Type 022 Missile Boat

williamhou said:

You were talking about a swarm of 40 022's VS USN carrier groups. How do you think they can approach the carrier groups and fire 320 missiles?

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The point isn't to approach the carriers and attack them, but rather make it much more risky and difficult for a carrier force to approach Chinese littoral waters. Of course, the USN can still operate 500+ miles of the Chinese coast and still send out strike sorties, but they will be denied freedom of operating wherever they may wish. The ranges at which they will have to operate will put constraints on sortie rate as well as areas to which they can potentially threaten. Furthermore, as Violet Oboe pointed out, the 022s represent just a fraction of the PLA's coastal denial capabilities. There are other platforms that extend the range too which the PLA can deter enemy naval movement to much further ranges than what the 022 are capable off. Against other navies that operate in shallower seas and continental shelves such as the Vietnamese, Taiwanese, etc, the 022 are a potent threat as well as deterrent. They also help level the playing field when it comes to other more advanced Asian navies such as the Japanese and Koreans.

The principle of defending coastline with small ships armed with deadly missiles is not new, but the Type 022 fits this philosophy like a glove.

It can probably do battle 200-250 km out from the coast. And it carries 8 very advanced missiles. Within 400 km from the Chinese coast, these ships are a huge menace.

And realistically, 40 ships are not needed. Each AB requires at least 10 incoming simultaneously to get a hit, and to really disable it maybe 15. A carrier group has about 5 AB's, so 65 missiles need to be launched. Add in another 15 missiles for the carrier itself, that's 80.

So you really need only a wolf pack of 10 ships firing simultaneously to overwhelm one carrier group. In a conflict China can deploy 8 or more of these wolf packs.


Relatively speaking, the Type 022 is just maybe 1/5 or 1/4 of the maritime denial ability package of the PLA.

While I agree with most of the good things being said about 022, numbers of missiles to defeat one burke are probably way higher. yj83 takes some 80 or so seconds to reach burke from the point where ships own sensors can track it (let alone e2 from the skies), and that is if it flies a perfectly straight profile. Even if we assume a lot of bad things for the burke, like the fact it starts intercepting and destroying the missiles only after they breach the horizon, meaning some 55 seconds before impact, even if we assume only 2 of the 3 target illuminators make contact with the missiles, and even if we assume a generous tracking time of 5 seconds per engagement per illuminator, despite the fact the attacker missiles are flying completely straight, that is still 20 missiles shot down (there can easely be multiple sparrows launched at an incoming yj83, all being guided by the same illuminator) before other interceptors come to play. That number should've been 22 missiles, but lets say sea sparrow/essm cant intercept anything a few miles from the ship. Adding phalanx and/or seaRAM, final tally is probably closer to 24-28 missiles per Burke.

And that is for a lone Burke scenario with no early warning from E2. If one wants to bypass burkes and go straight for the carrier, that'd be some additional 5-10 km to cross, where both the burke and the carrier would be shooting down missiles. (lets assume the incoming missiles are in range of only a single burke on their way to the carrier, yet far enough from it to be engaged by seaRAM) If we assume 8 kn, that is some additional 20 seconds of flight time. Thats 8 more missiles shot down by the Burke and probably another 6-8 (essm plus seaRAM combined) by the carrier itself.

That's 41 missiles downed. 42 required for one to pass thorugh. Without E2 support, which is unlikely, without added flight time for manouvering, without decoy attrition.

More realistic figure, If detected early enough by e2s, would be, i believe, 60 or so missiles, not counting the decoy attrition. Naturally, if the target illuminators and sea sparrows can afford to concentrate just 3-4 seconds per engagement, the figure would be higher still, probably in the high 70s range.

Totoro, Your calculation is interesting. My question is, how many ESSM and seaRAM will they carry and since they will probably have more than one going for each missile, the saturation rate needed will probably be lower.

BD, correct me if I am wrong, but in reality the CBG will never let these 22 get close enough to launch their missiles. Wouldn't both fixed wing and rotor aircraft take care of these FACs?

jwangyue said:

BD, correct me if I am wrong, but in reality the CBG will never let these 22 get close enough to launch their missiles. Wouldn't both fixed wing and rotor aircraft take care of these FACs?

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That's if PLAAF and PLAN-AF are sitting idle. Of course, PLA would never let these FACs be fully exposed like that. Like many have said, type022 is only a small part of a coordinated effort to protect the coastline. If one wants to consider other added factors to defend 022's, then we all have to also consider other added factors from the PLA side to aid the 022's. Let's not make it be 022 against ALL.

How many sparrows would carrier's fleet carry is an unknown. today the answer could be: Probably not over 32 essms per ship, perhaps as few as 16. Adding to that some 32-48 or so sea sparrows, 32-48 standards. Perhaps more, if no tomahaws are carried.

Realistically, we would hardly see a proper battle as IF the carriers fighters would lose the battle with plaaf/planaf, the carrier group would flee. And plan's surface fleet would not get into proper launching range. Then again, that's pretty much a victory for plan, if they manage to deplete carrier's air wing. Unless, of course, they used 5 times more fighters to achieve that, in which case after a few more such encounters and phyrric victories, plaaf would simply have no more platforms left to do battle and deny airspace.

vesicles said:

That's if PLAAF and PLAN-AF are sitting idle. Of course, PLA would never let these FACs be fully exposed like that. Like many have said, type022 is only a small part of a coordinated effort to protect the coastline. If one wants to consider other added factors to defend 022's, then we all have to also consider other added factors from the PLA side to aid the 022's. Let's not make it be 022 against ALL.

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Like I said before, I don't know why people keep pitting a single type of warship against an entire navy, let alone the current dominant USN.

In a Taiwan invasion scenario, why does it have to be 022 against a carrier? What about merchant ships? Disruption of supply lines? What about changing the ordinance from anti-ship missiles to surface-to-surface missiles? Or air launched torpedos? Mix and match them in a pack? Etc.

What about 022 in another Battle of Paracel Islands scenario?

Totoro said:

While I agree with most of the good things being said about 022, numbers of missiles to defeat one burke are probably way higher. yj83 takes some 80 or so seconds to reach burke from the point where ships own sensors can track it (let alone e2 from the skies), and that is if it flies a perfectly straight profile. Even if we assume a lot of bad things for the burke, like the fact it starts intercepting and destroying the missiles only after they breach the horizon, meaning some 55 seconds before impact, even if we assume only 2 of the 3 target illuminators make contact with the missiles, and even if we assume a generous tracking time of 5 seconds per engagement per illuminator, despite the fact the attacker missiles are flying completely straight, that is still 20 missiles shot down (there can easely be multiple sparrows launched at an incoming yj83, all being guided by the same illuminator) before other interceptors come to play. That number should've been 22 missiles, but lets say sea sparrow/essm cant intercept anything a few miles from the ship. Adding phalanx and/or seaRAM, final tally is probably closer to 24-28 missiles per Burke.

And that is for a lone Burke scenario with no early warning from E2. If one wants to bypass burkes and go straight for the carrier, that'd be some additional 5-10 km to cross, where both the burke and the carrier would be shooting down missiles. (lets assume the incoming missiles are in range of only a single burke on their way to the carrier, yet far enough from it to be engaged by seaRAM) If we assume 8 kn, that is some additional 20 seconds of flight time. Thats 8 more missiles shot down by the Burke and probably another 6-8 (essm plus seaRAM combined) by the carrier itself.

That's 41 missiles downed. 42 required for one to pass thorugh. Without E2 support, which is unlikely, without added flight time for manouvering, without decoy attrition.

More realistic figure, If detected early enough by e2s, would be, i believe, 60 or so missiles, not counting the decoy attrition. Naturally, if the target illuminators and sea sparrows can afford to concentrate just 3-4 seconds per engagement, the figure would be higher still, probably in the high 70s range.

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Counting missiles in flight and fire control radars? Geez. What everyone is missing is the most potent weapon a Burke, and the carrier, has against a mass cruise missile attack. ECM. Those missles will be chasing one or more false echos created by manipulating the characteristics of the seeker radars on those missiles, and a Mk-53 Nulka decoy will be deployed into the false echo to create a real target for the missiles to track when the deception jammer is turned off.
If you study the history of naval missile warfare, few if any missiles have ever required the use of a point defense weapon to defeat, deception jamming has worked when it has been employed. Study what happened to the Egyptian and Syrian navies in 1973 and the Iranian Navy during Operation Praying Mantis. The Israelis decoyed upwards of 24 missiles in one engagement using 1973 jammer technology. The Iranian Navy had multiple missiles in the air aimed at our ships, all of which were successfully decoyed. We never needed to use CIWS, and the Iranians were firing Mach 2+ missiles at us inside 25 nm. At least two Exocets fired by the Argentines against the Royal Navy were successfully decoyed by chaff, missing an RN carrier. One of these continued on and locked onto the Atlantic Conveyor, striking that ship and setting fire to it's cargo of aircraft, vehicles and artillery.
Shooting down every single missile is unnecessary to defeat such an attack.

By the way, I'v confirmed through an Australian contact at AMD that the Type 022's use a standard AMD 350 hull and machinery but I do not know the fuel load to determine the range. Every customer specifies different sized fuel tanks based on the length of the route each ferry will service. Most ferry services require their ferries to be fueled at each destination, some only have a 50 nm range, trading range for increased speed.
The longest range version is an AMD350PB in Omani service. It has a top speed of 36 knots with a 1000 nm range at that speed. Range increases to 1300 nm at 25 kts. This version mounts only a single Bofors 57 mm gun as it's armament, and has a helo deck aft. Both hulls forward of the engine rooms are filled with fuel to achieve this range, meaning there is no room for anything else in the hull.

Nice bit of information on the last paragraph.

On the missiles, i do feel it will be inevitably, need to shoot every missile down. You're referring to old school seekers where the radars are not very smart. With modulation agile seekers, especially pseudo random, it will become mathematically near impossible to jam such radars.

Actually we are all assuming that the Chinese would be using their Type 22 on the CBG alone. That is not what is going to happen. Type 22 is a small boat, although they carry potent weaponries, they are not much of a match to modern destroyers or even frigates. However I believe they will not be operating far from shores, they are a weapon that was use mainly near shores to deny assess to Chinese shores by enemies, thus they will have all the defences from the shores such as land based aircrafts helicopters and even missiles from land.

They are just part of a equation in the defence of the mainland and not a singular equation.

I believe in near future when the first chinese carrier had been completed, the Type 22 will become part of the escort team too... mainly for the add on firepower needed for the lack of destroyers to escort the carrier.