SD.Net World Redux Comment Thread VIII

[Beowulf]

Guns would fire saboted rocket assisted projectiles.

When all missiles would likely be fired away from 300 km and beyond, and the battle would be decided in the following several minutes? Right.

Congrats! You just blew up a oil supertanker! Anyways, it carries enormous amounts of AAW missiles for self protection. The battlemanagement system is extensively resistant to being overwhelmed, so your option is to try to shoot it dry. Got >1000 AShM to spare?

The guns would imply they are there for NGFS, not anti-ship work.

That's even more ridiculous. Who in their right mind would bring that ship near the coast? It's not an obsolete reactivated battleship which you can afford to lose to an enemy's missile boat armed with a nuclear warhead or just an enemy AshM armed with a nuclear warhead, or a torpedo from ground-laying SSK. It's a ship that is worth an entire Navy in metal and money alike.

NGFS for modern assault operations can be supplied by installing MRLS with beyond 100 km range to amphibious assault ships, LPDs and LSTs...

This ship is an open ocean battleship that poses such an engineering challenge for anyone, and is so ill-suited for all roles of naval combat that it cannot be anything but a smokescreen. Even an enormous carrier platform works better and is more believable than this. And that's not even starting to talk about the speed and hull stress, as I said.[/quote]

This thing wouldn't really need to get all that near the coast. Let's make some assumptions: Rocket assisting an 11" sabotted round will provide the same range increase as the Mk171 round does for the US Mk45 5"/62. 11" round would normally go about 180km from a 16" gun. Multiply by the range increase, and you have about 565km. How close do I really need to get to shore?

As for the ship itself, well, originally it was going to be based on the Montana-class BB. Same displacement, same length, same beam, same draft, same speed. Difficulties in finding the hull in a shipbucket style dictated a change, but the hull itself might have posed problems for a 1940s era ship designer, not for a 2010s ship designer. It's even easier when you don't have 15ktons of armor to put on, or giant armored barbettes that must sit on top of the keel. And why does a ship need to be suited for all roles of naval combat?

[K. A. Pital]

Congrats! You just blew up a oil supertanker!

Which matters in a large war... how?

Got >1000 AShM to spare?

Yes, plus torpedoes. By the time this shit hits the waves, the CATO navies will be operating submarines with 500 missiles just from the VLS alone. Besides, overwhelming limit starts at 100s of missiles, not 1000. Nor existing neither projected systems can support midair correction for a thousand of missiles, neither can they be all launched simultaneously.

Multiply by the range increase, and you have about 565km.

Really? Isn't that broken physics? What about the stress on the projectile itself and the possible damage to components? This is not a lightweight gun. More than that, since when did larger caliber automatically give a several times greater firing distance? The maximum range of a 16 inch gun is not that different from a modern 5 inch gun. Something here sounds like a heap of bullshit. Rocket-assisted projectiles in the 5in barely managed to squeeze the gun's firing distance over 100 km with reasonable accuracy; you are saying it will go straight to 600 km? When the very best long-range rocket assisted rounds mostly were 100 km and beyond?

I mean, look the B-37, arguably the best ballistic long-range 16'in gun with a performance of ~50 km, would have 600 km range with rocket assistance? What a load of crap! And I'm not even speaking of the barrel life. By the time you finish trials, you'd be replacing all the barrels on your ship.

Same displacement

Strangely enough, the Montana not only displaces less than that, but it also has armor. You don't. How come your ship displaces almost 90,000 tons? And it's a perfect case of laying all eggs in one basket I would add.

P.S.

Rough calculations and observations (please don't shoot me straightaway, because the data for many nations is simply not available)!

1) The GDP ratio of CATO/MESS is around 0,54
2) However, CATO average per capita GDP is actually higher. Possibly OD and Serenity are to blame, their PC GDPs are not present in the Wiki so I gave them rough MESS average GDP p/cs... and that's considering the OD GDP pc should be abysmal actually, with all the wars and that.
3) CATO maintains 0,9-0,7 ratio to the MESS in all major fleet combatants (including fulldeck carriers), and also has around parity in strategic bombers and rough parity in fighters, even though the MESS has more 5th generation craft (CATO:MESS = ~0,7)
4) CATO has far more SSGNs with strategic missile strike capability than the MESS combined. Far more means "2:1" or around that (once again, OD and Serenity are wildcards)
5) Since the MESS military space inventory is unknown, I don't really know how to compare the military orbiter forces.
6) Either alliance truly dwarfs Japanistan, but taking Japanistan one-on-one would be pretty much close to impossible for any nation alone.

[DarthShady]

Awesome work on the map Stas.

It's kind of funny to notice, that there are no wars or rebellions going on at the moment. Quite a difference, compared to the last couple of years.

[K. A. Pital]

Took a minute to fill out the previously nonexistent list of the UCSR space forces in the UCSR mil spreadsheet. It's by no means extensive, but it's a rough idea on what we should have by that time. If I'm right about our possible launch intensity, et cetra, about 1/5-1/4th of all CATO, and about 1/3rd of all Crimson/Union launches conducted were of military nature or dual use. The remaining 4/5-3/4th of CATO launches were were either mostly civilian (even if still possible to use for military) or scientific, or testbeds (military or civilian), or they weren't UCSR launches

Manned flight is entirely in PeZook's hands, but the satellite systems have been somewhat denied description.

P.S. Lonestar, we love you too!

[Bluewolf]

Well I am back in the game ,hope it all makes sense. I wouldl ike to see any currently sold military hardware whatever it is and I am willnig to talk on certain things I might be interested in.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Hey Lonestar, you going to tidy up the front end of the Sonic cruiser deal? Want to try some priestly diplomacy (or disaster?)?

[CmdrWilkens]

Well I am back in the game ,hope it all makes sense. I wouldl ike to see any currently sold military hardware whatever it is and I am willnig to talk on certain things I might be interested in.

If you ned naval assets I'm retiring and mothballing 'Ticos and 'Burke's left and right (got roughly a dozen each available immediately). Delivered without missiles the cost is in the 250-350mil/per range but you'll get the first tank of fuel free

[DarthShady]

Took a minute to fill out the previously nonexistent list of the UCSR space forces in the UCSR mil spreadsheet. It's by no means extensive, but it's a rough idea on what we should have by that time. If I'm right about our possible launch intensity, et cetra, about 1/5-1/4th of all CATO, and about 1/3rd of all Crimson/Union launches conducted were of military nature or dual use. The remaining 4/5-3/4th of CATO launches were were either mostly civilian (even if still possible to use for military) or scientific, or testbeds (military or civilian), or they weren't UCSR launches

Manned flight is entirely in PeZook's hands, but the satellite systems have been somewhat denied description.

Awesome. It's nice to have some actual numbers. Me and Fin were going to work out just how many MiG-105 we should each have. But somehow we never got around to it.

[PeZook]

I improved a bit on Wilken's work.

Date conversion spreadsheet

Switch the tab to "PeZook model": it's far more readable and elastic (you can even convert backwards from January 1st 2017!) - just type in the real-world date and hour in the "real date to calculate from" window, and it will spit out the in-game date.

A little short on bells and whistles, but then again, it's not for constant use

[Shroom Man 777]

Fingolfin told me to update my OOB and that I did. So now I've got like more than a dozen of various Silver-type orbiters.

Also, man, Siege totally made Comrade Shady out to be the awesomest cool-cat there is!

[Lonestar]

Hey Lonestar, you going to tidy up the front end of the Sonic cruiser deal? Want to try some priestly diplomacy (or disaster?)?

Posted the response. Also a book review of Shady's Bio. If you want, you can kick off the Schismatic bickerering, as I've already had Gregory XIX say a few nasty things about President Hank/CATO.

[Shroom Man 777]

Loinstar, you asshole

[PeZook]

Siege should totally do more of those bios! I nominate Shroom the 777th as the next candidate!

[Shroom Man 777]

PeZook: I would be so flattered, and the amount of dickery we'd kick up would make for a SPECKTACLE!

Why is Vulpesia yellow in Stas' map? Is it an IRT satellite state?

[K. A. Pital]

Vulpesia is pale yellow because the guy who made the map initially made it yellow; I just dimmed out the colors. It's unlucky coincidence that yellow is the IRT color in the map. But anyway, only the bright yellow is IRT and satellites, kinda like only bright green is for Japanistan and sats. Vulpesia is not one of them.

Oh, and Grand PooBah?! Lonestar, Lonestar!!! Lots and lots of love, all the crimmies can send you these neat postcards, you know, with little matryoshkas and balalaikas and all that, so you don't feel so lonely.

[Bluewolf]

In light of Wilkens offer, I'd be extremely curious about what CATO can offer hardware wise that MESS and the other groups can not.

[Beowulf]

Congrats! You just blew up a oil supertanker!

Which matters in a large war... how?

Well, massive overkill is expensive. You could probably have better used those missiles on something actually worthwhile.

Got >1000 AShM to spare?

Yes, plus torpedoes. By the time this shit hits the waves, the CATO navies will be operating submarines with 500 missiles just from the VLS alone. Besides, overwhelming limit starts at 100s of missiles, not 1000. Nor existing neither projected systems can support midair correction for a thousand of missiles, neither can they be all launched simultaneously.

Not simultaneously, but fast enough to empty all the cells well before the missiles would hit. And the STAR battle management system is capable of theoritically updating a thousand missiles in the air, if it has enough datalink capacity. It is, after all, largely autopilot updates. Assuming 3 coordinates each with 64-bit precision, along with a 1 second update frequency (all of which is fairly extremely overkill), that's a bandwidth of: ~192 kbps. Add in some overhead to tag the data for specific missiles and other requirements, and you're still well under what's capable of being transmitted. Oh, and all the STAR ships have hard-kill defenses against torpedos (part of the Millennium II CIWS upgrade is a additional feed that fires supercavitating bullets, and a blue laser LIDAR to map what's incoming)

Multiply by the range increase, and you have about 565km.

Really? Isn't that broken physics? What about the stress on the projectile itself and the possible damage to components? This is not a lightweight gun. More than that, since when did larger caliber automatically give a several times greater firing distance? The maximum range of a 16 inch gun is not that different from a modern 5 inch gun. Something here sounds like a heap of bullshit. Rocket-assisted projectiles in the 5in barely managed to squeeze the gun's firing distance over 100 km with reasonable accuracy; you are saying it will go straight to 600 km? When the very best long-range rocket assisted rounds mostly were 100 km and beyond?

I mean, look the B-37, arguably the best ballistic long-range 16'in gun with a performance of ~50 km, would have 600 km range with rocket assistance? What a load of crap! And I'm not even speaking of the barrel life. By the time you finish trials, you'd be replacing all the barrels on your ship.

Let's see: You fail to accomodate the fact that it's a saboted round, which will result in a higher velocity from the gun.

4) In the spring or summer of 1967 when USS New Jersey (BB-62) was being activated for Vietnam, Indian Head Naval Ordnance Station proposed taking 23,000 non-nuclear 280 mm (11") shells left over from the Army's "atomic cannon" program and converting them via a sabot and obturator to be used in 16" (40.6 cm) guns. This was apparently a part of or in conjunction with the "Gunfighter" program for developing Long Range Bombardment Ammunition (LRBA) projectiles. Test shots were fired in 1968 and 1969 at Yuma and at Barbados, with the latter location using two 16"/45 (40.6) cm guns welded end-to-end and achieving ranges out to 83,850 yards (76,670 m) with a 745 lbs. (338 kg) shell fired at a muzzle velocity of 4,550 fps (1,387 mps).

No elevation is given.

Contemporary 16" guns and 5" guns have a roughly 60% increase in range for the 16" guns. It is rather reasonable to assume that a modern 16" gun will have a longer range than a 5" gun, firing projectiles of comparable complexity (even disregarding the sabot rounds). Similarly, the relatively contemporary Mk45 and Mk71 guns result in the 8" gun having almost 25% greater range compared with the 5". Bigger guns means more range.

AGS rounds are non ballistic. This is the big range booster. Comparison of the LRLAP and BLRP projectiles shows a 4:1 range advantage for the LRLAP(non ballistic) shells. They're also guided, negating accuracy concerns at long range. Barrel life is sure to be crappy, but then it's fairly crappy on all battleships. Average gun life was about 3 times the number of shells stored on board, per gun.

Same displacement

Strangely enough, the Montana not only displaces less than that, but it also has armor. You don't. How come your ship displaces almost 90,000 tons? And it's a perfect case of laying all eggs in one basket I would add.

Sorry... I mis-read my reference, it was originally supposed to be ~71ktons full load. It doesn't have belt armor, but does have other very mass intensive systems. I'd estimate that the gun mounts alone would be about 3100 tons. Additionally, you have 128 Mk57 VLS modules at 33.6klbs each, for a total of another 2100 tons. Neither of those figures include the ammunition, BTW. Fully packed with SM-2 (for example, not an actual weapons outfit), those alone would add another 2000 tons. Loaded Mk58 cells would be another 1000 tons in missiles alone, with a similar weight in VLS systems. There's turbo electric drive machinery, the nuclear plants, very large air wing, SPY-3 arrays, STAR battle management system, space tracking radar, CIWS, passive survivability measures, etc.

[RogueIce]

In light of Wilkens offer, I'd be extremely curious about what CATO can offer hardware wise that MESS and the other groups can not.

Keep in mind, one advantage we have over them now is compatability. Given what you're currently using, you can slip in MESS (ie: NATO) "modernized" stuff (for example, taking some Burkes with 8in guns and Millenium II CIWS and the like) into your current fleets with less hassle in retraining and integration than you can CATO (ie: WARPAC) stuff. So with us, you can upgrade as you please or can afford without running into as many compatability issues. Whereas with CATO you pretty much have to replace everything, and in the interim you'll have a mixed bag of things.

Beowulf, Lonestar and the others can explain that better I'm sure. And I have no doubt CATO guys will be running in to tell me how wrong I am.

Either way, I have to go pursue this thing called a "social life" now so the inevitable arguing is not my concern.

[Zor]

You left out Zorian Veleria Stas!

Zor

[DarthShady]

Siege, excellent work. Looking forward to the rest of it.

Also a book review of Shady's Bio. If you want, you can kick off the Schismatic bickerering, as I've already had Gregory XIX say a few nasty things about President Hank/CATO.

Classic Lonestar. We love you too mang.

[Steve]

Aside from Japanistan he left out all of the other claims to Veleria save marking Adabani with Cascadia. In fact I think he even miscolored Katangwa Free State as part of Japanistan w/ satellites.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

In light of Wilkens offer, I'd be extremely curious about what CATO can offer hardware wise that MESS and the other groups can not.

Keep in mind, one advantage we have over them now is compatability. Given what you're currently using, you can slip in MESS (ie: NATO) "modernized" stuff (for example, taking some Burkes with 8in guns and Millenium II CIWS and the like) into your current fleets with less hassle in retraining and integration than you can CATO (ie: WARPAC) stuff. So with us, you can upgrade as you please or can afford without running into as many compatability issues. Whereas with CATO you pretty much have to replace everything, and in the interim you'll have a mixed bag of things.

Beowulf, Lonestar and the others can explain that better I'm sure. And I have no doubt CATO guys will be running in to tell me how wrong I am.

Not everything CATO produces and/or uses is incompatible with MESS stuff. I offer Sa'ar 5, Braunschweig, and licence-built Visby corvettes, and they're all MESS-compatible; ditto the modified Armidale patrol boats I've built for the Tian Xia Revenue Service. I also have a bunch of decommissioned Gepard FACs lying around somewhere; all their weapons systems are MESS-compatible as well.

[CmdrWilkens]

Honestly the real compatability issue is going to be with any missile or gun system. If you are using MESS-standard calibers and missiles then the VLS systems, rail systems, gun systems, etc of MESS-built ships come pre-loaded for that. If you are using CATO-standard calibers and missles well then the same applies. In other words where you get your bullets from plays a big role in who you buy your guns from...unless you want to spend the money to be able to fire multiple different systems (which has a penalty in training, spares, and a host of other areas).

[K. A. Pital]

In light of Wilkens offer, I'd be extremely curious about what CATO can offer hardware wise that MESS and the other groups can not.

What exactly do you need? CATO has a fair share of hardware that the MESS doesn't really operate en masse. Oh, and "what"? Let's see: several times faster and cheaper supplies, especially if you need something that can be shipped via ground. CATO is right next to your door. One thing that we can offer is joining the integrated Continental IADS, AEW and ABM system, which is nearing, density-and-quality wise, the density of a USSR IADS but updated to 5th generation, et cetera. The MESS cannot offer an integrated IADS/AEW/ABM because they do not operate one over the Old Continent. Your previous standard is MESS? That's a serious argument, but in my view, it has one key flaw: the Old Continent is consolidating and getting supplies from the OC nations next door is far easier than from MESS factories on the other side of the world.

And I have no doubt CATO guys will be running in to tell me how wrong I am.

No, you're right - if his previous standard was MESS, he'll have to spend time to retrain. On the other hand, CATO can offer him some things which you can't (see above), and we can also expand his military fairly quickly using the immense stocks which were created during the last 2 decades, especially after the Border Wars. We also have Byzantium, who are fairly adept at managing a transition from older MESS systems to newer CATO systems; Byzantine advisors can be sent to Cialan with the shipments.

Well, massive overkill is expensive.

With previous-generation missiles? I doubt it. The price of a typical Kh-55 is probably so low now, and there should be cheap Kh-555s around as well; whereas your ship will be having new interceptor missiles which cost, each, more than the missile they are intercepting. Worse yet, you'd be expending multiple missiles to intercept one of those old CATO missiles, which are ubiqutous. And the common tactic, which I'm sure people from Japanistan to Frequesue all the way around the world will use, is to stick several new missiles into a wave of old missiles, "fire and repeat".

Oh, and all the STAR ships have hard-kill defenses against torpedos (part of the Millennium II CIWS upgrade is a additional feed that fires supercavitating bullets, and a blue laser LIDAR to map what's incoming)

Yeah, but as always it comes down to throwing a lot at you, and trying to do it before the reaction times of your defence systems. Not to mention that torpedoes can have variable depth. Your laser is not a panacea.

You fail to accomodate the fact that it's a saboted round, which will result in a higher velocity from the gun.

Not that much difference actually. 300+ mm sabot rounds were supposed to have a range of ~100 km (8 inch = 70 km top w/sabot). I don't really understand how a 400mm cannon would have a several times greater range. Good ballistic 8'inch guns had a range of 30 km when shooting in-caliber, whereas superb 16'inch had 50 km when shooting in-caliber. That's a difference of 60%. So it would be 140-160 km for the 16'inch versus ~80-100 km for 8'inch. You're speaking of rocket propulsion - okay, I can add another 20-30% depending on the rocket efficiency (remember, the mass of the projectile is bigger), but it still wouldn't be anything close to 600 km. And you still didn't tell me how do you deal with the stress on the rocket engine when the round is exiting at hypervelocity? Would you accept 20-30% ignition failure rates?

P.S. Anyway, this is academic. You can build your cruiser. It would be worth several ordinary nuclear missile cruisers in metal, or even a nuclear carrier in money, and it would have a huge downside - it can't be at two places simultaneously.

[Raj Ahten]

This type of debate on the ships and so forth is always enlightening; despite this being just a game I tend to learn little tidbits about air defense networks and air/naval warfare from the more knowledgeable board members all the time. Such things are the weak point in my military knowledge and I'm pretty sure it shows in my orbat. My air force is probably damn near obsolete now despite fielding an all super cruise capable,AESA equipped fighter force in my upgraded Gripen's. It seems everyone is moving towards Ridiculously Fast ram jets and the like in this world leaving Indhopal a full generation behind in aircraft. Such is the fate of small nations though :Shrugs:.

Anyways, from what I can tell all these expensive ass warships still have one big weakness no matter how good their defenses have been getting: Naval Mines. From what I understand a good way to really deal with them still hasn't been developed and they are damn cheap to use. In a war I'd expect my subs and aircraft to kill more enemy shipping with mines than torpedoes and missiles.