I just got finished watching the trailer for the movie Battleship and I got to wonderring, is there a place for the Battleship in today's navy? With its big guns and imposing size it is a potent phsycological tool for amphibious landings and modern day targeting systems can put its missiles and shells anywhere within its range. But the Battleship is still a weapon of yesterday that can be attacked successfully with modern weapons. So tell me is the Battleship done or does it have a future?
The original idea of building a battle ship was to use them to engage as the major striking force as part of large fleet to fleet engagements with the goal, that afterward the big and decisive battle was fought between fleets, the winner of which would then be in control of the sea. The last time that story played out that way was in 1905 at the Battle of Tsushima. The historical goal of naval warfare has always been the same. And it has been to control the major sea-lanes of the world with all the valuable commerce which is carried on them. When naval units are used as augments to land forces in costal fights or in river campaigns they have always be secondary roll to the navy. The control of profitable trade, be it land or sea creates both wealth and power and thus the fate of nations for centuries. But as we found in WW II, that large (fleet on fleet) engagements are, in most part, a thing of the past. And when they do happen (we may never see one happen again) it is the air component which has become the decisive factor in there outcome. It is true that battleships did find great utility for a time as antiaircraft platforms in screening carriers and for some time longer than that in the roll in shore bombardment to support land operations but that was not the job they were designed to do.
Many of todays’ dreamers that look back on the days of the battleship and justify their continued existence, for their proven utility in the roll of shore bombardment a roll and they are justified to some extent in supporting in that we have no adequate platform to fulfill that roll in the fleet today. The littorals of the world are more dangerous to ships than they have ever been before and such an investment in men and materials to use anything with the same investment as an historical battleship, would be very risky commitment of scarce resources to say the least.
But there still is a place in the naval order of battle for a new kind of battleship. A ship meant to control the sealains and leave the battles of the littorals in the future, of which there will be many, to the ships that are already being built today that address those challenges. The necessity of controlling the sealains is a hard fact of which the world will always be dependent but it is often a neglected factor in strategic planning until it is too late. More time, men, and ships were put to sea in WW II as escorts or to keep the sealains open that ever were engaged in fleet or even squadron level engagements. They just don’t make the history books but they were just as vital to winning the war. It took hundreds of small escorts of many types and large numbers of air-craft and more than a few capital ships to do this one single vital task. It took more ships to do this job than the Navy today has of all kinds. The navy is smaller but the oceans are just as big as ever. The battleship I propose would have a combination of qualities that the current fleet severely lacks today but which the fleet did have in the past before the lessons of both WW I and WW II were forgotten.
There was a time that second kind of battleship existed and it was the Germans’ made them. They were called pocket battleships. They were units designed to operate as lone hunters far out at sea and were intended to function without other supporting units. They were not built to act as the primary punch of fleet actions but to be faster than any other battleship that could out gun them and to be stronger than any other ship that could match its speed. In the case the Germans' they never though they could control the seas with them but only to disrupt their enemy’s free use of the sea. The pocket battleship was designed as a weapon for use by a sophisticated but numerically weak navy of which the Germans were. The German navy was always far too small to challenge their enemies’ control of the sea. But they were intended only to deny the free and easy access of the sea for their enemies use. Enemies that would then be required to use many more times the Pocket battleships cost in men and material to counter them. What we now call asymmetric warfare. It is a function in modern sea warfare, which is now far more effectively done by submarines. The submarine is the sea denial weapon of choice for today and they are very effective ones. The major threat today to the big Navy’s of the world, which come from the smaller and weaker navy’s, are submarines’, the truly greatest asymmetric weapon of all time.
To combat this proven threat we once had decanted ASW carriers with their own escorts groups whose main job was to keep the sea-lanes open and to hunt submarines. And even with the less capable submarines of that time it was no easy job even with all the resources that were decanaled to it. But we cannot afford that approach anymore it is just too expensive. Our current fleet has the ASW capacity to defend its self from submarines but it is very doubtful that they can also defend the vast sealains of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. To use the old approach would require hundreds if not thousands of ships which we do not have and could not build in time when it was proven once again by hard experience that we needed them all along.
There are other lesser threats to the sealains. Long range bomber and patrol aircraft is one, disguised and undisguised surface raiders for another, and pirates, intelligence gathering ships, neutrals that will have to be closely watched and monitored, and don’t forget free floating self-activated mines. These threats will have to countered as well. What I propose to meet these threats is a 3D battle ship as the primary sea control ship of the navy to meet all of those needs. Like the pocket battleship of the past it would be designed to operate alone and not require any escorts to do its primary function. The 3D battleship will travel the deep oceans of the world often out of range of most land based aircraft keeping the sealains intact and securing the supply lines while the rest of the fleet prosecutes the fighting closer to shore where the major battles will undoubtedly be fought in the combined arms, net centric fashion that is being planned for. It can do this job far more cheaply and effectively than assigning multiple units from the general fleet and thus reducing the fighting fleets’ overall effectiveness for the battles that they were designed to fight.
This new battleship would be a combination of a small ASW carrier, a guided missile cruiser and mobile transport and servicing platform for the robot warriors of the future. For best effect it should be nuclear powered or be some kind of nuclear/gas turbine hybrid. This is because it will spend most of its time at sea running at medium speed. It would have all the capacities that a full up guides missile cruiser has and carry all the net centric warfare features as a well for it will have and use the same systems. In a pinch it can be used as an axillary carrier or cruiser in combined fleet actions and it would have the same anti air and ABM defense weapons as today’s DDG’s except it would carry a lot more missile cells ( not quit an arsenal ship but still have a punch)and not have any guns. This ship is not for use in the littorals. The additional missile cells would be filled with a lot more of both long rang ant-ship, and land attack cruise missiles and ASROCs’ rounds than is the normal in DDG cell load outs but few ant-aircraft. And it would have much better living accommodations for it crew. Why? Because these ships will, proportionally be spending much more of their time in war or at peace at sea than most ships.
On the carrier side it would have only one electric catapult and that catapult will be seldom uses in everyday operations, it will be used usually only to receive an occasional COD flight but you can image other uses that this added flexibility could mean in some situations. Normally it would carry (4) F-35B’s (4) ASW helicopters, (2) large lifting helicopters or (2) V-22 Ospreys (the use of which will be explained later) and several different kinds’ air, surface, and sub-surface drones. It would have extensive lower deck hanger space for the number of aircraft it carries and space for many large maintenance shops.
It would carry Air, surface, and subsurface drones and all of the felicities need to service them. And that is what will allow it to fulfill its primary function. It could also support a couple of E-2D’s under some circumstances. It would be a big capital ship but far smaller, cheaper, and with far fewer people than a fleet carrier. Though capable of land attack missions of the hit and run nature, it would not have the deep magazines or vast fuel supply of aviation full a regular carrier requires for its kind of normal sustaining operations as we use them today which is mainly to dominate the air space over coastal regions.
But as capable as this ship would be, even if the navy built ten of them, it wouldn’t be enough to get the job done if this ship didn’t have other functions and abilities. Ladies and gentlemen we are entering the age of the robot, sometime called drones. What this ship would do in both peace time and at war is cruse the sealains servicing the hundreds of UAV’s of the wave rider kind that will constantly be patrolling the sealains of interest detecting submarines, ships, floating mines, as well as other enemy UAV’s, and also recording weather, water conditions which have an effect on sonars active and passive and then reporting them back by satellite. The same source from where they will get their updated instructions. The heavy lift air-craft, be the helicopters or V-22’s would drop off UAV’s to glide in the currents to best effect, starting at up to three hundred miles from the battleship sails its plotted course without interruption. And then the same aircraft would to be used to pick up UAV’s at sea, again up to three hundred mills from the carrier to be returned for servicing and redeployment. That way they keep the sealains continually monitored.
To see a glimpse into the future and what it will look like at the following article. But there will be air patrolling drowns and undersea attack drown lunched only when that have a hard contact. Surface drones that will check out and follow surface craft of interest and more that I have not thought of but someone will.
Autonomous underwater vehicles (auvs)
http://my.fit.edu/~swood/26_Wood_first.pdf
