Posted on 10/27/2014 6:42:57 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Taipei, Oct. 27 (CNA) Taiwan's first locally designed stealth missile corvette, the 502-ton Tuo Chiang (Tuo River), began sea trials of its dynamic system Monday.
The ship was towed from the Lung Teh Shipbuidling Co. at the port of Nanfangao in Yilan County and sailed to waters south of Kueishan Island and north of Hualien Harbor.
Despite heavy seas off the port of Suao, the twin-hull construction of the corvette enabled it to maintain high-speed navigation.
The Navy said the tests entailed checking whether the engine can meet the requirements of traveling at high and low speeds.
After the tests, the vessel was scheduled to sail into Suao military port for docking.
After that, assembly and testing of its Hsiung Feng II and Hsiung Feng III anti-ship missiles will be carried out before the ship is turned over to the Navy for a nine-month period of tactical testing.
The armaments of the ship, described as an "aircraft carrier-killer" by local media, include eight Hsiung Feng II and Eight Hsiugn Feng III anti-ship missiles, an Otobreda 76 mm gun, four 12.7 mm machine guns and a MK15 phalanx close-in weapon system.
Construction of the vessel began in November 2012 and it was christened in March this year.
It has a maximum speed of 38 knots and a range of 2,000 nautical miles. It measures 60.4 meters in length and 14 meters in width and carries a crew of 41.
The Navy said the ship, with its high mobility, strong firepower and stealth features, will enhance the country's defense ability.
The Navy plans to commission between eight and 12 of the corvettes if sufficient budget can be obtained.
Each one costs about NT$2.2 billion (US$72.38 million).
Legislator Lin Yu-fang of the ruling Kuomintang said earlier that the Navy relies mainly on higher tonnage ships, such as its Kidd-class destroyers, but these nearly 10,000-ton ships move relatively slowly and can be an obvious target at sea.
He noted that the combat area in the Taiwan Strait is not large and does not need high-tonnage warships, hence the idea behind developing the corvette.
The Navy's 20 Guanghua VI-class fast attack missile boats currently in service will serve during a transitional period in moving toward smaller ships.
The Guanghua VI-class boat has a displacement of 186.5 tons and a maximum draught of 3 meters, while the Tuo Chiang has a displacement of 500 tons and a maximum draught of 2.3 meters, allowing it to move easily in and out of small fishing harbors, a feature that Lin touted, saying that the corvette could be hidden among fishing boats.
I wonder how it is designed to deal with the the Sunburn and Sizzler missiles?
It’s not really aimed at dealing with those-that’s up to the bigger ships. It’s a big missile-launching platform, which sort of makes sense given the growth of China’s surface fleet.
Nice looking boat. I wonder what is housed in the 2 side bays?
Costs one-tenth of our littoral combat ships. For the price of the two we purchased, we could have replaced ALL of our aging corvette-sized patrol ships and our mine-sweepers. As for our aging frigates, the French have a frigate that one-half the cost of our littoral combat ships and twice as good.
Normally, a naval architect would use doors like that to conceal small boats, but this case is a bit strange. There are two doors on each side of the ship, and they are too short to fit a boat that exits with its centerline parallel to the centerline of the ship. So, a couple of guesses - the article talks about it being a missile ship. So, they might be hiding weapons behind the doors. Or, you could have a boat on a strongback, such that the boat swivels after it gets out and then aligns with the ship’s centerline. Hard to tell.
Article claims that it’s “self designed”, but the hull looks like a near copy of those Aussie high speed catamarans.
Without trying to defend the LCS (I’m not a fan, but reasons other than the ones you mention), to do a complete comparison, a person would have to take into account a lot of features, to include range, speed, payload capacity, radar cross section (which the Chinese ship fails, despite their good intentions), specific threat matrix, etc., in addition to cost. Having done so for many years, I can tell you that direct comparisons of ships are really hard to do. A better way to look at a ship is to see how well it does or would do in the specific conditions for which it was designed and how that could have been done better.
I suppose you agree with President Obama, that the size of the armed forces doesn’t matter, as long as we spend 10 times as much on the tanks, planes and ships we procure than anybody else. I am sorry Governor Romney made no reply argument in the 2012 debates.
As for a “complete analysis,” we can certainly look around the world and see what governments are buying whose tanks, planes and ships. Check it out: zero for the LCS (and, this is in spite of pricing scheme that has us sucking down the R&D and overhead cost, and us financing the deal with a sweetheart deal from the EX-IM Bank):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littoral_combat_ship#Foreign_sales
Whoa, there, fella. I was trying to engage in a discussion in which I have over 40 years of technical expertise. Your off-target attack is the sort of thing I would expect from a Lib.
And you are saying the people all over the world in other militaries who don’t buy our way overpriced stuff are what? chopped liver?
Here’s what you should ask yourself, is there any point at which you would change your mind about how expensive is the stuff our military is buying? You like having to RIF active duty personnel, cutting the number of combat brigades, carrier groups and fighter wings, grounding the entire fleet of A-10s, because you want weapon systems that nobody else in the world is buying, because they’re better in some aspect than a comparable piece of equipment that is one tenth the cost. O.K. what if the comparable piece of equipment were one twentieth of the cost?
Having said this, given the uniqueness of the U.S. as the world’s only superpower, there needs to be room in the budget for some “boutique” weapons systems, giving the President options in various contingencies. The B-2 bomber is a perfect example. But, we’re talking about corvettes and their equivalent, and frigates, not one-of-a-kind systems, ships that we need in numbers to meet the far-flung obligations that we have.
Time out. You are getting upset over an argument that I never made. I never disagreed with you about the price of U.S. military programs. All I ever said was that when two ships are being compared, a number of stats have to be wrung out in the context of the ship’s planned use. I will put my 40 years of having done that against anyone’s actual experience. We cannot simply compare displacement and price.
martial arts guys emerge to deal with the villains.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.