Commanding the Seas: A Plan to Reinvigorate US Navy Surface Warfare

bobbymike

bobbymike

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http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2014/11/commanding-the-seas-a-plan-to-reinvigorate-u-s-navy-surface-warfare/


Good report calling for more surface ship strike capability.
 
Interesting, but as always, some times the wishes not really meet the reality.

Just one point, grabbed hastily:

-Then Navy should install lasers on Flight III. Arliegh Burke-class destroyers: Yepp, if the USN get a useable Laser-based CIWS, then they will probably do it anyway. But currently there is no combat-ready laser CIWS, and they only test a relatively small power (~30kW level) LAWS system, capable of destroy non-maneuvering small UAV-s and zodiacs. This kind of firepower is a long shot from the current CIWS systems...

-The same for the EMRG (Electro-Magnetic Rail-Gun) systems. The Zumwalt-class originally planned to get such system, but the technology is not ready, and especially not nearly combat-ready - not even now, when the first Zumwalt is nearly completed. If the EMRG's become a mature system, then most probably the Zumwalt-class get their EMRG's.

The USN has actually plan to implement the energy weapons for the next generation of the ships (CG-21, DD-21, FFG-21, etc.), but in the 1990's they got overly optimistic development schedules from the contractors, and then, they forced to move toward the conservative type of weapons, because simply the energy weapons will not ready when the ships are. Remember, the Zumwalt-class (ex-DD(X), ex-DD-21) originally planned with EMRG and Laser-based CIWS! Blaming the NAVY for not having plan how they build the new (and currently not battle-ready) energy weapons into their ships is a bit weird...
 
https://news.usni.org/2016/03/30/navy-awards-flight-iia-ddg-51s-to-ingalls-biw-flight-iii-set-for-later-in-fy16
 
Cifu said:
-The same for the EMRG (Electro-Magnetic Rail-Gun) systems. The Zumwalt-class originally planned to get such system, but the technology is not ready, and especially not nearly combat-ready - not even now, when the first Zumwalt is nearly completed. If the EMRG's become a mature system, then most probably the Zumwalt-class get their EMRG's.
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The Zumwalts were never intended to get railguns right out of the gate. (They were suppose to have the vertical firing modular cannon.) And they'll be in service for decades yet. They'll probably be the first ships to receive them.

Cifu said:
Remember, the Zumwalt-class (ex-DD(X), ex-DD-21) originally planned with EMRG and Laser-based CIWS!
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Source?
 
sferrin said:
Cifu said:
-The same for the EMRG (Electro-Magnetic Rail-Gun) systems. The Zumwalt-class originally planned to get such system, but the technology is not ready, and especially not nearly combat-ready - not even now, when the first Zumwalt is nearly completed. If the EMRG's become a mature system, then most probably the Zumwalt-class get their EMRG's.
Click to expand...

The Zumwalts were never intended to get railguns right out of the gate. (They were suppose to have the vertical firing modular cannon.) And they'll be in service for decades yet. They'll probably be the first ships to receive them.

Cifu said:
Remember, the Zumwalt-class (ex-DD(X), ex-DD-21) originally planned with EMRG and Laser-based CIWS!
Click to expand...

Source?
Click to expand...

Not expecting an answer since Cifu was posting over a year ago. But I was working for the program office in the mid-1990s, and your statement matches my memory. Railguns and lasers were always in the growth path for DD(X)/DD-21, but never for the initial build.

Vertical Gun for Advanced Ships (VGAS) was the initial plan, but then Congress insisted on trainable guns, so we got AGS instead. On the surface, a trainable gun makes sense because it should allow AGS to engage close-by surface or air targets or fall back on Army-style 155mm artillery rounds. But as it turned out, the only round for AGS is the LRLAP land-attack guided rocket-propelled round, so AGS's ability to engage other targets isn't great. In the end, VGAS would have been mechanically simpler for essentially the same capability. And it would have been much easier to apply to other ships.
 
The round problem with AGS is a result of cost-cutting and the truncation of the Zumwalt program, if we were actually building 30+ of the class there would have (at some point) been a non-LRLAP for non-bombardment missions. VGAS would have required guided rounds for all missions, which admittedly seems less daunting in 2016 than it did in the 90s. But VGAS never really sat well with me so I just may be biased.
 
Moose said:
The round problem with AGS is a result of cost-cutting and the truncation of the Zumwalt program, if we were actually building 30+ of the class there would have (at some point) been a non-LRLAP for non-bombardment missions. VGAS would have required guided rounds for all missions, which admittedly seems less daunting in 2016 than it did in the 90s. But VGAS never really sat well with me so I just may be biased.
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Yeah, I can see the case that way too. But unguided rounds for AGS got cut before they went all the way down to three ships. You'd hope it would come back at some point, but I'm not convinced. There were some odd parochial objection to just adopting Army rounds -- I don't think AGS could even chamber an M795 [HE round] at this point, even if you created a separate cased propellant charge.

I think the ideal solution would have been VGAS plus a simple medium caliber (127mm, or even 76mm or 57mm) for air and surface engagements. That's what a lot of the early DD-21 concept designs showed.
 
Possibly, I would have liked to see a couple Spruance retirees used to test the various options before committing. But that early 2000s DoD hated test ships almost as much as they loved blowing up Spru-cans.
 
Moose said:
Possibly, I would have liked to see a couple Spruance retirees used to test the various options before committing. But that early 2000s DoD hated test ships almost as much as they loved blowing up Spru-cans.
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Not much is sadder than seeing a Spruance, complete with VLS system, going to the bottom:



Bet they wish they were sitting in mothballs about now instead of at the bottom of the ocean.
 
Moose said:
Possibly, I would have liked to see a couple Spruance retirees used to test the various options before committing. But that early 2000s DoD hated test ships almost as much as they loved blowing up Spru-cans.
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Yeah, that was pretty maddening to watch.
 
TomS said:
Vertical Gun for Advanced Ships (VGAS) was the initial plan, but then Congress insisted on trainable guns, so we got AGS instead. On the surface, a trainable gun makes sense because it should allow AGS to engage close-by surface or air targets or fall back on Army-style 155mm artillery rounds. But as it turned out, the only round for AGS is the LRLAP land-attack guided rocket-propelled round, so AGS's ability to engage other targets isn't great. In the end, VGAS would have been mechanically simpler for essentially the same capability. And it would have been much easier to apply to other ships.
Click to expand...
I vaguely remember an issue that the vertical guns had something like a 15nmi minimum range? So you'd have to have both the vertical gun for long range and a not-particularly-stealthy turreted gun for close range. Which was more expensive than Congress wanted to pay for, not to mention takes up more space in the hull that the Navy needs to deal with.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I vaguely remember an issue that the vertical guns had something like a 15nmi minimum range? So you'd have to have both the vertical gun for long range and a not-particularly-stealthy turreted gun for close range. Which was more expensive than Congress wanted to pay for, not to mention takes up more space in the hull that the Navy needs to deal with.
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Yes, I think that was an argument made. But without a dedicated antiship round, AGS firing LRLAP has pretty much the same minimum anyway.

Ships do not need continuous gun coverage anyway. A couple of secondary battery guns are sufficient. This was not really spelled out when VGAS was replaced by AGS, but as designed, DD-21 was fine with 30-40mm guns for small-boat defense. (57mm was a brief excursion so that they would not have the field the new 40mm mount originally in the design.)
 
@TomS Too bad they never did the Vertical Gun in a Trident tube for the Ohio SSGNs. 2x-4x per boat would have made for some very happy SEALs when they needed fire support! Pretty sure that the "deck guns" would need to be parked in the tubes at the sub center of gravity, probably tubes 11-14.

Wish I still had that CD I found from LockMart, video showing 4x Cormorant drones at 1 per tube, N-ATACMS at 3 per tube, and Tomahawks at 7 per tube, all in the tubes of an SSGN. and all in action smiting a SCUD battery.

A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
I know an ERFB and what looks to be a cargo round was proposed for AGS, although I don't know how much development was done.

View attachment 715328
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I'm assuming that the super long shell in the middle is the LRLAP, round second to the right is the ERFB, and round on the farthest right is the cargo shell? Are the 2nd and 3rd from the left 5" shells? And what's that on the far left?

What's that mount behind the shells? a stealthy 30mm Mk38 mount?
 
Scott Kenny said:
I'm assuming that the super long shell in the middle is the LRLAP, round second to the right is the ERFB, and round on the farthest right is the cargo shell? Are the 2nd and 3rd from the left 5" shells? And what's that on the far left?
Click to expand...

The 2nd and 3rd from the left are the 5" Multi-Service Standard Guided Projectile (MS-SGP), with sabots prior to firing and with fins deployed after firing, the thing of the far left is APKWS.

Scott Kenny said:
What's that mount behind the shells? a stealthy 30mm Mk38 mount?
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Didn't know initially, managed to find an article with an image of the same exposition stall, describing it as a "Next Generation" Mk 38 mount with a 30mm cannon and 7.62mm machine gun.
 
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Scott Kenny said:
What's that mount behind the shells? a stealthy 30mm Mk38 mount?
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Yep. It's basically the Israeli Typhoon, which was being pitched as Mk 38 Mod 3 but was not adopted in this form. BAE does provide the actual Mod 3,.but it is a 25mm gun without this low RCS housing. Mod 4 is a 30mm mount but not this specific design (It's the MSI-DS Seahawk).
 

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