posted on Apr, 23 2005 @ 05:00 PM
Supertran,
They are better, especially the one that is taken somewhere around midship.
You can clearly see the canister launchers for the ASCM's. They look almost identical to USN Harpoon canisters. Same placement also.
Aft of them are two small launchers that look kind of like mini-rocket launchers. I'm guessing that's for chaff, although those launchers look like
they'll swivel and that's not necessary for chaff.
You can see a hatch open with some tubes inside the skin of the ship behind the hatch. That's over the side torpedos. The Aegis cruisers use the
same setup, launching them from inside the ship. The Aegis destroyers have the tubes mounted just aft of the aft superstructure. The tubes get
filled with compressed air and the air blows the torpedo into the water.
I guess that 'thing' that had the brown tarp over it in the original pic is the Russian CIWS the article mentioned. In the second pic of the second
group posted you can clearly see it's a CIWS system and the part sticking up from it is the radar.
In the second pic you can also see the side of one of the aft phased array radar antennas. The placement looks like it will clear most of the clutter
back aft for a decent air coverage, but it still looks like it has poor surface coverage aft. I'd still like to see them placed higher for better
range.
Also, looking at the stacks amidships, it looks like they used a design similar to the Aegis destroyers. The design is supposed to help disipate heat
and redure the IR signature.
All in all, I'll change my opinion and say it's a decent ship, and is probably the most capable the PLAN has. I still don't think it'll compete
with a USN Aegis ship, but it looks superior to a lot of other naval warships out there. I'd like to see it up against one of the Japanese Aegis
ships. they look to be in the same league.