AHC: The Battleship Stays Relevant

I wonder if a gulf war where the Iowa class fires double or treble the amount of rounds due to elite Iraqi units digging in relatively near to water would cause this change. One of the Iowa's fired around 700 rounds in the gulf. It was deemed that it would be cheaper to replace that role with missiles and increased air support than to retain the Iowa's.

Eventually the Iowa's would in a world where the us retained big guns most likely be replaced by a monitor.
 
In the current environment, it would be best to have the US continue the next generation cruiser, and have the tonnage balloon as they try and fit everything they want on a single hull (railguns, ample VLS cells, nuclear propulsion, etc) so that the project is split - one for a smaller vessel that would act as a cruiser, and a larger hull form that, for better lack of any to call it, it becomes the next generation battleship.

This sounds like a descrption of the DDG-1000.

Only problem is that the Zumwalts have no bullets, as the previously rounds cost more than a Tomahawk missile. The never-developed and implemented ballistic round had performance marginally greater than the Iowa class's guns (6-7k yards). Of course, that range is the optimistic projection for the never-made round for the DDG-1000 series.

Part of the issue is that the simple option (railguns) is so far off that the military keeps trying to design workarounds that end up costing even more than the older systems equivalent, and that they don't want to scale up. I wonder whether a modern 8" or 10" round would be capable of greater range than the 155mm's ballistic range maximum by a reasonable amount.
 
In the current environment, it would be best to have the US continue the next generation cruiser, and have the tonnage balloon as they try and fit everything they want on a single hull (railguns, ample VLS cells, nuclear propulsion, etc) so that the project is split - one for a smaller vessel that would act as a cruiser, and a larger hull form that, for better lack of any to call it, it becomes the next generation battleship.


Only problem is that the Zumwalts have no bullets, as the previously rounds cost more than a Tomahawk missile. The never-developed and implemented ballistic round had performance marginally greater than the Iowa class's guns (6-7k yards). Of course, that range is the optimistic projection for the never-made round for the DDG-1000 series.

Part of the issue is that the simple option (railguns) is so far off that the military keeps trying to design workarounds that end up costing even more than the older systems equivalent, and that they don't want to scale up. I wonder whether a modern 8" or 10" round would be capable of greater range than the 155mm's ballistic range maximum by a reasonable amount.

What I was saying the many improvements options raised by fellow members would result in a ship that have a spec highly similar to DDG-1000, except the stealth design. The Iowa guns, while powerful, may be too powerful and do not have pinpoint accuracy. I wonder about response time too.
 
I wonder if a gulf war where the Iowa class fires double or treble the amount of rounds due to elite Iraqi units digging in relatively near to water would cause this change. One of the Iowa's fired around 700 rounds in the gulf. It was deemed that it would be cheaper to replace that role with missiles and increased air support than to retain the Iowa's.

Eventually the Iowa's would in a world where the us retained big guns most likely be replaced by a monitor.

The Iowa class is just too manpower intensive by modern standards.
 

Deleted member 9338

I like the look of battleships (especially the inter-war period ships), but they are very easy to disable in the age of missiles. Not slamming into the sides of these monsters, but a single missile can destroy the radar and ECM masts of such a ship making it blind and useless. These modern systems need more than just the Mark 1 eyeball to be efficient.
 
Combination of mobility and relative impunity. Destroyer can realistically become a "mission kill" if struck even by SAM. Shore based batteries..well, these are vulnerable to SpecOps by definition.

Granted, man-portable ATGW could make a real mess of any frigate or destroyers that was foolish enough to come within range, but would be rather less of a threat to a fully armoured battleship (although don't neglect the damage that could be done to the superstructure and upperworks). Honestly, though, this seems like an extremely small niche to keep battleships around for. Wouldn't it be better to have 4 or 6 destroyers instead, which are more generally useful, or 8 or 10 artillery batteries? Even if the grim calculus is that the specops guys can be expected to render 50% of them ineffective, the cost to accomplish the mission must surely be lower while the utility at times they're NOT bombarding specops bases (hopefully most of the time!) will be much higher.
 
Granted, man-portable ATGW could make a real mess of any frigate or destroyers that was foolish enough to come within range, but would be rather less of a threat to a fully armoured battleship (although don't neglect the damage that could be done to the superstructure and upperworks). Honestly, though, this seems like an extremely small niche to keep battleships around for. Wouldn't it be better to have 4 or 6 destroyers instead, which are more generally useful, or 8 or 10 artillery batteries? Even if the grim calculus is that the specops guys can be expected to render 50% of them ineffective, the cost to accomplish the mission must surely be lower while the utility at times they're NOT bombarding specops bases (hopefully most of the time!) will be much higher.


Even the 76mm gun has longer range than the almost all man-portable ATGW, so it is indeed quite rare for such scenario to manifest.
 
Think about special forces operatives, not the full invasion. Then you need to sweep a long coastline and shell each small hideout, battleship may have some merit compared to airstrikes.
LOL what? A huge giant battleship to cruise around and blast light infantry with 16" shells, if they haven't managed to either get far enough inland to be out of range or embedded themselves into a town/infrastructure you don't want annihilated. Spend that amount of money on e.g. a helicopter assault battalion and you have a far more mobile and flexible fire brigade that is better suited for the niche task of rooting out enemy special forces and can also do any number of other useful things.
 
To save the battleship you need to get rid of missiles.

Maybe if the Germans had used Sarin warheads on the V2 against London, with countless thousands of deaths, that gets you some political will to push for a treaty to limit the development of guided missiles the same way development of battleships was limited before WW2.
 
Swap out the turrets for navalised M270 MLRS launchers (auto loading). You can lob simple HE rockets if all you want is the effect of a big gun or you can use something that carries various sub munitions, from bomblets to guided rounds. Add in the latest tech of GMLRS and you can reach out 120km, use ATACMS instead and you can go 300kms.
 
One element that should also be considered in this discussion is to remember that the primary purpose of a battleship has always been to prevail against an opposing battleship. Remove that from the equation, and the most compelling reason for retaining this class of warships is gone. Any secondary task it's assigned to can be done by other types of naval assets often at much lower costs.

Now let's consider a scenario whereby an opponent, which in effect means the Soviet Union, has its own battleships. Keeping Stalin and his plans for a traditional big oceangoing fleet alive for another few years should be sufficient to generate such a force that in the prevailing cold war would require a response.

The US retaining the battleship in its order of battle therefore becomes seen as a very prudent move. Also other western allies (i.e. UK and France will also be moved to retain their battleships). Perhaps a few othes (Brazil, Argentina, maybe China later on) may decide to do the same as it looks like the battleship days are not over.

The stage is set for a naval arms race as each side goes about modernizing and incorporating all the naval advances of the 50s to 80s to give their ships the needed edges for the "inevitable" Jutland 2.0. In this case how your battleships are equipped is driven in large part by how your opponents equip theirs.
 
But then you have to consider the case of the Sverdlov cruisers. A modern gun-armed armoured soviet ship of unknown but presumably fearsome capabilities, able to sortie against the British Atlantic ASW assets which had no battleships or modern cruisers to protect them. Solution? A new low level strike aircraft able to deliver a nuke onto it.
If the problem is a battleship instead of a cruisers, the solution is presumably a slightly larger aircraft & nuke.
 

SsgtC

Banned
But then you have to consider the case of the Sverdlov cruisers. A modern gun-armed armoured soviet ship of unknown but presumably fearsome capabilities, able to sortie against the British Atlantic ASW assets which had no battleships or modern cruisers to protect them. Solution? A new low level strike aircraft able to deliver a nuke onto it.
If the problem is a battleship instead of a cruisers, the solution is presumably a slightly larger aircraft & nuke.
Which is why the POD is in 1991, after the Gulf War. Because in a WWIII scenario, it's not gonna matter since the war at sea is probably going nuclear from day one
 
Pfffff. Actually discussing the premise of the OP is like, communist or something, and totally against the traditions of AH.COM

But my vote would be for ripping out all the 5” turrets, magazines etc and stuffing the space full of missile gear, electronics and control rooms. AEGIS plus lots of VLS. If someone desperately wants pop guns to go with the big guns, have a single 5” mk45 either side.
 

SsgtC

Banned
Pfffff. Actually discussing the premise of the OP is like, communist or something, and totally against the traditions of AH.COM

But my vote would be for ripping out all the 5” turrets, magazines etc and stuffing the space full of missile gear, electronics and control rooms. AEGIS plus lots of VLS. If someone desperately wants pop guns to go with the big guns, have a single 5” mk45 either side.
This actually lines up pretty well with what I was thinking for an Iowa replacement. 3x3 16"/50 guns, 4x1 5"/62 guns (one on each corner of the superstructure), 244 Mk 41 VLS cells (200 used for Tomahawks, the rest for SM-2s and ESSMs), 4 Phalanx mounts, low observable features built into the hull and superstructure to reduce RCS (bit of a fools errand with three big ass gun turrets, but still), similar armor protection as the Montana class would have had (yes, the superstructure may get wrecked, but the ship will still get home and can be repaired, additionally she'd still be able to fire her main guns under local control and remain combat ready), gas turbine propulsion (I'm leary of putting a reactor into a ship that's very likely to be targeted by enemy artillery and missiles), top speed of 35 knots as built, but with the ability to shift power from propulsion to weapons or sensors as new systems come on line (i.e. rail guns or directed energy weapons), speed likely to fall eventually to 28-32 knots. Keep as many systems automated as possible to reduce crew, figure 1,200-1,500 tops. 50 year designed service life.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
In 1991, the USN decides that the armored, big gun battleship still has a place in the fleet and decides to retain the Iowa class instead of retiring them. Yes, I know this is near ASB and all the reasons why. What I'm curious about is, IF the Navy had kept them, what upgrades/modifications do you think they would carry out to the ships, how much longer would they serve, and what would their replacement be? For the replacement, keep in mind, this is a Navy that has decided to keep armored big gun ships in its fleet. Other than that, go crazy.

They were retired because they were an ship without a good mission. Or put with more precision, the Iowas were a ship where each mission could be done by a much cheaper ship. They were also retired because of the explosion of powder during training exercise. While the Navy did a nice job of framing an innocent guy via the gay lover theory, the Navy knew there was another issue. As powder gets older, it because more unstable and this is what cause the explosion. If the explosion due to routine handling had happened in a powder magazine, the ship would have been cut in two by the explosion and 10 survivors would have been a lot. The state of the art 1943 ships is also missing a lot of very common technologies of today such a sonar. And it is so big, it probably should have nuclear propulsion. So we would really need to build the Ersatz Iowa.

So since we have to retire the class of ships due to age, lets first talk about building another ship of the same type. We have not produced 16" guns in ages. Probably need to design a new version with a higher rate of fire, like we did with the 5" guns on modern ships. Are we really going to build ships with armor schemes that don't stop modern missiles? No, so now I am building a BC with at most a light armor scheme of the "medium" variety. Not very useful. And very expensive ground fire ships for the marines.

So lets go to the much vaunted ground fire. I am not even against this ship, but i looks nothing like an Iowa. It looks like a WW1 Monitor. I could take the old 16" guns off scrapping the Iowa or new guns if you like. Have to produce new ammunition. Then I build a ship with 1-2 guns per ship so I can support a larger area. While it has to be able to travel at sea, it need not be fast. 20 knots is blazing fast, it just has to be able to get there. It is also a shallow draft shift that can go up bays, estuaries and bigger rivers. In fact, it looks at lot like in shore drilling platform, and may well use this type of civilian technology. It probably has legs to let it anchor to the ground for more accurate fire. It needs a medium, not an all or nothing armor scheme since it will be shot at by mortars and land base artillery. At least an inch everywhere, but maybe a good bit more. And if you think about this ship, it could have been easily built at any time since 1950. And it would have been hugely useful as a fire base in the rivers and bays of South Vietnam. Or in the rivers of Iraq. And this ships with some work probably could have been brought deep into interior of rivers, so finding it North of Baghdad is possible. People love to talk about missiles and bombs advantages, and these do exist. However in a world where the enemy does not have counter battery radars, the artillery adjust fires, the F-15 flies back to base to rearm.

I have never seen a person argue that naval gun fire (non-rail guns) is likely to sink a lot of ships. In any case, 16" is too big for the modern world even if you think the 5" is too small. Here you would design a new 8" or so rapid fire gun to put on new or existing ships.

I have not seen credible arguments for ship armor that can't stop missiles or arguments how we can build a ship that stops standards missiles such as the silkworm. All BS aside, if the Iowa gets hit by a 2-3 Silkworms she is in the same amount of trouble as the same size ship without armor.

Ok, you want to build this big a ship that is surface warship. By big, I mean the same length. Probably nuclear power. Carries missiles. Called BBGN. Probably looks like the Kiev, but replacing air wing with even more missiles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_aircraft_carrier_Kiev

So we get to what we really did. We went with CVN, CGN, and DD to do all the jobs the Iowa could at lower cost. There is only one role which these don't do well, it is the Monitor that mentioned before. Probably would have made sense to strip off some 14" or 16" guns and build the Marines 3-7 of these ships. Might even put a little room for a small command area for regimental size units. Probably economical.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Following Gopher you would first of all need something to reduce the crew - on top of all the gadgets needed to keep her in action in a modern world.


But when that is said I wonder what PoDs in WWII it would take to increase the relevance of heavily armoured and gun armed vessels in the post-war aera?


In OTL we saw initially Axis aircraft vs. wallied ships with a very rudimentary AA defence and later wallied aircraft against Axis ships with AAA not that much better. IOW the matches were set in the most favourable conditions for the aircraft.


But what if the great Pacific carrier battles had been between forces both having good radar, CAP and very comprehensive AAA like the 1944 USN?


I have an idea that the air strikes would be likely to bleed themselves white without really inflicting decisive damage, apart from slowing down the target, and next this could be the option for the “gunnery-school” to close and perform the kill.


Add to that some scenarios from the North Atlantic where bad weather takes out the air strike option but battleships get the chance to close and kill.


That would pretty much reverse the OTL image of battleships as the inefficient way to kill and the carrier as the efficient.


All surface vessels would still be vulnerable to underwater detonations (torpedoes and mines), no change from OTL here, but the battleship would clearly be less vulnerable to the soon coming availability of SSMs and it would take a generation or two of new technology extra before you could reliably shoot down incoming artillery projectiles compared to incoming SSMs.


In that context I could imagine new post-war surface vessel with a clear focus on protection (incl. subdivision and materials like Kevlar) and with heavy artillery as the main offensive weapon.

You need the guide missile not to be developed. Just can't really armor against these weapons. The BB was armored against gun fire at very specific ranges. When you have to armor against gun fire and missiles, you can't do it and have the ship float. And then missiles are better weapons than guns. Longer range, can be carried by cheaper things (planes, smaller boats, subs).
 

SsgtC

Banned
Can we ask the CNO if he wants one of these or one more CVN? I think the USMC gets outvoted by the fleet?
I agree that, IRL, the Navy is going to look at the proposal for 4 of these things and go, "can we just get two more carriers instead?" I was just curious what people would come up with as a hypothetical.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Remove all the turrets and replace them with VLS cells, maybe.

Cheaper to build a new ship. We tried that with cruisers and ran into a bunch of hard to fix and expensive structural issues. These turrets are used as structure and pulling them means the ship is often not seaworthy. i.e. Too weak to survive heavy seas.

And the guns are overrate in effectiveness. If you really wanted to improve the Iowas, you could probably pull all of the guns out of two turrets and use the deck space to put some more missile racks. And O, BTW, if you stick missiles outside of the armor (OTL), then the ship is not really armored since if have a fragmentation hit on the top of the ship, it is a mission kill.

Now sure, if I have ASB technology, it make sense. Pull out 2 of the three turrets and put in a bunch of missiles. Go deep in the ship and pull out half the armor. Install a nuclear power plant. Probably but a good admiral quarters that can be used by a naval or marine command. Reactivating the Iowa was a Reagan gimmick to get over 600 ships. The dollars would have been better spent building more cruisers, but that would have taken more time.
 
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