Type 45 is a joke, outcome of stupid archetectural incompetence, lack of integration test and project management neglectance. The breakdown of the ships in action, the invetigation and following remedy has proven so. The subject has been discussed in length in this forum.
How is it a stretch? Name one area (other than magazine depth) where any European warship is clearly superior to Type 054B. Name one AAW mission or threat type that a European warship can handle that the Type 054B cannot. Name any European warship with GaN S-band AESA arrays or CEC.
The Slava-class cruisers are even larger, and when designed represented the pinnacle of Soviet air defense technology with its S-300F system.Today it can't even stop a Neptune/harpoon missile.
They lay on the opposite ends of the capability vs cost spectrum. One is high capability low cost, the other high cost low capability.
Just by the T45 having a higher placed main radar, the Type 45 is superior to the 054B in engaging sea-skimming AShM (the most common threat to a ship right now). Aster is a lighter, smaller "dart", with bigger wings and PIF-PAF in comparison to HQ-16F which is a very big and heavy missile without a lot of control surfaces, this most likely means that Aster has a better p/k. There are a bunch of S-band GaN AESAs in Europe, but many of the warships carrying them are currently in the building process. Some examples are: NS100, Sea Fire, TRS-4D, Giraffe 4A, SPY-7.
If you honestly believe that then there's no point in having a discussion with you. The ships are meant for very different missions. Regarding overall capability (ASW, ASUW & AAW combined), I agree that Type 054B has an edge over T45 but the T45 is a specialist AAW as I've told you many times.
Ever heard of thrust vectoring?
Not actually that much of an advantage as I explained before. Against representative threats, a Type 054B would have three times as much time as a Type 45 to react against a sea skimming missile.
This is just not how it works.
In other words, the radars equipping current European warships is one to two generations behind the GaN S-band AESA radar on the Type 054B.
History is full of examples where multi-role weapon systems outperform specialist systems of the previous generations (e.g. main battle tanks better than specialist tanks they replaced, modern multi-role fighters better at either air to air or air to ground). This is especially the case for warships since the Type 45's "specialist" role reflects budgetary restrictions, obsolete doctrine, and inferior naval design.
Unless you know the size, power, T/R count and processing capabilities you cannot conduct any kind of radar comparison on the basis of, "generations ahead." We don't have any specs regarding the 054B's radar or power output at the moment, so it's not possible to do any kind of serious comparison. At the end of the day, a bigger ship with more power is going to be able to send more power to its sensor suite and its ECM/ECCM systems.
