Posted on 01/06/2014 1:08:10 PM PST by Sir Napsalot
A good article and I agree with it.
With that being said, I too can see the need for a modern battleship. But more along the lines of a ‘Arsenal Ship’, that is the Gun/Missile platform and a more versatile Sea Control Vessel that actually does the directing of fire and assigns assets to missions as necessary.
Keep the numbers of crew men down too. Why? Because they are both costly and create huge numbers of casualties when placed in the concentrations used in the Old style WWII vessels.
I think of an Arsenal ship as a valuable asset that can also be thought of as an expendable one. Once found they are going to be attacked until sunk. In the meantime other Arsenal Ships spread over the ocean can continue to whack the enemy until they and their assets are gone, either sunk or if on the land made unusable.
And of course with any discussion like this, there has to be the national commitment to build and maintain such units. Otherwise it’s all a waste, both of time and money and of the national prestige and honor of the nation that built them.
Yep.
Kinduh like castles.
Way kewel but, modernity has made them obsolete
I think that the US industrial base could not make a large caliber gun barrel these days. The “Iowa”-class gun barrels had a rated life of about 300 rounds (depending on the powder load and other factors). Now each ship was ordered with spare gun barrels and I think that there were even some turrets around for the cancelled “USS Kentucky”.
Then there’s the problem of the diminishing potency of the gunpowder charges. They would have to test-fire the 16” guns periodically to see how well the gun performed as the barrels wore and the powder aged.
So you begin to get the idea that even if the Iowa-class was everything its advocates hoped, it wasn’t going to be for all that long.
I’m a sucker for these ships going back centuries into their history.
The idea of a floating fortress coming up to a target and blasting it to hell still is awesome to see.
But the new ships get the job done, and that’s what is important.
China?
"The second supergun, "Big Babylon""
The USS New Jersey was pretty effective in Vietnam and Beirut - and it wasn’t bombarding beaches in preparation for amphibious landings in either of those places.
Damn, that must have really been something to see and hear! I love those Iowa Class big fellas!
Love these kinds of discussions. thanks for posting. It makes sense that battleships just wouldnt be worth the effort in a modern conflict. But to take it a step further I could argue that when the shooting starts in an all out conflict, the same reasons battleships arent coming back will also be a big wake up call for the modern day aircraft carrier. big, slow, expensive, man power heavy, vulnerable to cheap anti ship missles are the same reasons the BB idea wont work. It would take only one lucky shot to get through the ageis umbrella to render a CAG out of operation. And i believe it’s more likely that in a massive missle swarm attack a lot more than one would get through. So, while everbody still wants one (india, china etc....) they are so valuable that you really cant afford to lose one in combat. In a china/taiwan shootout we’d have to park our’s east of taiwan and spend all of our resources just to protect them. Because its not like we can spit a new one out like we could back in 1945.
If i were designing a navy of the future (and woe to the nation that allowed me this job) rather than bringing back battleships, I would take the zumwalt concept even further and develop fleets of dozens of tiny low profile platforms that were modular depending on the mission. youd have a mix of ships and some would be loaded with various drones, some with missle pods (air or sea or land), amphib landing modules, command module etc...and the modules could be changed out depending on the event and or the mix needed for the next mission.
I’m by no means an expert so there may be better ideas already in the works nor am i probably the first person to come up with this type of concept but I just see the modern carrier as a brdige between the battleship days of old and whatever the future holds.
The Russians are coming pretty close with their refit of the Soviet-era Kirov-class large guided-missile cruisers. Those are a bit more suitable to a modern navy, I'll admit - nuclear power and all.
The irony is still thick, though... given that those cruisers were what prompted the Reagan administration to refit the Iowas.
I seriously doubt any Chinese computer hacker could gain computer access to this firing station, which I often speculate that should there ever be a war with the Chinese they will have gained computer access to many ships fire control systems.
Bring back the Iowa class battleship, keep it plain simple, they were the best ever built, technology can be a two edged sword. Sometimes you need brute force instead of precision.
Analog computers. Kewl.
I wonder how effective those missiles would be. They are designed to go through the thin skin of a modern ship.
Virginia Class submarines can carry a lot of Tomahawks, especially when they extend their hulls.
Actually I wondered this. What kind of effective fire support would Marines have when they take a beach? Would the Arleigh Burke’s 6 inch cannon be enough?
New technology- especially drones- overcome all the drawbacks to battleships. Drones can provide air-cover.
The big guns are obsolete. But there’s lots of new stuff to put on that sturdy platform.
This kind of discussion shows the best of FReepers’ collective knowledge.
That teak is tough wood. And the holystones we used to keep them gleaming were right out of the 1600s!
For any non-military FReepers who may be scratching their heads over that, compare it to hiding in the woods, while someone looks for you using a flashlight. You can see the flashlight long before it can illuminate you!
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