Oops!
The literal quote is this: "By the time Operation Desert Storm concluded on Feb. 28, 1991, the Wisconsin and her sister battleship, USS Missouri, had delivered more than one million pounds of ordnance on the enemy from their 16-inch guns... Fire from the battleships was so overwhelming that an Iraqui garrison actually surrendered to one of the USS Wisconsin unmanned aerial vehicle."
The replacements are seven DDG-1000 class destroyers - at $3,3 billion apiece. "These slower, thin-skinned vessels are to be equipped with unproven Advance Gun System designed to fire rounds weighing only 63 pounds but costing nearly $100,000 each."
I´m not surprised if someone is pushing NEW and weak ships to replace OLD and strong ones. Anyway it must be the so called "experts" that are lost the Vietnam War and are losing Iraq.
The dreadnoughts still have a lot of action in themselves.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. Sir Winston Churchill
If the Navy is going to desing a new "Batleship" I dont see it in the new DD-1000 Class. From what i hear the new gun system is LESS than 3in. I would not mind the range they claim though.
Ramius wrote:If the Navy is going to desing a new "Batleship" I dont see it in the new DD-1000 Class. From what i hear the new gun system is LESS than 3in. I would not mind the range they claim though.
That is much different from what I heard, thank you for the correction. (I calculated and 115mm is about 4.5in) By the way, arent the Zumwalts going to have two of these? Wouldnt a BB replacement be more efficient to have more than two 4.5in guns?
Certainly not intended as BB replacement, but the guns are supposed to provide a long range bombardment capability with rocket assisted shells.
What will eventually happen is hard to say. Lots of new concepts in those ships and not much money, what with the Iraq war and the US economy in recession.
oh, my bad, must have read too quickly Well, 6in doesn't seem too bad for the mission It certainly is an improvement on the 5in mk45 the navy has on the current Arliegh Burkes and Tigonderogas.
I was just reading the previous pages on this topic, and I was wondering wheather there was going to be any performance improvement between the sixty year old battlewagon vs the brand new Zumwalt cruiser. I mean, besides saving a little money (although it would probably be cheaper to keep the already existing Iowa beasts than to buy an entire new AEGIS class) is there a major increase in speed, armament, and sensors. Are they even going to bother to put any armor on the Zumwalts?
I think many of you have made some great points about the pros and cons of a nuclear battleship. As thrilling as the idea is, it may be that it is not practical to place nuclear reactors in the Iowa-class battleships. Some of the vulnerabilities that have been described would make this a non-starter. It would only inspire enemies of America to aspire to sinking an American treasure, as our four remaining battleships are indeed treasures.
But this forum is about hypothetical naval scenarios. So why would talk of nuclear battleships be restricted to retrofitting existing battleships? Why not discuss what we might have if we started from a clean slate and designed her the right way from the beginning? And I don’t mean the ever-researched destroyers and cruisers being used to insult the battleship name. Granted, American shipbuilding isn’t what it used to be, but let’s say we can have this done the way we think a true dreadnought should be, with Iowa-class or better armor.
A battleship should not require a battle group to escort it and should be capable of engaging multiple threat vessels concurrently. Two or three battleships working together should be capable of engaging and destroying a carrier battle group.
I don’t think all of the technologies are truly at the implementation stage yet, but here is what I think would make for a legitimate introduction of the BBN vessel:
Combat Systems
“Aegis successor” battlespace management system – integrated sensor fusion (optical, radar, lidar, acoustic, IR, etc. sensors combined with GPS, inertial navigation, and sensor/state vector data from other vehicles); simultaneous tracking and classification of 1000+ surface, subsurface, land, and aerial targets; target assignment and concurrent engagement of all armaments; and vehicle health management.
Propulsion and Power
16 large waterjets (8 forward propulsion, 8 forward/steering)
TBD (4?) 100 MW nuclear reactors
