One day, when weapons are mounted in orbiting platforms aiming down on the oceans of the world, we’ll be discussing whether ships are at too great a risk. Yes, I realize there is a treaty against placing WMD in space, but… I doubt North Korea etc. will give that a second thought. The future is in stealth and speed, not lumbering battleships.
How much longer are even air craft carriers going to be a thing? You can launch a drone off a much smaller ship, AIUI, and we’re likely not that far off from being able to replace all our combat aircraft with drones. Saying, “The same argument applies to aircraft carriers,” isn’t an argument in favor of battleships, it’s an argument against aircraft carriers.
Indeed, see post #11
The problem with the arsenal ship is it fills a niche that doesn’t exist. The idea of the arsenal ship to have 500 or so vertical launch cells filled with cruise missiles being controlled remotely by an Aegis cruiser is rather silly; the Aegis cruiser itself has 144 vertical launch cells and there is nothing preventing all 144 of them from being filled with cruise missiles and having it escorted by a second Aegis cruiser. More importantly, the limiting factor in the use of Tomahawks has always been their cost, not the availability of launch platforms for them. The Pentagon has never been faced with the situation where if only it could mass fire another 500 Tomahawks at once but lacked the launch platforms to do it. The question on the use of Tomahawks has always been if the target is worth throwing over one and a half million dollars at.
To expand upon Dissonances point. The problem with resisting modern heavy torpedos is not making a hull that resists being penetrated by the torpedo warhead. Modern torpedos don’t work by making holes in the target ship.
They explode underneath the keel, this creates a brief explosion of steam followed by an implosion into the resulting momentary vaccum. This uses the ships own weight against it to crack it’s keel like an egg. In extreme cases a ship can literally break in half.
More on the theory here.http://fas.org/man/dod-101/navy/docs/es310/uw_wpns/uw_wpns.htm
Not at all. What you have to ask yourself is whether or not they can fulfill the mission we are asking them to do, not whether they can survives some low probability event that, if it happens we will have more to worry about than whether we lost a carrier or a battleship because we are now in a nuclear war. Or, to put it another way, if carriers have been obsolete for going on 70+ years now (since the advent of nuclear weapons) then how many have we lost so far to these weapons? Zero I believe. And how much utility have we gotten out of this ‘obsolete’ weapons system? I think that would be a non-zero figure even from those who don’t think carriers are that useful (and a more realistic assessment would show that, in fact, the US has gotten a hell of a lot out of our carriers and that much of our global military power in fact rests in this weapons system and our ability to use it to project power globally). And how likely is it that a nation state will use a nuke on a carrier in the future? I’d say it’s pretty low on the probability scale, since if you are going to stick your neck out and risk your entire population you are probably not going to do so by wasting your nuke on a carrier when hitting a city would be more affective in the short term. In the long term you will probably be smoking glass if you do launch a nuke, since every other nuclear power aligned with the US will most likely retaliate.
I remember the discussion (such as it was) when the Navy offered to home-port the USS Missouri (?) in SF.
This was 30 years ago, just for reference.
There was a great deal of snickering/chuckles about Uncle Ronnie wanting to re-create the Navy of his youth - and lots of predictions that the BB’s would not be around in 10 years.
And now we have more people who think a huge target that can throw a shell all of 28 miles is worth the cost of a BB?
I have no idea if the various anti-ship technologies (the “bubble” torpedo mentioned, the Chinese Silkworm missile, the Iranian gunboat swarm) will or won’t kill any given class of surface ship, but I am certain that the first targets will be the carriers.
Adding a BB to the mix? Would any self-respecting military even bother killing it? I would guess the guided-missile destroyers would be a bigger threat than even a “modern” BB.
Can anybody tell me what a “modern” BB would look like? How would it differ from the Iowa-Class?
I’m guessing we will forgo the 3’ of armor on the Command/Control module, but will we keep the huge artillery?
How many “cheap” shells do you have to deliver from this multi-billion dollar monstrosity before they become cheaper than a cruise missile from a destroyer?
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Can anybody tell me what a “modern” BB would look like? How would it differ from the Iowa-Class?
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Several people upthread have given various concepts of what it could be. My question to you is why do you think it would be an Iowa? Why would it have to have the same types of turrets and 16 or 18" guns?? Why would we build a modern ship with a design from 70 years ago? We don’t build destroyers to the same designs as 70 years ago. Our cruisers today aren’t the same as they were 70 years ago, nor are our subs. Carriers are sort of like they were 70 years ago I suppose, but even they are different. So, why would we build a BB the same today as we did 70 years ago?
For instance, in the other linked thread I suggested that instead of large guns we could equip a theoretical new BB with something like the MLRS (but larger with vastly extended range and capability) used by the army today if we wanted shore bombardment. Or maybe they would be large missile platforms with large numbers of anti-air capabilities. Or it could be a large anti-sub platform. Or they could be a mixture of those things coupled with, say, newer rail gun tech and perhaps more advanced Aegis Combat System capabilities. It would all depend on what role someone envisioned for this thing and what you wanted it to do. You could do a lot with a bigger platform that would be very useful to a future carrier battle group, increasing it’s capabilities and combat effectiveness. But saying that a BB designed 70 years ago would be built the same today and then using that strawman to handwave whether or not a BB could be useful really is meaningless, since, like I said, every modern ship today is vastly different in form and function than it’s WWII 70 year old counterpart.
Nor heavy armor. I think it was the heavy armor and the ability to go toe to toe against other battleships that distinguished them from cruisers.
With modern satellites, drones, long range cruise missiles and naval air power, a ship is not going to survive a battle by virtue of having thicker armor.
About the same size as a world war two heavy cruiser, bout the same in armor plating. Nuclear powered, at most 8 inch main gun mount’s . Secondary arnament likely to be both rail and lazer.
Declan
Because the Iowa is what people mean when they refer to a “battleship”(and the smaller but very similar ships that came before it).
Sure, you can talk about some kind of ultra-advanced warship with dual railguns, nuclear propulsion, an onboard drone aircraft launch system, and armor able to stop fragments…and maybe you could call such a vehicle a “battleship”.
But it’s not what most people in this thread mean. The defining features of a battleship are :
- Thick enough armor to take direct hits from other peer vessels including other battleships
- Banks of turreted guns as pretty much the only weapon.
That’s obsolete.
Whether or not modern weapons would be effective against modern battleship armor is a question of design. If a warhead is designed to do damage to a thin hull, it won’t do a thing to several inches of steel, much less modern armor.
A newly-designed battleship would self-evidently have integrated missile defenses.
The reactive armor is simply an example of what is possible with a modern design. Same with Aegis–it is utterly absurd to think that battleship design reached the ultimate pinnacle 70 years ago.
History shows that saying “X will never happen” is a very dangerous game.
I’m sure that people who deny the utility of armor don’t actually MEAN military-wide. But the shrill cries of “armor useless!” don’t bother to make any qualifications or exceptions.
If railguns turn out to be as effective as the 16-inchers, then by all means use them if they’re cheaper.
It looks like a Tomahawk can carry 1,000 lbs of high explosive. By contrast, a 16-inch gun can fire a 2,700 lb armor-piercing shell! Since battleships were made to go up against other battleships, I don’t think the cruise missile issue is an insurmountable problem.
The cost of operations is one major advantage that a battleship has.
http://www.g2mil.com/battleships.htm
And here’s something interesting–
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.htm
Nobody’s going to use a cruise missile to create a landing zone.
Now that $500 figure is doubtless out of date. But even allowing a generous rate for inflation, it’s clear that a whole slew of shells would still be cheaper than one missile.
I didn’t say they were obsolete for the last 70 years, I said they were just becoming obsolete now. And not because of nukes, but because of drones.
The US has been doing drones longer and with more development than any other nation and I have serious doubts we have a drone that could successfully attack a carrier battle group and hit one of the heavies. I realize that Iran and China, as well as several other hostile or potentially unfriendly nations (though I don’t necessarily put China in either of those categories) are developing drones of their own, but looking at what the Europeans and US has I don’t think it’s a significant worry. I’d also be shocked if the US Navy, knowing all of this AND having drone development programs of their own haven’t looked into counter measures for a potential threat from this quarter. My WAG is it will really be a threat after the US has an operational air wing of carrier based drones and has at least shown the concept enough that other countries will follow along. China is having enough troubles getting it’s re-tread carrier and it’s air wing spun up to be pushing the envelop wrt researching and developing a whole new level of drone tech. Iran has no carriers, so any drones they use would be coming from a rather long way away and from land based operators, and I have my doubts they have the software advanced to the stage that their drones could engage automatically (or even find a US carrier group on their own). India has some good drone tech, but I don’t think it’s on par with what the US or Europe has as yet.
I think this potential threat is years away, if ever, and is on par with the Russians super torpedo and the Chinese/Iranian super missile. You don’t want to discount it or handwave it away, and you want to look into it as a threat in a serious way, but you don’t need to toss out the baby with the bath water or automatically leap to the conclusion that your weapon system is obsolete or even becoming obsolete based on a system thus far unproven in combat and one that may never be tested in battle.
Like I said, the role and capabilities, as well as composition of several other ship types have changed radically since WWII, yet we call those basically the same name. I don’t see it as that much of a stretch that if the Navy ever did decide to build a larger capital ship to go along with a carrier battle group to call it a battleship (or a BBM to designate missile or maybe a BBLR for laser/rail gun). I seriously doubt that if the US Navy built one today it would be much like an Iowa…probably as different from an Iowa as a modern cruiser or destroyer is from it’s WWII ancestor.
I think you’re still missing my point. It isn’t that aircraft carriers are going to be made obsolete because of the danger of drones attacking them. It’s that aircraft carriers are going to made obsolete because air combat is going to become entirely drone-centered, which will obviate the need for such a large launch platform.
I don’t believe that will be the case, however. I suppose time will tell. If so, we are talking about years or even decades down the pike before that becomes a reality. Today you need to deploy your drones and their handlers in theater to have them be effective. No one is going to build a drone that takes a human out of the decision loop for firing a weapon. And drones with the capabilities of penetrating a modern defense, either on land or at sea are going to cost nearly as much as a conventional air craft (leaving aside the human cost of risking a human pilots life). Either they will be stealthy with advanced ECM and other penetration aids (which means heavy dollars) or you’ll need a metric butt load of them WITH advanced missiles at a minimum and you can expect to lose a bunch. Either way to increase range and capabilities enough to use the things against an enemy who has more than a couple of schmucks driving around with a cell phone in a truck it’s going to cost a lot, and today even the US doesn’t have that capability…and as I said, we’ve been doing this longer and have invested more in it than anyone else has as yet. So, I don’t think we need to start scrapping the carriers just yet (in fact, my WAG is that we will leverage our carriers and probably build new ones with mixed wings of humans and drones for different missions).
*etc. *includes Israel?
Which field did you come out of? I’m guessing left…
At least you dropped the horseshit about submarines only just becoming advanced enough to be a threat when battleships were retired and how easily the threat of torpedoes could be overcome by a double-hull with energy-absorbing material in-between. You clearly do not understand how reactive armor works any better than you understand how torpedoes work if you think you can coat a battleship with ERA blocks to missile proof it against missiles with 2,000lb warheads travelling at mach 3. A warship is not a tank; an anti-ship missile isn’t trying to punch a tiny hole in the side of a ship to spew molten metal around the cramped crew compartment the way an ATGM is. Anti-ship missiles aren’t HEAT warheads or long rod penetrators.
There is absolutely nothing history shows to be dangerous about saying “X will never happen” if X happens to be absurd. A battleship will never pummel its opponent with 16" shells with a range of 25nm when the engagement will have been settled one way or the other long before anything gets that close. You are essentially arguing that we arm our soldiers with pikes since they dominated the battlefield in the day of phalanxes and responding to people pointing out the flaw in this line of reasoning with “saying X will never happen is a dangerous game”.
A Tomahawk also has a range of 1,350nm, and unlike a 16" AP shell has an actual use. What, exactly, is a 16" AP shell going to be needed for aside from piercing the armor of another battleship?
Complete and utter tripe; not only is comparing the costs of Tomahawks vs. 16" HC shells an exercise in apples vs. oranges as they serve completely different roles, you’ve ignored the cost of building and operating an entire battleship to tote around those 16" naval rifles. Sure, battleships were great for shore bombardment, but the Marines aren’t going to be storming the beaches of Iwo Jima the same way they did in WW2 again anytime soon.