055 DDG Large Destroyer Thread

[Tam]

The Chinese Navy seems to be focusing a lot more on anti-submarine capabilities with more recent ships. A lot of them have variable depth sonar and towed sonar arrays.
With regards to weapons there is the CY-5 anti-submarine rocket. The Russians also have versions of the Kalibr with anti-submarine torpedo (91RTE2). So it would be surprising if the Chinese wouldn't have a weapon system like that as well.

You mean this?

Launches from the same YJ-83 canister but it might be VLS'ed.

 

[Tam]

It depends on their doctrine. There will be cost/effectiveness issues as well.
The Type 055 has twice the engines. I would not be surprised if the construction cost was similarly higher as well.

Still, considering how quickly they can build these ships I would tend to agree that the amount of Type 055 ships to be constructed will likely be on the higher side of things.

052D has two GT and two diesels, 055 has four GTs. Spruance, ABs and Ticos all have four GTs, and there are a huge number of these ships made. Russians also built the Udalois with six GTs, 2 bigger ones and 4 smaller ones. Cost is higher with 4 GTs but that won't stop you from making a lot of them. Your bottleneck is how fast you can produce the GTs. Note the future Type 054B may also further consume GT production if a ship has one or two of them.

The greater cost of the ship might be on the radars --- all those AESAs on the 055 add up to a large bill. 052D still features a good amount of mechanical radars. Something like the 055 might be price impossible if done in the West; the US took out the S-band AESA SPY-4 radars from the Zumwalt --- the functional analog to the 055's main Type 346B sets --- and which are originally part of the Zumwalt's sensor set, to save on costs.

Going forward however, spectrum dominance by ECM/ESM will be more and more important, AESAs can make the emissions harder to detect and harder to jam with better abilities to detect and target stealthier objects, so I expect the 055 to pay off more than the 052D in the long run, while something completely based on mechanical radars like the 054A and 056 can quickly become obsolete unless they are MLU'ed with a better set of radars.

 

[Blitzo]

052D has two GT and two diesels, 055 has four GTs. Spruance, ABs and Ticos all have four GTs, and there are a huge number of these ships made. Russians also built the Udalois with six GTs, 2 bigger ones and 4 smaller ones. Cost is higher with 4 GTs but that won't stop you from making a lot of them. Your bottleneck is how fast you can produce the GTs. Note the future Type 054B may also further consume GT production if a ship has one or two of them.

The greater cost of the ship might be on the radars --- all those AESAs on the 055 add up to a large bill. 052D still features a good amount of mechanical radars. Something like the 055 might be price impossible if done in the West; the US took out the S-band AESA SPY-4 radars from the Zumwalt --- the functional analog to the 055's main Type 346B sets --- and which are originally part of the Zumwalt's sensor set, to save on costs.

Going forward however, spectrum dominance by ECM/ESM will be more and more important, AESAs can make the emissions harder to detect and harder to jam with better abilities to detect and target stealthier objects, so I expect the 055 to pay off more than the 052D in the long run, while something completely based on mechanical radars like the 054A and 056 can quickly become obsolete unless they are MLU'ed with a better set of radars.

Just regarding that, I think the issues with Zumwalt's radar set was due to the costs and management of the overall programme than due to any sort of inherent limitations in complex radar integration and production in the US.
I think we can fully expect the USN's future large surface combatant to feature very integrated RF arrays similar to Zumwalt and 055.

 

[Tam]

Just regarding that, I think the issues with Zumwalt's radar set was due to the costs and management of the overall programme than due to any sort of inherent limitations in complex radar integration and production in the US.
I think we can fully expect the USN's future large surface combatant to feature very integrated RF arrays similar to Zumwalt and 055.

Exactly. The radar set cost an arm and a leg, and its not due to any integration issue. If there are technical issues that would be solvable, and won't have the weight of reason for the radar's deletion off the ship. That leaves the Zumwalt running only the smaller, X-band only SPY-3 AESA.

As for the LSC, we'll see, once the costs comes in. The question is how much arms and legs it will cost.

But of course, we may have to factor how China's electronics industry might be able to keep the costs of the AESA radars down, relative to Western equivalents. Still, the 055 is a virtual Rolls Royce, extravagant, no holds barred when it comes to active phase arrays. Except for a civilian type navigation radar on top of the bridge, comm and ESM antennas that need to be in a radial design for passive 360 degree coverage, every thing on the 055 is flat paneled even to the ECM.

 

[Hyperwarp]

Actually apparently it might have been taken during the rehearsal

Any pics of the subs from the rehearsal?

 

[by78]

More...

 

[by78]

 

[Lethe]

Exactly. The radar set cost an arm and a leg, and its not due to any integration issue. If there are technical issues that would be solvable, and won't have the weight of reason for the radar's deletion off the ship. That leaves the Zumwalt running only the smaller, X-band only SPY-3 AESA..

The deletion of SPY-4 from Zumwalt was more about rats fleeing a sinking ship than anything else -- the Navy was looking to save money anywhere it could. They swapped out the planned 57mm guns for cheaper 30mm guns too, and took sensors originally intended to be mounted flush within the deckhouse and just stuck them outside. It wasn't about carefully evaluating cost vs. benefit but about slashing costs wherever possible because the program was dead.

 

[Franklin]

There seems to be some criticism of the Type 055 design. The low position of the radar panels effect the detection range and the upper decks seems to be made up of light aluminum alloys that can be easily damaged during combat. This comes from a Macau based military analyst Anthony Wong Dong.

 

[Marjohn]

There seems to be some criticism of the Type 055 design. The low position of the radar panels effect the detection range and the upper decks seems to be made up of light aluminum alloys that can be easily damaged during combat. This comes from a Macau based military analyst Anthony Wong Dong.

What is a military analyst? I mean, I guess if he's a public servant, he won't be in office long, so his name is disclosed..... I'm not sure there's connectivity in jail!