Surface Ships Need More Offensive Punch, Outlook

Yes,We have already lost the chance to pass this technology on to the next generation...
 
ayatsuji said:
Yes,We have already lost the chance to pass this technology on to the next generation...
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Part of the reason, I'm afraid, is that we've made ourselves extremely vulnerable with things like the 'marketplace of ideas'.

Why fight your enemies when you can effectively hack them with the very information and culture they consume? That's the core concept of memetic warfare.

I mean, we have been warned about this; we just ignored it like anything that doesn't jive with the idea that the political philosophy optimists are right, despite history telling us that the pessimists are close to the money at best (outright correct at worst). It's like how we ignored that technology and rights and government go literally hand in hand, despite the literal mountains of evidence to back it up...
 
Scott Kenny said:
8" sabot firing a long ~155mm or 127mm projectile for range. Larger scale Vulcano.

And you replace all the 5" guns with it.
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8" is pointless. 6.1" is fine and can be a drop-in more or less, if BAE's TMF is anything to go by, so it's not exactly a bad option given the potential for 100+ km ammunition like the Nammo ramjet round or 70+ km from the VULCANO. Even an Excalibur with a fairly puny 40 km range would be better than what the 5" normally has.

Unless the Navy decides to procure more and different types of missiles for the VLS, which is extremely unlikely honestly, the deck gun will remain the primary fire support weapon for the Marines. The HIMARS after that.
 
The main weapon in future naval battles will still be missiles, while railguns and laser weapons will probably only serve as auxiliary tools to boost the survival ability of ships. At the same time, more powerful electronic and support equipment will inevitably require ships to have stronger power and propulsion systems, and ships will also need missiles with longer ranges. So, missiles on warships will only get bigger in the future. As a result, future warships will inevitably become larger, and nuclear power could be a good option. It's not out of the question that one day we could see a 20,000-ton nuclear-powered destroyer.
 
Kat Tsun said:
8" is pointless. 6.1" is fine and can be a drop-in more or less, if BAE's TMF is anything to go by, so it's not exactly a bad option given the potential for 100+ km ammunition like the Nammo ramjet round or 70+ km from the VULCANO. Even an Excalibur with a fairly puny 40 km range would be better than what the 5" normally has.
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8" means you have that much more volume for powder and better controlled pressure levels.
 
Scott Kenny said:
8" means you have that much more volume for powder and better controlled pressure levels.
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This is irrelevant. The most important aspect of long range gunnery for shore bombardment is shell design. An 8" gun isn't going to appreciably strike longer or hit harder than a well designed 6.1" shell. You can make an argument for a 175mm smoothbore if you're using extremely high pressures, but naval guns would want to have multiple zones and resemble howitzers, because shore bombardment is their primary job.
 
Kat Tsun said:
This is irrelevant. The most important aspect of long range gunnery for shore bombardment is shell design. An 8" gun isn't going to appreciably strike longer or hit harder than a well designed 6.1" shell. You can make an argument for a 175mm smoothbore if you're using extremely high pressures, but naval guns would want to have multiple zones and resemble howitzers, because shore bombardment is their primary job.
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8"gun firing sabots akin to VULCANO.

So you're keeping total pressure down to what your metallurgy can tolerate, not getting into Tank gun or ERCA pressures while still getting tank or ERCA muzzle velocities.

Also, you're using guided shells as standard so you use trajectory shaping if you need to hit a close target. And are always loading to max powder charge.
 
Scott Kenny said:
8"gun firing sabots akin to VULCANO.
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Yeah but it's not useful to make it 8".

The only actual reason you'd make it bigger is to get more shell volume to fit a nuclear warhead and a ramjet booster or something.

Scott Kenny said:
So you're keeping total pressure down to what your metallurgy can tolerate, not getting into Tank gun or ERCA pressures while still getting tank or ERCA muzzle velocities.
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For a U.S. naval gun, ERCA is actually perfectly fine, because ERCA wasn't doomed by gun pressures anyway. It was doomed by the fact that the United States Army uses copper driving bands and, like with Paladin HIP III and Crusader before it, the alteration of the 155mm ammunition supply chain for the United States Army was beyond the scope of the program's business case.

Presumably, if the Navy wanted to fund development of an entirely new gun, it could just import a German ammo plant and using iron driving bands. This would let it fire at ERCA velocities without the drive band wear issues.

Scott Kenny said:
Also, you're using guided shells as standard so you use trajectory shaping if you need to hit a close target. And are always loading to max powder charge.
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The most expedient solution would be an ERCA and a German 155mm ammo plant built by Rheinmetall.

This would achieve like 70% of BTERM with little independent effort beyond a new mount honestly.

I think what DON will actually do is just pay Lockheed $50 billion to integrate GMLRS-ER into Mk 41 and quad pack them like POLAR tho.
 
No one is wasting money on a new gun caliber. The time to do that, if there ever was one, was the Burke restart. At this point there are/will be far too many 5” systems to justify adopting anything else, especially for a system so tertiary to an escorts role.
 
SUPER=BUG said:
The main weapon in future naval battles will still be missiles, while railguns and laser weapons will probably only serve as auxiliary tools to boost the survival ability of ships. At the same time, more powerful electronic and support equipment will inevitably require ships to have stronger power and propulsion systems, and ships will also need missiles with longer ranges. So, missiles on warships will only get bigger in the future. As a result, future warships will inevitably become larger, and nuclear power could be a good option. It's not out of the question that one day we could see a 20,000-ton nuclear-powered destroyer.
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I mean, this sort of thing has happened before... and it caused the Destroyer to balloon from a few hundred tons at best to ~6k decades later.
 
Kat Tsun said:
For a U.S. naval gun, ERCA is actually perfectly fine, because ERCA wasn't doomed by gun pressures anyway. It was doomed by the fact that the United States Army uses copper driving bands and, like with Paladin HIP III and Crusader before it, the alteration of the 155mm ammunition supply chain for the United States Army was beyond the scope of the program's business case.

Presumably, if the Navy wanted to fund development of an entirely new gun, it could just import a German ammo plant and using iron driving bands. This would let it fire at ERCA velocities without the drive band wear issues.
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Still gets into the issue of not being able to use US or some NATO 155mm shells, until the copper driving banded ammo has been used up or remanufactured anyways.

While going to 8" guided gives you more options. 5" or 6" sabot shells for range, 8" ERFB shells for short range heavy hitting.

The major challenge with going to anything over 6"/155mm is rate of fire. The bigger shells and loading gear just cannot move as fast.


Kat Tsun said:
I think what DON will actually do is just pay Lockheed $50 billion to integrate GMLRS-ER into Mk 41 and quad pack them like POLAR tho.
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Probably.
 
Grey Havoc said:
breakingdefense.com

Navy selects Leidos, Defense Unicorns to test software prototypes for ships - Breaking Defense

Leidos and Defense Unicorns will test prototypes in a lab-based environment under the other transaction agreement.
breakingdefense.com breakingdefense.com

I suspect that this will not work out as they hope it will.
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Given that we're back to the Bad Old Days of where Congress and the military interact? Almost certain.

The military needs the ability to tell Congress where to stuff it again, because this is just disgusting.
 
Scott Kenny said:
User name checks out.

But if someone is within "I can charge to gun range" at sea, someone has made a grievous tactical error.
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If the enemy is 200nmi away im charging 200nmi
Kat Tsun said:
This is irrelevant. The most important aspect of long range gunnery for shore bombardment is shell design. An 8" gun isn't going to appreciably strike longer or hit harder than a well designed 6.1" shell. You can make an argument for a 175mm smoothbore if you're using extremely high pressures, but naval guns would want to have multiple zones and resemble howitzers, because shore bombardment is their primary job.
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bruh, a sub caliber 6” round fired out of an 8” gun will have a much longer range than a “well designed 6.1” projectile” particularly if the round is equally well designed.
 
The proliferation of drone technology largely hinges on bang for buck. Gun rounds should run substantially cheaper than drones. The drones in the Ukraine come in many sizes and the ones on fiber optic controls are relatively short ranged. By the time you get to the size to take down a ship they become much larger and harder to conceal.
 
MadRat said:
The proliferation of drone technology largely hinges on bang for buck. Gun rounds should run substantially cheaper than drones. The drones in the Ukraine come in many sizes and the ones on fiber optic controls are relatively short ranged. By the time you get to the size to take down a ship they become much larger and harder to conceal.
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How are you defining ‘take down a ship’?
 
MadRat said:
Your line of questioning is a bit trolling. I find it obnoxious. How about you poke holes in the reasoning in a non-confrontational way?
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How is it trolling to try to be on the same page before getting too deep into a conversation to ensure we’re not all just talking circles around each only to realize we have different definitions of what it means to ‘take down’ a ship 20 posts later?
 
MadRat said:
Your line of questioning is a bit trolling. I find it obnoxious. How about you poke holes in the reasoning in a non-confrontational way?
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No, it's not.

Are you talking catastrophic kill or mission kill? Because a Sparrow warhead can mission-kill a ship (well, Shrike, but same difference). But you need a much bigger warhead to catastrophic kill a ship.
 
Scott Kenny said:
No, it's not.

Are you talking catastrophic kill or mission kill? Because a Sparrow warhead can mission-kill a ship (well, Shrike, but same difference). But you need a much bigger warhead to catastrophic kill a ship.
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Right? Is it full mission kill? Sinking? Causing enough damage that the ship is technically capable of continuing its mission but it’s still too risky to stay on station with out at least minor repairs?
Like there’s so many things ‘take down’ could mean it’s meaningless.
 
Terms of art, that's a new one.

I simply stated a relationship between two technologies, which interesting enough has independently become an argument in another thread. Drones are relative, they are not a be all gizmo and have their own cons.

It is almost like there is a sudden need for binary terms. Reduced mission capability is not a whole mission kill nor signifies a whole unit loss. It does not even imply damage. Taking down something is a direction within a significant threshold or range, not a specific to an all or nothing result. It may be an event resulting in as little as creating separation from the task, a change of immediate priority, or a temporary redirection of effort. There an infinite number of things that do not create a mission kill that can result in a reduction of capability. But hey, its needless rhetoric towards the simple notion that by the time you get to the size to take down a ship they become much larger and harder to conceal.
 
MadRat said:
Terms of art, that's a new one.

I simply stated a relationship between two technologies, which interesting enough has independently become an argument in another thread. Drones are relative, they are not a be all gizmo and have their own cons.

It is almost like there is a sudden need for binary terms. Reduced mission capability is not a whole mission kill nor signifies a whole unit loss. It does not even imply damage. Taking down something is a direction within a significant threshold or range, not a specific to an all or nothing result. It may be an event resulting in as little as creating separation from the task, a change of immediate priority, or a temporary redirection of effort. There an infinite number of things that do not create a mission kill that can result in a reduction of capability. But hey, its needless rhetoric towards the simple notion that by the time you get to the size to take down a ship they become much larger and harder to conceal.
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"Taking down" is a term without specific definition.

"Mission kill" has a specific definition.
"Catastrophic kill" or "sink" has a specific definition.

Edit: messed up/fixed some quote marks
 
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Let’s cool this personal fight down.

It is no unreasonable to use definitions adopted by the military to describe the operational status of a unit on this board, but it is weird for two people to pick a fight- and it typically involves a moderator pretty quickly.

Let’s just discuss the facts, and I think mission kill is a suitable acceptable definition for everyone.
 
I do not need or require the goal posts to change to keep my message intact, thanks. Unit mission capability is a spectrum, not a binary term. Some people are apparently stuck on one extreme of a spectrum. You can alter mission capability by changing scope, tempo, goals, etc. So the drone doesn't need to mission kill, sink, or catastrophically kill a unit to have an effect. But the scale of the drone size and the ability to conceal it are relational concepts. Designers build for known capability targets, which in my opinion is why drone technology snuck up as a threat. Drone technology was large and bulky to an extent and existing technologies were capable of meeting those threats. But you have to keep costs within margins and make educated guesses on risk to cost. As drone technology has shrunk, so have the technologies to counter them. So nobody should be in a panic over the drone threats. And do not throw gold bricks at the solutions.
 
MadRat said:
I do not need or require the goal posts to change to keep my message intact, thanks. Unit mission capability is a spectrum, not a binary term. Some people are apparently stuck on one extreme of a spectrum. You can alter mission capability by changing scope, tempo, goals, etc. So the drone doesn't need to mission kill, sink, or catastrophically kill a unit to have an effect. But the scale of the drone size and the ability to conceal it are relational concepts. Designers build for known capability targets, which in my opinion is why drone technology snuck up as a threat. Drone technology was large and bulky to an extent and existing technologies were capable of meeting those threats. But you have to keep costs within margins and make educated guesses on risk to cost. As drone technology has shrunk, so have the technologies to counter them. So nobody should be in a panic over the drone threats. And do not throw gold bricks at the solutions.
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And your drone threat needs a roughly ~150lb warhead for disabling the radars.

Which means a certain minimum size drone.
 
Scott Kenny said:
And your drone threat needs a roughly ~150lb warhead for disabling the radars.

Which means a certain minimum size drone.
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We seem to be closer to a mutual understanding than your previous post suggested, because I agree the drones have to grow significantly from what threatens tanks on a battlefield to impact the missionn capability of a frigate or destroyer.
 
MadRat said:
We seem to be closer to a mutual understanding than your previous post suggested, because I agree the drones have to grow significantly from what threatens tanks on a battlefield to impact the missionn capability of a frigate or destroyer.
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Which means that the drones are the now the size of at least a Sparrow missile, if not the size of a Harpoon.

Makes them expensive and/or not easy to produce en masse.
 
There are a number of ~500# subsonic weapons available with ~100 lb warheads in the $150,000-300,000 price range that likely would mission kill a ship. Most do not have a terminal guidance system to hunt ships out of the box, but for instance Anduril is apparently trying to integrate the QuickSink sensor with their Barracuda 500.

The costs of small long range high subsonic cruise missiles is plummeting, driven by cheap turbojet/fan engines (often largely 3D printed now) and cheap commercial guidance options.

ETA: and precision EO/IR seekers are allowing these small munitions to pick their aim point on a ship, making warheads that otherwise would have dubious viability able of achieving mission kills.

Google ERAM, MACE, or FAMM-L, or the actual missile products RAACM, Rusty Dagger, or Barracuda 500.
 
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