Return of the Battleship?

[Borgholio]

The battleship was queen of the seas until replaced by the aircraft carrier. The carrier could deliver far greater firepower at far greater range and basically turned the battleship into a big floating target instead of something to be afraid of. The advent of guided missiles compounded this (a single Arleigh Burke destroyer could have done the job of the 6 Japanese carriers at Pearl Harbor and have ammo left over).

So the battleship went away and was replaced by carriers and guided missile destroyers. I wonder however, if they are due for a comeback in the coming decades. The Navy is investing heavily in railgun systems that have range and destructive force comparable to a guided missile at a fraction of the cost. This means that the range and firepower issues that doomed past battleships no longer apply. While it's certain that small railguns would eventually be fit on smaller ships, having a larger ship with larger railgun mounts would make sense as it would be capable of delivering a large amount of firepower at ranges of hundreds of miles.

So assuming all that comes to pass, you'd have a large warship armed with large weapon turrets. You'd have a battleship.

Sound realistic or is it battleship fanboy wank?

[Mr Bean]

There is a few crazy ideas floating around about making something like a mini-Iowa turret who's single railgun could fire a shell up to 80 miles over the horizon and expect to hit and sink anything floating. Problem is it can still be engaged at 100 miles away by a F/A-18 firing what we have now and DARPA is working on missiles that let a plane engage targets New York Harbor from Norfolk on any old drop capable aircraft.

Our missile endurance and accuracy is getting to the point where any hypothetical rocket assisted shell would still be outdistanced by carrier launched aircraft. In other words we are already at the point where a Navel Captain has to worry about a carrier in the North sea as he transitions the Mediterranean. Missile range is just getting that good that fast.

[Simon_Jester]

Right.

The battleship's role got rolled into the missile-carrying surface combatant- which does still play a role, largely because it's the only thing that can defend a task force against air attack.

Also, Borgholio, let me point out that the 'battleship' concept is heavily wrapped up with the ship's armor protection. Without that armor, a 'battleship' is easily vulnerable to weapons fired by much smaller individual combatants. And for the moment, naval weapon firepower has decisively outpaced armor protection, to the point where you could basically take all the armor plates off a WWII battleship, stack them one in front of the other, and blow a hole through the entire stack with one big antiship weapon hit.

Since armor more effective than the now-outmoded big slab of steel is impractically expensive, and armor made of such cheap material yet thick enough to survive modern antiship weapons is prohibitively bulky and heavy... you can't build a battleship armored against its own weapons. Ships are forced to rely far more heavily on active defenses, electronic warfare, evasiveness, and the ever-popular "kill them before they get a shot off" method.

[Borgholio]

There is a few crazy ideas floating around about making something like a mini-Iowa turret who's single railgun could fire a shell up to 80 miles over the horizon and expect to hit and sink anything floating. Problem is it can still be engaged at 100 miles away by a F/A-18 firing what we have now and DARPA is working on missiles that let a plane engage targets New York Harbor from Norfolk on any old drop capable aircraft.

Our missile endurance and accuracy is getting to the point where any hypothetical rocket assisted shell would still be outdistanced by carrier launched aircraft. In other words we are already at the point where a Navel Captain has to worry about a carrier in the North sea as he transitions the Mediterranean. Missile range is just getting that good that fast.

Rocket assisted shells are a different matter. The railgun prototypes have many times the range of a rocket shell - they can hit targets 200 miles away. I would imagine that even larger guns would have a range of 300 miles or more...which is greater than some anti-ship missiles.

you can't build a battleship armored against its own weapons. Ships are forced to rely far more heavily on active defenses, electronic warfare, evasiveness, and the ever-popular "kill them before they get a shot off" method.

Yes, but that can also apply to other ships too. We took practically all the armor off of cruisers and destroyers but didn't stop calling them cruisers and destroyers. A warship larger than a cruiser could still be called a battleship even if it didn't have a foot and a half of steel plating like the WW2 variety did. By the time such a thing is built, it would probably have some of the new laser interceptors that are currently being tested. Those would serve well as an active defense on a large ship that could mount several of them.

Now with that being said, if you're arguing that it's better to sacrifice some of the range so you can fit a railgun on a smaller (and more survivable / expendable / maneuverable) ship...that makes sense as well and I can see that being an argument against a battleship-sized combatant.

[madd0ct0r]

Given the ranges we're talking about, at what point does the ship bit become redundant and a fixed land eplacement chucks stuff halfway round the world?

My god, I've reinvented the missile silo

[Mr Bean]

Given the ranges we're talking about, at what point does the ship bit become redundant and a fixed land eplacement chucks stuff halfway round the world?

My god, I've reinvented the missile silo

Funny enough even five hundred miles an hour might be to far because 500 miles per hour still gives you over half an hour to dodge a Mach 6 missile. It's not till you get into the high 5,000 miles an hour range that a 500 mile range becomes worthwhile again

[madd0ct0r]

but the missile is steering no?

[Mr Bean]

but the missile is steering no?

Let me put it this way, active defenses are the way in defense. If you have a missile which takes half an hour to get close enough to hit means half an hour of lobbing anti-missile... missiles. It's the end goal with railguns or possible laser defenses being the last ditch point defense weapons, the farther you have to travel the longer it takes the more chances to shoot it down. Heck if it's a carrier full of aircraft launching on another carrier they have time to send up the entire compliment of aircraft and vector them in to shoot down the missiles.

[Eternal_Freedom]

We took practically all the armor off of cruisers and destroyers but didn't stop calling them cruisers and destroyers. A warship larger than a cruiser could still be called a battleship even if it didn't have a foot and a half of steel plating like the WW2 variety did.

We didn't stop calling them destroyers or cruisers because it wasn't the armour level that defined those names, but rather the role they fulfilled. Destroyers existed originally to destroy enemy torpedo boats before they could attack the dreadnoughts, now they kill enemies before they can attack the carriers, same role so same name. Cruisers have got a bit different, as they no longer do the whole "independent cruising" bit.

As for ships larger than cruisers, the Russians built them. They were the Kirovs and were called "battlecruisers" because they were large surface warships designed to kill other large surface ships but they weren't armoured against their own weapons, which as Simon said, is kind of the defining characteristic of the true battleship.

[Borgholio]

We didn't stop calling them destroyers or cruisers because it wasn't the armour level that defined those names, but rather the role they fulfilled. Destroyers existed originally to destroy enemy torpedo boats before they could attack the dreadnoughts, now they kill enemies before they can attack the carriers, same role so same name. Cruisers have got a bit different, as they no longer do the whole "independent cruising" bit.

As for ships larger than cruisers, the Russians built them. They were the Kirovs and were called "battlecruisers" because they were large surface warships designed to kill other large surface ships but they weren't armoured against their own weapons, which as Simon said, is kind of the defining characteristic of the true battleship.

Right, that kinda backs up what I'm saying. Battlecruisers were supposed to go out and hunt down cruiser squadrons...something which they almost never actually did. The Kirovs were also referred to as large guided missile cruisers. Conventional cruisers were supposed to be solo raiders but now just serve as large escorts for the few navies that still build them. The definitions of ships have changed before so I don't see why it can't change now. With battleships, the definition of them is an armored warship sporting large guns. But some battleships had actually pretty thin armor, (and even the Iowas were not armored to withstand their own shells), so there's nothing that says a battleship has to have massive armor plating.

[Thanas]

Well, the definition - to be able to stand in the line of battle, aka to give and receive fire - kinda requires them to be able to have massive armor.

[Borgholio]

Well, the definition - to be able to stand in the line of battle, aka to give and receive fire - kinda requires them to be able to have massive armor.

Again, definitions change over the years. Who is to say that having a massive active point defense doesn't count as being able to receive fire? I mean, an active defense has been preferred over thick armor since near the end of WW2 anyways...so if they had stripped down an Iowa and replaced the armor with more guns, would she no longer count as a battleship?

FYI, I'm not nit picking just to be an ass. I think that since the definitions and job descriptions of naval vessels DOES change over time, it's an interesting discussion on how a modern battleship might be defined.

[Thanas]

Well, the definition - to be able to stand in the line of battle, aka to give and receive fire - kinda requires them to be able to have massive armor.

Again, definitions change over the years. Who is to say that having a massive active point defense doesn't count as being able to receive fire? I mean, an active defense has been preferred over thick armor since near the end of WW2 anyways...so if they had stripped down an Iowa and replaced the armor with more guns, would she no longer count as a battleship?

No, she would not. She'd be a large fast cruiser like the Alaskas.

FYI, I'm not nit picking just to be an ass. I think that since the definitions and job descriptions of naval vessels DOES change over time, it's an interesting discussion on how a modern battleship might be defined.

But if you go that route - defining it by what it does, meaning battle management, flagship, prestige symbol and the most destructive weapon in the Arsenal - you get the aircraft carrier or boomer.

[SCRawl]

Rocket assisted shells are a different matter. The railgun prototypes have many times the range of a rocket shell - they can hit targets 200 miles away. I would imagine that even larger guns would have a range of 300 miles or more...which is greater than some anti-ship missiles.

But still vastly less then the range of other anti ship missiles fired by refueled carrier based aircraft, or all the coming hypersonic missiles. And since the range is so long you need a serious guidance system to hit anything moving, which means each shell will be fairly expensive and slow down significantly prior to impact, making it far more subject to enemy interfearance.

Anyway range is a bad thing to focus on, someone built a ~20lb UAV that crossed the Atlantic years ago powered by IIRC a very small two stroke diesel engine. You can throw incredible range into missiles if you want, the question is what else the missile is required to do. Guns likewise can gain massive amounts of range at the cost of speed by adapting a boost glide system, but then the projectile tends to turn into a gun launched missile.

Yes, but that can also apply to other ships too. We took practically all the armor off of cruisers and destroyers but didn't stop calling them cruisers and destroyers.

Cruisers did not originally have armor. This is in fact how we got the original clear split in steam propelled iron hulled warships. Battleships went one way, cruisers went another. The first armored cruiser was not built until much later, and was at times advocated as a battleship replacement (hint the battleship term was not seen THEN as automatically being transferred to its replacement). Also cruiser was even earlier then that a mission for ships, not a specific type. Which is why the term was able to persist so long, as has frigate which was a smaller type of cruiser, the smallest ships of the line were also used as cruiser.

Battleships meanwhile were always ships of maximum armor and gun firepower intended to fight in a battle line with others of its own type. When the first was negated and the later surpassed they went extinct. Plain and simple. In the future we may well mount heavy guns on ships again, but it will be in addition to everything else they do. Battleship is a very specific designation as far as warship types go, I am not sure why exactly so many people think it must be highly generic and flexible.

Do you see a serious argument to call DDG-1000 a heavy cruiser meanwhile? Because by the size of the damn thing and the weight of the shells it fired, it'd be one if we insisted on using obsolete designations. But in fact it spawned out of a development program which was launched specifically to design ships without preexisting assumptions on what 'destroyers' and 'cruisers' should look like or do.

In reality cruiser and frigate only persist because of political considerations and nolstalgia which is fading day by day. The USN was well on the way to modern designations prior to 1975 with task force escorts and ocean escorts as the main combattants. Destroyer has remained a valid designation as the screening mission has not really changed that much. Some NATO navies were going the same way as the US, though in reality I'd contend what they do was almost irrelevant considering how imploded they became, and still are getting worse at at.

Ironically the 1975 redesignation was largely driven by the pundent media aka Janes calling a lot of Soviet ships cruisers which it turned out the Soviets did not in fact call cruisers. Though they did call a lot of submarines cruisers. But that was a reference back to the original independent cruising role of cruisers, very fitting in fact for a dedicated anti surface ship submarine.

A warship larger than a cruiser could still be called a battleship even if it didn't have a foot and a half of steel plating like the WW2 variety did.

It could also be called a trireme even if it wasn't armed with a ram. But that would be pointless right?

By the time such a thing is built, it would probably have some of the new laser interceptors that are currently being tested. Those would serve well as an active defense on a large ship that could mount several of them.

And effective enough lasers will shoot down all the railgun shells, so will other railgun shells equipped with cheaper command guidance systems. Since the railgun shells are lobbed to 200,000ft or more they are very vulnerable to counterfire like this. Which means your probably just back to needing large simultaneous missile attacks capable of flight at high speed and low altitude to accomplish anything. Or planes which can bring large numbers of small weapons part of the distance and fire all of them at once.

In a ship to ship battle the railgun may have far more utility as a defensive then offensive weapon, but then the main point is bombarding fixed shore targets anyway.

I can see battleship coming back if we have near unlimited money, or can make them fly. Build something 450,000 tons huge and we can even start to think about some real armor. All three... and I am working on that one for a elaborately retarded story where someone also builds a thousand aircraft carriers... But this isn't reasonable in anything like real life when were not very far away from operational scramjet weapons and a couple other incredibly powerful technologies. Barring that adding one or two heavy guns onto an escort (of whatever size) does not make a battleship. Sea Base Power Projection Vessel? Sure. Battleforce Combattant? Sure. Super Trireme With Submersible Rotary Propulsion Module? About as rational as battleship.

[madd0ct0r]

why does flight make them less vulnerable to a clusterfuck of missiles?

[Enigma]

<snip>

Our missile endurance and accuracy is getting to the point where any hypothetical rocket assisted shell would still be outdistanced by carrier launched aircraft. In other words we are already at the point where a Navel Captain has to worry about a carrier in the North sea as he transitions the Mediterranean. Missile range is just getting that good that fast.

Captain Outie of the U.S.S. Bellybutton reporting for duty, SIR!

[Borgholio]

No, she would not. She'd be a large fast cruiser like the Alaskas.

They were so large in fact, that they were considered to be battlecruisers by some navies. The USN just arbitrarily changed the designation to large cruiser.

But if you go that route - defining it by what it does, meaning battle management, flagship, prestige symbol and the most destructive weapon in the Arsenal - you get the aircraft carrier or boomer.

I'm not sure I'd go that far. It's a large ship with large guns...that's pretty much my main criteria. The sticking point seems to be whether it can be called a battleship or not without the armor. Now if a whole new designation should be cooked up for these ships then that's fine I guess. Maybe simply "Bombardment Cruiser" or something like that.

Edit - the whole point in fact becomes moot if they don't create a whole new ship class and just replace the existing 5" gun on existing ships with a railgun.

And since the range is so long you need a serious guidance system to hit anything moving, which means each shell will be fairly expensive and slow down significantly prior to impact, making it far more subject to enemy interfearance.

So why would the Navy be interested in using railguns in anything other than a shore bombardment role? They're touting the advantage of the projectiles as being cheaper than guided missiles, but that's not entirely true if they need guidance to hit anything other than a stationary bunker... Or do they think of it as a short-range (visual) anti-ship weapon with longer ranges for bombardment?

Battleship is a very specific designation as far as warship types go, I am not sure why exactly so many people think it must be highly generic and flexible.

Because even the battleships rarely fought in a line of battle after WW1. By WW2 it was serving mainly as an escort for carriers or shore bombardment. Some were basically heavy cruisers (Deutschland-class) and classified as battleships instead. Even during it's heyday the term "battleship" was flexible.

Do you see a serious argument to call DDG-1000 a heavy cruiser meanwhile?

Cruiser, yes...heavy cruiser, no. Heavy cruiser is definitely obsolete since it's basically a miniature battleship in design.

It could also be called a trireme even if it wasn't armed with a ram. But that would be pointless right?

A trireme was named as such due to the number and layout of oarsmen...not the ram. As a point of fact, several WW1 era battleships had less armor than some cruisers...yet they were still called battleships.

Super Trireme With Submersible Rotary Propulsion Module

To be honest, I would LOVE to see that.

[Sea Skimmer]

So why would the Navy be interested in using railguns in anything other than a shore bombardment role? They're touting the advantage of the projectiles as being cheaper than guided missiles, but that's not entirely true if they need guidance to hit anything other than a stationary bunker... Or do they think of it as a short-range (visual) anti-ship weapon with longer ranges for bombardment?

I don't know what you have been reading but all use of these weapons is expected to use guided weapons except possibly very short range shipboard defensive which could be effective with some kind of shrapnel warhead. At 200 mile range even an error of .3% of the range, which would be fairly damn accurate for ballistic artillery... is an error of .6 miles! But in reality it'd be a lot less accurate on average and you'd have some shells landing over two miles from the target. So guidance is required and the advantage is mainly just that the railgun shells can be stowed in large numbers on a ship without detracting from other important missiles like operating helicopters. Which is why a battleship won't come back. Because any future ship will always need to devote the majority of its length to other requirements. And if it isn't being defined by big guns and heavy armor the term makes no damn sense.

Because even the battleships rarely fought in a line of battle after WW1. By WW2 it was serving mainly as an escort for carriers or shore bombardment. Some were basically heavy cruisers (Deutschland-class) and classified as battleships instead. Even during it's heyday the term "battleship" was flexible.

No the Deutschland class was classified as a Panzerschiff aka armored ship, a German attempt to make a rational designation for a unique vessel. It was never classified as a linienschiff aka battleship. Do you go around calling every armored vehicle on land a tank?

By WW2 the battleship was already going extinct and incapable of performing its mission on a reliable basis, which is why by mid war new construction was suspended by almost all powers, and shortly after the war almost all battleships in the world were retired from service, never to return.

Furthermore the ships were all still being conceived and designed for action in the line of battle against peer opponents. Nobody built a battleship from the ground up as an AA escort and bombardment ship. Which is what would be required for your point to have any validity. Always any such function was secondary to the ship to ship role against similar enemy vessels.

Cruiser, yes...heavy cruiser, no. Heavy cruiser is definitely obsolete since it's basically a miniature battleship in design.

That is the dumbest response you could possibly have made. I thought it might prompt something rational, but I guess this is a complete waste of time, like it always is.

A trireme was named as such due to the number and layout of oarsmen...not the ram. As a point of fact, several WW1 era battleships had less armor than some cruisers...yet they were still called battleships.

Lol another completely dumb response. The battleship is named for its role in the line of battle too. You already admitted even by WW2 they couldn't do this and low and behold, shortly after died off. So the name is completely invalid by your own damn logic. Thanks for showing you have no coherent argument to make and are just flailing in every direction you think you can.

You aren't nit picking I agree, that would require you to understand the subject.

[Chardok]

What about a return of a Bigass Scary Ship as an escort for a battle group that was designed as a *defense* platform for said battlegroup? I'm talking like Iowa class battleships bristling with CIWS and ABM and oh-by-the-way, there's like 5 fuck-off huge railguns that can vaporize like anything. (PS - there's also a "Metric assload" of anti-missile lasers) What sort of psychological effect might something like that have on an enemy? sort of a "Holy fuck that thing's enormous and nothing can get past it and it's backed up by destroyers and what's that? Fuck. It's F-35's. Welp..." *raises white flag*

[Simon_Jester]

It is very unlikely that any nation with a serious navy would be intimidated into surrender by the sheer size of an enemy ship. More likely their response is "well, let's see how many two-ton missiles it takes to sink your 50000-ton monster."

[Borgholio]

I don't know what you have been reading but all use of these weapons is expected to use guided weapons except possibly very short range shipboard defensive which could be effective with some kind of shrapnel warhead.

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/electromag ... -launcher/

http://www.onr.navy.mil/media-center/fa ... ilgun.aspx

Neither article mentions guided projectiles, and the Navy link actually mentions anti-ship combat. I agree that even a little bit of error at 200 miles will be quite a bit, but I expect they would have thought of that already.

Furthermore the ships were all still being conceived and designed for action in the line of battle against peer opponents. Nobody built a battleship from the ground up as an AA escort and bombardment ship. Which is what would be required for your point to have any validity. Always any such function was secondary to the ship to ship role against similar enemy vessels.

Conceded.

That is the dumbest response you could possibly have made. I thought it might prompt something rational, but I guess this is a complete waste of time,

How is that a dumb response? You asked me if it would be defined as a heavy cruiser due to it's size and the weight of it's shells. My answer is no, because the grading of light / standard / heavy / battle cruiser was based on the overall size of the vessel AND the guns it carried. That's why once they started switching to missiles instead of guns they got rid of all designations aside from the basic "cruiser"...which this one would be based on its size and armament compared to the smaller destroyers.

like it always is.

What is that supposed to mean?

Lol another completely dumb response. The battleship is named for its role in the line of battle too. You already admitted even by WW2 they couldn't do this and low and behold, shortly after died off. So the name is completely invalid by your own damn logic.

No, I said that the term "battleship" applied even to ships that don't meet your criteria of heavy guns, heavy armor and line of battle. I never said they died off because they were just used as escorts or for bombardment. They died off because the reach of their guns paled in comparison to carrier aircraft and they were way too big and costly to be just a missile boat. If the guns had a 200 mile range instead of just 25, things might have been different. And that's my point. Now that we are on the verge of having guns with a 200 mile range, the idea of a ship armed with guns is possible one again. If it is a large ship with large guns, I argue that it can be called battleship. You are arguing that it's still not a battleship because it doesn't have heavy armor or fight in a line of battle, even though not all battleships met either of those criteria. Ok fine, would you prefer calling it a battlecruiser then? Or just stick with the generic "cruiser"?

My whole thing about ship definitions is this : ship definitions have changed over time. Modern destroyers are as big as WW2 heavy cruisers but they're still called destroyers. Modern cruisers are actually smaller than some destroyers. These terms have been re-defined. Do you really have that big of a problem re-defining battleship as well?

You aren't nit picking I agree, that would require you to understand the subject.

How do I not understand it? We're talking about how to define a ship, and you yourself have said that the definition of ships has changed compared to what they were in WW2, and yet you say that a BS needs to ONLY be a big gun, heavy armor, line of battle warship and can't possibly be redefined to meet the modern example of a big gun warship.

[K. A. Pital]

I concur with Skimmer, battleships are gone and no amount of wank will bring them back.

[sarevok2]

In history of military technology has any weapon rendered obsolete ever came back ?

[Borgholio]

OK so let's just forget about the name. My initial intent was to discuss the possibility of a new class of big gun warship, but it got carried away into a discussion about how to even define battleship in the first place. So whatever you call it, would it be realistic to have a dedicated railgun-armed ship, or would railguns simply replace the 5" guns on existing destroyers?

[sarevok2]

The railgun seem it would be useful in land bombardment but not as useful as missiles vs other ships.