plawolfof course we can develop a lot (a ram with in flight course uplink and a dual mode seeker ir and active radar would be nice) but i think the main issue is what is available today. and i can’t see the problem with the limited numbers of missiles, the shells in a gun are also limited. a small numerical example. lets say ram has a real kill ratio of 0,75 so you can shot down 8 ashm with searam or 15 with the mk49. if you put 4 of these missiles on a phalanx, the missiles will take 3 ashm, so you have to shot down 5 or 12 ashm with the gun? so you will run out of shells very soon.
the problem with a “overkill” is also not only missile based. with a gun you can fire short bursts waiting to see them hit or fail and fire again or you can fire a stream of bullets until the ashm is destroyed. but because of the very limited range of guns there would be not enough room to try often.
the gun will likely fire small bursts in quick succession, making adjustments for each. continuous fire is pointless as unless you are just sweeping around, you will not have any better chance of hitting anything compared to bursts. and with bursts, the magazine can last quite a while.
besides, with a ram+gun combo, when dealing with multiple targets, you can just shoot off a ram at each target and use the gun to take out any that make it through. that is the kind of backup i had in mine.
using a similar redundency tactic would need two sea-rams per missile, which will not give you a much better engagment number with just the missiles.
as you sayed, such a system will affect the guns as well and a bigger sensor won’t guaranty a sucess. the sensor of a missile can be a bit more inaccurate because the seeker will come very close to the target.
so you think a radar 20 times bigger and not designed to be destroyed with every shot (meaning you can afford to put in higher grade electronics that would be too expansive to use on mass production missile seekers) will have the same ability as the seeker on a sea-ram? :rolleyes:
the distance to the target is irrelevent. the missile will need to go after one target and it will need to make up its mind pretty quick to have any chance of hitting it. that means it will have to make a ‘decision’ at long range. even if the seeker discovers that the target it has aquired is a decoy before impact, its small seeker head would have to re-aquiring another target, which is highly doubtful.
if the radar from the phalanx missed the ashm only a bit, the bullets will miss because there is no in flight update. maybe such a ashm would be a problem for all defence systems but maybe this ashm are more difficulte to build then you think or maybe there is no or only a minor effect to the defence because today there is no such a ashm (but a lot of ciws).
mid-flight course correction is of questionable value, with the combine speeds of the missiles, its doubtful that the sea-ram would be able to make a significant enough course correction if it went after the wrong target to start off with.
as for bullets, will the radar can pick up the first bursts and automatically feed the gun corrections for follow-on shots if it misses.
as for the AShM, well such a missile doesnt exist yet because there hasnt been a need for it. russian supersonic AShMs have been judged sufficiently effective against current gen defences. but if the defences are improved, have no doubt that the offenses will improve as well.
adding flare/chaff dispensers and jammers is just one simple example ottomh, and it would not have all that hard to implement. many of the current gen ECM pods used by fighters are fairly small, and a missile based system would not need to be nearly as complext. you can slap a stripped bared jamming pod onto some of the larger russian missiles with only a modest decrease in range and/or warhead size, or you can design a totally new missile around the jammer.
with many current gen missiles having ranges between 200 to several thousand Kms and warheads in the hundreds of kilos, you cant really see the presence of such a jammer making that much of a difference to the flight performance of the missiles. and most of these missiles are decades old in design!
plawolf…Mmm, is it the case that an externally powered cannon cannot jam? If so, then that would apply to chaingun as well, wouldnt it? Garry, enlighten me…
with a convential automatic weapon, the machanical energy or high pressure exhause gasses are re-cylcled to use to eject the spent cartrage and load another one.
externally powered cannons use an electric motor to eject and load the gun, so if one round fails to fire (which is the main cause of jammings), it will not affect the function of the gun (other then the fact that it will be firing one less round at the time) and the failed round will be ejected like a spent one and a fresh round loaded in its place.
apart from the electric motor failing, its hard to think of scenarios where such a gun could jam at all.
plawolfYou kill me. “besides, how good sea-ram is is beside the point”. It is? Well what exactly IS the point of this dicussion then?
i sometimes wonder if some members bothered to learn the ‘fine art’ of reading before they started to post. :rolleyes:
the point is that as good as ram may be, ram + gun will be better. is that clear enough for you or should i upload a voice recording as well? :diablo:
plawolfof course guns and missiles as ciws would be nice but there are some problems with this.
there is (afaik) no gun/missile system with 11 or 21 ready to use fire and forget missiles, aiming with the gun is a lot more complex because of the increased mount weight, installing such a system on a ship is also more complex.
seperate mountings would be also a bad idea because there are to few positions with a high field of view on a ship.and yes i would start the ram even if there is a essm in flight because i won’t risk damage on the ship. losing a single ram is no problem because 11 rounds should be enough for maybe 6-8 leakers (but in this scenario we have an outer layer so an enemy has to launch a lot more). if we have an 21 round launcher (preferable) there is no problem running out of missiles (in real world scenarios).
and yes i know numbers for gatlings like 30.000 rounds fired between stoppage but as you sayed where is the difference between this and a 0.95 kill ratio for ram?
so if you can offer a nice missile/gun solution in a mount ok, but until then my choise is stil a 21 round ram launcher which is in service today.
so why didnt you fire off two or three essms in the first place? the sea-ram overlaps with other defensive systems. if sea-ram is so good, add another rocket stage and have it replace the essm, or use its seeker in place of that of the essm.
redundency on a warship is good, but redundency at the cost of other abilities is not good.
the sea-ram’s supposed reliability will likely be its downfall. if there is a hostile missile incoming, do you fire off one ram or two or three? if the test results are to be fully trusted, two is overkill and three is just a waste. but what happens if the ram misses? got enough time to lob another ram at the incoming missile? depends. and thats the problem. do you want to loose a state-of-the-art warship because you were trying to save on a missile?
however, go with the overkill idea and that 11 or 21 missiles suddenly doesnt sound like all that much does it?
the chinese LD2000 with TY missiles on it as shown in pictures before already shows that it is perfectly viable to add at least four missiles onto the gun mount.
four sea-ram + the orginal phalanx volcan gun is a better CIWS then just the sea-rams.
of course we are not taking possibile future developments into consideration. how difficult do you think it will be for people to start putting flares and chaff and jammers onto their missiles and programming them to use them? that’ll screw up your perfect score sheet really nice.
you can argue that countermeasures will affect the gun as well, but the gun has a bigger sensor that will have a better chance of picking out the real target compared to the small and expandable seeker in th sea-ram.
that is why its not a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket – it only take one breakthrough to make all your defences useless, whereas with a gun and missile, you at least have something to fall back on, and its less likely that any one development will find weaknesses in both systems.
plawolf@plawolf: in fact on a lot of ships a ciws is the only aaw-system. in the us-navy with it’s carriers and aegis-ships a ciws would be the fourth layer but look around the world, there are a lot of ships with nothing than a phalanx or something else like that to defend the ship. even the british type23 has “only” a ciws for aa-defence (with seawolf not the worst one of course).
and even if the ship has sea-sparrow or essm why should i use a gun as second layer? the presence of an outer layer is (imho) no reason to use a less effective inner layer.
of course the systems shouldn’t interfere each other but i can’t see how ram should disable essm because ram don’t need an illuminator.and i think a missile-system is better in terms of system fails than a gun based system. if you compare sea-ram and phalanx for example, both uses the same mount so a failure in the mount would be bad for both (with a minor advantage for ram because the missiles have a small shoot around the corner ability). if a missile seeker fails you can start a second one, in fact you can start two missiles nearly at the same time increasing the kill ratio and reducing the risk of a technical failure. but what can you do if a gun jams? (i have heard this happens more often than it’s should be good for a ciws but maybe this is only a myth)
the range of a ciws is so important because more range means more time which means a second or third chance. i think it should be no problem to detect every availible ashm before it can enter the range of a ram (if the sensores are in active mode). so why starting firing at 4 or at 2 km with a gun if you can start at 10km with a missile? and if a ashm is destroyed to close to the ship, the ship can be also damaged without a direct hit. this is another reason why it is more dangerous to use a phalanx or a goalkeeper than using ram.
so, if CIWS is the only AA on a small ship, wouldnt it make more sense to have a short range missile AND also a gun instead of just the missile OR the gun?
sea-ram alone is a bad idea because it overlaps with other missiles’ fields of fire. if there are already ESSMs in flight to engage the income missile when it enters ram range, do you fire off the ram anyways? waiting to see if the ESSM hits will waste valuable time and make the extra reach of the ram somewhat redundent. but firing off sea-ram anyways will quickly result in you running out of missiles.
with a missile + gun system, you can afford to fire off the sea-rams to overkill because you have a gun to fall back on.
as for jammings, well do some checking and you will see that jammings for volcans are virtually unheard of. this is because the volcan gun is powered by an electric motor instead of having to recycle the machanical energy of the discharging round as with a conventional automatic firearm. any rounds that fail to fire will simply be ejected and a fresh on put in its place, so the failure of individual rounds will not cause the gun to stop working.
if sea-ram is so good, keep it, have it replace the short range point defence missile that used to fill the 10~5km hole, but for god’s sake dont get ride of the gun just because sea-ram is there.
the americans did the same thing with conventional missiles because they thought ballistic missiles would be all that is needed. they spent something like a decade doing catch-up as a result, and to this day, there is nothing in the west that can come close to matching the current gen russian AShMs, many which were developed and fielded decades ago.
plawolfKinda hard to argue with these results:
“The Block 1 upgrade program was successfully completed in August 1999 with a series of operational tests to demonstrate the system’s introduction maturity. In 10 scenarios, real Anti-Ship Missiles and supersonic Vandal target missiles (Mach 2.5) were intercepted and destroyed under realistic conditions. RAM Block 1 achieved first-shot kills on every target in its presented scenarios, including sea-skimming, diving and highly maneuvering profiles in both single and stream attacks.
With these test firings RAM demonstrated its unparalleled success against today’s most challenging threats. Cumulatively to date more than 180 missiles have been fired against anti-ship missiles and other targets, achieving a success rate over 95%.”
Where most launchers have 21 rounds on hand with essentially zero reload time. Well good luck.
http://navysite.de/launcher/ram.htm
And as another poster pointed out these are LAST ditch defense. Incoming would have had to run the gauntlet against Aegis and ESSM in most case.
Personally I’d get some of the 76mm Super Rapids with AHEAD ammunition just in case but then you’re talking a lot more deck space and deck penetration. . I wonder if those 5″ shotgun rounds can be fired at missiles.
with such reports, its hard to tell when facts end and advertisement begins.
if all such reports are to beleived, then there isnt even a need for sea-ram. :rolleyes:
besides, how good sea-ram is is beside the point. nothing is perfect, and do you honestly think that having a 30mm volcan intergrated with the sea-ram will decrease its effectiveness?
plawolfi hope people do realise that CIWS is not meant to be the first line of defence against incoming missiles. for that there are plenty of other missiles on a warship. the CIWS is there just in case a hostile missile manages to gt past all the other lays of defence.
in such circumstances, chances are that there will be very little time left to react, and so longer range is somewhat redundent.
imo, the missile + gun combo is the right approach, for a little more money you get the best of both worlds.
the sea-ram is a bad idea in my view. puts all your eggs in one basket with no back-ups. humans make mistakes, human technology fails. thats just a fact of life, and the more complex something is, the more chance there is that something might go wrong, no matter how careful or how well quality control is.
gun CIWS sprays a huge number of fairly simple projectiles. if some fail, there are plenty more to make up for it. sea-ram is just one missile. what if it fails? got time to fire a second one? doubtful.
a gun and missile CIWS has the range of the sea-ram, but also has a gun to spray rounds just in case.
have no idea why the americans are being so single-minded about this. do they really have to see something fail spectacularly to be willing to swollow their pride and do the sensible thing? 🙁
plawolfAbout Argentina we agree in some way. But the true role of the ’25 de Mayo’ was not to face the superior RN, but the regional neighbours (Exspecially Chile). Brasil and Argentina are both exceptions with no real worldwide intrests, like France or the UK for example.
and what wars did the ’25th’ fight in?
surely you see the folly in wasting money on a carrier that was never used in combat when the money and manpower tied up in that ‘prestege’ project could very well have turned the tide of battle in a real war.
how much did the ’25th’ and its air wing cost? how many more exocetes and super etondarts could that money have bought?
as for the need to intimidate its weaker neighbours. well which would be more intimidating to you? a navy that can take on the british and win, or one that can’t?
as i said before, deterance only comes from real fighting ability. with real ability, one does not need to get ‘monument’ systems to give their opponents pause for thought. on the other hand, only having ‘monument’ systems that only look imposing but cant fight is unlikely to fool the people that count (military commanders and government leaders), and if your ‘bluf’ fails, you would be faced with a humiliating back down, or a costly defeat.
Loosing a FF or DD in the Persian Gulf is something different than a CV. To sink a CV you are in need of a coordinated attack, which can not be done by an erronous fire order!
a cruiser (WWII size) can easily be sunk by a single volly from a sub, or a volly from a frigate or even some FACs, and fighter loaded with the right missiles can also easily have enough firepower to sink a ship of that size. a cruiser is of similar size to a carrier.
nations have the right to declear war if a soilder from another party so much as sets foot on one of their warships without permission. on the other hand, the shooting down of civilian air lines resulting in the deaths of hundreds of civilians have been explained away before.
a carrier can be sunk by the actions of one man on one sub, ship or plane just as easily as any other warship. if the loss of a frigate or destroyer can be exused, and the destruction of civilian airliners can be explained away, what is the point in such a ‘tripwire’?
a real tripwire is (or rather was) the US ground forces based along the 38th in SK. if NK attacked, many of those men would die, but more importantly, many would live and continue to fight. as such, the US would be forced into acting as no president, no matter how much he wants to, can stand aside and let american soilders get butchered without acting to help them.
One area of intrest for China is the ‘Southern Chinese Sea’. Here it has to operate within a constant air-threat and has very limited air-support at best.
A second area of intrest for China may be the ‘Street of Hormuz’. I can not see that western navies will feel committed to that for all times, to ashure the flow of oil to the PRC too. Oil shortage or blocked shipping-lanes is a real threat for the PRC too. China can not hope to fullfill all UN-tasks with some voting or an ashaming small amount of money for all days to come!
PLAAF and PLANAF flankers and JH7s can provide air cover for those areas with or without tanker support. a carrier would be more useful, but an operation in those areas without one is by no means impossible.
as for an attempt to cut china’s sea based oil lines. well with the degree of intergration china has achieved with the international economy, any such actions against chinese oil lines would cause tremendous economic damage to china’s biggest trading partners, which happens to be the US, japan, russia and the EU, as well as major harm to the economies of the rest of the world on the side.
the US, russia and EU will never stand for it unless its one of them that is doing the cutting (even then the others will likely be far from happy, but they are unlikely to come to blows over the issue).
anyways, if anyone except the US, britian, france, or russia (no one else has much of a realistic chance of being able to) tries to cut china’s sea based oil lines, the US, EU, russian and china (which happens to be a full house of the UN PMs) would unite against the offending nation and put huge political pressure on them to desist. if the attacker does not heed, at the very least the PLA has a free hand to get stuck in, and most likely would have direct military support from some other nations to boot. but part from the above meantioned list of nations, the PLA can take on and beat pretty much any other nation without needing a carrier.
if its the US, france, britian or russia that is trying to disrupt chinese sea based oil lines, then one ancient carrier with a handful of flankers is not going to make any difference. china would be better off (and is) investing in SSNs and SSBNs.
so either way, a solitary carrier is of little practical value to the PLA. if they are getting into carriers, they will do so in a big way. right now china is not ready for that.
as for chinese cotributions to the UN, well that is off topic and biased. china is still a developing nation. you expect the chinese government to be pouring money abroad when their own people are still living in poverty? :rolleyes:
have a look at all the BS coming from certain quaters about china’s small police contengent to liberia and you can see that its not just a lack of political will on the chinese side that is standing in the way of more chinese peacekeepers in UN service.
plawolfone doesnt become a competent carrier navy overnight just by throwing money at the problem. if PRC harbours ambitions of becoming a carrier navy someday (they need to if they want to supplant the USN in east asia), then best way is to start somewhere small like varyag and work to build institutions and competence. the skills arent going to appear magically even if two 80,000t CVNs emerge from a secret shipyard.
i know that, but still i feel its still too early for china to start worrying about carriers right now.
economically, china might find it hard to add the costs of another 1 or 2 new built carrier groups on top of what it is spending on its overal military modernisation program.
purhaps when the re-organisation of the air force, army and naval sub and surface fleets are nearing complete, but not at this earily stage.
politically, there is still too much mistrust of china in the west and in the US and japan in particular. investing in a carrier now might trigger even more military build up on the american and japanese side, and could trigger an arms race that china could well do without right now.
plawolfA carrier can be still a usefull tool in power-projection below ‘Super Power level’. See Russia, India and several other Navies about that.
look up what argintina’s carriers did during the falklands to see the value of such white elephants.
a weapon system’s first and formost objective in life is to be able to fight and win. only after that most basic object have been achieved can one think about concepts such as using deterance to avoid having to fight at all(because without real power, there is no deterance to speak of).
the navies that a medium sized carrier can successfully take on are of no threat to china anyways, and the powers that are a threat to china will easily eat up one ancient cold war relic, so whats the point besides showing off?
It even can act as ‘tripwire’, because a direct attack on such capital ship means ‘real business’, when a frigate or destroyer can still be labeled as an error or a mistake.
thats a mightly expansive ‘tripwire’. :rolleyes:
anyways, how the hell does one go about ‘accidentally’ misplacing a serveral ton AShM in the middle of someone else’s frigate or destroyer? :rolleyes:
if a nation or government doesnt have the balls to act when they loss a frigate to hostile fire, then chances are such a government would also be able to find some excuse not to act if they loose a carrier instead.
and frankly, one can easily think of far better uses for the money and lives involved then as a great big target for others to shoot at at their lesuire.
plawolfwhat’s the point if your not choosing to use it? If they are stripping the ship for scrap they they wouldn’t bother with the paint which could potenially cost a lot for a ship of this size. If PLAN are stripping the ship they might as well do it now…they already had a ton of time for engineers to come and study the design no point in actually keeping a ship at the Ship Yard and take up valuable space that can be used to build other ships.
But what would be the use of Varyag? Unless they are converting it into training deck or less likely a conventional carrier or maybe only a helo carrier… I don’t see the point.
Making the Varyag into a conventional carrier would be unwise for china. its small size would make it of limited use in any possible future conflict the PLA might fight in.
the massive investment needed to assemble and maintain a carrier air wing would also not be worth while for just one small carrier. but china is still not in a position economically to be able to easily afford a large fleet of carriers and support ships.
the same thing applies to a training ship – the investment is just too great for one or two ships to be worth while. but atm, china cant afford many more without having to make significant cuts to other projects (subs) or other services (air force and army). whats the point in starting to train people now if these people would likely be nearing retirement age when china does start fielding carriers?
this is either a commerical venture (some businessmen have more money then sense), or if the PLAN is behind it, then its most likely that they plan to convert the Varyag into a helo carrier.
a helo carrier would be useful in providing ASW helo, and prop AWACS support for the PLAN’s surface fleet and could also be used as a mobile base to launch helo-board SF troops if a conflict with taiwan erupts.
a helo carrier would also cause less of a political ripple internationaly, and could be a means to ‘break’ china’s neighbours into the idea that the PLAN will no longer be just a coastal defence force without the intimidation that a full-fledge carrier would bring.
a helo carrier would also be of great use in UN peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance missions, which would help beijing’s goal of trying to improve china’s image abroad.
plawolfI don’t think there is any airframe of mock-up air frame on deck. From the stage of what workmen seem to be doing (exterioor paining, no activity on the deck itself or elevators), it would be too early anyway. If there is interior work going on e.g. sanding and painting, they are going to need one or more air conditioners. From what we’ve seen on finishing ships, that usually is a square or rectangual, often blue-ish item parked on deck with a lot of yellow of white air-hoses sticking out of it and going into the ship. There may also be a need for generators.
well if you look at the rear of the ship, there appears to be a blue object of considerable size (compared to the workmen on deck), which might be an air conditioning unit. however, th blur makes it hard to be sure.
plawolfIf you do not have to offer more than personal accusations about that topic, just stay away.
if you would just excerise a tiny bit of common sense and think through what you are writing before posting; not butt in to make pointless remarkes just for the sake of trying to get one back, and not post SPAM just for the sake of trying to get the last word, then maybe i wouldnt have to waste so much time responding to you. :rolleyes:
plawolfYou discuss your questions not knowing if the “next” Chinese carrier will be of ‘STOBAR’ or ‘Flat-deck-catapult-type’ ?! I do not think, that you are a ‘half wit’ to use our words?!
Still in hope, that you have more to offer than personal remarks.
how has anything said before have any relevence with what you are balbering on about now? :rolleyes:
how does some work (the very nature of which is still very much unclear) on the old Varyag translate into giving any indication of what type of carrier china will build in the future? :rolleyes:
do you even have any credible evidence that china has started to build a new carrier? :rolleyes:
or is this yet another attempt to shift the focus away from your own blundering mistakes? :rolleyes:
if you dont want to be treated like a 5 year old, stop acting like one.
plawolf8th September 2005, 20:02
Sens
Rank 5 Registered User Join Date: Dec 1999
Posts: 1,832Has someone infos, that China has started to built a new carrier already?
When will it start its first sea-trials?
When will the “Varyag-Casino-Ship” reach Macao?Back from “hot-air” to our topic based on steel.
If you mean what you write, why not try to answer those three questions?!
either you are still unable to grasp the basics of the english language, or you are just trying to change the subject again. :rolleyes:
what, you think raising a couple of random questions about chinese carriers is going back on topic? :rolleyes:
any half-wit can think of semi-relevent questions like, ‘what planes will the chinese carrier carry? what crew complement be? what will its mission be?…’ so what?
why dont you excerise some common sense and not ask irrelevent and/or plainly answerless questions just for the sake of appearing to be sticking to the topic at hand.
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