055 Large Destroyer Thread II

[TK3600]

Guys, it's nice to see an alternative universe within a specific thread, but as of January 2023 - 055 production run is stopped at original 8. 052DLs are being verifiably built, laid down, and ordered as we speak...

Once upon a time Type 99 tank is procured in small number while thousands of 96A was built. Now we have 99A and where is 96B?

The likely explanation is batch 2 055 is going through some changes. 052D is a matured platform that can be built cheaply to fill the need while 055 work out new systems.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

Here's the thing: The full displacement difference between 054A and 052D is around 3650 tons. The full displacement difference between 052D and 055 is around 5350 tons.

Now that we know the upcoming 054B is estimated to have a full displacment of around 5000 tons. If that figure is accurate, I find it very, very hard to believe that China would be content and satisified with continuing the procurement of the current destroyer class that weighs merely 2600+ tons heavier than the new frigate class well into the late 2020s and even the 2030s.

Every thousand ton of increase in displacement on a surface warship does contribute heavily to the increase of capabilities of the ship which is succeeding her predecessor classes and types.

In fact, as pop3 has already mentioned - The development work is already well-underway with China's next generation destroyers (let's call this destroyer class as 057). I think that this might be one of the credible explanations for the apparent lack of construction activity for the 2ne batch 055. However, seeing more (and only) 052DLs getting build isn't a solid explanation for why there seems to be no construction activity of the 2nd batch 055s, as per reasons in the above paragraphs.

 

[Lethe]

Wasn't another 052d spotted at some point in construction? if they are working on another batch PLAN thinks otherwise.

Lots of nations build platforms that are less than ideal for current requirements owing to the advantages of incumbency.

Hangar and associated facilities aren't that expensive. And the helicopter itself/maintenance crew (the actual expensive part) aren't hard bolted to the ship - they're an asset of the whole fleet, asset that gains more value proportionally to the number of mobile pads capable of using it to the full capacity.

Given the poor availability of helicopters and with how support crew requirements scale with numbers (i.e. less than linearly) I suspect that littering the fleet with single-helo assets is quite inefficient. In terms of delivering collective rotary aviation capability at a task force level, I suspect you are better off with not every ship having an organic helicopter, but those that do supporting at least two, possibly supplemented by light helo carriers in the vein of Moskva/Hyuga.

Finally, 052D isn't just an 'AAW' combatant. It's a fleet unit in the sense AA frigates are. ASW capability is an integral and indispensable part of that capability.

When 052D arrived it was as the then largest and most capable (indigenous) ship PLAN had, the ultimate evolution of a design heritage going back to the 1990s. What I am talking about is the future of a medium destroyer in roughly the same size category now that 055 is here to do everything that 052D did, but better.

USN didn't end up with all-Burke inventory because they were idiots, but because capability scales above linear increase in size and cost, a relationship that favours larger combatants like Burke and 055. A smaller destroyer can't just be a scaled-down 055, because that 67% scale 055 is going to come in at more like 80% of the cost.

 

[Nill]

Lots of nations build platforms that are less than ideal for current requirements owing to the advantages of incumbency.



Given the poor availability of helicopters and with how support crew requirements scale with numbers (i.e. less than linearly) I suspect that littering the fleet with single-helo assets is quite inefficient. In terms of delivering collective rotary aviation capability at a task force level, I suspect you are better off with at least dual-hangar/helo assets, possibly supplemented by light helo carriers in the vein of Moskva/Hyuga.



When 052D arrived it was as the then largest and most capable (indigenous) ship PLAN had, the ultimate evolution of a design heritage going back to the 1990s. What I am talking about is the future of a medium destroyer in roughly the same size category now that 055 is here to do everything that 052D did, but better.

USN didn't end up with all-Burke inventory because they were idiots, but because capability scales above linear increase in size and cost, a relationship that favours larger combatants like Burke and 055. A smaller destroyer can't just be a scaled-down 055, because that 67% scale 055 is going to come in at more like 80% of the cost.

The U.S are returning to frigates now which are about the same tonnage as a type 052d, so they are not going all in on one type like burkes.

 

[Gloire_bb]

USN didn't end up with all-Burke inventory because they were idiots, but because capability scales above linear increase in size and cost, a relationship that favours larger combatants like Burke and 055. A smaller destroyer can't just be a scaled-down 055, because that 67% scale 055 is going to come in at more like 80% of the cost.

USN did end up with all-Burke inventory because it was an intermediate pax-Americana fleet of "free world cruisers" - of which you need around ~80 to cover the world(we know this number from both British and American estimates for global maritime empire).

Dream of the universal fleet of destroyers, which all can act both as fleet escorts, "battleships" in SSGs their own right, LCM attack ships (96 cell grid comes from this specific requirement, for pure AA use it's grossly oversized), and peacetime cruisers(yes, someone decided that pax Americana is so Americana that intercepting Yemeni Dhau with a Burke is a nice plan).
In a way, it's an optimal setup when you don't really have an enemy capable of fighting at sea at all - as there were literally none after the fall of the Soviet Union.

First the Dream has started to show signs of things going wrong when whole idea of the future fleet(which was even more idealistic Pax Americana - instead of policing the world ocean, just bottle up those few savages with super high tech fleet of LCS, drones and DDXs). It failed spectacularly - US neither managed to produce what it wanted, and lost capability to design what it wanted as a bonus.
And 'uneducated savages' failed to live up to expectations, and actually produced fighting concepts viable in 21th century. High tech extinguishers failed on the drawing board before even failing on trials.

But US still had the splendid Burkes, yes? Well, yes but no.

Because then the Dream started to crack even before Chinese rise - US, even with its budget, found it can't really afford that many that expensive ships doing 33/33/33 service.

And then China happened - and US was caught in a quagmire. They have to build, asap(China builds at China speed!), they can't even properly overcome the level at which their ships simply go out of commission(Burkes hurt), and thanks to all the future fleet debackle - they basically lost the ability to design new generation ship.
The only way out was, no, not that far away future combatant (which is over a decade away from us). It was Italian FREMM, which was redesigned into Constellation, to finally start gaining - not losing - some ocean-going numbers.
Yes, Constellations essentially kill Burke-of-all-trades dream. But losing a dream is still better than not having enough vessels for the battlefleet.

The problem is precisely that 052D is affordable, and, when mixed, with 055 gives an equal opponent to the all-Burke force(for cheaper, and produceable ~twice faster than US hope to achieve, and ~3 times faster than they are actually doing).

But for US, with their Burke fallacy, the aim isn't even matching China anymore (impossible, lol) - it's at least being able to deploy as much Carrier- and Amphibious groups they have ships for. And hope that somehow unmanned surface vessels will magically bring them out of their misery in the future.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

The problem is precisely that 052D is affordable, and, when mixed, with 055 gives an equal opponent to the all-Burke force(for cheaper, and produceable ~twice faster than US hope to achieve, and ~3 times faster than they are actually doing).

One quick question: Does the 052Ds have equivalent capabilities as the American AEGIS BMD systems?

 

[Zichan]

Combat systems can be updated to negate the need for Tico-type AAW command ships, but 055 still has a fleet action command center which 052C/Ds don't, we already see 055s leading SAGs operating independently of CVBGs. Also if the number of 055s needed is intrinsically linked to the number of carriers need (i.e. the role of 055s defined by their role in CVBGs), 8 is a lot for 2 carriers I'd say.

By comparison, when in 1975 USN reclassified frigates as cruisers, USN operated 27 cruisers and 15 carriers; in 83 when CG-47 was commissioned USN operated 28 cruisers and 13 carriers; and before this year when the Tico class began to decommission, 22 cruisers and 10 carriers. Obviously, this is very much a rough comparison but generally speaking, USN maintains a 2:1 ratio of cruisers and carriers, corresponding with what usually, or ideally, is a 2-cruiser composition in each CVBG/CSG.

So obviously 055 has more roles besides just protecting carriers, and the number of 055s PLAN need probably is related more to overall fleet fighting capabilities. Considering the current PLAN distribution of the first batch of 8 055s by 4 and 4 for Destroyer Flotillas 1 and 9, I'd go with the common speculation that PLAN might intend to arm each of its Destroyer Flotillas with 4 Type 055s. At the very least, 4 more for the Eastern Theatre Command. Besides, we already know for high certainty that Jiangnan is building at least 1 new 055.

Traditionally, cruisers had the endurance to keep up with a carrier in high speed transits, whereas destroyers did not. Ticos can cover 6000nm @20 knots, whereas ABs can manage just 4400 nm.

Yes, that's true.

However, you don't see surface combatants with the displacement and dimensions of the Fletcher-class destroyers from the Second World War still playing the same role as the destroyers of today. In fact, we are seeing them playing the role of corvettes and offshore patrol vessels that can only stick around littorial waters and not going out to fight powerful enemy warships on the open ocean.

Keeping surface combatant designs in the lower brackets of displacement and dimension in today's and near-future's naval warfare development could risk incuring more cost to the PLAN than what is actually desired. Besides, there is only so much firepower and systems that you could pack inside a hull of a set displacement and dimension without risking overweighing the ship itself, especially with the growing size and weight of weapon loadouts, computers, radar systems etc which are expected on a seagoing surface combatant in mind.

For instance, how are you going to fit LRHW missiles into the VLS cells of the Mark 41 and Mark 57? You can't. This is why the DDG(X) offers options that allows swapping out some of the Mark 41 VLS cells onboard the ship with bigger VLS cells that can fit larger missiles expected to enter service in the future, such as the LRHW.

Today, we can already see that global naval powers in-general are up-arming and up-gunning their destroyers and frigates, which resulted in the increase in displacement and dimension of their frigates and destroyers as well. So why should China stick with 7000 tons of displacement for their destroyers and 3000 tons of displacement for their frigates into the late 2020s and even 2030s?

Of course, China (and just about any other navy out there) would definitely reach the upper brackets of dimension and displacement for their destroyer and frigate designs based on the current model and doctrine. But that's still at least a decade or two away, not now.

While larger ships have more capability than smaller ships, they don’t scale well in terms of hits that they can sustain. It has been established that the number of hits required to mission kill a ship scales as the cube root of its displacement. In fleet on fleet action of equal displacement, the more numerous fleet is able to soak more incoming missiles and sustain more hits while staying in the fight.

 

[gongolongo]

Grim Reapers is absolute bottom of the barrel nonsense. I wouldn't recommend posting him here if we're looking to keep the quality of discussion high.

Agreed.

According to the history of PLAN destroyers from "中国近代舰艇工业史料集", a design by 701st Institute in July 1978, one of the first concrete ones, weighed 7,800 tons. I'd say DDG 055 would be the much larger one, but perhaps comparatively not as large since then the largest PLAN surface combatant only weighed no more than 4,000 tons.

Also, I do think that the "10,000-ton destroyer" is just the new norm for a top-of-the-line surface combatant, i.e just the larger surface combatant and not the capital ship of the fleet. Generally speaking, major or "flagship" surface combatants have been getting larger. Leahy class cruisers don't weigh much more than a Type 052D, and California and Virginia class nuclear cruisers weren't larger than a Type 055 either. Even though USN is pushing for the so-called distributed fleet structure, the 10,000+ ton DDG(X) is still the second most important program in development according to CNO Gilday at SNA 2023.

Well isn't the trend to go towards more numerous but smaller ships? (smaller ships being large frigates/small destroyers)

 

[HighGround]

I think the emphasis on "tonnage" is a little misguided. Yes, surface combatants are getting heavier, but I don't think that tonnage is the main number we should be looking at.

 

[Biscuits]

All these comparisons with USA when there is a navy that actually almost mirrors China's force structure... Japan.

Even through nowadays there's a signficant tech and numbers gap, the basic principle of the forces are similar, and I don't think that is a coincidence.

Both operate light DDGs in addition to full sized DDGs. The tasks of the light destroyer is to help shield the rest of the fleet by linking up with the more powerful radar of the full sized destroyer.

The idea is that 052 + 055 together > 2 Burkes/ticos, while costing less than 2 055s. A 052 doesn't become "worse" than a 055 as long as they're linked together, until the mission requires both ships to fire more than 64 large missiles or even more smaller missiles.

Similar to Japan, China has also in the past relied on modern SSKs to hold an adversary nuclear submarine in check using shallows as a strategic defense.

PLAN is a defensively focused navy, they have to be in order to counter threats from more militarized states.

China might be slowly changing the lineup by introducing supercarriers and a large SSN fleet, but China isn't going to stupidly fight as "little Americans" by going head to head with CBGs and 055s against US CBGs and Burkes. They're going to fight using their own doctrines that lets a smaller elite force with the home court advantage knock out a larger enemy. That includes using small DDGs, FFGs and SSKs.