What is needed to replace the Battleship?

[RF]

What is needed to replace the battleship - well battleships were effectively replaced by carriers, with their much longer reach......and of course the SSM which can be launched from a much smaller vessel.

What is needed to replace the battleship could be rephrased - what is needed to bring back the battleship as a front line instrument of war? I suspect the answer might be to increase the firepower and reach of the battleship, so it can shoot at targets at greater ranges than carriers with less risk - but there is the problem of deriving gunnery solutions on targets way beyond its visual threshold.

[lwd]

Perhaps more important would be the ability to pack econmical and efficient defenses on such a ship so that it had a good chance of surviving against modern antiship weapons. The offensive weapons are not that hard to come by.

[Legend]

The railgun? The 8in gun? Anything larger than a 5" standard naval artillery is near extinct! I do suppport your point though, again bringing economical power into the equation. That was thw whole point of the OHP class!

[hammy]

Is th heavy Industry around still to make the big guns ?

Not in the UK , biggest thing they make here nowadays is a 155mm , it seems missiles are used for anything wanting more punch .

And actually , though battleships guns have been used against shore targets frequently , they aren't actually OPTIMISED for that job , and without a specially developed high capacity H E shell specifically for the job , the normal projectiles aren't particularly effective unles you are tring to hit a hardened target .
Slow rate of fire too .

A Cleveland or Belfast revamped C A would probably do as effective a job with a high capacity shell , stand out 5 miles off-shore and hit most things within a 12 to 15 mile radius ( assuming youve fitted a naval variant of some modern 155mm gun instead of the old 6inch ) and with only 6 shots per barrel per minute (the old WW2 sustained rate of fire ) , 12 x 6 = 30 rds into the target zone = one every two seconds or so , nasty .

I read in here an interesting thesis by some U S marines colonel who did it for his Masters degree , arguing for a new breed of fire support ship ,
but it seemed flawed when he said he didn't think a "Weapons barge" type of ship was wanted , but something along the lines of an Iowa/Montana revisited with a discarding sabot projectile that could reach 50 miles inland .

Isnt that called an A10 "Warthog" ground attack airplane ?

[RF]

Perhaps more important would be the ability to pack econmical and efficient defenses on such a ship so that it had a good chance of surviving against modern antiship weapons. The offensive weapons are not that hard to come by.

But so are the technologies of defensive weapons. One aspect arising from the size of a battleship is that it could be used for example as a ''punchbag'' to draw enemy fire and thus provide cover for other, less prominent forces to enable them to strike more effectively while the enemy is distracted.

[lwd]

Perhaps more important would be the ability to pack econmical and efficient defenses on such a ship so that it had a good chance of surviving against modern antiship weapons. The offensive weapons are not that hard to come by.

But so are the technologies of defensive weapons. ....

But it's not just defensive weapons it's armor as well. And you have to put it all together on a ship that can move at a reasonable speed, can be actually built, payed for, and operated. I submit that offensive weapons are actually the easy part indeed some guns and VL cells and your done there.

[Legend]

Yes but how many currently operational ships have the firepower to compete with a battleship at firing range?

[RF]

This is an interesting point Legend, particulary when it comes to protection from direct hits received from a battleships main armament guns.

[Legend]

Well... the fact of the matter is it was hard for even a battleship of the time to take a heavy hit like that without taking pause or damage of some kind. My point merely hints that if a ship was in a combat situation with a large caliber warship... unless it had matching penetration and damage power it would not inflict as much damage as the other ship... resulting in the weaker ship's destruction.

[RF]

Which in a roundabout way brings back the question of armour protection for the smaller ships.....

[Legend]

Fair enough. Is there currently a defensive armor system lightweight enough to be placed on small warships... yet robust enough to absorb any damage of current Naval Artillery, Missiles, and upcoming weapons? Kevlar comes to mind... lots and lots of Kevlar.

[Bgile]

Kevlar is used in modern warships as part of the protection of critical spaces, but there are limits to what can be done one a given displacement. Most modern warships are quite small compared to a WWII battleship. Also, I note that infantry body armor now includes more than just Kevlar. Plates are inserted in special pockets for protection against rifles. I doubt whether Kevlar is terribly effective against modern shaped charge weapons, either. It's design seems predicated on stopping penetration of physical objects.