New radars and rockets are a must during the refits.

 

Herald

 

 

Maybe somebody can explain how the next generation of US engineers is supposed to learn designing new warships and get experience designing warships?

 

This is in my opinion not a capability that you can rapidly develope when you need it.

 

 

 

1. Build subs.

2. Build CGX.

3. Design a proper frigate.

Problem solved.

 

Herald

3rd paragraph, about 1/2-way thru:

{at least as of Tuesday, July 22, 2008, @ 2:50 PM EST US...}

 

" A crew of 150 sailors operate a variety of weapons, including two 155mm guns, two 40mm automatic cannon for close in defense..."

 

The guns in question would've been 57mm/70-cal Mk 110 mounts, same as the LCS has as its primary (bow) gun,

developed from the Swedish Bofors All Target Gun, license produced by UDLP BAE here in the US somewhere.

 

Maybe there may have been proponents for it in the past, but the finalized Zummwalt design

never showed the 40mm Bofors gun(s),

nor the Bushmaster III/MK44 gun in Super 40 configuration (something the Mk46 mount can become: the Mk44 gun is adaptable to a special somewhat-telescopic 40mm round by means of a barrel change and a few other minor alterations),

nor some as-yet-unrevealed 40mm CTAI naval turret.

 

Anything I've ever dug up, the DD(X), or whatever you feel like calling it, was always secondary-armed (or if you prefer, close-in) with the same 57mm guns as the LCS will use.

 

 

Come on, guys!

 

 

 

Still not the ship we need for the battles we are going to fight most frequently.

 

For gunboat diplomacy (and that means everything we do before the shooting starts), we need survivable ships - and that means armor - and that means bringing back the battleships.

 

And warship design has still gone too far in favor of technology at the expense of armor. We're still building ships designed to fight one giant apocalyptic battle - as in the Cold War.

 

 

Still not the ship we need for the battles we are going to fight most frequently.

 

For gunboat diplomacy (and that means everything we do before the shooting starts), we need survivable ships - and that means armor - and that means bringing back the battleships.

Battleships? Just what kind of battles are you expecting to fight?

 

Armor dropped out of favor not because we were "building ships designed to fight one giant apocalyptic battle" but because you cannot put enough on a realistic ship design to survive all the most likely threats it has to face.  What ended the battleship was not the atomic bomb but the armor piercing bomb.  The designers just could not armor the decks well enough to stop even relatively primitive armor piercing bombs without sacrificing most of the armament, which was deemed unacceptable.

I hope they add the RAM and maybe a MK-46/ MK-44 on the DDGs and how about a stern ramp???

A Mk46 mount should be the easy part: just build upn a suitable enough platform high up on the superstructure, allowing the maximum field of fire, ideally one on each side.

As has been said before: steel is cheap.

If you're worried about compromising your radar signature in the process, then just coat the extra steel with RAM (radar absorbent materials).

 

As to adding stern ramps: how much is that going to cost in redesign?

A small one for launching semi-rigids and other small watercraft is easy (just have to be wary of the ship's wake/prop wash churning up the waters immediately behind the ship; that could prove trickier on larger vessels launching smaller watercraft),

or are you talking assault craft-sized landing deck wells that have the ability to deploy some sort of LCAC-Light or other lighters that can deploy land vehicles to the shore?

1. Just put a crane aboard to handle small boats and design the small boat accordingly.

2. Steel can return a radio beam no matter how much RAM you slap on it. So scatter the return signal.

3. Better  counter-measures , passive ESM  and a better LPI radar are more effective defense than "armor" Not being hit is always better than being hit-even if you are the Iowa.

4. Stern ramps? Why do you want to weaken the hull?

5. Get better rockets to go with 3.

 

Herald

 

But,

the majority of current ship-mounted missiles and rapid fire guns negate the majority of chances any aircraft will have at dropping AP bombs thru a given ship's deck, superstructure, or other upper works.

Anti-ship missiles (and to an extent, gliding precision bombs dropped at a distance, but those are almost all subsonic, not very maneuverable, and easily targeted by CIWS),

and torpedoes,

are still the main threat ships face.

 

Mind you though: we can't go about equipping ships with sufficient armor to defending against Silkworks and Brahmos,

but some is still better than none.

Just because we cannot armor a ship enough to withstand them, and not be so overweight with all its other systems,

that doesn't mean we should skimp on protection altogether:

if I'm going to be running about in the littorals and enclosed coastal territories, I should at least afford my crew protection from all the lesser stuff my missiles, guns, and CIWS can't bring down: small arms fire, RPG- and ATGM-sized warheads, artillery shell splinters, etc.

 

I'm not worried about bombs coming thru my deck, because how many of what aircraft or missiles are getting thru my defensive screen?

I'm more concerned with some little sh*t hiding along the coastline launching Hellfire-sized guided weapons at me that will, most likely, strike low near my waterline rather than come plunging down from above thru my main deck.

 

Suitable side armor still has some merit, but I'm not suggesting we put 12" belts on all our ships.

Nor do I believe a massive belt of reactive ERA tiles will tolerate a lifetime of abuse by rough seas and saltwater that most of our ships will experience.

But today's practice of 1-inch of splinterproof/anti-spall plating just doesn't cut it.

 

Also, I've noticed we see scores of anti-missiles and CIWS (guns) have been developed, but where are all the hard-kill anti-torpedo defenses?

Mostly we seem wrapped in this false sense of security that torpedo decoy systems will be more than sufficient.

What about those 16-cm anti-torpedoes developed at Penn State years back? Could we see more advances in hard-kill ship-mounted anti-torpedo systems, a sort of underwater CIWS?

 

A 360° protective skin of maximum armor is no better than no armor at all (or minimal plating).

Just like all-guns or all-missiles designs don't cut it, neither does all-or-nothing(or minimal) on our armor schemes.

But if I plan on operating close enough to the shore that AFVs can fire their medium-caliber autocannon at me ( ~3000m ), then I should at least be able to withstand their gunfire.

...at least according to Navy Times:

 

Can also be found over at FoxNews:

ht*p://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,389222,00.html

But, the majority of current ship-mounted missiles and rapid fire guns negate the majority of chances any aircraft will have at dropping AP bombs thru a given ship's deck, superstructure, or other upper works. 

Agreed, the simple gravity bomb is not effective in the face of modern defenses.  However, how about:

-- A surface skimming cruise missile that executes a last minute "pop-up attack" maneuver to hit the deck?

-- A stealthed glide bomb that maneuvers over the ship at high altitude, then pitches over and fires a rocket booster to accelerate downward to supersonic speeds before striking the ship?

 

You don't want much do you?

-- RPG's will penetrate at around 16" of RHA (Rolled Homogeneous Armor)
-- Infantry guided missiles (Dragon/Milan equivalent) about 20"

-- Vehicle mounted system (TOW) are around 36" of penetration

-- Hellfire does more than 40" of penetration.

Enough armor to keep these weapons from penetrating is unreasonable.  What you do is mitigate the effects of a hit.

Ahh,
but ATGM/RPG-sized shaped charge warheads are only punching less-than-fist-sized holes through said armor; they're not creating holes that a man can crawl through, or cause such catastrophic damage that the ship's damage control parties can't save the ship from...unless we're talking the ship's outer skin being composed of thin plate steel and not hard armor.

 

I've seen up-close footage of  the damage done to targets by HEAT warheads of both TOWs and Dragons.

Where the armor is fairly thick (on a tank), the shaped charge functions as normal, creating a small diameter entry hole and, under ideal circumstances, dumping all the remaining blast inside the target to hopefully incapacitate the crew or detonate fuel and ammunition (not a really big issue if it dumps into a single compartment on a given ship, which can be easily sealed off, or even hastily repaired).

 

But on target AFVs where the HEAT warhead struck thin sections like along the engine area (rear cooling vanes around the exhausts and radiators, upper decking over engine), those thinner metal plates and pieces are literally gutted and torn apart by the initial blast, not penetrated by a hole like the heavy armor.

So a ship with fairly thin plate steel (little more than structural), especially metal alloys that aren't at least face-hardened, they'll suffer a larger tear in their skin, meaning it'll take more damage control efforts to fix them.

Even 1 inch of armor plating (solid armor plate, not solely face-hardened sheet steel) will show considerable damage.

What's needed if we're going close to such environments where we could succumb to ATGM/RPG shaped-charge attacks, is perhaps a good 6+cm of armor to absorb the initial blast and not rip open like a tin can, enough to allow the shaped charge jet to form and only create a small entry hole. Because again, a ship's compartments typically have more volume than the interior of any AFV so dissipating the blast inside will be easy, without risking catastrophic damage to the ship (because the most critical stuff isn't right there under a ship's outer skin, but normally a bit futher inside, in the case of destroyers and frigates, most likely well beyond the range of many HEAT warheads' shaped charge penetration capabilities (outer armor layer of ship absorbs the initial blast, then the large compartment inside the outer skin dissipates the penetrating jet before it has a lot of energy left to go through another couple of bulkheads to reach the ship's critical innards.

 

In the case of the USS Cole, thicker side skin (belt armor) would've meant a smaller tear from that suicide boat.

But we wouldn't even have needed a 6" armor belt to have greatly reduced the damage.

Even half that, 3 inches, of actual armor (not just structural steel with face-hardened alloy plating), would've made considerable difference.

 

Same could be said for the USS Stark: had her upperworks been composed of more armored steel rather than structural metal and plating, that Exocet wouldn't have gutted her so.

Not to mention, steel armor wouldn't have reached its melting point as rapidly as did the Stark's aluminum alloy.

Thin skin that actually allows shells and missile to penetrate several feet into the ship before detonating is a far worse outcome than building ships with armor that causes the inbound munitions to detonate outside the hull.

(Set off a firecracker on your open hand, then one closed inside your hand, and see which one causes you more physical damage.)

 

We don't have to armor ships like they're some kind of heavy cruisers.

But structural steel and minimal protective plating (barely proof against MG fire at point blank range) just don't cut it.

Be a cryin' shame if an LCS took itself thru some narrow waterway (quite a few estuaries, sounds, ports, and other river delta regions have navigable waterways easily less than 3 miles across) or close proximty to a port and came under surprise attack from AFVs (again, ~3000m for autocannon fire), being torn into by 30mm cannon fire and sunk because she wasn't able to withstand firepower of that magnitude.

 

Damn, I wish I could find that site that showed the effects of autocannon ammunition against various metal plates

(IIRC, it was US 20mm HEI, 25mm HE, 30mm HEDP, and 40mm grenades)...

The 1/2" solid, 3/4" solid, 1" solid & laminate (2 x 1/2"), and 1&1/4"" (a two-plate laminate of a 1/2" & a 3/4") plates were trashed, and even the 2" (5cm) face-hardened solid plates and double-1" laminate were torn pretty good by the 30 & 40mm rounds.

The target plates were supposed to be representative of Soviet Infantry AFVs, and were done back in late 1970s-early 1980s timeframe when the Chain Guns were being developed.

Why would ships with similar plating fare any better?

Certainly, the ship's sheer size and its compartments give it greater survivability over AFV designs,

but multiple penetrations across several compartments could overwhelm your damage control teams, especially as ships adopt more automation (more critical components compromised by hull penetrations) and smaller crews.

A single 3-5inch shell may be sustainable if it's contained in one compartment, but what about multiple smaller holes punched along the ship's length, close to the waterline?

This is what happens when you put stupid people in charge of the United States.  At least if obama was in charge at least the money would be going to poor americans and not arabs that hate us.