Nuclear Battleships
- Thread starter Thucydides
- Start date
BlairWitch749
Banned
there was a cabal in the us congress in the 80's and 90's that wanted to refurbish and bring back to surface the iowa class battleships and build a couple new ones... i guess if they built the new ones they might be nukes... waste of freaking money though
Well, after WW2 battleships were considered obsolete as the aircraft carrier had replaced them. They couldn't cope with air power. If we take a PoD after 1945, I don't see battleships returning, ever. What you could do is have some sort of very big nuclear powered missile cruiser be built like the Kirov class but nuclear. Those weigh in at like 28.000 tons, heavier than any WW I battleship and armed to the teeth. They are the heaviest capital ships after the US's super carriers and France's MN Charles de Gaulle. A ship like this could count as a nuclear powered battleship.
Yup, they sure were: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirov_class_battlecruiser
Although there is a bit of debate whether it was a heavy cruiser or battlecruiser. In the case of this thread, it is as close as exists.
No reason beyond cost.
If you have unlimited funds every surface combatant and carrier SHOULD be nuclear powered. It makes range a non-issue, tends to give a few more knots in speed and allows you to dedicate more space to weapons, have less trouble upgrading electronics, and even have a small reduction in machinery noise.
Of course cost does exist and no nation has unlimited funds. Nuclear powered vessels cost nearly a third more per operating year to maintain, although these is some savings in fuel costs, and cost a fortune at the end of their service life to decommission and disassemble.
As far as a BB itself, the cost feature rears its ugly head again. a modern BB would cost close to the same amount as a "Presidents" class CVN but with a far less useful mission envelope. Even for a country like the U.S. $8 billion dollars for a niche ship is a bit much.
If you have unlimited funds every surface combatant and carrier SHOULD be nuclear powered. It makes range a non-issue, tends to give a few more knots in speed and allows you to dedicate more space to weapons, have less trouble upgrading electronics, and even have a small reduction in machinery noise.
Of course cost does exist and no nation has unlimited funds. Nuclear powered vessels cost nearly a third more per operating year to maintain, although these is some savings in fuel costs, and cost a fortune at the end of their service life to decommission and disassemble.
As far as a BB itself, the cost feature rears its ugly head again. a modern BB would cost close to the same amount as a "Presidents" class CVN but with a far less useful mission envelope. Even for a country like the U.S. $8 billion dollars for a niche ship is a bit much.
Cost. Nuclear powered warships are expensive, and a conventional battleship just isn't useful enough to justify the extravagant cost that such a project would entail.
As for a Kirov/Arsenal-ship concept, it really depends on what you want. If we are talking about an arsenal ship with a minimized crew and a few hundred missiles, designed to fire and forget, then no, because the ship itself is fairly disposable, pretty vulnerable without escort, and just not worth the cash involved. if we are talking about massive missile cruisers, designed perhaps as the centerpiece of battlegroups, then sure, nuclear power is feasible, although it would be hard to find a nation with the resources to spend on this which wouldn't simply go for full sized CVNs instead.
Ah, but you'd have to sink the arsenal ship, where as all it would have to do is destroy the launch capacity of the carrier. If you have a missile swarm coming on it, you will get hit. Now if we had a 1bin dollar AS/BBG, taking on a ~4bin CV, a couple of 500min cruisers, and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of destroyerd, the Arsenal Ship will get you more bang for you buck. But any missile ship would be screwed without air cover.
The arsenal ship wasn't a BB. It was a missile carrier designed to provide the functions that modern VLS ships provide the fleet, but on a somewhat grander scale. The biggest problem with the idea is that one ripple fire was a $528 million dollar investment (500 missiles @ $570k a bird). Cruise missile are a nice idea when you are talking 10 or 20 weapons. When you are talking serious assault, they are simply too damned expensive.
The idea of a BB is that you can get some use out of large caliber guns in the littoral at a MUCH lower cost than a cruise missile or even a LGB but with the advantage of high volume of fire. Inside that niche, it is a terrific weapon system. Unfortunately, it is tough to justify $8 billion dollars to put something in that niche.
David S Poepoe
Banned
At the time the arsenal ship was proposed it would have carried more cruise missiles than were currently available in the entire US arsenal.
285 million USD is actually quite darn cheap if compared to even a few airplanes shot down. Super Hornet costs some 60 mln USD, for example. In grand scheme of military spending 285 million USD in US military spending is a minuscule amount. In Operation Iraqi Freedom alone USN used some 802 BGM-109's and this was an operation against a military basket case.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2003/uscentaf_oif_report_30apr2003.pdf
Compared to task of fielding a CBG with much less strike range arsenal ship is very much cheaper (naturally there's a lot of things unmanned systems cannot yet do but in general one should not use men where machines will do).
In 1996 the USN had some 4000 Tomahawks. The thing is that USN has so massive superiority that there's no need to reserve ships merely for Tomahawk firing.
For that niche tactical missiles, say, proposed Sea ATACMS, can fill the role much cheaper and do the job quicker and more accurately and may be even by using normal VLS cells. And range? With ATACMS's, some 300km's.
David S Poepoe
Banned
They would still be eventually withdraw from service. They are too manpower hungry.
If this for some odd reason would be the route taken I think we'd see "nuclear Vanguards" instead, ie. the new nuclear BB's would use 16" turrets out of Iowa's. Simply converting ships would not make sense as their protection was outdated and converted ships could not fully use the positive effects of nuclear power.
I'm not certain how well a gas turbine will power a railgun, but I'm fairly certain a nuke would do a much better job. And if you're already putting a nuke on the vessel, you might as well make use of it, and build a vessel with multiple railguns. So we'd have a vessel whose primary armament was, say, four railguns, each with a range of around 200 nautical miles, each shot as accurate and damaging as a tomahawk, at a fraction of the cost per shot. A large, heavily defended ship with an all big guns armament, definitely a battleship.
I feel this is definitely in our future, and a few changes could make it alternate history. A greater emphasis on the development of railguns in the cold war, for example.
I feel this is definitely in our future, and a few changes could make it alternate history. A greater emphasis on the development of railguns in the cold war, for example.
Nuclear powered ships
Nuclear power to power a ship is linked to the sideeffects of this form of energy and propulsion, namely nuclear weapons and capabilities. Therefore a surfaceship, no matter which one, with a nuclear propulsion can be as easily combatted as any other type of surfaceship, especialy by the relatively cheap submarine of the early Cold War period, of which type the USSR possessed quite a number.
Nuclear power is only proffitable in strategically important naval vessels, which are not battleships, but the large CVB's, capable of delivering a nuclear strike themselves, when asked to do so, and the SSBN's, with their equally important SSN's as both escorts and ASW vessels.
The only real drawback of nuclear propulsion is its pricetag. Only the largest surfaceships, which are large aircraft carriers normally, can be so equipped, as the carrier then has more space for storage of Aviation fuel and weapons, in stead of its own fuel.
Nuclear powered surfaceships are to last for many decades, or they will be considered too expensive. This means only the relatively simple large aircraft carrier, which has only a small armament itself and therefore sensor network, can be nuclear powered, as this type of vessel is to last for some 50+ years normally, because its more specialized escorts are to defend it against newer threaths. These are conventionally powered, to reduce their production costs, as they are not expected to last as long as the carriers.
Nuclear power to power a ship is linked to the sideeffects of this form of energy and propulsion, namely nuclear weapons and capabilities. Therefore a surfaceship, no matter which one, with a nuclear propulsion can be as easily combatted as any other type of surfaceship, especialy by the relatively cheap submarine of the early Cold War period, of which type the USSR possessed quite a number.
Nuclear power is only proffitable in strategically important naval vessels, which are not battleships, but the large CVB's, capable of delivering a nuclear strike themselves, when asked to do so, and the SSBN's, with their equally important SSN's as both escorts and ASW vessels.
The only real drawback of nuclear propulsion is its pricetag. Only the largest surfaceships, which are large aircraft carriers normally, can be so equipped, as the carrier then has more space for storage of Aviation fuel and weapons, in stead of its own fuel.
Nuclear powered surfaceships are to last for many decades, or they will be considered too expensive. This means only the relatively simple large aircraft carrier, which has only a small armament itself and therefore sensor network, can be nuclear powered, as this type of vessel is to last for some 50+ years normally, because its more specialized escorts are to defend it against newer threaths. These are conventionally powered, to reduce their production costs, as they are not expected to last as long as the carriers.