A tough question to answer, considering how many ships sail under flags of convenience. Thousands, at least.
PLAN container ship thread
- Thread starter mack8
- Start date
A tough question to answer, considering how many ships sail under flags of convenience. Thousands, at least.
Are we certain that these are the UVLS seen aboard the 052D/055? They look entirely different and might not even be a "universal" launcher as opposed to one for a certain munition.
"Certain" is a strong word.
"Strongly suspect" is more likely, given we know what at least one of the canister types for the UVLS looks like, per
PLA Navy news, pics and videos
IMO, the equipment on these ships looks very true, so it's likely a legitimate project. Props generally do not have such high precision. As for the text on the containers, it’s probably just camouflage used during transportation, likely created by the manufacturer themselves. We’ve seen...
www.sinodefenceforum.com
Interesting juxtaposition!
I don't think there is anything juxtaposed -- the canister for the UVLS in the image being loaded (I believe on a 052D) clearly has the same canister structural reinforcement as the canisters on the containers, which should lead to significant suspicion that they share at least one major structural commonality with the UVLS.
The key issue is we do not know what different various payloads for the UVLS look like in terms of their canisters; whether they look externally similar to what we see in that picture of the 052D being loaded, or if each unique munition has its own unique canister.
I'm surprised there isn't a separate topic on the container ship conversion like in other places. It's obvious the conversion integrates several different systems (with possibly more to come, i expect helicopters aboard larger conversions f.e.) all interacting with eachother and discussing them separately in x number of threads is just awkward.
MwRYum
Major
No one knows on average how quickly China's MIC can put together a standard shipping container VLS unit,
If we go by an arsenal ship has 500 VLS cells as the yardstick, that means 125 FEU containers.
A Panamax freighter typically carries somewhere like 3000 FEU containers, so let's estimate at 500 per level stack to 6 levels.
That means there's enough FEUs to ring the other stack to camouflage those VLS units.
Now...we need 4 to 8 such arsenal ships to enact "firebase-at-sea", there will be a demand for 500 FEU VLS units.
How one to hide that many "special items" if not also chartering that many Panamax freighters without raising flags at Langley?
PiSigma
"the engineer"
@Blitzo @siegecrossbow
I'm starting a new thread for the container ship. Feels it's got too many components to not have its own thread. If someone could move the conversation here from other threads it would be great. Thanks
I'm starting a new thread for the container ship. Feels it's got too many components to not have its own thread. If someone could move the conversation here from other threads it would be great. Thanks
EMcat centipede
China makes 96% of the world's containers, so they can ramp up rapidly.