Great warships

With this large shield, we can finally stand on the same starting line as Dongfang's 055. However, we have encountered problems with the small shield.

The dual-band radar of the 055 is very advanced. The lower part uses the S-band, which is responsible for the main air search mission. The upper part uses the X-band, which can obtain higher accuracy. At the same time, due to the high installation position, it can obtain better low-altitude detection capabilities. In addition, the small shield and the large shield are oriented at an angle of degrees, making the blind spot even smaller.

Of course the Yankee Burke 3 also wants to do this, but now it is encountering many problems.

"How could there be insufficient power? Don't we use an integrated power system?" asked a naval officer present.

"Yes, it is a comprehensive electric system. However, considering the stability and reliability of the system, we decided to use a normal gearbox to drive the propeller instead of electric propulsion. If you want to use this technology, then we need to get it from Europe. purchase."

Although the Americans have advanced LM2500, they do not have advanced electric propulsion technology. It is obviously not in their interests to give orders to Europe for the main power system.

"According to our intelligence, the Renhai class also uses ordinary transmission shaft propulsion. They also have various concerns about electric propulsion for warships. We cannot be too aggressive." Lucas continued.

In terms of warship power, the British are the most adventurous and even use all-electric propulsion on their aircraft carriers. However, the Americans do not dare to be so rash and have to use traditional ones.

If you use traditional ones, you will definitely face the problem of insufficient power supply. After all, it is impossible for all the power of the entire ship to be used to generate electricity.

The Burke-class destroyers have always used the ancestral LM2500 gas turbine. The four gas turbines are arranged in twos, facing each other end to end. Therefore, the two axes at the tail of this warship rotate in opposite directions. If viewed from the stern, the left axis rotates counterclockwise. , the right axis is clockwise. This design can also allow the propeller to generate opposite torsional torque to ensure the balance of the hull. Just look at the Burke-class butt and you can see that the propellers on both sides are exactly opposite.

These four gas turbines are only used to drive warships, and special AG9130 gas turbine generator sets are used to generate electricity. There are three units in total, each with 2500 kilowatts.

This system is not enough even if it is used on the Burke 1. Therefore, the Burke-class destroyer can only specialize in one of them. Specifically, it can only do one of the air defense missions and the anti-missile missions, but not both at the same time. For the captain, this also means that the captain of the destroyer has to face a difficult choice: if there are missiles flying towards him and missiles flying towards the mainland, how should he choose? Is it to protect one's own safety or to protect the safety of the homeland?

Of course the Americans are aware of the problems involved, so they are also making improvements. In the Burke 2A, the generator set was changed to AG9140RF, and the power of a single unit was increased to 3000 kilowatts. In the current Burke 3, the auxiliary engine was upgraded to AG9160RF, and the single unit The power has been increased to 4000 kilowatts, but at the same time, the size has also been further expanded, with a length of 9.88 meters, a width of 2.71 meters, and a height of 3.81 meters. The size of this thing is comparable to the LM2500.

If it were the original Burke 3, it would be very difficult to stuff this thing in. Fortunately, the Navy required an increase in displacement, so they could easily stuff this kind of auxiliary engine in. It was still the same three units. However, after calculation, it was found that although The power generated is higher, but the power used is also higher, but it’s still not enough!

What should I do if there is not enough? That's fine.

Forget about the four-sided shield, let’s make a rotating double-sided shield, which is just right and is still a mature product.

The U.S. Navy has mature ones.

After all, in the Aegis era, their warships still faced the problem of weak low-altitude detection capabilities, so they also had professional low-altitude blind-filling radars. Up to now, they have developed into mature AN/SPQ-9B radars. This radar uses back-to-back The double-sided phased array radar uses X-band, and its high installation position gives it the best field of view. It can easily track anti-ship missiles flying across the sea. After all, the U.S. Navy is most worried about being attacked. Attacked by ultra-low-altitude sea-skimming anti-ship missiles.

Now, dual-band radar consumes too much power, so we might as well use this one instead.

"No, this method is too backward." Swift immediately shook his head: "The warships in the East have already acquired dual-band phased arrays, and our radar must not be worse than theirs."

"Then we will have to switch to British gas turbines to free up space in our engine room."

These are not just a few amphibious assault ships, this is the main destroyer, which often requires dozens of ships to build. If the British power plant is used, the British will be happy, but what about them? Can they be happy themselves? General Electric will file a serious protest!

"Our radar is not bad, and it is a mature technology. Now, what we need most is to build this kind of warship as soon as possible!" the officer on the side said.

"Okay." Swift compromised: "Let's use this radar. Can this radar share data with our SPY-6?"

"Sorry, this can't be done yet, but once the software is debugged, it should still be possible."

Swift frowned again. If data cannot be shared or integrated into a system, is it still called dual-band?

The advantage of dual-band radars is that they complement each other's blind spots. The two must be integrated together. When one radar searches for data, it can be passed to the other radar. The large shield and small shield work together to form an unbreakable protective umbrella.

What now?

In order to save power, just use a rotating shield, but the two shields still can't share data! Can you still fight against 055? It’s the same level as 052DL! A main radar and a low-altitude blind blind radar.

What about our powerful technology in the United States?

However, this integration does not require changes to the hardware, it only needs to be upgraded in the software. This is not possible now, but in the future, it may be possible.

The U.S. Aegis system has had almost no hardware changes since it was put into use in the 1980s. However, through software upgrades, the performance has been upgraded again and again, not to mention the radar system, even missiles, torpedoes, etc. Weapons, now they are also taking the path of software upgrades.

The current Aegis system software has been upgraded to baseline 9. This Burke 3 will be improved to baseline 10, and will continue to be upgraded in the future to obtain powerful performance through upgrades.

In order to start work as soon as possible, we have to endure this.

Swift gritted his teeth: "Okay, let's wait for the upgrade in the future. Do you have a design? Show us."

"Of course." Lucas turned on the computer and showed the projection. He said smugly: "Everyone, what you are about to see is the most advanced Burke 3 destroyer!"

Everyone opened their eyes wide and looked at the screen. What did they see? On the ancestral clothes drying pole, there is the small rotating array radar just mentioned. There are other complex antennas on it. Below is the bridge. The four-sided phased array radar is placed at an angle of 2 degrees, with two antennas at the front and rear. With a hanging device, the entire warship looks like an enlarged version of a simple Burke .

Look at the 055 again, with its fully stealthy appearance and extremely simple appearance. The integrated radio frequency mast is covered with various shields. Looking at our own side, this kind of warship has continued its previous rough route. At this moment, Swift can no longer bear it. He was stunned and shouted: "Is this your product? You have spent so long time and applied for so much research and development funds, just to enlarge the Burke-class destroyer and give it to the Navy?"

"Sir Swift, please calm down." Lucas quickly explained: "Of course we know the needs of the Navy, but we also have to be realistic. We know that the most urgent thing for the Navy right now is to start construction as soon as possible. If that's the case If so, we must keep the original structure as unchanged as possible, so that we don’t need to do electromagnetic compatibility tests. If we use advanced comprehensive radio frequency technology, then we need to do all the supporting experiments, which not only costs huge sums of money, We still have to face the problem of a two- to three-year research and development cycle. Everyone, it is not a simple matter to remove all our existing radar equipment and then use several shields to undertake related tasks. Think about DDG -1000 project delays!”

This is a very puzzling thing. It is obvious that the Americans have spent a lot of money on the DDG-1000 project, and have also verified many technologies on it, such as the integrated electric propulsion of the whole ship, such as integrated radio frequency technology, such as advanced ship gun system, etc. However, these technologies cannot be transplanted to Burke 3, so that Burke 3 is a simple upgrade of Burke 2, without much change from the inside out.

why?

Only the Americans know this well. The result of using advanced technology is immaturity! Take the power system as an example. They used two MT30 and two 4500 gas turbines as the power system of the warship. They were all used to generate electricity. There was no problem in driving the more than 1000-ton DDG-3. It was supposed to be transplanted to Burke It's fine, but why don't Americans use it?

Of course it's because of the immaturity of the ship's integrated power system! For a warship that often sails at sea, it will definitely be affected by the moisture on the sea. However, the Yankee system often loses its locks due to moisture. In a serious case, the locks suddenly fell off when passing through the Panama Canal. It almost happened. causing the canal to become paralyzed.

Therefore, they chose their own gas turbine on the Burke 3 and used conventional propulsion. At least the brake failure would not affect the power system.

Because it is not an integrated power system, the power supply must be insufficient and the dual-band radar on the DDG-1000 cannot be used.

Speaking of DDG-1000, the dual-band radar on it is also quite impressive. It uses the world's first dual-band radar, including the X-band SPY-3 radar and the S-band SPY-4 radar. In theory, These radars are very powerful. The former focuses on low-altitude detection, especially searching for those Soviet-style supersonic sea-skimming anti-ship missiles. It can detect them in advance and indicate targets for the missiles, such as Sea Sparrows, standard missiles, etc. After all, X-band The accuracy is very high. With it, the Yankees no longer need target illumination radar. The previous Aegis system was subject to this limitation and was unable to achieve true anti-saturation attack capabilities.

As for the latter, it is even stronger. It is the main radar. It can detect whether it is low altitude or high altitude. The range exceeds 500 kilometers. Moreover, the two radars can also exchange data. For example, when one of the radars If you are attracted by a target coming from a certain direction and cannot separate the beam, the radar on the other side can take over the scanning to avoid being shot in the face.

However, such an excellent radar system cannot be integrated into the Burke 3 because of insufficient power!

On the Burke 3, these previous radars were not used, but the brand-new SPY-6 radar was used. Looking at the number, it is easy to think that this radar will be more advanced. In fact, this is purely a misunderstanding, because SPY-6 4 radar is a low-cost radar developed because the SPY- radar was too expensive.

The Americans have developed a combination of SPY-3 and SPY-4, and have been quite confident for a long time. They hope that these two radars can replace the many radars on hand. For example, the SPY-3 radar can replace the SPQ-9A. /B low-altitude blind-filling radar, SPS-67 search radar, search illumination radar supporting the MK23/MK91 fire control system, SPN-41/46 air traffic control radar, etc. It seems that this radar has great potential. As for the SPY-4 , which can be used as the main radar in the future.

However, the price is unfortunately high! The radars that these brothers originally planned to replace are all working well. Burke 3 continues to use the SPQ-9 radar, but they were shelved because they were too expensive. Even the third ship of the DDG-1000 was too expensive. He actually saved the main SPY-4 radar!

It’s SPY-5’s turn later. This is a cheap three-sided phased array radar, placed on the three sides of the tetrahedron of the bridge. The Americans are also aware of the shortcomings of high price, so they are no longer rich, but , the response was mediocre after its launch.

Next is the turn of SPY-6. During the development stage of this radar, the advantage of cost first was implemented. Mature technology was used as much as possible to save money as much as possible. Therefore, Burke 3 uses this kind of radar.

Although SPY-6 is cheap, its power is not low. If it is turned on at full power, the lights of the entire ship will probably be dimmed, let alone another set of phased array radars.

Insufficient power, how to break it?

Since dual-band cannot be implemented and speed is required, what else can be done? Just leave it as it is and upgrade it a little, which is cheaper.

"Moreover, we are also thinking about the navy. After all, what we are building now is Burke 3, which is very similar to our previous Burke class. This is right. If we make a stealth modification, after it is built, we will find that it is similar to the Burke class. We look very much like Dongfang's 055, so what will the world say about us?" Lucas still spoke plausibly.

Yes, that's what he said.

The warships we are building now are at least unique in their own way. If we also build a stealth model, and it looks the same as the 055 in the end, wouldn’t it be embarrassing if it gets spread out?

Everyone's faces were ugly.

As for the Navy's main carrier-based aircraft, there are constant twists and turns. Even if the X-32 plan was first determined, the Navy is now more inclined to the X-35 and has even begun to place orders. After all, the performance of the Flying Toad is too poor. .

However, this has also led to lagging behind. Moreover, if the X-35 is selected in the future, like Dongfang's fourth-generation stealth aircraft, the outside world will definitely comment that they are following the Eastern path. The carrier-based aircraft is gone. Where is this warship? Do you want to follow the same path as the East?

Shame on you.

Swift gritted his teeth and continued to look at other aspects.

"What is this hair hanging system used for?"

"At present, we believe that there is no time to develop a vertical hair unit larger than Dongfang, so we are mixing the existing MK41 and MK57 vertical hair systems. Specifically, MK41 is used in the front and MK57 is used in the rear. , This can meet the navy’s usage needs for a long time to come.”

Dongfang uses a 850 mm diameter hair drop with a length of nine meters. It is the largest hair drop system in the world, larger than the American one.

The MK41 hanging hair commonly used by Americans. In simple terms, this hanging hair is 635 mm. In detail, it is a standard module with eight launch tubes. This module belongs to an independent launching unit with a length of 3.17 meters. , width 2.08 meters, depth 7.67 meters.

There are eight openings on this module. Each opening is a square with a side length of 635 mm. Inside, three types of launch tubes can be installed, codenamed MK13, MK15 and MK14. The first two are used to launch standard missiles and missiles respectively. Aslok missile, 5.79 meters in length, which is used to launch Tomahawk, 6.71 meters in length. It is also possible to mix missiles smaller than this.

It can be seen that the largest weapon MK41 can launch is the Tomahawk, which can no longer meet future needs. Therefore, the Yankees have developed the MK57 vertical hair. This vertical hair has a structure of four tubes and one unit. Each unit weighs 15.24 tons, length 4.33 meters, width 2.29 meters, height 7.925 meters. These four tubes are a single row structure. The side length of each missile silo is 710 mm and the depth is 7.19 meters.

The latter was larger and could launch heavy missiles, but it was still not big enough. Later, when the Americans had hypersonic missiles, they found that they were not enough, so they had to remove the naval gun in front of the DDG-1000 and install this Regarding the specialized launching device for hypersonic missiles, the Yankees were the first to propose universal launchers, but in the end they took the path of professional launchers, which is very sad.

However, the DDG-1000 project at least left some useful things for the Americans. Although this MK57 is not big enough, it is at least better than the MK-41! The only flaw is that it was originally designed according to the side vertical hair, so four groups are one unit. However, the problem is not big, and it can be arranged at the back of the warship.

Using two different vertical hairs and installing different weapons on a warship increases the flexibility, which the navy should like.

However, when Lucas looked at the expressions of the officers present, it seemed that no one could laugh. Why? Isn’t it good to dislike our Burke 3? This is the most advanced -ton engine in the world!

"Everyone, our Burke 3 may not look that high-end, but we guarantee that the technology of this destroyer is the most mature. As long as the Navy passes the review and Congress approves the funds, construction can start at any time, and the price is Cheap enough for mass production!” Lucas said.

Swift let out a long sigh, cheap prices and mass production, this is the most important thing! How many detours has the Navy made over the years?