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Made in th
Pyromaniac Hellhound Pilot






Battle Carrier. a warship that combines the advantages of (Dreadnough) battleship and ability to store and launch naval warplanes in large numbers of Aircraft Carrier. such class of warship exists in science fiction.. usually Space Operas.
Is it practical in real life? and with land-based coastal missle battery (particulary the Chinese ones) beats the naval jet ranges. (manned or UAVs). is the combination of the two different types of warships practical IRL?



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Lord of the Fleet






London

Trying to move and fire high-calibre naval guns would likely disrupt any activity on the flight deck. Naval guns and dreadnought-esque battleships have been obsolete for a fair while now, as cruise missiles and aircraft can hit targets much further and much more accurately than naval artillery.
   
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The Marine Standing Behind Marneus Calgar





Upstate, New York

One of the big problems is range. Guns want to be close enough to hit, aircraft want to launch far enough away from the combat zone.

If you just want to add missile launch tubes to a carrier, I guess you could. Although normally their escorts do that. Don’t want to disrupt the flight deck, both in build and operation.

   
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On moon miranda.

Mostly they just look cool in scifi. In practice these functions don't really work well together, and don't really operate in the same way or at the same ranges. It's makes way more sense to put naval guns and missiles on other ships dedicated to surface warfare, and make the Carriers purpose built.

Kinda like how a combination of Main Battle Tank and Cruise Missile launcher wouldn't really quite work out either. It would probably look cool, but they're not really roles you'd want or need to combine.

EDIT: things might be different in spaceships, but I suspect that the classic concept of a "carrier" or "dreadnought" would probably not translate well. You might get a fusion powered monster covered in point defense weaponry that are basically nuclear machineguns and the big guns might be independently maneuvering lasers that detach during combat under their own power while enormous cargo holds might keep thousands of combat drones of various sorts, while the vessels larger form and function need be less constrained by terrestrial demands, but who knows?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/04/20 20:00:18


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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

Probably not for a 'wet' navy, simply because to use your big guns you've got to get too close to a target,

you might as well use the extra space they'd take up to carry some more planes that you could use far more often either for both offense and defence

Once you switch to SF and have a space borne battle carrier things change, your big guns will have a lot more range projectiles don't have to worry about friction and can target stationary stuff from a great distance, more hand wavy energy weapons probably do too

SF also seems to envisage single ships doing stuff a fair amount of the time at which point if you need fighters, bombers and a big guns they've all got to go on that ship (whereas in real life wet navy operations you'd be sending out a bunch of ships to guard & protect the carrier, all of them fairly specialised)


 
   
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Killer Klaivex







You could convert a carrier to mount a 12" gun I suppose; though it would clog up the internals something bad (look up how large gun mounting machinery is).

I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to. Either build a dedicated gun platform (of whatever size), or build a carrier. Trying to multirole usually just ends up making a bad design.


 
   
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Mighty Vampire Count






UK

A number of carriers had decent sized guns when laid down before or during WWII and these were removed in favour of better AA or just taken out.

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Douglas Bader






 Lone Cat wrote:
advantages of (Dreadnough) battleship


Just what exactly are those supposed advantages in a modern war?

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Battleships in modern war like modern high calibre artillery have more than you think. The Iowa class were laid up more due to a lack of viable opponents than technical or tactical obsolescent. There armour while less effective against modern weapons is still going to be more effective than a vessel of lesser displacement and will still need a fairly dedicated attack to kill. If General Belgrano had entered cannon range of the Falkland taskforce it would have been a very different war and so received a concerted hunt and destroy effort which took considerable resources. Cannon also have an advantage that they are too dumb to fool basically missiles can be decoyed artillery shells can't. As well as that you can carry far more missiles than a smaller ship. A dreadcarrier combining a dreadnaughts armour with a carriers armament didn't quite exist however the Illustrious class developed by the RN to run the channel came close and proved to be extremely effective during WW2 due to their heavily armoured flight decks and ability to shrug off things like Kamikaze attack.

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Douglas Bader






 Llamahead wrote:
There armour while less effective against modern weapons is still going to be more effective than a vessel of lesser displacement and will still need a fairly dedicated attack to kill.


1% chance of stopping a hit is more than 0.5% chance of stopping a hit, but it's hardly a meaningful advantage. Heavy anti-ship missiles are going to kill a battleship regardless of its armor, and that's not even considering the fact that in a full-scale war where naval fleets are engaging each other tactical nuclear weapons are almost certainly going to be involved and armor is completely irrelevant.

If General Belgrano had entered cannon range of the Falkland taskforce it would have been a very different war and so received a concerted hunt and destroy effort which took considerable resources.


Key word: if. Getting into gun range against an opponent that has much greater range and complete freedom of movement is easier said than done. Putting similar resources into better attack aircraft and anti-ship missiles would have been far more effective at sinking the task force.

Cannon also have an advantage that they are too dumb to fool basically missiles can be decoyed artillery shells can't.


Decoys are much harder to make than you think and will only get less effective as data processing technology improves. And yes, guns may be immune to decoys but they also have a much lower chance of hitting in the first place.

As well as that you can carry far more missiles than a smaller ship.


I'm not sure what your point here is. A floating missile silo is not a battleship or an aircraft carrier.

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Killer Klaivex







I swear we've had this discussion like five times in the last year.


 
   
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The Marine Standing Behind Marneus Calgar





Upstate, New York

 Ketara wrote:
I swear we've had this discussion like five times in the last year.


I’ll admit to having a strong sense of flashback/deja vu a few posts into this thread. Fun discussion, but yah, old ground.

   
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Fixture of Dakka






Glasgow, Scotland

This type of ship could be amazing, but find me a Nation willing to actually fund it in the current climate. Hell, unless we're acting within a set of rather specific bounds, one which would ever fund this (there'll always be an Albert Speer slapping away Hitler's hand from signing yet another Wonder Waffen project...).
   
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Pyromaniac Hellhound Pilot






 Ketara wrote:
You could convert a carrier to mount a 12" gun I suppose; though it would clog up the internals something bad (look up how large gun mounting machinery is).

I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to. Either build a dedicated gun platform (of whatever size), or build a carrier. Trying to multirole usually just ends up making a bad design.


1. With more armors, that's the return of Pre Dreadnoughs as well. What do you think?
2. With Chinese (and maybe Russian ally) coastal defense missile battery outranges American jets (and AA networks became stronger and coverage, I don't think Russo-Chinese bloc would not find any solutions against B52 problems). How will you beat such mobile coastal defense missile battery unit without the needs to deploy commandos/stromtroops?
And what will US Navy do with the remaining Dreadnoughs they still have in active service? these Dreads did still serves US Navy as active warship with nuclear reactors and Tomahawk launchers? particularly with smaller (and tech superior) Zummwalt coming up.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Llamahead wrote:
Battleships in modern war like modern high calibre artillery have more than you think. The Iowa class were laid up more due to a lack of viable opponents than technical or tactical obsolescent. There armour while less effective against modern weapons is still going to be more effective than a vessel of lesser displacement and will still need a fairly dedicated attack to kill. If General Belgrano had entered cannon range of the Falkland taskforce it would have been a very different war and so received a concerted hunt and destroy effort which took considerable resources. Cannon also have an advantage that they are too dumb to fool basically missiles can be decoyed artillery shells can't. .[/quote]


Also cannon shells can't be intercepted either!! While Phalanx sentry guns (and maybe Laser Avengers) mounted on warships (particularly large ones) can shoot down Exocet or any other anti-ship missiles. (similar concepts did show up in 1974 in Scifi), it CAN'T do the same with cannon shells.
And with this magnitude of smart warfare and robotic techs that grants a generic gun-howitzer the same ability as rocket artillery...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R05JoavbfrU
What will happen if naval guns particularly in dreadnoughs (especially the 16 inches) get NLOS tech upgrades?

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/04/21 04:50:34




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Douglas Bader






 Lone Cat wrote:
How will you beat such mobile coastal defense missile battery unit without the needs to deploy commandos/stromtroops?


Interceptor missiles. But the important question here is why would you think that a battleship-carrier hybrid would be a relevant part of a solution? A battleship's guns have even shorter range than the carrier's strike aircraft.

And what will US Navy do with the remaining Dreadnoughs they still have in active service?


Err, what? No such active ships exist.

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
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Pyromaniac Hellhound Pilot






^ What happened to Iowa class Dreadnoughs? I saw the news that this thing did fight in the two gulf wars.



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Douglas Bader






 Lone Cat wrote:
^ What happened to Iowa class Dreadnoughs? I saw the news that this thing did fight in the two gulf wars.


Officially retired in 2006, mothballed in 1995 and never left dock after that.

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
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 Peregrine wrote:


But the important question here is why would you think that a battleship-carrier hybrid would be a relevant part of a solution? A battleship's guns have even shorter range than the carrier's strike aircraft.



Think of nations that can't afford to (there are so so many countries in the world that might be easily bullied with a small flottila of American Strike Carrier, Missile Cruisers and a handful of Destroyer escorts,,, or similar flottila of either China or Russia), or not permitted to (Japan) have the large navy that includes a number of regular carriers and dreads, 'Quality' is needed

And think of backups when all naval planes assigned to a carrier is gone or not ready to launch when needed.
And, is 'Naval Railgun' a pure scifi flick weapons (seen in TF2 movie) or exists as WIP?




If this thing exists. What else is the reasons why Battlecarrier shouldn't be?
And with this. what will it be if Dreadnoughs are fitted with ones?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/04/21 05:19:08




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Made in us
Douglas Bader






 Lone Cat wrote:
Think of nations that can't afford to (there are so so many countries in the world that might be easily bullied with a small flottila of American Strike Carrier, Missile Cruisers and a handful of Destroyer escorts,,, or similar flottila of either China or Russia), or not permitted to (Japan) have the large navy that includes a number of regular carriers and dreads, 'Quality' is needed


And, again, the battleship part of the hybrid adds nothing to its effectiveness in a modern war. If a country has limited resources buying pure carriers is the rational thing, not throwing away money on half-battleships for the rare (and possibly nonexistent) scenario where a battleship could be useful.

And think of backups when all naval planes assigned to a carrier is gone or not ready to launch when needed.


This is a terrible design idea. The guns take up a huge amount of space which means carrying fewer planes. If both the hybrid and the pure carrier launch the same number of aircraft the pure carrier will still have planes in reserve.

And, is 'Naval Railgun' a pure scifi flick weapons (seen in TF2 movie) or exists as WIP?


Pure scifi. There are crippling barrel erosion issues and we're nowhere near building a viable combat version. Perhaps you should stop getting your ideas from movies?

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
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Last Remaining Whole C'Tan






Pleasant Valley, Iowa

 Ketara wrote:
I swear we've had this discussion like five times in the last year.


It's because battleships are fething awesome, even if we know they don't work anymore, so you have people who want them to work.

It's why you'll always seem people debating combat walkers, too, despite the fact they bring no advantages and many platform specific problems.... but man, a giant robot striding over the battlefield is only somewhat cooler than a giant ship with guns that have muzzle blasts the size of Rhode Island.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/04/21 06:50:21


 lord_blackfang wrote:
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Beast Coast

Carriers are already big juicy targets with a lot of eggs in one basket as it is. Trying to stuff more eggs into that basket doesn't seem particularly prudent. The carrier strike group exists for a reason.

   
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Pyromaniac Hellhound Pilot






 Hordini wrote:
Carriers are already big juicy targets with a lot of eggs in one basket as it is. Trying to stuff more eggs into that basket doesn't seem particularly prudent. The carrier strike group exists for a reason.


For countries that can afford to maintain a diversified fleet, like the USA, UK, PRC, Russia. this is not a problem,
What are a possible or viable solutions to those who can't afford a large fleet and often found themself at risk with such naval bullies or invasions? If not battlecarrier then what?.. without making themselves a vassalage of sort?
A fleet of Heavy Gunboats maybe good against a band of pirates like either Somalians or those of Mallaca strait, but a pure fleet VS fleet battles (like the Thonburi of the old) has proven a big sucker in ship to ship battle without the aid of aeronatuics. or Airforce as a whole. not sure about destroyers (which one is bigger?)



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Luton, UK

So I know very little about UAVs, but I assume they need a lot less space to be moved about, and a shorter runway to take off etc. I'm now imagining some sort of collapsible/retractable runway that sits on the side of the ship and is only raised when needed?

Obviously there's still the 'what's the point of the battleship' question but if you did that then you're not going to be impacting on the guns.

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Newcastle NSW

 Peregrine wrote:


And, is 'Naval Railgun' a pure scifi flick weapons (seen in TF2 movie) or exists as WIP?


Pure scifi. There are crippling barrel erosion issues and we're nowhere near building a viable combat version. Perhaps you should stop getting your ideas from movies?


So the railgun deployed on the Chinese Tank Landing Ship was a fake?

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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

 Rolsheen wrote:
 Peregrine wrote:


And, is 'Naval Railgun' a pure scifi flick weapons (seen in TF2 movie) or exists as WIP?


Pure scifi. There are crippling barrel erosion issues and we're nowhere near building a viable combat version. Perhaps you should stop getting your ideas from movies?


So the railgun deployed on the Chinese Tank Landing Ship was a fake?


Peri said "combat version" and if I recall right the landing tank railgun ship is still in testing for quite a while.
Building a new weapon is one thing, but testing is and long term durability and use is another. Some very high tech weapons are impressive, but prove to be unreliable, high maintenance or simply ineffective when compared to conventional weapons in actual combat situations. I seem to have a dim recollection that the USA might be similarly testing such weapons on ships as well.

In short at present its still in the development stages.

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 Lone Cat wrote:

1. With more armors, that's the return of Pre Dreadnoughs as well. What do you think?


Errr...pardon?

Pre-dreadnoughts describe the class of vessel laid out without turbines and no interlocking field of fire from a specific turret layout. It's a not a term used to describe ships with one gun turret mounted.

The term pre-dreadnought was coined after the arrival of Jackie Fisher's HMS Dreadnought in 1905; which was generally held to be a much better battleship design than those which predated it. So all battleships after that time are 'dreadnoughts' because they followed on from the general design tenets put into play then.


 Ouze wrote:
 Ketara wrote:
I swear we've had this discussion like five times in the last year.


It's because battleships are fething awesome, even if we know they don't work anymore, so you have people who want them to work.

It's why you'll always seem people debating combat walkers, too, despite the fact they bring no advantages and many platform specific problems.... but man, a giant robot striding over the battlefield is only somewhat cooler than a giant ship with guns that have muzzle blasts the size of Rhode Island.



The thing is, people will sit here and debate the viability of a battleship versus its obsolescence without ever really touching on the reason we don't use them. They'll squabble over missiles vs guns, shell weight versus battlefield requirements, survivability versus fleet usage. And frankly, the answer is that they could still well have a semi-useful role (as indeed, the continual reactivations of the US ships showed), but for one very fatal flaw.

And that's logistics.

To make heavy battleship armour and gun mountings requires an entire specialised industrial apparatus designed to support it. For the mountings you need workshops with extremely deep pits which carefully construct and then test the functionality of the mounting over a period of a year or so. Likewise with armour plating, it requires huge heavy forges and presses to make, carburise in specific ways (oil quenching, water cooling, etc); and again usually taking an extended period of time to manufacture. And that's assuming you know what you're doing.This kind of plant is extremely expensive, and requires retaining thousands of men with specialised skills and knowledge per battleship. It would take two or three years even to try and put the tooling together to do the job; followed by another four to five years in manufacturing time at first as people reacquired the necessary expertise.

No business is willing to invest money on such large expensive long running plant for just one or two ships. Or even a whole class of ships (say, five). Because once they've finished building them, there'd be no more repeat business. A new round of five battleships would last the US for the next fifty years, given the battleship race has long since ended. The money spent on all that plant would barely have paid for itself, and you'd have to discharge the men. The only way in which the private sector would be willing to undertake the job is if they were financially indemnified to an insane degree.

And that's what really makes the battleship impractical.

It's the sheer expense it would incur to get a new class of the bloody things put together. It's not that they're not useful (they can be), it's not that they're big targets or too vulnerable to aerial strike (carriers have the same weaknesses). It's because they're insanely bloody expensive to get a production line going for, and you can't just spit out a couple out of nowhere.

Which in turns means that the munitions which appear more expensive on the face of it (missiles, subs, and bombs) are actually much cheaper and more cost-effective to achieve the same job niche you'd have the battleship filling. Sure, they might not do it as well in a few specific scenarios. But they have their own scenarios which the battleship cannon will never perform as well at (if it's even able to). So it's not an 'either-or' scenario, but an 'either-and' one. And the sad truth is that battleships are just too damn expensive and awkward to build at this stage. So it's just cheaper and easier to utilise alternative attack methods.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2019/04/21 11:58:28



 
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




Various attempts to combine functionality of a carrier and surface combatant have been made, and at best results have proved mediocre.



This is even before we consider usefulness (or lack of it) of gun-armour warship today.

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 Ketara wrote:
And that's logistics.


A theory that is disputed by the fact that the US had battleships already built and in service but decided to retire them. The difficulty of building new battleships wasn't an issue, only their extremely limited usefulness.

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 Peregrine wrote:
 Ketara wrote:
And that's logistics.


A theory that is disputed by the fact that the US had battleships already built and in service but decided to retire them. The difficulty of building new battleships wasn't an issue, only their extremely limited usefulness.


Part of the reason they were retired is that they were very expensive to maintain, and none have been built since. I would say that supports the logistics argument. The most recent ones actually in use were all built in the 30s and 40s and were brought out of mothballs when needed, rather than building new ones.

   
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 Peregrine wrote:
 Ketara wrote:
And that's logistics.


A theory that is disputed by the fact that the US had battleships already built and in service but decided to retire them. The difficulty of building new battleships wasn't an issue, only their extremely limited usefulness.


Hardly. Retiring ships well past half a century in age isn't evidence of anything except that the ships were bloody antiquated (seriously, try continually installing modern electronics into a ship from pre-WW2 vintage design), not adapted for modern combat (there've been many advances in naval architecture since then), and which finally /needed scrapping or replacing. They only lasted so long because the U.S. Navy pushed them as far as they could realistically go age-wise in order to avoid having to commit to constructing new ones. And why was that?

Answer: Because logistics aren't a theory. Battleships require certain plant for construction, and constructing/maintaining that plant has certain costs associated with it. Long range artillery platforms are always useful in warfare, but battleship costs are simply too high to justify their construction capability being retained when other artillery substitutes are available within existing integrated procurement networks.

That is the primary flaw with the concept of contemporary battleships. One would have to commit, in effect, to a production line and regular construction once again to make the type sufficiently economically viable for those who construct the components. Well, that or set up a vast Government controlled complex with integrated steelworks. I don't see the U.S. Government or any other doing that anytime soon.


I accept that this rather spoils the fun of people getting to debate the relative merits of shells versus missiles, battleship and carrier maneouvres, etc, etc ad infinitum.


This message was edited 7 times. Last update was at 2019/04/22 08:56:00



 
   
 
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