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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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eldnah       2/26/2007 10:28:59 AM
Whatever happened to the Mark 71  8""/55 cal MCLWG (Major Caliber Light Weight Gun) from the late 1970's? Apparently it could fire 12 rounds/min and was successfully deployed on the USS Hull, a 4600 ton fl Forrest Sherman class destroyer. My understanding is that in the Carter post-Vietnam military budgets it was cut for financial not performance reasons though give Reagan's expansive military budgets of the 1980's I am surprised it was not revived if it was any good. Certainly  a 12-14,000 ton Zumwalt could handle two of those weapons. The big drawback I can suppose would be the possible cost of developing new munitions.
 
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historynut       2/26/2007 11:05:46 AM



If I can pack 500 bullets and use a railgun to achieve the same effects that packing missiles can into a space wherwe I have only 100 missiles then I go bullet. Substituting electric shove for rocket fuel means I can pack more killbodies in the given space. My killbodies can be valvejet steered to home in as PGMs. It still makes the railgun killbody about 1/3 the cost of the equivalent rocket maybe 1/4 the cost plus I obtain five times as many in the magazine. Now when you get into the 1000 kilometer + range rockets start to make more sense. But even then if you were to lob nuclear packages out of the railgun, there comes a point when at about 3500 kilometers+ the railgun starts to overtake the missile again. Using a railgun launcher  to dispensing with the first two stages of a rocket saves you 70% of the fuel, and half the cost for a competitive ICBM.

Herald



But can you build a guidance that can fit in those bullets and survive the massive G's and EM fields?  And will it cost less than an arm and a leg?   It's the guidance that drives the cost of these munitions. 

Unguided, those 3500km+ bullets will have a CEP measured in tens of kilometers.


The massive G's may be less of a problem then the EM fields. With a rail gun you could start the bullet slower with less of a shock then build up speed. The EM fields are the big problem.
As a line of sight weapon with unguided bullets it could still be very dangerous.
If you wish some thinking on the use of Railguns and Laser's in combat try the Sci Fri series HAMMER'S SLAMMERS by David Drake. He's put some thinking into the up's and down's of both.
One point he made was that a powerful rail gun could take out anything in line of sight. The speed of the round would make it a point and shoot weapon. Not too good for airplanes, missiles etc. Plus it could take out any rounds fired at it.

 
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doggtag       2/26/2007 12:11:49 PM

Whatever happened to the Mark 71  8""/55 cal MCLWG (Major Caliber Light Weight Gun) from the late 1970's? Apparently it could fire 12 rounds/min and was successfully deployed on the USS Hull, a 4600 ton fl Forrest Sherman class destroyer. My understanding is that in the Carter post-Vietnam military budgets it was cut for financial not performance reasons though give Reagan's expansive military budgets of the 1980's I am surprised it was not revived if it was any good. Certainly  a 12-14,000 ton Zumwalt could handle two of those weapons. The big drawback I can suppose would be the possible cost of developing new munitions.


Certainly I could see cost issues in developing a new caliber of PGMs.
But I don't see it to be prohibitively expensive: we're working up in caliber, not down.
So it's not like we'd be trying to shoe-horn the tech of one round into a smaller version. Theoretically, can't we just enlarge a current design (with minimal modification) to do so?
(and suggesting such an idea a decade or two ago may have eased a lot of frustration on the engineers' part, as they wouldn't have had to have worked so hard to create guided shells in the 127mm caliber first, but that's understandable since it is the primary caliber gun of many USN vessels.)
 
I'll have to go digging thru my library, but I was under the impression (back in the 1980s, or late 1970s even) that during the early days of the Copperhead CLGP development, there were 8" prototypes made to validate the tech (test firing from M110s) prior to the final end result of the 155mm system (155mm being far more numerous than 8" M110s).
 
This is still a valid question; why do we really need a gun in the 16" caliber? Would a lesser diameter suffice? 10 inch? 12? 14? What was the magic behind 16 inch? (is it just the nostalgia they represent?)
Making it so large as 16", and figuring in the upkeep of the weapon and the cost the guided shells most likely would be, there we'd be within the realm of guided missiles performing the job just as adequately.
How much explosive did the 16" rounds actually carry, anyway? Trying to recall past debates of naval gunfire, do those 16" shells even have 300 pounds of explosive in them?
A 16" diameter missile can carry more than that (Harpoon is 13.5", carries a 488 pound warhead), http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-84.html
Yeah, it doesn't have the speed of a 16" shell (we can increase speed by using a new supersonic design), but it has more than 3 times the range.
Fit it with HEDP or HEAT-type shaped charge, and you'll go thru just as much, if not more, armor than a 16" AP round could.
 

Data for AGM-84D/E/F/H/K, RGM/UGM-84D (incl. booster):

  AGM-84D RGM/UGM-84D AGM-84E AGM-84F AGM-84H/K
Length 3.85 m (12 ft 7.5 in) 4.63 m (15 ft 2.2 in) 4.50 m (14 ft 9 in) 4.44 m (14 ft 6.9 in) 4.37 m (14 ft 4 in)
Wingspan 91.4 cm (36 in) 2.43 m (96 in)
Diameter 34.3 cm (13.5 in)
Weight 540 kg (1200 lb) 690 kg (1520 lb) 627 kg (1385 lb) 635 kg (1400 lb) 725 kg (1600 lb)
Speed Mach 0.85
Range 220 km (120 nm) 140 km (75 nm) 93 km (50 nm) 315 km (170 nm) 280 km (150 nm)
Propulsion Sustainer: Teledyne/CAE J402-CA-400 turbojet; 3.0 kN (680 lb)
Booster (RGM/UGM-84 only): A/
 
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B.Smitty       2/26/2007 1:39:16 PM



How much explosive did the 16" rounds actually carry, anyway? Trying to recall past debates of naval gunfire, do those 16" shells even have 300 pounds of explosive in them?

The WWII era, 16" HC Mk 13 only had 153lbs of HE. 

Now undoubtedly modern metallurgy could produce one that had a lot more.
 
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doggtag       2/26/2007 2:49:49 PM







How much explosive did the 16" rounds actually carry, anyway? Trying to recall past debates of naval gunfire, do those 16" shells even have 300 pounds of explosive in them?



The WWII era, 16" HC Mk 13 only had 153lbs of HE. 

Now undoubtedly modern metallurgy could produce one that had a lot more.



I'd imagine if we built the guns to Gerry Bull-type specs, and used those elongated & streamlined extended range base bleed shells like the Assegai familiy of ammo South Afrika makes (see these previous threads for more entended range artillery info: here http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/4-2076.aspx    and here http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/4-2526.aspx    ),
we could be looking at battleship-caliber guns throwing full-caliber shells out beyond 125km with ease (I've mentioned on other threads that Iraqi 210mm gun based loosely on the South Afrikan G6, which had a 57km range firing those enhanced shells- had it been given further development, I'd guess today it could reach 100km with those newest VLAP shell designs).
And if we'd follow Gerry Bull's idea of using subcaliber rounds as he'd planned in those Iraqi superguns, we could, possibly, see 200km or more, surpassing the 180km of the rocket-enhanced LRLAP for the AGS.
 
Cost.
It all comes down to cost.
Cost not only to develop the gun itself, but a suitable mounting also, and a suitable ship configuration to support the mounting, and a completely new ammunition family (area attack round full of submunitions, point attack unitary warhead for softer surface targets, penetrator warhead type for reinforced targets).
I can understand the advantage here of the railgun: only 1 type of warhead/round is required (but area target attack capability is minimal if we're firing mostly-solid Mach 8 guided slugs).
 
I dug around in the library: WW2 England had a 9.2 inch Mk10 coastal gun that outranged even the majority of larger caliber weapons. It was used in installations along the eastern coast, firing to cover the English channel. Firing a 380 pound shell to a distance of 36,700 yards (for you metric folk, 172kg to 33.56km).
Compare that to the WW2 US 9.45 inch (240mm) firing a 360 pound shell (163.3kg) to just over 25,000 yards (about 23km),
and the 210mm Al Fao Iraqi gun firing 241 pound (109kg) Extended Range Full Bore Base Bleed shells to 62,710 yards (57.34km). 
South Afrika proved that 155mm guns with their VLAP (Velocity enhanced Long range Artillery Projectile) can even reach 75km, firing from guns which achieve 40-50km with ERFB-BB rounds.
Use the ERFB-BB and VLAP tech in larger guns, and we can obviously expect longer ranges.
But do we really need something that fires shells weighing in excess of a ton?
Would not something even 1/2-1/4 that weight, maybe 15% explosive, going to 200km or so be sufficient?
 
(I wonder what the magic was behind deciding the LRLAP for AGS needed to go 180km. Anyone know?)
 
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B.Smitty       2/26/2007 3:07:07 PM


(I wonder what the magic was behind deciding the LRLAP for AGS needed to go 180km. Anyone know?)


I believe 83-100nm is a USMC NSFS requirement to support STOM/OMFTS.  Now how they came up with that, I have no idea. 


 
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hybrid       2/26/2007 3:49:25 PM






If I can pack 500 bullets and use a railgun to achieve the same effects that packing missiles can into a space wherwe I have only 100 missiles then I go bullet. Substituting electric shove for rocket fuel means I can pack more killbodies in the given space. My killbodies can be valvejet steered to home in as PGMs. It still makes the railgun killbody about 1/3 the cost of the equivalent rocket maybe 1/4 the cost plus I obtain five times as many in the magazine. Now when you get into the 1000 kilometer + range rockets start to make more sense. But even then if you were to lob nuclear packages out of the railgun, there comes a point when at about 3500 kilometers+ the railgun starts to overtake the missile again. Using a railgun launcher  to dispensing with the first two stages of a rocket saves you 70% of the fuel, and half the cost for a competitive ICBM.

Herald




But can you build a guidance that can fit in those bullets and survive the massive G's and EM fields?  And will it cost less than an arm and a leg?   It's the guidance that drives the cost of these munitions. 

Unguided, those 3500km+ bullets will have a CEP measured in tens of kilometers.



The massive G's may be less of a problem then the EM fields. With a rail gun you could start the bullet slower with less of a shock then build up speed. The EM fields are the big problem.
As a line of sight weapon with unguided bullets it could still be very dangerous.

If you wish some thinking on the use of Railguns and Laser's in combat try the Sci Fri series HAMMER'S SLAMMERS by David Drake. He's put some thinking into the up's and down's of both.

One point he made was that a powerful rail gun could take out anything in line of sight. The speed of the round would make it a point and shoot weapon. Not too good for airplanes, missiles etc. Plus it could take out any rounds fired at it.



Just so ya know Drake had powerguns, not railguns in his series, they operated similar to the Keith Laumer's Hellbore in that energized a gram of material so it gave up its free electrons and turned into plasma then shot it out the barrel at some insanely high velocity. In Drake's case he used energized bits of copper.
 
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Herald1234       2/26/2007 6:41:56 PM
(I wonder what the magic was behind deciding the LRLAP for AGS needed to go 180km. Anyone know?)

90% of the targets on the earth we want to kill are within 150 kilometers of the ocean.
 
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B.Smitty       2/26/2007 7:26:58 PM
No, 90% of the population of the planet is within 150km.  Doesn't mean the specific ones we want to kill are. 

Osama and his cronies probably aren't. 
 
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Herald1234    ObL and crew.   2/27/2007 2:21:18 AM

No, 90% of the population of the planet is within 150km.  Doesn't mean the specific ones we want to kill are. 

Osama and his cronies probably aren't. 
I do believe that they are cowards and poltroons, but are not idiots.

90%  of the targets a seapower wants to hit are. I should be more clear when I write. That includes people by the way.

Herald
 
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