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The Case for a 21st-Century Battleship
The National Interest ^ | 03/08/18 | Salvatore Babones

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.


TOPICS: History; Military/Veterans
KEYWORDS: banglist; battleship; navy
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To: sparklite2

Hey, an American Vasa ship!


41 posted on 03/09/2018 1:57:28 PM PST by Professional
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To: sparklite2

...and people say a 70 year old ship is impractical to keep in the Navy.


42 posted on 03/09/2018 1:58:44 PM PST by WayneS (An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. - Winston Churchill.)
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To: sparklite2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia-class_cruiser

Yeah, but they got the CGN right with the Virginia’s.


43 posted on 03/09/2018 2:04:15 PM PST by Snickering Hound
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To: Phlyer

What do you mean no armor piercing bombs??


44 posted on 03/09/2018 2:42:24 PM PST by CodeToad (Dr. Spock was an idiot!.)
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To: CodeToad
What do you mean no armor piercing bombs??

Basically, no one has armor-piercing bombs in inventory any more. We (US) have a few hard-case bombs for penetrating bunkers, but there aren't a lot of those. Since no one has been putting armor on ships, no one's Navy has much armor-piercing capability. If you look at Harpoon, Tomahawk, Exocet, etc. none of them have any real armor-penetrating capability.

Similarly, except for submarine torpedoes (admittedly a real threat), no one has heavy torpedoes that could sink a truly armored ship, even with 17 hits (as in Musashi). The air-launched and surface-ship launched torpedoes are all light anti-submarine weapons.

That doesn't mean any ship is unsinkable, but it means that a truly armored ship would not be at much risk of sinking from the weapons in current world inventory (again, aside from subnmarine torpedoes, but it would take several of those).

Obviously, armor-penetrating weapons could be re-introduced, but not on current anti-shipping missiles (e.g. Harpoon) because there is no room for the hard case with any meaningful bursting charge. Nor are current Naval and/or shore guns heavy enough to deliver the sort of warhead it would take. The quickest way to re-equip to attack armored ships effectively would be conventional aircraft bombs - the armor-piercing versions of which were originally derived from battleship shells (a demonstration that they are too large for current artillery). The US is the only nation with an effective carrier force so that means shore-based aircraft. Launching a major strike would be a clear act of war, so once again it seems like an armored ship might work for freedom of the seas demonstrations.
45 posted on 03/09/2018 3:23:50 PM PST by Phlyer
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To: sarge83
A heavy cruiser with two triple 8 or 10 inch forward gun turrets and the mid and stern areas packed with various missiles would do the trick rather than go full battleship. You get armor, you get speed, you get long distance hitting power, AA capabilities and you can stand off shore and pound your enemy with shell fire as well. got to Singapore. buy a dozen 300,000T VLCCs that are just sitting there. Battleship armor the entire stern. fill the outer tanks with fuel or water. plenty of room for a couple of big guns and lots of VLS with AAW, Anti-ship, Land attack, and ASW weapons. won't look like warship but will act like one. don't need to sink the bad guy. an FAE (fuel air bomb) will strip every electronic array from a cruiser. turns a KARA class (dating myself) into an 8000T target.
46 posted on 03/09/2018 3:47:57 PM PST by bravo whiskey (Never bring a liberal gun law to a gun fight.)
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To: captain_dave

They did. Special Forces in Afghanistan. Movie 12 Strong. But you knew that.


47 posted on 03/09/2018 5:46:27 PM PST by slowhandluke (It's hard to be cynical enough in this age.)
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To: FatherofFive

I thought the movie
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1440129/?ref_=nv_sr_1
should have been more of a comedy.

The opening scenes should have been two students at college who became rivals, and eventually opposing admirals. Upon graduation, the students go back to their home countries. Eventually war breaks out between the two countries.

At some point, one admiral calls the other and says, “You sunk my battleship!”


48 posted on 03/09/2018 6:18:44 PM PST by scrabblehack
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To: SoCal Pubbie
It would likely be smaller, have plenty of missile systems, with the main armament a battery of rail guns.

I would agree. The future of artillery is the rail gun.

When the technology is mature it may make reactive armor obsolete.

49 posted on 03/09/2018 11:22:54 PM PST by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.L)
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To: Daniel Ramsey
How about a 3 kilometer long Pycrete ship? Just keep it in colder waters

Why not concrete. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about the water temperature.

A battle ship isn’t terribly useful if it can’t go where the battle is.

50 posted on 03/09/2018 11:49:05 PM PST by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.L)
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To: sparklite2

I always wondered if the Long Beach was as unstable as it looked. Wonder about the Chicago/Albany CLG’s as well.


51 posted on 03/12/2018 12:22:15 PM PDT by sarge83
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To: WayneS

Cheaper to build a new class of CA’s than BB’s.


52 posted on 03/12/2018 12:22:48 PM PDT by sarge83
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To: sarge83

The design was so unique, I had a crush on the ship for years. A friend from radio school was stationed on the Long Beach and I got to go aboard for a visit. Didn’t find out about her maladies until just a couple of weeks ago. Bummer.


53 posted on 03/12/2018 12:26:47 PM PDT by sparklite2 (See more at Sparklite Times)
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