On 1 August, Xinhua's second Type 055 large missile destroyer was launched, which attracted the attention of various countries.

Three years ago, the Liberian Navy's DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer was launched and deployed at the Guam Naval Base at the beginning of this year to deter the Asia-Pacific region.

In the following two years, two more Zumwalt-class destroyers were launched.

With a displacement of 14,500 tons and many new technologies, the Zumwalt-class destroyers are initially estimated to cost more than $3.5 billion per unit, or a staggering $7 billion if research and development costs are added, much higher than the $1.2 billion cost of similar warships of the current type.

Some critics say that for the price of a Zumwalt-class destroyer, you can buy a traditional naval fleet.

In the face of such a high price, the navy of the country with deep pockets could only "afford to build and not use," and reduced the number of ships to be built from the original 32 to a mere three.

The MK57 missile vertical launch system is deployed on the ship, which can launch various types of precision-guided weapons, such as ultra-long-range cruise missiles and high-speed attack missiles.

The first two ships of the "Zumwalt" class are equipped with two AGS advanced naval artillery systems, using 62 times the caliber of 155 mm guns, each AGS has the projection capacity equivalent to an army artillery battery, and can fire 600 long-range land attack shells to targets 150 kilometers away in 30 minutes.

On the third Zumwalt-class destroyer, two electromagnetic railguns were installed with barrels 12 meters long. The life span is up to 5000 rounds. The firing range is 370 km. Rate of fire 10 rounds / min.

The shell came out at a speed of more than 7 times the speed of sound, and it took only 6 minutes to hit the target at the maximum range, leaving the opponent with a very short time to find the target and intercept it, which is more difficult to defend against than a missile......

Electromagnetic railgun is an advanced kinetic energy lethal weapon made by using electromagnetic launch technology, which has outstanding and irreplaceable advantages compared with traditional artillery.

One is that the projectile is fast and has a long range. It's powerful.

Second, the shells are small in size and light in weight. Electromagnetic shells use almost no propellant, reducing the charge, so the volume of the shell is only one-eighth of that of a conventional 120-mm artillery shell, and one-tenth of its weight. Today's ships can only carry 70 guided missiles at a time, while electromagnetic railgun shells can easily carry a few hundred missiles at a time.

Third, the projectile has good stability and high accuracy.

Fourth, it is well concealed. The electromagnetic cannon does not produce flames and smoke when fired, nor does it produce shock waves, so it is relatively hidden in combat and is not easy to be detected by the enemy.

Fifth, it is more economical. Comparison with conventional weapons. Artillery projectiles cost $10 per joule of energy, while railcans cost only $0.1. If compared to a Tomahawk cruise missile worth a million dollars. The electromagnetic cannon is even more cost-effective.

In fact, the electromagnetic cannon is not a future science fiction weapon, the principle is not difficult, it was invented by the French as early as 1920, and the difficult thing is the energy storage technology and material technology of electricity.

In World War II, Germany was the first to conduct a comprehensive study of electromagnetic railguns. In 1944, a 2-meter-long, 20-mm railgun was developed, which could accelerate a cylindrical aluminum projectile weighing 10 grams to 1.08 km/s. Improvements were made to achieve an initial velocity of 1.21 km/s.

At that time, the Wa Kingdom, which had swept across Asia, was also working on electromagnetic railguns, and accelerated a 2-kilogram projectile to 335 m/s.

For a long time after World War II, the research on electromagnetic railguns was interrupted for a long time because key problems such as materials and electricity could not be fundamentally solved.

Today, various basic sciences have matured enough for electromagnetic guns to play an irreplaceable role. Lijianguo, Xinhua and other countries are at the forefront of the world in the research of electromagnetic guns.

There is such a scene in the movie "Transformers 2", seeing that the Egyptian pyramids are about to be destroyed by the giant Hercules, at the critical moment, the Lijian Navy used the "top secret weapon", that is, the electromagnetic railgun on the Navy destroyer, which was separated by hundreds of kilometers of ultra-long distance, and only one shot accurately bombed the Hercules Transformers.

The Zumwalt-class destroyers use advanced all-electric propulsion units that can produce 75 megawatts of energy, which also allows the ships to use high-energy laser weapons and electromagnetic guns without affecting the control system and speed.

Although it is experimental, there are many criticisms. However, the "Zumwalt" class destroyers have created many precedents for naval warfare equipment, and can be called epoch-making "weapons of mass destruction", and have also won the reputation of "science fiction warships" by virtue of their advanced performance.

……

Whether it is the advance of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region or the needs of its own maritime rights protection and blue-water strategy, the Xinhua Navy urgently needs a large 10,000-ton missile destroyer to cooperate with the aircraft carrier fleet in the open ocean.

The new Type 055 warship was rumored on the Internet as early as 2014, but when it will be put into service, there has been controversy in military commentary, and the more mainstream view is that it will not be able to form combat effectiveness until around 2020.

It can be said that the first ship of the Type 055 destroyer was launched last year, and the second was launched this year, and such progress shocked many foreign military experts.

The 055 destroyer belongs to the fourth-generation missile destroyer of the Xinhua Navy, with a total length of 183 meters, a width of 22 meters, and a standard displacement of 12,000 tons. The ship can reach a maximum speed of 35 knots and can carry two helicopters.

The ship type is a high flat deck, double shaft, double pitch propeller, fully considering the stealth design, as well as the design of reducing noise characteristics, infrared characteristics and electromagnetic characteristics, and has good habitability and crew living support conditions.

Although it is not as sci-fi as the shape of the "Zumwalt" class destroyer, it uses mature technology, is more cost-effective, and is more suitable for mass production.

This kind of large destroyer has a powerful single-ship comprehensive combat capability, and the universal vertical launch it adopts can launch anti-aircraft, anti-submarine, and anti-ship missiles, as well as land-attack cruise missiles, as well as various long-range ballistic missiles, to carry out the tasks of land attack and fire support, and is an advanced launch method second only to the Lijian Navy, and has an early warning defense network and attack fire network of long-, medium, and near-three layers of soft and hard weapons.

There are a total of 128 cells on the ship, with a layout of 64 in the front and 64 in the rear, and each cell can be installed with 1-8 missiles depending on the combat mission, so the number of missiles is 128-1024 units.

The radar of the Type 055 destroyer is a multi-mode new generation of active phased array radar, with a detection range of up to 600 kilometers, which can monitor hundreds of batches of targets, and in fully automatic mode, the target is automatically assigned to the corresponding combat unit, and the missile interception of the ship can be divided into 4 layers.

The combat mission of the Type 055 destroyer, which is different from the previous destroyers of the Xinhua Navy, is positioned to serve the far sea and even the global strategy beyond the second island chain, and is a sharp weapon to defend the maritime interests of the Xinhua Navy.

At the same time, it is also the main battle destroyer supporting the Xinhua aircraft carrier battle group and the main battle platform of the maritime anti-missile defense system.

In the three-dimensional maritime integrated combat group, the Type 055 destroyer will assume the task of a command ship, and can command air, sea, and underwater combat units to achieve joint operations.

The comprehensive combat power of this type of ship surpasses that of the Lijian country "Ali? The Burke-class destroyers, the Ticonderoga-class missile cruisers, and the Aegis destroyers of the Japanese State are second only to the Zumwalt-class destroyers and become the second most powerful missile destroyers in the world today.

The commissioning of the Type 055 destroyer is of epoch-making significance and will mark the status of the Xinhua Navy as a global navy.

According to the installed missiles, the Type 055 destroyer can also be divided into integrated destroyer 055A (mixed anti-submarine missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, land-attack missiles, and anti-ship missiles) and fire support destroyer 055B (mainly cruise missiles and DF-21D) in the future.

The lead ship of the Type 055 destroyer is fully fired, and the main gun is a new generation of 155mm 55 times naval guns, and the later batch will be replaced with electromagnetic guns, as the main equipment of the Xinhua Navy in the 2017~2030 period.

The second ship launched this time is powered by pure batteries, although there is no electromagnetic cannon installed, but it is equipped with a laser cannon for air defense, and the ship's C-type rare earth nano battery of up to 100 tons is enough to support the continuous launch of laser weapons, and the successor batch will also use nuclear power to increase the range and charge other ships of the fleet if necessary. (To be continued......)