Type 056 OPV/Corvette

Originally Posted by Mysterre

Actually, the width of the torpedo areas in both photos are almost exactly the same, both of them just slightly more than double the width of a torpedo launcher.

Well actually, the width of the area on the 056 is just what we can see through the doors, there is no reason why the doors would represent the limits of the internal space.

Whatever that space is in between the torpedo launchers, it’s not for a UAV. The biggest reason IMO is common sense. Why would they make things harder on themselves by moving UAV’s out the sides where the launchers are, then back towards the helipad, instead of creating a hangar door directly facing the helipad?

Well a very obvious reason would be structural integrity. You need a certain bare minimum amount of load bearing walls to help support the structure of the hanger.

I see from the rest of your comments that the reason you are so adamant that they cannot store UAVs in the hanger may be because of what you envisage those UAVs to be like.

The UAVs I have in mind would be pretty small rotor wing UAVs probably weighing in the 100-250kg range and would only carry a FLIR and optics turret and will have a relatively short range instead of the large torpedo and dipping sonar carrying kind you seem to be thinking of.

We know that there are many many UAVs of that size being develop by private companies in China, and indeed, the PLAN seems to be operating something like that already.



The kind of UAV you are suggesting is only on the drawing boards and it will be many years before they become operational at the earliest.

There are two windows there instead, one of them presumably for a control station. The other could easily have been a hangar door, if that space in between were actually for a hangar.

I think both windows are for control stations. The fact that there are two windows there is itself a little interesting as I think everyone can agree that the designers put them there for functional reasons as opposed to merely aesthetics. Now, normally you only need one window for the control room at help land helicopters, so what is the other one for? I think that would not be a bad place to put a UAV control station.

Now, if we apply your 'common sense' test to your hull hypothesis that there is no hanger and the doors are merely for crew passage, the most obvious question would be, why make them so wide?

With the current configuration, you need standard hanger shutter-like doors for those doorways, and two of them to boot. If they only needed the doors for crew passage and to move reload torpedos to the launchers, there would be no need for such large openings. They could have done with openings half as large and just have a couple of normal hatches for crew movement.

It is quite clear that the reason they made those openings as large as they did is to allow crews to move munitions and equipment to and from landed helicopters as quickly as possible to refuel, rearm and service them when needed.

However, every square meter of space on a warship, especially a small one like the 056, is precious and the designers would have come up with good ways to use it all, and storing a couple of small UAVs that the PLAN already operates in that hanger would make the most sense. That would also leave plenty of space left over to story munitions and equipment to service full size helicopters that might land on them.

The kind of large sized ASW UAVs you are talking about do not exist yet, but if and when they do appear, we may well see a slight redesign in future versions of the 056 to adopt a more conventional hanger door design to allow them to embark such UAVs, but that is still some way into the future at this point.

This alone makes it extremely unlikely there is an actual UAV hangar on that ship. There is basically no good reason at all not to have put a door facing the helipad. Unless of course the reason to put a door there does not exist because there is no UAV hangar there in the first place.

Well that is just circular reasoning and you should know it.

I’m referring to the first photo you just posted, where you can clearly see the wall in the back of the torpedo area. Not necessarily ironclad proof, but it definitely does not look deep enough to make it to the starboard “vent” or whatever it is.

Come on, you should know it's impossible to gauge depth from a shot like that. And as this picture clearly shows, there is a hatch leading to the hanger, so there is absolutely no reason why it should be partition off part way through as you are suggesting.

Besides, even if there was extra space directly forward of the torpedo launchers, it sure wouldn’t be for the storage of UAV’s. Instead, what they would have done is move whatever they are using that area in between the launchers for now (the area beneath the HQ-10) and relocate that to the areas in front of the launchers, then use the cleared-out area for a UAV hangar, with a hangar door that directly faces the helipad.

Again, I think the confusion stems from the size of UAVs we are respectively talking about.

The way I see it, they need a couple of meters from the windows for the control stations, and the space that is visible through the doors would be taken up by the torpedo launchers and walkway, but the rest of the space (about half the width of the hanger and almost the whole length of it) would be free for storage. Even if they take up 1/3 of the front end of the hanger for something else, that still leaves more than enough room to store munitions, parts and service equipment for helos at the far end of the hanger, with the space between the torpedo launchers more than adequate to store a couple of small UAVs.

I’m talking about doors FROM the helipad to the rest of the ship. More specifically from the wall facing the helipad. There are none. So if you land on the helipad there is no other way for you to get to the rest of the ship except through one of the passageways right beside the torpedo launchers, which is why I said those areas need to be wide enough to both accommodate the swing of the launchers as well as the movement of personnel. Which is exactly what that other photo of the PLAN torpedo launchers I posted is meant to show. They are the same width and serve the same dual purposes.

The torpedo launchers are completely within the hanger. There is no correlation between them and the size of the doors.

As I have pointed out before, if all they were interested in was access to the torpedo launchers for reloading and crew passage, they could have halved the size of the shutter doors quite comfortably and added standard crew hatches, which would be far more convenient for crew movement as they will not need to wait for the shutters to wind up and down.

Those doors are clearly meant for rapid re-arming and resupply of helos as they allow crews to get decent sized loads to both sides of the helo at the same time. That would be the primary reason why the doors were designed the way they have been. And they are also perfectly suited to allow the movement of small UAVs to help fill some of the the gaps left by not having a full sized helo embarked full time.

Neither of us being ship designers, I’m not sure how you can make any definitive conclusions about designers choices based on assumptions of ‘extra space’. Neither you nor I know what they are using most of the area inside the ship for. The best we can do is whatever can be seen from the outside. The little Paintshop 056 floorplan I made up was purely speculation. There could be dozens of things that I don’t know about and could need a lot of space inside a ship. Whatever we can conclude with reasonable certainty is whatever we can directly observe right now. Anything else is just speculation. I would give sailors more credibility in their speculation on the internals of a ship (e.g. BD popeye), but I am not, and I’m guessing you are not either.

Well I actually know ship designers very well and had to listen to plenty of their casual lectures, so I think I know a thing or two about ship design principles at least. But that is all beside the point.

You do not need to be a ship designing expert to know that rear deck design of the 056 is quite unusual. Just look at ships of similar size and roles and configurations.

Look at the likes of the MEKO and German Type K130. They are good examples of the standard approach to corvette design, with a very similar layout to the 056 except for the aft section. If the 056 had went with a standard design like the MEKO or K130, it could have had only one deck below the helipad instead of two, and had a full sized hanger and far more leeway in terms to ship height and equipment up to since top weight would not have been as much of an issue without the full extra deck below the helipad.

That would have been the easy approach, and the designers of the 056 departed from that for a very good reason, and no, the ability to launch a RIB is not nearly good enough to justify the sacrifices made to accommodate that extra deck. The fact that they stuff the torpedo launchers in the hanger instead of finding space on the extra deck is further evidence that they have something particular in mind for that space already.

Originally Posted by plawolf

The UAVs I have in mind would be pretty small rotor wing UAVs probably weighing in the 100-250kg range and would only carry a FLIR and optics turret and will have a relatively short range instead of the large torpedo and dipping sonar carrying kind you seem to be thinking of.


It is quite clear that the reason they made those openings as large as they did is to allow crews to move munitions and equipment to and from landed helicopters as quickly as possible to refuel, rearm and service them when needed.

Yep! I was thinking along the same lines when mentioning UAVs. I guess this discussion did not establish what size of UAV so everyone's input reflected their personal vision of UAV size. In my mind, it would also be the small UAVs which can easily be stored in this "garage" and easily moved around the torpedo launchers. It's pretty much given these ships will not be issued their own helos so when there isn't one on the deck, the small UAVs will augment. This is where I stretched the concept and asked about the feasibility for MANPADS launched sonar buoys to help expands the ships limited ASW capabilities.

Would the 056 have enough storage space to provide refueling to a helo? Considering the plan is to not have a helo be issued to each ship, sailing around with a tank of fuel reserve for any passing helo seems to be a waste of space.

Originally Posted by joshuatree

Would the 056 have enough storage space to provide refueling to a helo? Considering the plan is to not have a helo be issued to each ship, sailing around with a tank of fuel reserve for any passing helo seems to be a waste of space.

Well given the short range of Z9s and the fact that any helo would need to transit a fair distance to land on an 056, especially if it came from a land base, I think it is pretty much a given that the 056 would carry an auxiliary fuel tank for the helos. Since the 056 would need such a fuel tank anyways, it would make even more sense to equip them with UAVs, which can make use of the fuel when helos are not needed.

I envisage the 056 operating as springboards and rapid responders to help the PLAN make the most of it's small rotor wing fleet.

That way, you can have a relatively small, 'floating' wing of ASW helos that are normally land based or based on the Varyag or future LHD with a large number of 056s forward deployed to supplement larger warships like 054As and 052Cs. As soon as a sub is detected or suspected of operating in an area, a small wing of ASW helos could be dispatched to the nearest 056s, which can refuel, rearm and provide a temporary billet for the crews should the need arrises, and generally support helo operations almost as good as if they had embarked helos themselves. That way, you can have 24/7 ASW helo support anywhere in the SCS and ECS within hours without having to equip every surface ship with a helo.

Originally Posted by plawolf

Well actually, the width of the area on the 056 is just what we can see through the doors, there is no reason why the doors would represent the limits of the internal space.

There is probably a small lip around the edge of the openings (at the top and both sides) to help guide the garage doors. Beyond that, there is no reason why the openings should not represent the limits of the internal space.

Originally Posted by plawolf

Well a very obvious reason would be structural integrity. You need a certain bare minimum amount of load bearing walls to help support the structure of the hanger.

That’s a MASSIVE stretch of a reason and you know it. Look at the back of the Luhu’s hangar and tell me how much “load-bearing” is being done by the side facing the helipad. I’d say maybe 30%, 35% tops. Same thing with the Luhai. Same thing with the hangar-mod Luda. You just don’t need that much wall to support the structure of the hangar. Besides, this ‘structural integrity’ argument already fails to make sense just based on its current setup with two holes. You can’t count the holes as ‘structural support’, you know that, right? In fact I’m willing to bet even creating a hole as large as the port and starboard openings and sticking that right in the middle in place of those two holes, would do just about nothing to compromise the ability of the aft wall to support the roof, something it doesn’t even need to do AT ALL. You perhaps forgot that there are in fact FOUR walls running along the main axis of the ship at that location, with the two middle walls running at least partially the length of the two outer walls. If those aren’t enough to hold up the roof without any help from the aft wall, the PLAN is using some pretty cheap sh** for construction.

Originally Posted by plawolf

I see from the rest of your comments that the reason you are so adamant that they cannot store UAVs in the hanger may be because of what you envisage those UAVs to be like.

The UAVs I have in mind would be pretty small rotor wing UAVs probably weighing in the 100-250kg range and would only carry a FLIR and optics turret and will have a relatively short range instead of the large torpedo and dipping sonar carrying kind you seem to be thinking of.

We know that there are many many UAVs of that size being develop by private companies in China, and indeed, the PLAN seems to be operating something like that already.
The kind of UAV you are suggesting is only on the drawing boards and it will be many years before they become operational at the earliest.

Actually, I don’t believe I made reference to the size of any putative UAV in my reply to you and it actually makes no difference here. I’m talking about how much sense it makes to have a UAV hangar with a door that faces away from the helipad when there is no reason not to have one facing it. It doesn’t matter to me whether this door is the size of a home garage or a B2 hangar door. And you should note that you have been arguing two locations for the putative UAV hangar at the same time: the space just below the HQ-10 launcher, and the spaces just forward of the torpedo launcher.

Originally Posted by plawolf

I think both windows are for control stations. The fact that there are two windows there is itself a little interesting as I think everyone can agree that the designers put them there for functional reasons as opposed to merely aesthetics. Now, normally you only need one window for the control room at help land helicopters, so what is the other one for? I think that would not be a bad place to put a UAV control station.

Talk about circular reasoning, this statement basically starts with a false premise and concludes by referencing back to the original false premise: there are two windows, both of them needed for a control station. Why are there two windows needed for a control station? Well the designers must have had a reason to put two windows there for a control station, because normally there isn’t two, and plus that space could have been used for a hangar door. So why did they sacrifice so much? Because there are two windows needed for a control station.

Well, no. You may claim that both of them are needed for a control station, but that does not mean that the PLAN all of a sudden DOES need two windows for a standard helipad when it has never before needed something so wide. Nor has any other naval vessel that uses a helipad of this size.

BTW, I have also assumed those are windows, when in reality either or both of them could actually be used for something else, like ventilation. Or they could both be windows but neither of them used mainly for helicopter landing operations, but rather as viewports to the rear of the ship, which can be used as convenient control stations in a pinch. Right now they are just two holes that provide no structural support and provide no clues as to their eventual purpose.

Here is the bottom line: the wall facing the helipad has no need of either the level of structural support you are claiming based on the fact that it’s already proving that it doesn’t, RIGHT NOW, and the fact that other ships have no need of such significant structural support. Also, the wall facing the helipad has no need of a second control room window because no other ship has needed them in the past for a similarly-sized helipad. So there is still no reason a supposed UAV hangar could not have a hangar door directly facing the helipad.

Originally Posted by plawolf

Now, if we apply your 'common sense' test to your hull hypothesis that there is no hanger and the doors are merely for crew passage, the most obvious question would be, why make them so wide?

With the current configuration, you need standard hanger shutter-like doors for those doorways, and two of them to boot. If they only needed the doors for crew passage and to move reload torpedos to the launchers, there would be no need for such large openings. They could have done with openings half as large and just have a couple of normal hatches for crew movement.

It is quite clear that the reason they made those openings as large as they did is to allow crews to move munitions and equipment to and from landed helicopters as quickly as possible to refuel, rearm and service them when needed.

As I said, the passageways are just as wide as they need to be to accommodate both the swinging action of the torpedo launchers as well as the movement of personnel to and from the helipad. As for the openings themselves, they could easily be that wide to facilitate the reloading of torpedoes after being delivered by helo resupply. You already need passageways to be that wide. This has been demonstrated by MwrRYum’s photo. There is no reason to hinder either the reloading of torpedoes or the movement of personnel by making the openings smaller.

Originally Posted by plawolf

However, every square meter of space on a warship, especially a small one like the 056, is precious and the designers would have come up with good ways to use it all, and storing a couple of small UAVs that the PLAN already operates in that hanger would make the most sense. That would also leave plenty of space left over to story munitions and equipment to service full size helicopters that might land on them.
The kind of large sized ASW UAVs you are talking about do not exist yet, but if and when they do appear, we may well see a slight redesign in future versions of the 056 to adopt a more conventional hanger door design to allow them to embark such UAVs, but that is still some way into the future at this point.

No, it wouldn’t make the most sense because you have yet to demonstrate there is some kind of space that is being used as any kind of “hangar” in the first place, or that the 056 was even intended from the beginning to potentially be able to embark a UAV at all. Ever. The fact that the outside of the ship indicates that rear area is longer than the torpedo tubes in no way requires the passageway to extend all the way from the garage doors to the doors right next to the aft mast. In fact the passageways could terminate just forward of the torpedo launchers like this:



This gives that big room even more room, say if they need a real CIC, or a conference room, or something else. There is simply no NECESSARY reason for the passageways to keep extending forward once they are past the front of the torpedo launcher.

Originally Posted by plawolf

Well that is just circular reasoning and you should know it.

I’m guessing you’re using the word “circular” in a different sense than I am. Here’s what I’m saying: what reasons are there to place a hangar door in some location other than directly facing the helipad? The answer: no good ones; i.e. there may be some bad reasons to do it. OR, the question itself is totally invalid because there is no UAV hangar and therefore no reason to ask the question in the first place. Now, please tell me which part of this is supposedly “circular”.

Originally Posted by plawolf

Come on, you should know it's impossible to gauge depth from a shot like that. And as this picture clearly shows, there is a hatch leading to the hanger, so there is absolutely no reason why it should be partition off part way through as you are suggesting.

Again, I think the confusion stems from the size of UAVs we are respectively talking about.

The way I see it, they need a couple of meters from the windows for the control stations, and the space that is visible through the doors would be taken up by the torpedo launchers and walkway, but the rest of the space (about half the width of the hanger and almost the whole length of it) would be free for storage. Even if they take up 1/3 of the front end of the hanger for something else, that still leaves more than enough room to store munitions, parts and service equipment for helos at the far end of the hanger, with the space between the torpedo launchers more than adequate to store a couple of small UAVs.

If they want to use the middle portion as one large room, there is definitely a good reason to partition the passageways, just like the drawing that I posted. And who said the 056 will store any “munitions, parts, or service equipment” for any helo at all? This is just an assumption that does not require a necessary translation into reality. If they can run a fuel hose out to a helo sitting on the pad, that would be par for the course as far as I’m concerned for this class of ship. The presence of the helipad begs neither any kind of onboard hangar nor any kind of maintenance facility for helos at all. I think that’s what you keep tripping over. You see a helipad and you really want to add something else helo-related, like a UAV hangar or a helo maintenance/service station. Well sometimes a helipad is just a helipad.

Originally Posted by plawolf

The torpedo launchers are completely within the hanger. There is no correlation between them and the size of the doors.
As I have pointed out before, if all they were interested in was access to the torpedo launchers for reloading and crew passage, they could have halved the size of the shutter doors quite comfortably and added standard crew hatches, which would be far more convenient for crew movement as they will not need to wait for the shutters to wind up and down.

Those doors are clearly meant for rapid re-arming and resupply of helos as they allow crews to get decent sized loads to both sides of the helo at the same time. That would be the primary reason why the doors were designed the way they have been. And they are also perfectly suited to allow the movement of small UAVs to help fill some of the the gaps left by not having a full sized helo embarked full time.

Clearly? Again, I think you and I are using different meanings of words. I don’t see kind of clarity in this claim here. Two passageways to “load decent sized loads into both sides of the helo at the same time”??? LOL, which ship has ever created something for that purpose? Please show me, because I REALLY would like to see something like that. But TBH, there is reaching for straws, and then there is reaching for straws. And then there is the concept of multiple passageways for rapid loading of helos on both sides at the same time.

Originally Posted by plawolf

Well I actually know ship designers very well and had to listen to plenty of their casual lectures, so I think I know a thing or two about ship design principles at least. But that is all beside the point.

You do not need to be a ship designing expert to know that rear deck design of the 056 is quite unusual. Just look at ships of similar size and roles and configurations.

Look at the likes of the MEKO and German Type K130. They are good examples of the standard approach to corvette design, with a very similar layout to the 056 except for the aft section. If the 056 had went with a standard design like the MEKO or K130, it could have had only one deck below the helipad instead of two, and had a full sized hanger and far more leeway in terms to ship height and equipment up to since top weight would not have been as much of an issue without the full extra deck below the helipad.

That would have been the easy approach, and the designers of the 056 departed from that for a very good reason, and no, the ability to launch a RIB is not nearly good enough to justify the sacrifices made to accommodate that extra deck. The fact that they stuff the torpedo launchers in the hanger instead of finding space on the extra deck is further evidence that they have something particular in mind for that space already.

An unusual design does not equate to, “let’s speculate all kinds of untenable ideas for what the hell might be going on here”, when there are perfectly good reasons for seeing what we see.

Wide passageways on both sides: they need to be that wide to accommodate personnel movement and facilitate torpedo launcher rotation at the same time

Wide openings on both sides: there is no reason not to allow easy movement of personnel at the same time as facilitating an easier ability to reload spent torpedo tubes using fresh rounds from the helipad.

The lack of a UAV hangar door on the wall facing the helipad: there is no good reason for this if there were an actual UAV hangar. IF there were an actual UAV hangar.

A small UAV is not wider than a man who operate it. Those doors are wide enough to handle a small UAV like a Camcopter S-100.

Originally Posted by zaky

A small UAV is not wider than a man who operate it. Those doors are wide enough to handle a small UAV like a Camcopter S-100.

Did you somehow read somewhere that a small UAV could not fit inside those passageways? This point has already been covered. It is also utterly irrelevant to the main issues with a UAV hangar on board the current version of 056.

Originally Posted by Equation

Sorry to be a stickler here, but are you sure those are torpedo tubes launcher? Because that fella in the dark reddish shirt is sort of in the way, plus there isn't the mechanisms for launching it.

Here is my impression of torpedo tube launcher.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4_VwSXHY5b...o_launcher.jpg

Okay is it just me or is that a plastic door similar to one's used in office buildings for bathroom/toilets/washrooms?

Whatever became of watertight integrity?

It looks like some of the ship's contractors are used to making offices and not ships.

It looks to me it's a metal fence with some type of blue covering plate.

Originally Posted by Equation

The same can be say about what is a true democracy? There are so many changes that went on through out the history of the US that democracy never did stick to it's Greek origin meaning.

I read a fascinating book recently ( in Dutch, my wife must have it somewhere ) about the the inheritance of Western ideas from the Greeks and the Romans, but also from the Babylonians and the Muslims. It showed that ideas that would lead to democracy came from the Muslims, together with the concept of the University. They developed it in the 8th and 9th century without reference to Athens. The notions that Western values derived from Greek antiquity was part of the Prussian reforms, and ideology, reaction to the defeat by Napoleon in 1806, that let also to the Gymnasium.

Originally Posted by zaky

A small UAV is not wider than a man who operate it. Those doors are wide enough to handle a small UAV like a Camcopter S-100.

Agree. China have bought a certain amount of dual-use model of the S-100 and developing domestic copy / local-made model of comparable size. Given the size of the PLAN naval aviation (especially their rotary-wing division) is still too small for what it need to be, it's logical that the 056 corvette have UAV handling capability, and exploit such capability extensively for its various mission profiles.

Like I said, if they debut the 056 as early as 1st half of 2013, we'll see their mission packages in Hong Kong, and I'll do what I can to cover the story.

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/3...uncherbays.jpg

Hey Mysterre did you apply CAD drawings onto that PDF drawings there? If you did, that's great. And I would like to know how you did it.

Originally Posted by Equation

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/3...uncherbays.jpg

Hey Mysterre did you apply CAD drawings onto that PDF drawings there? If you did, that's great. And I would like to know how you did it.

Nothing more special than Microsoft Paint that comes standard with every PC.

This debate about whether they can store UAVs on the ship is becoming old. The two torpedo rooms are indeed large enough for UAVs, but in their current forms they are occupied by torpedo tubes which require a large area to be able to swing outward to fire. Having said that, that space has the potential to become a hangar since it's wide and tall enough, and already has a garage door, but you will have to remove the torpedo tubes. If PLAN wants to do it they can remove, say, the starboard side tubes and put a UAV there while retaining basic ASW capabilities by leaving the port side tubes in place.

Originally Posted by Mysterre

There is probably a small lip around the edge of the openings (at the top and both sides) to help guide the garage doors. Beyond that, there is no reason why the openings should not represent the limits of the internal space.

Well I have already given you plenty of very good reasons, such as to have a storage area for munitions, equipment and parts to service any helos that land on the helipad as well as to serve as a hanger for small UAVs to help mitigate not having full sized helos embarked at all times.

Now, if all you are doing is ignoring arguments you don't like, then I will see no point in discussing this with you further.

That’s a MASSIVE stretch of a reason and you know it. Look at the back of the Luhu’s hangar and tell me how much “load-bearing” is being done by the side facing the helipad. I’d say maybe 30%, 35% tops. Same thing with the Luhai. Same thing with the hangar-mod Luda. You just don’t need that much wall to support the structure of the hangar. Besides, this ‘structural integrity’ argument already fails to make sense just based on its current setup with two holes. You can’t count the holes as ‘structural support’, you know that, right? In fact I’m willing to bet even creating a hole as large as the port and starboard openings and sticking that right in the middle in place of those two holes, would do just about nothing to compromise the ability of the aft wall to support the roof something it doesn’t even need to do AT ALL.

The structural integrity suggestion was put forward to counter your original suggestion that it would have been possible to cut half of the middle support away to make the opening bigger for a large UAV. The two doorways already account for around half the width of the hanger, and if you cut away much of the middle support, there would be precious little left to support the rear of the hanger.

Structural integrity is of particularly more import to small ships, because unlike their larger cousins, it would be far more likely and common for a large wave to crest over top of a small corvette compared to a larger frigate or destroyer. Thus, the roof of the hanger would not only need to be able to support it's own weight, but also be able to withstand a large wave crashing down on it. Just how big of a wave it can withstand would be down to the margins the designers decide to give it, which in turn would decide what kind of storm such a ship can ride through and which it needs to steer clear of.

You perhaps forgot that there are in fact FOUR walls running along the main axis of the ship at that location, with the two middle walls running at least partially the length of the two outer walls. If those aren’t enough to hold up the roof without any help from the aft wall, the PLAN is using some pretty cheap sh** for construction.

What four walls? I have never seen any pictures to indicate any internal walls in the hanger. I hope you do realize that just because you drew them on a picture does not make them there in reality.

Actually, I don’t believe I made reference to the size of any putative UAV in my reply to you and it actually makes no difference here.

So the comments you made about a dipping sonar and torpedo carrying UAV were what exactly?

I’m talking about how much sense it makes to have a UAV hangar with a door that faces away from the helipad when there is no reason not to have one facing it. It doesn’t matter to me whether this door is the size of a home garage or a B2 hangar door. And you should note that you have been arguing two locations for the putative UAV hangar at the same time: the space just below the HQ-10 launcher, and the spaces just forward of the torpedo launcher.

Well, here is that word that all designers know and which you loath - compromise.

The hanger is not just a hanger, it is also where the torpedo launchers are housed. That changes the requirements compared to if it was just a hanger.

Having one big door in the middle would mean that there is no direct access to the torpedo launchers from the helipad. When you consider just how close to the rear wall of the hanger those torpedo launchers are placed, that presents a bit of a problem for loading and maintenance.

Now, you can load them from the front of the torpedo launchers I suppose, but that would mean that you need to keep an area at least the length of the torpedos themselves (almost certainly more as you need room to safely maneuver them) in from of the torpedo launchers free at all times. Why waste all that precious space when instead, you can put doors behind the torpedo launchers so that when it comes time to reload them, you can push the fresh torpedos onto the helipad, and have all the space you could want to maneuver and position them, and just slip those bad boys straight into the tubes?

To address your second point, I have not been arguing for two places at the same time. I have always said that the space immediately behind the rear control rooms would be perfect, however, it is also perfectly possible and feasible to have the UAVs parked deeper in the hanger. They are alternatives suggestions.

Well, no. You may claim that both of them are needed for a control station, but that does not mean that the PLAN all of a sudden DOES need two windows for a standard helipad when it has never before needed something so wide. Nor has any other naval vessel that uses a helipad of this size.

Which is why I suggested that one of them could be used for the control station for UAVs. Funny you cannot remember that now, yet seem to remember that just fine when you wanted to mock my suggestion. Pick and choose much?

BTW, I have also assumed those are windows, when in reality either or both of them could actually be used for something else, like ventilation.

So which other warship have vents in the rear wall that are that big?

Or they could both be windows but neither of them used mainly for helicopter landing operations, but rather as viewports to the rear of the ship, which can be used as convenient control stations in a pinch.

That's reaching, desperately so. Which other warship has such a design feature?

When someone tries this hard to come up with implausible suggestions to try to cast doubt on a far more logical suggestion, odds are that someone has an agenda other than trying to uncover the truth of the matter.

Right now they are just two holes that provide no structural support and provide no clues as to their eventual purpose.

Really? You have absolutely no clues as to what those windo...sorry, holes, might be used for? Are you sure?

Here is the bottom line: the wall facing the helipad has no need of either the level of structural support you are claiming based on the fact that it’s already proving that it doesn’t, RIGHT NOW, and the fact that other ships have no need of such significant structural support.

Please, go have a look at ship hanger design especially smaller corvette classed ships. There is always significant structural support measures in place, even on the newest ships which benefit most from modern materials sciences and CAD.

Also, the wall facing the helipad has no need of a second control room window because no other ship has needed them in the past for a similarly-sized helipad. So there is still no reason a supposed UAV hangar could not have a hangar door directly facing the helipad.

Unless you want to come out and claim that you know better than the designers of the 056, I would suggest you stop obsessing about how you might have designed it, and instead focus on trying to understand why the designers made the design choices they have.

As I said, the passageways are just as wide as they need to be to accommodate both the swinging action of the torpedo launchers as well as the movement of personnel to and from the helipad. As for the openings themselves, they could easily be that wide to facilitate the reloading of torpedoes after being delivered by helo resupply. You already need passageways to be that wide. This has been demonstrated by MwrRYum’s photo. There is no reason to hinder either the reloading of torpedoes or the movement of personnel by making the openings smaller.

Have you read what I wrote? Having a set of smaller rolling doors for reloading the torpedo launchers and a separate standard standard hatch would not hinder either reloading of torpedos or crew movement if that was all that was intended. On the contrary, having two sets of doors would have it far easier for crew to move to and from the helipad because they would not need to wait for the doors and wind up and down every time the pass.

However, as I have stressed multiple times now, the reason they designed those doors to be as wide as they have is to allow rapid reloading of helos that do land on the helipad, and has a welcome secondary benefit of being perfectly suited to moving small UAVs to and from the helipad.

No, it wouldn’t make the most sense because you have yet to demonstrate there is some kind of space that is being used as any kind of “hangar” in the first place, or that the 056 was even intended from the beginning to potentially be able to embark a UAV at all. Ever.

That is a logical fallacy.

I am not saying 'the 056 will 100% definitely have a UAV hanger', what I am saying is that, from the design decisions and general layout and common sense, I think it is extremely likely that the 056 will house small UAVs in it's hanger.

I am saying that the PLAN has UAVs that would fit just fine through the large doors, there is clearly space for them to house such UAVs if so desired, there is a clear operational benefit to having them onboard, and there looks to be specific design choices made to accommodate UAVs, like the unusually large control room.

If either of us had definitive proof, there would not been any need for this discussion would there?

Because we don't have proof, we need to look at the evidence available to us and try to find the most logical explanations to explain those design choices and that is what I have been trying to do. What have you been trying so hard to do?

Thus far, you have been able to come up with zero credible alternative suggestions for the design choices that the ship designers have made.

If you have an alternative theory for what the designers made certain design choices, I would welcome them. But at the very least vet them in your mind before dumping them here first. Because right now, the suggestions you are making just look like hastily concocted wild ideas you are just throwing out there to try to avoid having to contemplate the ideas I have been suggesting.

That does not feel like the product of rational thought and logical argument, but rather of pride.

Everyone can have bad ideas or make bad calls, there is no shame in that. What is disappointing is for someone to refuse to accept any alternatives because they feel they are wholly invested in a snap call they made long ago and now feel like they need to defined that call beyond all reason and logic to save face.

The fact that the outside of the ship indicates that rear area is longer than the torpedo tubes in no way requires the passageway to extend all the way from the garage doors to the doors right next to the aft mast. In fact the passageways could terminate just forward of the torpedo launchers like this:



This gives that big room even more room, say if they need a real CIC, or a conference room, or something else. There is simply no NECESSARY reason for the passageways to keep extending forward once they are past the front of the torpedo launcher.

You seemed to have put some effort into drawing that diagram, which makes it all the more disappointing. If you had spent half the time you did drawing that thinking through what you are suggesting, I think you would have realized how nonsensical if is to suggest that anyone would put the ship's CIC there.

CICs are typically buried deep within a ship to provide maximum protection, and are also situated close to the primary sensors and weapons so that cables don't need to run needlessly far, both to save on costs and also to help minimize the risks of battle damage cutting those cables.

The hanger is just about the worst place you can think of to put the CIC on a ship. Not only is it extremely expose with only walls of the hanger to protect it, it is extremely close to the main smoke stack, which will be a magnet for any heat seeking missiles. In addition, the hanger is about as far away from mean sensors and weapons as it is possible to get (with the exception of the FL3000 launcher I guess), increasing the length of cabling required as well as making them more vulnerable to possible battle damage by running them all the way along the ship.

The CIC will either be on the bridge, or below decks near the central mass. It's pretty standard in warship design and it's that way for very good reason.

The suggestion of a conference room is even more fanciful. So much so that I am struggling not to mock it, so I will just not bother to say any more on that bright idea.

When you analyses a design, you need to consider the design as a whole as well as it's purpose, strengths, weaknesses, role etc.

Now, having devoted a disproportionately large part of the ship to having a full sized helipad, is it remotely likely that the designers would not bother to include any space for munitions, aviation fuel, spares and equipment to allow them to refuel, rearm and generally make best use of any helos that do land?

There is absolutely no good reason to put the CIC or conference room in the hanger at the expense of the entire propose of having a helipad in the first place.

If they want to use the middle portion as one large room, there is definitely a good reason to partition the passageways, just like the drawing that I posted.

Except the problem is, there is no good reason to put a large room there.

And who said the 056 will store any “munitions, parts, or service equipment” for any helo at all? This is just an assumption that does not require a necessary translation into reality. If they can run a fuel hose out to a helo sitting on the pad, that would be par for the course as far as I’m concerned for this class of ship. The presence of the helipad begs neither any kind of onboard hangar nor any kind of maintenance facility for helos at all. I think that’s what you keep tripping over. You see a helipad and you really want to add something else helo-related, like a UAV hangar or a helo maintenance/service station. Well sometimes a helipad is just a helipad.

Really? Take another look at the design. The helipad is unusually big for a ship of it's size. What other ship design devotes as much deck space (in meters and as a proportion of the ship) to a helipad and cannot re-arm them?

The very design of the hanger doors is a clear indication that they designed the hanger to allow rapid access to both sides of a helo with sizable loads. Does not take much of a leap to imagine what those loads might be.

As for UAVs, well the PLAN already operates such small UAVs on their ships. That is a fact that you will have to accept. if they are operating such UAVs on ships that have full sized helos, why wouldn't they use such UAVs to supplement the 056 which has no embarked helo? Embarking such UAVs would only need 2-3 square meters of deck space per UAV max. Even if they did not specifically design the ship to take them, that is the kind of space they can very easily find and set aside in the hanger of the size on the 056.

It is amusing that you are accusing me to having preconceptions for calling something that looks like a hanger, is designed like a hanger, positioned exactly where you could expect a hanger to be, and have doors like a hanger as a hanger. OTOH, your far fetched suggestions that they would put a CIC or conference room there is based entirely on abstract logical deduction?

Clearly? Again, I think you and I are using different meanings of words. I don’t see kind of clarity in this claim here. Two passageways to “load decent sized loads into both sides of the helo at the same time”??? LOL, which ship has ever created something for that purpose? Please show me, because I REALLY would like to see something like that. But TBH, there is reaching for straws, and then there is reaching for straws. And then there is the concept of multiple passageways for rapid loading of helos on both sides at the same time.

Pointless hair splitting and already addressed.

An unusual design does not equate to, “let’s speculate all kinds of untenable ideas for what the hell might be going on here”, when there are perfectly good reasons for seeing what we see.

How exactly is anything I have suggested 'untenable' by any stretch of the imagination? The only suggestions that are untenable are the far fetched ones you are dreaming up that have no purpose, reason or basing in reality.

Wide passageways on both sides: they need to be that wide to accommodate personnel movement and facilitate torpedo launcher rotation at the same time

Which does not explain why the doors need to be that wide does it?

Wide openings on both sides: there is no reason not to allow easy movement of personnel at the same time as facilitating an easier ability to reload spent torpedo tubes using fresh rounds from the helipad.

As I have pointed out before, the torpedos need to be first moved onto the helipad from racks or magazines in order to load them into the launchers without needlessly wasting internal space. There is no need for helicopters to deposit fresh rounds, and the fact that you keep referring to such shows you have not fully appreciated the reasoning behind the design of those doors.

The lack of a UAV hangar door on the wall facing the helipad: there is no good reason for this if there were an actual UAV hangar. IF there were an actual UAV hangar.

Again, pointless hairsplitting. The Freedom class LCS can carry two Seahawks, but it only has one hanger door. What does that say about the LCS' ability to carry two helicopters? Absolutely nothing.

Normally, a warship would not have enough width to design a hanger other than one that has direct access to the helipad, it is also convenient do have such a direct path. But there is absolutely no reason why a hanger cannot house something just because it needs to make a turn to get access to the helipad.