JonesyNot to mention there is always the chance now that the smugglers/pirates could have a couple of Kornet type ATGMs of their own embarked.
That being the case the slim range advantage offered by a Vikhr/Ataka type weapon may be less insurance than you’d desire. In that situation the ability to lay off 20km or so and prosecute an attack could be seriously advantageous.
JonesySean,
So is this the reason that SA-5 is associated with the 5V21 and 5V28 missile rounds?. The 5V21 being this GRIFFON round and 5V28 being the quad-boosted round we all know today?
JonesyThat booster is straight off an SA-2 and the missile round looks a lot closer to the S-200 than the S-75. Prototype S-200 maybe?
JonesyI’ve often pondered on how to change this.. How does one get a “Chav lynching” law tabled before Parliament? Every little turd that is convicted would then be birched and sent for 6 months boot camp with (very) hard labour.
As a simpler, cheaper and, arguably, more productive solution there are plenty of landmines left scattered all over the world. Round up miscreant chav’s and march ’em across the minefields. The ones that make it across get a full pardon and a fresh set of underwear. The ones that dont….well…..dont present much risk of being repeat offenders.
JonesyTop one is the SA-5. Bottom weapon looks, at quick glance, to be an SA-2 variant of some sort.
JonesyGood evaluation Wanshan. 115 IS smaller than 167. Seeings as there is no obvious requirement in the PLAN fleet for a large GP frigate given the, alledged, large run of 054 FFG’s ordered it seems a reasonable assumption that this is an export hull.
Didnt the Thai Navy order a pair of hulls following on from the Type25’s?. What are the chances this is one of those?.
JonesyWolf
clever plan, but it will just backfire badly if anyone tired it for real.
china is fully aware of the dangers of relying too heavily on imported weapons. that is why for every imported system, the chinese have an indiginous one dispite the very high costs and logistical difficulties this brings.
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?!.
also, its very clear that what the chinese are truely interested in when they buy weapons are the technologies involved, instead of merely the firepower those systems offer.
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.
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.
they will add the knowledge gained from studying european systems with their own R&D efforts and raise their entire military industry to a whole new level. and it is that industry that china’s leaders are most interested in.
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?.
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.
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.
JonesySameer,
Pak Thunder is exactly right. The issue here is not one of Indian niaivete its one of the IN having to accept what theyre given by their poltical leadership.
Given the time wasted on acquiring a replacement for Vikrant, all the early 90’s negotiations with Bazan and DCN etc, Gorshkov politically became an important project for the continued regional superpower status of the IN and for the prestige of India in general. A great deal of time and effort was expended on the contract definition and negotiation. Political expediency would not have been served by the GoI pulling out of the deal at any late stage as it would have left the IN back at square one nearly a decade and a half after the first studies were undertaken for the replacement of Vikrant.
In that context the fact that Gorshkov would give the IN some form of aviation capability, by this time to replace Viraat AS WELL as Vikrant, could easily have been viewed as more significant than specific capabilities and operational efficiencies of the vessel itself. Simply put it was not necessary for Gorshkov to be a good carrier more that it just needs to be an operational carrier.
Viewed in that light how disruptive would it have been to publically release the fact that the carrier was in a poor materiel condition?. The very fact that so much of the carrier needs replacement 70-80% is indicative of the real state of it anyway.
JonesyBlackcat,
BTW the contract did not add that the guns wud be removed during the handover!. It just mentioned that it wud be cleaned up from inside.
They’d better pull that forward gun mount and the foc’sle deckhouse its mounted on or those MiG’s are going to have to park on a very odd angle when using the forward deck park illustrated on the conversion plans!
can u give me the litrature abt the service book of the Gorshy ??? ….. abt the maintaiance levels etc etc ….
Dont need the logbook. The service history of the whole Kiev class is known as chequered one. The operational history of this vessel is also a matter thats well documented. I’d imagine its not something that would be difficult to find on the net.
An earlier report posted says, its a progressing a bit ahead of time. Hope thats for making it enter service at the specified date.
See my answer to Roel below.
any vessel of its size will come along with its operational cost and thats nothing peculiar or isolated ones.
WRONG. Even after the refit this is still a vessel propelled by a large steam plant. The new boilers are going to be dramatically more efficient than the original units, BUT, large steam plants are always high maintenance and costly to run. Ask Roel how many merchies he knows of that run large steam plants?. He’ll tell you there are very few because they are comparitively inefficient.
Roel,
Of course that 80% rebuild will help that, and I’m quite sure they can do it for that money and probably in time too!
Its the start of 2005 now, they’ve gone on record, IIRC as saying its due to join the IN fleet in 2008. Theyre going to take about 12 months in sea trials so the ship has to be gutted and 80% rebuilt in 24-30 months. Best of British luck to them I say because theyre going to be cutting some fairly serious corners to get close to that!.
One thing those pictures do show is that the serious work of cutting through the hull to get those old boilers out hasnt started yet and the vessel isnt even in a berth that has the dockside facilities to commence such an operation. I seriously hope those shots are a few months old!.
JonesyWhat do those pics show though?. To me I see very little progress in clearing the foc’sle superstructure including the fact that one of the original medium calibre gun mounts is still present!
The pics show no detail on hull seams, penetrating valves/ports, circulatory pumps, HVAC installations or the hundreds of miles of pipework and cabling that are vastly more indicative of a hulls condition than the limited exterior imagery posted shows.
As a case in point look at HMCS Chicoutami, a much simpler vessel, and how she ‘looked’ when she sailed for home a few months back. A few days out of port the boat, having been inspected and accepted for Canadian service by their Navy personnel, was dead in the water with casualties aboard. Ships do not take well to being left swinging at anchor for long periods and Gorshkov was a known maintenance nightmare when she was in her prime.
I dont doubt that the Russians can make the ship operational again. I do doubt the fact that they can do it to the cost and timescale criteria publically reported. I also have concerns about the operational costs the vessel will bring with it when it joins the IN, despite all the new systems that are being introduced in the refit.
There is only so much silk purse that can be made out of a sows ear.
JonesyThing is though China is rearming already and is steadily increasing her military potential regardless of EU involvement or embargoes.
New weapons have been fielded and more are certainly going to be entering their inventory. I’d expect most professionals would rather those weapons be ones that are understood and have known potential vulnerabilities that could be exploited. The alternative is that they get weapons, as they have been doing, that the western powers don’t know the capabilities of and would be much more difficult to counter.
Like I said I cannot accept that the Pentagon isnt aware of this. They’re too well experienced in playing the game!.
JonesyIt beggars belief how stupid some people are!. It amazes me how journalists just lap this stuff up!. I actually cannot believe that the Pentagon is criticising the EU for proposed weapons sales to China. It HAS to be some other political department that has provided ‘an official’ for commentry to the media.
This is simply because, in event of hostilities, its so much better to face weapons you know all about rather than ones that surprise you with unexpected capabilities in the most unpleasant fashion. The Pentagon could not NOT be aware of that. Either its making a pro forma whinge to keep the Chinese happily confident in acquiring Western weapons or its making a statement to try and raise the profile of the ‘Chinese threat’ for its own budgetary reasons.
The French, for example, have historically proven willing to sell almost anywhere, but, also have been quite happy to provide information and training in methods to counter those weapons where the situation has required it. Taking the Falklands as an example their offer of intelligence and operational training (including trials against Aeronavale Super Etendards) was invaluable. Had the Argentines bought, say, Russian weapons we would have gone into that campaign in a much lower state of preparedness than we did.
The same applies to China. The more systems that they import from the EU the less they get from Russia and the less they develop indigenously. So, consequently, the amount of information available to the Pentagon on Chinese capabilities would be massively increased.
Dont you just love rabid scaremongering!.
JonesySean
For stupid decisions I think you’d have to try hard to beat Duncan Sandys 1957 British Defence White Paper that declared the superiority of the guided missile over the manned aircraft. That he used it as a justification to cancel development work on virtually every manned project on the books at the time and, consequently, give the initial push that started the UK’s aviation industry heading down the slope that its shipbuilding industry went down just adds to the scale of the stupidity.
Burger,
F-3 ADV a pointless aircraft?. Disagree with that one mate. The only other aircraft that could have fitted the requirement met by ADV was the F-14 and that was evaluated and rejected as being too expensive. As such, in its role, the F3 was a decent platform!
JonesyWith the Kh-35s I’d doubt very much he would unless he knows that the 130km between him and the target is totally empty of neutrals and friendlies. If he is certain that he’s not going to hit anything embarrasing he may try a bearing-only attack on a sighting or ESM intercept, but, its an imprecise science as it relies completely on the discrimination of the active seeker to pick out the right targets.
With NSM’s target recognition capability preventing attacks on invalid targets the max range bearing-only attack is a much more reliable, much more employable, solution. The likelihood then is that the NSM commander could be in a position to launch his weapons at longer range and with a much greater confidence of hitting the right targets.
JonesyNo Srbin there are not a lot of ways, open to the commander of a medium sized missile boat, to target a large destroyer at 220km!. The data gethering capabilities of such a vessel is limited in the extreme. They can be fitted with a datalink and can take a tactical plot from a surveillance asset, but, what happens if that surveillance asset cant descriminate between warships and civvy vessels at standoff range, what happens if the surveillance platform is intercepted and brought down?.
What happens is that those missiles stay in their launch cannisters on the missile boat until the commander can get a reliable firing solution for them. There’s your range advantage evaporating!.
The advantage NSM offers, in this scenario, we covered a few pages back.
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