South Korean Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter IDonT
- Start date
Fat Amy got done in by "Strike Eagle".
Speaking of which, here's the "Joint Firepower Ship" arsenal ship model exhibited by Hanwha.
Posted by on Twitter.
Basically looks like a stretched version of 055, lol.
Armament wise, other than 2 CIWS and one gun, it has 48 KVLS-1, 32 KVLS-2 and 15 L(Large?)-KVLS.
Three main (personal) critiques:
1. Why even bother with 3 different variants of the K-VLS on a single hull? Just fit more K-VLS1 (or alternatively, KVLS-2 with quad-pack capability with that L-KVLS grouping in the rear.
2. That's a huuuuuuge waste of space forward of the superstructure.
3. Those L-VLS arrangement is just really... sigh...
I can bet 20 bucks that some Chinese military 3D modeler on Weibo can do a much better arsenal ship model than Hanwha.
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Minor corrections.
Do we know the diameter and max. missile length for KVLS-II?
This states they are 9.8m long but since it's hot launch only , max. Missile length should be less than 9m.
I mean at this point whats the difference between this and a type 55D?
If you're gonna go full arsenal ship, just send it. Ditch the radars except for the CIWS illuminators and rely on accompanying ships to provide targeting or rather just slave the ship to the whole fleet and let them decide what to engage.
Also what is the dimensions of the KVLS-I (are they firing some short ranged SAM)? Aren't these escorts/fleet ships supposed to be reaaaallly far apart in IRL combat formation which basically renders the KVLS-I sized missiles useless as ship defense for the arsenal ship's escorts (apart from personal ship defense).
Or am I missing something here.
What is
What is the massive VLS used for? IRBM perhaps?
I am not going to criticize its VLS arrangement despite it including 3 different launchers, which is a weird choice for a post-2025 ship.
What I am going to criticize is the rationale for such a ship.
1- A ship like this makes no difference against North Korea, which is conventionally overmatched greatly.
2- A ship like this makes no difference against China. ROKN wouldn't be survivable against PLA and South Korea could just launch missiles from trucks.
3- Against Japan it does make some sense. It can establish new attack vectors and can be defended. But its opportunity cost must be evaluated well. Large naval vessels are fantastically expensive and defending these ships to their launch points and back would tie up a lot of aero and naval resources. It should be evaluated if the obtained capability is worth all of this.
1 - is it?
NK firepower is quite impressive - and, as Karabakh and now Ukrainian conflict shows, was developed in a very right direction.
Worst Korea looks fancier, but apart from the airforce (which North simply can't get from anywhere), i would be careful talking overmatches. Especially great ones.
2 - RK navy has a relatively safe geographical backyard in the sea of Japan - and it's already large enough to matter (all 3 East Asian navies are).
It of course depends on the political setup of the conflict(North Korea? Japan?), but dismissing ROK navy is wrong.