7 ms·

It's all hype, as the article points out. "Battleship", it's not. No mention of armor. A battleship is supposed to be able to withstand a hit from its own prima

by Animats 10mo ago

It's all hype, as the article points out. "Battleship", it's not. No mention of armor. A battleship is supposed to be able to withstand a hit from its own primary weapon. The British Navy had a fad for light cruisers at one point, "eggshells armed with sledgehammers". They did not do well in WWI and WWII.[1] Nor did the armored battleships. No Japanese or German battleship in WWII survived a determined air attack. Yamato, Tirpiz, Bismark - all lost to air attack. But they looked really cool. Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships. Being near a hostile coast held by someone with modern weapons is death to a navy today. The sinking of the Moskva was the first demonstration of this, and Ukraine has since taken out about eight more Russian warships and many smaller craft, using various missiles and drones. [1] https://hmshood.org.uk/history/bcorigins.htm https://hmshood.org.uk/history/bcorigins.htm [2] https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/china-s-df-27-missile-threatening-pacific-ships-and-the-u-s-homeland https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/china-s-df-27-miss...

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
> It's all hype It’s geriatric hype. It tells you how the administration is thinking about the Navy: in terms someone born in the 1940s—and who never refreshed their assumptions since childhood—can understand. What we should have are floating, automated drone-production platforms that can be mass manufactured themselves and shipped to right ahead of the front for overwhelming the enemy’s sea-based defences (while F-35s take care of SEAD). Instead we get Popeye with a rail gun.
- krapp 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - roughly 10mo ago
    Yeah but the other option was a chick
    - tialaramex 10mo ago
      I read an article shortly after Trump's first win which said that American women, especially the oldest remaining generation or so of voters did not believe a woman could be President, and so they were anti-Clinton in a way their comparable daughters were not. At the time I found this an interesting comparison to the UK. In the UK my mother's generation (squarely in that same bracket) voted in Margaret Thatcher†, the "Iron Lady" and so they know a woman is no different from a man in terms of potential to lead. Which doesn't mean (see Liz Truss) better but also doesn't mean worse. So in the UK you could definitely put a strong female leader at the top of the ticket and expect to get the same response, and in the US that seems likely in the future but it certainly counted against Clinton and even in 2028 it's probably a bad bet (assuming that is, that the US holds a meaningful presidential election in 2028) † Thatcher isn't much liked, especially in some parts of the UK, but nobody is fooling themselves by thinking she was incompetent or ineffectual, they mostly thought she was bad which is different.
      - roughly 10mo ago
        Yeah, I think that after 2024 neither political party is likely to run a woman for president for the next generation at a minimum, and I think the voters agree. (I don’t think that’s GOOD, mind you, but twice bitten)
        acdha 10mo ago
        I don’t think Democrats will. I did think there’s a non-trivial chance of an Ivanka ticket depending on how the family brand is doing by then. He’s used to thinking in terms of nepotism and his sons have the charisma of floor wax.
        actionfromafar 10mo ago
        That’s very charitable. Floor wax has utility.
        adabyron 10mo ago
        I see no reason why both parties should not try. Nikki Haley did very well in the primary against a more well known Ron DeSantis & Chris Christie. We have had multiple governors. The only 2 that have run are not a good example. A lot of people had strong opinions on Hillary that had nothing to do with her politics or leadership. A lot didn't want another 4-8 years of Clinton/Bush after 28 years depending on how you count Bush Sr. You could even add another 4 to that for Hillary's 4 yrs of influence as Secretary of State. Harris wasn't popular in the primaries, many thought she wasn't deserving of the VP & she was part of an unpopular White House that was given a few ticking time bombs that they didn't properly diffuse. They also failed miserably to communicate with the public.
  - AdieuToLogic 10mo ago
    Converting this sentence to singular form instead of plural seems apropos.
  - gorgoiler 10mo ago
    I blame the Primaries. The dogs choose the doggiest candidate and the cats choose the cattiest. The llamas and raccoons of Canidsas and Califelinia don’t even bother voting because the dog and cat candidates in these dog and cat voting states have always been and will continue to be in office term after term. The presidential race boils down to a handful of swing voters in purple Pettsylvania and Furrida.
- XorNot 10mo ago
  The Arsenal ship concept[1] paired with the idea of "crew optional" ships would be inline with this idea and also integrate with the data link capabilities intended for the F35 (where it potentially fires missiles it's not carrying at targets it identifies). The thing which stands out about VLS systems is the salvo fire capability of them: VLS tubes can launch an entire ships ammo complement in as little as 60 seconds or so. Which is a massive advantage because it means if a ship is targeted it can still potentially service every single target in range before it's in any danger of actually being hit. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_ship
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - jasonwatkinspdx 10mo ago
    Yeah, and the reason the arsenal ship proposal been shot down time after time, by many nations, is because when you actually dig into it, it's a bad idea. There's a minimum tonnage needed to mount a big enough radar, have a hanger for a helicopter, and plenty of room for VLS, RAM, etc. But past that, it's better to distribute your assets across multiple vessels vs building one dramatically larger ship. It's far better to have 4x Arleigh Burke style ships than one behemoth that's 4x the tonnage. Heck, this was true even at the end of the battleship era. Just look at how useless the Yamato proved to be. And it's doubly true now in an era of very sophisticated anti ship missiles. Also, conceiving of this in terms of single platforms is also just totally wrong. We assemble surface action groups with a mix of capabilities that match the situation. Some of our Burkes focus on anti aircraft warfare, other's anti submarine, so we send a mix. And when they're on station each hull can be in the location best suited to its task. So really you have to think about the whole package, and the arsenal ship just doesn't offer anything desirable on that basis.
    - daymanstep 10mo ago
      That surely depends on the particulars of the anti-missile defense technology. If it turns out that bigger ships are actually more survivable because you can put more effective anti-missile defense systems on them, then maybe it makes more sense to put everything on one big ship rather than distributed across many small ships.
- treebeard901 10mo ago
  A submarine automated drone production and deployment platform would be as damaging to a Navy today as aircraft carriers were to battleships.
  - nickff 10mo ago
    Why would you want to produce drones from the same facility as you deploy them? You would terribly hinder each task.
    - Balgair 10mo ago
      It's a storage thing. You can make it so that the parts fit together better in pieces, then you assemble the pieces in theatre during deployment, so you have more drones in combat per mothership. It's not like taking crude, cracking it, then refining the plastics, yadda yadda yadda. It's more an fast automated assembly thing.
      - krige 10mo ago
        Inside of a submersible warship really is not the place to be conducting assembly of sensitive electronics, and just because you call it "fast automated" doesn't mean it's either of those enough to be feasible in combat situations.
        Animats 10mo ago
        Right. What's more likely is a box launcher in a shipping container. Both China and the US have prototyped that. Launch from anything that can carry a shipping container. Such as a small, expendable self-propelled barge.
      - ivandenysov 10mo ago
        As an example loitering munition with foldable wings is already fairly compact. 2x storage space savings might not justify assembly space and effort
- SoftTalker 10mo ago
  Mostly agree. Battleships were basically obsolete already by the end of WWII. We haven't built a new one since then.
- pseudohadamard 10mo ago
  >It’s geriatric hype. Almost. It's hype for geriatrics, or one geriatric to be precise. Think of it as the USS Trump Reacharound. It'll never get around to being built, but I'm sure the Navy will get lots of concessions from the Dear Leader for proposing it.
justin66 10mo ago
> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships. Not to mention China's attack submarines, with their own anti-ship missiles as well as old-fashioned torpedoes. They have proven their ability to pop up and say "hello!" to US warships in the past. [0] Getting that close wouldn't be as easy when everyone is on a wartime footing, but then again, US ships would be steaming right towards them... [0] https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2007/january/world-naval-developments-back-surveillance-game https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2007/january/worl...
- jasonwatkinspdx 10mo ago
  The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate, so in a hypothetical conflict, China's subs will be much further out, trying to keep US strike groups far from the island, while also securing China's supply lines through Malacca. Note this is one of the material motivations for the CCP gaining control over Taiwan. They'd quite like to move their submarine basing to the east side of the island as a practical matter. It's got deep water and plenty of cliffs/mountains suitable for hardened docks/shelters.
  - justin66 10mo ago
    > China's subs will be much further out, trying to keep US strike groups far from the island I agree that's generally true and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Thinking it through, though: if Japan is party to the conflict its naval assets are likely to be much closer to China, and China will need to keep some assets nearby in the East China Sea to honor the threat regardless. To be honest the thing that's puzzled me about the Izumo-class ships since I read about them and the conversion they are undergoing to carry F-35Bs is where exactly they'd be safe to operate in a conflict against China. It's not like those planes have great range, and it's not like refueling is usually going to be an option, so if they're going to be put to use those ships are going to be in range of an awful lot of stuff. And what a juicy target for China. > The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate Is that true of China's smallest diesel-electric attack subs? I'd think the reason for them not to operate there would be a lack of targets. edit: I take the latter part back. Apparently mine-laying in the straight by US submarines is hypothetically something that could happen in the conflict, and that would certainly constitute a target for China https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/december/you-cant-win-without-more-submarines https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/december/you...
hermitcrab 10mo ago
>The British Navy had a fad for light cruisers at one point, "eggshells armed with sledgehammers". Do you mean 'battle cruisers'? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser 'Light cruisers' were different again. >No Japanese or German battleship in WWII survived a determined air attack. Yamato, Tirpiz, Bismark - all lost to air attack. Bismark was finished off by surface ships after the initial air attack. Tirpitz took many sorties to sink. The sinking of the British Prince of Wales and Repulse by the Japanese is probably a better example of how battleships became vulnerable to airpower.
- adolph 10mo ago
  The story ahead of the Tirpiz sinking is fascinating [0], right up there with the account in Blind Man's Bluff of Ivy Bells [1]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Source 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
- pfdietz 10mo ago
  > The sinking of the British Prince of Wales and Repulse by the Japanese is probably a better example of how battleships became vulnerable to airpower. In retrospect the Japanese got a bit lucky there; subsequent air attacks on battleships show they can be remarkably tough. Musashi took 19 torpedo and 17 bomb hits to sink.
  - mr_toad 10mo ago
    But these days you’re defending against the likes of squadrons of low flying B52s firing 20 (possibly nuclear) cruise missiles each. The bombers can fly back and re-arm much more quickly than any fleet, and there are a lot more bombers than ships. Add in submarines, destroyers and other platforms with even more missiles and I doubt any large ship or fleet will last long in any serious conflict.
    - pfdietz 10mo ago
      Sure, I wasn't trying to defend this silly idea of bringing back battleships.
nradov 10mo ago
US WWII battleships survived many determined air attacks in the Pacific Theater. They were heavily modified to carry more anti-aircraft cannons with huge supplies of ammunition. Improvements in radar, proximity fuses, fire control, and tactical doctrine proved to be extremely effective. Japanese kamikaze aircraft were conceptually similar to modern cruise missiles, just slower.
tw1984 10mo ago
> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. truck-mounted? Are you on CCP's payroll to downplay and cover the rise of its military strength? Chinese navy has YJ-20 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile fitted on its Type-055 destroyers. At Mach 10 with 1,500km range, it is the most advanced anti ship missiles ever developed & deployed on the sea. YJ-20 itself is the ship-launched version of the YJ-21, which has been spotted on H-6 bombers for ages. With YJ-20 and YJ-21, you don't get to "coast of China" to experience their "truck-mounted" missiles. Interestingly, you choose to ignore all these publicly available facts that can be easily verified and try to paint the Chinese navy as some 1980s forces relying on "truck-mounted missiles" for anti ship missions. Well done, you deserve a bonus for your strategic deception job!
- andrewflnr 10mo ago
  Are you on the CIA's payroll to try to get CCP to waste money? I bet the truck mounted missiles are still cheaper. If they can service a target with a truck mounted missile instead of a Mach 10 missile, they'd be fools not to.
  - tw1984 10mo ago
    care to explain how the US doesn't operate such super effective trucks? Trump doesn't like them? or maybe the kick backs are not as good as battleships?
    - diordiderot 10mo ago
      If Himars count as missile trucks then they do. Sometimes they just park one on a ship deck
      - andrewflnr 10mo ago
        Does the US do that? I only recall hearing about that kind of shenanigan from Ukraine.
    - 10mo ago
somat 10mo ago
So what would a guided missile battleship look like? my guess would be trident sized(2m) silos as the main battery and you fill them with vls cells as a working battery. for armor It needs to be able to defend agenst it's own gun right, so that would probably be a bunch of missile defense systems. It is often said that aircraft carriers replaced battleships but I don't think that is the case, I think aircraft carriers are kind of their own thing and the battleship role was actually replaced by ballistic missile submarines. Think about it, where are the big guns in the navy located? And the more tenuous but fun argument, look how the ships are named, battleships got state names, SSBN's got state names coincidence, I think not.
- herewulf 10mo ago
  Battleships are meant to fight other battleships. And you don't nuke ships. They are a relic from WWI when ships still had to engage each other directly. They also filled a shore bombardment role. But you also don't use nukes for that (rather modern aircraft). Disclaimer: IANAS (I Am Not A Squid)
  - somat 10mo ago
    > And you don't nuke ships Not for lack of trying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUM-44_SUBROC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUM-44_SUBROC And the Iowa battle ships were later equipped to handle "special weapons" But in seriousness, the restraint shown in the use of nuclear weapons is amazing, one day the genie will be let out of the lamp but it hasn't yes. On the topic of genies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie (sigh) yes an air to air missile with a nuclear warhead was not only invented it was built and deployed... With how hard we were actively flirting with the demon that is nuclear war it is incredible that anyone is still alive.
dragontamer 10mo ago
> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. Yes, which is why the DDG(X) class has loads of stealth built in, to make it harder for those missiles to lock on. One of the most important tools for fighting missiles is... an aircraft carrier. Early warning air systems (E2 Hawkeye), interceptors (F35), mostly for blowing up scouting craft. Missiles can only home into what they can detect and see. Blowbup their eyes (RADAR systems) and they are flying blind. It's a lot of ocean out there and the horizon is surprisingly short. Flight is your best way to cover a lot of ocean and find an enemy, but anything flying should be taken out by an F35. -------- I'm not so against a rail gun or any of these future weapons per se. IIRC Japan has deployed a rail gun and they are an ally, with the right R&D team / licensing we might be able to get a working design. But you know, that depends on how well Japans Railgun works. Ditto with laser systems and whatnot: as long as we test the crap out of them it's fine to deploy. > The sinking of the Moskva was the first demonstration of this, and Ukraine has since taken out about eight more Russian warships and many smaller craft, using various missiles and drones. Moskva is barely comparable to a singular US Destroyer, let alone a cruiser or larger boat. And USA deploys large teams of Destroyers to help watch each other (and protect the carrier at the core of their fleet). I'd expect that a drone being launched at a US Carrier strike group would simply be gunned down by the machine guns of an F35, long before they get close to the fleet. ----- The sinking of the Moskva is also a Russian error. We all know that the Moskva's RADAR system could see the drones. The sad truth is that the Moskva's sailors were themselves unready to watch a RADAR screen for hours, days, months. They likely got fatigue and sounded the alarm too late vs the aerial threat. Or maybe command was not notified quickly enough. Who knows? Communication error? There's a whole slew of chain of command issues that could have happened. But we all know that the Moskva has good enough RADAR to see all of those drones. Even in the storm they were in. So it's most likely some kind of human error along the way. USA, and other NATO forces, have anti-fatigue measures (better software, better training). Furthermore, we run missions vs Houthis and gain battle experience, or also shoot down Iranian missiles on their way to Israel. These missions (exercises??) will keep our sailors in better shape than the awful training the Russians have.

by Animats 10mo ago

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago

> It's all hype It’s geriatric hype. It tells you how the administration is thinking about the Navy: in terms someone born in the 1940s—and who never refreshed their assumptions since childhood—can understand. What we should have are floating, automated drone-production platforms that can be mass manufactured themselves and shipped to right ahead of the front for overwhelming the enemy’s sea-based defences (while F-35s take care of SEAD). Instead we get Popeye with a rail gun.

krapp 10mo ago
[flagged]
- roughly 10mo ago
  Yeah but the other option was a chick
  - tialaramex 10mo ago
    I read an article shortly after Trump's first win which said that American women, especially the oldest remaining generation or so of voters did not believe a woman could be President, and so they were anti-Clinton in a way their comparable daughters were not. At the time I found this an interesting comparison to the UK. In the UK my mother's generation (squarely in that same bracket) voted in Margaret Thatcher†, the "Iron Lady" and so they know a woman is no different from a man in terms of potential to lead. Which doesn't mean (see Liz Truss) better but also doesn't mean worse. So in the UK you could definitely put a strong female leader at the top of the ticket and expect to get the same response, and in the US that seems likely in the future but it certainly counted against Clinton and even in 2028 it's probably a bad bet (assuming that is, that the US holds a meaningful presidential election in 2028) † Thatcher isn't much liked, especially in some parts of the UK, but nobody is fooling themselves by thinking she was incompetent or ineffectual, they mostly thought she was bad which is different.
    - roughly 10mo ago
      Yeah, I think that after 2024 neither political party is likely to run a woman for president for the next generation at a minimum, and I think the voters agree. (I don’t think that’s GOOD, mind you, but twice bitten)
      - acdha 10mo ago
        I don’t think Democrats will. I did think there’s a non-trivial chance of an Ivanka ticket depending on how the family brand is doing by then. He’s used to thinking in terms of nepotism and his sons have the charisma of floor wax.
        actionfromafar 10mo ago
        That’s very charitable. Floor wax has utility.
      - adabyron 10mo ago
        I see no reason why both parties should not try. Nikki Haley did very well in the primary against a more well known Ron DeSantis & Chris Christie. We have had multiple governors. The only 2 that have run are not a good example. A lot of people had strong opinions on Hillary that had nothing to do with her politics or leadership. A lot didn't want another 4-8 years of Clinton/Bush after 28 years depending on how you count Bush Sr. You could even add another 4 to that for Hillary's 4 yrs of influence as Secretary of State. Harris wasn't popular in the primaries, many thought she wasn't deserving of the VP & she was part of an unpopular White House that was given a few ticking time bombs that they didn't properly diffuse. They also failed miserably to communicate with the public.
- AdieuToLogic 10mo ago
  Converting this sentence to singular form instead of plural seems apropos.
- gorgoiler 10mo ago
  I blame the Primaries. The dogs choose the doggiest candidate and the cats choose the cattiest. The llamas and raccoons of Canidsas and Califelinia don’t even bother voting because the dog and cat candidates in these dog and cat voting states have always been and will continue to be in office term after term. The presidential race boils down to a handful of swing voters in purple Pettsylvania and Furrida.
XorNot 10mo ago
The Arsenal ship concept[1] paired with the idea of "crew optional" ships would be inline with this idea and also integrate with the data link capabilities intended for the F35 (where it potentially fires missiles it's not carrying at targets it identifies). The thing which stands out about VLS systems is the salvo fire capability of them: VLS tubes can launch an entire ships ammo complement in as little as 60 seconds or so. Which is a massive advantage because it means if a ship is targeted it can still potentially service every single target in range before it's in any danger of actually being hit. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_ship
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- jasonwatkinspdx 10mo ago
  Yeah, and the reason the arsenal ship proposal been shot down time after time, by many nations, is because when you actually dig into it, it's a bad idea. There's a minimum tonnage needed to mount a big enough radar, have a hanger for a helicopter, and plenty of room for VLS, RAM, etc. But past that, it's better to distribute your assets across multiple vessels vs building one dramatically larger ship. It's far better to have 4x Arleigh Burke style ships than one behemoth that's 4x the tonnage. Heck, this was true even at the end of the battleship era. Just look at how useless the Yamato proved to be. And it's doubly true now in an era of very sophisticated anti ship missiles. Also, conceiving of this in terms of single platforms is also just totally wrong. We assemble surface action groups with a mix of capabilities that match the situation. Some of our Burkes focus on anti aircraft warfare, other's anti submarine, so we send a mix. And when they're on station each hull can be in the location best suited to its task. So really you have to think about the whole package, and the arsenal ship just doesn't offer anything desirable on that basis.
  - daymanstep 10mo ago
    That surely depends on the particulars of the anti-missile defense technology. If it turns out that bigger ships are actually more survivable because you can put more effective anti-missile defense systems on them, then maybe it makes more sense to put everything on one big ship rather than distributed across many small ships.
treebeard901 10mo ago
A submarine automated drone production and deployment platform would be as damaging to a Navy today as aircraft carriers were to battleships.
- nickff 10mo ago
  Why would you want to produce drones from the same facility as you deploy them? You would terribly hinder each task.
  - Balgair 10mo ago
    It's a storage thing. You can make it so that the parts fit together better in pieces, then you assemble the pieces in theatre during deployment, so you have more drones in combat per mothership. It's not like taking crude, cracking it, then refining the plastics, yadda yadda yadda. It's more an fast automated assembly thing.
    - krige 10mo ago
      Inside of a submersible warship really is not the place to be conducting assembly of sensitive electronics, and just because you call it "fast automated" doesn't mean it's either of those enough to be feasible in combat situations.
      - Animats 10mo ago
        Right. What's more likely is a box launcher in a shipping container. Both China and the US have prototyped that. Launch from anything that can carry a shipping container. Such as a small, expendable self-propelled barge.
    - ivandenysov 10mo ago
      As an example loitering munition with foldable wings is already fairly compact. 2x storage space savings might not justify assembly space and effort
SoftTalker 10mo ago
Mostly agree. Battleships were basically obsolete already by the end of WWII. We haven't built a new one since then.
pseudohadamard 10mo ago
>It’s geriatric hype. Almost. It's hype for geriatrics, or one geriatric to be precise. Think of it as the USS Trump Reacharound. It'll never get around to being built, but I'm sure the Navy will get lots of concessions from the Dear Leader for proposing it.

justin66 10mo ago

> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships. Not to mention China's attack submarines, with their own anti-ship missiles as well as old-fashioned torpedoes. They have proven their ability to pop up and say "hello!" to US warships in the past. [0] Getting that close wouldn't be as easy when everyone is on a wartime footing, but then again, US ships would be steaming right towards them... [0] https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2007/january/world-naval-developments-back-surveillance-game https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2007/january/worl...

jasonwatkinspdx 10mo ago
The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate, so in a hypothetical conflict, China's subs will be much further out, trying to keep US strike groups far from the island, while also securing China's supply lines through Malacca. Note this is one of the material motivations for the CCP gaining control over Taiwan. They'd quite like to move their submarine basing to the east side of the island as a practical matter. It's got deep water and plenty of cliffs/mountains suitable for hardened docks/shelters.
- justin66 10mo ago
  > China's subs will be much further out, trying to keep US strike groups far from the island I agree that's generally true and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Thinking it through, though: if Japan is party to the conflict its naval assets are likely to be much closer to China, and China will need to keep some assets nearby in the East China Sea to honor the threat regardless. To be honest the thing that's puzzled me about the Izumo-class ships since I read about them and the conversion they are undergoing to carry F-35Bs is where exactly they'd be safe to operate in a conflict against China. It's not like those planes have great range, and it's not like refueling is usually going to be an option, so if they're going to be put to use those ships are going to be in range of an awful lot of stuff. And what a juicy target for China. > The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate Is that true of China's smallest diesel-electric attack subs? I'd think the reason for them not to operate there would be a lack of targets. edit: I take the latter part back. Apparently mine-laying in the straight by US submarines is hypothetically something that could happen in the conflict, and that would certainly constitute a target for China https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/december/you-cant-win-without-more-submarines https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/december/you...

hermitcrab 10mo ago

>The British Navy had a fad for light cruisers at one point, "eggshells armed with sledgehammers". Do you mean 'battle cruisers'? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser 'Light cruisers' were different again. >No Japanese or German battleship in WWII survived a determined air attack. Yamato, Tirpiz, Bismark - all lost to air attack. Bismark was finished off by surface ships after the initial air attack. Tirpitz took many sorties to sink. The sinking of the British Prince of Wales and Repulse by the Japanese is probably a better example of how battleships became vulnerable to airpower.

adolph 10mo ago
The story ahead of the Tirpiz sinking is fascinating [0], right up there with the account in Blind Man's Bluff of Ivy Bells [1]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Source 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
pfdietz 10mo ago
> The sinking of the British Prince of Wales and Repulse by the Japanese is probably a better example of how battleships became vulnerable to airpower. In retrospect the Japanese got a bit lucky there; subsequent air attacks on battleships show they can be remarkably tough. Musashi took 19 torpedo and 17 bomb hits to sink.
- mr_toad 10mo ago
  But these days you’re defending against the likes of squadrons of low flying B52s firing 20 (possibly nuclear) cruise missiles each. The bombers can fly back and re-arm much more quickly than any fleet, and there are a lot more bombers than ships. Add in submarines, destroyers and other platforms with even more missiles and I doubt any large ship or fleet will last long in any serious conflict.
  - pfdietz 10mo ago
    Sure, I wasn't trying to defend this silly idea of bringing back battleships.

nradov 10mo ago

US WWII battleships survived many determined air attacks in the Pacific Theater. They were heavily modified to carry more anti-aircraft cannons with huge supplies of ammunition. Improvements in radar, proximity fuses, fire control, and tactical doctrine proved to be extremely effective. Japanese kamikaze aircraft were conceptually similar to modern cruise missiles, just slower.

tw1984 10mo ago

> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. truck-mounted? Are you on CCP's payroll to downplay and cover the rise of its military strength? Chinese navy has YJ-20 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile fitted on its Type-055 destroyers. At Mach 10 with 1,500km range, it is the most advanced anti ship missiles ever developed & deployed on the sea. YJ-20 itself is the ship-launched version of the YJ-21, which has been spotted on H-6 bombers for ages. With YJ-20 and YJ-21, you don't get to "coast of China" to experience their "truck-mounted" missiles. Interestingly, you choose to ignore all these publicly available facts that can be easily verified and try to paint the Chinese navy as some 1980s forces relying on "truck-mounted missiles" for anti ship missions. Well done, you deserve a bonus for your strategic deception job!

andrewflnr 10mo ago
Are you on the CIA's payroll to try to get CCP to waste money? I bet the truck mounted missiles are still cheaper. If they can service a target with a truck mounted missile instead of a Mach 10 missile, they'd be fools not to.
- tw1984 10mo ago
  care to explain how the US doesn't operate such super effective trucks? Trump doesn't like them? or maybe the kick backs are not as good as battleships?
  - diordiderot 10mo ago
    If Himars count as missile trucks then they do. Sometimes they just park one on a ship deck
    - andrewflnr 10mo ago
      Does the US do that? I only recall hearing about that kind of shenanigan from Ukraine.
  - 10mo ago

somat 10mo ago

So what would a guided missile battleship look like? my guess would be trident sized(2m) silos as the main battery and you fill them with vls cells as a working battery. for armor It needs to be able to defend agenst it's own gun right, so that would probably be a bunch of missile defense systems. It is often said that aircraft carriers replaced battleships but I don't think that is the case, I think aircraft carriers are kind of their own thing and the battleship role was actually replaced by ballistic missile submarines. Think about it, where are the big guns in the navy located? And the more tenuous but fun argument, look how the ships are named, battleships got state names, SSBN's got state names coincidence, I think not.

herewulf 10mo ago
Battleships are meant to fight other battleships. And you don't nuke ships. They are a relic from WWI when ships still had to engage each other directly. They also filled a shore bombardment role. But you also don't use nukes for that (rather modern aircraft). Disclaimer: IANAS (I Am Not A Squid)
- somat 10mo ago
  > And you don't nuke ships Not for lack of trying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUM-44_SUBROC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUM-44_SUBROC And the Iowa battle ships were later equipped to handle "special weapons" But in seriousness, the restraint shown in the use of nuclear weapons is amazing, one day the genie will be let out of the lamp but it hasn't yes. On the topic of genies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie (sigh) yes an air to air missile with a nuclear warhead was not only invented it was built and deployed... With how hard we were actively flirting with the demon that is nuclear war it is incredible that anyone is still alive.

dragontamer 10mo ago

> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. Yes, which is why the DDG(X) class has loads of stealth built in, to make it harder for those missiles to lock on. One of the most important tools for fighting missiles is... an aircraft carrier. Early warning air systems (E2 Hawkeye), interceptors (F35), mostly for blowing up scouting craft. Missiles can only home into what they can detect and see. Blowbup their eyes (RADAR systems) and they are flying blind. It's a lot of ocean out there and the horizon is surprisingly short. Flight is your best way to cover a lot of ocean and find an enemy, but anything flying should be taken out by an F35. -------- I'm not so against a rail gun or any of these future weapons per se. IIRC Japan has deployed a rail gun and they are an ally, with the right R&D team / licensing we might be able to get a working design. But you know, that depends on how well Japans Railgun works. Ditto with laser systems and whatnot: as long as we test the crap out of them it's fine to deploy. > The sinking of the Moskva was the first demonstration of this, and Ukraine has since taken out about eight more Russian warships and many smaller craft, using various missiles and drones. Moskva is barely comparable to a singular US Destroyer, let alone a cruiser or larger boat. And USA deploys large teams of Destroyers to help watch each other (and protect the carrier at the core of their fleet). I'd expect that a drone being launched at a US Carrier strike group would simply be gunned down by the machine guns of an F35, long before they get close to the fleet. ----- The sinking of the Moskva is also a Russian error. We all know that the Moskva's RADAR system could see the drones. The sad truth is that the Moskva's sailors were themselves unready to watch a RADAR screen for hours, days, months. They likely got fatigue and sounded the alarm too late vs the aerial threat. Or maybe command was not notified quickly enough. Who knows? Communication error? There's a whole slew of chain of command issues that could have happened. But we all know that the Moskva has good enough RADAR to see all of those drones. Even in the storm they were in. So it's most likely some kind of human error along the way. USA, and other NATO forces, have anti-fatigue measures (better software, better training). Furthermore, we run missions vs Houthis and gain battle experience, or also shoot down Iranian missiles on their way to Israel. These missions (exercises??) will keep our sailors in better shape than the awful training the Russians have.