Battleship

[Ghambit]

I don't know much about navies but I thought they stopped making actual battleship class vessels decades ago.

The last US one launched in 1944.  They still nominally have two in reserve.

They used one during the Gulf War to cheaply pound the area 20 miles inland from the beaches.  There will always be a place for mobile artillery in war.
Also, the future is full of smart munitions, rail guns, and energy weapons.  You can guarantee the battleship will be a part of that picture.

[WindupAtheist]

As big fat targets for those smart weapons to hit?

[Evildrider]

As big fat targets for those smart weapons to hit?

Yes, because we don't put anti-missle systems on our naval ships.   

[WindupAtheist]

Fine they're totally viable and that's why no one has built one in 70 years. Totally making a comeback any day now. Personally I'm waiting for the catapult to come back into style.

[Evildrider]

The reason we don't have them anymore is because of aircraft carriers.  They are just obsolete when you can have a crapload of aircraft that can do more precise attacks.  It's not that Battleships were a bad idea, they just have better ways to blow shit up now.

Now mind you, if we ever get into a full blown world war again, heaven forbid, I'm sure we'll see some manufactured again if we aren't all dead from nuclear winter.

[Tannhauser]

One reason the U.S. mothballed BB's is that they are labor intensive to operate.  But a reason to keep them is to bombard the shoreline.  More than half of the world's population live within 60 miles of a coast. 

[Merusk]

A coast that can be hit with missiles fired with ultra precision from smaller, more agile, more defensible ships.

The only reason to bring BS' back would be the expense or inability to produce of cruise missiles and smart munitions, since lobbing hunks of metal is cheaper and simpler. We're not likely to see that without the sort of a protracted war that won't happen without shit getting nuked first.

[Tannhauser]

They pulled two BB out of mothballs to shell/missile strike the Iraqi coast even with all of their guided missile cruisers.

[WindupAtheist]

If you want to shell coastlines then you're better off putting your railguns or whatever on a smaller and less resource-intensive ship, one that wasn't designed and built for an antiquated form of surface combat that barely even took place in WW2. Christ make a railgun artillery barge and have a destroyer tow it up to the coast. Don't send out a behemoth only a few (admittedly large) steps removed from wooden ships exchanging broadsides.

[DLRiley]

Lol. Battleships are seige weapons, when the poor and angry eventually figure out how to counter predator drones, lobbing a chunk of metal using google maps is going to be all the rage. We spent the last 2000 so years slamming ships against each other before the Pacific War, having a heavily armored multigun weapon firing platform that can rain death on anything 60 miles north of water seemed like a good idea till the aircraft carrier.

[WindupAtheist]

I'm not even sure what that post meant. All I know is that I've blundered across a few people here who actually think battleships are still a good idea, despite the matter having been settled ages ago.

[Chimpy]

They pulled two BB out of mothballs to shell/missile strike the Iraqi coast even with all of their guided missile cruisers.

Those were not taken out of mothballs for the Gulf War. Those were the last two of the four still in service that Reagan spent billions re-furbishing and putting tomahawk cruise missile launchers onto in the 80s.

[Ghambit]

Settled my arse.  
Precisely wtf do you think would be capable of carrying the necessary infrastructure to operate these next-gen smart/energy weapons (in large, effective quantities mind you)?  A tiny aegis destro or c-130 wont cut it.  You will always need a large, ship-mounted delivery system.

Couple that system with laser, emp, and metalstorm defense systems and you're pretty much a floating porcupine of energy-death.  The only other thing you'd need is a sterling-drive/aip propelled attack sub escort for totally silent subsea defense.

[Velorath]

At this point, I can only hope that the plot of Avatar 2 is that the humans come back to invade the planet again, this time bringing battleships along with their mechs.

[Fordel]

Obviously the Warships will turn INTO mechs http://youtu.be/NwD3gDfa-VU !

[Ratman_tf]

[DLRiley]

Supreme Commander

[Chimpy]

Settled my arse.  
Precisely wtf do you think would be capable of carrying the necessary infrastructure to operate these next-gen smart/energy weapons (in large, effective quantities mind you)?  A tiny aegis destro or c-130 wont cut it.  You will always need a large, ship-mounted delivery system.

Couple that system with laser, emp, and metalstorm defense systems and you're pretty much a floating porcupine of energy-death.  The only other thing you'd need is a sterling-drive/aip propelled attack sub escort for totally silent subsea defense.

Once again, you show the rest of F13 that you still need to put the crack-pipe down.

[Sheepherder]

One reason the U.S. mothballed BB's is that they are labor intensive to operate.  But a reason to keep them is to bombard the shoreline.  More than half of the world's population live within 60 miles of a coast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRhv9_jHDhk&feature=related

They pulled two BB out of mothballs to shell/missile strike the Iraqi coast even with all of their guided missile cruisers.

They were actually kept fully operational even while serving as floating museums.

If you want to shell coastlines then you're better off putting your railguns or whatever on a smaller and less resource-intensive ship, one that wasn't designed and built for an antiquated form of surface combat that barely even took place in WW2.

On the plus side, they managed to avoid another clusterfuck like Jutland, which would have made it apparently fucking obvious to even the densest motherfucker why Battleships were a retarded idea even in WWII.  Instead, we have to go with the somewhat lesser evidence of motherfucking Pearl Harbour.

We spent the last 2000 so years slamming ships against each other before the Pacific War, having a heavily armored multigun weapon firing platform that can rain death on anything 60 miles north of water seemed like a good idea till the aircraft carrier.

Erm, you failed history, right?  The Pacific war has jack and shit to do with development of naval rifles, except for, you know, ending it.

Also, the range on those is 23 miles.  Since 1964 there exists dumbfire artillery rockets with a range of 251 miles.

A tiny aegis destro or c-130 wont cut it.  You will always need a large, ship-mounted delivery system.

Couple that system with laser, emp, and metalstorm defense systems and you're pretty much a floating porcupine of energy-death.  The only other thing you'd need is a sterling-drive/aip propelled attack sub escort for totally silent subsea defense.

Actually, a destroyer would be quite sufficient.

But hey, just think of all the money you could blow on this shit to protect a battleship, only to have it "sank" by a half century old Canadian diesel boat in wargames.  Wouldn't that be awesome?

[Ghambit]

Ever since the Battle of Midway, sailors have reluctantly been forced to accept that it is aircraft (and nowadays missiles) which win battles at sea, not ships: generally speaking it is also aircraft which permit navies to directly influence events ashore. The aircraft carrier long ago supplanted the mighty big-gun battleship as top naval dog.

But railgun warships might put an end to this, swatting down shipkiller missiles or attacking aircraft from afar with ease and splattering targets ashore quickly and responsively – no need to keep aircraft on station or wait endless tens of minutes for a subsonic cruise missile to cover the distance. The only way to deal with a railgun dreadnought – just as in the days of old when the first armoured all-big-gun battlewagons appeared – would be by using a ship just like it. Surface warships and surface-fleet officers, once again, would rule the seas and the naval roost.

[Sheepherder]

The new Royal Navy Type 45 destroyers, the first warship class to use electric transmission for main full-speed propulsion, can supply a bit more than 40 megawatts of 'leccy. If fitted with one of the US ONR's desired 64-MJ railguns, they could recharge it for another shot in a little over a second and a half, though this rate of firing would leave little juice left for propulsion.

 

Also, if you think the appropriate tactic to counter battleships is to send in battleships you're a goddamn retard.  I already brought up Jutland in this thread, you probably should have taken the hint and read a little about it.

[Fordel]

Isn't all this surface shit just meat for Submarines?

[Ingmar]

I thought the counter to battleships was titans?

[WindupAtheist]

Settled my arse.  

Yes, settled. The fact that all these future railguns that shoot hundreds of miles are being planned as destroyer-scale weapons just settles it even harder.

[Der Helm]

How do future railguns shoot targets hundreds of miles away under the horizon ?

[Merusk]

Google & Gps or we're back to the old F.O. model, apparently.

[SurfD]

Google & Gps or we're back to the old F.O. model, apparently.

I think he means that conventional wizdom has that rail-guns fire projectiles at ultra high speeds in very straight lines, meaning that they arent supposed to be able to "lob" munitions at things that would be far enough away that the curvature of the earth would mean a strait line between gun and target would have to go through the ground to hit.

[Sir T]

How do future railguns shoot targets hundreds of miles away under the horizon ?

They bounce the railgun shells off the Ionosphere. 

To be honest I'd love a film on Jutland. Unfortunately I can't see Holywood fucking it up Pearl Harbour style. 24 Brit Dreadnaughts vs a line of 18 (I think) German Dreads, one at a time, is not very hollywood. Plus Beatty would look like a complete idiot and we cant have that.

[Sheepherder]

Isn't all this surface shit just meat for everything?

Fixed.

There are four main threats to battleships: missiles, naval rifles, torpedoes, and mines.  We've had examples of the latter three that could stomp a mudhole in the USS Iowa since WWI, and China has motherfucking conventional warhead SLBMs in service that have a CEP of 40 meters (i.e. a ~50% of a direct hit to an Iowa class from a submarine 14 000 kilometers away).  I'd like to see your CIWS deal with a warhead reentering @ 12 250 km/h motherfuckers.

Plus Beatty would look like a complete idiot and we cant have that.

He did manage to cross their T twice in one battle.

[WindupAtheist]

How do future railguns shoot targets hundreds of miles away under the horizon ?

Ask the Popular Mechanics article that was linked earlier and talked about the Marines wanting a weapon that could provide supporting fire from 220 miles away. What, you think they're a direct-fire-only weapon like a laser or something? The projectiles fly so fast that they defy gravity and don't arc at all?

That would make for a really shit artillery piece, don't you think? Especially considering it would be fired from a few feet above sea level by definition. Yeah that's what they're doing. They're building a new advanced form of naval artillery with a range of a few miles, because hey, horizon.

[Merusk]

Google & Gps or we're back to the old F.O. model, apparently.

I think he means that conventional wizdom

Conventional Wisdom is usually pretty dumb.  Comes from being part of a hive-mind where the IQ is 100.  Think about that for a minute.

[Sheepherder]

Rail gun artillery: rendered obsolete by Studebakers with missile racks driven onto barges.

[Ghambit]

Settled my arse.  

Yes, settled. The fact that all these future railguns that shoot hundreds of miles are being planned as destroyer-scale weapons just settles it even harder.

Destro-scaled railguns are only prototypicial, and as you've hopefully read it puts the small ships on their knees just with the single cannon, and this is with the scaled-down version.  Later versions will fire shells at twice the speed at 50% more power required.  Sure, you may see some super-secret prototype sitting on a destroyer, but it was always considered a futureweapon that a capital ship would be needed to fire.  A nuclear-powered carrier or refit battleship....  maybe a refit Aegic Cruiser, etc.

[Der Helm]

That would make for a really shit artillery piece, don't you think?

Indeed. And I still think that a chunk of metal fired at mach 10 makes for a really shitty artillery piece. I am way to lazy to even try to figure out the physics behind this, but the high speed and generally very flat trajectory of such a gun are really not suited for artillery engagements. You would either be able to vaporzie anything that comes in line of sight or anything in a rather small area way beyond the horizon. Or not ?

[Sir T]

Plus Beatty would look like a complete idiot and we cant have that.

He did manage to cross their T twice in one battle.

That wasn't Beatty. That was Jellicoe. beaty commanded the Battlecruisers that Chased Hippers battlecruiser fleet into the German fleet then turned and ran, losing 2 battlecruisers in the process.

Jellicoe correctly arranged his fleet slightly away from the german fleet initially (for which he was critisised later as not conforming to the aggressive spirit of the royal navy) and then watched Sheer sail into him. Sheer turned his fleet around and sailed off, then turned back around as he had no idea what had just happened. This resulted in the second crossing of the T upon which Sheer about turned and sailed off.