kwaigonegin
Colonel
If you zoom in the photo it does not look very neat for a supposedly high-tech system. And I was looking closely at it when I was on the 054A. But maybe my quality expectation was too high after getting used to iPhone's and Mac's workmanship lol.
What was interesting was that I was probably the only visitor on the 054A that had any knowledge of what we were looking at. No one else spent a second looking at the HQ-16 VLS, so I could easily get a clean shoot of it. Most people were taking selfies with the 76mm gun and the anti-submarine rocket launcher lol.
Very few visitors ever heard of the word "frigate", and for a while most of the visitors thought the rwas the 054A frigate they were told that's open to the public...and among the few guys that seemed to have some knowledge, they asked the Captain "Are we on a 052C?" "Is that a Phased Array Radar?"
Was that your first time on a naval vessel? If so your observations are correct. Most civies think ships, planes etc look like cars or like you said an iPhone etc.. Up close and personal you see large welds, expose wires, dangerous bulkheads, anti skids, gobs of thick gray paint. These aren't your Carnival cruise ships or Lexus with wood trimmings, wall to wall carpeting and perfectly molded plastic everywhere. These ships are built to survive extreme conditions and to be functional and get the job done. Aesthetics take a back seat.
And yes 99.9% of the general public have no idea what VLS, AESA Panels etc are. They are only fascinated by anything with a barrel or barrels that 'looks' like a gun like a CIWS, 5' gun or like you said the asw rockets. Many are also fascinated by the chaff launchers thinking it's some sort of a weapon system.
I once had a guy ask me if a pitot tube was a laser gun and he was serious! Another time a lady asked a shipmate if the ship has any missiles while she was standing under the quad Harpoon canister. LOL.
