AHC: Battleships.

Hkelukka

Banned
So, here is an AHC, I know its been done a fair number of times before, but, I would like your opinion in anyway.

The following end result must be achieved by no more than 3 semi-minor PoD's

1: All MAJOR countries fleets (US-Russia-China-France-UK and possibly a few others) have at least 1 dedicated surface to surface heavy ship with a total displacement of at least 50.000 tons.

2: Such a ship is designed for a class similar to Carriers, so very little to no independent AA or ASW.

3: The designated military niche for such a ship is mostly against heavy enemy ships and / or ground bombartment.

I'm not interested in the TL itself, I am however interested in the technical side of what such a ship would be like.

What kind of destructive power and at what accuracy could such a ship project. Assuming it is designed primarily for long distance artillery against ground targets but is considered a Flagship so no expenses are spared when built.

So.

TL;DR. Design a modern battleship, call it USS Obama and describe design and what kind of hitting power would it have. Spare no expenses, think, "Race to the moon" design budget. Think, gargantuan, think, military industrial complex.

Go!
 

iddt3

Donor
Ohhhh, railguns! Though once you start mounting those on surface ships, you seem likely to have big "Eggshell Mounted Hammer" type problems.
 

Hkelukka

Banned
Remember my good sir.

Cost is no obstacle here. These are the people that spend trillions on their bankers.

Imagine the following:

The Pacific and Atlantic fleet commanders are having a discussion:

"I bet I can get the pacific fleet to build a fancier battleship that you can get the atlantic fleet to build!"

"Right on chap. Lets go ask the prez or a support package. We'll call it "Too big not to build!""

"Right on, here's 100 billion, lets do this!"

Think big, think shits n giggles factor of something Yamato like being built, just because people like big shiny things that go pop pop.

Considering that having a 20.000 nuclear missile active stockpile supposedly made strategic sense, we can think of the timeline and the reasons why it happen later.

Just go nuts and design.

I'd try to do a spine mounted directed artillery shell with a caliber in the 800+mm range.

Think, spine mounted rail gun that shoots the largest semi-directed propellant in history up to a 200 meter accuracy rating 100 miles away.

EDIT:

Okay, so I’m doing a hyper futuristic design that I could, theoretically, see someone building.

About 250 meters long.

Designed to be submersible to about 800+ meters.

Designed around a single spine mounted Rail Gun of as large a caliber as possible.

Secondary minor AA and AWS armaments

Designed primarily around 3 concepts.

1. Hitting exceptionally hard and fast against targets when surfaced.
2. Versatility in used ammunition without putting on extra turrents. This is easy to do by using a rail gun of set size and alternating in ammunition construction.
3. Extreme survivability, depth, surprise and when surfaced massive AA-AWS and Armor due to all surface area covered with AA and AWS equipment when surfaced, and the depth requirements require a armor oriented design.

So. The concept is simple.

You move around slow, you stay hidden constantly, the surface fleet maps targets for you and prepares hit coordinates.

When the time comes, you surface, you fire preset ammunition at pre-set targets in preset order and sink fast again and then dash to a new location, sink to the bottom and kick up dirt around you and wait again.

The fleet assesses the damage, uses airpower on non-threathning targets. Marks all heavy AA targets that might threathen air units and prepares a ready package for the battleship.

The battleship receives this package, calculates good ammunition and gets targets ready, prepares a belt “3 first targets need shell size X at range Y, the next one needs O at range Z” and so on.

Once the list is ready the battleship surfaces again and hits them all at the same time and sinks again.

Protected by massive armors to protect It from the depth, as well as provide armor against missiles and torpedos.

So, get data, prepare targets, surface, fire on all targets in quick succession, sink again, and calculate new targets based on data fed by fleet.
 
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