"Return of the battleship?" Topic

The more things change?

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"We're talking about a projectile that we're going to send well over 100 miles, we're talking about a projectile that can go over Mach 7, we're talking about a projectile that can go well into the atmosphere," Klunder said.

Ships can carry dozens of missiles, but they could be loaded with hundreds of railgun projectiles, he said.

"Your magazine never runs out, you just keep shooting, and that's compelling," Klunder said.

What do you think?

Big Guns … I like'm …

Dumb idea: Seperate iron from ocean water to use as ammo?

Never is a very long time…….

The marketing people are exaggerating again.

On a related note, they are planning to use seawater soon to power vessels.

Everybody loves railings until they look at power consumption. Still, ain't they cool?

I also don't see how useful they'd be in the only role naval guns have been used since end of WWII – naval gun fire support.

I think there's more rational for a battleship with modern long range 16 inch guns than rail guns and lasers.

Dumb idea: Seperate iron from ocean water to use as ammo?

Yes, very dumb.

Everybody loves railings until they look at power consumption. Still, ain't they cool?

Can we retro fit the Iowa Class in mothballs with nuclear reactors?

Against vehicles, buildings, and other hard targets on land, they'd be very useful.

Against troops in the open, not so much.

The Iowas are Museum pieces, none are in mothballs. Beyond that it would be virtually impossible to retro fit a ship with a nuclear reactor, it would be cheaper to build one from he keel up.

I don't know where the idea of unlimited rounds comes from. You would still need projectiles. They would of course be " dumb" projectiles.

No, the battleship is NOT coming back…. Railguns have been planned for a whole lot smaller hulls for some time (you don't need a honking big BBs hull to absorb the recoil of a railgun). And the railgun has been under development for many, many years. And as FingerandToe Glenn pointed out, everybody loves the idea…. until they see the power consumption numbers… Will they happen? Eventually (once they come up with a terminal guidance system for the shells that can withstand a 0 to Mach 7 acceleration. And solve the power problem).

As for the Iowas… Forget it… They're only good now for tourists to climb all over. They're way past their 'use by' date and the manning of the beasts would be brutal (that's one reason why they were decommissioned).

A modern 16" conventional BB? Get real… Too big, too expensive and the tech too old…

There was a good story on CBS News tonight featuring the rail gun. It is definitely not a big gun as the projectile being used now is about a meter in length They cost about $25,000 USD a piece and that is why the USN thinks that ships could carry a lot

The video is here

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Sea Trials are not expected until 2016 with deployment sometime after 2020

Interesting vid – thanks. I'm not sure how they intend to use that as a missile interceptor, unless they can put a guidance package in it, in which case I can't see how it would still be $25 USDk a pop. Even a mach 7 projectile is not a guarantee to hit an inbound missile like a laser would be, especially if the missile is programmed to maneuver on the way in.

Doug

I would still take a BB in a shooting war, they should have never gotten rid of the ones resurrected during the Reagan years. No other ship could do what they did, and no ship will ever be as capable.

I should have been more clear on this. I mean will we see the return of principally gun armed warships? Not so much armored battle wagons, but mainly rail gun armed warships.

I mean will we see the return of principally gun armed warships? Not so much armored battle wagons, but mainly rail gun armed warships.

Unlikely. While railguns would probably work great for Naval Gunfire Support attacking shore targets and maybe even antiship work, I'm not expecting to see a return to large-caliber antiaircraft guns. So I still see a lot of SAMs or ABMs being carried.

Look at the Zumwalt design: two 155mm/62cal guns, and about as many VLS cells as an Aegis cruiser.

A real question is how will the railgun-armed ship handle over-the-horizon targeting? Guided shells are all well and good, but how do you know that the ship you're shooting at is NOT a Carnival cruise ship with 6000passengers?

but how do you know that the ship you're shooting at is NOT a Carnival cruise ship with 6000passengers

drones

Doug

We were running out of people what knew how to maintain the steam plant on the IOWAs. High-pressure, oil-fired steam is (a) v.v. complex (or so one's told), and (b.) not all that widely used in this CODOG/CODAG era. All that said, I loved the IOWAs too. Heck, I was bummed the reactivation of DES MOINES and SALEM proved impractical. :-)

Also the cost of operation was very high for the Iowa's. In the 80's, with gas hovering around 88 cents/gallon, it cost about a million dollars a day to keep one running.

Can we retro fit the Iowa Class in mothballs with nuclear reactors?

Cheaper to build new from the keel up, not to mention the US doesn't have the steel industry know-how to make armor plates that thick anymore.

But I could see a ship of roughly the size of the Salem/Newport News/Des Moines class and similarly armed. Thing is, you'd need two reactors to handle the electrical generation needs, and that's the same engineering crew as on a carrier, no less than 200 people.

My ideal gun platform would be something about the size of the Salem or maybe the Alaska-class CBs, with either 8" guns, those new 155mm/62 guns, or railguns, a pretty big missiles battery replacing the 5" secondary battery of the WW2 hulls, and a laser big enough to literally sweep across an incoming missile barrage and destroy them all. IIRC, that's a 100 megawatt laser or thereabouts.