Taiwan Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Janiz said:

BTW regarding lack of AEGIS equipped vessels: there's constant presence of US and Japanese warships read for action in every minute in the East China Sea. US Navy and JMSDF are the only navies in the world which deal with those kind of situations in real time thanks to the North Korean missiles flying over Japanese Islands. Best training is real threat and they know how to deal with that.

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Well obviously USN and JMSDF are most proficient at at-sea ABM monitoring and contingencies given they are the only naval ships armed with SM-3 and the associated software to launch them.
It's a harder sell if you're saying USN and JMSDF ships are generally more competent in all areas (rather than only ABM) just because of the threat of NK ballistic missile tests, given every navy can and do deploy ships on real world missions routinely which includes the usual manner of operational anti air, anti surface and anti submarine vigilance.

Of course all this is beside the point to what franklin was originally questioning, that is whether any aegis vessels would be able to support ROCN Kee Lung DDGs to leverage their ability to communicate with aegis ships, and so the presence of aegis ships in a relevant theater at a particular time of hostilities, is more important to the question than competence.
As Jeff said, the Kee Lungs have capable combat systems intrinsic to themselves.
But I also think franklin asks a valid question in just how valuable the ability to communicate with aegis vessels are for the Kee Lungs given it's hardly a given that there are aegis vessels ROCN can rely on in any hypothetical contingency.

I would be interested to know just how often and and what distance and duration JMSDF deploys its aegis ships at; after all it only has six (not counting the smaller Akizukis which in JMSDF doctrine seem to be operated as aegis "guarders"), with four Kongos and two Atagos. While it is plausible for all six to be deployed at one time for a short duration, normal patterns of operation would likely only have half of them ready to be deployed at any one time (i.e.: not in maintenance or the like), and even then they would be operating without very much mutual support from their peer aegis ships if they want to have a presence in a large area of water. In the JMSDF, their aegis ships very much are the equivalent of capital ship surface combatants due to just how few aegis ships they have and how much more capable they are compared to the rest of their fleet -- this is in contrast with the USN whose entire surface fleet is virtually made up of ships of that calibre. PLAN are looking to similarly populate their surface fleet by normalizing their "capital ship" 052Cs and 052Ds in limited numbers at present to become a much larger and present capability, with 055s taking the role of surface combatant capital ships, in a process that will probably end its first stage by the early 2020s.

That said I'm not actually sure how many aegis ships the USN has in westpac. Jeff, any rough idea how many Burkes and Ticos the USN has forward deployed or homeported in the westpac at any one time? I've tried looking at the USN's official websites for their various DESRONs and the escorts for particular carriers, but it was a frustrating task given only some commands list their vessels and some do not.

(a little OT; maybe a mod could move discussion to the aegis ships thread)

7th Fleet have 2 CG, 7 DDG

3th Fleet help also with 10 CG and 27 DDG.

FORBIN said:

7th Fleet have 2 CG, 7 DDG

3th Fleet help also with 10 CG and 27 DDG.

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Thanks; any rough idea how much of 3rd fleet is routinely operated west of Hawaii?

Kidd class ships were good AAW vessels when they are built. But were they good enough for ROC Navy when purchased in 2001?

First let's ask the common sense question, if the Kidd was still good enough in 2001, why was it rejected by Australia, then offered to Greece and also rejected? Did ROC navy just accept the Kidd because it had no other choice?

Looking at the Kidd class in more details. NTU is by all account a good system that gave much improved capabilities to old ships. Its interface is even described by sailors as more user friendly than the Aegis system. Its weakness compare to Aegis is in countering saturation attack. With just two AN/SPG-51D, which have to perform tracking as well as illumination instead of just illumination for large numbers of AN/SPG-62 on Aegis ships. the Kidds are going to a hard time countering saturation attack even with time sharing. Comparing to its most likely opponent in PLAN service, the Sovremennyy class has six MR-90 to perform similar track/illumination duty as the two AN/SPG-51D. Second, NTU ships were optimized against high to medium altitude Soviet threats, and were deficient vs supersonic sea skimming missiles that were coming into service. SPS-48E can detect sea skimmers, but it is only a single faced rotating radar that's blind to two third of the sky at any given point in time. A supersonic sea skimmer can pop up above the horizon and close the distance when the radar is not looking in its direction. USN later introduced SPQ-9B specifically to counter this threat, but not on the Kidds.
So given their know weaknesses, facing SS-N-22 armed Sovremennys in PLAN service, where the Kidds good enough for ROCN back in 2001?

During a one on one fight with another destroyer would not result in a saturation attack since destroyer does not carry that many ASMs.
Another point I am not able to confirm is does PLAN have a vertical launch capable ASM within their arsenal?

They have the YJ-18, which IIRC, the 2015 ONI report said that the 052D carries.

SamuraiBlue said:

During a one on one fight with another destroyer would not result in a saturation attack since destroyer does not carry that many ASMs.
Another point I am not able to confirm is does PLAN have a vertical launch capable ASM within their arsenal?

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Prior to 052D, no -- that's because 052D is the first PLAN ship to feature a common VLS able to fire a variety of munitions, meaning the previously most capable AShMs were the YJ-62 (tomahawk anti ship missile equivalent) aboard the 6 052Cs, the Moskit/Sunburn of the Sovremennys, and the YJ-83s (harpoon equivalent) aboard virtually every other class of ship. All these use slant launchers.

Of course with the introduction of 052Ds en masse they truly have the potential for a massed saturation attack with YJ-18 (and possibly YJ-100 if it's real), given they can potentially carry anywhere from 1 or 64 of an 052D's VLS with AShMs.

But regarding shen's point, even if we ignore the ability of PLAN to conduct supersonic saturation attacks in the early 2000s, the Kee Lungs are still not quite as good at air defence as a truly modern DDG should be. Limited terminal illuminators number, an older one sided rotating phased array, and arm launchers would only be able to stand up to relatively small scale AShM volleys or air strikes.

However we should also remember that in the early 2000s the PLA were only beginning to proliferate YJ-83 aboard their ships as standard, they were only beginning to induct the Sovs (which it turned out had issues with both the ships themselves and also the sunburn missiles supposedly), and very limited numbers of still immature strike fighters armed with air launched AShMs.
This was only 5 years after the 3rd taiwan strait crisis, and the PLA's modernization efforts were only starting to make its effects felt in small dribs and drabs.

In that sense, I think the capability the Kidds provided even in 2001 was quite competitive even if they were the best deal ROCN could have found at the time. Obviously it's not as good as an aegis ship, but compared to the threat environment they were facing I think they were definitely survivable.
Of course everything's changed since then.

Ships don't usually carry that many ASM. They mostly carry SAMs to engage aerial threats and ASROC for subsurface threats. That is what I am talking about.
PLAN could but that would be suicidal with no ways to defend.

Note I did say "potentially" and I deliberately wrote "1-64" with the implication that either number would be ridiculous for an operational loadout.

The point is that the PLAN has the ability to vertically fire AShMs with the introduction of 052D and the new VLS, and the potential for an individual 052Ds to fire more high capability AShMs than previous ships were capable of.

I'm not suggesting a single PLAN ship would be fully loaded with AShMs to conduct a saturation attack, if that's what you're thinking, but it does give the PLAN much increased flexibility to allocate more 052D tubes to AShMs and for the air defence roles to be ascribed to either other 052Ds or single role 052Cs in a task force. Bottom line, VLS able to fire AShMs is super handy, and having more VLS per ship is even better.