Road to 350: What Does the US Navy Do Anyway?

[Randy Daytona]

Recommend reviewing this thread to bring you up to speed on the power requirements imposed by the desired capabilities for this platform.


Are you high right now?

The Burkes carry 1,600 tons of fuel with modern engines and have a range of 4,400 NM. To use the Iowa as a representative sample due to hull size, it carries 9,000 tons of fuel for 11,600 miles of range with 40% efficient, 80 year old steam turbines. The much bigger hull can carry vastly more fuel - and the railgun probably won’t work anyway.

As for the 500 missile estimate, that was based on the 1990’s design of the arsenal ship which this battleship, if built, would likely resemble. As projected, the arsenal ship was 666 ft long and a beam of 97 ft and was to carry up to 500 VLS. This new battleship would be perhaps 20% wider and nearly 33% longer - it does not seem unreasonable for a ship this much bigger to carry a large missile load if you clear away less important space (ie, helicopter hangar).

Fair enough, but even the Missouri had it's own organic ISR during the Gulf War.

I believe the ISR was for 16” gunfire, the primary weapon of this ship will be heavy missiles going hundreds of miles downrange.

 

[Brett327]

To use the Iowa as a representative sample

Apples vs oranges, dude. Smart people have already weighed in on this. You should start paying attention.

1990’s design of the arsenal ship which this battleship, if built, would likely resemble.

Again, false. What has been proposed for capabilities in no way resembles this... 128 MK-41 VLS cells. You haven't been paying attention.

 

[Lawman]

The Burkes carry 1,600 tons of fuel with modern engines and have a range of 4,400 NM. To use the Iowa as a representative sample due to hull size, it carries 9,000 tons of fuel for 11,600 miles of range with 40% efficient, 80 year old steam turbines. The much bigger hull can carry vastly more fuel - and the railgun probably won’t work anyway.

As for the 500 missile estimate, that was based on the 1990’s design of the arsenal ship which this battleship, if built, would likely resemble. As projected, the arsenal ship was 666 ft long and a beam of 97 ft and was to carry up to 500 VLS. This new battleship would be perhaps 20% wider and nearly 33% longer - it does not seem unreasonable for a ship this much bigger to carry a large missile load if you clear away less important space (ie, helicopter hangar).

I believe the ISR was for 16” gunfire, the primary weapon of this ship will be heavy missiles going hundreds of miles downrange.

So just for scale….

You’ve got a 9k ton displacement parked next to a 15k in the Z, and just across a 20k ton LPD….

The proposed class needs another 5-10k in displacement, which funny enough does put it on par with a Washington treaty BB. Thing is gonna be a monster. Even if we were gonna build it, you’re talking about a boat that needs the build space currently reserved for a big deck amphib you’re willing to just go without for 3-5 years.

Stop this crazy and let’s tell industry to give us a box of X size that loads warheads and just Rapid Dragon a cargo hull ala Q ships or the Atlantic Conveyer, if all you really want is a big ordnance sump to augment burning the VLS amongst the primary combatants.

 

[taxi1]

A 1000 foot long barge pushed by a tug. Fill that thing with VLS systems.

 

[Lawman]

A 1000 foot long barge pushed by a tug. Fill that thing with VLS systems.

View attachment 44322

No dude not all of it…. Just like the middle past as well as a chunk of half a dozen other boats that you’d never expect it from.

And stick some stuff around it for protection but like from far enough away it’s not obvious.

 

[sevenhelmet]

No dude not all of it…. Just like the middle past as well as a chunk of half a dozen other boats that you’d never expect it from.

And stick some stuff around it for protection but like from far enough away it’s not obvious.

I keep seeing this suggestion come up; is hiding weapon systems in civilian-apparent equipment a road we really want to go down?

Seems like a bad idea, but maybe it's all a joke. Either way, building a few battleships at $15B a pop seems like something that a.) is really dumb and 2.) will never happen in our bureaucratically stalled environment.

 

[Gatordev]

I believe the ISR was for 16” gunfire, the primary weapon of this ship will be heavy missiles going hundreds of miles downrange.

...which will be targeted by some form of ISR.

I will concede that based on how you've presented your argument, the removal of some form of vertical lift could be justified (I don't agree with that assessment, but understand your reasoning). But if you're trying to target other vessels across the expanse of the Pacific, you still need extended targeting. If you're trying to target land-based targets, some of those targets are going to need to be localized. And in both cases, there are reasons why the E-2 or Growler may not always be what yields the most accurate targeting.

 

[Flash]

The Burkes carry 1,600 tons of fuel with modern engines and have a range of 4,400 NM. To use the Iowa as a representative sample due to hull size, it carries 9,000 tons of fuel for 11,600 miles of range with 40% efficient, 80 year old steam turbines. The much bigger hull can carry vastly more fuel - and the railgun probably won’t work anyway.

What about all the modern combat systems? The radar, electronic warfare gear and all those computers you have to run a modern ship? All of that requires A LOT more power than some dinky WWII radar or three. Some modern combat ships, being built today, have not taken all that into account in their design and their range/endurance suffers as a result.

Another thing that hasn't been addressed as much is if there is the need for ship so large? Battleships were large because they needed to be to carry their their main weapon system, their big guns, which no longer exist. There is no need for such a large ship to carry TLAMs, the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (Dark Eagle) or even railguns. All of those can be carried by much smaller ships, even together, at a much reduced cost.

We faced a similar choice in replacing the Ohio-class SSGN's, that could carry up to 154 Tomahawks, and the solution was not to replace them one for one but to modify Virginia-class subs to increase their TLAM capacity to 40. Something about eggs and baskets comes to mind.

 

[sevenhelmet]

What about all the modern combat systems? The radar, electronic warfare gear and all those computers you have to run a modern ship? All of that requires A LOT more power than some dinky WWII radar or three. Some modern combat ships, being built today, have not taken all that into account in their design and their range/endurance suffers as a result.

Another thing that hasn't been addressed as much is if there is the need for ship so large? Battleships were large because they needed to be to carry their their main weapon system, their big guns, which no longer exist. There is no need for such a large ship to carry TLAMs, the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (Dark Eagle) or even railguns. All of those can be carried by much smaller ships, even together, at a much reduced cost.

We faced a similar choice in replacing the Ohio-class SSGN's, that could carry up to 154 Tomahawks, and the solution was not to replace them one for one but to modify Virginia-class subs to increase their TLAM capacity to 40. Something about eggs and baskets comes to mind.

Yep, I like to start with "Why" for this stuff. If the answer is something along the lines of "because it looks really cool!" then the strategic value seems dubious (at best).

 

[Lawman]

I keep seeing this suggestion come up; is hiding weapon systems in civilian-apparent equipment a road we really want to go down?

Seems like a bad idea, but maybe it's all a joke. Either way, building a few battleships at $15B a pop seems like something that a.) is really dumb and 2.) will never happen in our bureaucratically stalled environment.

The entire theory on blending for the peer LSCO fight is basically that. Its not all just everybody take off uniforms and drive civilian trucks either, a lot of it is just make everything look boring and unassuming instead of “hey I wonder if there is something important in that tent with all the antennas and generators?”And while yeah totally unnecessary for a fight like what we did in coin and stability ops, it’s not like our opponents have demonstrated an attention to target discrimination or CDE as we would understand it.

Given what we saw with operation spider web and what has been trickling out of osint on China making that drone cargo ship, wouldn't be hard to see some places and times where we just say “if it’s not ours and found here, we will sink/shoot it.” Weighing risk to what could be lost vs the forgiveness ask for being wrong and just try to make sure that message is heard by the actual innocent bystanders to the conflict.

 

[Angry]

…wouldn't be hard to see some places and times where we just say “if it’s not ours and found here, we will sink/shoot it.”

This is already the case in many of our community (VP) tactical training scenarios. Once things “kick off” the assumption is the NPCs will have gotten out of dodge and anyone left is an assumed adversary.

Fun fact, Lloyd’s of London has a Joint War Committee that identifies active conflict zones and cancels policies for new and existing voyages thru those zones. So while it’s probably not a good idea for the DoD (er…DoW?) to use them as an input to ROE, it’s not likely that legitimate merchant vessels would be operating in that area unaware of the risks.

 

[hscs]

This is exactly what happened in the Falklands when the British declared their exclusion zone.