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 BaronIveagh wrote:

No destroyer currently afloat fires a powerful enough missile to do that. And battleships are more than fast enough to keep pace with carriers, which dictate the over all fleets speed, no matter what speed a destroyer can hit.

And, I'll point out that passive old armor is an excellent counter for the increasingly faster, lighter, smaller, and less powerful anti ship missiles that look to be the current trend. You just have to find the point where missile performance is degraded enough by the need to penetrate armor that it become vulnerable to active CIWS.

However, as I said, the battleship still has it's niche, but you might note that I did not say that it's a good fleet on fleet weapon. However, for gunfire support, it knows no equal, and is quite capable of taking hits and not ceasing to be operational. Which is the major issue with every single alternative that has been put forward. LCS program ships can barely make it from port to port without breaking down, and Zumwalt is every bit as massive as an old Mississippi class battleship, but depends on stealth and firing at extreme long range.

Baron, you might want to take a look at modern destroyers and anti-ship missiles. The average modern anti-ship missile carries a warhead between 150-500kg, and there is even frigates carrying 500kg warheads around, and even tiny corvettes carry missiles with 300 kg nuclear warheads (a single Admiral Gorshkov-class frigate can carry 16 anti-ship missiles with 300kg thermonuclear warheads for example, or an equal number of missiles with 200kg armour-piercing warheads or 500kg warheads, not to mention torpedoes and a large amount of shorter-ranged missiles). That is more than enough to take out, if not completely demolish an old battleship in a single strike. Especially if the hit is on the superstructure, which it likely will be. WW2 era armour is nothing but steel. It offers little protection against modern weapons. Destroyers carry even more missiles than frigates. And without countermeasures, the enemy can just hit the battleship with as many missiles as he likes. A battleship can take hits, but not that many. Even light Exocet missiles will take out a battleship with sufficient hits. Not to mention that to offer gunfire support, a battleship has to get close to shore, exposing itself to heavy land-based missiles and enemy aircraft. Basically, a battleship on a modern battlefield against a modern army is dead. In every scenario. It is just too slow, does not have countermeasures, and with the accuracy and power of modern missiles the time of battleships just tanking hits is over. That time is long over already, since WW2. Aircraft literally and figuratively sank the battleship as a viable class of warship. Cruise missiles are like aircraft on steroids. They are even faster and harder to intercept. If a battleship can't handle attack from aircraft, what on God's green Earth makes you think it could handle an attack with cruise missiles? Battleships look cool, but their time as a viable weapon is long past, just like cavalry or zeppelins.
Also, not every fleet has a carrier, and a fleet that has carriers should not contain battleships considering that battleships want to get close to shore to be in range with their cannons, while aircraft carriers want to be as far away from shore as possible to stay out of range from enemy land-based defenses, while its aircraft give it the range to strike targets even from very far away.
And if cruise missiles alone are not enough to convince you, modern torpedoes or ICBMs could also take out a battleship with ease. Not to mention submarines, which would be undetectable by the battleship's outdated equipment.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

No destroyer currently afloat fires a powerful enough missile to do that. And battleships are more than fast enough to keep pace with carriers, which dictate the over all fleets speed, no matter what speed a destroyer can hit.

And, I'll point out that passive old armor is an excellent counter for the increasingly faster, lighter, smaller, and less powerful anti ship missiles that look to be the current trend. You just have to find the point where missile performance is degraded enough by the need to penetrate armor that it become vulnerable to active CIWS.

However, as I said, the battleship still has it's niche, but you might note that I did not say that it's a good fleet on fleet weapon. However, for gunfire support, it knows no equal, and is quite capable of taking hits and not ceasing to be operational. Which is the major issue with every single alternative that has been put forward. LCS program ships can barely make it from port to port without breaking down, and Zumwalt is every bit as massive as an old Mississippi class battleship, but depends on stealth and firing at extreme long range.

Baron, you might want to take a look at modern destroyers and anti-ship missiles. The average modern anti-ship missile carries a warhead between 150-500kg, and there is even frigates carrying 500kg warheads around, and even tiny corvettes carry missiles with 300 kg nuclear warheads (a single Admiral Gorshkov-class frigate can carry 16 anti-ship missiles with 300kg thermonuclear warheads for example, or an equal number of missiles with 200kg armour-piercing warheads or 500kg warheads, not to mention torpedoes and a large amount of shorter-ranged missiles). That is more than enough to take out, if not completely demolish an old battleship in a single strike. Especially if the hit is on the superstructure, which it likely will be. WW2 era armour is nothing but steel. It offers little protection against modern weapons. Destroyers carry even more missiles than frigates. And without countermeasures, the enemy can just hit the battleship with as many missiles as he likes. A battleship can take hits, but not that many. Even light Exocet missiles will take out a battleship with sufficient hits. Not to mention that to offer gunfire support, a battleship has to get close to shore, exposing itself to heavy land-based missiles and enemy aircraft. Basically, a battleship on a modern battlefield against a modern army is dead. In every scenario. It is just too slow, does not have countermeasures, and with the accuracy and power of modern missiles the time of battleships just tanking hits is over. That time is long over already, since WW2. Aircraft literally and figuratively sank the battleship as a viable class of warship. Cruise missiles are like aircraft on steroids. They are even faster and harder to intercept. If a battleship can't handle attack from aircraft, what on God's green Earth makes you think it could handle an attack with cruise missiles? Battleships look cool, but their time as a viable weapon is long past, just like cavalry or zeppelins.
Also, not every fleet has a carrier, and a fleet that has carriers should not contain battleships considering that battleships want to get close to shore to be in range with their cannons, while aircraft carriers want to be as far away from shore as possible to stay out of range from enemy land-based defenses, while its aircraft give it the range to strike targets even from very far away.
And if cruise missiles alone are not enough to convince you, modern torpedoes or ICBMs could also take out a battleship with ease. Not to mention submarines, which would be undetectable by the battleship's outdated equipment.

A single krivak IIO or Grisha would destroy a battleship, the kirov, sovremennyy, and such not would have little trouble either, especially the pytor veliky. thats before worrying about akulas or oscar class.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
No destroyer currently afloat fires a powerful enough missile to do that.

Only because nobody currently uses battleships that would require a heavier missile. If battleships come back then bolting on some heavier missiles in box launchers is much easier than designing a new battleship. And there's always escalation to nuclear weapons, in the safest possible situation to use them*. Once the nukes start flying it doesn't matter how much armor your battleship has, one missile slips through your interceptors and the entire carrier group is dead.

*Clearly identifiable military targets with no civilians anywhere nearby.

 Peregrine wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:
No destroyer currently afloat fires a powerful enough missile to do that.

Only because nobody currently uses battleships that would require a heavier missile. If battleships come back then bolting on some heavier missiles in box launchers is much easier than designing a new battleship. And there's always escalation to nuclear weapons, in the safest possible situation to use them*. Once the nukes start flying it doesn't matter how much armor your battleship has, one missile slips through your interceptors and the entire carrier group is dead.

*Clearly identifiable military targets with no civilians anywhere nearby.

About that...yes, it seems intuitive, but the last test runs with nuclear weapons against dummy ship targets has been a while ago, no? I'm not sure if the ships were destroyed by the fireball or toppled by the sea, in any case, is there a chance that modern damage control systems and different materials might have given newer ships some benefits in this area that could result in some ships of the carrie group (possibly the ones further away from the center, obviously) might survive to some degree in smaller nuclear missiles?

I'm mostly asking because I just remembered a field test the Australians did with an older Centurion tank they kept running and dropped a nuke a hundred yards in front of it - when they came back later, the tank was mostly intact and had simply run out of fuel, meaning the blast didn't even impair the engine operation. (Effects on crew could, of course, not be tested...) I'm aware most ships won't have that raw armor, though.

 Witzkatz wrote:
About that...yes, it seems intuitive, but the last test runs with nuclear weapons against dummy ship targets has been a while ago, no? I'm not sure if the ships were destroyed by the fireball or toppled by the sea, in any case, is there a chance that modern damage control systems and different materials might have given newer ships some benefits in this area that could result in some ships of the carrie group (possibly the ones further away from the center, obviously) might survive to some degree in smaller nuclear missiles?

Survive? Maybe. Remain combat-effective? Not likely. Too many things (radar antennas, gun barrels, etc) have to be outside the armor to function, which means getting burned off by a nuke. So maybe you can tow the useless hulk back and repair it someday, but it's out for the duration of any plausible modern war. You'd have to disperse the ships pretty far out to have some of them survive, which means a significant drop in defensive effectiveness.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Witzkatz wrote:
I'm mostly asking because I just remembered a field test the Australians did with an older Centurion tank they kept running and dropped a nuke a hundred yards in front of it - when they came back later, the tank was mostly intact and had simply run out of fuel, meaning the blast didn't even impair the engine operation. (Effects on crew could, of course, not be tested...) I'm aware most ships won't have that raw armor, though.

The important part there is the very low yield on the nuke (and the distance was 500 yards, not 100), the warheads on anti-ship missiles are orders of magnitude more powerful.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Witzkatz wrote:
I'm mostly asking because I just remembered a field test the Australians did with an older Centurion tank they kept running and dropped a nuke a hundred yards in front of it - when they came back later, the tank was mostly intact and had simply run out of fuel, meaning the blast didn't even impair the engine operation. (Effects on crew could, of course, not be tested...) I'm aware most ships won't have that raw armor, though.

The important part there is the very low yield on the nuke (and the distance was 500 yards, not 100), the warheads on anti-ship missiles are orders of magnitude more powerful.

The other important part was that while the tank survived, the calculation was that the crew wouldn't have survived the blast wave. If a ship stays afloat but most, if not all, the crew is dead then that nuke did its job just as well.

And this is just discussing missiles. A nuclear torpedo isn't survivable due to the laws of physics. Gravity's a bitch.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

Our new LRASM has more then double the explosive power of the Harpoon, so I'd say at least in US regards, we're focussing on more punch with our missiles, instead of less.

The same one that is already getting ditched in favor of the again much lighter Joint Strike Missile? Or has already been ditched in favor of the NSM, which only has a 150kg ish warhead (IIRC)? That one?

They are replacing an air launched missile with a surface launched missile?

Yeah... don't think so.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Baron, you might want to take a look at modern destroyers and anti-ship missiles. The average modern anti-ship missile carries a warhead between 150-500kg, and there is even frigates carrying 500kg warheads around, and even tiny corvettes carry missiles with 300 kg nuclear warheads (a single Admiral Gorshkov-class frigate can carry 16 anti-ship missiles with 300kg thermonuclear warheads for example, or an equal number of missiles with 200kg armour-piercing warheads or 500kg warheads, not to mention torpedoes and a large amount of shorter-ranged missiles).

And you area aware that some of the last BBs into the water were designed to take 1300kg hits, right?

Ok, let me start by making some things clear, because I see a lot of the same tired arguments being trotted out again and again.

1) Battleships have been upgraded since WW2. Go visit one, you might be surprised at some of the modern hardware they carry. Unlike Russia, the US did upgrade it's BBs with fighting platforms like Kirov in mind.

2) A single Iowa class can carry more CIWS than an entire carrier group combined, in conjunction with modern VLS systems AND 16" guns, if the six inch guns are reduced to six 127mm otos, whose long range munitions DO work and cost less than the rest of the ship. The Navy has reviewed this plan in 1958, 1963, 1975, 1981, 1991, and 2006. It was shot down due to requiring too much manpower. Seems that battleships do not do 'optimal crewing'.

3) NUKES!


That object in the Wilson cloud? That's USS Arkansas, a pre-WW1 Wyoming class battleship being flipped over by a 70kt nuke nearly directly under it. Arky was a fraction of the size of an Iowa, but i'll admit that a direct nuclear hit would probably kill everyone on board, and may heavilly damage the ship. While I grant that Status Six would kill a battleship (and the rest of the fleet, and everything else for 75 miles,having a 100mt warhead) the little W23 equivalents that Sizzler could, probably, mount (being that all we know is that it can be nuclear armed, but given the warhead it's designed to carry, it's most likely in the range of a US W23) on Gorshkov don't have a big enough yield to do what you see in the above picture.

I've gone over the BoS reports on each battleship post Baker and the majority of them were actualyl in good shape, save the Navy tried to 'clean' the radiation off the ships by pouring contaminated material on them. The reasons this did nto work should be pretty obvious, and made the issue much worse. As far as crew survival goes, it's questionable due to the Navy's post shot procedures muddying the waters.

But, once you're broken out nukes, the sort of role that a battleship would play in a modern navy is probably off the menu anyway at that point. You're unlikely to be invading anyplace that's lobbing nukes at you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 djones520 wrote:

They are replacing an air launched missile with a surface launched missile?

Yeah... don't think so.

LRASM was up for the LCS program to be their missile, it lost to the NSM. If you don't believe me, feel free to go look.

JSM is an Air to Ground version of NSM. Also, feel free to go look.

The Centurion survived a nuke,it's nothing special

 BaronIveagh wrote:
2) A single Iowa class can carry more CIWS than an entire carrier group combined

This is a weird thing to say honestly. Because it's not like we couldn't fit more on our ships. A Ford has 3 of them, plus a couple of SEARAMs. A Burke has 2 of them. And a Ford for reference weighs more than 100 times as much. Yeah if you stick CIWS literally everywhere they could have more than a carrier group. But so could your average sized barge.


(besides I'd say that seasparrow equipped VLS and SEARAMs are a way more useful method, CIWS are very much last resort.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:
2) A single Iowa class can carry more CIWS than an entire carrier group combined

This is a weird thing to say honestly. Because it's not like we couldn't fit more on our ships. A Ford has 3 of them, plus a couple of SEARAMs. A Burke has 2 of them. And a Ford for reference weighs more than 100 times as much. Yeah if you stick CIWS literally everywhere they could have more than a carrier group. But so could your average sized barge.


(besides I'd say that seasparrow equipped VLS and SEARAMs are a way more useful method, CIWS are very much last resort.

And this is an interesting thing to me - I'm aware guided anti-missile defense systems are more modern than the usual CIWS guns, but keeping in mind that incoming salvoes of enemy missiles are the ONE thing modern ships have to fear, I'm wondering why they don't slap at least a few more CIWS on most ships. Maybe because it's a relative peacetime right now and they keep some possible slots free for quick upgrades on these larger ships?

I'm just thinking of these early destroyers of the 1920s and 1930s where the navies apparently thought "Oh, let's have a single flak gun for the entire ship, that'll work out" - and at the end of WW2 they were literally sticking guns pointing upwards wherever it was humanly possible. Against aircraft, not missiles, of course, but I'm wondering if we will see the same uptick in CIWS and similar installations once the first destroyer-or-bigger ship gets killed by a missile salvo overwhelming its defences. Because even if they are a last resort, I can't imagine that they are so expensive it wouldn't make sense to have, I dunno, at least eight per larger ship.

 Witzkatz wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:
2) A single Iowa class can carry more CIWS than an entire carrier group combined

This is a weird thing to say honestly. Because it's not like we couldn't fit more on our ships. A Ford has 3 of them, plus a couple of SEARAMs. A Burke has 2 of them. And a Ford for reference weighs more than 100 times as much. Yeah if you stick CIWS literally everywhere they could have more than a carrier group. But so could your average sized barge.


(besides I'd say that seasparrow equipped VLS and SEARAMs are a way more useful method, CIWS are very much last resort.

And this is an interesting thing to me - I'm aware guided anti-missile defense systems are more modern than the usual CIWS guns, but keeping in mind that incoming salvoes of enemy missiles are the ONE thing modern ships have to fear, I'm wondering why they don't slap at least a few more CIWS on most ships. Maybe because it's a relative peacetime right now and they keep some possible slots free for quick upgrades on these larger ships?

I'm just thinking of these early destroyers of the 1920s and 1930s where the navies apparently thought "Oh, let's have a single flak gun for the entire ship, that'll work out" - and at the end of WW2 they were literally sticking guns pointing upwards wherever it was humanly possible. Against aircraft, not missiles, of course, but I'm wondering if we will see the same uptick in CIWS and similar installations once the first destroyer-or-bigger ship gets killed by a missile salvo overwhelming its defences. Because even if they are a last resort, I can't imagine that they are so expensive it wouldn't make sense to have, I dunno, at least eight per larger ship.

I think that there are diminishing returns from point defence. If missiles are getting through to larger vessels then I'm afraid the battle is probably lost.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Baron, you might want to take a look at modern destroyers and anti-ship missiles. The average modern anti-ship missile carries a warhead between 150-500kg, and there is even frigates carrying 500kg warheads around, and even tiny corvettes carry missiles with 300 kg nuclear warheads (a single Admiral Gorshkov-class frigate can carry 16 anti-ship missiles with 300kg thermonuclear warheads for example, or an equal number of missiles with 200kg armour-piercing warheads or 500kg warheads, not to mention torpedoes and a large amount of shorter-ranged missiles).

And you area aware that some of the last BBs into the water were designed to take 1300kg hits, right?

Ok, let me start by making some things clear, because I see a lot of the same tired arguments being trotted out again and again.

1) Battleships have been upgraded since WW2. Go visit one, you might be surprised at some of the modern hardware they carry. Unlike Russia, the US did upgrade it's BBs with fighting platforms like Kirov in mind.

2) A single Iowa class can carry more CIWS than an entire carrier group combined, in conjunction with modern VLS systems AND 16" guns, if the six inch guns are reduced to six 127mm otos, whose long range munitions DO work and cost less than the rest of the ship. The Navy has reviewed this plan in 1958, 1963, 1975, 1981, 1991, and 2006. It was shot down due to requiring too much manpower. Seems that battleships do not do 'optimal crewing'.

1. I'd love to visit USS Missouri or some other massive battleship. Truly awe-inspiring vessels. But it hasn't been upgraded since the 1980's, and its antiquated CIWS systems and radar aren't worth much against the latest generation of missiles. The Kirov-class battlecruiser was designed to take on entire carrier groups with all their defense systems, its Granit missiles would have no trouble defeating an Iowa-class battleship with its old Phalanx systems. I mean, that is obvious. They are completely different ships with completely different purposes. A Kirov is a purpose-built capital ship killer. An Iowa is a floating artillery barge.
Of course, you could strip out all of an Iowa's weapons and replace them with modern weapons and systems. But you'd still have that massive, unnecessarily big hull that makes the ship really expensive in maintenance and crew requirements and overall provides a lot of disadvantages. Given the massive cost of such an upgrade and maintenance, you are better off using a couple of destroyers, who do everything better and are more resilient than a single battleship, simply because they are more ships. Like you could turn a battleship in a CIWS barge, you could make it carry more CIWS than an entire carrier group (it currently does not, it carries just 4 Phalanx CIWS systems), but that would come at the cost of it not being able to do other missions as well anymore, and multiple destroyers would still provide better coverage for overall lesser money. There are plenty of reasons the US Navy has shut down this idea so many times. Battleships just are not worth the effort. They cost too much money and do not provide anything significant that makes them worth using over a cheaper, more versatile destroyer.
Also, just to let you know, Russia does not have battleships. The Kirov-class battlecruiser comes close in size and armament, but it is no true battleship. It is however excessively large and expensive like a battleship, so they are probably the last class of large warships the world is going to see. The Russian navy will keep them until they reach the end of their service life, but you can be sure they will be replaced with destroyers or light cruisers after at. The cost and destructiveness of modern warfare just favours smaller, lighter vessels.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
3) NUKES!

That object in the Wilson cloud? That's USS Arkansas, a pre-WW1 Wyoming class battleship being flipped over by a 70kt nuke nearly directly under it. Arky was a fraction of the size of an Iowa, but i'll admit that a direct nuclear hit would probably kill everyone on board, and may heavilly damage the ship. While I grant that Status Six would kill a battleship (and the rest of the fleet, and everything else for 75 miles,having a 100mt warhead) the little W23 equivalents that Sizzler could, probably, mount (being that all we know is that it can be nuclear armed, but given the warhead it's designed to carry, it's most likely in the range of a US W23) on Gorshkov don't have a big enough yield to do what you see in the above picture.

No, but they will still kill everyone aboard the ship and tear off the superstructure at least. Unlike the bomb used in the test you are showing, a cruise missile would impact a ship directly rather than explode somewhere high in the air or underwater like in the tests. So it does not need those high yields to deal massive damage. And anyways, a battleship without crew is as good as sunk, and the test you showed sunk two battleships (Arkansas and Nagato), with Arkansas being a total loss and Nagato sinking later from damage sustained.
And a Kalibr cruise missile would mount a nuclear warhead quite a bit heavier than a W23 artillery shell. The entire W23 shell weighs 680kg. The Kalibr's conventional warhead alone weighs 500kg, with the entire missile weighing up to 2300kg.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
I've gone over the BoS reports on each battleship post Baker and the majority of them were actualyl in good shape, save the Navy tried to 'clean' the radiation off the ships by pouring contaminated material on them. The reasons this did nto work should be pretty obvious, and made the issue much worse. As far as crew survival goes, it's questionable due to the Navy's post shot procedures muddying the waters.

But, once you're broken out nukes, the sort of role that a battleship would play in a modern navy is probably off the menu anyway at that point. You're unlikely to be invading anyplace that's lobbing nukes at you.

In good shape? Here in the spoiler is USS Nevada after the ABLE test, which had an airburst bomb miss it and go off more than a kilometer away. It is all mangled up and while it remained afloat, it is clearly in anything but 'good shape'.
And an enemy that is not lobbing nukes at you would be an inferior enemy, and you are unlikely to need a battleship to provide fire support since you almost certainly will have aerial superiority already. The only countries against which an US invasion force would not be able to gain aerial superiority are those that would also be lobbing nukes (China, Russia). CAS Aircraft are able to provide more precise support, while bombers are more destructive than a battleship in tackling strategic targets. A battleship does have niche utility, but it is such a small niche that it does absolutely not justify the massive costs of a battleship.
But go ahead, write the US Navy with your amazing idea of the battleship in the 21st century. Tell all the admirals that they are wrong. Evidently, you are much more knowledgeable on 21st century naval warfare than they are.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
And an enemy that is not lobbing nukes at you would be an inferior enemy, and you are unlikely to need a battleship to provide fire support since you almost certainly will have aerial superiority already. The only countries against which an US invasion force would not be able to gain aerial superiority are those that would also be lobbing nukes (China, Russia). CAS Aircraft are able to provide more precise support, while bombers are more destructive than a battleship in tackling strategic targets. A battleship does have niche utility, but it is such a small niche that it does absolutely not justify the massive costs of a battleship.
But go ahead, write the US Navy with your amazing idea of the battleship in the 21st century. Tell all the admirals that they are wrong. Evidently, you are much more knowledgeable on 21st century naval warfare than they are.

Actually, I don't need to tell the Admirals they're wrong, they've already determined that. Nothing I've posted has not come up before in Proceedings or any number of tests.

More interestingly they already know there's a problem with how they're going about gunfire support. Two whole programs have gone belly up pursuing this. All sorts of ideas have been fielded, including battleships, putting reactive armor on the Burke class, unmanned drone boats, etc etc etc. Trillions have been spent trying to find a working alternative TO battleships, which is the major sticking point to battleships making a return, as well as the perception that Congress is unlikely to approve a cruiser, let alone a battleship. (Hence why Zumwalt is a 'destroyer').

And, frankly, I'll point to one field of operation that, and again this has been pointed out before, battleships would be superior at: FONOPs. Since the entire point of that is to be big, scary, and most importantly, seen. Which you know, takes a ship capable of taking a hit since, you know, stealth is counter-productive here, and carriers probably should not be sailing in sight of potentially hostile shores.

And, as I pointed out earlier, a battleship frees up aircraft (and long range missiles) to hit targets key to air superiority or prevent enemy reinforcements from reaching the landing zone. A lot of people seem to think that one replaces the other rather than compliments it.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

In good shape? Here in the spoiler is USS Nevada after the ABLE test, which had an airburst bomb miss it and go off more than a kilometer away.

Read the structural damage report, it's not actually bad and did not overly impact the ship's ability to engage in it's primary mission. The radiation that came in through the WW1 era ventilation systems was actually what would have killed Nevada.

Battleships can have big nasty holes right through them and not actually impact their fighting ability.

Here's a damage assessment of the USS South Dakota following Guadalcanal (since that got trotted out earlier):



http://www.navweaps.com/index_lundgren/South_Dakota_Damage_Analysis_Introduction.pdf

Here's BuShips report that above slams as being pretty incomplete, but does include some nice pictures of damage.

http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/BB57/1942DamageReport/GuadalcanalDamageRpt.html

Most of the damage was repaired at sea, the rest when she returned to port in New York for an overhaul.

...battleships would be superior at: FONOPs....

That's actually a very great point, especially in light of the island building shenanigans by China and Iran's threatening to shut down the straight of Hormuz.

The F-35s (and the like) job is to NOT be seen in their operations... having a big mofo battleships to "patrol" these areas independent of carrier groups does make a ton of sense.

Please oh please let's build a modern Montana-class battleship! How many gunz can we stick it on this thing?

 whembly wrote:

Please oh please let's build a modern Montana-class battleship! How many gunz can we stick it on this thing?

Fewer than I think you'd like. Ideally you'd have to replace the X and Y turrets with VLS (and we're talking 'macross missile massacre' levels of VLS) and then most of the secondaries with either duel purpose guns or CWIS systems (and possibly even more missiles in the form of SeaRAM) I'm fond of the 127mm Oto for this, as it's very versatile.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Baron, you might want to take a look at modern destroyers and anti-ship missiles. The average modern anti-ship missile carries a warhead between 150-500kg, and there is even frigates carrying 500kg warheads around, and even tiny corvettes carry missiles with 300 kg nuclear warheads (a single Admiral Gorshkov-class frigate can carry 16 anti-ship missiles with 300kg thermonuclear warheads for example, or an equal number of missiles with 200kg armour-piercing warheads or 500kg warheads, not to mention torpedoes and a large amount of shorter-ranged missiles).

And you area aware that some of the last BBs into the water were designed to take 1300kg hits, right?

Ok, let me start by making some things clear, because I see a lot of the same tired arguments being trotted out again and again.

1) Battleships have been upgraded since WW2. Go visit one, you might be surprised at some of the modern hardware they carry. Unlike Russia, the US did upgrade it's BBs with fighting platforms like Kirov in mind.

2) A single Iowa class can carry more CIWS than an entire carrier group combined, in conjunction with modern VLS systems AND 16" guns, if the six inch guns are reduced to six 127mm otos, whose long range munitions DO work and cost less than the rest of the ship. The Navy has reviewed this plan in 1958, 1963, 1975, 1981, 1991, and 2006. It was shot down due to requiring too much manpower. Seems that battleships do not do 'optimal crewing'.

1. I'd love to visit USS Missouri or some other massive battleship. Truly awe-inspiring vessels. But it hasn't been upgraded since the 1980's, and its antiquated CIWS systems and radar aren't worth much against the latest generation of missiles. The Kirov-class battlecruiser was designed to take on entire carrier groups with all their defense systems, its Granit missiles would have no trouble defeating an Iowa-class battleship with its old Phalanx systems. I mean, that is obvious. They are completely different ships with completely different purposes. A Kirov is a purpose-built capital ship killer. An Iowa is a floating artillery barge.
Of course, you could strip out all of an Iowa's weapons and replace them with modern weapons and systems. But you'd still have that massive, unnecessarily big hull that makes the ship really expensive in maintenance and crew requirements and overall provides a lot of disadvantages. Given the massive cost of such an upgrade and maintenance, you are better off using a couple of destroyers, who do everything better and are more resilient than a single battleship, simply because they are more ships. Like you could turn a battleship in a CIWS barge, you could make it carry more CIWS than an entire carrier group (it currently does not, it carries just 4 Phalanx CIWS systems), but that would come at the cost of it not being able to do other missions as well anymore, and multiple destroyers would still provide better coverage for overall lesser money. There are plenty of reasons the US Navy has shut down this idea so many times. Battleships just are not worth the effort. They cost too much money and do not provide anything significant that makes them worth using over a cheaper, more versatile destroyer.
Also, just to let you know, Russia does not have battleships. The Kirov-class battlecruiser comes close in size and armament, but it is no true battleship. It is however excessively large and expensive like a battleship, so they are probably the last class of large warships the world is going to see. The Russian navy will keep them until they reach the end of their service life, but you can be sure they will be replaced with destroyers or light cruisers after at. The cost and destructiveness of modern warfare just favours smaller, lighter vessels.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
3) NUKES!

That object in the Wilson cloud? That's USS Arkansas, a pre-WW1 Wyoming class battleship being flipped over by a 70kt nuke nearly directly under it. Arky was a fraction of the size of an Iowa, but i'll admit that a direct nuclear hit would probably kill everyone on board, and may heavilly damage the ship. While I grant that Status Six would kill a battleship (and the rest of the fleet, and everything else for 75 miles,having a 100mt warhead) the little W23 equivalents that Sizzler could, probably, mount (being that all we know is that it can be nuclear armed, but given the warhead it's designed to carry, it's most likely in the range of a US W23) on Gorshkov don't have a big enough yield to do what you see in the above picture.

No, but they will still kill everyone aboard the ship and tear off the superstructure at least. Unlike the bomb used in the test you are showing, a cruise missile would impact a ship directly rather than explode somewhere high in the air or underwater like in the tests. So it does not need those high yields to deal massive damage. And anyways, a battleship without crew is as good as sunk, and the test you showed sunk two battleships (Arkansas and Nagato), with Arkansas being a total loss and Nagato sinking later from damage sustained.
And a Kalibr cruise missile would mount a nuclear warhead quite a bit heavier than a W23 artillery shell. The entire W23 shell weighs 680kg. The Kalibr's conventional warhead alone weighs 500kg, with the entire missile weighing up to 2300kg.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
I've gone over the BoS reports on each battleship post Baker and the majority of them were actualyl in good shape, save the Navy tried to 'clean' the radiation off the ships by pouring contaminated material on them. The reasons this did nto work should be pretty obvious, and made the issue much worse. As far as crew survival goes, it's questionable due to the Navy's post shot procedures muddying the waters.

But, once you're broken out nukes, the sort of role that a battleship would play in a modern navy is probably off the menu anyway at that point. You're unlikely to be invading anyplace that's lobbing nukes at you.

Spoiler:

In good shape? Here in the spoiler is USS Nevada after the ABLE test, which had an airburst bomb miss it and go off more than a kilometer away. It is all mangled up and while it remained afloat, it is clearly in anything but 'good shape'.
And an enemy that is not lobbing nukes at you would be an inferior enemy, and you are unlikely to need a battleship to provide fire support since you almost certainly will have aerial superiority already. The only countries against which an US invasion force would not be able to gain aerial superiority are those that would also be lobbing nukes (China, Russia). CAS Aircraft are able to provide more precise support, while bombers are more destructive than a battleship in tackling strategic targets. A battleship does have niche utility, but it is such a small niche that it does absolutely not justify the massive costs of a battleship.
But go ahead, write the US Navy with your amazing idea of the battleship in the 21st century. Tell all the admirals that they are wrong. Evidently, you are much more knowledgeable on 21st century naval warfare than they are.

I was able to tour several Russian combatants in the past and the ones that truly were impressive to me was the Slava "Varyag". The Udaloy not so much. The Granit missile is impressive for its range and potential payload, but the real ship killers are the ones we call "sizzler" and "switchblade", I think those are called Klub and Kalibre to you? I believe though that the main carrier and battleship killing platforms would have been the backfires, not ships or subs at all, though akula and oscar are pretty good for that.

I agree that an UNREFITTED WWII battleship would be pretty useless in a modern naval engagement.

But I've never seen anyone here propose bring back unrefitted WWII battleships either.

If you refit an Iowa class with modern electronics (granted, with some heavy-duty shock absorbing technology) you'd free up quite a bit of space for modern active and passive countermeasures...

 Vulcan wrote:
I agree that an UNREFITTED WWII battleship would be pretty useless in a modern naval engagement.

But I've never seen anyone here propose bring back unrefitted WWII battleships either.

If you refit an Iowa class with modern electronics (granted, with some heavy-duty shock absorbing technology) you'd free up quite a bit of space for modern active and passive countermeasures...

Yeah, the shock of the 16"/50 firing was an issue even after the refit in the 1980's that brought it up to snuff then.

You want to hear one of the biggest costs for a refit currently, according to GAO? Separate bunks, restrooms, and showers for men and women.

GAO did an estimate on bringing the BBs up to snuff. For the entire Iowa class it was about 250m each (IIRC), including repairs to no2 Turret on Iowa and some minor armor refits.

Is it wrong to think that 250m each seems like a cost effective way to modernize these ships? o.O

With research/development/longterm support, isn't each of the new carriers something like 3 billion per ship?

EDIT: Mods, should we consider changing the title of the thread to include "all things" military? This is a fun thread...

I love battleships and always enjoy the battleships in the present debate, but really I think it comes down to too many eggs in one basket (lives), too narrow a mission to justify it.. A battleship can do some serious damage to targets within, what, 150Km in the time that aircraft can strike anywhere in the world given refueling. What enemy is really going to stand still and let a battleship steam up to them in the modern battle sphere? What enemy could really defend its entire coastline against the US so well that a battleship was needed to pound shore defenses? As has been pointed out I think, if you have air superiority you don't need a battleship, if you don't have it your battle ship is doomed unless point defense is better than the Harpoon Wargame taught me it is.... : )

 kestral wrote:
What enemy is really going to stand still and let a battleship steam up to them in the modern battle sphere? What enemy could really defend its entire coastline against the US so well that a battleship was needed to pound shore defenses?

North Korea immediately sprang to mind on these. It's not that any given target couldn't be pounded with air power, it's that there are so damn many of them. China is unlikely to aid the US even if it stood back and allowed a war with NK, and crossing the DMZ is for all intents even worse than forcing a landing someplace else.

Pretty sure air power would clear as many beaches as were needed in that scenario. Also, in most wars we can imagine in the present, the USA is not in a hurry. If you need a beach cleared, TOMORROW a battleship would be great... ...if you happened to have it there by some chance. If you've got a week, why not just surgically hammer the poor shleps from the air?

It seems to me that far more wars have been lost by nostalgia for past weapon systems and doctrines than by pushing forward too rapidly with development. Or at least that is my reading of military history.

 kestral wrote:
Pretty sure air power would clear as many beaches as were needed in that scenario. Also, in most wars we can imagine in the present, the USA is not in a hurry. If you need a beach cleared, TOMORROW a battleship would be great... ...if you happened to have it there by some chance. If you've got a week, why not just surgically hammer the poor shleps from the air?

NK has been digging in for fifty years+. If you think US air power alone will clear out those defenses, in any reasonable amount of time, I hope you're in the first wave ashore. No invasion has 'a week'. You DO NOT want ot give them time to prepare for your push inland. Unless you want ot go back to the part where they also buy purple hearts in bulk

The reason for having a battleship there is so that you CAN hammer them surgically from the air, and don't have aircraft tied up hammering the beach.

Maybe a greater explanation is required: the typical US attack to invade someplace usually involves every single ship and plane launching as many cruise missiles and TALDs as they can to swamp air and missile defense systems so that targets get hit. Stealth bombers try and pick off what they can, but the real work of the whole thing falls to non-stealth aircraft. Even the F-35 when fitted out to hit ground targets is big as a barn on radar due to what exterior weapons mountings do to radar cross section.

Battleship close fire support means that instead of having to use aircraft to deal with hardened beach defenses, they can focus on runways, hangers, SAM sites, C&C, and all the stuff that has to blow up behind the enemy lines to keep US Marines unperforated.

There was a report put out back in the 1980's with the estimated difference in plane and pilot losses in Vietnam if the New Jersey had been allowed to continue to provide fire support.

Over 1,000 men might have come home who didn't.




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 kestral wrote:

It seems to me that far more wars have been lost by nostalgia for past weapon systems and doctrines than by pushing forward too rapidly with development. Or at least that is my reading of military history.

If that were true, the Infantryman would have been done away with the moment cavalry rode along. Also, if you're into readings of military history, I suggest that you examine the tank actions before Cambrai. They generally show that underdeveloped doctrines and technology rushed into service prematurely get men killed and equipment lost needlessly.

And, the point is that you keep a system until you find something better. You don't just throw it at your ass because something is newer. The knife, for example, still has a place on the battlefield, ten thousand years on. It might have changed in that time. But even still, there it is.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
If you think US air power alone will clear out those defenses, in any reasonable amount of time

But why do you need to do it in a "reasonable amount of time"? North Korea has zero force projection ability outside of the fact that Seoul is right next to their border. They have zero modern weapons or AA defenses. If you somehow magically prevent North Korea from shelling their hostage off the map the moment you take aggressive action towards them you can bomb them into submission at your leisure. All they can do is sit there passively and take losses until you decide you've killed enough people to start landing troops. It just comes back to the fatal problem with battleships: you don't need them against the enemies they can hope to successfully engage, and any enemy that can't be bombed into submission at your leisure is probably going to turn that battleship into nothing more than an expensive target.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
Is it wrong to think that 250m each seems like a cost effective way to modernize these ships? o.O

Not really, when it's 250m thrown in the trash. Even if it's arguably a small total amount relative to the bloated obscenity of the US military budget as a whole it's still not getting much in return, especially compared to an aircraft carrier. And that 250m number seems rather optimistic for a comprehensive refit when the steel is the cheap part of a ship and all of a WWII battleship's systems would have to be torn out and replaced. It's just laughable that the highest cost in all of that would be putting "men" and "women" signs on some doors.

 Peregrine wrote:
They have zero modern weapons or AA defenses.

A reasonable amount of time being one where they don't have time to fix it again before the troops arrive. That's the problem with any prolonged aerial campaign is that you can't hit every single target every single day. and if there's one thing a NK invasion would have it's targets in numbers the likes of which have not been seen since WW2. They spend 25% of their entire GDP on their military, and have a larger force of reserves than the US, China, India and Russia combined. Their entire military haws been planning with the single assumption: that the US will attack them, and every war the US has fought between here and there has been studied quite closely.

We know frankly bupkis about current NK weapons systems in this field, since we haven't had a defector to question who'd have knowledge since the 1990's. It is known that modern AA systems have been found on occasion being smuggled in. How many they have, no one knows. Do they have any home grown variants based on Russian or Chinese tech? No one knows that either. What we do know, is that they have almost as many AA gunner and SAM launcher personnel as the US Marines have men entirely, and lots of surplus Russian MANPADs.

The US will run out of missiles long before the North Koreans run out of men and defensive positions. So every missile that isn't wasted is a victory. If other weapon systems can take over from bombs and missiles, then it's best they do. Further, close support with anything besides aircraft will come under rather intense bombardment due to the sheer number of artillery pieces they have trained on their boarders. So whatever you bring into play is going to need to withstand hits and remain operational. Which neither LCS nor the Burkes are going to pull off.

 Peregrine wrote:
And that 250m number seems rather optimistic for a comprehensive refit when the steel is the cheap part of a ship and all of a WWII battleship's systems would have to be torn out and replaced. It's just laughable that the highest cost in all of that would be putting "men" and "women" signs on some doors.

Thank you, Peregrine for showing that you know absolutely NOTHING about this subject matter. You do realize that the 'WW2 Systems' that would need replacing already have been, right? The Iowa's haven't been just sitting mothballed since the Second World War, they got overhauled in the 1960's, 1980's, and 1990's.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
They have zero modern weapons or AA defenses.

A reasonable amount of time being one where they don't have time to fix it again before the troops arrive. That's the problem with any prolonged aerial campaign is that you can't hit every single target every single day. and if there's one thing a NK invasion would have it's targets in numbers the likes of which have not been seen since WW2. They spend 25% of their entire GDP on their military, and have a larger force of reserves than the US, China, India and Russia combined. Their entire military haws been planning with the single assumption: that the US will attack them, and every war the US has fought between here and there has been studied quite closely.

It's funny how people like to throw out that 25% every time they need to show NK is dangerous, yet conveniently forget to mention that thanks to NKs weak GDP the real amount of money is barely more than such global powerhouses as Norway and Pakistan spend. South Korea alone spends over five times more money while only using 2,6% of their GDP on it...

The real problem in a NK campaign would be to find worthwhile targets. Kim has lots of rusty Soviet gear and lots of men, but very little worth spending an expensive bomb on.

How much GDP adjusted for PPP does NK spend though?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
How much GDP adjusted for PPP does NK spend though?

It depends on who you ask, but it varies from 5-40 billion a year in military expenditures. Like many things about NK there's no straight answer. Even the 25% number is a guess. Some sources claim as high as 40%.

Spetulhu wrote:

The real problem in a NK campaign would be to find worthwhile targets. Kim has lots of rusty Soviet gear and lots of men, but very little worth spending an expensive bomb on.

Yeah, they'll all be home by Christmas.