WI: USN Kirovs

[Arkenfolm]

Does the CG(X) program count?

Are the 16 guns still viable against anything thats a real peer target that you can't hit with plenty of other stuff, like aircraft? By the 80s is the Iowa main hot war weapons, not the ABLs that could be on a DDG just as easily, with the 16" more for use on 2nd rate targets?

It's cheaper than a missile or airstrike and doesn't carry as much risk of losing expensive equipment and trained personnel like a crashed jet might (that one incident with the Iowa's turret notwithstanding).

 

[Catsmate]

Those later CSGN designs with the ability to operate VTOL aircraft, can we get them to be attractive to US allies? In some or most cases, the big cruiser will not be nuclear powered. Australia with a couple of big cruisers, carrying a small force of Harriers? Japan building some? They could start out as a larger version of the JNSDF's big helicopter destroyers built in the last century, then become full fledged cruisers. Who else?

Oh, an Iowa-like conversion of the Des Moines-class cruisers is a different answer to this thread.

It's unlikely in the extreme that any other country would be interested in a CSG; massively expensive, expensive to operate and replacing the reactors with turbines would cost a lot of internal space for bunkerage.

The Des Moines were in pretty terrible shape by the time anyone was thinking STOL.

 

[Salvare7097]

Personally I think the design would be something like one or two large caliber gun (12 to 16 inch) turrets (the USMC would like this and they do have a lot political power) in a all forward arrangement with the missile system in the back. The hull would be something like a modern Alaska with out all of the stupid older version.

 

[aaronupright]

Fun fact: The Slavas could not generate enough electricity to turn on all those big, nasty looking anti ship missiles at once..

Errr, source?

 

[I lurk therefore I am]

Errr, source?

Lt Cdr Pink*, Senior Warfare instructor, Britannia Royal Naval College, c. 2002/3.



*seriously. That was his name. Principal Warfare Officer (Above Water Warfare) on a Type 42 prior to joining Dartmouth.