Nuclear powered Battleship?

Historical what if discussions, hypothetical operations, battleship vs. battleship engagements, design your own warship, etc.
Bgile
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by Bgile »

Yes, but I'm afraid the 8" LWG is long dead and the 155 has been slowed way down by the need for money for the current wars. The existing 5"/62 was designed for a long range projo, but that was cancelled due to money and development problems. They are still having problems designing a reliable projo that can withstand gun type acceleration and be reasonably cheap.
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Legend
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by Legend »

The Mk71 has a caliber of 8in/55 with a shell weight of 260lbs, RoF of 12, "lbs-pm" of 3120, and a range of 18 miles. The system was tested out on the USS hull back in the seventies... if I recall correctly they thought the 5in was superior to it.

The new AGS has a 6in shell and is fairly standard for it's type besides the fact that it's advanced munitions (missiles in a barrel) give it a range of around 60 miles, with different reports giving ranges between fifty and nintey miles and an accuracy that is supposed to put land based howitzers to shame.

I like the idea of replacing the mk45's on destroyers with these... but for a battlehip shouldnt we use a secondary with more AA capabilities... neither the 8in or the 6in have AA capabilities...
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by lwd »

Bgile wrote:Yes, but I'm afraid the 8" LWG is long dead and the 155 has been slowed way down by the need for money for the current wars. The existing 5"/62 was designed for a long range projo, but that was cancelled due to money and development problems. They are still having problems designing a reliable projo that can withstand gun type acceleration and be reasonably cheap.
If we're designing a new nuclear powered battleship I don't see any problem with reviving and improving previous programs or indeed accelerating current ones. That's one reason I mentioned metal storm. EM guns might even be an arguable secondary/AA alternative.
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Legend
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by Legend »

A small caliber electromagnetic gun? I think by the point that you put enough of them on the ship to be effective, the power output needed would multiply to a point that it would be cheaper to have conventional munitions, verses the fuel used up by the auxilery generators.

The 155mm and the 8in, to my knowledge, have no to very little AA capabilities, even though they are superb surface attack weapons. If the supposed 40 per minute RoF the Otomelera 5in has, then why couldnt it be a prime canidate in the secondaries? I do not have any information on the accuracy of the system, but it appears to be very close to the mk45 (5in) besides the fact that it fires twice as fast...
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by lwd »

Since time of flight for a rail gun is almost zero or potentially so you wouldn't neccesarily need a bunch of them and the fire control solution would be pretty easy.
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Legend
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by Legend »

True. So youre saying one on each side? That still leaves the problem of a swarm of missiles... the railgun can only fire around ten to twelve per minute due to cooling issues.
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RF
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by RF »

Why stick to only one?
''Give me a Ping and one Ping only'' - Sean Connery.
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Legend
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by Legend »

Power consumption. By the time you put a full battery of railgun secondaries on the ship, the power consumption overdoes the amount being able to be generated by the auxileries... and by the point you put more auxileries in and make the ship capable of a full secondary railgun battery, the secondaries will have greater capabilities than the main guns they are supposed to replace.

What if they put another reactor in, solely for power generation, and convert the four triple turrets to massive caliber railgun turrets?
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by lwd »

Legend wrote:Power consumption. By the time you put a full battery of railgun secondaries on the ship, the power consumption overdoes the amount being able to be generated by the auxileries...
I'm not at all sure that's the case. First of all if it's for use vs missiles it doesn't have to be very large bore or a very heavy projectile. The other thing is for rail guns you really want a good energy storage system capable of rapidly discharging its energy. This means that you can store up power for a significant period of time. Furthermore an engine like the M1's turbine can supply adeqate energy for several rounds a minute. I don't see these demands as all that extreme. Now there are some hazards associated with the energy storage but that's true of any form of energy storage.
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Legend
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by Legend »

The 64 MJ system they are planning for the zumwalt and other classes, will require the ship to stop and focus all of it's generating power, 72 megawatts, into the functioning of those two guns. That is an assumed caliber of 6in. Your proposition for a smaller caliber is a good idea, but there isn't current development on that. Perhaps Oto Melera could come up with a railgun version of their 76mm?
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by lwd »

At one point there was a significant amount of work on developing one for a tank. I'm not sure of the caliber but I'm pretty sure it was under 120mm and may have been under 75mm. If you want the same muzzle velocity from a 3" round that you'd get from a 6" round you only need 1/8 the power. drop down to 50mm and you are looking at 1/27th. In essence if you can put one on a tank you can put one in a turret that should weigh somewhat less than the tank and be pretty much self contained.
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Legend
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by Legend »

Wow. That is freaking amazing! If we had them the same size as the Otobreda... then we could have like twelve of them and basically be able to take out any number of cruise missiles any small nation would have! Could it possibly be elevated to the water and fire at torpedoes? Just sending a mach 7 shell in the vicinity of a torpedo would probably be enough to fry it's electronics!
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by lwd »

Legend wrote:... Could it possibly be elevated to the water and fire at torpedoes? Just sending a mach 7 shell in the vicinity of a torpedo would probably be enough to fry it's electronics!
I've wondered about that myself. Not sure "fry" is the right word but the shock wave alone might be enough to damage or divert the torpedo to some extent. Not sure there's been enough work on fire control to give you a good chance of hitting it though. A small, fast, smart, short ranged torpedo would probably be better in this regard. It could be set to home on the propulsion system of theatacking torp. If it were also desined to sound like a ship it might even manage a cooperative intercept.
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Legend
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by Legend »

1. Have whatever sonar assets you have give you a general bearing and fire a barrage on a path straight towards the thing! The supercatitation bubble resulting from it would be enough to damage whatever electronics the little cretin has.

2. Another point I want to bring up, is that the Board Evaluation from my first post, mentions the possibilities of a large caliber railgun. Currently, they are planning a 64MJ system, which I can only guess has a caliber around 6 inches. It has a constant power consumption of 57megawatts... for only one im assuming. If we scaled the system up how much power would a... say sixteen inch railgun system take up and require?

3. New Idea! And thinking outside the box here so don't attack it too quickly. A large caliber railgun system would take up lots of energy right? So what do we know of that is compact, relatively safe, and really potent for power generation? I was thinking about this for small scale guns... but now I like it better for this large caliber system. A torpedo is around the same size (larger but you get my point) of a large shell we are talking about. So why not have a... generating cartridge... seperate from the barrel itself, but a chemical reaction similar to a torpedo reaction that generates the power required within the... say fifteen seconds it may take for the barrel to cool down and reload? Also the railgun rounds are relatively light, so it will be faster to reload the system.

4. When I say railgun I mean any electromagnetic system we may be talking about. Railgun, Coilgun, Hybrid. Whatever!
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Re: Nuclear powered Battleship?

Post by lwd »

Rule of thumb if you when you increase the linear dimensions the mass increases by the cube. IE double the linear dimensions and you get 8 times the mass. The inverse is also true. Now if you want to maintain the same MV then the energy needed will increase as the cube as well. However you might not need the same muzzle velocity as larger projectiles maintian velocity better. Also you might not need/want to increase all the linear dimensions eqully so it's not that simple. Thoretically I believe the max velocity of a em gun is around .1c. In an atamosphere such a muzzle velocity will in many cases result in the projectile becoming a rapidly slowing and expanding ball of plasma.
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