Such a big difference in the WS-18 vs 20 noise level lol.
PLA Air Force news, pics and videos
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
Would this be PLAN or PLAAF? I guess there's no way to know for certain until it's publicly announced, but I would have thought PLAN due to being a "very fast surface vessel" more than a "very low flying plane".
Its almost definitely going to be a navy aircraft considering it probably can only operate from naval ports with limited ability to land on actual runways.
More just asking because of the thread name. The International Maritime Organisation classifies ekranoplans and other WIG vehicles as maritime vessels.
Some ekranoplans like A-90 could fly to 3,000 meters though.
Sure, it could be a Class B (although that would still count as a maritime vessel AFAICT). I think at least some ability to rise a bit is probably really helpful for dealing with potential weather issues like chop.
On that note, I think something that makes ekranoplans much more feasible in the modern day is not just the typical improved control systems, but just the fact that weather forecasts are so much better than they used to be. We have much greater ability to reliably forecast weather 10+ days in advance, rather than 3. That could let the PLAN move them to less weather-affected bases well in advance, or chart a course around non-navigable weather events.
Plus, as far as I'm aware we still don't really know how to target them. As far as we know any US torpedo would be useless against them (they're ~10× faster than the Mark 48's estimated speed), even a supercavitating torpedo like the VA-111 may not be fast enough to match their speed. A strike missile/AShM like the Tomahawk or LRASM could travel fast enough to easily exceed the speed of an ekranoplan, but I don't know how much such a high speed would complicate everything involved in completing that kill chain.
I am really intrigued by the idea of having an ekranoplan armed with a SAM system, to defend itself from the most likely threat it faces and to be able to put a capable SAM somewhere out on the ocean much faster than any other option. I'm also intrigued by the idea of an ekranoplan for ASW, using their combination of high load capacity and speed to drop large volumes of hydrosensors, or even to rapidly deploy some Mark 32-like munitions to a location where an enemy submarine was detected before other assets can get there.
I think it's better to consider an ekranoplan as an aircraft that flies very low.
So you want to use AAMs or SAMs to shoot them down.