King Sejong the Great

It’s time for another random glance at the arms race on Saipan’s back yard. I’ve got a cool warship to look at today: South Korea’s King Sejong the Great-class of guided missile destroyers. Three of them have been built, and more might be on the way.

Though South Korea is geographically small, this ship is no mere coastal-patrol rubber-ducky. This is a blue-water ship to be sure, and it just might be a world-class warship.

It’s a big destroyer, displacing about 8,500 tons. Yes, that’s how ships are measured: tons of displacement. It’s sort of a squishy benchmark, depending on how loaded-down the ship is, and on how the class evolves, so any figures I throw at you are ballpark.

To put this in perspective, I’ll mention some famous U.S. classes of destroyers. The Fletcher-class destroyers of WWII fame, well-represented in the glory days of the west Pacific battles, were about 2,050 tons.

Fast-forward to what I consider the first modern destroyer, the Spruance class, which was, for the time, an eye-poppingly large 7,800 tons. This was a Cold War baby that saw service from 1975 to 2005.

Yet more modern times brought us the Arleigh Burke-class of guided missile destroyers, which rule the waves to this day, and examples of which I’ve seen docked on Saipan. These ships displace around 9,200 tons or so, though I believe more recent examples are heavier.

South Korea’s King Sejong the Great is, I guess, kinda’ sorta’ their version of the Arleigh Burke class. We’re talking high-tech from propulsion, to electronics, to weapons systems.

The state-of-the-art way to propel a destroyer, and other ships of roughly similar size, is to use big jet engines slaved to reduction gears that, in turn, drive the screws (props). These screws, incidentally, are variable-pitch, sort of like airplane propellers, so there’s some crossover here between aviation stuff and nautical stuff.

But it’s not a perfect crossover, since when you put a jet engine in a ship it’s not called a jet engine anymore, it’s called a “gas turbine.” Egads, if there’s one thing you can count on in life, it’s that aviators, mariners, and landlubbers never agree on terminology for anything. Anyway, the real star of this realm is the General Electric LM2500, which, in airplane duty, is the CF6 model of engines for widebody planes. The King Sejong the Great class has four LM2500 engines.

Warships are like chess pieces, and are designed to project, and be protected by, their peers. Linking these elements together electronically is a big deal, so what they see and what they do can be shared and coordinated in combat. One such method is the “Aegis” system used by the U.S. and selected allies. The King Sejong the Great class is Aegis-equipped, so it’s part of the big leagues. For you naval buffs I’ll note it has SPY-1D phased array radar. Yep, the good stuff!

The ships can accommodate two helicopters, which are used for all sorts of things, including anti-submarine warfare (ASW).

When it comes to weapons, which is pretty much the whole point of this gig to begin with, well, we’re talking mondo missiles here. The class boasts a Vertical Launch System (VLS) capacity of 128 missiles.

They’ve also seen fit to include a single five-inch gun forward. Sensibly enough, it’s the same proven 5”/54 cal. Mark 45 that’s been around for decades now.

Hey, let’s hit that last point since nobody seems to write about naval gunnery these days; missiles are shiny and glamorous and get all the press. Remember those small old WWII Fletcher-class destroyers I mentioned? They stuffed five, count ’em, five five-inch guns on those things, which is one reason they were so top-heavy and not very sea-worthy. The Spruance class, incidentally, had two; one forward, one aft. Arleigh Burke class: Just one five-inch gun.

So you can see the trend here; gunnery is ever-diminishing, but not gone. Well, not yet, anyway. Five-inch guns are the true masters of multi-tasking. Anti-aircraft, check. Anti-ship, check. Anti-bad guy when your troops are hitting the beach and need artillery support, check. Indeed, so much has changed since the Battle of Saipan, and yet so little has changed, too.

OK, enough of that little sermon, as enlightening as it was. Back to the King Sejong the Great class. Its other weapons include various smaller guns, dedicated anti-ship missile launchers, torpedoes; you know, the usual stuff. The ships are 544 feet long and use a crew of 300 to 400, which is one heck of a nebulous range but it’s all I could find.

I’ll put a link or two at the “Ed’s latest column” part of my website so you can see more about this class of ship, including photos. After all, Saipan’s nautical neighborhood is getting more interesting by the day, so it’s always polite to meet the new neighbors.