Re: 022 Purpose and Advantages for PLAN
Actually we have discussed this seaworthiness quite along time now and as far as I'm consered this type of normal catamaran hull doesen't give the ship that great stability that many might think. To have catamarans being stabile you need SWATH type of hulls which isen't the case with type 22.
But what the ships are mented is quite simple. Coastal defence. They have virtually no endurange due the fact that there is no volume in the hull to storeys and supplies not to mention great crew comfront and fuel. They roles are pretty much the same as has been with small and fast FACs since the creation of motor-torbedo boats. Fast but short dashes against invading enemy landingships and their support units in the rude coastlines of arghipegalo. Speed and Stealthines are great benefit in this type of warfare but unfortunetly the modern enviroment exspecially against airtargets these ships are rather weak. And they are not offensive weapons to be used against targets way beoynd own shores and definetly not any sort of patrol ships. The lack of endurance prevents them.
But in more detailed I think its pretty much said that theyr usage are stop-gap measure in the form of modernising PLAN coastal forces. they present logical devolpment from the old Russian orgin torbedo and missile boats, with elements (such as the hull form and speed) to exploid the tactical thinking of these type of vessels....which are pretty well explained by Oldsquid, thanks to him
I would add their potential comes most handly against invading landing forces...
remarkable is that PRC now remains sole advocate of the ancient small FAC concept that finally proven its shortlivenes in Gulf War. The overal enthustiastism of missile FACs came from the realisationt that Torbedo boats can carry SSMs and therfore temporaly giving them deadly thread to bigger warships.
But those biggers have now reached the gap...and the disadvantages of FACs have come present during various conflicts they have involved. These disadvantages migth change to class to class but general consensus counts at least these to take consider:
1)They are small. So you cannot just but everything from them but carefully examine what is possible and come out with compromises and novel features to enable their fighting skills.
2) As they are small in size, the exes topweigth they can carry is limited. This puts restrictions most notably to their mast structures and limits the ammount of sensors that they can carry. As the current thread enverioment calls increasing ammount of ECM and improved radar sensors to counter the air thread, only way to place them in the ships are to make mast as ligth as possiple. Or like Israelis have done, just ignore the topweigth and pretend that it doesent exist
What many western leading FAC producers have find out, the ligth mast are prone to vibrate so bad in high speeds that the ships weapon systems cannot be operated in optime attack speeds. Also in poorer build FACs this vibration in high-seas (that will always exist in some level in ships) have led failures to the missile system itself.
To counter this proplem the FACs have growed in size or featured novel seakeeping ideas. Type022s catamaran hull speaks for it self. Top weigth is even more concern in catamaran, as the ships weigth point is lot higher than in normal boat. This is clearly evident in all Type022 desing and sole thecnical reason for its rather limited load in terms of active and passive protection and defence equipment.
3) the air thread. The helicopter launched SSM that made its depute in Falklands and showed its muscles in 1990 Gulf War. expecially to smaller navies that assume to operate FACs as a David vs. Golyat aspect, the value of FACs have seriously dropped if the opponent has helicopter launched SSMs.
So to encounter this thread, the value of Air defences have rosed. But to place a velocity prone SAMs and their radars (as well as supporting ECM) to allready small hulls strains the desing even more....
Thats why you can rarely spot under 50 meter, 400 tonner missile boat in other manufactorers. The small Frigate/Corvette desings have therefore begun to flourish (along with the hype to use such desings as low-cost replacement to expensive ASW frigates of western navies that doesent have to hunt VMF submarines any longer)
So I myself found Type022 almoust useless class for Blue Water navy, but then again we have to understand that PLAN is not Blue water yet. It is in transistion stage. In other end its precious to have enough modern weapon platforms to replace the worn out anciet and obsolete ships that forms the bulk of PLA tonnage, and in other hand PLAN seeks actively succesfull desings that can be mass produced to the future ocean going fleet.
Type022 fits really well in this situation. It presents some level of traditionalism, most notably in the concept of usage, therefore it can be quickly incorporated to the fleet that has long experiences of old shore commanded FAC operations, but in other hand they feature some sort of experimentality that migth come handy for the future fleet and its expansions.
