Also, the kinetic impact damage of a Mach 2 missile is greater than that of a subsonic missile.
Yes, there are some carrier killer missiles that have been developed. They are relatively rare and only a few militaries even have one. There seems to be an assumption that as long as a plane carrying one gets within 500 miles the press the fire button and scratch one carrier or battleship.
It is nowhere near so simple or certain.
Not to mention it is normal to keep high value targets out of a dangerous area till you have secured the air (same goes for carriers today).
No one is arguing that sinking a battleship with todays (relatively) small warhead would be difficult. But repairing wooden aircraft carrier’s flight deck it’s the same thing as repairing radar and communication gear. And machine shops on board can’t create that. We just don’t do that at sea right now. You keep bringing up Bismarck. Way before she sunk, she was ineffective as a fighting warship.
I’m guessing battleships would have Aegis escorts.
Yorktown had a lot more trouble than a busted flight deck. That said one place Americans excelled at far beyond their Japanese counterparts was damage control. Those guys were really, really good at it.
Also, while you cannot fabricate every part aboard a ship they do carry replacements on board for a lot of critical stuff. I’d hate to think a whole US carrier could be taken out because a radar mast malfunctioned and they’d have to go home to fix it.
And yeah, Bismarck was indeed combat ineffective long before she sank. Hell, with her steering broke she was already nearly a sitting duck. The point is she took 300+ shells to get there. Compare that with a handful of Exocet missiles.
And while some poo-poo Exocets in favor of supersonic carrier killers realize Exocets are far and away the most likely anti-ship missile to be faced out there. Seems everyone has those (or something very similar like the Harpoon).
I think you may be talking about the DF-21 “carrier killer” missile. That is only one of the missiles I mentioned at the end of my post (about the concern on ASBM). The other missiles that have come along way include the Sizzler (used by about eight countries), the Sunburn (used by our three most likely adversaries), the Strobile (foreign sales are relatively new), and some others.
Look, you just aren’t going to get anywhere arguing that ships should be able to withstand a few missile hits, because missiles are getting more lethal and more numerous. It’s a loser of an idea. Every now and then, the pendulum in warfare swings between offense and defense. For anti ship weapons, the offense currently has the advantage in a very big way. It’s anachronistic and frankly silly to believe the counter to that is adding more armor. Add as much armor as you like: it will just make ships hideously more expensive and take them longer to rust at the bottom of the sea.
And therein lies perhaps a critical question that goes to the heart of the OP - What is a battleship? Is a BB defined in terms of its raw or nominal size, weight, and/or armament (regardless of what it is doing), or is it defined in terms of the traditional role of a battleship? By contrast, computers have shrunken in size dramatically over the past 50 years, but very few people would claim that a modern “server” that fits in a rack and can be lifted by a midget with an ankle problem is any less a “server” than one of those room-filling monstrosities of the 1950’s. Why can’t a battleship be more compact if it can sail and blast its way around the seas as well as a full-size one?
I think most would agree that a WW2-era battleship is of marginal utility today in terms of its originally intended role. So what can we do to get a better naval ship but make sure that our ship keeps it’s “battleship” classification? Do we try to find a novel way to reuse a WW1 or WW2-style battleship (I don’t know, pack it with explosives and use it to ram harbors or something) or do we look to see what we can build that can accomplish the role that was performed by WW1/2 battleships, even if it doesn’t look like grandpa’s battleship?
Arguing that a battleship could shrug off a hit from an Exocet is pointless; the Exocet wasn’t designed to penetrate several inches of armor because nobody bothers to waste the effort of putting several inches of armor on their ships anymore. If they did, you can bet the Exocet would have been designed to deal with it. As it was, the Exocet had one of the smallest warheads on an anti-ship missile and it mission killed the Stark and sank the Sheffield. Quite unintentionally there are and were a large number of anti-ship missiles that would have had no problem dealing with the armor plating on the reactivated Iowas in the 1980s. In the event the Cold War went hot, the Iowas weren’t going to be laughing off hits from Kh-15s (AS-16 Kickback) performing terminal dives from 130,000 feet at Mach 5 or P-270 Moskits (SS-N-22 Sunburn) seaskimming at Mach 3 with 710lb warheads. The future looks even bleaker, the BrahMos-II in joint development by India and Russia will use a scramjet to travel at Mach 7.
There’s a reason navies stopped putting armor belts on warships; they realized it was pointless to do so. Its also the reason navies stopped having multi-barreled turrets of high caliber guns as the main battery of warships. Control of the seas isn’t going to be determined by ships coming within visual range of each other and trading broadsides anymore, which is the only thing belt armor and main batteries are really good for. The battleship has a romantic nostalgia to it, but like horse cavalry it had its day and its not coming back.
Aegis escorts can’t clear the air, they can only clear the *nearest *air, and maybe possibly could conceivably intercept incoming AS missiles [citation needed]. But you need interceptors flying CAP to be any safe from air attacks happening at all - after all, if they have standoff weaponry they can just launch them from beyond the Aegis’ AA range, go home and repeat. As long as they have more missiles than the Aegis cruiser has stores, they win since there’s no way they’re losing a plane.
Aegis could also be defeated, for example by a torpedo-bearing missile (i.e. a cruise missile that flies just above the sea to avoid detection then drops a torpedo in the water once it is within ~10 nm of its target. Antimissile *that *!).
Bottomline : having pointies that can hunt down and destroy the enemy air force before it has a chance to shoot in the first place is a must. BBs don’t really help on that front, nor do Aegis cruisers.
Note that Ticonderoga class cruisers were originally designated as destroyers, but were renamed “cruisers” as a PR move. Aside from the 22 Ticonderoga missile cruisers, the Russians have the Kirov and three missile cruisers, and Peru has one cruiser. Aaaand, that’s it. And the Arleigh Burke class ships replacing them are destroyers.
So what’s the role of the battleship, exactly? We can rename any of our ships as “battleships” if we like, but what is the purpose of such reclassification? If they don’t have heavy armor, aren’t really big, and don’t have heavy guns, then what’s the purpose of naming them battleships?
Do we need to build bigger non-carrier surface ships? What’s the purpose of building capital ships? To have machine shops and hospital facilities and command and control capabilities? We already have carriers as our floating naval bases, do we really need extra floating naval bases that can’t launch airplanes? It’s great to have a floating naval base, but we already have a lot of naval bases around the world on land, and we already have 10 supercarriers.
Do we need ships with heavier armor? The guys at the navy figure the best protection is killing the other guy before he has a chance to shoot you. Lots of sensors and ECM and computers and anti-ship, anti-aircraft, anti-missile, anti-submarine weapons are good. But an AEGIS system that protects you against missiles isn’t the same thing as an armor belt.
Do we need ships with heavier weapons? Sure, but with modern missile systems you don’t need bigger ships to carry heavy missiles. If you want an 18 inch cannon on a turret you need a gigantic heavy ship to carry it. If you want to fire missiles, you can do so on a variety of smaller ships. Today’s destroyers carry the heaviest weapons we have, so there’s no reason to build a bigger ship to carry a heavier weapon that doesn’t yet exist. And note that the really big weapons in the modern navy are in fact nuclear bombs. We’re not bringing back a ship with 18 inch cannons, even if such a ship would be a great shore bombardment platform it would only be useful for pounding the crap out of third world countries. Yes, a 18 inch cannon shell is cheaper than a missile, but a ship that can carry an 18 inch cannon is not cheap. And so the ships that carry the heavy weapons today don’t have to be big ships, and thus shouldn’t be designated battleships.
These new gen BBs if built would still need to travel with Carriers groups. The E-2D Hawkeyes should be able to deal with the described torp-bearing missile in conjunction with Aegis (which will probably destroyers BTW). I’m fairly sure the E-2s of the 80s that we had could detect low flying missiles with ease and work with the Phalanx machine guns systems to shoot them down. The Phalanx CIWS of the 80s had an excellent success rate vs low flying and indeed any incoming missiles. Today’s should be far better.
Right, but if your BBX needs to hide behind the carrier, then what role does it fill exactly?
It’s not going out and pounding the crap out of other ships. It’s not shooting down planes. It’s not destroying missiles. It’s not hunting subs. It’s not supporting amphibious invasions. It’s sticking close to the carrier, so it can’t be a floating naval base, that’s the carrier’s role. So what’s it’s job again?
None really, I’m strongly on the side of there not being any need for one, just pointing out how it would be protected if it existed. They would work in conjunction with carrier group if they existed at all.
There are three aircraft that can carry that in the Russian inventory. The Tu-160 which is a Russian B1 bomber that they have 16 of. The Tu-22M3 Backfire C which hasn’t been built since 1993. And the Tu-95MS-6 ‘Bear-H’ which was originally designed in 1952 with the Bear-H coming online in 1981.
I am not saying those aren’t dangerous but you keep throwing out that they have this missile as a slam dunk against naval assets and nothing could be further from the truth. Successfully launching that missile and hitting a carrier or BB is no easy task and not one I would want to undertake against modern air assets the US possesses to stop precisely this sort of thing (the US spends a lot of money on the military…you think they hadn’t thought about this?).
75 mile range? Have fun getting that close.
Far from a proven design. Also has a 180 mile range so again, have fun getting that close.
Look, I am not saying there are no threats to a battleship. It is war. It is a chess match. Each side maneuvering for advantage. A battleship is but one piece in the puzzle. Can it be killed? Sure but remember the US will be doing its level best to see that doesn’t happen and if you are the enemy and think it’ll be easy to sink a carrier or BB cuz you have a whiz-bang missile you should think again.
Yeah, modern torpedoes swim under the ship and explode causing a bubble that the ship “falls” into breaking its back (keel). I am not sure there is any defense against that armor or structure wise. That said the sub has to get close enough to shoot and while they certainly can it is not easy for them.
Battleships in WWII were rarely used for ship-to-ship engagements. Their main role was in support of amphibious landings. In this role they excelled.
Also, people here are thinking of battleships as tactical weapons. They are more a strategic weapon akin to a strategic bomber. They have a threat level all their own and can scare opponents in ways a missile cruiser never will (leaving nukes off the table).
If we assume a modern BB then you can get rid of the numerous small cannons. Make the ship nuclear powered. Give it its massive main guns. Some of the new rail guns and massive AAA defensive prowess. Add in missiles too (the Iowas had those I think).
What range do you think those massive main guns are going to have? In their heyday battleships had much longer range than any other ship, due to those extremely heavy guns. They could engage and sink enemy ships before the smaller ships could fire back. And this was the main advantage of the heavy guns.
But those guns are just a waste of time in modern engagements when aircraft, missiles and torpedoes are the weapons that a warship has to face.
When you laugh off the idea of an enemy getting close enough to launch a ship-killer missile without getting destroyed, what exactly do you think is going to destroy the attacking ship? It isn’t the main guns of the battleship, which will be quite useless. So now you’re left with a massive AA capability, and lots of missiles. And railguns, if and when we build one that work better than simple missiles. Except we already have ships that have massive AA, missiles, and torpedoes, the aforementioned missile cruisers and destroyers.
If we ever get railguns that are worth mounting on a warship, then we need to figure out the best size of ship to mount them on, and whether that ship needs to be nuclear powered. Note that all the nuclear cruisers we used to have are now retired, today we have nuclear subs but the only nuclear surface ships are the supercarriers. And the Russkis have their single Kirov-class battlecruiser, and a couple of icebreakers. But note that the Kirov class cruisers don’t have main guns, only missiles and AA cannon and no armor belt.
I very much doubt that if a modern BB was designed, the main gun armament would exceed 12 inch rifles. For me, the appropriate caliber would be between six inch and 8 inch rifles, with a variety of range extending projectiles. The modern navy for most of the world is a frigate navy. Small caliber cannon for a “main” gun, and a brace of surface to surface missiles that got sold as a package with the fig.
For all the torpedo’s vaunted capabilities, the British navy still used a world war two torpedo to sink the General Belgrano in the falklands war, over one of the modern spearfish torpedos. So if the spearfish is equivalent to a mk 48 adcap, then it puts a crimp into some folks world view that the BB is vernerable to a torpedo.
Declan
It does? The Phalanx has a 0% success rate in combat; it never engaged a single missile fired at a ship in anger. The Phalanx on the Stark certainly didn’t do it any good. The Phalanx is also an entirely autonomous weapon system designed to provide a last ditch hard kill defense against an anti-ship missile about to impact the ship; it didn’t work in conjunction with the E-2 in any way. The only things the Phalanx has killed has been in accidents:
So yeah, the only thing the Phalanx has shot down in anger was the USS Missouri’s Super Rapid Blooming Offboard Chaff during Desert Storm which it decided was a threat; luckily the four rounds that hit the Missouri didn’t kill anyone. The reason the Stark’s Phalanx didn’t do it any good was it was in standby mode, if it were left in autonomous mode all the time let’s just say I wouldn’t have wanted to be the pilot of one of the Stark’s helicopters.
You’re completely missing the point, and I don’t “keep throwing them out”, this is the first time I’ve made mention of them. These are simply anti-ship missiles which the Iowas would have had to contend with in the 1980s had there been a shooting war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact that would have blown it out of the water, not bounced harmlessly off its armored belt, and they weren’t even designed with the thought that they’d be used against an archaic armored battleship. As I said, it’s pointless to argue that a battleship could shrug off a hit from an Exocet. The Exocet wasn’t designed to penetrate several inches of steel because nobody makes ships with several inches of armored belt anymore. If navies started doing it again on newly designed warships, anti-ship missiles made to cope with it would be designed and deployed before the first of this new generation of throw-back armored warships was launched. They’d be functionally obsolete upon commission. If belt armor was such a fantastic idea for defeating anti-ship missiles, why did navies stop including it on warships in the first place? The Ticonderoga’s were designed specifically to deal with massed attacks by anti-ship missiles; why weren’t they outfitted with at least as much armor as Baltimore class heavy cruisers of WW2 (6" belt, 3" deck, 3-6" turrets, 8" conning tower)?
There is simply no longer any meaningful role for WW2 era battleships to play that could possibly justify the cost of building new ones today just for the sake of bringing back the battlewagon.
That’s the big question. Traditionally the battleship served a capital ship role as the biggest, baddest ship in the fleet. The frigates, destroyers and cruisers traded size, armor, firepower for speed and cost and served various roles as escorts, reconnaissance, commerce raiding, anti submarine and whatnot. For all intents and purposes, they were all basically just different sizes of the same ship using the same weapons - naval guns protected by layers of steel armor. So what defined a navy’s power was having the biggest ship with the biggest guns and the thickest armor.
The carrier and the submarine changed all that. Because the carrier’s aircraft could engage and destroy the battleship long before the ships could even see each other, all that armor and guns were rendered useless. And for the last 60 years, advances in aircraft, missile, radar and satellite technology have made it even more so.
So ships in the modern fleet has evolved to fill the roles they fill today:
Carriers and ballistic missile subs are the main capital ships because they define what “power” means at sea.
Cruisers now serve a defensive role providing the air defense umbrella to the battlegroup.
Frigates, destroyers and attack submarines continue their historical jack-of-all-trades role of patrolling, escorting, and commerce raiding and also additional roles such as supporting amphibious landings and acting as missile platforms.
There is simply no role in the modern fleet for a giant ship with giant guns and heavy armor.
Also, another thing that no one has mentioned. A giant expensive battleship can only be in one place at a time. So if you don’t need those giant guns because the role can easily be handled by aircraft and missiles launched from a destroyer, you would be better off building a bunch of frigates and destroyers for the same price.
What is the goal of bringing back the BBs?
A current (USN) DDG had an Armament of 96 missiles. Iowa class BBs had 48. The cost to operate (manning, repair, fuel, train) the BBs is enormous - especially compared to DDGs and CGs today. And you can argue they can put less ordinance on target.
Fundamentally, there is far to much hand waving on how much punishment these things can take. it doesn’t matter if you can’t sink it, if you can make it ineffective without sinking it. Yes the BBs can fabricate many metal parts, rewind motors, fix much gear. but they can’t rework battle damaged com gear and armored box launchers out of sheet metal.
Sure, but if you’re gonna be bringing a carrier along anyway, what’s really the point of adding a BB to the group besides giving the steelworkers of Norfolk a longer lasting boner ? The carrier has fighter/bombers that can more or less do what a BB does (what they lose in terms of volume of fire they make up in precision), and then some more because the birds can actually bomb stuff further inland.