PLAN container ship thread

mack8

Senior Member
So our armed container ship no only has SAM, AshM and AsuW weapons, but air defence/strike too? This is getting better and better. Looks they're not even going to wait to spam VTOL aircraft on transports as i was theorizing, they'll spam RATO launched CCAs instead. Although makes you wonder how they will be recovered. Maybe they don't even plan to, like the MACs of old, the CCA is launched, it does it's mission, and then it crashes into the nearest enemy if possible.
 

no_name

Colonel
The anti-air and ASW missions are separate, so there's no need to put everything on the same ship.

For ASW, that could be a single self-contained container trailing a Towed Array or Variable Depth Sonar, as long as it has clear space behind.

EDIT. When a 100-TEU containership only costs $1 Million, a TAS or VDS is probably more expensive than this.
So you can justify a single 100-TEU containership whose only job is to deploy this TAS or VDS.
Come to think of it, even smaller fishing boats can probably deploy a TAS or VDS
This thing would actually be well suited to anti-submarine role. Because acoustic signature wise enemy submarines may not be able to tell it apart from normal civilian container ships.

Unrestricted submarine warfare unrestricted anti-submarine warfare :p

Same thing when enemy warships radar shows a signature consistent with civilian ship but is actually an armed ship. This increases radar clutter and workload for the enemy as they now have to treat all return signals as a potential threat. It also makes them uncertain as to whether they've given their positions away to 'civilian' ships fitted with the necessary radio-emission detection assets.

China is saying you think shipping is our Achilles heel? Now we gonna make sure you knock yourselves out and die on this hill.

Having the biggest industrial capability really is the multiplier that adds zeros no matter how big the first number is. Whatever games you choose to play we're just gonna swamp ya. It's brutallisticly simple.

以斗争求和平则和平存,以妥协求和平则和平亡。
 
Last edited:

Andy1974

Senior Member
Registered Member
This thing would actually be well suited to anti-submarine role. Because acoustic signature wise enemy submarines may not be able to tell it apart from normal civilian container ships.

Unrestricted submarine warfare unrestricted anti-submarine warfare :p

Same thing when enemy warships radar shows a signature consistent with civilian ship but is actually an armed ship. This increases radar clutter and workload for the enemy as they now have to treat all return signals as a potential threat. It also makes them uncertain as to whether they've given their positions away to 'civilian' ships fitted with the necessary radio-emission detection assets.

China is saying you think shipping is our Achilles heel? Now we gonna make sure you knock yourselves out and die on this hill.
China also has electric battery powered container ships, the batteries could go under the VLS cells. Submarines probably wouldn’t be able to detect it.
 

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
This thing would actually be well suited to anti-submarine role. Because acoustic signature wise enemy submarines may not be able to tell it apart from normal civilian container ships.

Unrestricted submarine warfare unrestricted anti-submarine warfare :p

Same thing when enemy warships radar shows a signature consistent with civilian ship but is actually an armed ship. This increases radar clutter and workload for the enemy as they now have to treat all return signals as a potential threat. It also makes them uncertain as to whether they've given their positions away to 'civilian' ships fitted with the necessary radio-emission detection assets.

China is saying you think shipping is our Achilles heel? Now we gonna make sure you knock yourselves out and die on this hill.

Having the biggest industrial capability really is the multiplier that adds zeros no matter how big the first number is. Whatever games you choose to play we're just gonna swamp ya. It's brutallisticly simple.

以斗争求和平则和平存,以妥协求和平则和平亡。

Submarines would have to consider that every containership or fishing boat might have a containerised TAS or VDS system.
It also means the possibility of containerised VLS tubes containing rocket-launched ASW torpedoes.

In addition, maritime patrol aircraft (trying to enforce a blockade on Chinese shipping) now have to consider that they may be shot down by the cargo ship they are trying to visually identify.

---

From a strategic perspective, China is the world's largest trading nation and derives the most benefit from seaborne shipping, so China wants trade to continue flowing through the South China Seas and the Malacca Straits.

In comparison, the US would be trying to impose a blockade on China, because the US has a much lower dependency on cargo shipped through these areas. Note that the China-ASEAN trade is intermingled, and it is in ASEAN's interest to keep trade flowing through the South China Seas and Malacca Straits.

Having armed cargo ships makes the job of enforcing a China blockade much more difficult.

---

I also suspect that this ship and its containerised weapons is a direct result of:

1. The US losing the recent trade war to China, where it is now clear that China can cripple US industry whereas Chinese industry is unaffected. (Due to rare earth shortages, Ford was shutting down car factories and Raytheon was 3 weeks away from stopping missile production, as per Gavekal)

It's also clear now that China has the upper hand over the US (with rare earths) for at least the next 3 years and possibly up to 10 years.

2. Previously, I suspect that the Chinese didn't pursue containerised weapons because China still wanted Chinese ships to send Chinese containers to the USA. But 2 months ago, the US effectively banned Chinese ships from US ports by imposing punitive port fees on Chinese ships. Plus we had the US imposing punitive tariffs on China this year anyway, before the US backed down.

Granted, the tariffs and port fees have now been put on hold as part of the trade war "truce", but this truce only lasts a year.
So it's reasonable to assume that the US will ban Chinese ships again as soon as possible, as well as ramp up tariffs as soon as possible.

---

So given that there is nothing to lose, China might as well pursue containerised weapons now.
 
Last edited:

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
Having the biggest industrial capability really is the multiplier that adds zeros no matter how big the first number is. Whatever games you choose to play we're just gonna swamp ya. It's brutallisticly simple.

Yes. At the moment, it's difficult for China to project power because the US has a much more powerful Navy.

But let's say China can produce large numbers of containerised sensors and weapons systems.

There are now hundreds of ships carrying such containers. And each ship is now an additional node in the maritime battle network.

---

Just a thought. If you have enough nodes with an acoustic monitoring system, is it possible to detect (and potentially triangulate) the sound of a B-2 stealth bomber as it passes overhead? Although I imagine it would be easier to deploy such a network on land.
 

no_name

Colonel
Just a thought. If you have enough nodes with an acoustic monitoring system, is it possible to detect (and potentially triangulate) the sound of a B-2 stealth bomber as it passes overhead? Although I imagine it would be easier to deploy such a network on land.
I think someone trialed this already, but with a network of video cameras instead which can also see the contrails left behind by aircrafts as they fly. I think it was posted on this forum somewhere.

It's neat because you can potentially make use of surveillance camera networks in cities provided they have the resolution and points in suitable directions. The AI developments definitely helps in correlating flight path/positions etc. It works roughly like linear optimisation where the pixels in each camera combined with their location helps cross out regions in the sky where the plane is not, and with enough camera nodes and enough slices taken away you get a better idea of where the target is. You can also separate multiple flying objects this way.
 

no_name

Colonel
In the future speed and range might be focused on, but also computation capacity and capability will be what wins wars. It maybe determined by two countries AI system to fight it out given the number of assets and factors at play, with both side trying to figure the other out and conducting feints and what not.

In this sense total war is also about bringing out every assets not just war fighting ones to not just help with the war effort but also to further complicate and overwhelm the other sides AI systems. Total war in an obfuscation sense.

Case in point being these container ships that may or may not be carrying a strike package. From the initiators side it knows which ships are normal and which are 'rogue' but it is blind to the other side (if proper precautions taken), and that uncertainty and extra large number of unknown variables will need to be considered and is therefore a burden to their computing, planning and decision making systems.


Every dual use assets will have to be considered to be potentially usable in a militarily hostile sense, and China is finding as much dual use capability of it's systems as possible, more over much of these will be modern smart systems with some degree of 'intelligence' on their own. So we're looking at not just achieving overwhelming firepower but also overwhelming computation/network overloading in future wars.
 
Last edited:

PigeonFood

Just Hatched
Registered Member
A video of the ship, i didn't realized how small it is until seeing the yard sat pics including Sichuan.
That's exactly what you'd want. Smaller, dispersed, and disposable (except for the guys inside, but still more so than a full staffed naval crew), and yet able to carry enough firepower to both present a threat to surface boats and demand dedicated fire in return.
 
Top