That is...beyond any level of stupidity in military planning since the invasion of Iraq.
AHC: A more competent U.S. Armed Forces
- Thread starter M. A. Dickens
- Start date
That is...beyond any level of stupidity in military planning since the invasion of Iraq.
Compared to this, the Iraq War was a brilliant masterpiece in terms of execution.
Marc A
Oh my, Mike Sparks. I think you're spot on in him having a mental illness. It's really the only way to explain his vitoralic rants, delusions of grandeur, and obsession with those out there ideas.
It's a shame that when you look up military reform that these guys and their ilk are the top hits. There are serious discussions on the matter to be had, but most of them have no firm grasp on reality. It can be seen in the hatred of electronics mentioned above, and derision of things like GPS enabled precision guided munitions. Most of these guys seem to want to re-fight World War 2 with light infantry! General rule of thumb: if you can find that an author is seriously advocating the return of the Iowas, then they have no idea about modern manning requirements and the effects of PGM. Fortunately most of them seem to also dedicate bandwidth to 9/11 trutherism, so they can be easily spotted.
It's a shame that when you look up military reform that these guys and their ilk are the top hits. There are serious discussions on the matter to be had, but most of them have no firm grasp on reality. It can be seen in the hatred of electronics mentioned above, and derision of things like GPS enabled precision guided munitions. Most of these guys seem to want to re-fight World War 2 with light infantry! General rule of thumb: if you can find that an author is seriously advocating the return of the Iowas, then they have no idea about modern manning requirements and the effects of PGM. Fortunately most of them seem to also dedicate bandwidth to 9/11 trutherism, so they can be easily spotted.
BlondieBC
Banned
The Iowas received vastly too much hype. All this false PR was one of the main things I had to unlearn for my TL. Lets go through some issues.
1) The ammo is getting old. As it gets old, it gets more unstable. To really keep the Iowas, you have to produce all new ammo. We are extremely lucky we did not lose 2K sailors when one of the ships had the explosion in the firing exercise. The powder bag went off because light pressure was applied (the ram). It just as easily could have went off in the powder magazine and this would have split the ship in half. No more than 20 sailors would have lived and it is likely in the single digits.
2) The manpower requirements are huge. If you want a Monitor (which is all we really used them for in combat), you need to build a new turret from the ground up to lower manpower usage. Saves money in the long run.
3) If you are just using as ship to ship missile boat that can carry a lot of weight (what they claimed it was for), then you don't man the turrets. Maybe keep enough men on to man two guns in one turret, but then leave the other two empty to save $$. As you wear out guns, you can move the men to the other turrets. The barrels have fairly short lives compared to land based systems. You can't really remove the structural parts of the turret without some real issues, so it is hard to convert them to something else. Just wasted space in many ways.
4) The armor on these ships is basically worthless for modern naval combat. Actually probably a net harm due to weight. If you ever get a fire going from rocket fuel, the weight will bring up some real structural issues due to weakened steel.
There are a bunch of other issues, but history is pretty clear that converting capital gun ships to other usages generally is not a great idea, and is always a stop gap measure. Now I am not against a 16" monitor for the marine corp. Just built one to specs. You only need maybe 2-4 16" guns. You need to be armed not with a deep belt to stop 16" rounds, but with lighter armor on the surface of the ship to stop lighter land based artillery. It can be slow - 10-18 knots is probably fine. It helps if it is shallow draft. Probably some modified drilling platform for inshore drilling would work well.
And I am not against building new "battleships", if you can explain why it is better than cruisers. But you will need modern guns (maybe the railgun under development), not 75 year old weapons. Probably will have missiles as main weapons. You can skip the armor. Probably nuclear powered.
In many ways, the Iowas were a stunt to get the USN to Reagan's 600 ship navy fast. The probably is a modern cruiser would make a lot more sense. The Iowa probably had some role as a reserve ship, but to keep costs down, the personnel should have been all reserve, and you only bring it out for the Iraq war. The concept of a battleship sailing the Ocean's in the 1990 was a waste of money. Yes they had capabilities, but much less than other ships you could have spent the money on.
BlondieBC
Banned
No, you are repeating navy PR myths. Yes the numbers quote are right, but not the conclusion. Issues:
1) The main armor belt is near the water line. It is made of Class B armor (unhardened). For missiles attacks, it provides no protection. They come in above the belt, so the belt does not matter. And once the unused rocket fuel starts to burn, they create issues. If the 16" belt has fire on it, the steel will lose strength. The great weight will make the ship more likely to sink (break in half). And the damage can't be repaired. Even a handful of smaller missiles can result in permanent mission kill. i.e. you take to drydock and scrap.
2) The smaller missiles you list will penetrate the armor on kinetic energy alone. The all also can fit shape charged warheads. They can also be programmed to change final attack angles. In short, the penetrate.
3) The 7.5 inch armor you list is misleading. First, it is built on "all or nothing protection scheme". So large portions of the ship is unarmored. Second, that is max thickness. The armor is carefully thinned to provide just enough protection from enemy battleships. The weather deck is under 2", maybe under an 1". Now yes, this is hardened (Class A) armor, but it is not that impressive. Almost all modern tanks and other armored vehicles have the equivalent of a lot more than 7" of steel armor. Basically any anti-tank weapon known to god will penetrate the Iowa armor. What makes an Iowa tougher than a tank is that most of the Iowa is non-critical spaces. So the Iowa can take many Exocet hits, but eventually they will either find a critical space (catastrophic loss of ship) or they will start doing cumulative structural damage to the strength decks giving you a permanent mission kill. Yes, the Iowa likely takes a hit from one or two Exocets and keeps on the mission, but as the number climbs up towards 20 or so hits, the ship is a loss.
4) Plunging fire. The Iowa armor does provide some protection from land based artillery (if you are thinking of it as a Monitor), but is vulnerable to plunging (high angle) fire. Even a plan old 155mm artillery round is likely to breach the weather deck. Now without the fires associated with missiles, these are much, much less likely to greatly harm the ship.
5) The Iowa is horrible against any modern torpedo. How many nations have torpedoes? And if they have no submarines, exactly why do you need a Iowa to defeat say Chile?
I dearly love Battleships, but the USN is just misleading people on a lot of this stuff. The Iowa only had three roles. The main was to give Reagan good PR. They do make nice Monitors, and if kept in reserve status and we assume a 3-6 month leadup to a minor war, they do make nice support for the Marines. They may even be cost effective in this role. Third, they were big ships that could hold lots of modern missiles. They made an ok stop gap measure. The 16" guns have low value in modern naval war. Probably as likely to sink the Iowa in ammo explosion as actually take out an enemy warship that could not simply be sunk easier by shooting a missile. The armor is a negative. It makes it slower and more vulnerable to fire damage.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
http://www.thedailybell.com/3932/Anthony-Wile-Mike-Sparks-on-Why-James-Bond-Is-Real
Just CTRL-F for "Nazi Flying Saucer"
Since he is an actual insane person, we should discuss him no further, but his "Gavin" crap comes up a lot on the Internet and needs to be refuted.
BlondieBC
Banned
I am sure 2LT learn how to call in airstrikes, but when I was in, each Battalion had a CAS officer and NCO attached from Air Force. They are pilots. Pilots can explain things to pilots much better than people who have never flown. Just like every infantry sergeant knows how to call in artillery fire, you prefer to have FO call it in.
Having worked with 2LT as their driving, I would not call them well trained. Quite frankly, I could do most of their job better than them. The Sergeants in the Humvee could do much, much better. 20 years of experience beats a few months of classroom time. 2LT is basically an apprentence program, but do to the structure of nobility outranking commoners, the NCO reports to the 2LT not vice versa. I have also driven for Captains. By the the time they are a Captain, they know what they are doing. Captains really command units. Platoon sergeants really do the work leading and commanding Platoons. I know a lot of effort is given 2LT feeling like they are in charge. And the can override the sergeants, it will just be a short career for them. If the 2LT really made the decisions, he would fail his performance reviews. It is different by the time you get the Captains and Colonels. They actually understand what they are doing.
And you are right on the ROTC having a large political and public relations side. For example, the reason the Ivy league schools have ROTC is not that they expect them to have long military careers. It is because the Army know that Congressmen and their staffers often come from Ivy League and they want them to be more pro military. This is the only reason the Ivy League ROTC was not cancelled. It is how it was sold to the generals by the colonel in charge. The were complaining about how few went past the initial sign up. And he told them "Would you rather ask for your appropriation from a Senatorial Chief of Staff who has 5 years army experience or from a Senatorial Chief of Staff who has a negative view of the Army?" They never again tried to cut his budget.
While we're on the topic of gun cruisers... how feasible would it be for the Navy to get a new class of missile cruisers based on a Des Moines-class hull?
Marc A
Marc A
Ideally you would want to create a new hull to incorporate improvements made in ship building and bow mounted sonars / nixie etc. This is before we start thinking about powerplants, bow mounted thrusters (which are just beautiful in assisting coming alongside) or the pods on an FFG.
Up to you, but preference would be for a new hull.
Up to you, but preference would be for a new hull.
Well, yeah, of course a new hull (don't want to use WWII-era dinosaurs, now do we?
), I'm just saying the new design would be one based on the Des Moines, with all the modern goodies fitted.So it's workable, eh? Good.
Marc A
The former. Which means the new class of cruisers will be built with new material, using the Des Moines hull as basis of design.
Marc A
Money that doesn't have to spent, I suspect. The TOW is still a serious weapon and fully capable of shutting down most tanks.
The Hellfire has superior range though. A tank can easily kill a Bradley at longer range than the TOW can hit a tank.
You could do that?? I never knew...
Marc A
There's a number of armies upgrading their wire-guided ATGM's to laser guided one's.
Pomphis
Banned
In open desert. In many other terrains the two will not be able to see one another until they are much closer.
Isn't much of that because the Hellfire is launched at speed and at altitude?
I wonder how big the range difference is when you put a Hellfire in similar conditions as a TOW missile.