Do We Need Battleships Again?
Norkiland has been rather quiet lately, until Fatty Kim da T’ird decided to get some attention for himself by letting the world know that he’s afraid of US Navy battleships.
From the article: In World War II, the Japanese super-battleships Yamato and Musashi each mounted nine 18.1-inch guns, the largest naval guns ever deployed, but they never sank a single American ship. In a conflict decided by naval aviation, Yamato and Musashi were used mainly as flagships and troop transports. Despite their huge armaments, they were steel dinosaurs from an earlier strategic age.
But how do you sink a steel dinosaur? The answer is: “with difficulty.” It took eleven torpedoes and six bombs to sink the Yamato. The Musashi took nineteen torpedoes and seventeen bombs. And at the time they were sunk, both ships were already limping along on patch-up repairs from earlier torpedo strikes. They may have been strategically useless, but the Yamato and Musashi were almost (if not quite) indestructible. – article.
Will the Navy start building new battleships? Or will we continue as is? As cool as they are, isn’t the dreadnought known as the US Navy aircraft carrier much more intimidating to a smidgeon government that can’t even keep this lights on at night in its cities?
Category: Navy, North Korea
“Do We Need Battleships Again?”
Yes. They need not fire a shot. Just show up and
watch people flee inland.
Just the thought of silhouettes of a fleet of large battleships offshore sends chills down my spine.
I was always more awed at the site of full anchorages like the one at Ulithi than I was by anything amassed on land.
Drawback: they cannot “gun” things more than about 25 miles away with main battery shells.
With missiles, they can fire thousands of miles.
There are more efficient and cost-effective cruise missile platforms than a battleship. Also we can build “bombardment barges” at much lower cost, for such tasks as may be required.
The battleship is a very expensive piece of hardware, designed to kill battleships.
A pair of modern torpedoes that reach their target will kill any such ship ever floated.
Every time.
The era of the battleship as a primary combatant is long past.
It remains to be seen if land-based aircraft, or land-launched missiles, have rendered the aircraft carrier obsolete for stand-up peer-to-peer fights. And if not to those foes, they will eventually fall to whatever comes next.
That day, too, is coming.
Small quibble, doesn’t 65% of the human race live within 20 miles of a coastline? Just sayin’…
We can threaten civilian populations -much- more cheaply with aircraft. We can engage those coastal regions with things designed to do so. Battleships are designed to fight battleships, not coastal regions. They can do that other mission. They are extraordinarily expensive platforms to make into floating redlegs. We could build “battery barges” of gun or MLRS systems, much cheaper. Dead end asset. Too easy to kill, and no one is making the proper targets for them. Who else is building them? China could, and plans to make life exciting for its neighbors with coastlines. Not even looking at the platform. How does on protect a battleship against modern torpedoes, in the littoral area? Modern torpedo equipped drone-mines? BBs have armor against gunfire from battleships or other “big slug guns”. They have “tornado blisters” and armor belts for old-style surface-running torpedoes. Modern ones explode under deep the keel, breaking it. No BB ever built was armored against such weapons. Adding the mass required would eliminate most of the “gun” tonnage. Not practical. If we protect them the way we do carriers, distance and sanitizing open ocean, then the BB is pointless. Slim it down and add VLS cells. Then, it isn’t really a battleship. It’s day is done. They cost insane amounts of money and infrastructure. We can easily do the missions needed with modern assets. If Japan had diverted the resources of Yamato and Musashi into carriers and aircraft, we probably lose that war. They could easily have built six for two. Perhaps eight. if Naguto had -twelve- fleet carriers, versus the six he had, would he have failed to finish off the US base at Pearl Harbor, -and- sink the -three- US carriers had they been engaged? Oops. Yamamoto counseled against Musashi and Yamato. His superiors did not take that advice. Oops. Dead end platform. A 2kt “tactical” warhead, especially a “dirty” one, detonated under water and upwind, renders a battleship unusable except as a kamikaze. (And not for very long for that). And if close enough, it will crush or capsize it. Dead end. Swatting nincompoops is not… Read more »
Purpose building a battleship as a Tomahawk platform is stupid. Adding them for versatility on an existing platform adds long range capability. ANY ship will be sunk by an under-the-keel nuke; by your logic nothing should sail, only fly. Their day may be done but the niche they filled still exists and is not well filled by a carrier.
Carriers stage multi-role aircraft into a region without a base. They are quite flexible.
A Battleship is not.
Two F-15Es out range and out gun a battleship.
It would take us 5+ years to build the factories needed to -start- to return the museum ships to service. We couldn’t from-scratch build a battleship in ten years.
Not going to happen.
“Ships are safe in harbor… But, that’s not what ships are for”…..
(Unknown to me for the source of the quote).
Ships are safe in harbor, like on 6 December 1941.
Not so. The RAP round of the 16 incher had a range of over 32 miles if handled correctly. And with each bird shot down, you lose that delivery system. Once all the missiles have been fired, you got nothing. In an amphib assault scenario you need heavy gun power to put the damn damn on enemy shore defenses and artillery.
What about using battleships to defend the aircraft carriers instead of bombarding shores.
Armed as they were in the 90s with nuclear capable Tomahawks, 16″ guns, and a slew of smaller guns, an Iowa-class ship absolutely ruled a localized area with pin-point accuracy. Force projection as few other countries ever achieved. Can they be sunk? Sure, as can ANY other ship. But modernized and refitted? Can you imagine one patrolling the Straits of Hormuz? Not going to take one of them out with exlosive filled boats.
As cool as they are, the Iowas are most likely past their prime as functional ships. Even the greatest systems get old after a while. But how badass would it be to see an updated new-build Montana-class BBG?
They would be in range of short and medium range ballistic missiles. Lots of them.
The water is shallow enough for modern mines, basicly patient torpedoes. Modern big-ass under-keel ones.
We can’t make the guns or ammo for them without building a whole new infrastructure. We can’t even reactivate them, as no one left in service has any idea how to work them or work on them. Nor are any of our factories tooled to make the parts.
They were utilized, to end of life and beyond. But once decommissioned, there was no going back.
We could swat pirates with USS Constitution. (And would that not be an awesome FU to pirates everywhere?) But it would be -dumb- to do it twice, and in very short order, someone kills her.
Day is done.
“Do we need Battleships again?” Be still my throbbing vascular system, err err beating heart. No gunner of the floating Artillery Platforms would turn down the opportunity to have a weapon system that turns the platform caddy whompus every time it fires a volley. Is it practical? Prolly not. Would it scare the bejeebus out of the coastal residents? Well, yeah. Do we really need them? Better to have and not need than to need and not have. We coulda made a nice down payment on one with what has been pissed away on all the fake investigations. Coulda had a whole fleet of them by cutting out all the foreign aid that we give away to people that don’t deserve our money.
I’m keeping tabs on Boris Johnson’s Brexit bidness. It’s rough going for him, not everyone likes it, but other “entities” are mumbling about ‘me,too’. Think about that for a minute. Then ask if you’d rather face China, boosting up its own fleet now, with a battleship platform or without it?
without. i’d rather fuck up china with a large fleet of very highly mobile, very fast, destroyers and such. make a bunch of small radar cross section boats capable of going in much shallower waters than a battleship is practically capable of. light, fast, mobile, and with all kinds of devastating missile and anti-air capabilities.
i’m really with 11B mailclerk on this one. it’s not realistically practical at all to have a BB, no matter how high the cool factor gets. a battleship only gives bragging rights to the enemy if they sink it, and presents an overly large target on the open ocean. with china’s anti-ship weaponry advancing as it has been, id rather have a bunch of small boats to take them apart rather than one big one painting a bigass target on its own crew.
China isn’t stupid. They are building flexible multi-role combatants by the score, and a few “prestige” carriers for Face and for flexible power-projection.
They will counter our carriers asymmetricly, as Sun Tzu counsels. Look for ships packed with missiles, freighters loaded with missiles, swarms of fast and light missile and torpedo boats, submarines, aircraft with stand off missiles, and drones above and below water. Toss in ballistic missiles and sci-fi.
And as many distractions as they can sucker us into.
This!
I believe a version of the Battleship could be useful as seen with the Iowa’s, A fast ship meant to work with carriers strike groups and primarily attack ground target among other things, they are also equipped with modern missiles allowing for them to have great range, as seen in Iraq If we evolve the Battleship it could be a very useful weapon of war
The age of the battleship may be “done”, but in terms of A2AD it is absolutely necessary.
The Iowa’s aren’t coming back. It would be cheaper to build a new one from the ground up.
There does still exist a necessity for Naval gunfire…an area the Zumwalts were supposed to fill. They haven’t.
A modern 16+ inch gun is a bit overkill, but would do the job nicely in terms of amphibious support. A much better job than 2 jets.
The biggest problem is the architecture. As nice as it would be to build a ship in the likeness of the Iowa’s, it would need to be able to fit through the Panama Canal, make 35+ knots, have a minimum of 6 big guns, plenty of AA, and a massive VLS with hundreds of missiles.
A lot of these problems could be solved with modern nuclear reactors providing more than adequate power for propulsion.
The next problem is armoring the beast. It’s either going to have to run on the all or nothing philosophy. If you can make 35+ knots with heavy angled armor, then sure, let’s do it.
But for the same price to build 4 new BBNGs, you could potentially build 20+ DDGs
In so many words, no.
They cannot project power as well as a CVBG, and SSN/SSGN’s can lob several dozen Tomahawks in addition to infil/exfil SEAL teams.
Make a big noise, but they can’t perform the roles any better (or cheaper) than current platforms.
Interesting discussion and history of the battleship from YouTube’s “the history guy” can be found here: https://youtu.be/FU57Y1Td6xI
With the advent of newer weapons and weapon systems that give cruisers the same firepower as a battleship but at less operating costs, it is difficult to make the case for the battleship as being needed.
The debate will always rage on as “the big gun club” never really goes away.
Another YouTuber, a Brit who goes by the handle “Drachinifel” has a pretty good channel for all things nautical.
Drachinifel is one of the best channels on youtube as is the history guy…
also top notch: World War Two (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP1AejCL4DA7jYkZAELRhHQ)
Mark Feldman (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfCKvREB11-fxyotS1ONgww)
and TIK (https://www.youtube.com/user/TheImperatorKnight)
Pootube is full of crap, but these channels are great.
I recently came across an interesting suggestion on the internet. With the advent of frickin’ laser beam-type point-defense weapons that will probably have the ability to jack up a missile’s seeker head and/or cause enough aerodynamic deformation to dump the missile into the ocean well short of the target, large-caliber high-velocity naval artillery whose shells are much more resistant to such things may well make a comeback as the primary ship-to-ship weapon system. If that happens, ships will have to be armored. Ergo, 21st Century big-gun battleships may well be a thing someday.
Of course this is purely conjectural, and admittedly appeals to my inner teenager shouting “Fuck you, science! This shit is awesome!” But the guy putting it forward knows a lot more about this sort of thing than I do (though even he qualified it as a possibility rather than a probability). Who knows?
Continue the thought.
Lasers are not limited to ships.
Lasers are line-of-sight weapons, and are -severely- limited for ship-to-ship combat, but excel at defense of ships, given lots of power throughput.
Laser armor/defense is different from gun armor/defense.
Lasers are poor for underwater use.
The Submarine, manned or drone, is thus a very useful thing.
The concept of a big armored hulk, that can strike effectively is always envisioned until the price is discussed. Similar to the concept of a Carrier. You are putting all your eggs in one basket, and make a an easy target.
The carrier has more functionality as it can conduct multiple missions and sit further out of harms reach. If we want to bring back Battleships, they would have to be more of a mothership like the Gallactica (of Battlestar Gallactica), able to get in close and slug it out, but meant to be a mobile home base that stays out of the fight!
What if some of us former Door Gunners from Battlestar Gallactica wanted to re-up to serve as door gunners on the revived Big Mo? Or the Joisey? What the frack? Incoming Tie Fighters! Stand by to launch Vipers.
No, we don’t.
There’s nothing that a battleship can do that a smaller, lighter, faster, more agile, less expensive vessel can’t do better.
With regards to the armor, I’m reminded of something I heard years ago:
In the arms race between “armor” and “warhead”, “Warhead” always has the advantage.
IOW, it’s a LOT easier and a LOT cheaper to make a warhead big enough to sink a battleship than it is to make a battleship stout enough to withstand a bigger warhead.
Yes it took multiple torpedoes to sink the Yamato. But those were WWII Torpedoes, which were notoriously weak and ineffective.
The question that needs to be asked is how many MODERN torpedoes would it take to sink a Yamaato class (or even an Iowa class) battleship?
I’ll let the naval experts chime in but AFAIK there is not a ship sailing on the ocean now that cannot be taken out by a direct hit from one modern (non-nuke) torpedo. That goes for the big battleships too.
And if the hull is breached or the keel damaged, all that heavy armor that was designed to protect the ship is now the very thing that is going to pull that armored hulk down to the bottom of the ocean.
Battleships are badass, there’s no doubt about it. But their time has past. Between modern aircraft and submarines, a battleship doesn’t stand a chance in modern naval warfare.
“But how do you sink a steel dinosaur?”
Answer in 1945: eleven torpedoes and six bombs
Answer since 1945: With a nuke
Even if you don’t destroy it, all you would have to do is irradiate it (look up Prinz Eugen). As an official armchair naval strategist, I’ve always worried about the Navy’s dedication to fewer CVGs and smaller expensive ships. With missiles and nukes out there that can cripple or even destroy those low density, high demand assets, that becomes a dangerous strategy. I LOVES me some battleships. Most are gorgeous amalgam of design and function – the Iowa class being some of the most awesome, badass looking and beautiful ships to grace the seas. That being said, unless there is an alien invasion that tries to interrupt the next RIMPAC, I think their days are long past. I think they could take a huge amount of A2AD punishment, but they are also, as others have put before, too many eggs in one basket.
I believe the US would be better off with more, smaller ships. Before missiles, you had to increase the size up ship to increase survivability and gun size. Since we can now put a missile with more punch than an 16″ shell on a destroyer sized vessel, you have no reason to have a giant ship on the water. More, smaller targets would help neutralize (by sheer numbers) A2AD networks and provide redundancy. One caveat – the desire to make those fewer, smaller ships more and more technically advanced must be resisted. If that desire is given in to, it will ensure fewer ships due to the expense and complexity in creation. Think T-34s vs German armor.
There is even a historical example: The Battle off Samar.
Destroyers and Destroyer Escorts put cruisers and battleships out of the fight, with crude unguided near-surface-running torpedoes. Their five-inch gunfire didn’t sink any opponent, but did cripple several by wrecking topside stuff, like the bridge and detonating torpedo racks.
Had their been twice as many “tin cans” …
Had their been larger -guided- torpedoes….
The seven tin cans of Taffy-3, armed with the current US mk-48 torpedo, -sink- most of the Japanese “center force” fleet, including the super-battleships. (Assuming at least two Mk-48s on DDEs and at least six on the DDs)
Great example. “The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy’s Finest Hour” is an awesome book.
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Stand-Tin-Sailors-Extraordinary/dp/0553381482
Oh, what an epic three hour movie lurks in that book.
-highly- recommend it.
You wouldn’t even need a nuke. Modern conventional HE torpedoes pack more than enough punch to break the keel of a battleship.
And all that guessing with a stopwatch and a compass like in the WWII submarine movies went out with modern guided munitions.
“Smart” guided munitions mean that where we used to fire 10 torpedoes in hopes that one would hit, now we only have to fire one and we KNOW it will hit the target.
Forget a nuke. 2000lbs of high explosive detonated in proximity of a battleship’s keel will sink it every time.
Build the keel heavy enough to withstand that and the ship will be too heavy to float.
And that’s just torpedoes. Have we forgotten about the likes of the Exocet or similar air-launched precision guided missiles? It’s the modern equivalent of a kamikaze without the Bushido code and a computer in place of the pilot. Punch a couple of those into the side of a battleship and it’s not going to be good for much of anything besides scrap.
I’ll agree with you about the torpedos Martinjmpr, but as far as the Exocet, as I recall, after the Brits lost that ship off the Falklands to one, there was some discussion / testing or such and the general consensus was that if one of them was to hit an Iowa class BB, by design it would hit the armor belt, and the end result would be a nasty scorch mark needing repainting… and not much more.
As to needing BB’s I hate myself for saying it, but I have to agree that their day has passed, and there are better / less expensive routes to achieve the same goals. (until / unless we get to the point TOW describes)
The Brit ships had Aluminum superstructure. The Exocet missiles ignited them, and they burned down to the hulls.
Oops.
Not unlike a certain USS Belknap…
May have been true of the ancient Exocet but modern cruise missiles can be targeted on, say, the bridge or the CIC. What would be the effect of a 50-100lb warhead detonating 10′ from the skipper’s head?
No doubt about the effectiveness of modern torpedoes. The overall point I’m making (that you are reinforcing) is that there are weapons out there that make putting faith in a few really big ships is not wise. Furthermore, poor nations may not be able to afford to produce and deliver nukes or sub launched torpedoes, but I bet a lot of them have chemical capabilities. I also bet that the Navy (like all US services) aren’t as prepared for being slimed as as they would like. Nothing like some HN3 Mustard Gas to ruin the deck cycle.
Yeah. Do we even train for that sort of cleanup anymore?
Any nation with a petroleum source, a refinery, and a pesticide plant can have working in chemical weapons in a few months. The delivery systems are the real challenge, assuming you want the safety of binary agents. Crop dusters that don’t poison the pilot work. Artillery is tricky but air-dropped bombs are easy.
Now, if you do not value life much to start…
The Navy does do some CBRNE (it will always be NBC to this former 5711) training – they did it when I was on the BHR (LHD-6). The 31st MEU/ARG got some real life practical application when they responded to the Tsunami that hit Japan. During the humanitarian response, the ships (big deck was the USS Essex) got some radiation from the Fukashima plant and had to spend a lot of time cleaning up. I wasn’t there at the time (didn’t get to the MEU until 2012) so I don’t know how it went.
Rads? Good training.
Seriously, though. We need to keep up the NBC skillset, because inevitably some lunatic does the math and uses gas.
With modern sensibilities about hazards, would we ever get a carrier clean enough after getting hit with a persistent nerve Agent like VX or Novichok? A dusting with reactor radwaste is worse. Neutron emission makes radioactive isotopes in the steel.
We have too few carriers to sustain casualties. We need more, or we need to stop getting involved in multiple generational conflicts without clear Victory objectives.
Why Not an Up Armored battle Cruiser say 12 12 inch guns Nuclear powered of course. My question is do we have the capability to build 12-16 inch gun barrels anymore? Standard shells have a range of 25 miles or so team it up with the a larger version of the army’s 1000 mile gun and then you would have something shells are cheaper than missiles typically.
Almost a lost art to make the big guns. Not just a scale-up of a 155mm.
Do able, but the economic cost is significant.
Is that the best way to do the job?
A pair of F-15E fighters can deliver twelve 2000 pound independently-precision-guided penetrating weapons. That is more than a salvo from USS New Jersey. And all twelve like will be spot on, first salvo.
And once delivered, out of ammo. The battleship can deliver two rounds per minute per gun…. 18 rounds a minute while the F-15s are headed back to their ground base to refuel and rearm. Again, it is a specialized niche, but within that niche, pretty damn impressive. Oh, and the 16 inchers have minute of arc accuracy. so all three from a battery land within a football field 20 miles away. With 16 inchers, close DOES count, just like horseshoes etc. Close enough to ‘spot on’ for most purposes, I would think.
I do hate to make a counter argument to battleships just becuase they are so freaking awesome, BUT. . . .
What is the cost of the 2 aircraft vs that of the battleship. I liken this to the Germans preoccupation with gigantic rail guns during the world wars. Sure the Paris Gun and the Schwerer Gustav were awesome, but how many towed 155mm regiments could have been used in battle for the expense. How many more aircraft or smaller ships could you field for the cost of ship capable of sporting 16″ guns with the armor you need to defend what would be an extremely lucrative target? The answer is likely to be a lot.
The Battleship can fire GPS guided rounds. Not three in a football field. Try three in the same window.
At a range of twenty three miles.
The F-15 can out do that by a bit. And for the cost of eighteen rounds a minute, how many F-15s can be cycling?
a battleship would cost about a hundred billion a unit, factoring in the factories and yards to build them. None of which exist for that class of ship. We don’t have the proper welders even if we still had the steel mills that made “class B armor plate” or could forge the billet for a 16 inch 50.
The whole economic infrastructure is -gone-. None of the skilled workers exist for the guns or the armor. Absolute minimum of ten years to rebuild it all, and think Trillions for the cost to do so in just 10.
The ones we have are museums, de-milled, and mostly slowly falling apart and sinking. None are seaworthy, and I doubt two could be made so.
Not going to happen.
Agree with everything there. Some thoughts:
►Another problem with reconditioning old BBs or making new ones would be that developers would most likely (no evidence that they would not) try to make them so technologically advanced the development and production of the F-35 would look like a quick and easy thing by comparison.
►There are guided 16″ rounds? I wouldn’t have thought that technology would have been around the last time they were using BBs and there would have been no reason to have developed them since. In any case, 16 inchers are very accurate.
There are no existing live 16 inch rounds period. Nor the tooling to make them.
Since we have to produce the shells for such a return-to-service project, why not use the off-the-shelf guidance technology we use for smaller shells?
Fire the 16″ guns in sequence, one precision-guided round per target, nine targets per salvo.
Use 8″ guided rocket-assist rounds in sabots, and your main battery range is now 50-75 miles.
Nine targets serviced per salvo.
If we are going to have a battleship, give it all the advantages of the 21st century. Gut out that honkin huge analog computer for modern stuff. Pull the fuel bunkers and boilers for a pebble-bed reactor. Chobham armor on the key places where “flat” works. Laser shell/missile defenses. Strip that wood deck for carbon fiber/kevlar/ceramics. Drones not seaplanes. Tomahawk and harpoon in vertical launch pods. A swarm of escort decoy drones and torpedo killers.
Yeah, but know we are making it economically unfeasible. Besides, take a look at the developmental projects that have taken place/still ongoing. The Excalibur guided projectile (since we are talking about that sort of thing) took 20 years to get from beginning of development to low rate initial production (LRIP, for you in the biz). Imagine what it would take to work up the development for all of the highly technical mumbo jumbo they would want to put in a “modernized” battleship! It be cheaper to design a death star!
I’m back to just suggesting lots of less advanced smaller ships. It’s an Ender’s Game thing – when the opponent has a device that can wipe out massed formations (or single big ships) the answer is to distribute your forces widely.
I concur.
If we had kept the BBs in service, each refit could add a “modern” item.
Once we parked them as museums, we scrapped out the last of the BB infrastructure.
A new-build class would barely resemble an Iowa class. Railguns, lasers, composite armor, precision guided munitions, missiles, drones, etc. And still remains the key question: “What is it to fight?”.
Hmm. A trick? Bait our opponents into an arms race they can’t win or even sustain? Nah. Carriers and stealth planes work for that, and are more useful.
China is about to come to grips with “world power, OR communist/authoritarian”.
China is about to come to grips with “world power, OR communist/authoritarian”
True enough – the choice will be theirs. I was listening to a commentator yesterday (Andrew Klavan, I think) who said that once he heard that China was taking down NBA banners several stories tall from buildings because of one tweet from a basketball coach not many had heard of who don’t follow basketball, he stopped worrying about them. He said if they are that insecure in their power that they can’t deal with a tweet (something almost no one would have heard of if they hadn’t had such a fit about it), then they can’t be as powerful as they try to project.
They handle things differently. It translates as “Face”.
They -have- to maintain Face. We are weird/insane to them, because we do not.
They banned Winnie the Pooh because some folks made a slightly-disparaging comparison to someone.
The situation in Hong Kong is a -disaster-. They are hugely losing face with he ongoing protests, but cant survive without the wealth-flow of Hong Kong, but cant survive the loss of Face.
This may well be the moment it all comes apart, much as the Soviet Union fell apart.
Or, the dragon will again eat its young, and grind their bones into the pavement with Tanks.
If the latter, I hope Trump goes for the jugular with economics. And congress goes along.
Happy Birthday USS Constitution “Old Ironsides”
Long may she sail.
I would prefer a drone mini battleship.
Very small, very tough, and very cheap.
A cheap ship.
Gunship. Seagoing Apache.
The number number of countries that are able to detect and respond to a non-nuclear ICBM launch can be counted on one hand. How many tungsten telephone poles can be carried aloft by a single Atlas V?
Phone poles? At ballistic weapon speeds a big crowbar weight is enough.
The catch is, no one is sure what is on the way up, or exactly who is going to play “catcher”.
A misunderstanding might be distressingly messy.
How many ” failed” satellite launches” equal a “bombard from orbit” system?
Surprise.
Other members of the ICBM club can track the trajectory much easier than was possible during the Cold War. Pummeling the NorK’s, Mooj or anyone in AFRICOM would be discreet and wouldn’t require deployment vaccinations or logistical footprint.
The interesting thing (to me) about this article is that I never saw anything to back-up the title. When Did Kim state that US battleships was his biggest fear?
“Salvatore Babones is an associate professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney.” I’m guessing this guy knows as much about naval operations as the North Korean dictator.
Shhhhhhh. Never let a “clickbait reveal” ruin a good thread. (Grin)
I think we could do better with larger guns on cruiser 8″ or 10″ cannons could massively improve naval gunfire support. Also, use a nuclear powerplant to give it better legs.
I’d say the best battleship would actually be more like a pre-dreadnought in style, with mixed gun arrangement. Realistically, you’d want a heavy cruiser designed for offshore artillery and trashing small boats. It could dish out lots of pain cheaply.
A fast container ship, loaded with MLRS rockets in vertical launch pods, venting out the sides.
Fire the top boxes, toss the empty packs overboard, and ripple the next set.
One twelve-pack of such MLRS rockets with mixed anti-personnel and anti-armor munitions will devastate a square kilometer. Such a monster fire-ship can ripple -thousands-.
And the launcher can fire precision-guided weapons, too.
Ok, lets say it encounters Godzilla off the
coast of Japan. Unless you unleash your wad
danger close the reptillian freak is gonna
invert your hull.
I’m not talkin King Kong swatting Sopwiths
outta the sky while clinging to a building.
And that nuke power plant will go down
his throat like a fireball candy treat.
Sixteen inch guns at ten miles would be
plenty though.
Bah. Godzilla would probably play handball with 16” AP rounds. And that atomic breath gonna put a hurtin on even a BB’s armor.
Great. Now I have BoC’s “Godzilla” stuck in my ear…..
History shows again and again,
How nature points out the folly of Men….
“the folly of Men…”
Mothra smiles..
Reminds me of a guy on the WARSHIPS! Facebook group I am a part of who thinks this US should invest in conventionally powered submarines (mainly the Japanese Sōryū class) rather than investing in the Virginia class to help with the submarine gap which I don’t know if I agree with mainly because those are mainly for coastal work and because the US is right smack in the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and far away from everything. I am not comfortable with forward deploying them in another country either (which was another idea of his) because that country can always tell us to leave at any point.
Now I have a question: can one modern day torpedo sink an aircraft carrier (saw a pompous British jackass make a comment like that on a post about the John F. Kennedy getting her flight deck installed).
A big enough torpedo with a back-breaking shot under the keel, sure. But neither the carrier nor the battleship operate alone. Each is the centerpiece of a battle group surrounded by escorts that specialize in killing the things that bring such torpedoes to the party.
My WAG (wild ass guess) is that if it was detonated under the keel it probably could.
But I think that’s a moot point: There’s no question that one modern torpedo could render an aircraft carrier unserviceable and unusable for the duration of a battle. Whether it sinks or not.
And the enemy’s tactical objective would not necessarily be to “sink” a carrier, but simply to make it unusable to their foe.
If it happens before or during the course of a battle, the aircraft on the carrier can’t be launched, and those that are flying have to scramble to find somewhere else to land.
The above, I’m pretty sure, is the whole reason that the carriers in Carrier Battle Groups are surrounded by multiple rings of cruisers, destroyers, ASW ships, minesweepers, attack subs and are overflown by ASW aircraft.
Because all the CBG’s “Eggs” are in that one basket, they can’t afford to even let one submarine get through.
“The carrier is the most protected ship in the fleet.” Clancey in Red Storm Rising. And a known fact since carriers FIRST came to be known as an offensive weapon. Hat tip to Gen Billy Mitchell of the ARMY Air Corps. Carriers had to be the most protected because it became the most valuable target.
The “accidental” disabling of the screw on the carriers was a major part of the plot in Clancey’s Debt of Honor. You are correct Mj, don’t have to sink it, just take it out of action.
What do you think about the idea of investing in conventionally powered submarines rather than nuclear ones (buying them from Japan or licensing from Japan to build them in the US)? Keith Patton is the name of the gentleman in question (there are others that agree with him including one member that had shared an article that said you could build 4 Sōryūs to one Virginia class which I don’t know if it’s true or not and not to sure if I believe it though I can see a nuclear powered version being built as it is big enough). You guys have far more knowledge about this than I do.
There are many modern diesel/electric subs out there. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_212_submarine) They have pretty good range (8000 KM for the Type 212 at 8 knots) and can stay under water for 3 weeks without snorkeling. You wouldn’t need a foreign port but you would need a sub tender. Our nuke subs do for food, mail, etc. just not diesel.
A possible strategy would be to use the diesel boats close to home, where they are most efficient, and send the nuke boats out hunting elsewhere.
We tried a mix of conventional and nuke carriers, and found the nuke ones just work better for our purposes.
Now that we have vastly better reactor tech available, we really need to look into nuclear cruisers and destroyers again. Doubly so as directed energy weapons and railguns become deployable systems.
Being a former birdfarm Corpsman before I went SARC I can tell ya, some of ya are spot on. Disabling a carrier is very feasible and sinking it is not even remotely required. To perform flight operations you have to have forward speed, generally at least 20 knots and you need steering and stability.
An intact deck and functional catapults/arresting gear would just sit their taunting the air boss as the flight capability was rendered useless. Especially so if ya were gonna try to launch munitions laden birds,it’s just not gonna happen.
Disabling one is actually better, as you effectively take a lot of escort ships out of the battle.
I thought that was what I said…disabling was preferable sinking unnecessary.
And yes, your point added to the CBG escorts is additionally valid…very good.
Here is the post in question. He has a butt buddy who chimes in later on bragging how British ships are better than American ones and how we are jealous that we are not the Royal Navy (I love it when the second British idiot tries to use the excuse that they did own us Americans. Yeah that was many years ago buddy. Not anymore and not for a long time. In the future, I say we tell them the next time a WWII like scenario happens we should tell them that they are on their own if that’s how they want to act. I honestly have no absolutely no problem with ditching them.) Sometimes I wonder if this is just insecurity on their part which I believe it is (who knows, these could just be a couple of smart alec losers looking for attention).
Forgot to put the link in. https://www.facebook.com/ilovewarships/posts/3736898529669310?comment_id=3738828632809633&reply_comment_id=3745668158792347
People afraid of Battleships lobbing the old 16in shells are probably ignorant of the awesome capabilities the AEGIS systems which make those shells seem like a potato gun.
I was fortunate (read old) and saw the Jersey firing into Lebanon from an onshore position and felt the ground shake well after seeing the horizon flash orange as the shells were fired generally one after the other at timed intervals. Also saw her up close and firing from the sea. Took pictures of her steaming on station where she stayed, rusting inevitably for about 2 years or so, rotating the crews through Cyprus, where I also ran medevacs for wounded Marines, handing them over if lucky, continuing on further is I was stood up by the next aircraft (thanks USAF).
I think the sweep of their bow, wooden decks and awesome guns are fukking beeyooteeful, but don’t see that they would be cost effective, certainly not enough to justify as more or less what amounts to high cost propaganda pieces.
YMMV
The likelihood of a major naval battle between ships seems more than remote, since any foreign country that has a navy with that capability is either an ally (UK, France, Australia) or is also equipped with nukes and ICBMs (Russia, China.)
So how would this supposed naval battle even occur? Seems to me the war would be over long before the first ships got more than a few nautical miles out of port.
I’m reminded of an old Tom Lehrer song from the Cold War days (particularly the very last line):
So long, Mom,
I’m off to drop the bomb
So don’t wait up for me
But while you swelter
down there in your shelter
You can see me
On your TV
While we’re attacking frontally
Watch Brinkley and Huntley
Describing contrapuntally
The cities we have lost
You wouldn’t want
To miss a minute
Of the agonizing holocaust
Little Johnny Jones he was a US Pilot
And no shrinking violet was he
He felt so proud when World War 3 was declared
He wasn’t scared, no-siree!
And this is what he said on
His way to Armageddon:
So long, Mom,
I’m off to drop the bomb
So don’t wait up for me
And though I may roam
I’ll come back to my home
Although it may be
A pile of debris
Remember, Mommy,
I’m off to get a Commie
So send me a salami,
And try to smile somehow
I’ll look for you
When the war is over:
An hour and a half from now!
They thought nukes would make Infantry obsolete.
“…it makes ya really proud ta be a sol-dier!”
If an amphibious assault has to occur, we need something way better than a platform with a 5″/54 gun on it. When we were supposed to assault Kuwait City in 1991, all the land based Iraqi artillery far outranged those things, in some cases by over 5,000 yards. The task force would have had to release the landing craft over 12 miles out from the coast to stay safe from a goodly bit of their artillery. a Battleship or two would have come in handy had we gotten the signal there to land the landing force. You need to be able to put steel on target fast and in great weight. an 8 incher minimum would be great such as the old heavy cruisers had.
Go big or stay home.
When is the last time an oil tanker
sent a battle ship limping back
into port?
That’s what I thought.
With all of the latest technology
On our destroyers, many of our
sailors did not come home to their
Families because a destroyer simply
Is not able to withstand a
collision with oil tanker.
(weather or not such a collision
happened by mistake, or otherwise.)
A two tier navy would be preferable,
In that there are many potential
areas of conflict where sending in
Our most advanced hardware is just
not an economically viable decision,
especially if our more modern
hardware is better served in another
area of concern.
I am all about new tech but just
Because something is old does
Not mean that it is irrelevant.
it is broken.
Go big or stay home.
When is the last time an oil tanker
sent a battle ship limping back
into port?
That’s what I thought.
With all of the latest technology
On our destroyers, many of our
sailors did not come home to their
Families because a destroyer simply
Is not able to withstand a
collision with oil tanker.
(weather or not such a collision
happened by mistake, or otherwise.)
A two tier navy would be preferable,
In that there are many potential
areas of conflict where sending in
Our most advanced hardware is just
not an economically viable decision,
especially if our more modern
hardware is better served in another
area of concern.
I am all about new tech but just
Because something is old does
Not mean that it is irrelevant.