I think, thats the VDS of the Luhu (052)…

I believe Towed Array Sonars are like a long thick rope……(maybe Jonesy or serv could elaborate on that….)

yeah, but i wasnt sure if they had something bigger at the end to create more drag and to help make the retraction process a little easier. in hindsight, you are probably spot on. 😉 never mind.

pic of 054 in the final stages of fitting. note that the air pump is considerably bigger then the ‘box’ of the 115.

I heard Yuan class sub is mass produced in China.The PLAN must be satisfy with the design and system of Yuan.Don’t know whether Thai Navy will buy from China for Yuan class sub since Thai don’t have a single sub?

where did that come from? do you have a link?

And what questions would be solved by that? That it has a port anchor?

dont be silly now.

the pic clearly indicates that the hanger is just a hanger and not a VLS missile hub.

if that structure is supposed to be for VLS, why would you only use half of it?

even if you did need to leave half for something else, you’d think they would prefer to have the VLS to the front of the hanger. since that should be more sterdy structurally and also allows easier access to the langing deck at the very rear of the ship.

it also clearly shows that there is a change in the CIWS arrangements, with the old 4*twin cannons on top of the hanger replaced by another system. most like the 730, positioned on either side of the funnel and/or on the rear of the hanger.

[/QUOTE]
What is quite weird, is that we got some pics of the two LPG-tankers next to it, but no one seems to have noticed these were being built in that very same yard! Or was it built somewhere else and towed there for outfitting? And if it was built in this yard, wouldn’t there be any 114 in that yard somewhere? [/QUOTE]

thats not really military related is it? also, the fact that china is going to be building these things has been on the news months ago. no big suprise there.

Crobato:
It is pretty much safe to assume that RIF will be installed on this ship, when long time insider information holder such as 龙耀天下,百战刀 and J-8III tell u it is the case. There is almost definitely no hanger at rear now, using picture comparisons, the hanger of 167, 168 and 170 are all about 2.7 decks in height, while the “hanger” on 115 is only 2 decks high.

well, the 052Bs and Cs are destined to carry ka32s, which are unusaully tall as a result of their counter rotating design. this 115 could be design to only handle a Z9, which is much smaller. this means that the height of the hanger itself (especially such a small difference) cannot be used as a means to deterine whether its is a hanger or not.

personally, i think it is a hanger. for what other reason would they leave the aft of the ship so low? if they extended the hanger much futher back, then they can probably double the number of Rif missiles this thing can carry and still have room to house a CISW like the type730, amounst other things.

interesting development never the less.

shame this didnt come out a couple months earlier. i was in dalian then and could have poped to the shipyard to take a few snaps. 🙁

i cant read all the writting on the board, but just from the very first sentence there are glaring mistakes. its said that the J10 was designed and built by the xian aviation company, when in fact it was the product of CAC (chen du).

from that, its obvious that this is just something an ameture (a poorly informed one at that) made up and displayed in some low level science fair or something. nothing offical.

hell, that model and board well probably get pulled and the orginiser fined.

Wolf

Its no ‘plan’ mate its just the nature of the international arms trade when played at a certain level. Look at the French policy for any examples of it you like. They get panned for selling anywhere and everywhere, but, damn near anywhere they may have to send their own forces to go and fight they know that at least some of the major weapons systems that theyre going to face will be ones they’re very familiar with. A very subtle, effective and profitable policy to follow non?!.

indeed, and everyone uses it. thats the big downfall. it will work on small states that cant do anything about it, but not with the industrial powerhouse china is fast becoming.

Extreme wishful thinking that one Wolf!. They have plenty of systems in play that are straight drop in purchases or have Chinese designations but are, in every respect, straight copies of foreign systems with characteristics as near to the original as makes no difference. Missiles, torpedoes and sensors being the prime candidates of this. Their Crotale knockoffs are still Crotales, their Moskit missiles are stock versions, their lightweight torpedoes are Mk46 knockoffs, their Shtil SAMs are just like Russian Shtil SAMs, their French intercept sonars work just the same as those bolted to French subs etc, etc, etc.

well, first off notice how i said ‘ next gen systems’ in my last post. it takes time to study and build something equivliant and improve on it.

as for the missiles. well there is just not need for them to bin missiles they just bought or madefor no good reason. with china’s industrial ability, they will be able to spot in a second what parts of a missile is suposed to do what, so the only tempering that can be done is no the software. even then it will be every hard to do with without the chinese realising (they cracked the Su27’s fire control radar codes), especially since missiles dont have that much software to start off with, making it harder to hide backdoors and such.

the risk of tempering is pretty much removed from weapons systems the chinese have licence produced or ‘knocked off’ (which is pretty much licence production through the back door in this day and age 😉 ).

the fact of the matter is that the chinese never merely copy something and be done with it. even in the 50s and 60s, the chinese were making modifications and adding their own stuff onto russian fighters, even when they have the fully plans and all the needed manufacturing tools to build them.

so, even if the sonars in chinese warships are still the same french units (i’m pretty curious as to how you can know this for sure), i’d be extremely suprised if the factory ceil is still unbroken and very suprised if there are no chinese modifications or adjustments made to the systems.

the key here to consider is that as soon as the chinese start making modifications and adjustments to a system, it will stop behaving like it did in mint condition (something russian pilots found out first hand when they flow chinese built J11s, with the russians claiming that the J11 feels and flies like a totally different plane from the Su27). so you’d have to be very careful that you dont go into a conflict thinking you know alot more then you actually do.

PS, i have yet to see anything reasembling credible as to when and how the chinese were able to ‘knock-off’ some MK46s.

In every case above, and those are just the immediate examples off the top of my head for brevity (you know how Flood hates in depth debate! 😉 ), those systems capabilities are known and exploitable. That will not change to any great extent until Chinese industry reaches the point where its developing its own cutting edge technologies and not relying on foreign imports that can be dissected for their technological development.

first off, industies are not static entities that moving in jumps but in dynamic and fluid rises, and china’s industry as a whole is improving with every passing minute. people in general only tend to take note when certain milestones have been reached and passed (such as mastering all the knowledge and technologies needed to build a 100% chinese J11).

secondly, in the real world, no two industries are at the same level across the board. to build hi-tech weapons systems of a certain level needs a combination of all of a nation’s various sectors and industries to reach a minimum level of maturity.

if we take the J11 example. if SAC can only make a 75% chinese J11, it does not mean that the entire chinese industries is 25% short off the mark. its almost certain that 75% (probably more) of the chinese industry has reached the minimum required level, (and most likely surpassed it) and only bottlenecks in certain feilds are dragging the back foot.

the important thing to realise is that once any sector has reached and surpassed the minimum require level, they can and will start to make better components (like better composite materials, faster processors, better conductors etc), all of which can be used to replace and upgrade the components previously being used, and so improve or at the very least, change the capabilities and charateristics of the said weapons systems, even if the chinese military industry as a whole is unable to make something equviliant from scratch.

i know its very complex and could probably be worded better, but this is the best i can do, so please be patient and read it again if you dont get it the first time. if you really are struggling, just tell me and i’ll have another crack at explaining it a bit better (same goes for the rest of my post :p ).

thridly, it is a common misconception that the chinese industry is merely leaching knowledge and information from others without doing any of the ground work themselves. the truth is that china is pouring money into its own R&D, and is relying on that as its primary source of new technologies and knowledge.

however, closed door R&D is very time consuming, expensive and often dont work. that is where foreign stuff comes in.

chinese scientists almost only use imported technology as a guide to broaden their horizons, gain insperation based on the solutions others have found to similar problems etc. they may copy basic designs like chips, but very rearly do they copy something very complex wholesale (in fact, i cant think of anything worth meantioning in the last 20 years).

there are everyday examples that shows this point all around us. take football (or any other sport or art) for example. you can play every day and only come up with new tricks and moves once in quite a while (this is assuming that you are at a pretty good level to start with) if you only played with your friends. compare that to if you were also watching the premiership on TV in between playing yourself. you’d see dosens of new tricks and moves every match, and that’ll open doors you might never have found by yourself. you might copy some tricks and moves, and you will most likely make up alot more of your own moves and tricks applying the new ideas you seen being applied on TV. if tricks and moves are components and a game is a finish product, you can see how studying the methods of others can vastly improve your own levels. in hinsight, painting might have been a more easily understanable example seeing how there is no reative elemint in designing things as opposed to playing football, but i really cant be bothered to delete all that and write something similar again. 😉

hope your getting the picture now. china is not studying foreign systems merely to RE everything and digest the knowledge. there are elemints of that like the design of new chips or materials etc, but most of it is just setting markers in the direction china’s scientists should focus their energies. so there is a much smaller chance of them going after wild gooses or going into blind allys.

The basic technologies are all well known though. AESA’s, autonomous UAV’s, Directed Energy, high-bandwidth datalinks, small IIR seekers, target recognition algorthyms, low frequency active sonar etc are all examples of the enabling technologies that the advanced powers are now deploying that China needs a handle on to remain competetive. They know that and the public source theoretical work done to date. They can develop these areas as well as anyone else surely?

well, china pretty much started everything from scratch after the communists gained power. the russians gave the chinese a great boost, but china was still lagging far behind the rest of the world when relations went down the toilet. china has been playing catch up ever since.

if you’d had any experience in engineering, you’d know that theoretical stuff is easy, uni kids can do the maths and prove pretty much every theroy known to man. but there are still theories that middle school kids can prove, that the world’s best scientists cant get to work in practice.

There is far more to it, though, that to get ahead they must develop in ‘related areas’ such as materials science, design technology and the suchlike. So its not necessarily as simple as them buying a few Arabel phased arrays (for example), unlocking their secrets, and gaining a quantum jump in technological capability.

i think i already addressed that point before.

again taking the football example. you may know a trick inside out from watching it a thousand times in replay, but without a fairly good base of skills too base on, there is little hope of you ever doing it.

like football, the skills and knowledge needed are only learnt through a comulation of countless more basic skills.

china’s scientists are trying their best to give china the basic foundation of skills and knowledge needed to do the ‘fancy’ stuff. but they are only human, and it will take time.

Simply put by buying euro gear theyre actually handicapping themselves as, once the embargo is lifted, they will spend several years reverse engineering the new gear they get, eventually master it, then find that everyone else has advanced that number of years whilst they’ve, in effect, stood still. Keep doing that sort of thing and you’re always playing catchup.

now thats wishful thinking mate. 😉

china is not just looking for advanced weapons from europe. hell, its doubtful china will even get weapons systems like radars and sonars even if the ban is lifted because of all the restrictions that will be placed. the PLA will almost certainly buy some big ticket stuff to reward those that helped the most to get the ban lifted, but these will probably be ‘no teeth’ items like military transports, tankers and other logistical stuff like that.

i suspect the prize they are really eyeing is the opening up of europe’s advanced technologies industry as well.

so, instead of buying the finished products, the chinese will most likely put most of their money into advanced machine tools and supercomputers – the tools needed to make advanced weapons systems. much of the knowledge on how to use these tools to do cutting edge research and procution are already available to the chinese through chinese students studying abroad returning to china with the knowledge they learned. (for example, china can already make ASEA radars, only problem being that they dont have the same level of advanced tooling as the west, so their ASEA radars costs many dozens if not hundreds of times more to make, hence hindering their widespread application, and i suspect this is also the case with many of the otehr example you raised.)

the chinese will be using these computers to design and the tools to build their next generation weapons systems and better tools while studying how to build the ones they already have. its what they are doing to a certain extent already, only with the ban lifted, they will be able to do with on a much much larger scale on in any and all sector they want.

this is what will bring a quantum leap in chinese military (and overal) industrial capacity in a very short time frame, and that is what the americans are really afraid off.