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I am a big fan of the Battleship especially the USS New Jersey BB-62.
The USS Cole was destroyed by a rubber raft carrying explosives, the USS Missouri survived 3 Arieal attacks and even a kamakazie attack. The battleship is a superior force to the missle destroyer, (let me remind you Battleships
also cary cruise missles but their main armement is the big guns.) The U.S. is the only country that introduces new agents of war. NATO always follows our lead, and China only steals copys of our weapons and improves them. And with sensor technology we can usually spot an areial attack ahead of time and call in the carrier for air support (simply put the threat from the air is not as great as it once was) So lets design a revelutionary new battleship that can fire 1000 lb shells over 50 miles. If the U.S. started bringing the battleship back into full play so would the rest of the world.
The main reason that airplanes over took big Guns is because Airplanes were cheaper. But that was then this is now. Today high tech military airplanes cost over 100 million (on average), Today a Battleship is less than half the cost of a missle ship or aircraft carrier.
Here are several reasons why CAS ,helicopters, and high altitude bombers cannot replace Big guns for the missions such as close fire support:
1.Long Mission Lead Time – it takes too long to get there (mission planning, flight time, etc…)
2.Limited Ordnance Payload – It can’t carry enough.
3.Short Duration of Influence – It can’t "dwell" or "loiter" for any appreciable length of time.
4.Extreme Platform Vulnerability – Planes and Helicopters are extremely vulnerable to enemy weapons and the effects of Weather (wind, snow, fog, ice – all of which ground aircraft)
The main argument that the middle east always brings to the US is all those missles we keep fireing at Iraq, so lets make a deal no more missles and we will just fire 2,700 pound shells instead.
And ask any British historian what was the greater threat from the Germans during WWII, The Luftwafee, or the Bismark. All will answer saying "The Bismark"
Battleships are the best for missions where the goal is a show of force. BB simply have that look of pure destruction.
And right now I think the only reason the missle destroyer is the pride of the sea is because the navy has severe lack of sailors in the navy, even modern battleships would require a crew of 1000-2000 sailors per ship, were as missle destroyers only require 120-200 sailors per ship.
NAVY blue not playing purple
http://www.usnfsa.c...cles/fsao/fsao7.htm
fire support capabilities to supportForced-entry from sea [wood2coal, Jan 17 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]
Nauticus
http://www.nauticus.org/
The National Maritime Museum in Norfolk, VA [phoenix, Jan 17 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]
Show of force
http://www.coxnews....090800_defense.html
Bush wants to show the world that our armed forces are tough [wood2coal, Jan 17 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]
The Falklands
http://www.yendor.c.../falklands-war.html
The British are coming … the British are coming! [reensure, Jan 17 2002]
History of the Second World War by BH Liddell-Hart
http://www.amazon.c...102-2563031-8565719
An all embracing History of WWII. The early chapters on the invasion of Norway highlight the Royal Navy's attitude in the face of German air superiority and the chapters on operations in the Pacific explain exactly why battleships are no longer the striking arm of modern navies. [DrBob, Jun 06 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]
Iowa
http://www.battlesh...ages/Tow%20CaB4.jpg
[po, Oct 04 2004]
[link]
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Hm. I was about to MFD this, on the grounds that it's not an idea, really, just a plea to 'start doing something that we stopped doing'. But then it occurred to me there are other examples here that remained. The one that comes to mind is "Bring back the codpiece" or whatever it was called. |
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The reason that battleships went out of fashion is because they got bombed to shit without adequate air cover. Although I agree that the big boomers were impressive pieces of kit (I've got a great picture of the Iowa squeezing through the Panama Canal), they've had their day. The New Jersey was pretty much reduced to the role of a missile platform by the time of the Gulf War. The fate of the Prince of Wales and the Yamato should tell you all that you need to know on this subject. |
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That's fine... as long as you have a *load* of fighter jets and submarines to protect their topside and underbelly. |
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"Big Guns" were king in an age before Oprah and CNN. They're effective and cheap, but do not offer the (relative) precision of "smart" bombs. |
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Much of the press is already pissed about the body count among Afghani civilians (I've seen more pictures of dead Afghanis than dead WTC victims on news sites). |
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Because of the media's ability to bring to us the horrors of war, and because they tend to be quite harsh (overly so, IMO) on our military when we unintentionally kill non-combatants, I doubt if we could wage war against any nation, for any reason, if we employed weapons which were much more likely to cause "collateral damage" than our incredibly expensive "smart bombs." |
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Furthermore, I think that the level of mobility on the modern battlefield further erodes the usefulness of "big gun" technology. Big guns are useful for shelling fortresses, cities, or heavily fortified positions (like beaches), but I can't see them being that effective against a force that can just get up and move somewhere else on very short notice. |
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[wood2coal] Swing by Norfolk, Virginia sometime and stop at Nauticus. The USS Wisconsin is docked there (link). |
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"Swing by Norfolk, Virginia sometime and stop at Nauticus. The USS Wisconsin is docked there" |
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Phoenix battleships that have been decomisioned and turned into museums nolonger count as battleships. |
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The scope of these ships is huge, as was the vision that guided their construction and the goals set for them. If I had to use a word to describe the flagship battleships it would be sacred -- sadly, they are an anachronism. Vital for breaching coastal defenses and maintaining open sea channels, what they offer in wholesale destructive power and reach can be countered by placing targets away from the sea (Afganistan) or by interspersing targets among civilians like our recent fights with insurgent barbarians in 'raq, 'dnam, and 'aiti. The last major naval engagement of the 20th century that proved decisive was in the Falkland islands in 1982, almost mirroring the 1914 battle in that area that cost the axis its hold on the western hemisphere. That the second battle was more costly in equipment lost and nearly one sided in losses to ships was to insure the naval relics in drydock would continue to receive their spit and polish but would lack the funds and the credibility to push back to sea and fight. |
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I personally think that several large ships should serve as floating museums. They could be deactivated and defanged, but operated as a tribute to the cost paid to build them. Could they be used to train sailors, certainly. Could they be used as correctional facilities for teens in leau of boot camp environments, possibly. Could they be floating hotels for adventure style getaways, god only knows. |
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It'd probably take ten years to rebuild the technology to build the things...The last crane that could handle the turrets was decomissioned something like 20 years ago, as they discovered when they needed to fix the Iowa. |
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No steel companies can make the three foot thick armor plate anymore, either. |
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The battleships could have their day again, with tube-launched missile tech, but as others have said, without their own air cover, they're too easy to kill. |
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A big battleship or two would make a nice addition to a carrier escort with the abovementioned updated munitions... |
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try to think modern battleship, not old fashion battleship. (but still big guns.) That is all I have to say. |
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the ultimate battleship would have H-bomb shells, and just need to attract alot of enemy forces, then shoot a few straight up. The ultimate suicide move.....and kills of the enemy...... |
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The definition of battleship is "big fuggin' guns". 'Modern battleship' = 'destroyer'. |
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Actually, it's an interesting question. Are cruise missiles, even the supersonic kind like the Soviet Sunburn actually adequate to kill BATTLESHIPS? Cruisers and destroyers, esp. modern ones, simply aren't that well armored. |
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Put some VLS cells around a BB, add an Aegis array (maybe replacing one of the forward turrets) and you have a built-in taskgroup... minus the air cover. Add an aerostat balloon for lofted radar coverage, and nothing can sneak up on it except a sub. |
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. . . or a re-entering, vertically descending, ballistic nuclear warhead. |
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How does a battleship have a shorter "Mission Lead Time"
to a bunch of F15's or B52's ? Can a battleship get from
the USofA to Afghanistan in under a week? With in-flight
refuelling the aircraft can. |
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BTW, Omega_scientist: There ARE nuclear artillery shells, and with the huge guns available to battleships, some terrifyingly powerful ones. An automated loading and firing set of turrets could lay down one hell of a barrage... |
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Actually a battleship CAN'T get to Afghanistan...it's landlocked. No coasts... |
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Ah, but UnaBubba, imagine a battleship WITH ASW choppers onboard (maybe even some Harriers), Aegis array, an aerostat balloon array for radar coverage (not quite as good as a Hawkeye but don't need a deck) and VLS cells with SM-2ER missiles... And still has 2/3rds of its guns. Add some rocket-assisted shells with precision guidance (think Copperhead) and you have a single-ship task force! |
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Battleships were defeated by air power alright, but that's before the advent of VTOL and SAM. With SAM coverage and Aegis array, I don't think BB's are as vulnerable as they once were. |
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Starchaser: That, of course, was the other part of my
point. Not only are battleships so slow that they have to
be in the area before the fight to be of any use, but
there are places that they can never reach. |
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I'm not sure they would be effective even if they weren't vulnerable. That one that pounded Lebanon certainly didn't bring about Middle-Eastern peace and I understand that afterwards its bores were so worn it was incapable of firing again with any range or accuracy. |
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Reensure: re the Flaklands, in simple numbers of ships lost, didn't the Argentinians win? I don't think it was one sided at all. Just from memory (so I might be wrong) ,Argentina lost a rusting Pearl Harbor survivor and a submarine, the UK lost two destroyers, two frigates, a large container ship stuff the gunwhales with materiel and a landing support ship. Or have I missed your point? |
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<grins at 'USS Codpiece'> |
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Sirrobin, actually with a little retrofitting, the big guns could be used to launch missiles. Replace the extra fuel the missile needs to launch from a dead start with kaboomite, and use powder to launch it from a smoothbore tube. |
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Nevertheless, it is more sensible to have a bunch of smaller ships than one Big MammaJamma, anymore. One broken engine means one less destroyer, rather than no battleship at all. |
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Everyone has the impresion that Battleships were replaced by aircraft carriers, and are vulnerable to aircraft, I think you should look at that a little more carfully pearl harbor is not a valid example since there we were caught by suprise and any vessle caught by suprise is extremely vulnerable, Aircraft are easily defeated if you catch them befor they take off. British battleships that were destroyed durring WWII were mostly all from the early dreadnought class. Battleships were certainly not obsolete in World War I. In fact, they were that era's dominant naval weapon.
Battleships were not obsolete in World War II. They repeatedly proved resistant, although not invulnerable, to air and torpedo attacks they were much more resistant to attacks than carriers. While I will admit they are no longer the dominant naval weapon, they could and did carry out many useful missions that other types of ships could not. |
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The role of the battleship changed in the Cold War era, but the surviving battleships repeatedly demonstrated their unique capabilities in the area of heavy gunfire support. There were no attacks on remaining battleships which significantly damaged any of them. |
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While the surviving battleships are now very old, the need for a heavy gunfire support ship remains. Such a ship would not necessarily be any more vulnerable to submarine, guided missile, or nuclear attack than any other type of amphibious warfare ship, and indeed might be significantly less vulnerable. No other type of ship has replaced the battleships' fire support capability. Whether a future ship is called a battleship or something else, an armored ship with large guns that can get up close and personal to the enemy is still needed to provide gunfire support. |
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Big, slow, expensive ships are too vulnerable to big, fast, relatively cheap missiles. It's possible to put too big a warhead on a missile that can be fired from over the horizon. While the heavy armor of the old battleships might have stood up to one hit, a flight of missiles would still take it down. The 'Arizona' was killed by one <admittedly very lucky> shot with one bomb around half the size the Tomahawk missile carries. Torpedos are generally smaller than bombs, due to the need for engine and guidance systems. |
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No, battleships were not obsolete in World War 1. They were the state of the art at the time. But by the next war, everybody knew how to kill them. If the fleet had been out and maneuvering instead of napping at the docks, Pearl Harbor wouldn't have worked quite as well; a few of the ships might have survived. I think they'd all still have died, though they'd have died in action. |
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The big guns no longer have the range to stand out of range of the shore batteries and pound inland, because nobody uses shore batteries anymore, they all use missiles that can pretty handily hand a big stationary target the detached body parts of its choice. But if the big guns were used as the 'first stage' of a cruise missile, they could easily hugely multiply the range, and with the storage available on the ship, could put a hell of a lot of 'boom' on any chosen target doublequick. With spotter planes laser marking targets, smaller shells could be fired farther more accurately, and a little bang on the right spot is always more effective than a big boom in the general neighborhood. |
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Mounting a couple of anti missile systems on the big ships would help their survivability. Maybe even enough, out at sea away from someone able to fire lots of missiles at once. But close in to shore, they might as well quack, as they're sitting ducks. |
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The best offen/s/c/e is a good defen/s/c/e. Without battleships, aircraft carriers and their brethren on the high seas, commercial seagoing units of all descriptions, even other countries or regions - if you will - would be more susceptible to interception, destruction - so on and so forth. In this day and age, it is with that in mind that landlubber terrorists tend to stay landlubbed. Ironkneecally, USS Cole is testament to diligence needed on every level for protection even of the Military Craft themselves. Great concentrations of humanity and industry are populating the shores of continents, let alone many which are surrounded by ocean waters. On US shores, for those who live close to the harbors, the sitting ducks - as StarChaser correctly calls them - are of minor reassurance, but reassurance nonetheless. Time and time again, the US has been reminded it has enemies - and time and time again, the US has mobilized its forces by land and sea - oftentimes, by sea first. For those reasons, and many more - though the seas offer little protection for us uprights, they offer a means to provide protection for many across the globe. While maintaining our vital corporate interests, of course. |
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*Bigger guns? Surely we already have big guns? Do we really need to kill each other in more painful, inventive and efficient ways? |
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Besides, big guns: the Guns of Navarone. |
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Everyone keeps saying that battleships are vulnerable to attack. I will say ofcourse they are all vessles and all tools of the military are vulnerable, that doesn't mean that they should be cowardly sitting at home like museum items. Sometime you have to go into harms way to complete a succesful military operation. Infantry soliders are vulnerable to attack yet we coninue to put them in harms way, the navy needs to toughen up and also sometimes go into harms way and the best vessle to preform a mission like this is the Battleship. |
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The mentality that is going around seems to be that cruise missles and smart bombs are the solution to every problem, this is false. While I will admit SSM and TSLM are a powerful weapon there are several situations where these weapons alone can't handle. The biggest problem with both these weapons is the weather you need almost perfect conditions to make an acurate missle attack, and technology is easily countered by technology radar jamming and other methodes can esily throw a missle off track. i advice you all to think more carefully about the issue.
If there is eventually going to be an attack on Iraq i doubt that this time Saudi Arabia will be so liberal about leting us use their land to mount the attack which means it is possible an amphibious assult might be needed and with out a battleship provideing surface fire support many marines will helplessly die. The only substitute we have right now that may be able to provide fire support to landing marines are Cobra helicopters, but Cobra helicopters can only stay in place so long and cannot deliver as much tonnage as a Battleship and Cobra helicopters are pretty much useless to provide support in a dense jungle region like the philipines and Srilanka The battleship on the other hand can support these missions. |
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[NTG] Yes, we do need to keep inventing more ways to kill the enemy. Otherwise the enemy will eventually counter all your offense. |
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[w2c] You seem to know a bit about the equipment, but not enough about CONOPS. |
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I thought the next big gun would be a space station platform. I mean the whole point of bigger gun is not to shoot bigger shells but how to shoot others without get shot youself. |
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"with out a battleship provideing surface fire support many marines will helplessly die", except for the aircraft carriers covering them which do double duty as ground and air support. |
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//And ask any British historian what was the greater threat from the Germans during WWII, The Luftwafee, or the Bismark. All will answer saying "The Bismark//
I think not. Having spent the pre-war years poo-pooing the influence of air power on naval combat, the Royal Navy suddenly became remarkably reticent to venture into areas controlled by the Luftwaffe once the shooting match started.
And it wasn't the Bismark that destroyed half of London and other towns and cities around the country.
I agree with some of the points that you make about fire-support for marine landings, wood2coal, but please don't over-exaggerate the capabilities of these beasties. |
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Everyone is entitled to their own opinon. But think what if the Germans had sent two task groups at the same time one group with The Bismark, and the other with Tripitz. With the combined power of these two battleship task groups and the U-boats the Germans would have succesfully managed to blockade all the ocean trade routs that America was using to send supplys to Britian, and in effect won the war just as Hitler had origionaly visioned with the Z-plan. |
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Cutting the supply line is the key step to winning a war, and defeating your enemy. |
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If the Germans has come up with such a plan then the allies could have acted against it to neutralise it as the Enigma code had been cracked. There are more weapons than just big guns. |
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Aristotle I don't like repeating myself but it seems I have to. I agree there are more weapons then just big guns. I am simply trying to point out the importance that these weapons do still posses in the world today, different situations call for different tactics and different weapons, and there are still many situations today that only Arsenol ships (Big guned ships) can handle. And there are several situations where it is true missles and arieal gunships can handle just as well as battleships, but if you carefully review all these options you will find at least 70% of the time you will find that battleships are the most economicly effective.
(Remember we are talking about Naval and coastal operations.) |
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And also how do you know that the allies would have been able to stop the Z-Plan. After all in one sense the Z-plan is almost exactly the same as the strategy that we used agianst Japan. I always used to wonder why Japan waited until Leyete Gulf to mount a battleship attack. The answer is because of Oil our submarines and Battles cruisers succesfully destroyed more than 60% of Japenese oil supplys from Indonesia. Japan just didn't have enough Oil to mount that type of anattack until it was to late. (cutting the supply line is how we won the war.) |
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He's not really amusing anymore. Big, mostly stationary battleships are just not useful anymore, and this constant insistence that they're better than anything else in the water is wearing. |
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Agian you people simply are not reading correctly. I never said that battleships are the solution to all problems, I never said that they are superior to aircraft carriers. Simply there are many specialized situation that battleships can handle better than any other vessel. Agian I will repeat not all situations but indeed a great many. And the air war in Kosovo prooved that air launched laser guided weapons are really only highly effective agianst stationary targets such as Armorys and bridges. But lets not get into the land issues we are talking about Naval and coastal targets. I really don't feel like explaining it all to you so you are just going to have to do the reasearch yourself.
And I am not going to repeat myself on what I said about the Pacific War with Japan, you will simply have to read books yourself. (Books are diferent than the internet for those of you that simply believe everything you read on the web.) |
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If it is any consolation, I think big guns have a place in the world today.... |
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Your suggestions to plop an aegis array, anti-air missiles, and all sorts of technological tomfoolery on one ship is completely outdated. One massive kill-all do-all ship would be one massive target. And your rebuttal? Plop some point defense weapons on there? I imagine you mean vulcan cannons and the like. Well, here's the rub on that one: point defense weapons are last ditch efforts to save the ship. They're not very reliable. Ships depend primarily on area defense. This is why the idea of a battlegroup was thunk up. Carriers take care of the CAP(combat air patrol), cruisers muck around under the waves, and destroyers do exactly what you say the battleship should do. Successful bombardment is possible with the smaller guns of today. And, if a little more sauce is desired, well, there's all kinds of neat toys to add on. Rockets can be launched in massive volleys for complete saturation. This would take care of that little problem of Marines dying in an amphibious assault. Well, not completely, obviously. But it gets the job done. Here's a funny word: specialization. That's what ships are into these days. By the by, the Luftwaffe was a much bigger problem than the Bismarck. Lest we forget, Britain was a force to be reckoned with on the high seas. Your little idea of the Bismarck and the Tripitz cutting off supply lines isn't based in reality. Putting those two ships in the line of fire against not one, but two powerful navies would be suicide. Germany couldn't afford to replace those ships if they were lost. That's why the Bismarck spent it's last days high-tailing it from a British fleet in the fog. |
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Well I don't feel like debating, Let me just say agian I agree with practicly everything you have said. But none of it was the subject I was really talking about. I guess either no one is listening or I am not making my statements clear. Either way I guess it doesn't really matter. |
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Hi, I have an idea for a handgun. |
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How about a .222 automag that uses caseless rounds, each of those rounds using a magnum charge.
How it works is that each round is encased in it's own propellent which is electronically ignighted.
The tip of the round is armour piercing, industrial diamond I would use, and just behind would be a small amount of semtex. The moment the round enters the object, the semtex detonates. This way the round dosen't go all the way through, and detonates inside the target. |
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The result? A round that travels a long way, with a punch greater than that of a .44 magnum round, and the ability to have a lot of rounds in the clip. |
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Baked. Both caseless ammunition, and the HESH small arms projectile. Not commercially availabe (Geneva convention for the projectile), but they do exist. I could tell you about them if you wanted, but then I'd have to kill you. Sorry. Hint: Actually designed by a Swiss weapons company, and manufactured under licence. |
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You looking for a fight?
Bring it on. |
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True, destroyers have inadequate armor plating (hence the term Tin Cans, or just 'Cans) but the Battleship is simply too vulnerable in the face of standoff antiship weaponry. The French-made Exocent air-to-surface missile can strike a ship from 13 miles away. If an enemy aircraft gets into attack range and lets the missle go, the ship is going to be hard-pressed to intercept a small radar target that is flying at less than 50 feet above the waves. The R2D2's (or point-defense weapons) are too unpredictable. The only way to defend against air attacks is to achieve air superiority. A Nimitz-class CVN can achieve a 300 (600+ with tanker support) mile diameter of control over the ocean surrounding it, while a battleship's 14" guns have a max range of 16 miles. True, its SSM and SAM's could extend its reach, but it can only shoot so many before the launchers have to be reloaded. |
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Finally, carriers can go for years without having to take on fuel for themselves (although their fighter wings need aviation fuel), while a BB has to be refueled frequently to power its outdated oil-fired boilers. |
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What about nuclear powered Battle Ships, with heavier armor, missile and ultra long range rocket assited incendiary shells using smaller shells and automatic feed fireing mecanisms, and electronic countermeasure (emp, radar and radio jamming, microwave radiation, etc) capabilities? |
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nuclear aircraft carrier top speed = approx. 50 knots
most BB of WWII = average top speed approx. 30 knots
largest guns used on a BB = 18.1 in (Yamato)
Largest proposed guns for a BB = 31.5 in. (H-39)
Only 4 shellspeirced the bismarck's main armor the ship was scuttled
the tirpitz was sunk by 3 5.4 ton bunker peircing bombs
350 mm of german or british armor was equal to about 410 mm of american armor
the scharnhorst and her sister sank an operational british aircraft carrier in WWII
several WWII BB survived atomic bomb tests including Nagato and Prinz Eugen
2 31.5 guns were actually built and used
the shell weighed 15,653 lb
they had a max range of approx. 23 miles
many BBs had planes on them in WWII the bismarck for example had 4 planes |
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now imagine a "modern BB"
the powerplant of an aircraft carrier = speed 50 or greater
modern armor of titanium alloys therfore lighter than traditional BBs but stronger
main guns up to 31.5 in or more
cruise missles, aegis array, vulcan cannons, rocket assisted shells with modern propelent to boost range,
and a small compliment of helicopters/harriers with asw capibility |
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what you end up with is an impervious ship that could: possibly close to killing range of a lightly armored aircraft carrier, possibly survive a nuclear attack, be alot cheaper than an aircraft carrier in the long run
but as many have pointed out a BB lacks the range of an aircraft carrier and cannot attack far distant places like afganistan |
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H-CLASS, 1944 (Hindenburg) |
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Displacement:(tons)
Design: 128,930 (131,000 metric)
Full Load: 139,264 (141,500 metric)
Length:
Waterline: 1,133'
Beam: 169'
Draft:
Design: 41'6"
Full Load: 44'4"
Armament:
Main Battery: 8 20-inch (508mm) guns 4 x 2 |
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Secondary: 12 5.9" 6 x 2
Anti-Aircraft: 16 4.1" (105mm)
16 37mm
40 20mm
Torpedo Tubes: 6 21"
Aircraft: 6
Armor:
Main Side Belt: 15"
Total Decks: 13"
Anti-Torpedo: Torpedo detonating plate 25 feet
from the armored bulkhead of any
vital area.
Propulsion:
Normal Maximum: 266,300hp
Overload: 296,000hp
Speed: Maximum & Overload: 30 knots
Range: 20,000 nautical miles at 19 knots |
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The largest warship(s) are the US "Nimitz" class of
nuclear powered aircraft carriers, with full load
displacements of up to 100,846 tons (short, metric or
long?) and a length of 1,092 feet overall.
USS Enterprise is longer, at 1,102 feet overall. |
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Quote
"in the long run but as many have pointed out a BB lacks the range of an aircraft carrier and cannot attack far distant places like afganistan" |
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Isn't that what the army and airforce is for. People don't realise how vulnerable carriers are, they are higly dependent on their escorts for defense. And since when does an air launched mavrick on an F-18 out range a cruise missle. A carrier is probably slower to deploy than a battleship. A carrier operates in a Task force composed of more than five ships, and a , battleships operate in Surface action groups that are only made up of two or three ships. |
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And if you want to compare this to WWII then remember to sink Yamato It took the entire 7th fleet with over 360 planes, (more than that used at Pearl) |
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If you built one of these batleships (costing the equivalent of god knows how many destroyers) what would it actually do that they couldn't? Be able to take on other batle ships that no one has? It certainly wouldn't be much use against the terorists which seem to be the biggest threat at the moment. |
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Quote "If you built one of these batleships (costing the equivalent of god knows how many destroyers) what would it actually do that they couldn't? Be able to take on other batle ships that no one has? It certainly wouldn't be much use against the terorists which seem to be the biggest threat at the moment." |
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Not how much it costs compared to a destroyer, how much is it worth and capable of in cost compared to a destroyer. Defend itself and fight, thats what Battleships do. Don't forget Russia still has 3 Kirov class Cruisers, and they have also sold god knows how many to other nations like China and India. Do you really think a destroyer could stand up to the Kirov? I wouldn't even try it with a destroyer, it would probably take at least 3 VLS Ticonderoga cruisers to duel agianst the Kirov. Even though our main concern at the moment is terrorist, we should not limit ourselvs to that. Our military force must stay as prepared as possible to combat any threat that exists. If we want to limit our selvs to terrorist only we should get rid of the army entirely only maitnain marines, and special force units. And there would be no need for all those Abram tanks, and attack submarines, we really wouldn't need fighter planes either just transport, bombers, and attack aircraft. Basicly we wouldn't need carriers either, assult ships with Harriers could do the job. Think about it. |
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Does no one here know why battleships are all museums now?!?! They cost to much to maintain!!!
Yes, the amount to build one would be compareable to a carrier, but the cost of maintaining a crew for such a large ship would make it more expensive in the long run. Sure, it could delivery the best fire support around, but how often do you need that. Also, could it really survive alone against modern air power? I don't think it could survive an attack by a regiment of backfires by itself. It would act like a carrier, needing just as much protection by escorts like DDg-51s and Ticonderoga cruisers. Also, there are no sea faring opponents for such a ship. O sure, the Russians have some big ships like the Kirovs, but the Russian navy might as well be all tug boats cause their navy gets about as much funding as a 10 year olds allowence. I mean when was the last time one of those ships put to sea? And for shore support, has no one heard of the DD(x) program here. Its whole mission is long range bombardment support! Also, a couple of big ships does not have power projection of many ships. Which is better, 5 battle ships sitting out side 5 enemy ports intimidating them, or 25 aegis destroyers and cruisers sitting out side 25 enemy ports doing the same thing as the BB. Sure the BBs do a better job, but I would be scared if there was a ship out there that had a lot of TLAMs, and not knowing how many of those TLAMs were nuclear tipped. More ships means a larger power projection capability. And wood2coal, I think it only takes 1 or 2 tomahawks or harpoons to take down a Kirov, and I think a DDg-51 could take on a Kirov, it just depends on who fires first, because that is what its come down to with modern warfare. |
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Last note, STOP calling it an Aegis Array. The "array" as it were is called the Spy-1 radar, and though the Spy-1 and aegis are always used together, they are not the same. Aegis is the sytem that automates all defenses aboard ship, from the Phalanx CDG, to the missle battery controls, to radar tracking. Aegis was designed to stop long rang raids by Soviet backfires and their AS-6 Kingfish missles. Aegis cruisers and destroyers are the premire in naval air defence and combined with ASW choppers, towed arrays, and long reaching harpoons and TLAMs and TSAMs, these ships are far better than a couple big battlships. |
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[wood2coal] I agree with a lot of what you have to say, and an updated battle ship would probably be a good addition to the Navy. |
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Some of your figures are a bit off though. |
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I was on a missile cruiser, and there were about 500 sailors onboard it. The newer ones are the ones they hope will have 120-200 people. |
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My cruiser also had two "big guns," five inchers to be specific. I'm not impressed with big guns. We were doing a live fire exercise on a decomissioned ship, and from five miles away, we shot 84 rounds at it with our two 5 inch guns. 84 of those rounds missed. We had numerous spotters to check our aim, and ample time to adjust all the shots every which way. Eventually, a helecopter was sent out to sink the ship with a particular missile, taking one shot. |
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For those 84 shots, the ship shook from stem to stern, disrupting our electronic systems, so that it was impossible for us to fire an SM2, or a tomahawk at the target. I also now need hearing aids. |
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