Littoral Combat Ships (LCS)

Brumby

Major
You took one sentence and put it out of its main context that it is part of a whole set of factors.



You are only looking at the direct associative cost of labor building the hull.

Those systems like radars and missiles, still have to be designed by people, developed by people, coded by people, wired by people, assembled by people and put all together by people, shipped by people, and on top of the people managing all these people. The cost of a missile or a radar is much more the sum of its materials and components.

PPP disparity does matter when it affects the entire chain.

And then on top of that, you have the sheer volume of components driving down the costs thanks to the large multiblock buys. That's the 80% of the ship cost being massively amortized.

If you have a $10 billion R&D for the ship, building five of them means you have to add $2 billion development cost for each ship on top of everything. If you build 30 of them, the R/D cost per ship goes down to $333 million each.

The entire Type 052C/D looks to be heading down past the 30th ship in the combined series. Each ship has over 6,000 elements per AESA face and there are four faces. How many elements you are going to have? How is that volume going to drive down the cost of each element and what's behind it? When you are building a lot of these radars, the costs will flatten. If you build six Type 346 sets, the costs must be crazy. If you build 30 of them, the costs will fall through the floor.

I use the Type 052C/D because these ships represent the biggest breakthrough in Chinese naval warshiptech, and likely by far the biggest expenditure in R/D. The Type 055 is coasting on the developments made of the Type 052C/D. The three main tech breakthroughs in the 052C/D is the Type 346 AESA radar, the development of indigenous gas turbine, and with the D itself, the development of the U-VLS that combines both hot and cold launch in a CCL design. The R/D costs behind the 052C/D program is offset and amortized by its large production run (the 26th 052D hull under construction has been spotted).

What the 055 adds to the 052D is minor: the introduction of a new X-band four faced AESA; the introduction of an octet set of AESA type surface scanning arrays; a new ECM system; and a new ESM mast, along with taking the evolution of the Type 346 radar a step further (possible switch of GaAs to GaN). So the R/D cost of the 055 may not cost as much as the 052D, as no major breakthroughs are made. You are taking the same tech --- once revolutionary for the Chinese industry but now solidly proven --- and add more of it, from 64 VLS to 112, from two GT25000 turbines to four.
The problem is that you are making a bunch of generalised claims without one shred of research data to support your overall argument.
 

Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
The problem is that you are making a bunch of generalised claims without one shred of research data to support your overall argument.

Oh and you think one sentence taken out of context from a research paper makes your argument.
 

Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
At least I have referenced a number of research data. I can provide more. What have you provided besides claims?

You read highly generalized reports, typical of RAND. Why don't you break down how much of weapons and systems are R/D cost and software development cost.

Anyone with some basic understanding of IT understands that software represents the greatest cost of all.

Go to the 052C/D thread and look at the numbers. Please have some understanding how volumes matter in production costs. And its basic accounting. If you have a 100 dollars of research cost, making only two items means you have to have pay off your research cost by only selling these two. This means your R/D cost each is $50. Make 10, and the R/D cost per unit is $10. Make a hundred and the R/D cost is $1. That's also how the chip industry works.
 

Brumby

Major
You read highly generalized reports, typical of RAND. Why don't you break down how much of weapons and systems are R/D cost and software development cost.

Anyone with some basic understanding of IT understands that software represents the greatest cost of all.

Go to the 052C/D thread and look at the numbers. Please have some understanding how volumes matter in production costs. And its basic accounting. If you have a 100 dollars of research cost, making only two items means you have to have pay off your research cost by only selling these two. This means your R/D cost each is $50. Make 10, and the R/D cost per unit is $10. Make a hundred and the R/D cost is $1. That's also how the chip industry works.

Please provide some numbers then to back up your position.

Don't bother with the R&D amortization explanation. I do that for a living.
 

Brumby

Major
That's also how the chip industry works.

Taking your example it actually undermine your argument. If you want to go by economies of scale and as I pointed out from the CSIS report, China's local manufactures only produce 8% of the world wide capacity. When it comes to GaN the US currently has the biggest market share. China might eventually catch up but it is no help with your argument

upload_2019-5-31_21-20-26.png
The key players of
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
includes Fujitsu Ltd (Japan), Panasonic Semiconductors (Japan), Texas Instruments (U.S.),RF Micro Devices Corporation (U.S.), Osram Opto-semiconductors (Germany), Cree Incorporated (U.S.), Toshiba (Japan), Aixtron SE (Germany), Infineon Technologies (Germany), Gallia Semiconductor (Belgium), ROHM Company Limited (Japan), . NXP Semiconductors (U.S.), Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Netherlands), Nichia Corporation (Japan), and Qorvo (U.S.).
North America presently leads the global GaN semiconductor devices market. The United States of America accounts for the largest contribution to the growth of the region's market, primarily due to the swift development in aerospace. There is also an increasing demand for semiconductor devices in military applications, oil and gas industry and emergency medical services.
 

Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
Taking your example it actually undermine your argument. If you want to go by economies of scale and as I pointed out from the CSIS report, China's local manufactures only produce 8% of the world wide capacity. When it comes to GaN the US currently has the biggest market share. China might eventually catch up but it is no help with your argument

View attachment 52486

That's only who are making the devices. The US does not mine a single ounce of it.

China accounted for the vast majority of mining and refining of Gallium.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!



Screenshot 2019-06-01 at 2.33.01 AM - Edited.png
 

Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
Breakdown of Type 054A cost.

View attachment 52485
Labor accounts for 22 % of cost with weapons and electronics accounting for more than 53%
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

That's labor for the shipbuilding itself. There is a labor cost in the development, coding, assembly and integration of weapons and electronics, that's already part of the those systems themselves. It will only cost you $90 for an FPGA chip, but what is the manhours required and the cost for the developers doing the microcode on it for a particular application?
 

Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
Taking your example it actually undermine your argument. If you want to go by economies of scale and as I pointed out from the CSIS report, China's local manufactures only produce 8% of the world wide capacity. When it comes to GaN the US currently has the biggest market share. China might eventually catch up but it is no help with your argument

View attachment 52486

This is how you mislead in argument. By modifying the language.

The key players of
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
includes Fujitsu Ltd (Japan), Panasonic Semiconductors (Japan), Texas Instruments (U.S.),RF Micro Devices Corporation (U.S.), Osram Opto-semiconductors (Germany), Cree Incorporated (U.S.), Toshiba (Japan), Aixtron SE (Germany), Infineon Technologies (Germany), Gallia Semiconductor (Belgium), ROHM Company Limited (Japan), . NXP Semiconductors (U.S.), Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Netherlands), Nichia Corporation (Japan), and Qorvo (U.S.).
North America presently leads the global GaN semiconductor devices market. The United States of America accounts for the largest contribution to the growth of the region's market, primarily due to the swift development in aerospace. There is also an increasing demand for semiconductor devices in military applications, oil and gas industry and emergency medical services.

The keyword is DEVICES. These firms buy the GaN wafers then put them on the fabs to make devices. They design and make GaN devices. They are not however, the source of the substrates, anymore than a book publisher is the paper factory. Military however, uses boutique fabs, meaning companies like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman does not rely on these companies but fab devices on their own fabs. They only need to acquire the wafers from somewhere else.

An example is this company, which happens to be a world leader in making GaN wafers but isn't mentioned in the above.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Want to buy bulk GaN wafers in China? Just a few.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


This particular page even shows links for GaN wafer substrates for RF use.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


A lot of GaN wafers goes into lighting. China is pushing GaN based LED lighting nationwide to replace other forms of lighting in order to greatly reduce the power bills.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Sells to the US too.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
 
Last edited:
Top