052/052B Class Destroyers

[Jura The idiot]

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

Well, perhaps in a video game it would be fun.

But in the real thing, when your life and that of your compatriots on your ship depends on the CIWS being able to make all of those hits...IMHO I do not think it would not be fun at all.

Jeff, I'd suffer from a heart attack if I was a Captain of that ship ... my point was that a saturation attack using Vulcano ammunition could happen, followed by AShM attack! I apologize if my reference to "fun" was silly or something

 

[Jeff Head]

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

Jeff, I'd suffer from a heart attack if I was a Captain of that ship ... my point was that a saturation attack using Vulcano ammunition could happen, followed by AShM attack! I apologize if my reference to "fun" was silly or something

No problem.

Yes, such an attack could occur...and could probably be timed, if within range, to occur simultaneously.

But then, the relative differences in the ranges of the Vulcano round and the ASM is fairly significant and the ASMs would surely be fired in a wave first, at much greater range.

Oto Melaro lists the Vulcano 127mm GLR round as having a 80 km maximum range. By comparison Teseo MK2/A missiles have a maximum range of 180 km.

 

[Totoro]

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

Plus, if you wanted to achieve "several rounds fired from the same gun striking at roughly the same time" effect you'd shorten the range further. so for the similar effect at maximum range (which isnt that big to begin with) one'd really have to use more guns/more ships. which is really at that point a pretty big operation - having several frigate/destroyer sized ships involved in a single attack. once one gets to such operations you might as well be using antiship missiles for longer ranges - difference in price is hard to compare there against longer reach and other benefits antiship missiles offer.

in my opinion, ship just using two ciws (without extra missiles) should have a decent chance to defend against a 2-4 simultaneous rounds attack. if attacking vessel is using maximum range so simultaneous attack is out of the question then a modern two ciws ship could potentially hold out almost indefinitely. then it becomes a matter of available ammo, heating, etc.

as far as actual warhead/explosive goes, it should be more powerful than 81mm mortar rounds, but a bit less powerful than 120mm rounds. might be roughly as powerful as 105mm artillery projectiles.

 

[tphuang]

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

I have a feeling that I might have shifted conversation off topic, but it's pretty interesting.

Yes, they can and will have an anti-shipping capability. The IR guided rounds will allow for that.

However, they are also able to be intercepted. The US and others has been using CIWS software and hardware in ground intercept missions for incoming infantry rounds for some time...down to as small as mortar sheels. So, they will also be vulnerable to interception.

OTOH, they can also be fired very rapidly, particularly if a couple of ships engage, making the ability to shift and hit the multiple incoming rounds on a sustained basis more difficult too.

Play and counter play.

yes it is steerable, it needs to be to be able to hit anything. but those are minute and discreet movements so the shell keeps its trajectory, not any sort of evasive manouvers that might endanger the stability of the shell. plus, since the rounds should be able to be tracked at long ranges since they're flying to high, any possible evasive manouvers will be making the range shorter.

if the round is not evading, like i am assuming here, then interception is already possible with such systems as c-ram, mantis or china's own ld-2000. one could imagine specific ship based systems to be created in the near future, if the need arises, with even better sensors and longer ranged/more precise tracking.

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the latter link mentions 30 kg for the whole round, 16 kg for the projectile and 90mm diameter. so one might guess that warhead is around 10ish kg?

don't get me wrong, the antiship variant is still going to be quite useful against non high end targets. various corvettes and multitude of larger radarless ships (tankers, amphibious assault ships etc) would still be very vulnerable to it.

but the main role of vulcano family was always shore bombardement. same goes for ags on zumwalt.

127mm volcano ammo has range of some 70-120 km, which it achieves through non manouvering ballistic flight profiles. those are pretty easy to intercept. while brochures will surely say "little darts are hard to detect and intercept" in reality that is simply not true. Anti-artillery radars have been tracking 105mm rounds at over 20 km distances for some time now. And those are far smaller and less potent radars than what ship based radars can offer. And once something like an artillery shell is tracked for a few tens of km, it's very vulnerable.

GPS round costs a few tens of thousands of dollars. I haven't seen the cost for the IIR guided round, which is allegedly meant exactly for antishipping roles, but it's bound to be more expensive. it wouldn't be unreasonable if it ended within the fifty to hundred thousand dollars bracket.

of course those rounds may find a niche role against non combat ships or very lightly equipped ships with lousy radars and ciws - but properly equipped frigates and destroyers won't have much trouble against them. and vulcano rounds, being made for ordinary 127mm naval guns, trade their warheads for propellant (for range) meaning in the end their destructive power is even less than a regular 127mm round's (which weighs some 30 kg).

So the question wasn't whether or not ship can intercept it. I would certainly agree that having something travel in a ballistic path would not only be easier to detect and intercept, but also harder for it to actually find the target and maneuver to hit there. And I tend to think it's just a matter of putting development into it to get something that can track with IIR seeker and hitting a moving target. It's a similar problem that ASBM have to deal with.

The premise here starts with the costs and limitations of anti-ship missiles. You can only fit so many on a ship like 052D. At some point, you have to do trade off between the number of SAM vs AShM vs LACM to carry. Certainly, modern SAMs probably all have secondary anti-shipping functionalities built in, but they don't have the same kind of warhead/seeker as AShM and they are optimized to fly path that are better for intercepting aerial targets rather than hugging sea levels to avoid detection. The pros for them is that if you are quad packing the VLS and can launch one per second, that's mass salvo of missiles that you can send against an enemy ship.

Against a modern air defense system with many ships and aerial assets in play, sea skimming missiles can get picked up further away than they previously would. Generally, defending ships have ample to either do soft kill or hard kill against multiple anti-ship missiles.

So, can we get to a point in the future, when the rounds from 127/130 mm gun has enough range, accuracy and range that it can hit a moving target from 70 to 100 km away. If it can and you can launch enough of them in quick succession, combined with sea skimming anti-ship missile, that would certainly be harder to deal with. 052D in theory is no longer limited to 8 AShM, but also has SAM that it can send in addition to rounds from PJ-38, which would give it far more fire power vs something like the Sov.

Advantages: cheaper, more rounds can be stored, higher firing rate
Disadvantages: easier to intercept, hit rate lower

from the link I put up in my previous post here: "... the need to program the target data into the VULCANO guided ammunitions slows down the process somewhat, reducing the rate of fire to 25 rounds per minute." but, Totoro, shoot those "darts" at will (I guess it'd be easy for you to track tens of them even if they were coming at different trajectories, and also easy to take them all down with your CIWS even if they closed in on you in file with the interval between them longer than the bursts of your CIWS), this could be fun, but ... AShM could be programmed to appear above the horizon at the same LOL

Even 25 rounds per minute is pretty high. Remember once you start firing these things so quickly, the barrels are going to get really hot.

in my opinion, ship just using two ciws (without extra missiles) should have a decent chance to defend against a 2-4 simultaneous rounds attack. if attacking vessel is using maximum range so simultaneous attack is out of the question then a modern two ciws ship could potentially hold out almost indefinitely. then it becomes a matter of available ammo, heating, etc.

you can say the same about conventional anti-ship missiles if you have seen those videos of Goalkeeper. And you can probably only store 500 to 1000 ammos for each CIWS.

 

[Totoro]

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

again, in a non peer conflict, such rounds may be useful. Though, even then, one still needs targeting assets. if those assets are, for example, helicopters, then an even better solution might be simply a helo attack with hellfire/jagm (if the opponent is a lightly armed vessel) or penguin/jsm/c701 if it's a corvette.

in a peer conflict, it is simply often too dangerous to actually have your ships approach the enemy to 100-ish km. While you do that, his helo/s will scout you and his antiship missiles (be they small ones on the helo or big ones fired from the ship) will be striking you from 200-300 km away. Or more.

i dont see much sense in combining gun rounds and antiship missiles as then one'd have to waste much of missile's range.

and in situations where enemy has enough assets that they can track antiship missiles from the air that same enemy would be attacking the gun equipped ships long, long before those ships could try and use their guns.

while ciws will certainly get a chance to intercept subsonic antiship missiles (providing they were being tracked beforehand) at least to the same degree as it'd intercept artillery shells, missiles are more easely massed in a swarm doing simultaneous attacks. yes, 127mm gun can have high rate of fire for a short time. various ranges are cited, from 20 to 30 to even 40 rounds a minute. in theory, that'd mean a single ship with a single gun can hope to put 4 rounds on a target within 6-12 seconds, when shooting at maximum range. if it went for shorter ranges, perhaps all 4 rounds could be put onto target within 2-3 seconds.

But a missile barrage from a single ship can be put onto the target within a few seconds. before vls based ashms standard was 8 missiles. but if the target demands it, if its an high end target - even 16 missile volleys or more wouldn't be unheard of. Plus, those volleys could be sent through such trajectories that they come from all sort of directions and converge on target simultaneously. barrage of shells from a gun would always come from more or less the same direction.

one could concentrate more firepower with more guns but standard doesn't seem to be moving away from a single barrel gun per ship. so one'd need 2 or more ships to get at saturation levels achievable by antiship missiles. Yes, missiles are by far more expensive when looked at on projectile versus projectile basis.

But they require less carrying platforms for successful saturation attacks (one saves money that way too), they offer longer ranges (less risk), they offer possibilities that simply don't exist with gun rounds - such as autonomous target tracking or even battle damage assesment.

and we haven't even touched upon longer ranged defenses, not just ciws. there's no reason why the likes of aster/essm/redut/etc won't be able to intercept projectiles in ballistic trajectories. issue there isn't about interceptor missile themselves but with ship based tracking radars. tpq37, which is a fairly small and weak radar if compared to the likes of SPY radar or Sampson radar, tracks medium caliber gun projectiles at 30-32 km ranges. Yes, it would be a situation where interceptor missiles would be perhaps even 10 times more expensive than gun rounds - but it'd thwart an attack. at least once. and in the meantime the attacker would be neutralized, if not sooner.

vulcano ammo and ags ammo are great stuff, superb for what they were devised, but don't blow them up into more than they are.

 

[Jura The idiot]

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

...

as far as actual warhead/explosive goes, it should be more powerful than 81mm mortar rounds, but a bit less powerful than 120mm rounds. might be roughly as powerful as 105mm artillery projectiles.

Totoro I quote you from your post #3866: "the latter link mentions 30 kg for the whole round, 16 kg for the projectile and 90mm diameter." and wonder what makes you think a 90mm-diameter dart would be as powerful as 105mm shell (I'm not saying it's impossible! maybe you simply know something I don't, like the breakdown of weights of, quote from the link you provided, "a fuze, pre-fragmented highexplosive warhead and fin unit") ... I just checked on the weight of the HE 105mm projectile to shoot from a howitzer: 14.97 kg according to

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[Jura The idiot]

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

... And I tend to think it's just a matter of putting development into it to get something that can track with IIR seeker and hitting a moving target.

It seems it's been done, according to

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: "The most interesting VULCANO variants are, however, the Guided Long Range (GLR) ones. These include: ...
- GPS / INS / Infra-red Imaging
...
The IIR seeker is instead meant primarily for anti-ship role. This variant of the round is in fact produced only for the 127mm naval guns. Targeting enemy ships on the open sea is a complex job, and it might be very hard, if not flat-out impossible, to have a third party observer marking the target with a laser. The anti-ship VULCANO is meant to be fired over the area where an enemy ship is known to be sailing, and engage the target on its own.
The ammunition is thus programmed to enter a descending trajectory already a few miles before entering the target area, allowing the built-in IIR seeker to scan the surface of the sea to detect and track the heat signature of the enemy vessel. Once the target is located, the maneuvering round will pursue it, using its canards and fins to steer to compensate for the enemy’s evasive maneuvers."

...
Even 25 rounds per minute is pretty high. Remember once you start firing these things so quickly, the barrels are going to get really hot.
...

It seem it's been taken care of, according to

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:
Rate of fire 32 rds/min +- 10 elevation depending
Cooling system sea water - fresh water for flushing

But hey I'm not a dealer of Oto Melara or nothing LOL

 

[Totoro]

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

I wasnt comparing calibers but weights of the projectile. if one projectile weighs 16 kg, but it also has a seeker/gps, a battery, canard actuators etc - and other projectile (regular 105mm) has a 14 or so kg weight - then one might say they're roughly comparable. Actually i'd think vulcano might have even less explosive, since all that equipment does take up space, which is eyeballed the warhead at around 10-ish kg. of course, the 14 kg 105mm round isnt all explosive either. it has a fuze and most of the warhead should be various heavy metal pellets.

vulcano ammo should have greater velocity though, so some extra damage might occur because of that.

since we're on the subject, ags's 155mm projectiles are twice as heavy as regular nato 155mm artillery projectiles with almost twice the explosive charge.

 

[chuck731]

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

Yes, they can and will have an anti-shipping capability. The IR guided rounds will allow for that.

However, they are also able to be intercepted. The US and others has been using CIWS software and hardware in ground intercept missions for incoming infantry rounds for some time...down to as small as mortar sheels. So, they will also be vulnerable to interception.

OTOH, they can also be fired very rapidly, particularly if a couple of ships engage, making the ability to shift and hit the multiple incoming rounds on a sustained basis more difficult too.

Play and counter play.

And the gun, especially if it is water cooled like the Russian original, can keep up 20 rounds a minute until the target ship runs out of CIWS ammo.

 

[tphuang]

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

It seem it's been taken care of, according to

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:
Rate of fire 32 rds/min +- 10 elevation depending
Cooling system sea water - fresh water for flushing

But hey I'm not a dealer of Oto Melara or nothing LOL

Quite possibly this has become less of an issue than I think, but what we see on brochures vs actual conflict after several minutes of salvo might be quite different.

again, in a non peer conflict, such rounds may be useful. Though, even then, one still needs targeting assets. if those assets are, for example, helicopters, then an even better solution might be simply a helo attack with hellfire/jagm (if the opponent is a lightly armed vessel) or penguin/jsm/c701 if it's a corvette.

in a peer conflict, it is simply often too dangerous to actually have your ships approach the enemy to 100-ish km. While you do that, his helo/s will scout you and his antiship missiles (be they small ones on the helo or big ones fired from the ship) will be striking you from 200-300 km away. Or more.

I think you might be overstating the frequency that missiles actually get launched from that far out.

i dont see much sense in combining gun rounds and antiship missiles as then one'd have to waste much of missile's range.

anti-ship missile will run out really fast against a well defended fleet and likely not to have done much damage.

and in situations where enemy has enough assets that they can track antiship missiles from the air that same enemy would be attacking the gun equipped ships long, long before those ships could try and use their guns.

In reality, how often do you think the aircraft will actually get to target a modern destroyer from outside of the ship's long range AShM? I'm not sure why you think it's a bad thing to utilize additional assets outside of those 8 AShM that a ship typically carries.

while ciws will certainly get a chance to intercept subsonic antiship missiles (providing they were being tracked beforehand) at least to the same degree as it'd intercept artillery shells, missiles are more easely massed in a swarm doing simultaneous attacks. yes, 127mm gun can have high rate of fire for a short time. various ranges are cited, from 20 to 30 to even 40 rounds a minute. in theory, that'd mean a single ship with a single gun can hope to put 4 rounds on a target within 6-12 seconds, when shooting at maximum range. if it went for shorter ranges, perhaps all 4 rounds could be put onto target within 2-3 seconds.

But a missile barrage from a single ship can be put onto the target within a few seconds. before vls based ashms standard was 8 missiles. but if the target demands it, if its an high end target - even 16 missile volleys or more wouldn't be unheard of. Plus, those volleys could be sent through such trajectories that they come from all sort of directions and converge on target simultaneously. barrage of shells from a gun would always come from more or less the same direction.

one could concentrate more firepower with more guns but standard doesn't seem to be moving away from a single barrel gun per ship. so one'd need 2 or more ships to get at saturation levels achievable by antiship missiles. Yes, missiles are by far more expensive when looked at on projectile versus projectile basis.

Notice how I said you use them both at the same time? It's meant as a supplement to AShM. This gives the attackintg ship additional options to attack. Arleigh Burke-class doesn't carry harpoon missiles anymore, but it still has a lot firepower because of standard missiles and ESSM that have secondary AShM capabilities. So similarly for 052D, it can carry it's compliment of AShM, LACMs, LRSAM and MRSAM. Having a gun, then can attack ships from 70 to 120 km out is additional benefit.

But they require less carrying platforms for successful saturation attacks (one saves money that way too), they offer longer ranges (less risk), they offer possibilities that simply don't exist with gun rounds - such as autonomous target tracking or even battle damage assesment.

and we haven't even touched upon longer ranged defenses, not just ciws. there's no reason why the likes of aster/essm/redut/etc won't be able to intercept projectiles in ballistic trajectories. issue there isn't about interceptor missile themselves but with ship based tracking radars. tpq37, which is a fairly small and weak radar if compared to the likes of SPY radar or Sampson radar, tracks medium caliber gun projectiles at 30-32 km ranges. Yes, it would be a situation where interceptor missiles would be perhaps even 10 times more expensive than gun rounds - but it'd thwart an attack. at least once. and in the meantime the attacker would be neutralized, if not sooner.

vulcano ammo and ags ammo are great stuff, superb for what they were devised, but don't blow them up into more than they are.

I didn't say anywhere that SAMs can't intercept projectiles. I even said they should have better interception rate. But each missile sent to intercept a projectile is one that cannot intercept a incoming missile. Remember, there is a limit to the number of target that a ship's MFR can track for targeting and for illumination.