ouroboros

ACCESS: Secret
Joined
1 February 2008
Messages
353
Reaction score
20
There was some rumbling recently about a new "carrier killer" ship concept from Taiwan, supposed leaked recently, though it isn't a full up project yet from what I understand. Visually similar to the chinese wave piercing catamaran that is operating now.
 

Attachments

  • 1271070136471.jpg
    1271070136471.jpg
    15.6 KB · Views: 1,302
I'm assuming the 'pile of snow' behind the mast is actually SSMs of some sort?
 
Anticipating a plausible future Chinese carrier capability, probably worried ever since china purchased the Varyag casco.

Armed with Hsiung Feng III?? Seems logical.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/taiwan/hf-3.htm
 
Considering the lack of experience building this style of ship, maybe Austal will get contracted?
 
I have to think that the best carrier killer is well...an aircraft. This thing looks much more like a litttorral combat ship, which would be effective against landing craft, but in general any carrier worthy of the name will be nowhere near those waters.
 
starviking said:
I'm assuming the 'pile of snow' behind the mast is actually SSMs of some sort?

They do look like the SSM launchers. I wonder if it also has vertical SAM launchers?

----JT----
 
Just call me Ray said:
Carrier Killer? Taiwan?

In fact, not really

This design is much more probably a "Type 022 Houbei Killer" (ie. a FAC killer)

- Nearly same style design but much more bigger (= more endurance, more bettter seakeeping)
- More heavily armed (a 76mm gun, a effective CIWS, probably 8 SSM)
- Probably +/- nearly equal speed

This concept is the same than for : Destroyers vs torpedo-boat, but in more modern style ::)
 
First of this class to be launched on March 14.

http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201403020021.aspx
 

Attachments

  • ch-9.jpg
    ch-9.jpg
    42.6 KB · Views: 134
  • ch-8.jpg
    ch-8.jpg
    55.7 KB · Views: 116
  • ch-7.jpg
    ch-7.jpg
    43.8 KB · Views: 126
  • ch-5.jpg
    ch-5.jpg
    42.1 KB · Views: 125
  • ch-4.jpg
    ch-4.jpg
    53.5 KB · Views: 729
  • ch-3.jpg
    ch-3.jpg
    57.6 KB · Views: 756
  • ch-1.jpg
    ch-1.jpg
    55.5 KB · Views: 778
  • ch.jpg
    ch.jpg
    40.9 KB · Views: 773
Looks like sixteen missile canisters, although not all the same size. That's a pretty heavy armament. Looks like it is optimized to go after large warships--fire all its missiles at once and run.
 
ALCON,


Perhaps 8 RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrows in the smaller launchers and 8 Hsiung Feng III supersonic AshMs in the larger launchers?


Such an armament would give it good air defense capability for its size (establishing a limited Air Defense zone ~50km around the vessel) as well as giving them the ability to engage large surface combatants and can do so quickly thanks to its high speed missiles (missiles that reach their maximum range in just ~200 seconds, compared to >420 seconds for a Harpoon/YJ-83 type AshM covering the same distance).


Thus, a handful of these vessels could engage an entire battle-group and then disengage before any AshMs fired from targeted battle-group could reach them.
 
Eagle2009 said:
Perhaps 8 RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrows in the smaller launchers and 8 Hsiung Feng III supersonic AshMs in the larger launchers?

Or the other way around with eight quad pack ESSM canisters in the larger launchers. However the ship doesn't look to have the target indication radar and fire control channels to support ESSM. But even without ESSM it appears to have a far more sensible weapons fitout than the Chinese WPC missile boat. The 76mm gun is a pretty effective anti air system against helos and fighters coming in with bombs and rockets. Combiend with CIWS much better than the single 30mm gatling on the Chinese boat.
 
I think ESSM is unlikely. No one has fielded an angled box launcher for it yet, although there is no theoretical reason why they couldn't. But the lack of fire control radar suitable for ESSM is telling.

The linked Focus Taiwan story says it has both HF-II and HF-III, which would explain the two different-sized angled box launchers. Having two AShM types on one ship is relatively rare, especially on one this small. It could be an attempt to diversify the threat to complicate defenses, or it could imply lack of confidence in the reliability or availability of the newer HF-III. I'm betting primarily the latter.

The news story also has a link to a Taiwanese military fan site (http://www.mdc.idv.tw/mdc/navy/rocnavy/ch.htm) [I originally thought this was official. My mistake]. That page has a table of characteristics, in Chinese. I've tried to pull out the highlights, with help from Google Translate. My comments are in square brackets:

The class name appears to be Tuo Jiang (Two Rivers)? [Not sure on this]

Displacement: approximately 500 tons
Dimensions: Length 60.4 m, Width 14 m, Depth 6m [Hull depth or air draft, possibly?], maximum draft 2.3m
Propulsion: 4 diesel engines, 4 waterjets
Speed: 38 knots
Endurance: 2000 nm [no speed given]
Crew: 34
Sensors: 1 air search radar, 1 gun fire control radar, electronic warfare equipment
Armament: 1 x Mk 75 76m gun [Evidently not a Super Rapid, despite the stealth cupola], up to 16 x Hsiung Feng antiship missiles [mix of 8 HF-II and 8 HF-III appears to be standard], 1 x Phalanx CIWS, 4 x 12.7mm machineguns
Dates: prototype contruction began 11 November, 2012; launch date March 14, 2014 [estimated]; completion date November 4, 2014 [estimated]; no delivery date set
 
Just noticed that the Wikipedia article on Hsiung Feng III says there is a common launcher that holds both HF-II and HF-III missiles. It seems that some of the Taiwanese Perry FFGs also have a mixed load of four HF-II and four HF-III and some of the Ching Chiang parol boats have two of each. This to me suggests that there is a fairly robust supply of these missiles, which makes me lean toward threat diversity as the reason behind the mixed loads. Hitting a single target with a mix of supersonic misiles and lower-flying subsonic missiles would complicate the defender's task if you can arrange it as a roughly time-on-target attack.
 
http://www.janes.com/article/35351/taiwan-launches-first-carrier-killer-stealth-missile-corvette
 

Attachments

  • p1525948.jpg
    p1525948.jpg
    179.2 KB · Views: 393
  • p1525947.jpg
    p1525947.jpg
    84.2 KB · Views: 401
  • Boat_launch_-_main.jpg
    Boat_launch_-_main.jpg
    161.7 KB · Views: 418
http://www.asiandefencenews.com/2014/05/photos-of-taiwans-first-hsun-hai-class.html
 

Attachments

  • More photos of Taiwan's first Hsun Hai-class corvette.jpg
    More photos of Taiwan's first Hsun Hai-class corvette.jpg
    89.1 KB · Views: 276
  • More photos of Taiwan's first Hsun Hai-class corvette 2.jpg
    More photos of Taiwan's first Hsun Hai-class corvette 2.jpg
    73.4 KB · Views: 272
  • More photos of Taiwan's first Hsun Hai-class corvette 3.jpg
    More photos of Taiwan's first Hsun Hai-class corvette 3.jpg
    87 KB · Views: 97
This has turned out to be a very interesting program encompassing both a FAC/Corvette (the Tuo Chiang class) and an OPV (the Anping class). It seems to me this is pretty much what the intent behind the "Streetfighter" concept that was one of the inspirations for the LCS program was. A fast, heavily armed 600-1200 ton ship.

I do have a couple of questions though.

I've seen several references to the Tuo Jiang (I've seen is spelled this way as well, but not often) class being able to operate in Sea State 7, but not as to what that actually means. Does that mean it is capable of carrying out combat operations, or that it can batten down the hatches and ride out nine meter waves without being combat capable?

It earlier looked as if the Phalanx was going to be replaced by a Searam like launcher, the Sea Oryx, but that doesn't seem to be the case with the upgraded Tuo Chiang ships. Is that still in the plans for the future? Additionally, 4 of the 8 supersonic ASMs were replaced with 16 medium range SAMs. Are these a replacement for the Sea Oryx, or an addition. In either case they give the ships a credible layered air defense suite.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom