Doggtag, you have completely lost me, I don't think we are on the same page. I am saying that ships post WWII had fewer tubes, because fewer tubes were needed to give out sufficient firepower. This is while the tube artillery was the destroyer and cruisers main anti-ship weapon still, before the advent of decent SSM's. Of course there was not much use of automatic 6 inch and 8 inch guns, as the heavy anti-ship and anti-land weapon was seen as the carrier, as you say. I have never argued that. The fact remains, that a lone shipboard gun of a given caliber is the quivilent of a battery of land based guns, while remaining more mobile.

Yimmy: I think the issue is a little unclear - the real emphasis was not on anti-ship capability, as doggtagg rightly states, the emphasis was on anti-air capability. For that role, smaller calibres made more sense (though there is evidence that some of the mid-size guns had a lot of effect against aircraft in WW2). Anti-ship capability really only became an issue with the reemergence of the Soviet surface fleet under Admiral Gorshkov. See: (http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1982/jul-aug/chipman.html) The result was that surface to surface capability was not the driving force behind gun mountings postwar, it was ASW and AAW that were seen as important.

Don't need to build an entire DD(X) to test out this idea. Take a retired Spruance or Tico and put the gun on it. The Tico would be nice as it has lots of room for instrumentation. You also don't really need a full crew, just some snipes to the make then engines go, a few radar guys to keep it from running into anything, and a quartermaster or two to make sure it does not run aground. No re3ason to even have the Aegis operational. That could be simulated. Have to say this technique works. I served on a ship that torwards the end of it's life was used to test out new systems. While I was aboard we got the first ship based SOSUS, and also the first SATCOM system (at least on a smaller vessel). We put tons of mileage on those systems to see how things worked in reality vs on paper. Myt last skipper was actually from the ONR. Cool dude, PhD in EE. (One time when we fixed a radar the EMO asked us what was wrong with us, and we told him it had a shorted fuse. I can imagine him telling a PhD in EE this in the wardroom - such fond memories)

"Without it, the Navy believes they will lose relevancy in the armed services, because it doesn't take much to realize that so far, the most powerful fleet in the world has had only a marginal impact at best in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," It is a very true assertion.In France navy is constently under funded because it did not play any singificant role in napoleonic war,Crimean war, 1870 war, 1914 war,1940 war, Indochina war, Algerian war. of course navy did a major role in conquering our empire (crushing Chinese navy end of 19th century for exemple and deterring japan) but it was soon forgotten.

"the real emphasis was not on anti-ship capability, as doggtagg rightly states, the emphasis was on anti-air capability. For that role, smaller calibres made more sense" Yes I completely agree, hence why calibers larger than 130mm were nearly unheard of. This was a compromise however, as the tube artillery was still a major surface weapon at the time, only the requirement was less. Even up to 1982 the ship gun was seen as a potent anti-ship weapon, a la Belgrano.

If you cannot get your ship to stop rocking then move your ship up to the beach. The LST's could literally spin themselves right up to the beach; they withdrew using their anchors as tow winches. Think of it as a railroad gun only on the beach. Hell, make it a detachable gun and let it ride up the beach on rails. Fantastic solution if I must say so myself. So, you drive your ship up on the beach, point your big gun and fire away. I'd suggest something in the 400mm range, but thats just my opinion. A revised 203mm would probably be plenty of firepower for the USMC. The 155mm solution is so 1990's. Think big.

-> Hell, make it a detachable gun and let it ride up the beach on rails. Fantastic solution if I must say so myself. So, you drive your ship up on the beach, point your big gun and fire away. I'd suggest something in the 400mm range, but thats just my opinion. A revised 203mm would probably be plenty of firepower for the USMC. The 155mm solution is so 1990's. Think big. Niiice! If we're going to argue for big gun firepower, then by all means use big guns. Surely the US still has all that HAARP research somewhere in its vast archives...? What kind of range would we be looking at with a truly big gun (10-16 inch) firing saboted PGMs to extreme ranges (the Project Babylon Iraqi Supergun's proof-of-concept model was about 14" (the "Baby Babylon", although at about 170feet long would be excessive for a ship) and mounted on a modified railway car, and didn't even need a high elevation to achieve its 60+mile test shots. And for a ship with the physical dimensions and displacement of the DDX, I see no reason why such a hull couldn't support a heavy gun of 8-12" caliber. ...I always wondered what we could do with a modern-day 28cm K5 railway gun with Bull-inspired ballistics (see DENEL systems). Under development at War's end for was a rebored-to-31cm smoothbore cannon firing "Arrow Shells" developed at Peenemunde, allowing a range of about 150km. The pictures of the gun and projectile show the round to be a finned subcaliber "dart" several feet long with a sabot-type device midway along the shell's length. Weight of the shell is given at 300pounds with a muzzle velocity of 5000feet/sec. But my guess is, like the Paris Gun of decades earlier, barrel wear would've been high and accuracy at range must've been just as horribly bad (CEP the size of a city). But a modern rocket-assisted PGM would alleviate all those weaknesses. If US forces plan on constructing massive stationary bases after a landing/mobilization to a foreign country, then a semi-permanent installation of our own fixed Superguns seems as logical as tying long range guns to the decks of a ship 20+ miles out at sea and asking it to perform long range inland precision strike. Imagine the psychological effect on the locals when the massive booms and flashes coming from the local US base are heard all over the city, and knowing those 200+ pound shells can hit anything precisely within a 100+ mile radius of the base in very short time. You want big and mobile? Create something between this... http://www.battletanks.com/t92_sp_240mm.htm>T92 240mm SP Howitzer http://www.battletanks.com/images/T92__C-1.jpg ALT=T92> ...and this: http://www.armscontrol.ru/atmtc/Arms_systems/Land/Artillery/Self_Propelled/2S7_Pion_SP_Gun.htm>2S7 (2S7M) 203-mm PION Self-propelled Gun http://www.armscontrol.ru/atmtc/Arms_systems/Land/Artillery/Self_Propelled/pion.jpg ALT=2S7> Of course, the US did have the M65 280mm "Atomic Annie", a very large and cumbersome system that only had any real maneuverability due to its two independently steerable tractors. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/m65.htm>Atomic_Annie (Hey, I figured, What the hell?) Minimally, if we're going to do anything, we should have a land-based, mobile (it can get inland much farther than any ship) SP gun built around the AGS (if at all we absolutely must build the ship version). But my whole beef with the AGS is, land units already have plenty of 155mm systems available (will the land units be cleared to fire the AGS's LRLAPs?). If the USN really wants to impress us with long range ship artillery, use something bigger, like 8" or greater. That Iraqi 210mm Al Fao howitzer, developed from DENEL's G6, had the prodigious range of just over 57km w/ ERFB-BB Extended Range Full Bore Base Bleed shells. I wonder where the range record would be today if someone kept one of those 210s around and DENEL made a VLAP for it: 90+ km? If the USN is hoping for 180km with a 6" AGS and LRLAP, one can only imagine the capability (range/payload) of a system with at least 2 more inches in diameter... (I think I'm done with this thread: it's getting as redundant as every other naval fire support thread. Y'all can have all the last words you like.)

Ya but keep in mind, the DD(X) isn't just testing a gun, it is testing an all electric drive for warships, new advancements in electronics, new hybrid propulsion ideas, maybe even new propulsion ideas, not to mention stealth hull, or ship self defense, smaller crewing, fire suppression, and other ships engineering that you can't simply refit to an old hull.

You really want massive firepower? Fit the MOAB with wings, bolt a big catapult to an LST, and park it near the beach - you could probably launch it ~50 miles with a small booster rocket and the cat launch. 23,000lb shell for 50 miles? Not that is firepower!

They do have plenty of LST hulls in reserve that could be modified for the role that the USMC wants. They also have plenty of strength in the superstructure to support firing the guns as they were intended to drop 40 ton tanks damn near on the beach itself. I don't see any reason they can't combine the two for the mission. The ship-based guns do offer steady supplies of ammunition that are a logistics nightmare over land. Sure you can cram a convoy full of supplies and truck them behind your spg's, but there is a pretty cramped supply of ready to fire ordnance. The ships don't have that problem. The only real snag I could see is that the USMC don't always practice over beaches, rather they've worked on the fine art of attacking inhospitable coastlines. The LST-gun system wouldn't work so well stuck on a coral reef. Then again, there is always the hvac's.