DDG(X) - Arleigh Burke Replacement

Seragina said:
Agree. Their magazines should be for selfdefense and a dozen shots for offensive; should they find themself pushed to the wall or simply having target of opportunity etc..
The main offensive magazine should be moved onto the USV/UUV that also do the ASW sensing/chasing/hunting since this is always short range.
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They would be a hell of a UUV to carry a 30-40 foot missile vertically.
 
CPS and TBMD are strategic loads and should be on designated ships. No need to have all eggs in one basket.
CPS might be better be part of a future carrier design.

Sferrin said:
They would be a hell of a UUV to carry a 30-40 foot missile vertically.
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UUV woulld be for torpedoes not VLS. I typed USV/UUV for drone ships in general as carrier of munitions.
 
A USV big enough to carry CPS or drag a towed array would probably require enough maintenance to justify a permanent crew, and exquisite weapons like CPS are probably so monetarily expensive and militarily valuable that having a crew onboard to immediately fix problems and especially to do damage control might be justified. I think the smallest viable CPS shooter would be a warship about the size of the South Korean Joint Firepower Ship concept, with a self-defense suite capable of point defense against ballistic missiles (PAC-3 level of capability).
 
The keyword is containerized. It shouldn't be hard to put something like the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) into a 40 ft ISO container. The downside is the wasteful foot print.
 
TomS said:
I think he's honestly got it backwards. Putting all those capabilities into a single hull handcuffs the commander more, because he will likely find himself wanting those capabilities in different places at the same time. CPS almost certainly has a significant *minimum* range while guns have very limited maximums. Your CPS shooters will need to sit back from their targets, which isn't compatible with many other tasks. Same applies to TBMD, which may require a ship to position itself in a specific place relative to the task force that isn't compatible with using CPS or guns.
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There is a case for guns if they can get the 5 inch HVP working and it is guided/useful for the counter missile role and it's cheap. If you had a gun delivered 50mile range counter ASM round, that would be useful.
 
Seragina said:
The keyword is containerized. It shouldn't be hard to put something like the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) into a 40 ft ISO container. The downside is the wasteful foot print.
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The army version is already containerized. You could probably launch it as is from an Independence class helo pad.
 
There is the question of you know.

Electronic Warfare Hardiness.

IE, How many drones have the Air Force gotten stolen by someone hacking the datalinkage? Know of at least 2.

As well as general security and the like.


Before adding in other NEEDS DISPLACEMENT needs.

Like Range, Big Radar, Local command and control* cause back seat admiraling never turns out well, among other deals.

*people underestimate how often satcomms just straight up eat shit and die due to weather or someone messing up a rolename. Before adding in enemy action, so most smart militaries perfer having a unit command and control be with the unit.
 
Just remember, if you’ve taken a certain color pill or have drunk enough kool-aid, it’s not difficult - once you’ve fully bought into space based MTI for all targets and are in the full honeymoon of orbital mechanics - to arrive at the conclusion, physics, chemistry, rocketry and horizons being what they are, that the best location for sensors and kinetic effectors to protect ships from advanced peer hypersonics, FOBS or BMs is not on the ship itself - although something like a BBG(X) should be able to reasonable defend its bubble in a totally denied comms environment - but in space.

Brilliant, eh Pebbles?
 
Sferrin said:
But then if you stick your CPS cells on their own, lightly armed ships then they'll need escorts too. . .

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Why? They have a reach of 2000+ miles. What is going to reach them?

And even if we assume that is the case…there is a lot more flexibility and options if you don’t collocate those two completely different mission and weapons sets.
 
EmoBirb said:
USVs are supplements, not replacements. And they certainly should not be seen as high end platforms or replace the same. Because that just won't work out. Also UUVs are far more promising imo.
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I'm getting to the point of thinking that UxVs should be considered the low end ships in a hi-low mix.



Josh_TN said:
BBGX still dies by 2029 at the latest, if only for purely political reasons.
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It may get walked back to 20-25ktons instead of 35+, but it's going to get built.

Again, the USN requires Flagships, both AAW flag and Numbered Fleet flag.



Sferrin said:
They would be a hell of a UUV to carry a 30-40 foot missile vertically.
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If you're talking about 16 of those, you'd be looking at 41 for Freedom sized. 6800 tons on the small end, 8400 on the big end.



Josh_TN said:
Why? They have a reach of 2000+ miles. What is going to reach them?
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And carriers have a reach of 800-1000nmi, or will once the FAXX and big UCAV are in service.
 
So now theres 128 amidships? I guess that section can stretch to fit the current preferred BBG-ish concept. I hope it also has enough generation capacity for the lasers that you cant identify in pictures.
 
Scott Kenny said:
It may get walked back to 20-25ktons instead of 35+, but it's going to get built.

Again, the USN requires Flagships, both AAW flag and Numbered Fleet flag.
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15,000 ton DDGX *was* the flagship and IMO that is what the USN falls back on, unless it only wants three destroyers again.
 
Once you get over 10,000 tons these days, it is time to drop the notion its a destroyer and just accept it is in fact a cruiser.
 
MadRat said:
Once you get over 10,000 tons these days, it is time to drop the notion its a destroyer and just accept it is in fact a cruiser.
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Naming doesn't matter and has no practical use. The Navy will call it a destroyer if they feel like it, or a battleship, or a dreadnought or a ship of the line.
 
Josh_TN said:
15,000 ton DDGX *was* the flagship and IMO that is what the USN falls back on, unless it only wants three destroyers again.
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15K could actually end up too modest, given what they seemingly want to get out of a modern large surface combatant.
 
EmoBirb said:
15K could actually end up too modest, given what they seemingly want to get out of a modern large surface combatant.
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Well,modern trend for distributed combat capability across the ship("survivability islands") does appear to greatly increase displacement for given capability.
Like, twice.

DDGX already appears wildly optimistic - just compare it with new italian ship, with just 80(+8) cells.

Overall, italian navy appears to be a sort of referense to what US "wanted to be" - corresponding DDGX and FFGX; even a "desired" heavy green water combatant.
 
EmoBirb said:
Naming doesn't matter and has no practical use. The Navy will call it a destroyer if they feel like it, or a battleship, or a dreadnought or a ship of the line.
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Naming is useful in so far as it reflects doctrine and intended use. If national doctrine has a place for something called a 'great grey war canoe', it's reasonable to suppose that a ship called a 'great grey war canoe' is intended to occupy that niche. Trying to define it consistently based on displacement, length, VLS count, or any other quantity, is almost certainly futile.

The most recent definition of a capital ship in international law appears to be in the Second London Naval Treaty. Attempting to apply that leads to the conclusion that the US currently has three capital ships of sub-category (a) in service, and twelve of sub-category (b) under construction. That is to say, three battleships and twelve heavy cruisers. Which is of course absurd for about a dozen reasons.
 
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Josh_TN said:
15,000 ton DDGX *was* the flagship and IMO that is what the USN falls back on, unless it only wants three destroyers again.
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15k wasn't big enough to have the AAW missiles, gun, and CPS missiles. All their designs ended up as either gun or CPS tubes.

So now we're up to probably ~20k to hold the desired AAW load, gun and CPS.
 
Scott Kenny said:
15k wasn't big enough to have the AAW missiles, gun, and CPS missiles. All their designs ended up as either gun or CPS tubes.

So now we're up to probably ~20k to hold the desired AAW load, gun and CPS.
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Pointless to put CPS on the same platform, but fine, 20,000 if the USN eat one stupid about it. CPS was an option being explore for DDGX not a hard requirement, and quite honestly the gun seems perfectly pointless on an ABM/Command ship.
 
Josh_TN said:
Pointless to put CPS on the same platform, but fine, 20,000 if the USN eat one stupid about it. CPS was an option being explore for DDGX not a hard requirement, and quite honestly the gun seems perfectly pointless on an ABM/Command ship.
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CPS plus Tomahawks can make for an aggressive attack at 1000nmi.

The gun is for HVPs and AA, much more than for shore bombardment.
 
Scott Kenny said:
15k wasn't big enough to have the AAW missiles, gun, and CPS missiles. All their designs ended up as either gun or CPS tubes.

So now we're up to probably ~20k to hold the desired AAW load, gun and CPS.
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Two tranches. One loses the gun and gets CPS for long range attack. The other loses the CPS for the gun and gets HVPs. They work in pairs.
 
Training_Dummy said:
Just remember, if you’ve taken a certain color pill or have drunk enough kool-aid, it’s not difficult - once you’ve fully bought into space based MTI for all targets and are in the full honeymoon of orbital mechanics - to arrive at the conclusion, physics, chemistry, rocketry and horizons being what they are, that the best location for sensors and kinetic effectors to protect ships from advanced peer hypersonics, FOBS or BMs is not on the ship itself - although something like a BBG(X) should be able to reasonable defend its bubble in a totally denied comms environment - but in space.

Brilliant, eh Pebbles?
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Yeah, I think that's where we are headed. Cost to orbit has already gone down a couple orders of magnitude since Brilliant Pebbles was proposed, and is going to go down one or two more in the near future when Starship is up and running. When you can lift a one-ton weapon into orbit for $10k-100k, that changes things, and not just for defense. Why build ~$40M CPS missiles when you can strike with an even faster weapon that is far cheaper? It will probably get to the point where it is less expensive to park the entire arsenal of strike weapons in orbit than it is to ship, store, and maintain them all around the world, much less how much it costs to operate the warships and warplanes that deliver non-orbital weapons to their target.

The first nation to build something like Brilliant Pebbles is going to have veto power over their adversaries ever launching anything into orbit. IMO, it is inevitable someone will do it, the only question is who.
 
CastleBravo said:
Yeah, I think that's where we are headed. Cost to orbit has already gone down a couple orders of magnitude since Brilliant Pebbles was proposed, and is going to go down one or two more in the near future when Starship is up and running. When you can lift a one-ton weapon into orbit for $10k-100k, that changes things, and not just for defense. Why build ~$40M CPS missiles when you can strike with an even faster weapon that is far cheaper? It will probably get to the point where it is less expensive to park the entire arsenal of strike weapons in orbit than it is to ship, store, and maintain them all around the world, much less how much it costs to operate the warships and warplanes that deliver non-orbital weapons to their target.
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I mean, I do expect the Golden Dome orbital units to have a surface strike dart, as a response to anyone doing a laser-blind, EM attack with a Maser pulse, or maybe even cyber attack if the surface source could be identified.
 
Scott Kenny said:
CPS plus Tomahawks can make for an aggressive attack at 1000nmi.

The gun is for HVPs and AA, much more than for shore bombardment.
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Except, 5" rate of fire is quite limiting for AA role... and the AAW Commander should generally avoid compromising its own mission to launch a strike (or to host the strike missiles gor that matter).
Kat Tsun said:
Two tranches. One loses the gun and gets CPS for long range attack. The other loses the CPS for the gun and gets HVPs. They work in pairs.
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I agree, but it doesn't need to be just two tranches. AAW and BMD could have differences if necessary, or might have advantages with a common ship for both overlapping missions. Especially now that ASBMs are a thing. Maybe AAW is the cruiser?

The CPS destroyer doesnt need as big a radar, accomodation for flag staff, or as many VLS. It could probably benefit from PVLS to contribute armouring outside the CPS silos, and you probably dont want to lose all the VLS amidships when the CPS replaced them. They have to go amidships because thats the modular design, keeping most remaining spaces identical if possible.
CastleBravo said:
Yeah, I think that's where we are headed. Cost to orbit has already gone down a couple orders of magnitude since Brilliant The first nation to build something like Brilliant Pebbles is going to have veto power over their adversaries ever launching anything into orbit. IMO, it is inevitable someone will do it, the only question is who.
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Space based lasers would also be a veto on brilliant pebbles.
 
Preparing for a Large Regional Conflict across wide areas requires the ability to sustain long range & lengthy engagements.
It has been repeated accessed that missile magazines are shallow, run out quickly and that shortfall will remain so. Mass fast missile production is difficult, although Western missile production rates continue to rise.

Ships only fitted to defend themselves, literally defines the self licking ice cream cone, much like a CVN equipped largely w aircraft dedicated to fleet defense are self licking ice cream cones.

Large surface combatants not equipped to prevail in the counter-Anti- access/area denial strategy facilitating early entry ground forces maneuver are self lacking ice cream cones.

The current European front has displayed the very lacking Western artillery rd production capabilities.

If one doesn't even have the floating gun platforms to deliver precision artillery barrages over a sustained period one is even further behind. Literally., in a day, one is a day late & and many dollars short.
 
Scott Kenny said:
CPS plus Tomahawks can make for an aggressive attack at 1000nmi.
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Those two weapons have nothing in common and would work horribly together. Tomahawk has a range a thousand miles if it flies a high profile; CPD has a range likely well in excess of 2000 and I bet it minimum range is mid to high hundreds. The range band in which they overlap is probably fleetingly small.

There is no reason to put dedicated strike cells on an escort/command ship outside of ten year old “look, cool!” Factor. All you are doing is adding a new mission to a ship that already will not exist in adequate numbers for no tactical or strategic reason whatsoever.


Scott Kenny said:
The gun is for HVPs and AA, much more than for shore bombardment.
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Is there any USN program of record for HVAP as an AA projectiles? Because otherwise the gun is Zoomie level useless.
 
jsport said:
Ships only fitted to defend themselves, literally defines the self licking ice cream cone, much like a CVN equipped largely w aircraft dedicated to fleet defense are self licking ice cream cones.

Large surface combatants not equipped to prevail in the counter-Anti- access/area denial strategy facilitating early entry ground forces maneuver are self lacking ice cream cones.
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USN ships have been almost exclusively escorts with little offensive capabilities going back to WWII, where even the fast BBs were effectively escorts against other BBs and additional flak batteries rather than independent assets. Post war, the USN basically adopted an all DDG navy of escorts. They change size and shape, but their role has pretty much always been “self licking ice cream cone”, for the sake of defending other units that actually delivered naval power and policy.

If you are planning to use large surface ships as offensive platforms you are simply planning to fail.



jsport said:
If one doesn't even have the floating gun platforms to deliver precision artillery barrages over a sustained period one is even further behind. Literally., in a day, one is a day late & and many dollars short.
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Floating gun platforms are almost pointless and certainly not cost effective and that has been the case for most of a century.
 
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DJB said:
Except, 5" rate of fire is quite limiting for AA role... and the AAW Commander should generally avoid compromising its own mission to launch a strike (or to host the strike missiles gor that matter).
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If pK of guided projectile can approach missile(why it shouldn't?), then it's up to debate. 5" ROF is in fact significant, and it isn't limited like VLS by firing cycle delays
 
Ainen said:
If pK of guided projectile can approach missile(why it shouldn't?), then it's up to debate. 5" ROF is in fact significant, and it isn't limited like VLS by firing cycle delays
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See what I posted earlier. I have doubts 5inch or 155mm (155mm may work with a novel design) will be good at AAW with the HVP projectile due to insufficient speed and also due to lower divert capability.
 
Ainen said:
If pK of guided projectile can approach missile(why it shouldn't?), then it's up to debate. 5" ROF is in fact significant, and it isn't limited like VLS by firing cycle delays
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I think current 5” is 20/min; hard to imagine a VLS does worse. If HVAP can push the range and probability of intercept out *while maintaining a much lower cost* it might be useful; the baseline 5” certainly is not.

I think an argument coined made for more VLS instead and figuring out a cheaper missile to put it them.
 
Josh_TN said:
I think current 5” is 20/min; hard to imagine a VLS does worse. If HVAP can push the range and probability of intercept out *while maintaining a much lower cost* it might be useful; the baseline 5” certainly is not.

I think an argument coined made for more VLS instead and figuring out a cheaper missile to put it them.
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Something like an 200mm gun shooting 125mm diameter missiles would be very interesting. Basically get rid of the missile first stage and hopefully get something like 1.2 kps velocity out of it. Then have the ram jets kick in for the remainder (the nozzles can be slightly proud of the body in sabot space between the body and the barrel). That should get you quite good range, allow you to use a slower burning sustainer motor, and replaces what should be (with modern electronics) the most expensive part of the missile.

But the current BAE HVP out of a 5inch gun, I have doubts we will get more than ~20 miles of AAW range out of it while having worse pK at the same range. I hope they are at least able to put a terminal IR or active radar seeker on it.
 
ROF of 5 inch/54 Mark 42 is 28 rounds per minute. ROF of 5 inch/62 Mark 45 Mod 4 is 20 rounds per minute. The 20 rounds is the autoloader capacity. Once exhausted it depends on hand loading to sustain fire. Your gun crew can reload that initial 20 rounds and be ready to upload on the next target at its maximum ROF.

Mark 45 mod 4 uses a modified flat-panel gun turret, designed to reduce its radar signature. Otherwise it only enjoys the higher caliber over previous mods and Mark 42. It originally was planned to utilize the Mark 171 Extended Range Guided Munition (ERGM), which like many other incredibly effective things was canceled. But now there was the Mach 3 Gun-Launched Guided Projectile (GLGP) deployed in testing that was substantially better and highly cost effective for taking out drones, boats, and aircraft. Of course it was canceled and they went back to Hyper Velocity Projectile (HVP) research that relies on a sabot-type smart round based on a proven non-cost effective round. Makes you wonder how these decision makers continue to impede progress.
 
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