And the nukes are a lot bigger now ...
Posted on 03/09/2018 11:07:28 AM PST by Simon Green
In World War II, the Japanese super-battleships Yamato and Musahi each mounted nine 18.1-inch guns, the largest naval guns ever deployed, but they never sank a single American ship. In a conflict decided by naval aviation, Yamato and Musahi were used mainly as flagships and troop transports. Despite their huge armaments, they were steel dinosaurs from an earlier strategic age.
But how do you sink a steel dinosaur? The answer is: "with difficulty." It took eleven torpedoes and six bombs to sink the Yamato. The Musahi took nineteen torpedoes and seventeen bombs. And at the time they were sunk, both ships were already limping along on patch-up repairs from earlier torpedo strikes. They may have been strategically useless, but the Yamato and Musahi were almost (if not quite) indestructible.
Naval construction requires decades of advance planning, and naval planners are always at risk of fighting the last war. Since the end of World War II, U.S. naval planning has revolved around the aircraft carrier. But world wars are few and far between, and other missions abound. When it comes to countering the rise of China, some of the most frequent missions are freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) requiring no fighting at all.
Over the last several years China has become increasingly aggressive in asserting illegal maritime claims in the South China Sea. In response, the United States regularly conducts FONOPs, sailing destroyers within twelve nautical miles of China's artificial islands to repudiate Beijing's claims to sovereign territorial waters. So far, China has been sensible enough not to challenge any of these operations.
But a destroyer is a fragile fish. In June last year the USS Fitzgerald was put out of action by a collision with a container ship, with the loss of seven lives—on the destroyer. Then in August the USS John S. McCain was nearly sunk by an oil tanker. Ten sailors lost their lives. The tanker suffered no injuries. Leaving aside the issue of poor seamanship, these two collisions illustrated a potentially more serious shortcoming of today's naval ships: poor survivability. Navy ships used to threaten oil tankers, not the other way around.
The U.S. Navy certainly needs the firepower provided by its awesome carrier strike groups and its flimsy, but nonetheless formidable, guided missile destroyers. But it also needs ships that can take a punch and keep on sailing. That kind of toughness is likely to become an even more important quality as China develops its precision strike capacities. Soon it may become too dangerous to sail an unarmored ship in the South China Sea.
Stealth is one way to keep from getting hit, and the United States leads the way in the development of stealthy destroyers. But stealth defeats the purpose of a FONOP, which is to be seen. An old-fashioned battleship is a ship to be seen—and in a big way. But there's no need for the Navy to build an old-fashioned battleship in the twenty-first century when it can build a new-fashioned battleship instead.
A contemporary battleship would combine advanced armor materials with automated damage control to produce a ship that is virtually unsinkable. Its offensive armaments might be mission-specific, but its key attribute would be survivability. It would be a ship that could be put in harm's way in the reasonable expectation of coming home in one piece.
This "battleship of the future" could solve the challenge posed by China's emerging anti-access / area denial (A2/AD) strategy for excluding the United States from the western Pacific. China is rapidly expanding and improving its networks of onshore, offshore, undersea, and space-based sensors to the extent that it will soon be able to see everything that moves between the Chinese mainland and the first island chain formed by Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan, and the Philippines. And improvements in precision weaponry will increasingly mean that China will be able to hit anything it can see.
America's response has been a shifting set of tactical plans successively labeled as AirSea Battle, JAM-GC and Third Offset. What these plans all have in common is the idea that the best defense is a good offense: instead of defending against Chinese A2/AD attacks, they propose that the United States strike first to take out the command-and-control networks that tie China's sensors to its precision munitions. The problem is that this implies the immediate escalation of any A2/AD scenario into a full-scale war.
That's where the battleship of the future comes in: it would give the United States a defensive option for limited conflict. For example, a future battleship could respond to Chinese provocations by disabling Chinese seabed sensors or cutting Chinese undersea cables. It could survive being rammed by enemy ships—a favorite tactic of the Chinese and North Koreans. And if A2/AD did escalate into a shooting war, it could operate in the danger zone while U.S. offensive actions turned the tables.
The U.S. Navy will never again be a dreadnought fleet of big-gun battleships. But it is time to reexamine the role of armor in naval architecture. Even the most forward-leaning offensive operation needs a few tough linesmen who can take a beating and stay in the game. A future battleship would give the Navy— and by extension the president—warfighting options other than the total annihilation of the enemy. Regular FONOPs already demonstrate the need for such options. The A2/AD threat will likely generate even more dangerous missions that only a durable battleship of the future can safely perform.
I do like big ships.
The US was going to build 32 Zumwalt-class Destroyers. They were very big destroyers, with an emphasis on land attack and very impressive range for shelling beaches and whatnot. There was a fair amount of discussion at the time whether they really were destroyers or if they were basically battleships. Doesn’t really matter.
Well, money got tight and we didn’t build 32 of them. I think we will end up with 3.
And the first of them (USS Zumwalt) has had nothing but trouble since it was commissioned. Trouble sailing, munitions, too expensive, etc. I do love big ships. But I think the US is not capable of handling a true Battleship. We are not the nation we were 70 years ago.
Cue Space Battleship Yamato.
“The U.S. Navy will never again be a dreadnought fleet of big-gun battleships.”
True, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a few of these fire-breathing dragons around. The battleships were very effective in the first Gulf War when they shelled enemy positions with deadly accuracy.
And the massive 16” shells those ships fired were utterly indifferent to anti-missile defense systems.
There remains a place for a few of these battleships that fired massive shells. Perhaps they could be augmented with rail guns and other newer weapons while still retaining the old school weaponry and armor that made them so imposing they were once considered a threat to civilization as we know it.
Thanks for posting.
And the nukes are a lot bigger now ...
The battleship North Carolina was struck by a single submarine torpedo and was in repair for months in 1942, a mission kill.
The battleship Pennsylvania was struck in Aug 1945 by a smaller aerial torpedo and had such extensive damage that she ended up losing a prop shaft and was expended in the Bikini nuke test.
Get the wave motion gun working.
Best laugh I’ve had all day.
“You sunk my Battleship!”
I think that it would be highly advantageous if this country could field a half dozen very large, very well-armored ships that could accurately put down several dozen tons of high explosive and/or armor-piercing ordnance anywhere within 40-50 miles of the shore line...every minute. That’d put the fear of God into a lot of people.
If it got nuked, it’d be a goner...but then again, so would whomever launched said nuke, and whomever ordered said nuke launched - we have LOTS of counter to that, and everyone knows it. But you won’t have an Exocet missile putting a dreadnought like that at the bottom of the ocean...especially if it, and the supporting ships in its task force, are armed with the multi-megawatt lasers that the Navy is currently developing. They’ll be able to knock down missiles and planes at a fair distance, and fire multiple time per minute - EACH, and you can put dozens on a huge battlewagon.
Something that can get in close, surface from out of nowhere, shoot off 154 cruise missiles in a few seconds, and disappear again.
And the Army can bring back horse cavalry, too.
“Nine days later, while sailing with Wasp, Hornet, and ten other warships, North Carolina suffered a torpedo hit on her port side just forward of her number 1 gun turret, 20 ft (6m) below her waterline making a hole 32 ft by 18 ft, and killing five seamen. Torpedoes from the same salvo from I-19 sank Wasp and the destroyer O'Brien.[16][17] Skillful damage control by North Carolina's crew and the excellence of her construction prevented disaster; a 5.6° list was righted in as many minutes, and she maintained her station in a formation at 26 kn (30 mph; 48 km/h).[18]
After temporary repairs in New Caledonia, the ship proceeded to Pearl Harbor to be dry docked for a month for repairs to her hull and to receive more antiaircraft armament.[13] Following repairs, she returned to action, screening Enterprise and Saratoga and covering supply and troop movements in the Solomons for much of the next year. She was at Pearl Harbor in March and April 1943 to receive advanced fire control and radar gear, and again in September, to prepare for the Gilbert Islands operation.[19]”
Pennsylvania was a thirty year old ship by the end of the war and the battleships were being decommissioned at a time when military thinking predicted that the atomic bomb was going to make conventional warfare obsolete.
The topic of a new breed of battleship has been discussed on this forum before. Such a vessel would probably not look much like the Iowa class. It would likely be smaller, have plenty of missile systems, with the main armament a battery of rail guns.
The Iowa Class Battleships are beyond amazing machines. Now however they are over 70 years old.
The Navy can't keep relying on them every time they have to fill their big gun needs.
In a sane world we come up with a Monitor-Type Ship.
Something you could place off shore with two or four 8, 10 or even 12 inch guns.
We have the technology today to make that work.
But no, Monitors are far too effective and cost efficient. We need to waste money on a "Littoral Ground-Fire Suppression Automation System" or the L.G.F.S.A.S. for short.
Tirpitz survived many aerial attacks but was ruined by an underwater detonation that scrambled its innards. It didn't sink (at the time) but never moved under its own power again.
Battleships can absorb brute-force attacks, but what about smart weapons designed to target weak points underwater?
How about a 3 kilometer long Pycrete ship? Just keep it in colder waters, virtually torpedo proof. A floating island with just multiple Azipods. You could literally put several Leupold style railway guns on it, or a nuclear power plant for railguns. Could have sub docks. And an airfield long enough for large aircraft.
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