"Arm the Amphibs!" Topic

As of this writing, the Navy consists of 287 deployable battle-force ships, of which some 31 are part of the amphibious force. These ships—"amphibs" in Navy parlance—are optimized for the transport and delivery of land power from the sea (otherwise known as the U.S. Marine Corps). Amphibs are large and capable and are among the most heavily tasked ships in the Navy because of their versatility and value to regional combatant commanders. What they aren't is lethal, at least as warships go, and this limitation is no longer acceptable as the Navy limbers up for great power competition…

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The old Tarawa-class LHAs actually had 5" guns on them, but those were removed from the ships in 1998, and the ships themselves were decommissioned in 2015.

Given that SSM and SAMs can be deployed in tubes and containers now, seems like that would be easier to do than in the past.

The real issue will probably be with the lack of fire control radars, and long-range search radars to support the weaponry.

Of course, with data-linked systems that work as billed, that should no longer really be an issue, so long as at least one vessel in the group has the needed sensors to permit the effective firing of the weaponry.

I want radars on every ship in the group, even with epic datalinks that allow airplanes or satellites to give targeting info to ships.

Just because you don't want there to be a single-point-failure with only one ship with the correct targeting radars!

Awwww, from the title of the thread I thought we were getting frogs with friken laser beams.