Bring back the battleships?

Great Debates
1

From an earlier friendly PM discussion between What Exit? and me, posted here with his consent:

Elendil’s Heir
An interesting idea… what do you think?
http://kbismarck.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=584

What Exit?
An old subject that came up often while I was serving. The basic reasoning was Battleships have little real purpose other than Flag Waving and Beach support. They require a huge crew which is a bigger problem than the fuel needs. Basically there was no need for Nuclear powered BBs and little need for the ones we had back in service. They were cool and fun and I would have loved to serve on the USS New Jersey but they had little real value to the USN. They were not worth the expense of the massive retrofit.

That said, a Nuke BB would be very cool.

There is a silly little but fun book I read when I was in the Navy where the put Nukes on the USS Texas and high powered particle guns and used the Texas to fight of commy invaders. I remember it being a fun read but highly illogical. Google has failed me in finding the name of the book or author.

Wow, through a convoluted Amazon search I found it.
THE AYES OF TEXAS(Paperback) by Daniel Da Cruz (Author)

Elendil’s Heir
Now you have to post a review!

I’m a big battleship fan. IMHO, bringing back the battleships was the best thing Reagan did in eight years. Even with their high operating costs, there’s no better way, ton for ton, to have that kind of both firepower and survivability. Hell, I think we should build a new class of battleships - and the first should be the USS Monitor!

Also, see the “In fiction” subheading here: USS California (CGN-36) - Wikipedia

What Exit?
I don’t remember the book well enough to review it. I think you would enjoy it but I would not say it was a good book. Just a fun read.

What does the fire power do for us? Ship to Ship combat is extremely rare. The beach bombardment it very useful when we need it but I am not convinced that justifies the cost of the crew. If you could build a new crew efficient one that had some 16" guns, missiles and effectively Aegis electronics it might make an excellent multi-purpose flag ship. However, there just aren’t any real Navies to fight* and the main purpose of ships now is to protect the carriers. So the armor & size seems like a luxury that is not justified. I love them, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t see the cost justification for them in these days. I would guess you could build a carrier for the same cost.

The key to the CGN success and use is that the crew is roughly ¼ that of the BBs. All they lack are big guns and armor. They actually have a lot of fire power though in their missiles.

  • I think we could put out to see 3-4 fleets at any one time that are more powerful than the next best Navy. I might be underestimating the USN in saying that.

Elendil’s Heir
“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” - George Washington, 1790

“…only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.” - John F. Kennedy, 1961

I like having a navy of unquestioned dominance. So did Great Britain, for more than a century.

The Marines are on record, not surprisingly, in favor of a robust shore-bombardment capability; you can never tell when you might need it. And shipkiller missiles have only grown deadlier since the Falklands War and the USS Stark incident, so armor is a definite plus. I strongly believe there’s still a place for battleships in our mix of naval forces (we don’t have CGNs anymore, either, alas).

Greater efficiency and smaller crews through smart, cost-effective automation would certainly be a good idea, though.

What Exit?
Wait, the CGNs are gone? Holy Cow, I had no idea. I see they’ve been gone for a while now.

I thought the only purpose of the Cruiser in today’s Navy was to carry the Aegis combat control systems. They stopped being combat ships long ago. Basically missile platforms. As they now build smaller, better and more advanced Aegis systems on Destroyers, the Cruiser is probably dying off. Beside those Arleigh Burkes are as big or bigger than most of the past Cruisers.

The Zumwalt-class destroyer will look almost like your Monitor and be heavier than the CGNs: Zumwalt-class destroyer - Wikipedia

I guess my only concern with Cruisers were the fact that the Aegis one kept me safe on the Ranger.

Destroyers generally do everything a Cruiser use to do.

Elendil’s Heir
Feh. According to that Wiki article, we’re going to have two or three Zumwalt-class destroyers, at most. Congress, not for the first time in naval funding, is being penny-wise and pound-foolish.

What Exit?
I actually sent that before reading the article. I had no idea the order had been dropped to 2-3 Zumwalts.

It still seems like the Cruiser need is simply being replaced by large Destroyers.

I agree we need the ability to rapidly deployed a beach softening ship. The answer there has always been BB and we still have nothing better though if you can get a flight of B52s** nearby they were nearly as good.

What are the current plans for a beach invasion? Just don’t bother? Use Copters? Smart Bombs from Carrier Jets?

** The Air Force is planning to keep the B52s flying until 2040. The B52H are now approved to fly on FT jet fuel.

Elendil’s Heir
Air Force jets are going to be subject to flak and SAMs, and the Marines are historically leery of relying on anyone other than the Navy to supply their needs (transport, medical, etc.). I don’t think that’s the answer.

Amazing that B-52s are going to be aloft for so long. It’ll far and away be the longest-serving active-inventory U.S. warplane, I’d guess.

What Exit?
True on both counts.

So now we throw the topic open for GD Dopers. What do you think?

2

There is no conceivable realistic situation in which we would have to invade a country with marines landing on a beach. I vote we build a government-funded university with free tuition for 10 thousand kids a year rather than build and maintain a lumbering monstrous floating behemoth just because it’s scary and looks cool. Almost anything we could do with that money would be better than building giant slabs of metal with no greater purpose than launching a bunch of shit really far.

3

How about Marines in power armor instead?

4

Not strictly true. However, I agree that it’s a low-probability scenario. Why should we spend billions on dollars on a massive weapon platform that’s only good for one relatively uncommon thing?

5

Battleships are a complete waste of money. So is the rest of the U. S. Navy. so is most of the U. S. military. As for President Washington’s quote there, he 's wrong. Preparing for war does not preserve peace. It preserves war.

Consider this for a moment. Suppose that America spent $500,000,000,000 dollars a year on its military, and that military just sat around year after year without doing anything. What would happen? Obviously the American taxpayers would wonder why they were spending so much money on an institution that accomplished nothing. They would would demand that the military budget be cut.

There are powerful interests who are interested in maintaining a large military. Those would include the actual soldiers, the commanders, companies that contract with the military, and politicians who want to brag about how much they spend on the military. Since these people don’t want budget cuts, the result is obvious: war. We’ll go to war for the purpose of justifying our large military. Indeed, since the creation of a standing army in the 1840’s, America has been going to war with remarkable regularity. Sometimes the war came to us, but that hasn’t happened since 1945. Since that time, it’s always been us going out of our way to start the war.

Of course I do not mean to suggest that everyone who supports any war does so just to justify a large military. I merely mean that for some people, including some powerful people, a large military provides an incentive to lean in that direction. Shrink the military, and you’ll get fewer wars.

Consider the Second Iraq War. Having a large military was a necessary condition for starting that war. If our military was a more reasonable size, we wouldn’t have gone to war, and a million lives would have been saved.

Personally, I think that the U. S. military could be reduced by ninety percent. This would also have another obvious advantage: it would save money. We’ve agonized over the $400,000,000,000 deficits for the past few years, but few people realize that we could have had balanced budgets if we weren’t spending all that money on the military. Even in our current crisis, trimming the military could take us half the distance to a balanced budget.

6

I know you’re agreeing with me, but I’m curious to know what scenario you were thinking of when you said “low-probability”. I’m wracking my brain trying to think of one that’s even remotely possible, and I can’t do it. Are we talking about far-fetched ideas like having to invade Japan, Australia, or England?

7

I’m also in agreement with Mosier about battleships being useless. It amazes me how many people still think that WWII is going on, or could flare back up again at any moment. In reality, it’s been more than fifty years since the last time armies clashed in the field for control of territory. Modern warfare is guerilla warfare. There is no exception. There is zero possibility of the United States ever having to make an amphibious landing under fire.

8

The Confederacy firing on Ft. Sumter, or the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, or the 9-11 Al Qaeda attacks were all equally far-fetched, almost impossible even, a decade before they happened. We cannot know what the future holds.

9

Fat lot of good the battleships did us in those scenarios, huh.

10

I was temporarily attached to a Marine unit on the New Jersey - awesome experience.

I wonder if the Battleships would be of help in some of the Middle East / Africa patrolling? As foreign nations buy old ships, would a Battleship help in keeping things safe?

For beach assaults, that was part of Iraq. I could see needing it in Iran for a second front. We went ashore in Somalia, but that was a photo op. The question of a beach assault is really a question of how we will use our military in the years to come.

11

I can think of one possible scenario where a beach invasion might make sense. If the US did end up in an armed conflict with North Korea, I’d think a invasion well north of the DMZ might make sense to avoid a long and costly fight throught the North Korean DMZ defences…

But as others have stated earlier - BBs are far to expensive, and the idea of a battle ship has been obsolete since the Prince of Wales was sunk by Japanese aircraft in 1942. You’d have to pour way to much resources into a platform that can be taken out through low cost means, particulaily today with the plethora of very good anti-ship missiles. Apart from carriers, no ships today has any reason to be bigger than a destroyer/frigate class.

As for shore bombardment - why not bring back some sort of gunboat. A small vessel with one large gun - a fleet of eight of these would be equal in firepower to a battle ship, and they would be very cheap and the Navy could easily afford the cost of loosing a few… (In terms of monies, not man power)

12

It’s not insane to think that in the next twenty years or so, US Marines would make landings in Somalia, Pakistan, or Iran. I would rate that as a “low probability” scenario. That said, couldn’t that sort of beach support fire come from a small group of smaller ships designed to do the same thing?

13

Actually in all three of those cases, somebody in the United States military or intelligence community did predict the event some years before it happened. However, that’s missing the main point. WWII is over and so is the style of fighting that it involved. Armies don’t clash in the field because it would be suicidal to do so. An army taking up a position can be bombarded by airplanes or missiles with impunity. That’s why modern warfare is guerilla warfare. The dominant power is always the one that holds air supremacy. Anyone who opposes that dominant power must live in hiding, striking with guerilla attacks, terrorism, IEDs, assassinations, and so forth. It was true in Vietnam. It was true in Algeria. It is true in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s not going to change. That we’ll someday have an amphibious landing in hostile territory is as impossible as going back to war with swords and spears.

14

Small boats currently don’t have the ability to do a good job of beach support but between heavy bomb loads from bombers, smart bombs and missile strikes we might have new and more accurate options. There is also talk of rocket assisted shells so you can send a 5" shell 40-60 miles instead of 12-13 miles. These are/were under development. I think the money is better spent on these new systems than the glorious Battleships.

15

You know what can also soften a beach? Aircraft. A flight of Apaches can support a beach landing just as well as a floating artillary battery.

And if you really want ships bombarding the shore, stick an MLRSon a frigate. You’ll have all the fire support you’ll need.

16

Yes, battleships are good for softening up a beach for a landing, but you could also do that job with missiles or planes. The usual objection to this is that 16" shells are cheaper than missiles, and that’s true, if you get to the point of actually using them. But given that the expected probability of needing a beach assault is low, we have to figure that into the cost-benefit analysis. Battleships are great for beach assaults, but a waste of money if we don’t, but the same planes and missiles that could be used for landings could also be used for other purposes.

17

We start off by agreeing. I love those old battleships, but they make no sense in the modern navy. Shore bombardment is the only conceivable scenario in which they are useful, but there are replacements even in that role. With B-2’s being able to fly all the way to most engagement sites and back again.

This is absolutely wrong. The U.S. downgraded so much of its military after WWII that it barely had the men to send to Korea. That didn’t seem to usher in an era of peace, did it?

The only times of relative peace in modern history were during the Pax Brittania and the Pax Americana, when a relatively benign government had overwhelming military strength. The existence of the U.S. carrier fleet acts as a curb on violence around the world. The knowledge that the U.S. will intervene in conflicts keeps a lot of them from starting.

“If you wish for peace, prepare for war.”

Countries aren’t attacked because they are too strong - they are attacked because they are weak.

You’ll maybe get fewer wars that the U.S. starts. You’ll get a lot more that other countries start. Why did Saddam invade Kuwait? Because he became convinced that the U.S. would not come to Kuwait’s aid. This fundamental question of “Will the United States stop me?” keeps an awful lot of aggression in check around the world.

The only thing I want to say here is that nowhere NEAR one million people died in the Iraq war. Even the grossly flawed Lancet study came up with around 600,000. The true number is likely half of that or less.

And I think that if the U.S. military was 1/10 its size, conflict would erupt around the world.

18

China? Pakistan?

19

Now, there has been talk of a completely new class of battleships which use railguns which can fire finned (guided) projectiles from hundreds of miles away with huge kinetic energies.

20

Also, forgive me if I’m misremembering, but going back to the WW2 archetype, didn’t a lot of pre-invasion “softening” bombardment (both naval and air) in various fronts of that war turn up to not “soften” the defenses quite as much as expected? Then again, that may have come from a lack of precision munitions, wherein a majority of your shells/bombs would not even come close to an actual enemy position and just blew sand in the air …

Nevertheless, one does understand the conceptual attractiveness of a shore-bombardment system that does not require a crew to actually overfly the hot zone (bomber) and where you can have a large amount of less-expensive warheads on a fast-reloading launch device. As suggested by the concepts brought up by both abel29a and Alessan, THAT could be addressed instead through the creation of an actual Naval Fire Support Bombardment System, either on a dedicated vessel or as a module that takes the place of part of the weapons suite on a multipurpose platform. You’d probably get away with putting that on something Cruiser-class, or even on something LSD-class (which ISTM the Marines would love); going the whole Battleship megillah would be an inefficient use of resources for this type of contingency. IMO battleships, in their day, were huge and mighty and awesome because they had to be to pack the kind of shell-and-powder-based weapons suite and armor to be able to take on ANY other major surface vessel, while on high seas deployments, and as a bonus provide shore bombardment support in the kind of quantities that older carrier-based bombers could not deliver. Under current naval doctrine, though, there is no call for a vessel that would be expected to be able to slug it out against all comers.