Does that matter? Some presidents are good, some are bad… It all depends on that. Their navy has been “stationary” but now has received much more funding for new carriers, new destroyers etc. I suppose it’s not only maintaining such a Navy that indicates bad intentions… I suppose a build-up or large modernisation plan seems to indicate more. And what is China doing??? :diablo: :p

what kind of logic is this? do u have any idea how much it costs to just maintain the USN ‘stationary’ (ps, new warships are being built all the time and has never stopped)?! its not like a hammer u pay one-off for and then can do what u want with. i dont have the exact numbers, but i’d say that there is a good chance that the USN has spend as much money maintaining its fleet as china is moderising and expanding it.

both nations have endless other projects that need the money, but it was allocated to defence. and because the US spent more, it gave up more, meaning it wanted the military more then china, so, if china is being ‘agressive’, what does that say about the US? dont please dont give me that good president, bad president crap. the USN (and AF and army and marines), got the funding they wanted from 3 successive presidents, dont tell me the first two were just laying the fondations for the thrid to do what he likes. :rolleyes: :diablo:

OK so to be a useful weapons system they have to have a good little flotilla of them, something to provide targetting and something to screen them from air attack. Hmmm cost-effective when your fleet is hurting for ASW!

no, what i meant was that in order to maximise their potential (against something like a carrier battlegroup), its best to use them as i described. against lesser oppents, less support is needed.

also, one of the very reasons that these vessles are important to the PLAN is exactly because of the PLAN’s lack of comprehensive ASW capacity! subs might find these things, but it will be hard for the subs to effectively deal with them given that the sub’s torpedos are designed to sink lumbering (in comparison to FACs) heavy warships.

because of the PLAN’s poor AWS capacity, the PLAN surface fleet might need to stay at home in the event that they are faced against someone with a decent sub force (in terms of quality and quantity) over a small dispute (ie its not worth the risk of the fleet over). in such instances, these FACs can fill in the surface gap left by the heavy warships.

You would accept that these vessels would only be of use if given a target position from an offboard source. Given an equivalent target position a flight of strike aircraft would be able to make a low-altitude attack profile minimising its exposure. A flotilla of circa 300ton ships would be a much larger RCS target than a few strike fighters plus, if the flotilla happens to be rattling along at 30+ knots, its going to be difficult to confuse them with fishing boats as well!

no, firstly, i never said they can only be useful if off-board targeting info is given. they can attack using target info from their own radars, but they will need to get in closer.

secondly, its not a ‘this or that’ choice between one or the other, but rather both. one backs up the other just in case, cos overkill is always better then no kill.

lastly, because both attack methods will be used, it will make the life of CAP very difficult.

if long range target info can be provided by something like the JH7, then chances are the enemy will know that he is being lit up and will send fighters off to try and shoot down the fighter. this means that the CAP will be carrying AAMs, so it will be harder for the fighters to attack these FACs with only guns. but even if the CAP also carry AShMs, the missiles will take up valuable pylons (and reduce manoverability if they encounter the figters first) which will reduce their efficiency against the fighter support of the attacking strikers.

Small size definitely yes, but, they dont look so stealthy to me. Compare one to Visby and you might see what I mean.

well thats a comparative thing, stealth has definately been incorporated into the design, there is no denying that. how good the stealth is is another matter, and i belive it is pre-mature to speculate on that given the little info we have ATM.

[QUOTE]
Even current antiship missiles have taken out missile boats, not seen any jamming arrays on this unit but a decent chaff system could work well if co-ordinated with a well practiced evasive manoeuver plan. Fleet evasive manoeuvers with frigate-sized vessels can be entertaining – doing it with upwards of a dozen high speed units like these would be very exciting with live missiles inbound. If the missile boats are on a reciprocal bearing from the inbounds performing evasives then the AK mount and the director are masked so theyre relying on softkill.[QUOTE]

i never said the FACs wont be totally immune from AShMs, just that current AShMs will not be as effective against them as larger warships.

as for missile evasion. well, off the top of my head, there are two ways they can go about this.

1) spread out. this also helps to reduce RCS. the boats will charge in formation, if AShMs come at them, they will all release chaff to maximise the jamming effect (or in turns depending on the number of chaff rounds available). if jamming fails, then the best course of action would probably be to keep heading for the target untilit is evident which target the missile has chosen. the rest can just keep on going. the ship targeted will do what it can to shake the missile and continue on target. the idea is to overload the enemy so that some FACs will get into firing position before they are hit, or to deplet the enemy’s AShM.

2) to form up. this way they can maximise the effect of any active jamming kit they do have, and will aim to combine their AK fire to hardkill the incoming missiles. the idea here will most likely be that employed in football during a corner :D. – everyone is given a box to defend (maybe two or three will be given the same box depending on the number of ships), each ship only shoots at anything that comes into their box, this way u can best handle multiple incoming targets with less advanced sensors, and also maximise fire.

however, all this is assuming that enemy ships can detect and lock onto these FACs at something like 160+km (cos any closer and the FACs will be in range to fire their AShMs).

Bit harsh on the crews of these, alleged, wunder-FACs though isnt it!?. Why not just use the existing or, even better, older less valuable FACs if all you want is a fleet of missile soakers!. Better still use strike aircraft that are less likely to suffer!

well, again, these FACs are not just bait. that was a worse case scenario i was talking about, with all FACs sunk before they get a chance to fire. with these ones, at least there is a chance (i think its a decent chance) that they will be able to get within range, shoot, sink the enemy and go home. with the older stuff, u are only bait.

again, as i said before, its not a choice but a combo between FACs and fighters.

First off, as commander, I’m trying to stop the ASWCS staff laughing at the poor Kilo trying to get an accoustic fix on anything with 100 FAC’s charging up at him!

when did i say the kilo will be coming in the same direction as the FACs? :diablo:

Then I’m on the vocom requesting a new guide dog for a surface picture plotter that didnt notice 100 high speed vessels until they got to 100km when he was holding a handful of destroyers at 2 or 3 hundred – he would presumably have to have a quite nasty selective blindness to let that slip!

well maybe i didnt make myself that clear, i wasnt talking about getting within 100 km of the carrier itself, but rather the fleet in general.

at the distance escorts keep to the carrier. it will be highly doubtful if they can get close enough to fill in any holes punched in the line in time to stop the FACs (will missiles left) and/or fighterbombers from sinking the carrier.

Then I’m on going to tear the arms off the Fleet Air Ops officer for not potting a lot of those FACs when tasked to do so by the Surface Warfare team (who really would have noticed them if they could spot a DDG at 300km!).

well, that might be a little harsh if his fighters were in a bitter fight to try and stop the incoming fighterbombers from offloading all their missiles at u. 😉

as for detection range. well i must confess 100km was a guess. but even at 160somethingKMs, it would be too late as the FACs would have been able to fire their missiles.

Hehe, my place is where something bad about China has to be said! 🙂 Just kidding. This forum goes too fast for me.
So there we go. I honestly don’t think 516 was the only conversion. It might be a test, resulting in 20 such ships.
Hmm I think the Taiwanese agression or willingness to retake the mainland was more of a US inspired action.
As why US Navy keeps so many ships, indeed you have given the answer yourself. Who are they going to invade next? Afghanistan was number one, Iraq number two, I’m sure they won’t stick to that. If Bush gets re-elected I’m not sure whether North Korea or any other country he doesn’t like is still safe. They have indeed shown that their strong Navy wasn’t useles, now they can steal anyone’s oil and other important things. He’ll always find a reason to do so, justified or not. Who’s going to stop him? US’s money is finished too, a gap of 1.5billion USD in the Pentagon last year, hundreds of tanks, planes and missiles “missing”. They are going to pay for it anyway. If there really would be another arms race for them, they’d lose it (of course not in technological way, but in economic way).

the US has maintained its naval forces for over a decade before invading someone.

Well seeings as the original starship Enterprise is, in reality, a small toy ship with utterly no practical value I think you could be on to something there, Haley.

What is the bloody point of this thing?. A couple of heavy antiship missiles that it has nowhere near the sensor fit to operate, to full potential, and a 30mm single-barreled gun which offers, what, a marginal capability against small surface targets and slow-mover air targets?

What is the value of this vessel that a couple of JH-7 or Su-30 with a few C-803’s or Kh-31’s couldn’t achieve better?.

well i think they werent thinking of sending these things off on their own in combat when they designed them. 😉

sure JH7s and maybe flankers can carry the same weapons, problem being that the enemy will see them alot futher out, so it can be a challenge for the big fighterbombers to get within firing range especially if the enemy has decent CAP.

given the small size and stealth design of these new ships, i say that the chances of them getting to within a hundred or so KM (well within missile range) of an enemy fleet without being detected is fairly good.

think of it as a part of a much bigger combat force. u have a couple dosen of these little FACs racing towards the enemy fleet, who will most likely be pre-ocupied with the JH7s and Su30s coming a couple hundred or a thousand KMs away.

the planes’ radar range if far in excess of their missiles (especially the Su30), meaning they can provide target info for the FAC without having to close to missile range. this means that if u time it right, u can have the fighters providing target info for the FACs from 1000km out!

the FACs then fire their missiles.

massive confusion as the crew of the enemy ships try to deal with the first wave of incoming missiles, giving the fighterbombers a much better chance to get to firing range.

even if the plan goes pear shaped its no big deal. not sure how effective big AShMs designed to killed huges destroyers will be against these tiny fast moving targets who will no doubt also be employing jammers as well as the AK as a CIWS. (no way do the big destroyers want to close to within gun range to shoot at them because of the missiles these little boats pack).

even if the missiles are effective, taking out a couple dosen of these ships will most likely deplete the AShM load of a sizeable fleet given the small number of AShMs carried on most modern warships.

this then exposes the enemy fleet to ur own surface combatants. and then there also the probability that as the enemy is busy trying to sink the FACs, ur fighterbombers will have a better chance to get closer.

thats just a small scale attack. china can probably make these things in the hundreds if needed. so a big scale assault might go something like this. imagine u are the commander of a naval task force getting ready to face off with a dozen or so PLAN destroyers a few hundred km away. suddenly ur radar operator spots a hundred or so of these FACs a hundred or so KMs away and speeding at u, then a couple dozen Su30s and JH7s show up on long range radar, at the same time ur sonar operator says he thinks he heard a kilo a couple dozen miles out… :dev2:

lets just say these FACs are a very cost effective force multiplier. 😎

At first I thought towed line-array sonar but, after reading Jonesy’s post, I’ld say towed long-array sonar.

well, its probably towed line-arry sonar. wasnt that familiar with all the specific termanology.

One typical is enough, when it comes to a long-range strike fighter, otherwise look to your first sentence. 🙂

‘one typical’ of what? stop being so vague. :rolleyes:

Hyper,

What can the PLAN do against Seawolf and the Virginia Class SSNs? Not only that, but against ultra-quiet SSKs. What sorta Equipment do they exactly need to detect them and how do they act against them?

Two acronyms to answer this one – SURTASS and SOSUS. As we investigated on the ‘surface warfare’ thread a few months back China’s major handicaps in ASW are in primary detection and localisation queueing. The Yellow Sea and East China Sea are shallow enough to allow for quite liberal seeding of a fixed-hydrophone SOSUS type system (although the processing stations would need A LOT of computing power to filter flow noise). A SURTASS-type long-array towed sonar would be pretty good to gap fill and expand the envelope throughout the South China Sea, Phillipine Sea and out into the Pacific.

To exploit this detection capability you have to look at flexible assets. Small unit subchasers dont work against SSN’s. The SSN will always be able to escape faster than a 300ton ship can chase and prosecute attacks. SSK’s are basically mobile, intelligent, minefields and they can be sited to catch an SSN but its a largely static defence and any SSN skipper worth his ticket would have plotted out likely ambush points before he slipped his moorings!

By flexible assets were, really, looking at four key weapons systems:

– First, and most important, competent SSNs of their own. This complicates the tactical picture for an attacking SSN immeasurably. Simply because a threat can be posed to an attacking SSN anywhere on the transit to theatre and you have the ability to threaten lines of supply and engage in aggressive sea denial.

– Second. Competetive ASW aircraft in numbers. The quickdraw asset to chase down SOSUS or SURTASS contacts at range or outside surface patrol zones. These aircraft need to be high-endurance and fitted with multi-channel sonobuoy processing capability in addition to a decent radar, competent ESM and a good EO/IR system!.

– Third. Choppers in numbers. The type is only important from the perspective of payload/range and endurance. Obviously a modern low maintenance airframe would be a bonus from a mission uptime standpoint. The most important component of the helicopter would be an advanced dipping sonar of the HELRAS or FLASH type as well as carriage capacity for a couple of decent LWTs.

– Fourth. Helicopter optimised ASW escorts. Simply for deployment and operation of the above. Optimum solution would be a circa 7k ton DDH capable of embarking and supporting three or four NH90-sized choppers, fitted with a active low-frequency towed array, armament sufficient for self-protection and CODLAG propulsion to minimise ownship accoustic signature. Netcentric master capability would be useful to allow for a pair of DDH units to act as centrepieces for ASW hunting-groups built up with lighter GP escorts.

Significant dollar values for all that to be sure and we’ve not even addressed to C3I backend and satcomms infrastructure that would be required to integrate it all into one coherent ASW plan. Those are the components I’d want to shore-up my coastline and maritime interests from the kind of advanced SSN/SSK intervention you mentioned.

lol, looks like we finally agree on something. 😎