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Subject: Crazy idea to replace the battleships.
kirby1    2/10/2007 6:07:43 PM
I've definitly heard the debate between the Navy and the Marines concerning the fate of the Iowa Class Battleships. The Marines love the Sixteen inch guns, the Navy hates the battleships. They claim that its too much money, too much vessel, too much maintenance, and too much trouble. The marines look at the guns currently mounted on the Arliegh Burkes, Ticonderogas, and Zumwalt class boats, and (Just like your exe)says "Looks a little small to me." So heres my crazy, probably not logical idea for a solution. Why not highjack the turrets from the BBs, and mount two of them on a new hull? Something vaguely similar to the Admiral Sheer style pocketbattleships that the Germans deployed during world war two. All she really needs would be her two turrets, some drones for artillery spotting, and possibly a CIWS system for selfdefense. The marines keep thier fire support. The Navy doesn't have some giant WWII relics to maintain. I imagine two of these vessels, one in the pacific, and one in the Atlantic. These two boats are specifically act as an interem design until new systems come along that can sufficiently replace them (IE the electromagnetic railguns that the navy is currently experimenting with.)can replace them.
 
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B.Smitty       2/28/2007 2:33:08 PM

With a repeating railgun you can radar/visually walk the solution into the target track.

Bullets are also CHEAPER than rockets.

Herald

With a guided missile, you can get one-shot, one-kill.  You can also add CEC, permitting over the horizon or obstructed shots. 

Guns (especially non-existant railguns) are much more expensive than VLS cells.  And ships designed specifically to carry railguns are likely a LOT more expensive than VLS cells WE ALREADY OWN.

Plus, guided bullets aren't necessarily any cheaper than missiles.  In fact they may be more expensive. 

Of course, this assumes we can actually design and build a guided bullet that doesn't suck. (cough.. Copperhead)
 
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Herald1234       2/28/2007 2:52:14 PM



With a repeating railgun you can radar/visually walk the solution into the target track.

Bullets are also CHEAPER than rockets.

Herald


With a guided missile, you can get one-shot, one-kill.  You can also add CEC, permitting over the horizon or obstructed shots. 

Guns (especially non-existant railguns) are much more expensive than VLS cells.  And ships designed specifically to carry railguns are likely a LOT more expensive than VLS cells WE ALREADY OWN.

Plus, guided bullets aren't necessarily any cheaper than missiles.  In fact they may be more expensive. 

Of course, this assumes we can actually design and build a guided bullet that doesn't suck. (cough.. Copperhead)





Missiles can be foxed.

Sure the railgun armed ship will be expensive. but they have  no cost blowout associated with designing a size restricted aeroshell that has to use compromised chemistry that restricts burn times, absolute acceleration, range jink and at least a dozen other factors with a hit/miss one shot GUIDED weapon.

Add to that that your million dollar missile is likely to be fielded in at most a few dozens of rounds.

Bullets-especially railgun bullets in the flak regime are PURE BALLISTIC MASSES-i.e. slugs.

Can't be jammed.
Range limit is in the gun, not the propellant.
Speed is limited by electrical load. We can impart some FEROCIOUS shove forces onto a railgun projectile. The only limiters seem to be impedance friction and heat.

An electric railgun machine gun is going to have the second best chance of hitting a ballistic/cruise missile short of only a laser or a particle beam.

You can hose a target.

And with the kind of munitions we are describing here; [4 centimeter 2 kilogram slugs @ Mach 8+] you can not only saturate sky and guarantee dead a Brahmos or PRC carrier killer TBM, you can pound a patch of ground up to 100+ kilometers away with the kind of steel rain youn get from cluster munitions from a GMLRS. youm can even define the size and shape of the footprint with UNGUIDED slugs.

The guided slugs was just for 15.5 cm. projectile throwers. Even at that the GPS slug will be far cheaper than an aircraft delivered SDB. So within its usable range you go gun.

Copperhead is not a railgun round. For one thing the shock force design criteria are radically different.

Herald     
 
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doggtag       2/28/2007 2:56:26 PM

With a repeating railgun you can radar/visually walk the solution into the target track.

Bullets are also CHEAPER than rockets.

Herald

Won't DEWs figure into this equation anywhere?
Even if a Mach 6-8 (or greater?) railgun's velocity means minimal drop (what about inherent lift?- few bullets actually travel perfectly horizontal after emerging from a horizontal barrel- some have a slight trajectory peak or crest created from body lift) during its brief flight vs an aircraft or missile, don't DEWs improve on that by having no drop whatsoever?
Wouldn't DEW shots cost next to nothing (only figure in the fuel the ship's using to generate power)?
Only bad aspect of DEWs is poor performance (if any at all) in inclement weather...but how often will enemy air units be attacking you in the middle of a gale force storm or snow squalls?
 
Ideally, yeah, we think future armaments as a combo of both railguns (vs heavy material like armor) and lasers (DEWs, against anything thin-skinned).
But I'll wager we're going to see mixes in ship armament (shell-firing guns and DEWs, railguns and missiles, etc), we're not going to get all "Star Trekkie" in one single revolutionary design.
 
What interests me of the railgun projectiles: will they mostly just be solid kinetic kill vehicles with guidance and control machanisms?
Or will we be able to use uniquely-patterned (controlled detonation pattern),
mission-specific (area saturation/cluster?), 
or smart warhead (multi-option detonation patterns) designs?
 
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doggtag       2/28/2007 3:24:47 PM

The guided slugs was just for 15.5 cm. projectile throwers. Even at that the GPS slug will be far cheaper than an aircraft delivered SDB. So within its usable range you go gun.

A lot of good stuff, Herald, thanks. But I don't necessarily agree with this point:
An SDB is, after deployment, a barely supersonic(?)/mostly subsonic cruiser/glider.
At most, it may have to be strengthened for just over Mach 2 aerodynamic stresses, and the associated G's (10 max?) the deploying aircraft would experience (and it isn't really built to perform AAM-like high-G maneuvers anyway).
So even if the SDB has more overall complexities (due to that flick-out diamond pattern wing),
I still think the fact that the railgun shell will need its guidance/receiver components and control mechanisms structurally strengthened to far greater G tolerances, that will run its price up beyond something like the SDB, even if we want to believe optimistically otherwise.
 
Especially considering we may be fortunate to even see twenty major-caliber railguns built- those 200+km models-, plus spares (I'm assuming the DDX will mount them in place of AGS, at two guns for each ship, ten ships if we're lucky, and other destroyers and cruisers just won't have the power generation capacities to power the same railguns, not without major refits),
I don't think we're going to get an economy-of-scale bulk price factor to figure in for the railgun projectile production: I doubt we're going to see them produced anywhere beyond a few hundred thousand rounds over the lifetime of the vessels- that is, of course, providing the rail cannon prove to operate reliably enough in the saltwater environment. 
 
I do however believe that small-to-medium-caliber railguns (primarily AA / CIWS / WVR direct fire sizes) will have greater potential, just because their smaller sizes means more ships can use them. Of course, the catch in smaller caliber railguns is that they may prove beyond-cost-effectively difficult to create guided rounds for them, and solely unguided rapid burst rounds will be used, which would make them extraordinarily cheap.
 
Again, just my opinion.
 
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Herald1234       2/28/2007 4:57:30 PM
doggtag       2/28/2007 2:56:26 PM

With a repeating railgun you can radar/visually walk the solution into the target track.

Bullets are also CHEAPER than rockets.

Herald

Won't DEWs figure into this equation anywhere?

Yes-especially particle beams, but we are closer with the railgun than we are with the particle beam.

Even if a Mach 6-8 (or greater?) railgun's velocity means minimal drop (what about inherent lift?- few bullets actually travel perfectly horizontal after emerging from a horizontal barrel- some have a slight trajectory peak or crest created from body lift) during its brief flight vs an aircraft or missile, don't DEWs improve on that by having no drop whatsoever?
Wouldn't DEW shots cost next to nothing (only figure in the fuel the ship's using to generate power)?
Only bad aspect of DEWs is poor performance (if any at all) in inclement weather...but how often will enemy air units be attacking you in the middle of a gale force storm or snow squalls?

Some charged particle beams and neutralized particle beams are going to be subject to local ground path conditions[have you ever seen a linear lightning bolt?]. There are also inverse square law range limits as well as the weather effects you mentioned..
 
Ideally, yeah, we think future armaments as a combo of both railguns (vs heavy material like armor) and lasers (DEWs, against anything thin-skinned).
But I'll wager we're going to see mixes in ship armament (shell-firing guns and DEWs, railguns and missiles, etc), we're not going to get all "Star Trekkie" in one single revolutionary design.

I expect that we will see a mixture of chemical explosive guns, missiles, and and railguns  with the DEWs coming in  just about the time the [explosive induced magnetic flux charge capacitor] vircator shells come into general use.
 
What interests me of the railgun projectiles: will they mostly just be solid kinetic kill vehicles with guidance and control mechanisms?

The first ones will be UNGUIDED slugs.

Or will we be able to use uniquely-patterned (controlled detonation pattern),
mission-specific (area saturation/cluster?), 
or smart warhead (multi-option detonation patterns) designs?

That comes as soon as we figure out how to build a kinetic bombarder.
 
Quote...  &n
 
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Herald1234    Correction:   2/28/2007 8:59:23 PM

I include the cost of the pilot and the pilot[that should have been PLANE] for the SDB as I include the cost of the fire control systen and the actual gun itself. You might wind up with an equivalent initial cost but as you quantify the cost of munitions over time..................

Herald
 
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doggtag    Correction:   3/1/2007 7:25:28 AM
Point taken.
 
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B.Smitty       3/1/2007 7:49:01 AM



I
include the cost of the pilot and the pilot[that should have been PLANE] for the SDB as I include
the cost of the fire control systen and the actual gun itself. You
might wind up with an equivalent initial cost but as you quantify the
cost of munitions over time..................


Herald
 
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B.Smitty       3/1/2007 7:51:13 AM



I
include the cost of the pilot and the pilot[that should have been PLANE] for the SDB as I include
the cost of the fire control systen and the actual gun itself. You
might wind up with an equivalent initial cost but as you quantify the
cost of munitions over time..................


Herald
Then you should also include the cost of an equivalent C4ISR/OCA/DCA/SEAD capability to the cost of your gun system.  Aircraft don't just drop bombs. 



 
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doggtag       3/1/2007 8:06:43 AM
One thing to remember, though: SDB isn't tied to just one aircraft.
With the software integration, it can/will be installed on dozens of aircraft,
whereas the AGS, and most likely the railgun, will be limited to the DDX/DDG1000 (the railgun because of its sheer power requirements, which other vessels may not be able to feed/recharge as fast).
 
Add the fact that foreign allies will most likely be able to purchase the SDB, but doubtfully none will buy the AGS or major-caliber railgun, and the cost margin for the SDB spreads out quite a bit more favorably.
The aircraft to deploy it are already in service mostly (software updates are needed, and maybe some wiring upgrades), and the cost to implement SDB onto them is going to be marginal as compared to the finished design for the railgun which is still not yet finalized.
 
But if/when they do get the railgun working with all the kinks ironed out (and in a package that can be an upgrade like many other turrets, rather than needing a purpose-built ship to fire it), I'm all for it.
 
 
 
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