Super Battleship Proposal

[assymmetric]

Once ray guns come on board around 2025, I think aircraft/missiles will begin to become obsolete. Miniature nderwater autonomous robots will be able to sniff out locations of submarines.

So we need to go back to the battleship. We need something large enough, with nano armor that is 5x stronger than steel, to withstand real bullets. With missiles out of the equation, could we see a return of Yamoto sized battleships? But perhaps much, much larger, nuclear powered, with ray guns for AA defense.

For artillery, I would like to see some 30 inch conventional guns (in case of power failure), along with a plethora of rail guns firing in the mach 10+ range.

I am imagining something about 10x larger than the yamoto, perhaps a million ton displacement, that can be parked about 400km off a country, and wipe it out completely, with a combination of laser cannons, high powered railgun fire, and 30 inch or so conventional explosive filled shell artillery as backup and after rail guns defeat the countries limited raygun defenses.

For armor, I would like to see something kevlar/nano/steel hybrid plating, perhaps 6 feet thick, that could defend against other rail gun fire. Anyhow, I think once you have the AA defense down, having a very large platform that can wipe out/bombard an entire country at low cost is the way to go, using conventional tungsten slugs (one slug per building). It would be a low cost way to destroy a country and would not leave radiation behind as in the case of nukes.

The current model of bringing aircraft carriers, with 350 million dollar planes, into an area to do sorties will not work against laser defenses. The return of the capitol battleship is inevitable, but on a much larger scale. Thoughts/comments?

 

[StobieWan]

Once ray guns come on board around 2025, I think aircraft/missiles will begin to become obsolete. Miniature nderwater autonomous robots will be able to sniff out locations of submarines.

So we need to go back to the battleship. We need something large enough, with nano armor that is 5x stronger than steel, to withstand real bullets. With missiles out of the equation, could we see a return of Yamoto sized battleships? But perhaps much, much larger, nuclear powered, with ray guns for AA defense.

For artillery, I would like to see some 30 inch conventional guns (in case of power failure), along with a plethora of rail guns firing in the mach 10+ range.

I am imagining something about 10x larger than the yamoto, perhaps a million ton displacement, that can be parked about 400km off a country, and wipe it out completely, with a combination of laser cannons, high powered railgun fire, and 30 inch or so conventional explosive filled shell artillery as backup and after rail guns defeat the countries limited raygun defenses.

For armor, I would like to see something kevlar/nano/steel hybrid plating, perhaps 6 feet thick, that could defend against other rail gun fire. Anyhow, I think once you have the AA defense down, having a very large platform that can wipe out/bombard an entire country at low cost is the way to go, using conventional tungsten slugs (one slug per building). It would be a low cost way to destroy a country and would not leave radiation behind as in the case of nukes.

The current model of bringing aircraft carriers, with 350 million dollar planes, into an area to do sorties will not work against laser defenses. The return of the capitol battleship is inevitable, but on a much larger scale. Thoughts/comments?

:facepalm:


This doesn't even qualify as science fiction. Rayguns ? I'm not trying to be mean here but this is not in any way a sensible post regarding anything even partly credible.

 

[swerve]

He may mean lasers, & other directed energy weapons, which are being worked on.

But it's still garbage. The sort of fantasy boys in their early teens & megalomaniac dictators have.

Just a bigger target for all the submarines out there.

 

[StobieWan]

He may mean lasers, & other directed energy weapons, which are being worked on.

But it's still garbage. The sort of fantasy boys in their early teens & megalomaniac dictators have.

Just a bigger target for all the submarines out there.

Platform size was specified at half a million tons plus, take something nuclear to drop that...I'm hearing the Imperial March when I think about it

30 inch main guns....six foot thick armour made of purest unobtainium...

 

[Todjaeger]

Platform size was specified at half a million tons plus, take something nuclear to drop that...I'm hearing the Imperial March when I think about it

30 inch main guns....six foot thick armour made of purest unobtainium...

Funny, I kept hearing Cybernetic Bronchitis...

What the poster missed is just why the battleship has fallen by the wayside. Namely, there are better ways to deliver munitions on target.

Direct energy weapons are all well and good, but they are still limited by LOS. Firing large conventional rounds from a cannon (rail or otherwise) still would not provide the same degree of range as a long range cruise missile, never mind an air-launched cruise missile or some kinds of land-based ICBM's.

Plus it also ignored the fact that if it is a ship which floats on water, it can still be sunk and with the kind of costs involved in designing and building a 1 mil. ton vessel, only a very small number could be afforded. That puts limits on where operations can be conducted since the vessels would still have training and maintenance cycles, plus the risk of catastrophic damage/loss and the impact that would have on naval ops.

But again, this is more a sci-fi fanstasy than anything else.

-Cheers

 

[Belesari]

Hmmm where to start.

OK the idea of a modern battleship:

First off. Subs will continue to be best delt with by subs i figure. Will unmanned USV help? Will we see subs launching 4 or more USV's out to help it seek out subs in a area? Maybe but the undersea enviroment is still ruled by the submarine for a long time i figure.

The battleship would be a great asset for amphibous operations providing firesupport and CIWS agaisnt small craft, aircraft, and missiles if built and designed right.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Weapons:

So lasers (also known as directed energy weapons), Railguns? Yes, eventually. But still normal AA, etc.

Offensive weapons-8in-12in Maybe MAYBE tops 16 in. Trying to get the biggest gun possible is a mistake the Japanese went with when building the yamato.
The Yamato's 18in guns had around the same penetration as the American's 16in but were less accurate. In addition i dont even want to think of the amount of strength such a ship would have to be made to to withstand a 30in gun firing.

8-16 inches would work fine. Hell the 8in guns or the Later american heavy cruisers could do 10-12 rpm thats 8in guns. The AGS does 10.

Add in tomahawk cruise missiles for long range ground attack and harpoon missiles you have a hell of lot of firepower.

As for power Nuclear maybe i think it would be a good idea. Better range and more power is always good.

Armor. Again it depends on cost.


The thing to remember though is this. The age of Lone ships of the line ravaging shores and sailing alone is over. Modern warfare is about fleets.

Each ship and mission brings multiple weaknesses and strengths that the idea is to balance out the weakness of say a modern heavy cruiser or battleship which can rule the surface and anything its guns can touch but is weak against Missile swarms, aircraft and most importantly subs.

This is where the DDG, Frigate and attack sub come into play along with other systems and aircraft.

Look at the Iowa's. They lacked the Heavy armor of the Montana class which was to follow but that is because they where Fast Battleships ment to escort the carriers.

The ship you describe is a Wunder weapon. Wunder Weapons are the folly of nations and empires streaching back through history. Ask the germans how those super tanks turned out or look at how the german tigers and panthers turned out when confronted by a numericaly superior foe the M4.


And if im going to irradicate a country ill just nuke it. Fast cheap effective.

And if im going to do that I'd just use a SSGN or SSBN.

But no. No super battleships please. A good Heavy cruiser or light battleship like the Graffspee sure.

Once ray guns come on board around 2025, I think aircraft/missiles will begin to become obsolete. Miniature nderwater autonomous robots will be able to sniff out locations of submarines.

So we need to go back to the battleship. We need something large enough, with nano armor that is 5x stronger than steel, to withstand real bullets. With missiles out of the equation, could we see a return of Yamoto sized battleships? But perhaps much, much larger, nuclear powered, with ray guns for AA defense.

For artillery, I would like to see some 30 inch conventional guns (in case of power failure), along with a plethora of rail guns firing in the mach 10+ range.

I am imagining something about 10x larger than the yamoto, perhaps a million ton displacement, that can be parked about 400km off a country, and wipe it out completely, with a combination of laser cannons, high powered railgun fire, and 30 inch or so conventional explosive filled shell artillery as backup and after rail guns defeat the countries limited raygun defenses.

For armor, I would like to see something kevlar/nano/steel hybrid plating, perhaps 6 feet thick, that could defend against other rail gun fire. Anyhow, I think once you have the AA defense down, having a very large platform that can wipe out/bombard an entire country at low cost is the way to go, using conventional tungsten slugs (one slug per building). It would be a low cost way to destroy a country and would not leave radiation behind as in the case of nukes.

The current model of bringing aircraft carriers, with 350 million dollar planes, into an area to do sorties will not work against laser defenses. The return of the capitol battleship is inevitable, but on a much larger scale. Thoughts/comments?

 

[exported_kiwi]

Wasn't there something called the "aersenal" ship quite a few years back that, while not equipped with directed energy weapons, or railguns, would've fulfilled the same role?
I'd think that, if anything, it'd be a lot more practical than this "mega battleship".

General question; is a 1million ton vessel even buildable?

 

[StevoJH]

Wasn't there something called the "aersenal" ship quite a few years back that, while not equipped with directed energy weapons, or railguns, would've fulfilled the same role?
I'd think that, if anything, it'd be a lot more practical than this "mega battleship".

General question; is a 1million ton vessel even buildable?

From what I remember the arsenal ship could be looked at as something similar in deck layout to a tanker or container ship with a deck literally covered with hundreds of VLS Cells.

Depending on which proposals you looked at the ship would be either manned or unmanned.

As for whether a 1 Million ton ship is buildable, I see no reason why it could not be built, whether or not it could actually be *launched* from any existing continental dockyard could be another matter.

It would also be limited in where it could travel. For example, you could probably rule out the seas surrounding most of SEA as being too shallow (especially malacca).

Basically the ship would probably have to be built in a massive floating dry dock, which would then have to be taken out into deepwater before it could flood down and let the ship out. Returning to shore for maintenance would require a similar process.

 

[exported_kiwi]

From what I remember the arsenal ship could be looked at as something similar in deck layout to a tanker or container ship with a deck literally covered with hundreds of VLS Cells.

Depending on which proposals you looked at the ship would be either manned or unmanned.

As for whether a 1 Million ton ship is buildable, I see no reason why it could not be built, whether or not it could actually be *launched* from any existing continental dockyard could be another matter.

It would also be limited in where it could travel. For example, you could probably rule out the seas surrounding most of SEA as being too shallow (especially malacca).

Basically the ship would probably have to be built in a massive floating dry dock, which would then have to be taken out into deepwater before it could flood down and let the ship out. Returning to shore for maintenance would require a similar process.

Thanks for the reply. I saw an artists impression of this ship once, a few years back and it looked like some sort of catamaran hull for stability when "ripple" firing missiles.
As for operations in SEA, best fitout would probably be TLAMs (for range), SAMs/RAMs and CIWS, no? Can weapons like JSOW be fired from a VLS?

I wonder what a 1 million ton arsenal ship would carry in terms of available munitions in the VLS.
Reloading would be a S.O.B, especially at sea.

 

[assymmetric]

Wasn't there something called the "aersenal" ship quite a few years back that, while not equipped with directed energy weapons, or railguns, would've fulfilled the same role?
I'd think that, if anything, it'd be a lot more practical than this "mega battleship".

General question; is a 1million ton vessel even buildable?

Digging around on the internet, it looks like the Germans had plans for a 120k ton ship with 20 inch guns. Hitler proposed a 31inch gun super battleship that would weight about 700,000 tons.

I think the trick is to scale up the ship to the size that it can not be defeated by known munitions, and use lasers to defend against any aircraft or missiles. Have a layer of subs around the super battleship to screen against torpedos. Can laser defense work underwater agains torpedos?

We need a new super battleship, in the 1 million to 2 million ton class, to achieve these purposes of having an unstoppable ship that can destroy a continent with a single week of bombardment. I am thinking have about 20 or so 31 inch guns, with about 10 rail guns firing mach 10+, and a whole plethora of laser defense systems, with armor in the 10 foot thickness range, would be enough to annihlate any country with no risk of repercussion.

 

[T.C.P]

Digging around on the internet, it looks like the Germans had plans for a 120k ton ship with 20 inch guns. Hitler proposed a 31inch gun super battleship that would weight about 700,000 tons.

I think the trick is to scale up the ship to the size that it can not be defeated by known munitions, and use lasers to defend against any aircraft or missiles. Have a layer of subs around the super battleship to screen against torpedos. Can laser defense work underwater agains torpedos?

We need a new super battleship, in the 1 million to 2 million ton class, to achieve these purposes of having an unstoppable ship that can destroy a continent with a single week of bombardment. I am thinking have about 20 or so 31 inch guns, with about 10 rail guns firing mach 10+, and a whole plethora of laser defense systems, with armor in the 10 foot thickness range, would be enough to annihlate any country with no risk of repercussion.

I sincerely hope you are joking!!

Firstly you want a ship which can bombard an entire continent??? WHy not just use nukes, cleaner and more efiicient. If you want to annihilate a country why not use WMDs, that are already available.

As for laser defence, CIWS Gun and missile systems perform better. Lasers may look cool in TV shows, but in real life they have not proved to be a great defense against missiles or air craft, theres a reason why the US scrapped their laser ABM defense plans.

Do you have any idea how costly it would be to build a millon ton ship abd how easy a target it would be. If that ship is so threatening, it will have a bull eye mark on it for enemy nukes.

Nuclear Submarines are better and can ensure more destruction then your imaginary supership!

 

[assymmetric]

I sincerely hope you are joking!!

Firstly you want a ship which can bombard an entire continent??? WHy not just use nukes, cleaner and more efiicient. If you want to annihilate a country why not use WMDs, that are already available.

As for laser defence, CIWS Gun and missile systems perform better. Lasers may look cool in TV shows, but in real life they have not proved to be a great defense against missiles or air craft, theres a reason why the US scrapped their laser ABM defense plans.

Do you have any idea how costly it would be to build a millon ton ship abd how easy a target it would be. If that ship is so threatening, it will have a bull eye mark on it for enemy nukes.

Nuclear Submarines are better and can ensure more destruction then your imaginary supership!

The reason to not use nukes to level a continent is because of risk of nuclear winter or radiation. Nukes are not clean at all because of this. We need a clean solution for this task.

The reason I think lasers is because the Navy plans on putting free electron laser to defend against missiles or aircraft on its larger ships soon. This is why I suggest a very large ship, with many huge nuclear reactors, to power up massive AA defensive laser systems and rail guns. So it can defend against any incoming threat. The only worry would be kinetic weapons against it, such as dumb munitions. I recommend very heavy armor to defend, maybe 10 feet of armor.

Nuclear submarines are not good for cleanly destroying a continent. Besides nukes, which are not clean, they only fire tomahawk missiles, which are weak and expensive. Super battleship can park off the coast and rain down on the continent until it is nothing left. This is why I think Nato should pool their resources together and create super battleship. If Iran knew it would be leveled completely by super battleship, it would not misbehave.

 

[assymmetric]

And just to elaborate on the point about why not to use nukes for this task, if you want to level the continent you do not want any left over radiation if you plan to colonize or expand your territory. Take for instance China. In order to finish a country of this size, it would require hundreds of nuclear weapons. It would be much better to use a super battleship that can park off the coast and fire from 10 rail guns and fire maybe 100 rounds per minute for 1 week straight. That would be 1 million rounds, each carrying perhaps 200MJ of kinetic energy to each target. That could destroy every major building within the country in only 1 week, at very very low cost, maybe only 1 billion dollars for the projectiles assuming 1000 dollars per projectile. There would be no left over radiation from this attack, and open the country up for fresh colonization.

Your concern about the survivability of the super battleship, when faced with threat of a nuclear strike against it, is valid. The super battleship would need to be equipped with sufficiently strong laser defense, such as 1 million joule free electron laser, to defend against incoming nuclear attacks.

 

[Bonza]

This is getting ridiculous...

Put some more thought and a dose of realism into your posts or the thread is getting locked. This isn't a science fiction forum.

 

[Cadredave]

And just to elaborate on the point about why not to use nukes for this task, if you want to level the continent you do not want any left over radiation if you plan to colonize or expand your territory. Take for instance China. In order to finish a country of this size, it would require hundreds of nuclear weapons. It would be much better to use a super battleship that can park off the coast and fire from 10 rail guns and fire maybe 100 rounds per minute for 1 week straight. That would be 1 million rounds, each carrying perhaps 200MJ of kinetic energy to each target. That could destroy every major building within the country in only 1 week, at very very low cost, maybe only 1 billion dollars for the projectiles assuming 1000 dollars per projectile. There would be no left over radiation from this attack, and open the country up for fresh colonization.

Your concern about the survivability of the super battleship, when faced with threat of a nuclear strike against it, is valid. The super battleship would need to be equipped with sufficiently strong laser defense, such as 1 million joule free electron laser, to defend against incoming nuclear attacks.

Its official we have now crossed over into the twilight zone, :lol3 now back to the real defence threads

CD

 

[My2Cents]

For artillery, I would like to see some 30 inch conventional guns (in case of power failure), along with a plethora of rail guns firing in the mach 10+ range.

Here are the POMB guestimates:

• The guns will probably be 125 ft / 38 m long and 900 tons each.
  If the power is out you would never be able to traverse or elevate a 30” gun by hand, and any attempt to load them would be an exercise in futility.
• The 400km range specified will probably require the use of a rocket assisted sabot round. Let’s say 16” diameter x 14’ long, with a weight of 2.5 tons. A full bore ERGM equivalent round would be around 20’ long and weigh 15 tons, with a 100km range.
  Handling machinery will be complex and tricky as you will probably have to bring the rounds up to the turret in a horizontal rather than vertical position.
• Powder charge between 2 and 3 tons. Getting a charge this large to ignite and burn correctly will be very tricky.
• Rate of fire will probably be 4 to 10 rounds per hour because of a high degree of automation. Naval 16” gun turrets were expected to do 2 rpm, and 18” 1.5 rpm, so this may be high. Guns this size on land seldom managed even 2 rounds per hour.
• The overpressure from firing will kill anyone topside. It will almost certainly also destroy any sensors and your lasers directors, so they will have to be retract within the armored envelope during firing, leaving you blind and vulnerable.

 

[exported_kiwi]

Its official we have now crossed over into the twilight zone, :lol3 now back to the real defence threads

CD

Yep, I'll risk the ire of the MODs here and say, "oh good grief

 

[Eeshaan]

I never expected to use this line in a DefenseTalk forum thread, but here's a first :

Posting in an Epic thread !!!



P.S. This is ridiculous. Directed Energy weapons will not be deployed even in prototype stage for at least a decade. What you're suggesting is a bit too far-fetched, man. And really, why bother with a continent-sized battleship when a single carrier group or ( if things go south real fast ) a couple of nukes are deterrent enough ?

 

[SpartanSG]

Even though I love battleships, here's a reality check on the proposed 1 million ton super battleship equipped with directed energy weapons.

1. Directed Energy Weapons.

I have a Physics background, and the reality for directed energy weapons is that they are limited by the inverse square law. Put simply, this basically means that for every doubling of the range of the weapon, the power needs to increase by 4 times (in other words, exponentially). And this is for 1 directed energy weapon. This is the primary reason why directed energy weapons are not in widespread use. The energy requirements to power multiple directed energy weapons that are effective out to 100km is mind boggling. Also, notice how all the news about experimental directed energy weapons don't talk about the recharge time before firing again?

Secondly, directed energy weapons are subjected to dispersion by the medium they travel through. Hence, for lasers (which is basically a highly concentrated beam of coherent light), their effectiveness in atmospheric conditions such as rain, fog, haze, etc is seriously degraded. In other words, its a fair weather weapon. I would love to see the expression of the naval leadership when scientists try to convince them to replace all weather weapons (i.e., missiles and projectiles) with fair weather ones.

Thirdly, 1 directed energy weapon can only engage 1 target at a time. Sure, it has unlimited ammo. But that's not very useful when you are swamped by so many incoming missiles/projectiles that your energy weapons are overwhelmed so badly.

Finally, if you mix directed energy weapons with other weapons that give off smoke on the same ship, or operate with other ships that give off smoke in combat (like firing of missiles and guns), you are asking for trouble. Because those smoke will degrade the performance of directed energy weapons. Just as people can't see through smoke with their eyes, so lasers are no good when there is smoke.

2. A 1,000,000 ton ship

Seriously? The largest ship ever built is the Seawise Giant, which is 657,019 tons fully loaded. Her deadweight tonnage is 418,000 tons, which means that when empty she is 239,019 tons. In order words, the largest ship ever built by a shipyard on Earth is 239,019 tons. And you are proposing an almost 5 times increase over current ship building capability? Which shipyard will be big enough to handle this?

If I'm not mistaken, the largest ships American shipyards are capable of building are the aircraft carriers (~100,000 tons, which means the proposed magnitude is almost 10 times current capability). All other commercial vessels are built in Asia (accounting for the majority of ship-building activity in the world) or Europe (highly advanced but very very expensive).

3. Super Big Target

Such a large ship invariably means that it will be limited in speed and manoeuvrability. It won't be going anywhere fast and will be too big for Suez and Panama Canal (just like the proposed Montana class battleships). In other words, even unguided bombs won't have too much of a difficulty hitting it. Also, it will be seriously vulnerable to torpedoes. Take out its propellers, and it becomes a million ton of sitting duck. There won't be any tugboats capable of moving this Super Battleship by itself. Which means the ship is as good as stranded for the however many days it takes for enough large tugboats to get there to tow her to safety. And tugboats are not fast. Their speed is usually ~12 knots and that means a voyage from San Diego to Japan will take 20 days.

That's 20 days of being a sitting duck with the other side throwing whatever they have at the million ton target.

 

[swerve]

The ship you describe is a Wunder weapon. Wunder Weapons are the folly of nations and empires streaching back through history. Ask the germans how those super tanks turned out or look at how the german tigers and panthers turned out when confronted by a numericaly superior foe the M4.

Don't lump the Panther in with the oversized & unreliable heavies. It cost very little more than the Pzkw IV, & was considerably more powerful.

If the Germans hadn't bothered with the Tiger, King Tiger, Ferdinand, Maus, etc., & instead built as many Panthers as possible, they'd have done a lot better. They could have built almost twice as many Panthers, which would have been far more effective than the much smaller number of heavies & super-heavies.

But your main point is correct. Wunderwaffe (Panther wasn't one: it was a bigger & better tank than its predecessors, but still a medium tank with trade-offs between protection & firepower, designed with cost & ease of building & deployability in mind) rarely achieve what is hoped. They're usually a waste of resources, particularly design & engineering skills.