It needs lease crew becos of little weapon onboard. I am sure more crew is needed if more things are added. Then it's back to square one , same as darling or type052d.
Finally, US rail gun is nowhere in sight. No even shipboard sea trial. I can dare to bet with you. US naval rail gun will not be in service in even next 10 years. Bragging about future weapon that no where operation in next 10 years is just like India bragging about a paper drawing AMCA project able to compete with F-22 raptor and J-20
lol.
You don't operate on a man to weapon system. If you have been on a modern warship, you will know weapon system are in charged by a single element in a single room, called CIC (Combat Information Centre) it does not matter how many tube of missile launcher you have, or how many projectile weapon you have. The CIC have a fixed personal or complement.
The automation is based on how many people you need to operate radar system, diagnostic, engine maintenance and so on. The little the people you need (say 3 in Zumwalt vs 6 in 052D) the more automated the system goes. Less crew mean less resource you have to devote on the ship in general.
Saying "Zumwalt" have little weapon onboard is basically laughable. Zumwalt, as a destroyer, is more powerful than AB Class Flight IIA in terms of firepower. And Firepower did not mean much in navy destroyer anyway, the capability of your ship hitting something is more important than how many missile you carry, you can carry 1000 missile onboard but if your reaction time is not quick enough and accuracy is not good enough, the fact that you have 1000 missile tube mean jack shit in modern naval engagement.
As for railgun. I am not the one who talked about it, you did. And did China have a working Megajoule level railgun prototype on hand and tested already? Because US Navy already tested a 32MJ railgun that can mean something in naval warfare. In fact, Chinese navy ship cannot carry a 30+ MJ railgun because most Chinese combat ship (not accounting for future ship) have less than 65MW Output after engine drivetrain power. Railgun technology as a whole is not mature, just because US does not publish their research, that doesn't mean they are not happening.
The one fail to accept the truth and keep misleading is you. The chinese designer also claim the railgun is successfully tested onboard the testbed ship and ready soon for deployment and somehow you failed to mention this sentence but just keep mumming on bad things like one hundred failure. The blizter gun is no where operational and workable. This is also a fact you need to accept. Use simple logic, why it wouldn't deploy onboard ship to be tested like zumalt? There are plenty of things that is just good for PR show but none near operation.
Somehow when Chinese claim something is working and anti Chinese or hater will claim that is bragging. But when westerner claim something is working , it is taken as a breakthru and highly acceptable with no backlash. See the double standard by these haters?
That's where you are wrong.
First of all, China "Claim" they were able to test fire a unspecific output amount of railgun on a specially modified type 072 at sea. First the account cannot be substantiated because there are no image or video to justify the test. Secondly, that testbed is specially rigged, which mean the gun is not suitable to normal deployment, as it is a testbed, kind of like what the MW Laser weapon on board of the KC-135 testbed a few years ago, you wouldn't claim it's combat ready when it is tested on a dedicated testbed.
There are only 2 ships (Non-nuclear) in this world can have enough electric power to fire a Railgun, both of them are Zumwalt because they have a 110MW generator which give 78MW spare power after powering the ship's everything else. For Chinese warship to converted into firing a rail gun, the drivetrain and the power generation system will needed to be overhauled. Which mean basically you will need a new ship design.
