1.operability in shallow and confined waters
2.price
3.vulnerability
4.non-acoustic signatures
+one vague:
5.small electric subs have an energy breakthrough right around the corner, since li-ion batteries give much more to them, than to others.
09V/09VI (095/096) Nuclear Submarine Thread
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
- Start date
2.price
3.vulnerability
4.non-acoustic signatures
+one vague:
5.small electric subs have an energy breakthrough right around the corner, since li-ion batteries give much more to them, than to others.
Maybe you should tell all of that to the PLAN and ask them why they are still building Yuans rather than some smaller SSK. I suspect they would tell you that all of these points don't amount to a significant enough difference between a large SSK and a small SSK to warrant the adoption of a small SSK. Plus I think points 3 through 5 are really non-points.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Subs are like fighters, whereby weapons size places a limit on the benefits of miniaturisation.
When you need to carry a big torpedo/cruise missile, the smaller the boat, the bigger the proportion of internal volume used up by munitions carriage, thereby forcing you to make difficult trade-offs and compromises.
With subs, size also help to improve stealth, as it takes less energy to create vibrations in smaller objects than larger ones. Also, more internal volume allows you to add in more sound suppression.
Small subs really only make sense in an extreme lethality and attrition scenarios, where your boats are not expected to survive long enough to fire off more than one or two torpedos or get very far from their bases/deployment points, in which case more weapons load and endurance is just wasted.
For a major power like China, such suicide subs would only make sense if they were unmanned, but we are probably still some time away from where such tech is operational.
Project 677 is born out of a Russian Navy budget that spent much of its rubles on nuclear submarines, and little for everything else. While it maybe quieter than a Kilo, its overall capability over a Kilo 636.3 is questionable, and after they build two more, the Russians are designing a new SSK.
Pr.677 was conceived and defined in Soviet times, so the post-collapse Russian budget had little to do with its size (just with the delays...). If overall capability is similar to a Kilo at 70% of a Kilo's displacement and recurring cost that's a success, and it could be even better if the planned fuel cell AIP plant was funded and implemented. Which is what the "new" SSK project is likely to be all about - I suspect they aren't going to re-invent the wheel (maybe plus an x-stern - in any case, don't expect size to increase, if at all, beyond the requirements for adding the AIP system!).
FWIW, Polish experience found the Kilo far too bulky to manoeuvre properly in the shallow, confined waters of the Baltic (which is a close match for the Yellow Sea in several respects). It's no accident either that modern Swedish and German SSKs designed for this environment are all about the same size as Pr.677. The entire East and South China Seas are each smaller and on average shallower than the Black Sea, and it's not entirely due to politics that you don't ever see Russian SSNs deployed in the latter...
Institutional inertia can be a powerful thing. Ask Russia why they opted to base their next tanker on a mildly upgraded Il-76 rather than the vastly superior (as a refuelling platform) Il-96. Or the UK why they built such a huge carrier for such a modest capability (mainly constrained by STOVL and non-nuclear propulsion). It happens all over the world, and China is not exempt - count on it.
Yellow Sea might be shallow but East and South China Seas are deeper than the Black Sea at their maximums.
Maximum Depth:
Baltic Sea - 1506 m
Black Sea - 7365 m
Yellow Sea - 499 m
East China Sea - 8858 m
South China Sea - 18,238 m.
The Black Sea is not even close to the South China Seas. In fact, the South China Sea is deeper than the Mediterranean (17,280 meters).
But of course, this is maximum depth, a big portion of the seas are going to be much shallower.
The modern Kilos are thrown into the Black Sea, and operate in the Med, I see likewise for the Kilos and the Yuans in the East and South China Seas. Vietnam already operates Kilos in the South China Seas, and appear content with it.
Modern attack submarines might have a test depth of around 400 m to 500 m, with a crush depth of around 700 m. So even the deeper parts of the Yellow Sea may already be enough for nuclear submarines. Given that submarines the size of the Kilo and the Yuan can operate fully in the East and South China Seas, I don't think its economical to develop a submarine just to operate in the shallower areas of the Yellow Sea and near the Chinese coasts.
To give some more context.
Submerged Displacement (off from Wiki)
Type 212 - 1800 tons
Gotland class - 1600 tons
Song class - 2250 tons
PR 677 Lada class - 2700 tons
Type 214 class - 1800 tons <--- This one is being built by South Korea, which is expected to operate in the same East China and Yellow Sea waters.
S20 (export Yuan) - 2300 tons. <--- sold to Thailand and expected to operate in the South China Seas.
The 212, 214 and Gotland class are even smaller the PR. 677, which itself displaces more than the Song and the export S20. To create a new small SSK, would be like recreating a Song with AIP, which only leads to a scaled down Yuan, which is therefore like an S20. I don't see the benefit of doing this just for the Yellow Sea, when you still have Songs, and antisubmarine assets like Type 056A to patrol these areas.
broadsword
Brigadier
Oh yes I did goof up.
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plawolf
Lieutenant General
For assessing sub operating freedom, mode depth is much more informative than deepest. But I appreciate that kind of information is difficult to come by.
But below is a passable example, which shows that the SCS is pretty good for sub operations for the most part. Which is why China moved its primary nuke sub base from Dalian to Hainan to allow those subs quicker and easier access to the SCS.
Vietnam’s Kilos probably also operate a lot in those deeper waters, as they can each it with only a short trip through shallow waters.
But below is a passable example, which shows that the SCS is pretty good for sub operations for the most part. Which is why China moved its primary nuke sub base from Dalian to Hainan to allow those subs quicker and easier access to the SCS.
Vietnam’s Kilos probably also operate a lot in those deeper waters, as they can each it with only a short trip through shallow waters.
Quite apart from the fact that those are all in feet rather than meters, as has been mentioned, maximum depth is a misleading criterion anyway - average is much more relevant. Apart from the Baltic and Yellow Seas, the deepest points are beyond the reach of a modern military submarine by such a margin that it renders even large differences moot.
Exactly: the SCS is shallower on average than the Black Sea (~1100m as opposed to ~1300m), despite a much greater maximum depth! This indicates large areas must be substantially shallower than the Black Sea (and significantly less than 1100m), whereas the extreme depths are largely confined to a narrow trench immediately off the Philippine coast.
Average/maximum depth (meters):
Black Sea - 1253/2212
South China Sea - 1060/5016
East China Sea - 350/2719
Baltic Sea - 52/459
Yellow Sea - 44/152
Sure - because for the vast majority of the Kilo users there simply is no other game in town, thanks to Pr.677 lagging so badly behind schedule. Correlation does not necessarily equal causation! I'd be willing to bet that if Pr.677 had lived up to the original plans there would be no more Kilos in Russian service by now, and a couple of its late export sales would have materialized as Amur-class contracts instead.
So use nuclear submarines in those waters! My point exactly.
What would be uneconomical is to go on building 4000t SSKs in parallel to SSNs when for the vast majority of China's littoral seas ~2000t boats are better suited (and those areas where they could be properly operated could be covered by SSNs, as mentioned).
Which brings us full circle back on topic: if the Type 095 SSN is up to scratch, the calculus changes for *future* PLAN SSK classes and smaller designs would become preferable - as I said initially. Maybe you misunderstand, I do NOT criticize the Yuan per se - it was a good solution while China did not have a credible SSN fleet and served that purpose admirably, but *continuing* to build them makes little sense (unless for some reason 095 fails).
2700t for Pr.677 is widely quoted but probably an inaccurate estimate founded on the erroneous assumption that it follows established Soviet/Russian practice and is a double-hull boat with characteristically high reserve buoyancy - it isn't, though. You sometimes see 2300t, giving a submerged/surfaced ratio comparable to the Type 212 which sounds about right. Something like a S20 with AIP (i.e. much more modern than Song!) could therefore be a good fit for *future* PLAN SSKs, yes.