5 ms·

Converting Merchant Ships to Missile Ships

25 points by protomyth 8y ago

jpm_sd 8y ago
Acronym explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_launching_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_launching_system In general, this is not a super new idea, but it's interesting to see it getting a bit more traction. Here's another pair of articles on the same general topic. https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/6/22/supporting-the-fight-ashore-when-the-marines-ask-for-someone-to-bring-the-rain-the-us-navy-is-in-a-drought https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/6/22/supporting-the-fight-... https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/7/nsfspar2 https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/7/nsfspar2
dmos62 8y ago
Interesting ideas, good no-filler writing.
- smacktoward 8y ago
  The USNI blog is very good overall, if you're interested in seapower issues.
ForHackernews 8y ago
> To get to 355, the Navy’s 2019 ship-building plan proposes an eventual composition of 12 aircraft carriers, 12 ballistic-missile submarines, 66 attack submarines, 104 large surface combatants, 52 small surface combatants, 38 amphibious warfare ships, and 71 combat logistics and support ships. Wow. For comparison[0], China has 129 ships and Russia has 79. I guess the US Navy believes in overprovisioning. [0] https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-five-most-powerful-navies-the-planet-10610 https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-five-most-powerful-...
- tivert 8y ago
  I think you're making a mistake by comparing planned future fleet goals of one navy to current fleet numbers of other navies. It seems harder than a quick Google search to find good numbers (e.g. the wikipedia article seems to count inactive obsolete reserve ships in its total for the USN), it seems like China has 328 ships (on an upward trend) and the USN has 280 ships (on a downward trend) [1], but obviously it's a difficult comparison because the US has more aircraft carriers, etc. [1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/end-us-naval-dominance-asia https://www.lawfareblog.com/end-us-naval-dominance-asia: > In early 2017, the Chinese Navy had 328 ships. It now possesses nearly 350 ships and is already larger than the U.S. Navy. China is the largest ship-producing country in the world and at current production rates could soon operate 400 ships. It commissions nearly three submarines each year, and in two years will have more than 70 in its fleet. The Chinese Navy also operates growing numbers of cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and corvettes, all equipped with long-range anti-ship cruise missiles. Between 2013 and 2016, China commissioned more than 30 modern corvettes. At current rates, China could have 430 surface ships and 100 submarines within the next 15 years. > Despite the growth of the Chinese Navy, the United States retains maritime superiority throughout East Asia. But the trend is what matters and the trend is less rosy. In early 2018, the size of the active U.S. fleet was 280 ships. Going forward, according to the Congressional Budget Office, if the Navy’s budget is the average of its budget over the prior 30 years in real dollars and it maintains its aircraft carrier and ballistic submarine construction schedules, in 12 years the active naval fleet will decline to 237 ships. In six years, the U.S. submarine fleet will decline to 48 ships, and in eleven years the number of U.S. attack submarines will decline to 41 ships.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  China and Russia aren't really playing the same "world policeman" role the US Navy is tasked with. We're more over-missioned than over-provisioned.
  - coenhyde 8y ago
    "tasked with". That role was assumed, not given. Anyway yeah I bet you could cut back foreign power projection activities by at least a third and have stronger power projection as a result by concentrating effort. The US has ~800 military bases around the world. That's got to cost a LOT to maintain.
    - gaius 8y ago
      The US Navy was tasked by the civilian government.
      - coenhyde 8y ago
        But not by the world, which is what I was referring to. Since the role attributed was "world policeman". My point is that the "world policeman" responsibilities are an easy justification for a military posture which is very aggressive. If the world needed a world policeman we'd create an institution and have governance projected from that... oh hang on that's the UN.
- twic 8y ago
  Reminds me of the UK's attempt to maintain the two-power standard, whereby the Royal Navy had to be big enough to fight the next two biggest navies at the same time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Royal_Navy#Two-power_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Royal_Navy#Two-...
  - mattmanser 8y ago
    Something they'd done for almost a century already, just to put it in context.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Wow. For comparison[0], China has 129 ships and Russia has 79. I guess the US Navy believes in overprovisioning. The long standing US policy has been to maintain enough force to fight a major conflict in both the Atlantic and Pacific at the same time. It's basically what the British Navy was designed to do, when Britannia ruled the waves and had a globe spanning empire. The Brits basically went broke doing this and mortgaged their position as world hegemon to the US to pay for WWI and WWII. So now, the US has to maintain enough force to patrol the world's navies. (Between WWI and WWII, there was serious talk about the US and British navy duking it out over the issue of the British war debt to the US. There were even naval war plans drafted.)
  - alexhutcheson 8y ago
    Including a detailed plan for the invasion and annexation of Canada: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red
tivert 8y ago
That's an interesting idea. It seems like many of the most useful and longest-lived weapons platforms are general purpose and easily adaptable, like the B-52. If the Navy adopts something like it, it could really save a lot of money and enable more incremental innovation. As far as survivability, I wonder if something like this could scale out fast in wartime by redistributing the containers among more ships? Maybe the containers could even be watertight, so they could be fished out of the sea and reused if the ship that was carrying them is sunk.
Pica_soO 8y ago
Now that is the idea terrorism needed - just load some cheap tomahawk knock offs into containers and bring it home.
opwieurposiu 8y ago
Naval ships are typically built to a much higher standard then civilian ships. Thicker plating, more fire resistance, heavier bearings etc. This makes them cost more. The navy has at times tried to relax these requirements, but so far it has not worked out. Designating a ship as civilian level hardness from the git-go may be a way around this. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUKN2017353120100121 https://www.reuters.com/article/idUKN2017353120100121
- gaius 8y ago
  This is why HMS Ocean had such a short service life, to “save money” she was built to commercial not military standards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ocean_(L12) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ocean_(L12)
  - mattmanser 8y ago
    Seems like you're being a bit disingenuous, or you need to explain a bit more. According to the very Wikipedia article you link to, firstly she's been sold to Brazil for £80 million and so is still in service, and she also cost 2/3rds what it would have cost to make it to military standards. That doesn't sound bad? (For context the article claims her cost is the equivalent of £288 million in 2016, so roughly sold for 30% of her original price). VSEL's bid was £139.5 million compared to Swan Hunter's £210.6 million... The Financial Times described the different philosophies adopted by the two bidders; while Swan Hunter viewed the ships as entirely military, "VSEL thought the design was basically a merchant ship with military hardware bolted on." VSEL's decision to sub-contract the build phase took advantage of lower overheads at a civilian yard as well as efficiency drives by its parent, Kværne I don't know anything about the expected service times, etc., so I'd be interested to hear if it's turned out as bad as you made it seem?
    - gaius 8y ago
      How the Brazilian government allocates it’s defence budget is it’s own concern of course but consider that a comparable-role ship HMS Hermes was laid down in 1944, sold to India in 1985 and served until 2017. Ocean will never manage that. HMS Ark Royal served for 30 years too. São Paulo, the ship Brazil is replacing, a former French vessel was intended to have a total service life of 80 years! —————————- Reply here as I am “posting too fast” apparently The idea that in 20 years, let alone 40 years time, we'll still rely on human piloted planes is pure stupidity. They said that 50 years ago when the first guided missiles were coming into service. They will probably still be saying it in 50 years! The truth is that military tech just doesn’t change that fast. The B52. The 1911 pistol - that’s the year. Warship hulls are supposed to last 50+ years and you occasionally upgrade the radar. That sort of thing.
ansible 8y ago
It seems to me that the super-giant container ships these days would not be optimal in the role. Presuming the VLS containers are standardized, I'd expect it would be better to have more smaller ships. If that's the case, the Navy could pick up some of the older container vessels relatively inexpensively, because they aren't as economical to operate as the Maersk Triple-E class ships.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  I think those smaller ships are the types they're talking about. The Maersk Triple-E are way more expensive than the 25-50 million quoted as the per ship cost in the article. Maybe they fall a a lot on the used market because new Triple-Es are $190m. > In heavily trafficked areas, a missile merchant without sensor masts would be hard to discern from other merchant ships at range. Electronic emissions that could be correlated to U.S. Navy assets pose risks that must be mitigated as much as possible. Automated ship reporting systems should be used judiciously. This seems dangerous to me, it seems like it will inevitably get a regular cargo ship sunk. Especially considering this second line where they also suppose that these missile merchants could draw fire from more traditional ships because of their threat. > Drawing enemy fire could become an important function, perhaps protecting higher value, more-densely manned combatants.
theincredulousk 8y ago
"Advances in high-performance computing, software virtualization [...] enable [...] cruise missiles to fit into [...] shipping containers." Wut
- scrumper 8y ago
  The point there is that virtualization permits operation of necessary computing services that previously relied on dedicated hardware. Dedicated hardware that has uses a lot of power - more than a civilian ship is capable of providing - and is tough to cool. Commodity hardware is massively more powerful, uses less power, and is easy to cool compared to the dedicated stuff that sits in warships. So, the thinking goes, virtualize the warship software stack and run it on off-the-shelf PCs on a merchant ship and you're now able to operate your containerized VLS missiles from a civilian vessel.
  - theincredulousk 8y ago
    Oh I see, so the whole weapon system including the computer systems etc. The way the quote literally reads is that software virtualization and HPC somehow solved a physical geometry problem.
jonathankoren 8y ago
Containerized weapon systems are pretty interesting because they leverage the intermodal infrastructure of the global shipping industry, and potentially provide the flexibility of "mission modules", that typically haven't provided. Being somewhat self contained, they also provide a cross functionality across sea and land based assets. Patria's 120 mm NEMO gun http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/6440/this-120mm-gun-built-into-a-shipping-container-is-pretty-damn-genius http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/6440/this-120mm-gun-bui... Northrup Grumman's containerized AGM-88E system http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24111/northrop-grumman-shows-off-shipping-container-launched-anti-radiation-missile-concept http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24111/northrop-grumman-... IAI's LORA ballistic missile system http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/11723/israel-just-launched-a-containerized-ballistic-missile-from-the-deck-of-a-ship http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/11723/israel-just-launc...
KaiserPro 8y ago
> the air wing will only have a range of around 700 nm—about half that of many antiship cruise missiles. Which basically means that unless the US has very very effective anti ship missiles systems, their entire navy strategy(and thus Nato's) is broken. The whole point of an aircraft carrier is that it provides a dome of protection. It pushes ships capable of launching anti ship missiles out of range. This means that the rest of the navy is free to do other things. Without that cover, the navy can't move about without being destroyed. So you either need loads of little ships (which are much more expensive to eliminate, cheaper to produce, but have smaller weapons, or have a system to effectively intercept missiles, or the missile launcher.

25 points by protomyth 8y ago

Acronym explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_launching_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_launching_system In general, this is not a super new idea, but it's interesting to see it getting a bit more traction. Here's another pair of articles on the same general topic. https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/6/22/supporting-the-fight-ashore-when-the-marines-ask-for-someone-to-bring-the-rain-the-us-navy-is-in-a-drought https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/6/22/supporting-the-fight-... https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/7/nsfspar2 https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/7/nsfspar2

dmos62 8y ago

Interesting ideas, good no-filler writing.

smacktoward 8y ago
The USNI blog is very good overall, if you're interested in seapower issues.

ForHackernews 8y ago

> To get to 355, the Navy’s 2019 ship-building plan proposes an eventual composition of 12 aircraft carriers, 12 ballistic-missile submarines, 66 attack submarines, 104 large surface combatants, 52 small surface combatants, 38 amphibious warfare ships, and 71 combat logistics and support ships. Wow. For comparison[0], China has 129 ships and Russia has 79. I guess the US Navy believes in overprovisioning. [0] https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-five-most-powerful-navies-the-planet-10610 https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-five-most-powerful-...

tivert 8y ago
I think you're making a mistake by comparing planned future fleet goals of one navy to current fleet numbers of other navies. It seems harder than a quick Google search to find good numbers (e.g. the wikipedia article seems to count inactive obsolete reserve ships in its total for the USN), it seems like China has 328 ships (on an upward trend) and the USN has 280 ships (on a downward trend) [1], but obviously it's a difficult comparison because the US has more aircraft carriers, etc. [1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/end-us-naval-dominance-asia https://www.lawfareblog.com/end-us-naval-dominance-asia: > In early 2017, the Chinese Navy had 328 ships. It now possesses nearly 350 ships and is already larger than the U.S. Navy. China is the largest ship-producing country in the world and at current production rates could soon operate 400 ships. It commissions nearly three submarines each year, and in two years will have more than 70 in its fleet. The Chinese Navy also operates growing numbers of cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and corvettes, all equipped with long-range anti-ship cruise missiles. Between 2013 and 2016, China commissioned more than 30 modern corvettes. At current rates, China could have 430 surface ships and 100 submarines within the next 15 years. > Despite the growth of the Chinese Navy, the United States retains maritime superiority throughout East Asia. But the trend is what matters and the trend is less rosy. In early 2018, the size of the active U.S. fleet was 280 ships. Going forward, according to the Congressional Budget Office, if the Navy’s budget is the average of its budget over the prior 30 years in real dollars and it maintains its aircraft carrier and ballistic submarine construction schedules, in 12 years the active naval fleet will decline to 237 ships. In six years, the U.S. submarine fleet will decline to 48 ships, and in eleven years the number of U.S. attack submarines will decline to 41 ships.
ceejayoz 8y ago
China and Russia aren't really playing the same "world policeman" role the US Navy is tasked with. We're more over-missioned than over-provisioned.
- coenhyde 8y ago
  "tasked with". That role was assumed, not given. Anyway yeah I bet you could cut back foreign power projection activities by at least a third and have stronger power projection as a result by concentrating effort. The US has ~800 military bases around the world. That's got to cost a LOT to maintain.
  - gaius 8y ago
    The US Navy was tasked by the civilian government.
    - coenhyde 8y ago
      But not by the world, which is what I was referring to. Since the role attributed was "world policeman". My point is that the "world policeman" responsibilities are an easy justification for a military posture which is very aggressive. If the world needed a world policeman we'd create an institution and have governance projected from that... oh hang on that's the UN.
twic 8y ago
Reminds me of the UK's attempt to maintain the two-power standard, whereby the Royal Navy had to be big enough to fight the next two biggest navies at the same time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Royal_Navy#Two-power_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Royal_Navy#Two-...
- mattmanser 8y ago
  Something they'd done for almost a century already, just to put it in context.
stcredzero 8y ago
Wow. For comparison[0], China has 129 ships and Russia has 79. I guess the US Navy believes in overprovisioning. The long standing US policy has been to maintain enough force to fight a major conflict in both the Atlantic and Pacific at the same time. It's basically what the British Navy was designed to do, when Britannia ruled the waves and had a globe spanning empire. The Brits basically went broke doing this and mortgaged their position as world hegemon to the US to pay for WWI and WWII. So now, the US has to maintain enough force to patrol the world's navies. (Between WWI and WWII, there was serious talk about the US and British navy duking it out over the issue of the British war debt to the US. There were even naval war plans drafted.)
- alexhutcheson 8y ago
  Including a detailed plan for the invasion and annexation of Canada: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red

tivert 8y ago

That's an interesting idea. It seems like many of the most useful and longest-lived weapons platforms are general purpose and easily adaptable, like the B-52. If the Navy adopts something like it, it could really save a lot of money and enable more incremental innovation. As far as survivability, I wonder if something like this could scale out fast in wartime by redistributing the containers among more ships? Maybe the containers could even be watertight, so they could be fished out of the sea and reused if the ship that was carrying them is sunk.

Pica_soO 8y ago

Now that is the idea terrorism needed - just load some cheap tomahawk knock offs into containers and bring it home.

opwieurposiu 8y ago

Naval ships are typically built to a much higher standard then civilian ships. Thicker plating, more fire resistance, heavier bearings etc. This makes them cost more. The navy has at times tried to relax these requirements, but so far it has not worked out. Designating a ship as civilian level hardness from the git-go may be a way around this. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUKN2017353120100121 https://www.reuters.com/article/idUKN2017353120100121

gaius 8y ago
This is why HMS Ocean had such a short service life, to “save money” she was built to commercial not military standards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ocean_(L12) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ocean_(L12)
- mattmanser 8y ago
  Seems like you're being a bit disingenuous, or you need to explain a bit more. According to the very Wikipedia article you link to, firstly she's been sold to Brazil for £80 million and so is still in service, and she also cost 2/3rds what it would have cost to make it to military standards. That doesn't sound bad? (For context the article claims her cost is the equivalent of £288 million in 2016, so roughly sold for 30% of her original price). VSEL's bid was £139.5 million compared to Swan Hunter's £210.6 million... The Financial Times described the different philosophies adopted by the two bidders; while Swan Hunter viewed the ships as entirely military, "VSEL thought the design was basically a merchant ship with military hardware bolted on." VSEL's decision to sub-contract the build phase took advantage of lower overheads at a civilian yard as well as efficiency drives by its parent, Kværne I don't know anything about the expected service times, etc., so I'd be interested to hear if it's turned out as bad as you made it seem?
  - gaius 8y ago
    How the Brazilian government allocates it’s defence budget is it’s own concern of course but consider that a comparable-role ship HMS Hermes was laid down in 1944, sold to India in 1985 and served until 2017. Ocean will never manage that. HMS Ark Royal served for 30 years too. São Paulo, the ship Brazil is replacing, a former French vessel was intended to have a total service life of 80 years! —————————- Reply here as I am “posting too fast” apparently The idea that in 20 years, let alone 40 years time, we'll still rely on human piloted planes is pure stupidity. They said that 50 years ago when the first guided missiles were coming into service. They will probably still be saying it in 50 years! The truth is that military tech just doesn’t change that fast. The B52. The 1911 pistol - that’s the year. Warship hulls are supposed to last 50+ years and you occasionally upgrade the radar. That sort of thing.

ansible 8y ago

It seems to me that the super-giant container ships these days would not be optimal in the role. Presuming the VLS containers are standardized, I'd expect it would be better to have more smaller ships. If that's the case, the Navy could pick up some of the older container vessels relatively inexpensively, because they aren't as economical to operate as the Maersk Triple-E class ships.

rtkwe 8y ago
I think those smaller ships are the types they're talking about. The Maersk Triple-E are way more expensive than the 25-50 million quoted as the per ship cost in the article. Maybe they fall a a lot on the used market because new Triple-Es are $190m. > In heavily trafficked areas, a missile merchant without sensor masts would be hard to discern from other merchant ships at range. Electronic emissions that could be correlated to U.S. Navy assets pose risks that must be mitigated as much as possible. Automated ship reporting systems should be used judiciously. This seems dangerous to me, it seems like it will inevitably get a regular cargo ship sunk. Especially considering this second line where they also suppose that these missile merchants could draw fire from more traditional ships because of their threat. > Drawing enemy fire could become an important function, perhaps protecting higher value, more-densely manned combatants.

theincredulousk 8y ago

"Advances in high-performance computing, software virtualization [...] enable [...] cruise missiles to fit into [...] shipping containers." Wut

scrumper 8y ago
The point there is that virtualization permits operation of necessary computing services that previously relied on dedicated hardware. Dedicated hardware that has uses a lot of power - more than a civilian ship is capable of providing - and is tough to cool. Commodity hardware is massively more powerful, uses less power, and is easy to cool compared to the dedicated stuff that sits in warships. So, the thinking goes, virtualize the warship software stack and run it on off-the-shelf PCs on a merchant ship and you're now able to operate your containerized VLS missiles from a civilian vessel.
- theincredulousk 8y ago
  Oh I see, so the whole weapon system including the computer systems etc. The way the quote literally reads is that software virtualization and HPC somehow solved a physical geometry problem.

jonathankoren 8y ago

Containerized weapon systems are pretty interesting because they leverage the intermodal infrastructure of the global shipping industry, and potentially provide the flexibility of "mission modules", that typically haven't provided. Being somewhat self contained, they also provide a cross functionality across sea and land based assets. Patria's 120 mm NEMO gun http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/6440/this-120mm-gun-built-into-a-shipping-container-is-pretty-damn-genius http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/6440/this-120mm-gun-bui... Northrup Grumman's containerized AGM-88E system http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24111/northrop-grumman-shows-off-shipping-container-launched-anti-radiation-missile-concept http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24111/northrop-grumman-... IAI's LORA ballistic missile system http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/11723/israel-just-launched-a-containerized-ballistic-missile-from-the-deck-of-a-ship http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/11723/israel-just-launc...

KaiserPro 8y ago

> the air wing will only have a range of around 700 nm—about half that of many antiship cruise missiles. Which basically means that unless the US has very very effective anti ship missiles systems, their entire navy strategy(and thus Nato's) is broken. The whole point of an aircraft carrier is that it provides a dome of protection. It pushes ships capable of launching anti ship missiles out of range. This means that the rest of the navy is free to do other things. Without that cover, the navy can't move about without being destroyed. So you either need loads of little ships (which are much more expensive to eliminate, cheaper to produce, but have smaller weapons, or have a system to effectively intercept missiles, or the missile launcher.