cruisers for Indian navy ?

Vishwamitra

Member
Mar 28, 2018
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India
I don't understand why we are not investing in need for cruisers for Indian Navy.


We have ambition to control India's Ocean by 2050 and for that we must needna new powerful class of heavy weight Cruisers to tackle is T and chinese 55(A). China is going to build around 48 T55 so we have to invest in cruisers as well.
 
I don't think a few large cruisers are the answer to large number of Chinese vessels. Rather investing in submarines, a variety of maritime patrol aircraft and an assortment of corvettes/frigates would be more productive.
 
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I don't understand why we are not investing in need for cruisers for Indian Navy.


We have ambition to control India's Ocean by 2050 and for that we must needna new powerful class of heavy weight Cruisers to tackle is T and chinese 55(A). China is going to build around 48 T55 so we have to invest in cruisers as well.
It might cost twice as more to build a Guided Missile Cruiser than to build a Guided Missile Destro, while it will not bring the utility of the two ships combined. It might be better to build more efficient high endurance destroyers than building larger ships.
 
I don't think a few large cruisers are the answer to large number of Chinese vessels. Rather investing in submarines, a variety of maritime patrol aircraft and an assortment of corvettes/frigates would be more productive.
In the end we eill fail like germans.
 
I don't understand why we are not investing in need for cruisers for Indian Navy.

Couple things to consider here.

In the traditional Cold War sense of classifying surface warships (which is no longer relevant for most navies), a Cruiser is a large warship designed primarily around anti-air warfare (for defence of the battle group/fleet) while a Destroyer is a smaller warship designed primarily around surface warfare and/or anti-submarine roles.

This differs to a great deal between navies. For example, the UK Royal Navy which doesn't have any cruisers uses its Type 45 destroyers as the principle anti-air warfare ship while relegating ASW/surface warfare role to frigates like Type 23 (or the Type 26 in future). Australian Navy will be following a similar trend (Hobart class AAW destroyers and Hunter class ASW frigates).

Whereas the US Navy which doesn't really have any ocean-going frigates that work in a CBG, resorts to using Ticonderoga class cruisers as the AAW component of a CBG while the Arleigh Burke destroyers take care of a multitude of roles, including the likes of which are performed by frigates in the navies of UK and Australia.

That said, as I already replied to a previous thread you started (about next destroyer class of IN), the Project 18 NGD is estimated to be a 13,000 ton warship which puts it in same league as Type 055 and new Zumwalt class. That is already much bigger than any cruiser like the Tico and slightly more than Slava class battlecruiser.

What more do you want? The only cruiser bigger than that are going to be Russian Kirov class (nuclear powered, 28,000 tons). Even the US is not building warships of that caliber anymore, so why would we or China do it?

Case in point, there is not much to classifications. Even China considers the 055 as a destroyer, as does US (Zumwalt is regarded as DDG), and India too will be following similar path. Project 18 is already called NextGen Destroyer (NGD).

Any of those 3 ship types can easily be regarded as Cruisers in the traditional sense - but the very fact that USN, PLAN & IN regard them as Destroyers shows that there is not much meaning to the term Cruiser anymore.

We have ambition to control India's Ocean by 2050 and for that we must needna new powerful class of heavy weight Cruisers to tackle is T and chinese 55(A)

P-18 DDG will afford us that capability.

China is going to build around 48 T55 so we have to invest in cruisers as well.

Highly doubt that. They don't even build that many 052Ds so building four dozen 055s is fairly a stretch even to imagine. I think current plans call for about half dozen. That could become one dozen sometime in future.
 
It might cost twice as more to build a Guided Missile Cruiser than to build a Guided Missile Destro, while it will not bring the utility of the two ships combined. It might be better to build more efficient high endurance destroyers than building larger ships.

There's no difference between a 13000T cruiser and a 13000T destroyer. All semantics.
The cruiser was a ship which had a battleship level firepower, but not the armour. No relevance today.

The idea behind a 13000T destroyer is the additional firepower, nothing else. We are talking about a 2x firepower difference between something like the Kolkata class and this ship. We will need some large destroyers after we hit the 200 ship force we are looking at by 2027.

We can expect P18 to start by 2020.
 
There's no difference between a 13000T cruiser and a 13000T destroyer. All semantics.
The cruiser was a ship which had a battleship level firepower, but not the armour. No relevance today.

The idea behind a 13000T destroyer is the additional firepower, nothing else. We are talking about a 2x firepower difference between something like the Kolkata class and this ship. We will need some large destroyers after we hit the 200 ship force we are looking at by 2027.

We can expect P18 to start by 2020.
I think the cruisers from PLAN perspective is just 13T Destroyer, its not like kirov class which displaces twice as much. Now the question is would you rather have say 20 13T destroyers (dubbed cruisers) or 40 8T Destroyers of Followon- Vishakapatnam/kolkatta class. I personally feel there is more utility in larger numbers of destroyers rather than large displacement units, but thats just my opinion, not backed up with any expert opinion or data.
 
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I think the cruisers from PLAN perspective is just 13T Destroyer, its not like kirov class which displaces twice as much. Now the question is would you rather have say 20 13T destroyers (dubbed cruisers) or 40 8T Destroyers of Followon- Vishakapatnam/kolkatta class. I personally feel there is more utility in larger numbers of destroyers rather than large displacement units, but thats just my opinion, not backed up with any expert opinion or data.

You need a mix of both, since the extra firepower is highly necessary when you are fighting a peer adversary, while being able to afford such a navy at the same time. It's much harder to sink a bigger ship.

There's also the added advantage of a 13000T destroyer being bigger than one that's 8000T and hence more radar range, bigger sonar etc.
 
You need a mix of both, since the extra firepower is highly necessary when you are fighting a peer adversary, while being able to afford such a navy at the same time. It's much harder to sink a bigger ship.

There's also the added advantage of a 13000T destroyer being bigger than one that's 8000T and hence more radar range, bigger sonar etc.

Well, irrespective of 8kt vs 13kt, the range advantage to my mind will be minimal, type55 are a 5K miles, while D66 Vishakapatnam is at 4kmiles, I think 8T will hold enough fuel to get to the same range, same applies for the radar range, its not fueled by the weight.
Now harder to sink part holds true, more space, more sams. I still feel that two ships instead of one helps project better power, offcourse with comparable firepower to a larger capital ship.

What i am waiting for is the NGMV, hopefully that packs some serious punch.
 
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Well, irrespective of 8kt vs 13kt, the range advantage to my mind will be minimal, type55 are a 5K miles, while D66 Vishakapatnam is at 4kmiles, I think 8T will hold enough fuel to get to the same range, same applies for the radar range, its not fueled by the weight.

I am referring to the height of the radar mast and the size of the hull for a larger sonar, not cruising range.

But firepower is where it matters the most. Surface ships are all about firepower.

What i am waiting for is the NGMV, hopefully that packs some serious punch.

Yeah, definitely.
 
its true Type 055(A) will be even bigger and better equipped compared to 055. china really want to match us destroyers in nubers so its not hard to see why with 11T economy they cant afford 48 Ageis.

more Agis are needed to protect their 6 Air craft carrier battle groups.
 
its true Type 055(A) will be even bigger and better equipped compared to 055. china really want to match us destroyers in nubers so its not hard to see why with 11T economy they cant afford 48 Ageis.

more Agis are needed to protect their 6 Air craft carrier battle groups.

There is no Type 055A yet.

At $1B a ship, they can afford 48.