SAM-N-8 Zeus

[Dilandu]

Well, the right to suicide against Terrier/Talos is everyone's inalienable right.
The problem of course was that it's a right, not obligation. Soviet Naval Aviation stopped using both around 1960-61, because in the missile era it was just pointless.

So you admit, that Zeus could not solve even that problem. Then the question is: what exactly Zeus is supposed to do?

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

Independent action assumes being able to deal with situations brought in by such action(cruising). Surface action is of course not a requirement, but it's one of the kind. Given the scenario(early 1960s) we in fact can encounter 3:
-surface action, probably quite sudden;
-coastal bombardment;
-sudden short-range encounter with a surfaced submarine

All of which the Albany can do. Submarines will be detected at long-range by SQS-23, and killed ASROC (and in any case the largest deck guns for Soviet submarines were 57mm), enemy surface combatants can be detected at long range by SPS-10, and killed by Talos and Tartar, and given that this is the 1960s, shore targets would be dealt with by nuclear-tipped Talos. You seem to think that these engagements will be like the Second World War, but the technology, tactics and equipment involved have changed to make this impossible.

Albany is not well suited to those; Albany can't really protect itself from a low-altitude attack, and is rather easily saturable even at the moment of its introduction, because a single tartar per side isn't a lot.

It has can use both Tartar and Talos at close range, these ships were equipped with CW illuminators for this reason.

Much smaller and lighter contemporary Soviet ships had more, much faster channels of fire for self-defense.

Contemporary Soviet ships had fewer fire channels, Kynda only had a single SA-3 launcher, with a single illuminator.

Seeking surface engagement against an opponent(often faster) not seeking surface engagement while happily emitting is at best a questionable approach, as it'll warn the (usually faster and lighter) Soviet forces of surface presence.

Hence the shore-based direction finding providing their location to the Albany, with the cruiser switching on it's radars when it's in position to start the engagement.

At worst it'll invite Soviet naval aviation with a combined ARM and ASCM salvo. Unlike Soviet ships at sea, aviation is always happy to bring more from its airfield within a few hours; launching at cruiser for them is not a problem, but an opportunity.

In a situation like that, no ship would be operating independently. The definition of a ship that can conduct independent operations is not the definition of a ship that can face down an entire opponent's force single-handedly. Not even a Ticonderoga is capable of that, and it would not be used in that way. Sailing Frigates were considered capable of independent action, it did not mean that they were expected to face an entire enemy battle-line and come off better.

Or awaken Soviet SSGNs, which at this point already exist in serious numbers.

None of them are capable of launching a salvo that can over-saturate an Albany, except perhaps the small number of Charlie class submarines in service at the end of the 1960s, and only because they're weapons are a pop-up threat that can only be dealt with by Tartar. This is not the case with the Echoes and their SS-N-3s

Talos, except for missiles immediately on the launchers, requires fuelling, and its missiles have a big dead zone. It's really an Area denial weapon at its purest.
Terier is better, but still has the same restrictions.
Tartar is much better - but until Albany it isn't a cruiser weapon, and on Albany, it's again only a single mark 11 per side.

You don't know what you're talking about.

Talos has CW homing for low-altitude close-range targets, see the JPL papers on this. The launchers aren't the important bit, the illuminators are. An Albany can point four SPG-49s and two SPG-51s at any target in a broadside bearing, and two of each on forward and aft bearings. That's between four and six fire channels, and even against targets at close range with little warning, Tartar will likely get off multiple salvoes.

Manned guns(we're operating at wartime, 1 mount is probably manned 24/7; and if we expect action - all are, if there is more than 1) can open fire immediately - as they often did during ww2, even when the action begins as a confused ambush.

So can manned missile systems, and they will score crippling hits in the first salvo.

One of the most likely kinds of surface action since ww2 is always exactly a violent and rather sudden event(often in heavy weather or at night - or, since we're talking about Soviet Union - both together in a nice winter arctic ice storm at a sea state 999), not a lazy exchange of fire.

I'm aware, and only one of the sides in this confrontation had significant experience of night surface actions. Both sides will make extensive use of airpower, shore-based direction finding and surface plots before a surface engagement. Both sides are likely to be aware of each others presence, and so both will be prepared for action. They will attempt to conduct actions based on the information surface plots, not actively emitting until they think they are in position to conduct an ambush, before immediately disengaging, much like the British at Matapan. An Albany in this situation could get of a crippling salvo.

There is no such thing in missile era, especially in late 1950s-early 60s. Missiles will work even if someone will for some reason decide to not immediately put out their shiny tactical nuclear warheads, which literally every US/Soviet missile ship has onboard.

So you start this conversation by criticising the value of all-missile ships, and now extoll the virtue of those very same missiles?

Thus, IMHO, while Albany and Long Beach are indeed optimal CSG screen linchpins for the era - they are most definitely not built for independent cruising operations in high threat environment - they require screen and some forewarning.

Read the US Navy requirements for the Albany-class, and find out what independent operations are, I can assure you that they are absolutely capable of it.

 

[Ainen]

So you admit, that Zeus could not solve even that problem. Then the question is: what exactly Zeus is supposed to do?

Is it some sort of TV debate where I have to admit something under laugh, or shall I verbally catch you for every single statement you make? There is a whole bucket to work with from the previous page alone. We can have this chat this way if you want.

Soviet-style high-altitude torpedo bombing wasn't used in practice against modern warships, and IIRC wasn't used much at all in actual combat, except the Taiwan strait(by PLANAF) - with some, but not excessive results, against not exactly the most capable targets.

Zeus is better - an order of magnitude better - at dealing with anything than the normal medium-caliber AA barrage, as used by most of the fleet.
This certainly includes bomber formations making RAT passes. More importantly - it most certainly proposes a self-defense layer wastly better than the 5"/38 mounts the 1st generation missile cruisers retained.

 

[Ainen]

All of which the Albany-can do. Submarines will be detected at long-range by SQS-23, and killed ASROC (and in any case the largest deck guns for Soviet submarines were 57mm), enemy surface combatants can be detected at long range by SPS-10, and killed by Talos and Tartar, and given that this is the 1960s, shore targets would be dealt with by nuclear-tipped Talos. You seem to think that these engagements will be like the Second World War, but the technology, tactics and equipment involved have changed to make this impossible.

Surfaced submarine won't be detected by active sonar, and the most straightforward way to kill it is not ASROC, but simply shooting at it. Straightforward solutions are the best.

If there is a rather obvious approaching SPS-10 - it is unlikely to ever detect anything "at long range" - cruiser will be either avoided or engaged from OtH. Both are mission failures， the second one is a potential catastrophe. The main protection of any surface combatant is the ambiguity of its position&incomplete situational picture in the vastness of the sea for the enemy.

Experience from both the exercises, CW "games" and even actual combat events (Sidra gulf) has shown that much less in 1960s, even by the very end of the Cold War, surface engagement still can begin point-blank, even at peacetime when much later ships are free to emit happily with no consequences.

Whatever the case - we can simply say from afterknowledge, that after a short while - proper guns had to be urgently returned to US&Soviet warships. The mistake of deleting them wasn't necessary in the first place - in fact, happy missile superpowers were the only ones to make it.

You don't know what you're talking about.

Talos has CW homing for low-altitude close-range targets, see the JPL papers on this. The launchers aren't the important bit, the illuminators are. An Albany can point four SPG-49s and two SPG-51s at any target in a broadside bearing, and two of each on forward and aft bearings. That's between four and six fire channels, and even against targets at close range with little warning, Tartar will likely get off multiple salvoes.

Close range is how close? For a two-stage missile with an uncontrolled acceleration phase. So let us put SPG-49s out of the equation right from the beginning, we're specifically talking about situations where it may be too late for them - and why tartar is there.

Nuclear-tipped missiles are catastrophic - sure(though they're never the first option on the rail, and there are limitations to them) - but conventional ones may or may not be as effective. Even Talos with its heavy warhead still has a very dedicated anti-air warhead(especially later) - and if the first salvo is not an immediate success - it may be a disaster. Automatic 8" guns in this situation, will be firing more powerful 8" salvoes (let's say 4 150 kg dedicated anti-ship warheads per salvo) at 10-12 rpm. Even at 2-4 barrels, that's a burning wreck out of anything other than battleship before the second Talos is loaded.

Furthermore - for single-ended cruisers, Talos/Terier are there as well. They are just having both, not one.
p.s. yes, while I certainly can't count dishes and don't know what they're for - just can't help but wonder, why massive successes weren't repeated, and quite soon started being replaced by much lower-ranged combatants with half the number of channels. Armed with 2 gun turrets, which simply could've been kept without a break in the 1960s.

I'm aware, and only one of the sides in this confrontation had significant experience of night surface actions. Both sides will make extensive use of airpower, shore-based direction finding and surface plots before a surface engagement. Both sides are likely to be aware of each others presence, and so both will be prepared for action. They will attempt to conduct actions based on the information surface plots, not actively emitting until they think they are in position to conduct an ambush, before immediately disengaginh, much like the British at Matapan. An Albany in this situation could get of a crippling salvo.

Yes, indeed, this very picture.

The problem is that everyone wants to be British at Matapan; yet sometimes we end up being Allies at Savo, Japanese at Esperance, or American at 1st Guadalcanal. Shit happens at sea - sometimes we're a very experienced Australian crew routinely inspecting some weirdly acting merchantmen, but what can possibly go wrong.

Plots don't resolve the situation completely - the stronger the opponent and the better is he at interfering with the reconnaissance - the harder is it to gain a complete and recent enough picture.
And, as was mentioned before - the reasons gun turrets were reinstated(and still have to be retained to this day, when our information-gathering capability has grown to levels incomprehensible back then - like, well beyond 1960s sci-fi) were and remain straightforward.

Retention of 6"-8" battery through keeping it effective for the main perceived problem(air attack) allows a possible path around the actually taken path (wrong one, as it appeared) - with potentially much better CIWS capability(similar to modern Italian STRALES), developed much earlier.

So you start this conversation by criticising the value of all-missile ships, and now extoll the virtue of those very same missiles?

I criticize all-missile ships; certainly I don't criticize missiles and their effects on warfare, it would be stupid. If anything, perceived effectiveness at Zeus development path relies precisely on the effect the long range surface to air missiles provide.

In a way, what I am doing is trying being smart later, knowing that very soon after we had to come to installing guns back anyway.
And because this is indeed rather mean of me - I simply suggest that Zeus could be a path to not making this mistake for the USN.
A path, sadly perhaps, not taken.

Was it a completely unavoidable mistake? I don't think so - precisely because UK&European navies didn't make it. Only the US and Soviet Union did. So quite a few navies managed to avoid it even back then - perhaps due to their limited access to new shinies in late 1950s, but still.

Read the US Navy requirements for the Albany-class, and find out what independent operations are, I can assure you that they are absolutely capable of it.

Thanks, I did read a book or two in the passing. And conclusion, supported by their modifications and career paths, was that they really weren't what they wanted them to be - leading to the end of this specific type of ship.
Importantly for our discussion, when the time came later to refit ships for that very independent operations capability in the late 1970s - not just the gun, but specifically 8" gun was in the midst of the debate.
So - with Zeus - why lose it in the first place?

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

Surfaced submarine won't be detected by active sonar, and the most straightforward way to kill it is not ASROC, but simply shooting at it. Straightforward solutions are the best.

If sonars like SQS-26 can detect surface ships "under-the-horizon" then it is likely that SQS-23 could do the same with surfaced submarines, although SPS-10 could also do the same.

Whatever the case - we can simply say from afterknowledge, that after a short while - proper guns had to be urgently returned to US&Soviet warships. The mistake of deleting them wasn't necessary in the first place - in fact, happy missile superpowers were the only ones to make it.

Notably these guns were circa 5-inch, not 8-inch guns.

Nuclear-tipped missiles are catastrophic - sure(though they're never the first option on the rail, and there are limitations to them) - but conventional ones may or may not be as effective. Even Talos with its heavy warhead still has a very dedicated anti-air warhead(especially later) - and if the first salvo is not an immediate success - it may be a disaster. Automatic 8" guns in this situation, will be firing more powerful 8" salvoes (let's say 4 150 kg dedicated anti-ship warheads per salvo) at 10-12 rpm. Even at 2-4 barrels, that's a burning wreck out of anything other than battleship before the second Talos is loaded.

The first salvo of Talos would very likely have crippled the target.

Furthermore - for single-ended cruisers, Talos/Terier are there as well. They are just having both, not one.
p.s. yes, while I certainly can't count dishes and don't know what they're for - just can't help but wonder, why massive successes weren't repeated, and quite soon started being replaced by much lower-ranged combatants with half the number of channels.

Single-end ships reduce the amount of fire channels and number of missiles which can be fired. When the Soviet air threat is rapidly increasing in scale that is unacceptable.

The reason why the Albany-class weren't followed up is a combination of Polaris competing for funds, Typhon (which included similarly long-ranged missiles, albeit smaller in size) being a technical failure.

The shift to lower-range weapons was the result of pop-up threats requiring faster reacting weapons. Not a problem in the 1950s when the SCB-173 conversions are being drawn up. As for number of firing channels, the intention of both Typhon and Aegis was to greatly increase that number. What limited number of successors were built, until Aegis, were only built in very limited number because of the limitations of the 3-T missile system compared to late 1960s and early 1970s threats.

Plots don't resolve the situation completely - the stronger the opponent and the better is he at interfering with the reconnaissance - the harder is it to gain a complete and recent enough picture.

This doesn't prevent the ship from operating independently though, and gun armed ship would have all of the same problems (and like other gun-armed conversions, possible worse ASW as well).

And, as was mentioned before - the reasons gun turrets were reinstated(and still have to be retained to this day, when our information-gathering capability has grown to levels incomprehensible back then - like, well beyond 1960s sci-fi) were and remain straightforward.

Said guns were not included to fight night surface actions with enemy surface combatants. They were included to conduct shore bombardments in Limited Wars. We are talking about, in the vast majority of cases, a single mounting, at most two, with a single circa-5-inch gun, usually capable of firing at 20 rounds a minute, certainly no more than 40, and rarely greater than than. That's a capability more comparable to the single 5"/38s of the Albany-class, not the 8-inch, or 6-inch and 5-inch batteries of the other cruiser conversions.

Retention of 6"-8" battery through keeping it effective for the main perceived problem(air attack) allows a possible path around the actually taken path (wrong one, as it appeared) - with potentially much better CIWS capability(similar to modern Italian STRALES), developed much earlier.

CIWS capability in the late 1940s would better be achieved through systems with much less ship impact like DACR, and into the 1960s by fast-reacting missile systems like Orange Nell and Seawolf.

I criticize all-missile ships; certainly I don't criticize missiles and their effects on warfare, it would be stupid. If anything, perceived effectiveness at Zeus development path relies precisely on the effect the long range surface to air missiles provide.

I am opposed to Zeus because we are talking about a weapon system which has vastly worse performance than Talos or Terrier, and yet has very similar ship-impact.

In a way, what I am doing is trying being smart later, knowing that very soon after we had to come to installing guns back anyway.
And because this is indeed rather mean of me - I simply suggest that Zeus could be a path to not making this mistake for the USN.
A path, sadly perhaps, not taken.

They don't re-install guns do they? Certainly not the 8-inch guns that Zeus requires.

Was it a completely unavoidable mistake? I don't think so - precisely because UK&European navies didn't make it. Only the US and Soviet Union did. So quite a few navies managed to avoid it even back then - perhaps due to their limited access to new shinies in late 1950s, but still.

The UK was certainly willing to build missile cruisers if they had the money, and if they had a useable anti-ship missiles like Blue Slug were also planning to build them as double-ended ships.

Europe was primarily to rebuild after the Second World War, they didn't have the resources to do anything other than complete existing large warships on the stocks and build new escorts. Many of them also had colonial empires to police, which unsurprisingly meant the shore bombardment capability was more important.

Thanks, I did read a book or two in the passing. And conclusion, supported by their modifications and career paths, was that they really weren't what they wanted them to be - leading to the end of this specific type of ship.
Importantly for our discussion, when the time came later to refit ships for that very independent operations capability in the late 1970s - not just the gun, but specifically 8" gun was in the midst of the debate.

They left service because the ships were at the end of their lives, operating an orphaned system used by at most seven hulls across the entire fleet.

So - with Zeus - why lose it in the first place?

In addition to the points I've made above Zeus demands limited industrial and intellectual resources to develop, in direct competition with other systems.

If you want to deal with Gorshkov's fleet, you essentially continue the 1950s strategy, or alternatively invent the 1980s Maritime Strategy early (both are fairly identical), which involve aggressive forward basing of attack carriers, and the require the development of the means to defend them, i.e. advanced fighter aircraft (i.e. F6D Missileer, F-111B and F-14) that have multi-target capability and can shoot down large numbers of bombers, and ships with systems that are hard to saturate to deal with leakers (Typhon and Aegis). The Carriers can support the northern flank of NATO, and attack Soviet shore facilities, and later their strategic nuclear forces.

 

[Scott Kenny]

GFCS tends to have lots of secondary stations - in the case of Sverdlov, it's 5 positions spread around the ship, of which two are heavily armored, and 2 more are at least splinter-proof, and will still feed some data even if their radars are out of action.
Also, I am not as optimistic about knocking out an armored ship of 15'000t with SAM warheads that fast. At least, when Tartar was considered as a specialized DP tool(instead of secondary capability) by the Germans - they wanted a HEAT bullpup warhead on it.

Terrier users did need a dedicated antiship warhead/missile. Hence Harpoons and Exocets.

Talos, however, was a 3300lb magnesium alloy airframe missile with 225lbs of TNT/RDX mix (greater HE equivalence than pure TNT and the whole airframe is not just flammable but can burn through steel given enough time) and however much ramjet fuel was remaining, impacting at Mach 2.5 or so (call it ~2600fps).

The 16" "High Capacity" HE shell from an Iowa weighed 1900lbs with 154lbs of TNT, impacting at less than 1600fps for ranges between 20,000yds and 40,000 yards.

A single unarmed Talos missile broke a DE in half, punching boilers out through the bottom!

How well would a Baltimore-class fare against a 16" HC impact? Now make that impact at better than 50% more speed with an HE+Incendiary payload that is 67% heavier than that 16" HC shell.

Who needs 8" guns when you have a missile broadly comparable to the Yamato-class 46cm guns?

 

[A_Random_Guy]

It simply wouldn't work on 1950s tech. The probability of radar even detecting something as small as shell was far too low. It would require conical scan radar to make several revolutions just to reliably be sure where exactly shell is.

A beacon in the base of the shell would allow it to be tracked even with a low RCS.

In a similar vein one idea I had for tracking the rotation was using two of the fins at right angles as dipoles (operating at different frequencies or with a different PRF or some other method to distinguish them) paired with two antennas on the ship also at right angles. When the antennas are aligned you get a maximum strength signal while when they're at 90 or 270 degrees with their paired antenna they have a minimum signal.

It's not perfect, at 180 degrees you'd also get a spike but if you have tested how many rotations it makes before signal acquisition you could possibly eliminate that 1/2 chance of triggering at the right time and thus have a system that works most of the time.

Additionally, depending on frequency used you could use these dipoles as your signal repeaters and then tracking their relative position (which one is higher, is one to the left or right of the other) you could have a far more certain way of determining orientation though this is dependent on the angular resolution of the tracking radar so with only a few inches between the two it would probably have to be done with something in X-band and preferably quite close to the firing ship.

Here’s a sketch I’ve done to illustrate the idea.



With a single dipole on the shell you can get a similar counting method but with two you can potentially get that initial orientation to aid the counting over an “informed” coin flip on the divert charge’s orientation.

 

[A_Random_Guy]

Actually, now that I think of it there's an even more basic way to track orientation.

Have a single dipole on the ship and a single dipole on the shell.

On the ship there's continuous wave broadcast through the reciever dipole and from the shell dipole at the same frequency. When the shell dipole aligns at 0 degrees you get constructive interference, increasing the peaks. When the shell dipole is at 180 degrees you get a dip in the pattern from the destructive interference.

The issue is the timing of this. You have to be quite precise to make sure they're in-phase which would be a headache.

I'm just an amature with RF engineering so if someone who knows better has any ideas that would be helpful.

 

[Firefinder]

Someone recently just posted a deep dive on Zeus Arrow on TXitter.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1777715068576076049

View: https://twitter.com/MassiasThanos/status/1777715068576076049


Turns out the navy did have Plans for a 5 inch launch version. With that being the actual ISSUE caliber and not 8 inchs.

And well... Its easier to list which classes of US surface ships that DID NOT have 5 inch guns then did.

Both the Albany and Long Beach did. So assuming that the guidence gear was small/light enough?

3 layers of guided defense are better then two, or one. Or None in the FRAMcans case.

Even with only 6 degrees of deflect capacity the US AA fire control of WW2 average around 4 or less so an ability to correct that will vastly increase the capabilities of 5 inchers against all aerial threats.

Rip picts attached for when the txits disappeared

 

[A_Random_Guy]

Someone recently just posted a deep dice on Zeus Arrow on TXitter.

I swear I could kiss you.

 

[A_Random_Guy]

From the links included in the Tweet

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/trecms/pdf/AD1214394.pdf
"A Comparative Study of XRAT and XRAM Guidance Systems Being Developed For The Angled Arrow Projectile"

May 23, 1950

This dives into two methods they looked at to track the angular motion of the Zeus shells and their control mechanisms. These, as the title suggests, are XRAT and XRAM.

XRAM, standing for "experimental radar angular mirror" used a radar reflector, angled so that the RCS varies as the projectile rotates. This was tuned to S-Band and X-Band, the prior being used in radars such as the SP-1M radar which was used for testing of the Zeus and the later being common on fire-control radars such as the Mk-25 radar which was also used for early missiles such as Terrier.

The command link for the XRAM guidance system would be through this S or X band radar though by the wording of the paper it didn't seem like this had reached operational status. Another interesting factor was discussion of using a separate transmitter on the ship to detonate the VT fuze, potentially as a countermeasure to low reflectivity targets like the issues the U.S. had against Ohka Kamikaze missiles.

XRAT, standing for "experimental radio angular transmitter" was a bit more complex. The shell had a transmitter operating at around 160 MHz made out of a modified VT fuze. This transmitter would also act as the reciever for the command signal and they were also looking at using it as the VT fuze or possibly a radio-command detonation fuze similar to the XRAM proposal. That being said later it appears they at least experimented with S and X band transmitters, likely to reduce the amount of equipment on-deck.

The signal, and thus rotation of Zeus from the XRAT was picked up by a vertically polarized Yagi antenna through the modulation of the shell's signal and the commands were issued through a separate circularly polarized helical antenna. One potential mounting solution was to put the tracking antenna on-top of a turret to quickly aquire the projectile this was also looked at with the XRAM type guidance system possibly in a similar manner to the Mk 63 and Mk 64 GUNAR systems.

They also looked at guidance channel limitations.

With XRAM they looked at having one radar per turret so they could fire independently. They came up with a couple different solutions to the channel guidance problem. One was to have a so called "Bracket-Gating" method which, if I am understanding it correctly, would act like a countdown with command pulses opening sequential gates before a final pulse activated the divert charge. Each XRAM-linked radar was to operate around 100 MHz apart. Narrow beamwidth (around 2-3 degrees depending on type) would reduce the risk of interference between ships.

XRAT, as always, was more complex. Around 0.3 MHz of drift in the transmitter was experienced with firing so to reduce interference a 0.5 MHz channel separation was what they figured on for their calculations. The transmitter on the shell itself can be tuned through 17 MHz between 150 and 167 MHz, similar to fuze setting. They figured around 34 channels were available though several would need to be left unused for VT fuzes since XRAT reuses VT fuze mechanisms. In this concept each individual gun would have a dedicated channel (and reciever horn) compared to each turret in the XRAM system having a dedicated channel. Since there wasn't much directionality to speak of, interference between ships could be significant meaning those channels had to be shared over a formation.

From
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0024835.pdf
"Shipboard Sun Sonde Test of AAP Sin Angle Error"
18 August 1953

It appears that the XRAT command scheme progressed over the XRAM scheme, possibly due to the irregularities in the latters returns compared to the relative consistancy of the XRAT system as discussed in the 1950 paper. It was tested here on three possible locations aboard the USS Macon, CA-132. The locations for the vertically polarized Yagi Antennas were: one on the bow, one on-top of the No.2 Turret, and one on a Mk 37 director.


In this test they used regular shells outfitted with the radio equipment rather than actual Zeus (AAP) shells. An additional horizontally polarized antenna was added to check reflections off the sea.

Both of the links are worth a read. I'm a bit short on time right now but these are my initial take-aways from the discovery.

 

[Firefinder]

The channel sharing likely been less of an issue actuality thinking on it.

Besides the Forestals with their fucking 8, the most 5" guns a post 1950 ship has was 3 on the Forest Sherman class. Most had only 2 on opposite sides of the ship or just one.

And I imange that the twin turrets on the older Frams likely only needed a channel a turret and had to Alt fire due to control limits.

Still 34 channels is limiting.

In the 60s it was what? 14 warships in a carrier task force? At best looking at 2 channels per ship.

 

[A_Random_Guy]

The channel sharing likely been less of an issue actuality thinking on it.

Besides the Forestals with their fucking 8, the most 5" guns a post 1950 ship has was 3 on the Forest Sherman class. Most had only 2 on opposite sides of the ship or just one.

And I imange that the twin turrets on the older Frams likely only needed a channel a turret and had to Alt fire due to control limits.

Still 34 channels is limiting.

In the 60s it was what? 14 warships in a carrier task force? At best looking at 2 channels per ship.

Keep in mind channels have to be left open for VT fuzes. Additionally, the rapid fire capacity of those guns are largely obviated even considering additional time that may be needed to load the rounds with just 2 channels per ship. The 1 channel per gun was for the 8"/55 which, even in its automatic form, was far slower firing.

Combining the XRAT scheme with some of the gating methods they experimented with on the XRAM scheme may be the ideal solution combining the reliability and longer effective range of the XRAT with the higher guidance capacity of the XRAM.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Still 34 channels is limiting.

In the 60s it was what? 14 warships in a carrier task force? At best looking at 2 channels per ship.

Not a huge issue, you break the 12 ships in the big circle (plus one for Goalkeeper and the carrier proper) into directional groups, and you may be able to repeat channels on opposite sides of the carrier group if they'll be far enough away to not interfere (would need testing). So North and South use the same channels and East and West use the same channels, then carrier and goalie have their own set.

24 channels for the escort circle and 10 channels for the carrier and goalie. You're not splitting that 24 channels across 12 ships, you're splitting it across 6. 4 channels per ship, probably 6 for the carrier.

 

[Dilandu]

Someone recently just posted a deep dive on Zeus Arrow on TXitter.

Awwwwww! Thank you!