You knew,it should work.If our cyvilisation do not collapse,we should see that after 2050.They should made working railguns till then.
What would be necessary conditions for battleships in the modern era?
- Thread starter Lord Sovereign
- Start date
DarthOne
☦️
If that was true, all those massive aircraft carriers wouldn't be a thing.
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
To be fair the USN has been trying to give the carriers anti torpedo torpedoes for over two decades and is still working on it
DarthOne
☦️
Huh. The more you know.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Making BBs heavy hitters again would not mean there are no more escorts, destroyers, and submarines (arguably it does mean no more carriers).
Honestly, against something like the proposed BB, I'd be more likely to see poorer nations respond with pods of torpedoes in prepositioned areas or something like a fast minelayer.
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
I'd strongly disagree there. Aircraft would be invaluable for scouting, screening and harassing the enemy fleet. Essentially, they'd take on the role of light cavalry, alongside (to an extent) submarines.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
With Q-Radar bring developed and likely proliferating, I would scratch electronic warfare entirely as the Q-Radar would see that and go 'yeah, not my return' and ignore enemy E-War.
Note that all future aircraft are getting some level of stealth built into them. It is likely that, if stealth isn't defeated, every future aircraft would be essentially built using advanced and/or radical stealth techniques. Not only that, but armor is likely going to go the way of Battletech of all things since we've developed EndoSteel(tm) v0.1 back in 2016.
Also, the water is likely going to be a piss poor heat sink due to rising ocean temperatures. We're already having problems with our river-fed power plants getting their output slashed because the water is too warm to use.
Three words for you: Blue-Green Lasers. In this case, the equivalent of a torpedo LAMS system. Once the lasers get to that spectra and get the RoF, torpedoes become far harder to utilize as an anti-ship asset. Even supercav torpedos (which would shred themselves if the bubble collapses) would be hard-pressed to make a dent in a decent LTMS system.
Eh, depends on the technological context here... which muddles everything when you get at it.
Q radar is not far enough along and EW is not as simple as that
Bassoe
Well-known member
Aircraft carriers are already a white elephant technology in peer power warfare, just use a bomb big enough that upon detonating just outside of their defenses, the tidal wave would still be sufficient to flip them like bathtub toys by the time it reached them. Of course, since peer power warfare would be 'nukes fall, everybody dies' and they're still quite useful for invading weaker, non-nuclear third world countries and transferring vast sums of taxpayer money to military-industry complex, they still get built.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
That... wouldn't really do anything to a carrier unless it happens to be near shore for some unfathomable reason. A Tsunami doesn't actually become destructive until it hits shallow water. For a carrier out at sea, a Tsunami's just a long, fast-moving ripple that has no more effect than any other swell.
Additionally, the amount of firepower needed to generate even a tiny tsunami is in the range of "Ha ha, no" for our current technology level. The 8.2 earthquake in Alaska only generated a small tsunami, yet that's the equivalent of a couple of gigatons, not something we could duplicate at our current levels.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
It is already getting some field testing, from what I can scrounge up.
During the Able and Baker tests of Operation Crossroads, the ships there were parked incredibly close to the detonations, and some 13 ships were sunk by the blasts while the rest came out of it with only large amounts of water damage and still floating. This is out of a grouping that is literally called 'the 6th largest fleet in the world' at the time. The rest were sunk by the USN via weapons fire because the ships were too contaminated.
Lesson learned? Nukes don't work well against naval ships. Period. That and German ships were damn impressive in the compartmentalization department.
It isn't that far at all and no one knows I'd they are as viable as people think they will be
Simon Darkshade
New member
The first stage would be to have a gun (rail or otherwise) that can fire further than the range of carrier based airpower or missiles and have it very cheap in comparison.
There wouldn't be any sense of triple turrets or a particular calibre, but rather what would be needed for a land attack mission of ~1200km. Said guns would be deployed in twin mounts at maximum, to fit with modern gun emplacement thinking/strategies (fewer launchers, more rounds and capacity). Therefore you could be looking at a ship with one large twin mount fore and one large twin mount aft. The gun, if not a railgun system, could be based on the US Army's Strategic Long Range Cannon, should that ever see the light of day; whilst the calibre is not currently known, we'll call it 12" for now.
Displacement is dependent on a number of factors, but it would be at least 15,000t and at most 25,000t, based on those general parameters. To that basic hull, we can then chuck on CIWS, self defence missiles, radars, possibly tactical lasers and what not. Whilst there would be no question of an old style armoured belt, there would be passive protection on the level postulated for the CGN-42 in the 70s.
Once we've created this bastard great-great grandchild of the predreadnought, then there might, might be the possibility of applying that gun technology to the surface to surface/anti-ship mission. I can't see the rebirth of armour, though, as active protection measures seem to be both cheaper and more effective against current and projected threats.
There wouldn't be any sense of triple turrets or a particular calibre, but rather what would be needed for a land attack mission of ~1200km. Said guns would be deployed in twin mounts at maximum, to fit with modern gun emplacement thinking/strategies (fewer launchers, more rounds and capacity). Therefore you could be looking at a ship with one large twin mount fore and one large twin mount aft. The gun, if not a railgun system, could be based on the US Army's Strategic Long Range Cannon, should that ever see the light of day; whilst the calibre is not currently known, we'll call it 12" for now.
Displacement is dependent on a number of factors, but it would be at least 15,000t and at most 25,000t, based on those general parameters. To that basic hull, we can then chuck on CIWS, self defence missiles, radars, possibly tactical lasers and what not. Whilst there would be no question of an old style armoured belt, there would be passive protection on the level postulated for the CGN-42 in the 70s.
Once we've created this bastard great-great grandchild of the predreadnought, then there might, might be the possibility of applying that gun technology to the surface to surface/anti-ship mission. I can't see the rebirth of armour, though, as active protection measures seem to be both cheaper and more effective against current and projected threats.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
Here's the thing, BBs won't really return. Ever. Why? Zone of Control. Unless you get literal 'it flies, it dies' and 'unless you're using exotic shit for stealth (i.e. out of phase with reality/not part of our reality levels of exotic)' technologies, aircraft carriers will rule until space warships become an actual thing.
Carriers are arleady dead to good submarine with good missiles,so rather not.Unless you made carrier with hordes of cheap drones,it would work and not be missed too much when sunked.
A 16-inch naval gun does one thing, and does it well. Aircraft on the other hand can do many things.
If you want a scenario that makes a big mobile armoured artillary platform become the ruler of the seas again... how about this:
1) Serious shortage of hydrocarbon fuels, making the power-projection capability of aircraft a very limited resource.
2) The sun starts doing some fun electro-magnetic stuff, making modern-day electronics no longer reliable. Guided missiles suddenly aren't.
3) Something, I don't know what, to make torpedo-firing submarines no longer viable.
Then you can be back to the era of honking big guns lobbing shells, and people looking through binoculars at the splashes to adjust the range.
If you want a scenario that makes a big mobile armoured artillary platform become the ruler of the seas again... how about this:
1) Serious shortage of hydrocarbon fuels, making the power-projection capability of aircraft a very limited resource.
2) The sun starts doing some fun electro-magnetic stuff, making modern-day electronics no longer reliable. Guided missiles suddenly aren't.
3) Something, I don't know what, to make torpedo-firing submarines no longer viable.
Then you can be back to the era of honking big guns lobbing shells, and people looking through binoculars at the splashes to adjust the range.