Well like you say, we don’t have any insight into the PLAN planning or R&D projects. From the information we do have, the Type 055 Destroyer has an integrated power system that some articles have mooted to be laying the groundwork for a future railgun system. It’s possible that the PLAN has also made some sort of breakthrough (or is close to doing so) with the power miniaturization or storage systems that would be necessary to fit one onto a Type 055. Either that, or the PLAN is doing this as a vanity project, which is pretty out of character for them.
As for hypersonics, naval missiles are housed in VLS silos that can’t be reloaded at sea. Even if the mooted railgun can only fire a few dozen or so shots before requiring a barrel replacement, that still works out favorably if the barrel replacement can be done at sea. Also consider that it’s possible that hypersonic missiles might still be impacted by jamming or some future interception system, whereas a metal slug travelling a mach 3 tends to not care about either. As for a sub surface nuke, setting aside the very obvious environmental damage (China plans to fight near it’s home waters so can’t be so blase about nuclear contamination), using any sort of nuclear weapon is a huge step up the escalation ladder and would be only one step down from striking a US base with nukes.
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Well like you say, we don’t have any insight into the PLAN planning or R&D projects. From the information we do have, the Type 055 Destroyer has an integrated power system that some articles have mooted to be laying the groundwork for a future railgun system. It’s possible that the PLAN has also made some sort of breakthrough (or is close to doing so) with the power miniaturization or storage systems that would be necessary to fit one onto a Type 055. Either that, or the PLAN is doing this as a vanity project, which is pretty out of character for them.
As for hypersonics, naval missiles are housed in VLS silos that can’t be reloaded at sea. Even if the mooted railgun can only fire a few dozen or so shots before requiring a barrel replacement, that still works out favorably if the barrel replacement can be done at sea. Also consider that it’s possible that hypersonic missiles might still be impacted by jamming or some future interception system, whereas a metal slug travelling a mach 3 tends to not care about either. As for a sub surface nuke, setting aside the very obvious environmental damage (China plans to fight near it’s home waters so can’t be so blase about nuclear contamination), using any sort of nuclear weapon is a huge step up the escalation ladder and would be only one step down from striking a US base with nukes.