Future Battleship/Capital Ship Discussion

[B.Smitty]

Originally Posted by el_guapo

Pocket battleships. We don't need giant ones.

Maybe little, plastic ones you can stick in your pocket.

Nobody needs the real kind.

[HoratioNelson]

Obviously some disagree with you, people like the NSFSA. Or Defcon 6 and his very interesting Big Battleship Doctrine. I think his idea is quite well developed and it could have a place in the modern USN. Carriers and air power certainly have a central role in the USN, but battleships could have their niche as well. When it comes down to the simple job of blowing something up real good, choosing between sending a multi-million dollar F-35 JSF(which can be shot down), firing a multi-million dollar cruise missile (which can be intercepted) or shooting a few thousand dollar 16in shell, which you can't intercept or shoot down, i'd choose the shell. I will admit that carrier jets can fulfill many more missions, but in simply destroying a hardened target, a shell is both more cost-effective and efficient.

Oh well, the BB(X) as Defcon6 describes it, will never come into being. The Carrier Admirals were very assured in their victory after the Second World War, and i'm fairly sure there's no USN high ranking officials left with the balls to support a battleship project. Especially when faced with the behemoth competition that is US Naval Aviation and the Carrier Admirals. I sometimes wonder what kind of Navy America is running when their Surface Fleet is seen as secondary to Naval Aviation. But then I remember that they have the world's largest Navy, so I perish the thought.

[gunnut]

I like armored cruisers. Something in the 12,000t range with enough armor to deflect up to 5" gun fire and armed with 2 to 3 6" to 8" single tube gun mounts. Limited air defense. Up to 3 helos and/or UAVs for utility/spotting work.

[B.Smitty]

Originally Posted by HoratioNelson

Obviously some disagree with you, people like the NSFSA. Or Defcon 6 and his very interesting Big Battleship Doctrine. I think his idea is quite well developed and it could have a place in the modern USN.

This BB(X) is largely cut-n-pasted from web spec sheets.

Firstly, how can a ship that has,

* the displacement of nearly 4 DDG-1000s,
* as many 155m guns as 6 DDG-1000s,
* as many VLS cells as 8 DD(X)s
* adds 9 as yet undesigned 16" guns with exotic 400nm projectiles,
* has over two dozen 3" and 35mm mounts (why it needs so many is beyond me)
* has 90 Phalanx mounts?!! ("x5 20mm Mk. 15 CIWS guns in x18 locales" ) HOLY COW!! Did I read that right?

only cost twice as much as a DDG-1000?

Why does it have Mk 7 AEGIS and SPY-3? Isn't Mk 7 meant for SPY-1?

Why no volume search radar? Might as well just cut-n-paste all the DDG-1000 systems, not just SPY-3.

Why Mk36 GWS? It's designed to work with 5" Mk45 mounts, right? What is it intended to control? The 3" guns? How many guns can a Mk36 control? One? Two?

Why two different CIWS? Why so many 3" guns and below? What will all these little, unsteathy mounts do to the RCS of the ship? How many hundreds of crew will be required to maintain all of them?

Originally Posted by HoratioNelson

Carriers and air power certainly have a central role in the USN, but battleships could have their niche as well. When it comes down to the simple job of blowing something up real good, choosing between sending a multi-million dollar F-35 JSF(which can be shot down), firing a multi-million dollar cruise missile (which can be intercepted) or shooting a few thousand dollar 16in shell, which you can't intercept or shoot down, i'd choose the shell. I will admit that carrier jets can fulfill many more missions, but in simply destroying a hardened target, a shell is both more cost-effective and efficient.

It is neither more cost effective nor more efficient. A new battleship would be an extremely expensive platform for firing expensive munitions modest distances, or cheap munitions short distances.

Its exotic, 400nm, guided, scramjet, 16" gun rounds aren't going to be cheap.

Could this BB(X)s guns hit Baghdad? No. Afghanistan? No. Can it find it's own surface targets? Not unless they are within LOS.

[HoratioNelson]

The massive amount of Phalanx CIWS and 3in guns were the things that puzzled me about it. In WWI and WWII, a battleship's secondary guns (ranging from 3in to 5in in calibre) were quick firing, dual-purpose guns used both against fast targets like enemy torpedo boats and against aerial threats. Torpedo boats aren't too much of a threat in the modern era, with submarines fulfilling their role far more efficiently, and the time of the AA gun is pretty much gone with supersonic multirole combat aircraft like the F-16 being simply too quick and agile for AA guns to hit. So why have all those 3in guns, is it simply to add to the ship's broadside? With 9 x 16in guns, it can already pretty much blast most naval targets out of the water, and not many bunkers could resist a 2,200lb AP shell dropped on them at high speed, so why? The only secondary guns I could think a modern battleship would need would be a few 5in guns for hitting smaller targets that don't require using the sheer force of the main battery.

The massive amount of Phalanx guns also seems unneccasary to me. I think a military ship of this size would need maybe 6 x Phalanx CIWS. 3 on each side, with overlapping fields of fire for maximum coverage. Perhaps 8 guns at the maximum.

But hey, who am I?

[el_guapo]

Originally Posted by gunnut

I like armored cruisers. Something in the 12,000t range with enough armor to deflect up to 5" gun fire and armed with 2 to 3 6" to 8" single tube gun mounts. Limited air defense. Up to 3 helos and/or UAVs for utility/spotting work.

Super Cruiser, or Super Destroyer (don't know the difference) could work. I don't big battleships are neccessary. That's why I brought up pocket battleship, which is essentially a smaller battleship. Marines would appreciate such a platform. Infact naval gunfire has been always been appreciated by the grunts, but not the higher ups.

[gunnut]

Originally Posted by el_guapo

Super Cruiser, or Super Destroyer (don't know the difference) could work. I don't big battleships are neccessary. That's why I brought up pocket battleship, which is essentially a smaller battleship. Marines would appreciate such a platform. Infact naval gunfire has been always been appreciated by the grunts, but not the higher ups.

Well, the pocket battleships of the Graf Spee class was officially classified as armored cruisers.

Destroyers technically don't have any armor. Only cruisers and above have armor rated to stop gun fire, back in the days that is. So we pretty much have the same idea. A ship with guns for shore bombardment and armor to repel gun fire, and little else to offer to the fleet. Kinda niche existance and will never get funding.

[braindead]

If shore bombardment is the key , then why just not rent a tanker , fill it with VLS / MLRS(ATACMS) x 10 / /100 /1000, put a AEGIS next to it to defend from ASuW missiles , why bother with trillion-USD designs that have no match nor ever will have ? Because it is not as much fun as in designing one ?

[Shipwreck]

Originally Posted by B.Smitty

Why Mk36 GWS? It's designed to work with 5" Mk45 mounts, right? What is it intended to control? The 3" guns? How many guns can a Mk36 control? One? Two?

Back in the good ol' days (late 1980s - early 1990s), the Mark-160 Mod. 4 GCS (part of the Mark-34 GWS) was modified for use on the Iowa-class battleships, the nomenclature for this modified GCS being known as the Mark-160 Mod. 5.

Among a number of other features not present in the Mod. 4 system, the Mod. 5 was meant to provide a multiple gun capability (for 3 turrets with 3 x 16"/50 guns each) and allow a battleship to engage multiple separate targets simultaneously.

[B.Smitty]

Originally Posted by braindead

If shore bombardment is the key , then why just not rent a tanker , fill it with VLS / MLRS(ATACMS) x 10 / /100 /1000, put a AEGIS next to it to defend from ASuW missiles , why bother with trillion-USD designs that have no match nor ever will have ? Because it is not as much fun as in designing one ?

I've been thinking put POLAR/ATACMS/GMLRS in containers meant to be fired vertically, carry them aboard a container ship to a Sea Base, then load them on the decks of LCSs or HSVs for the run in close to shore, and fire directly from these decks.

They fire off their load, go back to the Sea Base to be reloaded, rinse, repeat.

Supplement this with 5" guns and TLAMs on AEGIS warships and you're done.

You have scalable levels of NSFS based on the need. Just dedicate more LCSs/HSVs to the task if you need more. If one of them gets knocked out, you don't lose your entire capability.

When massive NSFS isn't needed (which is 99.99% of the time), they can be reconfigured to perform other tasks.

[B.Smitty]

Originally Posted by Shipwreck

Back in the good ol' days (late 1980s - early 1990s), the Mark-160 Mod. 4 GCS (part of the Mark-34 GWS) was modified for use on the Iowa-class battleships, the nomenclature for this modified GCS being known as the Mark-160 Mod. 5.

Among a number of other features not present in the Mod. 4 system, the Mod. 5 was meant to provide a multiple gun capability (for 3 turrets with 3 x 16"/50 guns each) and allow a battleship to engage multiple separate targets simultaneously.

Interesting, I didn't know that.

Isn't DDG-1000 going to get a brand-new GCS?

Why not use that as a basis for this BB(X), rather than an old design like Mark-160/34/36?

[Master Chief]

That ship would be so top-heavy. It would never work. Way too much un-need weapons. The ship would need a CIC as big as a football field! Not to say how many techs. on board to fix any problems.

And one last point. I never knew phalanx was use in the "Falkland War"? Is there and record of this?

[ArmchairGeneral]

Originally Posted by Master Chief

And one last point. I never knew phalanx was use in the "Falkland War"? Is there and record of this?

Dunno if it was actually fired in anger, but it was operational on the Invincible class in the Falklands.

[Shipwreck]

Originally Posted by ArmchairGeneral

Dunno if it was actually fired in anger, but it was operational on the Invincible class in the Falklands.

HMS Invincible didn't have Phalanx during the Falklands War.

HMS Illustrious received hers shortly before her commissioning of 20 June 1982. On the same day UK declared hostilities to be over.

[ArmchairGeneral]

Originally Posted by Shipwreck

HMS Invincible didn't have Phalanx during the Falklands War.

HMS Illustrious received hers shortly before her commissioning of 20 June 1982. On the same day UK declared hostilities to be over.

I stand corrected. Now that I think about it, I remember reading that the British experience in the Falklands war was one reason for their buying Phalanx and Goalkeeper systems.