After 12 years of trying to make it work, the Navy has informed Rayco that the Extended Range Guided Munition development has been terminated.
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ERGM cancelled
- Thread starter HeyJoe
- Start date
65 years later and they're still trying to find a replacement . . . :icon_tong
(I know, that sounds shoeish, but BBs are still fricking cool . . . as far as ships go anyway.
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I worked on that program, so many problems it wasn't even funny. They actually brought us a round that wouldn't fit in the gun one time, good job engineers, it has been 5" for a long time . . .
BTERM is what they should have gone with, the guys over at MIT knew what the hell they were doing, just didn't know enough people I guess. . .
BTERM is what they should have gone with, the guys over at MIT knew what the hell they were doing, just didn't know enough people I guess. . .
I say bring back battle ships. They're easy to use, and there's not a whole lot that beats its shock and awe effect. Sure, it's a carrier Navy, but artillery (rather, surface-borne, indirect fire) is the King of Battle.
We had the CNO speak to us the other day, and I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, but was a little surprised to see what a high priority it is on the Navy list (at least, his list) to reduce manpower in the Navy -- one of the big reasons he's a fan of the LCS and DD(X) ships. With that in mind, I'm thinking BBs will not be coming back anytime soon. But yeah, they are sweet ships.
In what parallel universe do you live? The only people who say that are arty guys.
Sure, sure, as long as you're within the range of its 16" guns so it wouldn't help in OEF or OIF where the fight is beyond their range.
The universe in which with a low ceiling, low priority for CAS, and at night the artillery firing over you silences the rounds coming towards you. Many Marines are eternally indebted to the string pullers if only for its defensive capability. It is just as important as air, all weather, and is much easier to come by than air especially if you're not a battalion commander.
Noted. There are a whole load of assets we have that aren't really needed in the present conflicts though. If we only train for the here and now though...
Cost. There's an indeterminable number of weps systems we'd love to have to fit every situation; but in the case of the BB, it just costs too much to run them. Seriously - steam powered turbines are slowly going away (yes, many auxiliaries still use them) with gas turbines starting to be the rule, as they're much faster to respond, maintain, and are more efficient. Couple that with the upkeep. There aren't shipbuilders building BBs anymore. Anything that breaks mechanically has to be fabricated. Unfortunately there's not an Auto Zone for the BB world. ~25 max range for heavy artillery support doesn't really make for much argument. You could probably get on-call CAS with precision ordnance from an alert launch faster than you could maneuver a battleship into position, plus the CAS can go to mile 26, 27, etc. In shallow/shoal areas you couldn't get the BB that close anyway. Just thoughts.
If it was posted on Baseops, but we don't have any nondeploying light blue regulars on AW.