Posted on 12/05/2005 12:55:30 AM PST by txradioguy
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Marines, while fighting valiantly in Iraq, are on the verge of serious defeat on Capitol Hill. A Senate-House conference on the Armed Services authorization bill convening this week is considering turning the Navy's last two battleships, the Iowa and Wisconsin, into museums. Marine officers fear that deprives them of vital fire support in an uncertain future.
Gen. Michael W. Hagee, the current commandant of the Marine Corps, testified on April 1, 2003, that loss of naval surface fire support from battleships would place his troops "at considerable risk." On July 29 this year, Hagee asserted: "Our aviation is really quite good, but it can, in fact, be weathered." Nevertheless, Marine leaders have given up a public fight for fear of alienating Navy colleagues.
The Navy high command is determined to get rid of the battleships, relying for support on an expensive new destroyer at least 10 years in the future. This is how Washington works. Defense contractors, Pentagon bureaucrats, congressional staffers and career-minded officers make this decision that may ultimately be paid for by Marine and Army infantrymen.
Marine desire to reactivate the Iowa and Wisconsin runs counter to the DD(X) destroyer of the future. It will not be ready before 2015, costing between $4.7 billion and $7 billion. Keeping the battleships in reserve costs only $250,000 a year, with reactivation estimated at $500 million (taking six months to a year) and full modernization more than $1.5 billion (less than two years).
On the modernized battleships, 18 big (16-inch) guns could fire 460 projectiles in nine minutes and take out hardened targets in North Korea. In contrast, the DD(X) will fire only 70 long-range attack projectiles at $1 million a minute. Therefore, the new destroyer will rely on conventional 155-millimeter rounds that Marines say cannot reach the shore. Former longtime National Security Council staffer William L. Stearman, now executive director of the U.S. Naval Fire Support Association, told me, "In short, this enormously expensive ship cannot fulfill its primary mission: provide naval surface fire support for the Marine Corps."
Read the rest here:
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/robertnovak/2005/12/05/177720.html
The reality of war, the complete concreteness, the life and death requirement for unemotional intelligent action, remember it well.
On the other hand, I remember San Francisco annihilating a NVA armored regiment with one bombardment. I also recollect that on that day San Francisco despite the best efforts of the crew and 34 knots just barely made it into gun range in time.
A rain of 8" 280 pound projectiles obviously must arrive in a timely manner.
I will add that modern large caliber guns have never been built. Modern large caliber ammunition likewise. Bull's 40 incher that he was building for Saddam Hussein could have put a two ton projectile on target from three hundred miles away. Or a ten ton projectile eighty miles away. Rough personal calculations, a calculated guess.
Any modern large bore gun would not use conventional propellant but instead something like kerosene and LOX. Burners like those used in liquid fueled rocket engines could light in sequence as the projectile passed by. Full pressure right to the muzzle. Also I think 150,000 psi is possible with reasonable tube longevity even with a (relatively) light weight structure. Would have to use film cooling. Steam augmentation, hey!!
"They are no longer practical weapons systems".
Think about this. These Battle wagons are so heavily armored that anti ship missles that will tear a "modern" Warship apart will bounce harmlessly off it's hull.
Also, there has got to be ways to upgrade these ships with new electronics and computers to lower the crew sizes significantly.
Did you see the price tag of the new Destroyers? Unreal.
If the Navy really wants a battelship, it's best bet is to design and build one from scratch, not reactivate one built for a war fought more than half a century back.
Yes, of course. That's why Iraqi soldiers surrendered to the first adumbration of their coming.
If you think the Iowa's steel is unsound........here's a paint chipper, get busy. Show me all the unsound bits, sailor.
LOL.
The problem is that there is less money to be made by contractors by refitting the battleships.
yeah....
Being an ex-artilleryman myself, I love watching the big guns go boom, as my wife likes to say.
But I'm NOT a Naval planner nor do I ever want to pretend to be one.
If they don't think they can do it, well, I'll just leave it at that.
Looks like a big, fat target to me. There was a place in Ernie King's Navy for slow-moving, extremely vulnerable, don't-click-your-teeth-too-loudly AE's and LSI(R)'s, but to make a ship like that a ship of the line, and engage enemy combatants directly? Wow.....
Must have been Newport News or St. Paul.....or maybe the Boston. When I was in, I knew a CWO2 who had stood weapons watches in the Boston the night she wiped out a VC or NVA battalion that got trapped on a beach near Qui Nhon or Quang Tri City. Killed over 600 of them.
San Francisco was retired and decommissioned at the end of WW2.
They were decommissioned so President Bush 41 could have a "peace dividend" to spend on his other priorities -- like tax cuts for rich people he went to Yale with.
He also wanted to decommission most of the troops he eventually sent to Kuwait instead, which decision had, or would have had, further ramifications:
BTW, it's "Chief," not "sailor."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.