054B/next generation frigate

[tphuang]

For example like this, yes.
Point is, that there are lots of solutions to the problem, and fleet frigate appears to me to be the worst. Not technically, simply because it's inefficient - and on the eve of a true arms race brewing in the region - fleets shall aim for the most efficient solutions, generating the largest and most capable force compositions (per given amount of money) possible.

Ocean-going battlefleet units - carriers(steam/nuclear) - 055s(turbines) - 052C/Ds(turbines/diesels mix) - 051C(steam)
Non-fleet units - LHA/LSD(diesels) - older destroyers - frigates(diesels)
Coastal units - light frigates/corvettes - mine warfare vessels

There are no obvious empty boxes in the first line - 055/052D mix is optimal, if anything is suboptimal with it - it's problem with your main combatants. They have to be able to deal with submarines themselves.
Best place here for 054B for me is the second line - either potential replacement of the "older destroyers" box(052, 052B, 956E(M)), or simply continuing 054A line with a new, better ship. 054A is objectively becoming outdated and can't be used for some crucial purposes.

More 052d would only be ideal if your other low end option is 054a. If 054b is available and has the specs we expect, why would you have 052d take up the roles that 054b would be able to do better and at lower cost and fewer crew members?

I really love 052d, but if they have more than 2 or 3 of them in their future csg, it would be a problem. Let's go through all the issues with it:
Not enough automation
Not enough berthing space per crew members
Old and non optimal damage control system

For the asw role
Old propulsion not suited for asw
Not quiet enough
Only 052dl can comfortably accommodate z20
No space for vtol drones

 

[Gloire_bb]

The Type 052D is far from an ideal ASW platform. It carries expensive radars that are of little to no value in ASW. It carries just one helicopter and only the very latest variants can embark a Z-20 size helo. The Z-9 is a very poor choice for ASW.

In the future, USVs and UUVs will play increasingly important roles in ASW.

For fleet ASW expensive radars will have to be carried anyways; currently produced 052Ds bring in Z-20 as well; is the second hangar really worth the duality of two ship classes, where the needed one always happens to be unavailable where it is needed?
In the 1980s superpowers went through this fleet ASW/fleet AAW split - it has proven itself very unfortunate: better have all fleet escorts universal(and play with formation accordingly) than have individually better ships.
Especially in our case, where the difference is a second helo(IEPS - sure, but fleet destroyer will need just as much in any case).

With USVs/UUVs it is true, but the question, again is fleet ASW - can small onboard unmanned vessels keep up with the fleet? The answer is probably outright no: we need size, displacement, power and seakeeping. Like a simple check: we're steaming at 25 knots(maximum speed at which we can still listen on the move) at sea state 5 for 8 hours, with a few burst of 30+ maneuvering to let STOBAR carrier launch aircraft.
Fleet USV/UUVs are probably to be deployed directly from port, exactly like flying loyal wingmen are.

Now, the same craft for some other tactical missions(including ASW, but not for the CSG itself) are such missions - but here we may be as well be talking about "normal" frigate temporarily working together with CSG to achieve a common goal.

 

[Gloire_bb]

The problem is this might encroach the number of fixed wing aircraft and complicate flight operations. If PLAN wants more 055 then sure, there is no need for a fleet frigate. Or PLA builds DDH or 076 can moonlight as helicopter carrier.

Rotary wings will be there in any case - if anything, because flight operations require SAR helicopters on standby.
Complications with angled deck can generally be considered as acceptable for most things short of mass launch/mass landing - in the end, carrier is an actual small airfield.
As a bonus - its operations will be massively more efficient in any case - heavy ASW helicopters(not medium), ample supply of fuel and ammo, much better on-board servicing.
I don't call for replacement of ship helos, but against a dedicated class wanted almost solely for a second helo hangar(and which will pay a lot for being designed to normally operate with the fleet) - it's a terrific option.

 

[Gloire_bb]

More 052d would only be ideal if your other low end option is 054a. If 054b is available and has the specs we expect, why would you have 052d take up the roles that 054b would be able to do better and at lower cost and fewer crew members?

I really love 052d, but if they have more than 2 or 3 of them in their future csg, it would be a problem. Let's go through all the issues with it:
Not enough automation
Not enough berthing space per crew members
Old and non optimal damage control system

For the asw role
Old propulsion not suited for asw
Not quiet enough
Only 052dl can comfortably accommodate z20
No space for vtol drones

Acceptable - but if anything it's more of a call to update your Lo- fleet destroyer design(Hi- is already where it needs to be).
Lo- fleet destroyer update and Frigate update (or addition of a "heavy frigate" subclass) shall either be merged or kept separate (fleet v not fleet) - but building two classes of more or less same-sized fleet ships with somewhat different specializations IMHO is wasteful.

 

[tphuang]

Acceptable - but if anything it's more of a call to update your Lo- fleet destroyer design(Hi- is already where it needs to be).
Lo- fleet destroyer update and Frigate update (or addition of a "heavy frigate" subclass) shall either be merged or kept separate (fleet v not fleet) - but building two classes of more or less same-sized fleet ships with somewhat different specializations IMHO is wasteful.

Alright, so basically you are a proponent of having low high rather than low medium high in a csg. Keep in mind that only usn and plan are of size that could support low medium high, so it doesn't make sense to bring any other navies into discussion here.

There is a good chance plan agrees with you since their recent csg had 1 055, 4 052d and just 1 054a. I am not sure if that's due to 054a inadequacy or small Liaoning air wing or their preference for high low composition.

If they were to go just high low, I think it would just be 054b and 055. It would be a good debate whether or not the gap between the two are too large. And then, you could have a 054B design that starts off at 5000t and eventually max out at 6000t (almost as large as 052C) that is more focused ASW and short/medium range defense with some land attack missiles loaded also. Maybe you start off with 40 UVLS and eventually max out at 48. Maybe they can come up with a 5m UVLS variant for this ship. It would have far fewer crewmember than 052C, so a low 6000t design might be able to hold 48 UVLS. It would have to be able to carry 1 Z20F and small VTOL drone and maybe deploy UUVs to help hunt submarines. The upper end 055 would max out at 128 VLS cells and maybe 13,500t. You would continue to have HP/HD build 054B and JN/DL build 055s.

I think it's more likely that 052D will remain in the mix as a tweener for the next 15 years. They are probably going to build 35 to 40 052Ds. That's not going away anytime soon. So, then for the short term, you will have 054B in the low 5000t, 052D in the 7500 to 8000t range and 055 in the 13,000t to 15,000t range. In this case, you'd probably have a good number of both 054B and 052D in your CSG to perform low end duties + just providing a large number of AAW and ASW assets and then 055 to provide the long range fire power and ABM as well as ultra long range air defense.

Keep in mind that 055 is a pretty unique ship. It's the only mass produced ship with legitimate shipwrecking firepower. Each 055 probably provides as much strike power as an entire USN air wing. So in the role it is given, you probably want it to carry as many 9m long missiles as possible (64 anti-ship missiles, 32 LACMs, 32 ultra long range SAM as an example). J-35 is designed in a way to maximize A2A capabilities. It's not asked to do anti-ship missions when facing F-35C/Rhinos. Therefore, 052D and 054B would carry HQ-9, YJ-18s, Yu-8 and 3-5s. So, I see PLAN CSGs in the next 15 years to go low-med-high combo for this reason.

 

[Zichan]

For fleet ASW expensive radars will have to be carried anyways; currently produced 052Ds bring in Z-20 as well; is the second hangar really worth the duality of two ship classes, where the needed one always happens to be unavailable where it is needed?
In the 1980s superpowers went through this fleet ASW/fleet AAW split - it has proven itself very unfortunate: better have all fleet escorts universal(and play with formation accordingly) than have individually better ships.
Especially in our case, where the difference is a second helo(IEPS - sure, but fleet destroyer will need just as much in any case).

I agree that such a vessel should retain multi-mission capability, but my argument is towards scaled down air defense sensors and weapons and hull and propulsion optimisation towards ASW as its primary mission. This is exactly what the US Navy has adopted with the Constellation class. They are installing the same SPY-6 family radar as on the AB FLIII, but instead of 4 arrays these ships will have only 3 arrays and each array will have only 9 instead of 24 RMAs. This will allow them to reduce the expenditure on the radars by almost 4-fold. They share the same AEGIS battle system with all the bells and whistles of state-of-the-art networking like cooperative engagement. But they carry only a fraction of offensive&defensive firepower of the destroyers, again to reduce cost. Compared to electronics and weapons, hulls are relatively cheap.

In return, the Constellation class are designed with a more sophisticated acoustic optimisation such as electric drive and fixed-pitch propellers optimised for minimum noise at ASW patrol speeds. Gas turbine powered ships have to use variable pitch propellers that have an inferior acoustic profile. However, while the AB destroyers max out at around 35 knots, the Constellation class frigates likely max out at under 30 knots.

With USVs/UUVs it is true, but the question, again is fleet ASW - can small onboard unmanned vessels keep up with the fleet? The answer is probably outright no: we need size, displacement, power and seakeeping.

I wonder about that as well.

Like a simple check: we're steaming at 25 knots(maximum speed at which we can still listen on the move) at sea state 5 for 8 hours, with a few burst of 30+ maneuvering to let STOBAR carrier launch aircraft.

At 25 knots, you can forget about passive sonar. Even active sonar will be degraded in range. ASW patrols are conducted at about 10-12 knots. At high speed transit, helicopters come in handy as they can scout ahead, deploy sonobuoys and remain undetected by any unsuspecting submarine.

 

[AndrewS]

For fleet ASW expensive radars will have to be carried anyways;

That is analytically incorrect.

In a Chinese carrier group, we can expect 2-3 destroyers providing a close AAW escort for the carrier, plus a role for an "expendable" ship for close-in ASW work.

So there is no need for another expensive radar for this ASW focused Frigate/Destroyer.
But this ship does need to be fast to keep up with the carrier.

In addition, the Chinese Navy would only need a handful of such ships for this role.
So you have to look at the other roles in the CSG (such as AAW picket or screening a AAW picket), SAGs and independent operations.

My read is that a 3-tier surface combatant structure does provide the most efficient balance of [capability] vs [role requirements] vs [cost]

We know the Type-055 is going to stick around as the high-end platform. But when we're talking about the fleet AAW picket role, the Type-055 is too big and expensive, and the Type-054B doesn't have a good enough radar or weapons fitout. So that leaves the Type-052D/E. And there is a role for a ASW-focused ship in a CSG.

If we look at notional SAGs, there is a role for a fast ASW ship to accompany the Type-055/052D destroyers.
Again, there is no need for an expensive radar system because this is provided by the destroyers.
And with CEC, a Type-054B could act as a low cost VLS cell carrier, which allows the destroyers to stay deployed whilst the Type-054B shuttles back and forth with more missiles.

 

[AndrewS]

With USVs/UUVs it is true, but the question, again is fleet ASW - can small onboard unmanned vessels keep up with the fleet? The answer is probably outright no: we need size, displacement, power and seakeeping. Like a simple check: we're steaming at 25 knots(maximum speed at which we can still listen on the move) at sea state 5 for 8 hours, with a few burst of 30+ maneuvering to let STOBAR carrier launch aircraft.
Fleet USV/UUVs are probably to be deployed directly from port, exactly like flying loyal wingmen are.

Surface ASW is not about steaming at 25 knots.

It's sprinting and then drifting silently to listen

 

[externallisting]

Keep in mind that 055 is a pretty unique ship. It's the only mass produced ship with legitimate shipwrecking firepower. Each 055 probably provides as much strike power as an entire USN air wing. So in the role it is given, you probably want it to carry as many 9m long missiles as possible (64 anti-ship missiles, 32 LACMs, 32 ultra long range SAM as an example). J-35 is designed in a way to maximize A2A capabilities. It's not asked to do anti-ship missions when facing F-35C/Rhinos. Therefore, 052D and 054B would carry HQ-9, YJ-18s, Yu-8 and 3-5s. So, I see PLAN CSGs in the next 15 years to go low-med-high combo for this reason.

It's unique in the sense of China's larger geopolitical situation, I agree, much like those KDX class "destroyers" make sense for SK - reasonable for the threat environment anticipated, yet also adequate and more for such environments they operate in (read= range). I'd love to see what their loadout normally consists of, alas!

>In a Chinese carrier group, we can expect 2-3 destroyers providing a close AAW escort for the carrier, plus a role for an "expendable" ship for close-in ASW work.

I don't think it's set in stone currently how a future Chinese CBG may operate, let alone in far waters. I don't think the current CBG arrangement is something reflective of what the PLAN views optimal, which lends weight towards the idea - rapid induction of other vessels and supporting ships - (those that may be better suited to faster boats, UUV's etc..) I think this is just what they have arrived at given the current and near-future vessel mix.

>They are installing the same SPY-6 family radar as on the AB FLIII, but instead of 4 arrays these ships will have only 3 arrays and each array will have only 9 instead of 24 RMAs. This will allow them to reduce the expenditure on the radars by almost 4-fold. They share the same AEGIS battle system with all the bells and whistles of state-of-the-art networking like cooperative engagement. But they carry only a fraction of offensive&defensive firepower of the destroyers, again to reduce cost.

I didn't know it got reduced to 3, I'm layman enough though to think a lower number and assume "badder". I'd love to see a picture I'll never get about defensive vs offensive loadouts on all. Don't know enough to say anything on how/why it might be as such. Anyway I think it's more than reasonable to assume that enhanced datalink capabilities means we might see something like an HQ09 (and successors) on this boat, with NVT towards whatever, yet how the vessel works in a wartime environ we can do little but speculate. I know there are some radar pros here amongst us, be keen to read and learn more.

 

[asif iqbal]

with the restart of the Type 54A programme and restart of the Type 052D/L I am wondering if there is any room for a Type 054B?

the longer it takes the less likely it is going to happen