[MtnClimber]

Seems like a good concept. Need to look at defense against new chinese anti-ship missiles.

[2banana]

WWII battleships have so much armor that modern missiles have no effect...

[Pelham]

interesting read.

[2ndDivisionVet]

ICE AIRCRAFT CARRIERS AND PYKRETE
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2720.htm

[bunkerhill7]

best concept:

US Navy’s Ultimate Dream Weapon (That Russia Feared): Merging a Super Battleship, an Aircraft Carrier, and a Submarine

[gaijin]

[gaijin]

Some day..?

I feel sure they're working on SOMEthing like this...

[gaijin]

This was a REAL Japanese sub, 70 years ago:

They attacked Oregon using it and nearly attacked the Panama Canal.

[Salvavida]

We'll take two. And Mexico can pay for them.

Missouri at Pearl, and the New Jersey at Norfolk.

[2CAVTrooper]

With modern technology you could cut the crew size in half

[Billthedrill]

This idea surfaces every few years - the cited article is from 1980 - and usually incorporates a suite of sexy modern weaponry that would be fascinating to field. It usually founders on the more prosaic requirement to run the ship, i.e. propulsion. "Just put a nuclear propulsion plant on it" is, unfortunately, not quite that easy. Either you somehow cut through the torpedo belt - best of luck with that - or down through the armored deck to extract the 600-lb steam plants, clear the spaces out, install the plant, upgrade the generators (this is especially important in modern weapons systems as the Brits just found out to their dismay) and somehow reassemble the thing.

All of that stuff is technically possible, of course, but at a ruinous cost that is the price of building several of them new from the keel up. You can turn a Sherman tank into an Abrams, but it's cheaper to build the Abrams on its own.

As a former weapons officer it grates to admit it, but sexy weapons suites do not a warship make. I've pinged somebody who knows. Care to chime in, Mr. Snipe? ;-)

[60Gunner]

Meh. The Japanese did that to two of their battleships in WW2. Ise and Hyuga, if I recall correctly. They were tactically worthless.

We have better ways to spend our money than on a stupid idea like this.

[bravo whiskey]

I have said this before. Cheap solution
take a 300,000T tanker put double the BB armor around the superstructure, fill the cargo tanks with water and load it up with VLS: AAW,ASM,LACM, all sorts of ECM. flight deck for helos and VSTOL.