055 DDG Large Destroyer Thread

[Mirabo]

I doubt the Chinese would put AshBM on the type 055. AshBM is effectively a one-shot suicide weapon. It’s launch can be detected immediately by anything within its range. It’s range is not all that great. It’s launch will immediately reveal where the launch ship is and focus retribution down upon the ship.

you don’t use your most capable and valuable surface warship for that kind of one-shot role.

if you need to launch it from the sea, you probably launch it from a submarine or One-use self-propelled weapon Barge type platform That wouldn’t take a lot of valuable equipment down with her in the retaliation that will likely follow after launching its weapons.

Say for example the miniature AShBM fired from a CUVLS cell has a 1000 km range - speculation as per the rumors we've heard. Perhaps more advanced propellant and rocket designs in the future can increase it to 1500 km, but let's stick with 1000 km for now.

An enemy fleet is approaching, and hypothetically, the 055 launches as soon as the targets enter striking distance. Great, now everyone and their dog knows where the ship is, but what can they do about it? The combat radius of a F-35B is only 800 km, so air attack is out of the question. Even if it was close enough, good luck getting an aircraft past the fleet's outer picket and defensive screen.

If not aircraft, what can you shoot back with? LRASM has a respectable range, but the 600 km maximum still gives the 055's AShBm a 400 km margin. Harpoons? lol

There might be fast attack subs operating nearby, those could be one method of retaliation? But like with aircraft, you'd have to get past the Chinese fleet's ASW screen first. It could launch ASMs from further out, but there's no guarantee of success because the Chinese Navy is not some impoverished third-world fighting force, and they have real SAMs like the HQ-9 that have been tested and proven to work.

A VLS-launched AShBM is a significant new development and it's time to call it what it is. It's a weapon that outranges anything else that you can currently put on a ship, and the delivery vehicle is fast and maneuverable enough that it has a reasonable chance of reaching its target. And when it does hit, the damage is more severe than what a typical anti-ship warhead can manage.

Using a WW2 analogy, it's like comparing the 18.1" shells of the Yamato to the 12" shells of the Alaska. Even though the shell diameter is "only" 50% larger (like 0.85 m vs 0.55 m for the CUVLS vs Mk 41), the resulting projectile is three times heavier, with an explosive charge four times larger, and can penetrate armor 60% thicker at 20,000 yards. The CUVLS on the 052D and 055 - and the missiles that could fit inside them - is nothing to sneeze at.

 

[Blitzo]

I think ship launched AShBMs or anti-ship HGVs (whatever it specifically ends up closer to in concept) is obviously a useful capability, but like all weapons it isn't a silver bullet. Instead, it is a useful weapon that provides additional flexibility and a capability that may be particularly useful in certain situations.

Proclaiming that ship launched AShBM or HGVs being a "one shot weapon" is overreaching, and even the USN is looking to equip its future surface combatants with similar weapons.

 

[plawolf]

I doubt the Chinese would put AshBM on the type 055. AshBM is effectively a one-shot suicide weapon. It’s launch can be detected immediately by anything within its range. It’s range is not all that great. It’s launch will immediately reveal where the launch ship is and focus retribution down upon the ship.

That’s just based on a huge amount of unsubstantiated or downright incorrect assumptions.

Don’t go seeing ‘ballistic missile’ and automatically assume an AShBM launch, especially a version that can fit in a VLS, will have the same heat signature as an ICBM launch to trigger instant detection. And maybe you want to do some basic LOS and curvature of the Earth research to see how silly it is to suggest a surface target 1000km away could instantly detect an AShBM launch at the Earth surface to be able to pinpoint the location of the 055 that launched it.

Best case scenario you detect the AShBM as soon as it clears the horizon, but even then backtracking the trajectory will only given you a huge area and not a precise co-ordinate to use for counter missile launch.

Secondly, I don’t think anyone would class 1000+km as ‘not that great’. I remember you were one of the people who loved to go into great length about the amount of distance a USN carrier strike group could cover in the time it takes for a ballistic missile to cover a few thousand km. But you now act like the US have some sort of Godray that can instant delete 055s as soon as one is detected. Pray tell how much distance an 055 can cover in the time it takes a subsonic tomahawk to cover 1000km?

Which brings us to the last point about kill probability. What’s the KP for subsonic tomahawks to get through the combined defences of a PLAN fleet cantered on an 055 or two? Never mind one backed up by carriers?

you don’t use your most capable and valuable surface warship for that kind of one-shot role.

if you need to launch it from the sea, you probably launch it from a submarine or One-use self-propelled weapon Barge type platform That wouldn’t take a lot of valuable equipment down with her in the retaliation that will likely follow after launching its weapons.

It would only be a one-shot suicide weapon if anyone was foolish enough to take your advice of putting it on such a suicide barge.

But why would you Force yourself to make this kind of trade by putting AshBM on the type 055?

1st of all, you are not sure if AshBM can sink every ship in that group. If it really has a high change of doing that, the owner of the CVBG would know it too and probably wouldn’t put himself where a type 055 can approach and launch,

If an USN carrier commander does that, then that alone would be worth 055s carrying AShBMs, because even if those 055 sit in port, that will still mean the USN carriers won’t dare to come within 1000km of the mainland.

Finally, it should be noted that 055s are not the only ship with the new UVLS, 052Ds also carry 16 of the 9m tubes. So already that’s a huge number of PLAN ships that can carry them once such a weapon is developed.

If the PLAN apply the new UVLS on their next gen FFG as expected, that could mean even more ships able to carry them if they can fit a few 9m cells in the design.

This is absolutely a capability worth developing if Chinese scientists can shrink the AShBM enough to fit in the UVLS.

 

[Totoro]

DF-11A is listed on Wikipedia as 8.5 x 0.8m which should more or less fit inside 055's full-length universal VLS cells. As such, DF-11A can serve as a baseline for minimum expected performance. In reality, a new generation of propellants and reduced warhead size should yield improved performance.

Any missile fired from said VLS needs either
A) cold launch pressurized gas canister under the missile, which for the said missile woudl be roughly 0.8 m diameter sphere
or B) specialized launch sub-container, which would be inserted in a cell, and which would feature own hot launch exhaust.

For A) to work the missile itself would need to be roughly 8 m long.
For B) to work the missile would have to be smaller and narrower, so there's room for the exhaust around the missile.

Range is a factor of many things, far from just propellant. So a modern missile, depending on various other requirements and possible acceptable compromises, could easily achieve quite long ranges.

Case in point - the PrSM system, to replace the ATacMS for the US Army. While ATacMS is 4 m long, 0.6 m wide and weight 1.6 tons, its range was 300 km. PrSM is roughly 0.35 m to 0.4 m in diameter and 4 m long. Weight unknown but should be around a ton? It's range was limited to 499 km by the now defunct INF treaty. And now the word is a variant with even longer range is being worked on, of same dimensions.

8 m long missile, 0.8 m in diameter, should thus easily go over 1000 km in range, even without any special gliding warhead. Even 1500 km range would be perfectly plausible, depending on trajectory and warhead requirements.

 

[plawolf]

I think the main limiting factor for a UVLS launched AShBM would be space within the warhead to allow for the inclusion of a remote sensor module.

The DF21 has a diameter of 1.4m, whereas any AShBM that can fit in the UVLS will need to be <0.8m, which is a pretty big size reduction, which corresponding impact on detection range and overall performance of the remote sensing unit.

A remote sensing module will be especially important for a ship based AShBM as the primary purpose of such would be to push out a AShBM coverage to beyond the range of Chinese land based systems. But Chinese space based assets are overwhelmingly focused on China’s near seas region, so the further you push out the engagement envelope, the more you are stretch space based and land based detection assets the PLAN would currently rely heavily on for target acquisition and engagement of its existing land based systems.

As such, I suspect a ship based AShBM may forgo having a warhead and rely on KE alone.

These won’t be one-shot-kill systems like land based DF21/26s, but would probably be an alpha strike mission kill weapon designed to soften up an enemy fleet, to be finished off by follow on massed conventional AShMs.

 

[AndrewS]

I don't see any reason to put ASBM's on surface ships especially a flag/command ship like 055. Perhaps a semi-submersible arsenal ship or just an autonamous variant of the 032 sub will do very nicely as deterrence. Much cheaper.

A minor point.

It's a lot cheaper to use an existing class of ship than developing a new one.

Plus the Type-52D has the same VLS cells as the Type-55

 

[AndrewS]

As such, I suspect a ship based AShBM may forgo having a warhead and rely on KE alone.

These won’t be one-shot-kill systems like land based DF21/26s, but would probably be an alpha strike mission kill weapon designed to soften up an enemy fleet, to be finished off by follow on massed conventional AShMs.

If there's space, adding a cluster dispenser for ball bearings would also make sense.

Carriers have large decks and modern warships are covered with weapons systems or delicate electronics.

 

[Insignius]

It wont be a DF-21. It will be a big missile, but not anything close to a DF-21. Remember the limitations of cell-length and diameter. At most, it will be a missile as large as the SM-3 or SM-6, both of which are huge missiles. And if the US has no problem with their infra-red signature when they inevitably launch hundreds of them in any fight against an opponent like China or Russia who have space based detection assets, China as well wont have any problems with the Type 055 launching missiles of similiar size and IR-emissions.

As far as we know, this sort of missile could actually be less visible than SM-3/6s because its warhead would be an unpowered glider after its booster seperation phase.

 

[by78]

Another update from Dalian...

 

[by78]

Shipyard update from Jiangnan...