This was not how it started. Before 055 came to light, Chinese fanboys expected next big destroyer to be 9000 tons. They called it: “九千岁” or 9000 years. When 055 came, they called it "万岁舰“ or 10000 years ship. It means a ship is bigger than 10000 tons to be called 10000 years ship. Long live China in Chinese actually: 中国万岁 or China 10000 years!
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- Thread starter Jeff Head
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By the way, he always quotes normal standard displacement rather than maxima displacement.
So I suppose that the task of deciphering pop3's statements should be closer to determine whether his information is up-to-date or not, rather than to determine whether his information is factual or not.
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Update needed:
Which relates to:
~~~(NOTE - The following information are purely speculative only)~~~
Judging by pop3's comment, i.e. "the new model of 6,000-ton destroyer is not just a mere 'L', but a real new model with a substantial increase in combat capability", IMO the "new model 6000-ton destroyer" very likely refers to a brand new successor class to the 052D/DL, rather than just being the new (5th?) batch of 052D/DLs.
The "substantial increase in combat capability" quote likely means that having only ~6000 tons normal displacement (or ~7500 tons full displacement) of the 052D/DLs likely isn't viable. Hence, the 052D/DL-successor class is likely to have substantially higher displacement than the 052D/DLs.
And given that pop3 didn't mention of "万吨舰" (10 thousand-ton ship) regarding the ship itself, I'm guessing that the 052D/DL-successor class probably will have ~8000-9000 tons of displacement.
Besides, the hull of the 052D/DL is already pretty stretched as it is, so I don't think that the new model is going to be further based upon the 052D/DL design.
~~~(If my understanding on the matter is incorrect/inaccurate, feel free to point out or rectify)~~~
I think now I understood the statement regarding "new model 6000-ton destroyer" after looking back-and-forth and re-reading the posts here. So kindly disregard this question.
Which relates to:
~~~(NOTE - The following information are purely speculative only)~~~
Judging by pop3's comment, i.e. "the new model of 6,000-ton destroyer is not just a mere 'L', but a real new model with a substantial increase in combat capability", IMO the "new model 6000-ton destroyer" very likely refers to a brand new successor class to the 052D/DL, rather than just being the new (5th?) batch of 052D/DLs.
The "substantial increase in combat capability" quote likely means that having only ~6000 tons normal displacement (or ~7500 tons full displacement) of the 052D/DLs likely isn't viable. Hence, the 052D/DL-successor class is likely to have substantially higher displacement than the 052D/DLs.
And given that pop3 didn't mention of "万吨舰" (10 thousand-ton ship) regarding the ship itself, I'm guessing that the 052D/DL-successor class probably will have ~8000-9000 tons of displacement.
Besides, the hull of the 052D/DL is already pretty stretched as it is, so I don't think that the new model is going to be further based upon the 052D/DL design.
~~~(If my understanding on the matter is incorrect/inaccurate, feel free to point out or rectify)~~~
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Ma's supership concept obviously has a lot of issues, but he's not a ship designer. It sounds like the subsystems he mentioned will be incorporated into some of the new ships e.g. 054B. The reason I think so is because the PLA/N typically doesn't delay the construction of a platform to wait for better subsystems (e.g. J-20 and Z-10 wrt engines) unless it's a generational leap and provides critical next generation capabilities (e.g EMALS for launching drones on 003).
I think it's hard to say about the displacement right now. He says that there will be groundbreaking ("new concept, new thought process") type of weapons, which makes me think that Ma's proprosed EM launched weapons are possible. While something like a railgun may be larger, EM launched missiles are possibly smaller due to needing less propellant. Supercapacitors would increase size, but elimination of a drive shaft may offset that. Automation can also reduce crew size. There are a lot of potential give and takes wrt displacement IMO.
I don't think there's a need to speculate too far ahead or in too granular detail.
That section of what POP3 wrote is vague enough such that it can basically be boiled down to "future technologies will be applied on future surface combatant projects". There isn't much more information to get anymore detailed than that, and sometimes it is better if we avoid speculating when the evidence and indicators don't warrant it.
When I first read about Ma Weiming talking about some kind of all-in-one supership that can go "solo Rush-B against an entire CSG or CBG" on SCMP, I actually thought that Ma is working with the 战忽局 lol...
Either way, his vision for an all-in-one supership with the "combined firepower of CSG/CBG" sounds really awesome in theory, but ridiculous and impractical in reality.
That all-in-one supership idea practically resembles the Alicorn from Ace Combat 7:
There are tons of reasons why countries around the world choose not to pursue all-in-one superships, and I believe you guys already know them.
However, regarding the individual equipments that Ma Weiming talked about in the same paper - Railguns, Electromagnetic missile launchers, Underwater coilgun (torpedo?) launchers, Modular supercapacitors with megawatt-scale energy storage capability, etc - These are pretty important developments for the PLAN, generally speaking, which I believe that we should keep tab on.
Agree. Roger that.
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We've speculated this has been the case for 054B, nice to have confirmation.
We first had rumours of 054B years and years ago, arguably since the late 2000s. The fact that it's taken this long to emerge and the fact that subsystems and details seemed so vague for so long until the last few years, suggested at the time that they wanted to carefully define what sort of ship they wanted before committing to a design.
Based on the technologies we could see the PLAN fielding in that period, as well as the technologies we knew the PLAN were developing, it was obvious that subsystems were rapidly advancing and initial requirements maybe conceived in the late 2000s/early 2010s might have been made obsolete or too conservative with the pace of advancement.
I suppose things for us to watch for 054B is some kind of definitive, clear cut confirmation by insiders and/or ideally PLA/state media (eventually) about the sort of advancements 054B actually fields.
We all expect IEPS and that has been basically confirmed, but having a definitive irrefutable statement would be nice.
It also makes me wonder as to whether the wait for 054B would still see it use H/AJK-16 or UVLS, because technically the wait for new subsystems can be VLS independent, but it also can't be ignored that UVLS is the much newer and future proof system. If they do continue with H/AJK-16 on 054B then it will further out scrutiny on what other major subsystems 054B has seen major advancements on.
We will likely won't hear about it for 10+ years but I would like to learn about the sonar set on the 054B. As far as I heard from various people, there have been huge advancements in active sonar in the last 15 years. Especially regarding waveform analysis and multistatism. If anything, the development in China should have been faster considering the ongoing catch-up and the pace of iteration China has shown.