CCTV exposed the fierce news, whose "ruthless character" can make the PLA 055 suffer?
The People's Liberation Army 055 destroyer Dalian revealed the inside story of the training, and the commanders and fighters said that the Dalian ship "suffered hardships" in the joint air defense assessment. The exposure of this detail shows that the PLA attaches great importance to the air defense capability of ships, and the resulting improvement in the comprehensive combat capability of the PLA surface ship force will allow us to better deal with potential conflicts with the United States.
[Dalian ships participating in the joint air defense assessment]
Recently, a video released by the official account of "CCTV" has attracted the attention of the outside world.
Because in this video, although the Type 055 Dalian ship has achieved excellent results in the joint air defense assessment organized by a certain training center of the Navy, the commanders and fighters of the Dalian ship also frankly admitted that the PLA Air Force fighter that served as an imaginary enemy in the assessment made the Dalian ship suffer a lot.
[The commander of the Dalian ship said that the air force made them suffer a little]
You must know that the Type 055 destroyer, as a 10,000-ton destroyer designed by the United States, has reached the world's top level in single-ship combat capability, especially air defense capability.
Many analysts believe that the Type 055 destroyer is the core of the air defense of the PLA aircraft carrier strike group, and if such a ship will be "suffered" by the Air Force fighters in the air defense capability assessment, then it is self-evident what level the intensity of this joint air defense assessment will reach.
[Air Force J-16 fighter who served as an imaginary enemy in the assessment]
After all, with the advancement of technology, information technology, intelligence and other factors have become more and more important in modern naval warfare, so that in the eyes of many people, modern naval warfare has become as simple as a video game, just by tapping the keyboard.
However, it should be noted that although informationization, intelligence, and other factors have simplified the process of naval warfare and improved the combat efficiency of troops, these factors have not fundamentally changed the combat mode of modern naval warfare, and if you want to sink enemy ships, you still need your own ships or carrier-based aircraft to launch anti-ship missiles.
[The Taizhou ship of the People's Liberation Army that launched anti-ship missiles]
This leads to the fact that even if the opposing navy is at a disadvantage in the system confrontation, as long as their ships have strong enough single-ship performance, they can still hold out for a long time under the strike of a series of anti-ship missiles. And when these high-performance ships are dispatched in formation, if there is no strong enough means to attack the fortifications, no matter how advanced and intelligent the attacker's system is, it will be impossible to start in the face of such a fleet.
In their view, the U.S. Navy still has a clear advantage over the PLA in the naval combat system, but the improvement in the performance of the PLA's combat ships has made it increasingly difficult for the U.S. military's anti-ship capabilities to break through the PLA's defense threshold.
A typical example is the Burke-class destroyer, which has a full load displacement of about 10,000 tons, but its anti-ship armament is only eight Harpoon anti-ship missiles. Not to mention the PLA's 052D destroyer, even the 054A frigate can easily stop the salvo attack of these 8 subsonic missiles.
[The Burke class is only equipped with a maximum of 8 Harpoon missiles]
Therefore, as the risk of conflict between China and the United States is getting higher and higher, the US Navy, which is well aware of its lack of anti-ship missiles, has begun to consciously strengthen its anti-ship capabilities, especially in the air. For example, in cooperation with the Air Force, B-1B bombers carrying a large number of LRASM anti-ship missiles to suppress the PLA fleet, and the procurement of better adaptive NSM strike missiles to give F-35B/C fighters the ability to strike mobile ships beyond visual range.
However, although the US Navy is aware of its own problems, due to the performance of these anti-ship missiles themselves, the Navy's most effective anti-ship means at present is still to launch a large number of missiles to carry out saturation strikes against the PLA, hoping that the PLA air defense system will be down in response to high-intensity air attacks.
[Imagination of the F-35 launching the NSM missile]
Under such circumstances, the PLA has vigorously carried out high-intensity joint air defense assessments, and it is difficult not to wonder whether this is the PLA's targeted preparations for the US military's anti-ship capability.
Because the U.S. Navy is well aware of its anti-ship capabilities of surface ships, it must rely on aircraft carriers and overseas military bases to make up for the air power superiority.
The Chinese Navy faces the opposite, with our surface ships having extremely strong anti-ship firepower and being able to be supported by rocket forces and land-based aviation in the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait, East China Sea and other directions at our doorstep. As a result, the PLA's anti-ship capabilities have reached the upper limit of the marginal effect curve, and the return on continued investment is far less costly.
[Imagination of the 055 destroyer launching an anti-ship ballistic missile]
At the same time, because the Chinese Navy still lags behind the US Navy in terms of the number and performance of aircraft carriers, the air pressure faced by the PLA surface ship force is comparable to that of the US Navy. A series of factors make it necessary for the PLA to list air defense capability as a key technical and tactical capability to cultivate, otherwise it will easily fall into passivity under the influence of the opponent's air superiority when competing with the US military on the same stage.
This is also the reason why the Dalian warship will "suffer hardships" in the assessment, because we are not the US military after all, and it is difficult to completely reproduce the state of the US air force when it was carrying out anti-ship missions. If we want to test the air defense capability of the Dalian ship in actual combat as much as possible, we can only achieve it by increasing the difficulty of the assessment.
Therefore, this joint air defense assessment is not so much an assessment as a stress test, which can show that the air defense capability of the Dalian has reached the ideal level that a warship should have. And as more and more units undergo similar tests, the PLA will have more confidence in the face of possible future conflicts between China and the United States.
After all, the US Navy itself has quite a lot of problems, and it is still unknown how many reliable air anti-ship forces it will be able to pull out in wartime. This means that the PLA's training is likely to be lenient to the enemy, and it will be able to have more spare strength to deal with it calmly in wartime.