Another 21st Century WHIF battleship idea.

[pyro-manic]

What killed the Iowas was the manning costs though.  They required huge crews and even the USN couldn't in the end justify that.

And how is this any different from a CVN carrier which requires 5000+ people to maintain/operate it?

A carrier is an extremely effective method of power-projection, far superior to a battleship. Thus, a carrier is seen to be worth it where a battleship was judged not.

Also notice that the new "Ford" class (ugh! ) carrier has a complement of around 1000 fewer than a Nimitz-class. This is due to automation, and makes them vastly cheaper to run. The automated systems (as well as everything else) will be multiply redundant and hardened as much as is possible, so the only way to effect an EMP powerful enough would be to actually nuke the thing. In which case it really doesn't matter how many people are on board, 'cos they're all dead anyway.

Re. railguns, any other weapon will be just as vulnerable to power loss - if you lose power you have no communications, no sensors, no way of finding or designating targets, no way to train and elevate turrets and guns, no way to launch missiles. Total power loss = "mission kill", which is why multiple redundancy is designed into warships to guard against such total failures. Damage sufficient to cause such a total failure is likely to threaten the ship's ability to float!

The problem with the 16"/50s is that while they are arguably the pinnacle of heavy naval guns, they are a seventy-year-old design, based on technology that goes back to at least the 1890s. The factories and tooling to build such weapons have been gone for at least 50 years, and such a specialised capability would be horrifically expensive to create from scratch (low volume output, at enormous technical, infrastructure and overhead cost). The expertise has been lost - people involved in design and production are now all dead or extremely aged, and re-learning the skills and knowledge would be extremely difficult. Ditto for the ammunition - none has been made for many decades, the factories and skills have all vanished. The railgun is a current technology, so once a workable implementation has been attained it will be easy to build and maintain them, and alter/refine the concept as necessary. The cooling will not be an issue - it will be built into the design and will be integral to the system, performing at a level to match the rate of fire desired by the designer.

[rickshaw]

What killed the Iowas was the manning costs though.  They required huge crews and even the USN couldn't in the end justify that.

And how is this any different from a CVN carrier which requires 5000+ people to maintain/operate it?

Well, as Pyro has mentioned, that number is decreasing.  Also, a CVN is considered a much more utilitarian ship than a BB which has essentially one role only - power projection.   CVNs can be utilised for power projection, humanitarian aid, Sea Control and other things.

What is not in doubt is the need for an effect on target.  16" guns may look spectacular and the effect on target is awesome, they are horrendous weapons to maintain and man.  The limited life on their gun tubes means they must frequently be replaced and that means a massive infrastructure to manufacture new tubes and barrels for the guns, while that required to manufacture the shells is just as bad.

And an electromagnetic rail gun is just as bad, if not worse. I've read where the "barrel" for a EMRG gets so hot that it needs special cooling. Also, a rail gun needs a lot of power to operate and fire. It gets the power from the ship's own propulsion/power systems. But if an enemy knocks out a ship's systems in any way, then your rail gun is without power to operate. What then? You're screwed.

Well, please don't think I'm advocating EM rail "guns".  I'm not.   Conventional guns have their problems which I've outlined, EM "guns" have their equal share.  They are a long way from being fielded in any useable form at the moment.

I much prefer the use of missiles.  There are no problems with recoil, launchers are cheap and easily replaced and they are quite accurate - more accurate than any more of gun, over extended ranges.

If someone wants to build a 21st century BB, then they'll need as much automation as possible.  They will need weapon systems which can be built and maintained by the 21st century industrial base.

All this automation, electronics, computers, etc. is great, but only to a degree. At the rate we're going now, an enemy won't have to sink or blow up a ship to defeat it. All they'd have to do is explode a very powerful EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) bomb or missile over/near a ship to knock out all the computer/electronic/propulsion systems, and then you're effectively dead in the water.

Military electronics are designed to survive EMP.  As the only published method of creating a militarily effective EMP at the moment is with a nuclear device, doing so to eliminate your ship would bring a rather large number of attendant political and military problems with it and there is no guarantee of it working.

[KJ_Lesnick]

I'm thinking if you want a 21st century battleship you'd want something like an arsenal ship.