re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer
No, when I said "dead in the water", I am specifically talking about a quad-packed SR SAM in a 052D. The same would apply to a 052C if there was a chance it could also quad-pack an SR SAM. SR SAM's are for ship self-protection. This ship already has ship self-protection. The purpose of a 052D is mainly fleet air defense. SR SAM's do not fit the bill. SR SAM's on a ship that already has point defense fits the bill even less, even less than that so if there will be an HQ-10 launcher on board with ranges of 10-15 km. BTW the ESSM has a range in excess of 60km.
Well you repeatedly calling something a short ranged missile does not make it a short ranged missile. 20-25km is medium range, and is more than enough to provide a missile screen for other ships that are close enough. BTW, 20-25km is just a very conservative estimate of what a naval HQ17 might be able to achieve. If the FL3000 can manage 10km (where did you get the 15km range from as I have not seen that figure associated with the FL3000 before), there is a very good chance a HQ17 using similar propellent and electronics (ie not bulky cold war era stuff on the Tor) could achieve better than 30km, and that would put in on par with the Aster 15. But even if we are conservative and stick to 25km, that is still effectively the same class as Aster 15.
Now, are you going to tell me that the Aster 15 is pointless if a ship can load up on longer range missiles?
Whether you like it or not the USN sets the bar. It certainly isn't the Russian Navy. By the looks of things I would guess that the PLAN agrees with that assessment. I am also talking about common sense more than doctrine.
I'm not talking about copying the Russians, I an questioning the necessity of spreading ships more than 20km apart. The USN can do that because their ESSM can still provide effective mutual support at that range, but if you have a MR missile with 25km range, you would space your ships accordingly so that they can still provide each other with mutual supporting fire if needed. My point is, the 20km separation is not set in stone, and the PLAN would have to be idiots to blindly copy that without a thought on how appropriate that would be to them.
If the PLAN were so concerned with an overwhelming saturation attack, why didn't it feel the need to replace the front CIWS with a 24-round HQ-10 launcher? We all know this launcher size exists. Instead it has a 2-3km range CIWS that could at most take out a few incoming before the rest get through. If it wanted some guns to deal with pirates or terrorists, that automated 30mm on the Type 056 looks mighty fine and could easily be put on the deck.
Are we talking about the 052C or 052D? The FL3000 was not available when the 052C first came out, and the fact that they look very likely to have put one FL3000 launcher on the hanger deck would suggest that they are taking saturation attack rather more seriously.
There is also something to be said about not putting all your eggs in one basket. FL3000 missiles are great, but having a gun+missile based CIWS is more future proof as you won't be quite so screwed if new offensive missile innovations like decoy launchers suddenly makes missile based CIWS less effective.
Besides, the FL3000 is still a new and untested system, and as such, there would be understandable reluctance to rely solely on it for your last line of defense.
They carry LR SAM's for good reason: they are fleet air defense ships. There is no reason to fill other cells with Tors-on-roids if you can load LR SAM's instead.
By that line of reasoning, shouldn't the USN not bother with ESSM and instead just pack SM2 only? The fact that they have put a great deal of resources into developing and constantly improving ESSM would suggest that there is rather more to MR missiles than you are insisting.
I would not consider a 20-25km range SAM a medium range SAM or judge it capable of fleet air defense. With these missiles a ship could possibly provide air defense for another ship if incoming missiles pass close by, but then so could an AK-630; it just depends on how close they pass by you. OTOH I would never call an AK-630 a fleet defense weapon.
Come on, that is a really silly argument. Do you honestly cannot see the difference between a 1-2km ranged gun and a 20-25km missile? You are better than that.
If that was a strong concern you would see the USN load most of its cells with ESSM's, but in fact most AB's and Tico's load only a module's worth of cells with ESSM. The loadout is obviously tailored to meet the most likely threat at any given time, but I do not expect that the USN will somehow become so concerned with an overwhelming saturation attack that it will force itself to give up a single shot at long range in exchange for 4 shots at medium range anytime soon. The case of the PLAN, it would have to give up a long range shot for 4 short ranged shots.
Didn't you say loading a single cell with MR missiles instead of LR would be a waste? Why then does the USN load up even a single module's worth of ESSMs then? And before you bring up the SM2's minimum engagement range, remember SeaRAM? That should more than cover the minimum engagement blind spot, so why bother with ESSM at all?
The USN has almost twice as many Aegis class ships as the rest of the world's navies combined. Just because the USN can afford to send in 4 times as many ships into a area does not mean a much smaller navy like the PLAN can afford to operate like that.
In addition, as you yourself acknowledged, the loadout you mentioned is only a standard one (I do believe many if not most USN ships don't even normally load up every cell with missiles if they are not expecting to head into a hot or dangerous zone), and they will choose different load outs for different areas of operating. If and when the USN is expecting to face an opponent capable of launching a saturating attack, I fully expect them to load up more ESSM on their ships at the expense of SM2s if need be.
I'd like to see some documentation of this so-called close formation tactic. "Back in the day", there were nuclear missiles sailing around the open seas, and "close formations" meant a single nuke would destroy an entire fleet foolhardy enough to sail around like that, so there was even less reason back then than there is now to sail in close formation. Also, trying to remain undetected does not mean you need a close formation. Strong discipline in EMCON procedures is what keeps you undetected, not bunching up to within a few km of each other.
Well, unfortunately I have yet to come across a really good source for cold war era 'grey ops' (stuff like sneaking into Soviet territorial waters to put bugs on underwater communications capables and sneaking a whole carrier battlegroup as close to the Russian coast as they think they can get away with etc) conducted by the USN, and what I have heard are mostly from other people. I had a quick look and cannot seem to find where I heard about close formations, so it's up to you if you believe me or not.
But contrary to your view, I think that when the adversary is likely to be lob hundreds of nuclear tipped AShMs at you, remaining undetected is even more important than now when those missiles will only be conventional and when ship based anti-missile defenses have evolved much more.
If the Cold War had turned hot, spacing your fleet 20km from each other or 200m apart would not likely have made much of a difference with hundreds of tactical nukes coming your way. As such, remaining undetected would have been far more important than the dubious benefits only getting badly singed instead of being outright vaporized by a close by nuclear detonation might have granted you, especially when they would almost certainly be more nukes incoming to finish the job now that all your electronics and delicate sensors and weapons have just been blinded, or at the very least badly degraded by the actual and EM blast of a close nuclear detonation.
You are right that the primary means to avoiding detection would be good signals discipline, but keeping your fleet close together has many inherent advantages to sending them out on a battle spread.
Firstly, the further you spread your fleet, the bigger a footprint your fleet leaves, and the greater the odds that an enemy patrol might stumble upon part of your fleet and thereby give away an approximate location of your entire carrier battle group. Having your fleet widely spread out would also make it more difficult to keep an eye on nearly enemies with off-board sensors like fighter or AWACS based sensors as you will need to monitor a much larger area if your fleet is spread out to give all ships a good early warning of anything unfriendly near them.
Lastly, just because you started your approach in close formation does not mean you have to maintain it until contact. You won't be using active sensors, but all your passive gear should be up and running, and as such, you should have a good idea if the enemy has made you. As soon as that happens, you should have plenty of time to break the fleet into a battle spread long before the enemy can organize a strike package against your fleet.
Against an adversary like China, it will soon not matter very much at all what EMCON procedure you practice, just like it pretty much doesn't matter for any PLAN fleet right now wrt USN.
What is this obsession with thinking that the only one the PLAN might fight would be the USN?
It is considerably more likely that if the Liaoning or a future indigenous Chinese carrier might be used in anger, it would be used against a far less capable adversary like Vietnam, the Philippines, or some African despot.
Again, there is no such thing as medium range air defense rings for their own sake, thus nothing to "provide" for. Medium range missiles exist on ships for various reasons, none of them having anything to do with covering some hypothetical middle tier of air defense. Put another way, there is a medium range air defense ring only because there are medium range air defense missiles, not because these missiles were somehow designed to cover some kind of medium range 'requirement'.
You are correct that there is no medium range requirement. But the fact remains the medium range missiles exists, and have a good reason for existing.
Since we are only talking about SAMs in a naval context, it gets a little easier as we and ignore all the reasons for having medium ranged land based missiles. For naval ships, the main reason to have medium range missiles is the ability to allow for quad packing, thus a ship can greatly increase the number of missiles it can carry and as such, quad packing servers as form of force multiplier allowing your to put more missiles onto fewer ships/cells.
It is a trade-off between range and firepower, and contrary to your insistence that one should never trade range for more missiles, the fact is there are very good reasons for doing so, and that is why medium range missiles like ESSM and Aster 15 exist.
Firstly, the biggest benefits of having LR missiles is that chiefly, it gives your the option of engaging enemy aircraft before they can deliver their payload. Secondly, the longer range allows you more reaction time to shoot down incoming targets, and lastly, having great range allows several ships to co-ordinate their efforts and work as a team instead of functioning as individuals.
Now, in this day and age when the best air launched AShMs outrange the best SAMs by a significant margin, it is very debatable if you are realistically likely to be able to engage enemy strike aircraft before they get within firing range of their missiles with just your SAMs (pretty much the main justification for the PLAN needing carriers). With that in mind, LR missiles looses out on one of it's biggest strengths.
Now, despite what manufactures will claim, missiles will miss quote often. That is why it is common practice with many armed forces to fire multiple missiles at a single target. This is especially important in a saturation attack scenario.
With LR missiles, the extra reaction time could allow you to be more economical with your SAMs, so you can fire one missile at cheap incoming missile instead of two to start with. This means more missiles will slip through compared to if you double tapped them, but it will also mean fewer of your SAMs are wasted.
Depending on how far away you detected the incoming AShMs at and the speeds of the AShMs and your SAMs, you might get 1-3 more opportunities to engage the leakers with further SAM volleys, but at some point, you need to throw economy out the window and make sure you get a kill. That means that in your final engagement window, you should be firing two SAMs at each incoming AShM to maximize the chances of taking them out and leaving your CIWS with a manageable number of targets.
With quad packed MR missiles, you can use these smaller shorter ranged missiles for the doubt tap instead of your LR missiles, and with missiles like the ESSM that have 50-60km range, you might be able to get two pops so your can fire one ESSM at each AShM at 50km, and then two at anything that survives.
When you consider that you can carry 4 ESSMs in a cell and only a single SM2, having medium ranged missiles should mean that you will be able to shoot down far more incoming AShMs than if you only carried SM2s. A secondary advantage is that the total bill for missiles expended will also be significantly lower with a mix of LR and MR missiles.
In a more realistic scenario, you might not detect the enemy at 300km out, they might be flying 15m off the deck and managed to get within 50km of your ships before they popped up to fire. Since they are already within MR range, better to just engage the AShMs with MR missiles and save your LR missiles for the fleeing fighters or the next wave of attackers.
A 054A will be deployed along the expected threat axis, maybe two. A third and maybe fourth 054A would cover the rear. Some or all of these ships would also be trailing TAS to listen for subs. These would be deployed this way because of the range limitations of the HQ-16, not because there is some medium range air defense ring to cover. I'm sure the PLAN would welcome an HQ-16 that could travel 100+km and would never think twice about giving up some kind of protection at medium ranges.
Yes, you are quite right, but what you are refusing to acknowledge is that there are very good reasons to take the trade off for having quad pack MR missiles instead of LR ones on ships. I fully expect the 054Bs to also use the same CCL VLS we have seen on the 052Ds. That might mean fewer cells in total, but it will still be a good trade-off because of the extra flexibility offered by quad packing as well as the ability to use longer range missiles on the 054B.
