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Originally Posted by maximusslade
Ok...I am just going to come out with it. Why in hell does the Navy need some 5 or 6" round that shoots a hundred miles?? Sure as hell not to provide gunfire support for an amphibious landing or to provide gunfire support for the Army while they are miles and miles inland. Why do I say this?
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Then you want to rewrite amphibious doctrine than has been evolving for the las 10-15 yrs? You say your navy, Haven't you seen the "From the sea"
pamphlets lying around the last couple of years?
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Where are the targets that landing Marines or soldiers are going to need blown up?
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I think the furtherest we ever did a assault/raid during a MEU(SOC) work-up was 350 miles from the ships. Would have been nice to have fire support planning for that. Aside from the company 60mm and a pair of 81s. The longest "From the beach" real world op I've ever done was In Kinshasa DRoC. We staged out of Brazzaville RoC, a little more than 250-300 miles from the beach. Now the Navy wouldn't take the ships too close to shore because of the oil rigs being a hazard to navigation.
If things had gotten real bad I sure would have been nice to have a little NavalGangba*g to fall back on.
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What general sends a division into battle without its own artillery? So far as I know, there is no general so foolish, and those targets marines need blown up are on the beach.
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What time in the amphibious planning does the arty go ashore? And we try not to do the head on beach assault anymore. With only 2.5MEBs worth of lift in the whole Navy it would not take long to burn through those Marines.
If your going to design a ship to provide support, it might be of use to read up on the relevant doctrine
OMFTS, google it sometime. Been the official way we say we will do business since 1996.
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If there is a target beyond the range of a gun, a TLAM or SLAMMER or whatever ship to ground missle that they wanna use, even aircraft with guided munitions.
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Well thats about every target but I see you did bring up the fires triad.
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So why not use aircraft to bust targets on the beach during an assault? My thought is if we are landing on some God forsaken beach that probably, just probably many of our air assets are being used up somewhere else perhaps maintaining air superiority or bombing a bridge or whatever may be required.
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If there is an amphibious assault, everyone will be there. If you don't have the air support to provide CAS to the troops in your assault then you might want to do a little more battlespace shaping before you start landing troops.
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On top of that tanks and artillery will be landed on the beach as soon as there is room for them when the assault force gets off the beach by that time, when they get out of range of navy guns, they can start using their own artillery to support maneuvers.
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Lets say we do it old school. How long will that take? In a Hollywood assault (SpanishPhibEx, Bright Star, ect) Arty goes ashore at H+ 14. Bet you cannot guess how many times I've spent 2 or more days on ship because things get backed up? In 20+ years, I never saw the tubes hit the beach on time. How many tubes will that 2.5 MEB have to support maneuver? What about Reinforcing fires? General Support Fires? GS reinforcing Fires? Counterbattery Fire?
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What I am saying is this, we dont need little shells that fly miles (except MAYBE in the case of special ops missions but I am way in over my head there so I am not even going to talk about that further) what is needed for amphipious assaults is ACCURATE and DEVISTATING firepower that is ready at a moment's notice,
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And little bitty shells can do that
Big shells leave big holes in the ground that can impede movement inland. Nothing like having that M-1 tank slide into a 16in gun crater. Doing what your enemy can only dream of, causing a mobility kill and knocking the tank out of the fight.
And once again, OMFTS. You will see that we do need shells that travel miles and miles
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not dependant upon an aircraft that has limited fuel,
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Just signed a contract for those new Air refuel planes. No worries
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limited ammo, and whose base is miles and miles away.
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We sort of perfected the plane stack in Desert Storm. We know how to keep armed planes in the area.
after you fire your loadout, how long will you have to pull out of action to reload in a port?
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What about civilians? I want to see a report talking about how many civilians were living amongst the beach installations during the Pacific theater or along the Kuaiti coast while our ships were parked off their coast.
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take a look at the night time sat view of the earth. 80% of the people live within 350 miles of a shoreline. And a better example might be how many no fire areas did we have in the european assaults because we wanted to minimize civilian casualties. Same with Kuwait and the British assault into Basra. Notice we tore apart their defenses with pinpoint accuracy vice big bombs going boom. John McCain can probibly tell you from personal experence. You don't recieve a warm reception from the people you just dropped bombs on. No matter how much you claim to be liberating them.
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As for the second role of surface combatant? That is more clear cut to me. Design a ship that can cause more damage and take more damage than the other guy. Premise is the same as the old dreadnaught. Sink the other guy through superior fire power and survive through superior range and armor.
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So you plan to design a whole fleet of DDs and CGs to act as escorts for this thing? Or do you see a modern version of a Great white Fleet
composed of nothing but armored battleships?
Cause I'll sink your vulnerable escorts that are providing ASW support among other things then send my subs after you
Or just sink your escorts. Don't think the US public will see the victory in 3 sunken ships but one surviving because it was built to survive.
Battleships had their death warrant signed way back on July 20, 1921. Captain Osami Nagano was there to observe it. He got it. Some people still dont.