When an enemy can launch a fusillade of anti-ship missiles or several air burst tactical nukes is there a better way? In the 60's McNamara, of Ford fame and fortune, was given credit for the DDG class which ended up being top heavy along with the vulnerability of having an aluminum superstructure to compensate and poor sea keeping ability.
Now the Navy wants to build a new frigate with more capability. What are your ideas?
I have posted it before. Buy a bunch of 300,000T tankers sitting idle off Singapore, battleship armor the entire aft superstructure, fill the outboard storage tanks with fuel or water for “armor”, add a flight deck for helos and VTOL and fill the rest of the center section with VLS: anti-ship missiles, T-LAM, New ASROC, SA-6. Hard to sink, a lot of firepower, and plenty of fuel. not fancy so the admirals will.not like it, not new so congress and contractors will not like it but ask a sailor if he would rather run over a mine in this or an LCS.
* Sonar-evading subs that fire cruise missiles
* Missile-shielded islands (man-made if needed) close to the Islamo-fascists and Norks - ready to free up sea lanes, establish air superiority when needed, and fly in Special Ops [put the troops in those hell-hole nations only briefly for missions, then get out]
Aircraft carriers are ok, but may become, or already are, too easy of a target without countermeasures that make them have diminishing returns.
Military history is filled with examples of quality vs. quantity. If a military strays too far in one direction, they become vulnerable to the other direction.
In WWII, a large portion of our navy was in small attack boats, and they, and their crews, were seen as “expendable.” Not just PT boats, but all the way up to destroyer class, could be lost without “compromising the mission” of the larger naval group to which they belonged.
Since today we no longer have the inclination or manpower to do this, the assumption must be to use surface and subsurface drone vessels.
The smallest of these vessels should be focused on high speed, and maybe have a single weapons system. But different boats could have many different weapons systems among them and work together as a fleet. All by remote control and artificial intelligence.
Larger vessels to take on the patrol boat mission in littoral and riverine operations. And the largest, up to the old destroyer sized, could act as mid sized air drone launch and recovery, for coastal reconnaissance and attack.
Build a mega floating island thats at least a mile long.
It would have skyscraper tall towers for railguns or other line of sight weapons. High enough that they would reach past the curvature of the earth, plus it protects the base from similar counter laser or railgun much lower that cannot shoot past the horizon at sea level.
Nothing else. Minimal manpower onboard, not really a ship but does have propulsion, definitely can handle the largest aircraft. Just a psychological point of extreme power.
Like a floating Death Star. But with no exhaust port weakness.
Air power is the thing. Surface ships — even the fastest — are dead meat once detected by aircraft. Right now we’re packing more anti-aircraft missiles onto the ships, but even if they work 95% of the time, the leakage will result in a lost ship. We’re going to lose ships.
We need to look at giving each vessel the ability to put up a screen of kamikazee Artificial-Intelligence drones to protect themselves. Fire them off like chaff launchers. This way you could have a small-deck aircraft carrier for AWACs drones that would need to be recovered between missions. Let the others fall into the water after they expend their fuel.
A large one Curtiss Wright I believe...
"SPARCS"
Google Pratt and Whitney and Turbo Compound Rotrary, a lot of patents coming out of the Canadian Division.
My suggestion would be a few dozen diesel subs with AIP. Quieter than a nuke, great for coastal patrol, the GOM, and regional force projection.
Modular
Steel
Railguns
Lasers or (frikin’ lasers)
Drones
Or a small drone carrier
Of possible interest Ping...
I want a big ship with lots of weapons and tigers too. Tigers would be awesome on a ship. I want a cool looking ship with lots of blinking lights and a sleek profile in the dark. Plenty of guns and barrels of rum too.
Anti CVN nuts are out today.
Naval warfare is won at home with a strong industrial base, ship yards lots of shipyards, huge shipbuilding industry, and huge dry docks. We have none of these things.
Lazers. You can’t go wrong with lazers.
BFL
floating automated missile launchers in large numbers
Well, I figure what the hell does the Navy know. Let’s call on a bunch of cranky old Freepers to tell them how it’s done.