Role of large calibre naval guns in modern warfare

[howardxu_23]

Looking at how the current modern navy runs, I pretty surprised that the modern missile destroyers could be as expensive as a post treaty ww2 battleship, even when adjusted for inflation, while nearly costing as much as one or more to keep it running, and missiles are not cheap either (Zumwalt class anyone? The money invested them at this point is better off on either more subs/cvs/cheaper DDs/even designing and building a BB) , Plus they have 0 in terms of armor, so if they take any hits from their own weapon the best case is that it ends up crippled.(cwis? Just fire a dozen missiles at it to overwhelm it), hence losing a costly ship, while a BB is designed to withstand a large amount of ordinance thrown at it before it goes down.

 

Plus from what I know they even use the missiles vs stationary land targets, where heavy naval artillery could see a use(imo at least), yet there is no actual ship that is suitable for that role. My thought is that they could put 1/2 BB calibre guns on a destroyer or a frigate hull, effectively turning it into a monitor so it can serve in a shore bombardment role, and since guided shells like the M982 Excalibur exist, it should be reasonable to assume that one could scale that up to solve any accuracy issues that a regular shell could cause, and to increase effectiveness vs moving ocean targets. Plus shells are noticeably a lot harder to shoot down with ciwis, and even if it possible to shoot it down, There is still the option to spam them a lot faster then you can with missiles, since as far as I’m concerned with what I can see, real life guided missiles are not actually sent in cool massive barrages that some games portray.

 

the other option is to actually build a proper large BB with thick armor, armor schemes, redundancies and all that, from scratch instead of trying to mordensie old BBs and arm it with large calibre cannons and missiles. It does not need to have as many guns as the ww2 bbs as it can fit a VLS missile system in place of one of the turrets if needed.

 

thoughts?

[ColonelPete]

The time of BB is over.

There were some attempts (some successfull) to use bigger guns for coastal support in the past, but the usefuleness is limited.

 

Quote

Modular Naval Artillery Concept (MONARC) was a study of the German defence industry about mounting the turret of the PzH 2000 self-propelled howitzer on a naval ship of frigate size.

....

Rheinmetall, the producer of PzH 2000's gun system, plans to design special smart naval rounds that will boost the range of the gun from 30 km with standard NATO ammunition and 40 km with assisted rounds to over 80 km (50 mi), more than that of many anti-ship missiles.

 

Quote

Oto Melara Vulcano ammunition:

"VULCANO" is a family of unguided (BER) and guided (GLR) ammunition for the 76mm, 127mm naval guns and 155mm land artillery systems"

• GLR (Guided Long Range)
• Guided ammunition for NFS
• Up to 100Km range▪Autonomous IMU+GPS guidance
• Precise shore bombardment firing
• Notched HE warhead
• SAL terminal guidance

 

[SkollUlfr]

to build these ships, would mean making the armour out of the same composites used to make MBTs. otherwise it would just be a waste of steel. and what you would get is a ship that fires shells that are basically bolter rounds from 40k due to having guidance and propulsion of their own, and costing enough to reflect that.

 

the 'gun' might come back. but it'l be railgun instead of big gun.

[MahBallz]

I've been thinking similar.

In my head I have an image of something like an Iowa or Kurfurst type BB but instead of the typical main guns have rail guns fitted and replace all the AA mounts for CWIS/SAM launcher and Laser weapons. Add a VLS battery and some sort of anti torp counter measures as well as modern gas turbine engines (or nuke), full modern rewire for a full combat sensor & target engagement suite and surely you would have one stacked ship.
Obviously as above, there is the argument of the amount of resources required for such a vessel, but I do have the question of how modern anti ship missiles would fare against 14-18" of solid armour... Or maybe you wouldn't even need conventional thick steel armour with the advent of modern armour such as Dorchester armour used on the abrams battle tanks and take advantage of spaced armour arrangements etc to save resources and weight?

I know that they fitted the Iowa with CWIS and such for the gulf but nothing like I'm suggesting above.

[ollonborre]

21 minutes ago, MahBallz said:

but I do have the question of how modern anti ship missiles would fare against 14-18" of solid armour...

Pretty damn good. Considering most naval based missiles don't necessarily strike at the belt armor of ships but instead go for the superstructure or are proximity fused. And if they do go for the belt or the like, well it is a ~200 kg warhead of TNT travelling in excess of 800 km/h on most ship to ship missiles.

 

The best defense against modern ship missiles is to either shoot it down or not allow it to find you in the first place.

[ZygZag]

Well - maybe check out what Zumwalt class was to be equipped? 150mm Advanced Gun System.

155 mm/62 (6.1") Mark 51 Advanced Gun System (AGS) Read about it. http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_61-62_ags.php

And read about the ammo for it: Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) with range from 140 to 190 km.

These are now (or were) big guns. Now it is not about the caliber of gun that matters - it is the ability of projectie to hit the target and destroy it.

As far as AGS was doomed the nex navy big gun is   5"/62 (12.7 cm) Mark 45 Mod 4 with HVP - that are currently stored in ammo racks of Arleigh Burke and Ticonderoga's.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a25804867/us-navy-hvp-heavy-gun-shells-rimpac/   

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_5-62_mk45.php 

[TohtoriP]

On 4/8/2020 at 9:07 PM, MahBallz said:

Obviously as above, there is the argument of the amount of resources required for such a vessel, but I do have the question of how modern anti ship missiles would fare against 14-18" of solid armour... Or maybe you wouldn't even need conventional thick steel armour with the advent of modern armour such as Dorchester armour used on the abrams battle tanks and take advantage of spaced armour arrangements etc to save resources and weight?

One of the first proper Anti-ship missiles, Soviet P-15 Termit (SS-N-2 Styx) had a 454 kg HEAT warhead so it was designed from the start to penetrate heavy armor. You can not armor a ship against such threats the way you can armor a tank. When that was realized nobody armored ships anymore and then missiles evolved smaller with smaller more normal warheads like for example Harpoon does with 221kg HE. If somebody would start designing warships with heavier armor it would be very easy to design new warhead for missiles that could penetrate it thus making armor again irrelevant.

 

For example a basic HEAT warhead can penetrate 4-7 times it´s diameter in Rolled Homogenous Armor depending on how you construct the warhead for extreme penetration or more "general" penetration capabilities. So for example Harpoon has room for a 30cm warhead. 30cm x 5 is 150cm or 60 inches. Sure the hole it makes is not very large however beyond armor effects can still be pretty devastating with HEAT warheads of this magnitude i.e. 200+ kg of explosives throwing all that molten plasma of steel and residual explosive energy inside the ship. If it penetrates your magazine you will have a bad day.

 

It is just too easy to use and build missiles and design proper warheads to them than to design ships and armoring them to withstand even a few large missile hits and remain combat and operational capability.

 

And here we are not even talking about modern torpedoes...

[MRGTB]

On 4/20/2019 at 5:59 PM, howardxu_23 said:

Looking at how the current modern navy runs, I pretty surprised that the modern missile destroyers could be as expensive as a post treaty ww2 battleship, even when adjusted for inflation, while nearly costing as much as one or more to keep it running, and missiles are not cheap either (Zumwalt class anyone? The money invested them at this point is better off on either more subs/cvs/cheaper DDs/even designing and building a BB) , Plus they have 0 in terms of armor, so if they take any hits from their own weapon the best case is that it ends up crippled.(cwis? Just fire a dozen missiles at it to overwhelm it), hence losing a costly ship, while a BB is designed to withstand a large amount of ordinance thrown at it before it goes down.

 

Plus from what I know they even use the missiles vs stationary land targets, where heavy naval artillery could see a use(imo at least), yet there is no actual ship that is suitable for that role. My thought is that they could put 1/2 BB calibre guns on a destroyer or a frigate hull, effectively turning it into a monitor so it can serve in a shore bombardment role, and since guided shells like the M982 Excalibur exist, it should be reasonable to assume that one could scale that up to solve any accuracy issues that a regular shell could cause, and to increase effectiveness vs moving ocean targets. Plus shells are noticeably a lot harder to shoot down with ciwis, and even if it possible to shoot it down, There is still the option to spam them a lot faster then you can with missiles, since as far as I’m concerned with what I can see, real life guided missiles are not actually sent in cool massive barrages that some games portray.

 

the other option is to actually build a proper large BB with thick armor, armor schemes, redundancies and all that, from scratch instead of trying to mordensie old BBs and arm it with large calibre cannons and missiles. It does not need to have as many guns as the ww2 bbs as it can fit a VLS missile system in place of one of the turrets if needed.

 

thoughts?

Battleships and Cruisers it is said are pretty much obsolete in today's modern warfare. Carriers and Destroyers are now the main ships I read... destroyers because they are more agile and faster than cruisers and battleships (less of an easy target), plus they have far more advanced weapon systems today used on them.

[Zemeritt]

Aren't modern "destroyers" rather large compared to their 2WW siblings?

[WWDragon]

8 hours ago, Zemeritt said:

Aren't modern "destroyers" rather large compared to their 2WW siblings?

Well the highest displacement destroyers of WW2 were, unsurprising, the German ones  with the Type 1936A Mob with 3,691 tons with a overall length of 127 m, now lets take the Arleigh Burke class, 9,700 tons and 155 m so much heavier but not necessary that much larger ... well it is and German destroyers were on the large size but the Cleveland class had a standard displacement of 11,932 tons and 180 m in length.

 

Destroyers are bigger because they are necessary heavier (all that radar and sonar and computer stuff weights a lot) but they are still under cruiser length, the Virginia class are about 10,663 tons and 179 m so bigger that the Arleigh Burke but shy shorter that the Cleveland, of course there is the PLAN Type 055 Destroyer that is 180 m in length and 12~13,000 tons with the preceding Type 052D being significant shorter (161 m,  7,500 tons) with the USN classifying the Type 055 as a cruiser for the obvious reasons.

 

In short, yes ... but this is because navies mostly abandoned cruisers in favor if destroyers and thus destroyers became more "multirole" taking on roles that used to be done by cruisers with frigates taking on roles used to done by destroyers such as escort, in fact frigates are even taking roles used by modern destroyers with the Spanish Álvaro de Bazán class being larger and heavier that old WW2 era destroyers being 146.7 m in length with a standart displacement of 5,900 tons, its also AEGIS equipped.

 

 

[ZygZag]

On 9/2/2020 at 11:59 AM, TohtoriP said:

(...)Sure the hole it makes is not very large however beyond armor effects can still be pretty devastating with HEAT warheads of this magnitude i.e. 200+ kg of explosives throwing all that molten plasma of steel and residual explosive energy inside the ship. If it penetrates your magazine you will have a bad day.(...)

Yup. Just see what - during Falkland War - Exocets, which did not detonate caused. They managed to get through into the ships and fuel that has left in the rockes caused devastating fires (+ ofc the damages caused by kinetic energy). Exocets had problems with fuses construction - it caused fuses to be damaged during ship penetration... .

 

 

On 9/2/2020 at 11:59 AM, TohtoriP said:

(...)

And here we are not even talking about modern torpedoes...

You mean supercavitation torps? Or these thermal and electric ones?