The Ship Model Forum

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We spell alike!

I am an engineer that got sent to PG school to be reprogrammed as an applied math guy (Ops Research) - Wayne Hughes was my thesis advisor

I assure you that the good Captain brings a lot of operational insight and the math to back it up to a professional discussion.

That said, simply models can be incredibly powerful tools, especially when you start working with decision makers.



I am not against battleships, but it is a completely different weapon system from a CVN and I find the battleship to be distinctly inferior to a number of competing systems, notably the SSGN, or a cheap light attack aircraft/drone. In fact if you look at Hughes book, you might find that he is arguing that much of the what has been bandied about on this forum as *strike warfare* is really a capability that lies within the cruisers and destroyers of the CVBG battle group, not the carrier itself, at least not until deep strike drone aircraft like the X-47B are fielded en mass. I also remind battleship proponents that there are only four of these ships – if we really need more platforms (and we do), why not bite the bullet and build exactly what we need rather than screw around trying to upgrade four ships when we need more?

The threats the Iowa was built to defend against were not really the threats she faced in WWII, and are certainly not the same as the threats that ships face today. I am *very skeptical* that a battleship will be able to employ its guns against targets ashore in a significant regional power like Iran, or North Korea until the very late stages of a conflict. Without going into the classified reasons, I note that the USMC EFV was scrapped after people started taking a hard look at the feasibility of getting amphibs within 75 nm from shore to launch an assault - that should really wake folks up about the mine/shallow water ASW threats that are proliferating. You noted that CVNs face the same threats, but a CVBG has the option of fighting from a standoff range that mostly places them well outside of the 600 fathom curve where the mine threat is nil and we have ASW assets that are much more effective. A handful of tomahawks are not really worth the effort, and to get more, you are getting into more extensive modifications.

There really is no point in bringing the battlewagons back without giving them full C4ISR and sensor suites. Since only about 10% of the cost of a warship is its hull and most of the cost is sensors and weapons - that means that the communications and other systems for a battleship are likely to run into the $1B+ range to get DDG like capability, and that is before you touch the costs of screwing around with rebuilding. As an engineer you know that conversions rather than new builds typically result in wrecked time lines, cost overruns, and too often performance issues. I laugh when low dollar figures tossed around figures tossed about for modernization of battleships. Have these people ever had a home remodeled? The history of the PC, DDX, LCS do not inspire confidence! Just thinking about replacing that 6" lead lined fire main system (which also provides electronic and auxiliary cooling) makes me pause. And then we get to the point of reopening training pipelines for skills the Navy no longer has, which is another area of financial concern.

All this leads me back to the question: Without its guns and armor - what does a battleship really bring to the table? What are the competing options and trade-offs?
- The hypersonic missile (cruise or ballistic flavor) offers significantly more destructive power than any 16” shell. Why not incorporate more of these weapons into the fleet (obviously the cruise versions are pending tech).
- There are 30+knot commercial hulls in the 10-15000 TEU range that could serve nicely (and economically) as a second line carrier for two to four squadrons, with very low maintenance costs. These could be bought for a fraction of the cost of a DDG, given a flight deck, and have the added benefit that the hull itself can be run by 20 guys (love those big cathedral diesels!).
- We could also accelerate the next generation SSBN, we could consider converting more Ohios into SSGNs, or produce an SSG varient of the next SSBN.
- Having actually called in AC-130U gunfire (puts paid to the myth that aircraft cannot perform CAS in bad weather), I really wonder if the taxpayer would not get a better bargain if Congress made the Air Force and Navy buy more AC-130, EMB-314, a 21st century A-10 etc. aircraft to deal with other threats.

You're arguing with a ton of passion, and that's awesome, but you're really leaving a lot out.

I don't think anyone here thinks a battleship would do anything more than Dave proposes. You talk about the massive limitations of cost and then propose systems exorbitantly more expensive. You don't need a full AEGIS suite on a vessel designed to lob artillery. There are far cheaper options available, many of which Dave has outlined at length and in great detail, so I'm going to suggest reading his thoughts as opposed to me mangling them in the retelling. You cite the recent failures and cost overruns of new build projects, and skip over the original modernization of all 4 of the Iowas for less than the cost of an OHP. There's a real disconnect here.

On the other hand, you're absolutely right about the range. 23nm is not enough. And if all you're bringing to the table with the BB is a bit more space to hack into for some mk 41 VLS to lob more tomahawks, I don't think you're actually trying to solve the problem (I'm trying to remember the quote about lobbing million dollar cruise missiles at camels) go back to the modified 11" Sabot rounds and finish the job started by DARPA.

New technology is awesome, but there are times that a more restrained and old school approach is not only warranted, it is the better option than a wheelbarrow full of money and a bunch of fresh faced kids from MIT. The A-10 and the original Spooky are both perfect examples that it can be far better to build for the mission, not just throw everything and the kitchen sink into the build and hope it does the job. The examples of DDX and LCS you cited pretty much illustrate that to a tee.

Okay, all of that aside, I agree with you on the new build. Sure, I'd love to see Whisky sail and get refitted, but that's the romantic in me. But what would really be something is a ship purpose built for the job. Define the criteria (Which is in large part NGFS, gunboat diplomacy, and Strike Missions), outfit it properly (My issue with the Arsenal ship is that it's one gigantic unarmored target just waiting to explode and take a billion dollars of ordinance with it) and use it appropriately.

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Here is the crux of the matter - you have completely redefined the criteria to fit your assertion *sustained fire support within 20 miles of shore* - which is incredibly restrictive, and to the point, does not fit current operational plans.

I say this as a retired officer with combat experience, a former SOF guy, a strike and contingency planner on a Unified Staff, an OR analyst, and a guy who has done some bean counting for Congress. Based upon recent personal, experience – I do not think any Admiral or General is contemplating the type of operations, which make the battleship a premier weapons platform . I doubt any would award assert that it deserves higher priority than other critical priorities like more SSNs, a new SSGN, TOE(X), a replacement for the CGs, etc..

Consider:

- In the last ten years have you seen a Unified Combatant Command with an operational/functional/contingency plan that calls for *sustained fire support within 20 nm of shore* against a peer competitor (hypothetically China), or a major regional power (hypothetically NK, Iran)? Really? Seriously?

- Please describe a scenario in which the US is going to conduct forced entry operations against a peer competitor or a major regional power without first achieving air superiority (and all that entails)?

And being objective, I think it is very much in debate whether the battleship is the *best* fire support platform. Best at close support? Interdiction? Deep strike? Please define fire support (think Joint Pub 3-09). Consider:

- Having been a guy on the ground, I would not want to call a battleship to support troops in contact with the enemy - danger close for a 16" shell is ~800 meters, which is way too much.

- The premier fire support weapon for working close to friendly troops is the AC-130 gunship hands down. In a 24-year career, no one who has actually seen them fire has voiced a contrary opinion to me. True all weather capability, the ability to shoot through multiple story buildings and kill a target in a specific room (with friendlies in the building), able to hose down a huge area, or to zap a specific gomer with a single round – nothing is like an AC-130 for close support.

- Mortars, A-10s, AH-1s and AH-64s are all much better tools for *close support* than a battleship. These systems can all work fire close around friendly forces. And these weapons systems have the range or mobility to keep up with the troops, which the battleship does not, unless we are looking at island scenarios. Ask any commander who fought in Iraq (1991 or 2003) if he felt that he did not have enough fire support.

- Aircraft excel at the interdiction role, because they can search large areas, put eyes (sensors on target), attack at will, conduct BDA, and re-engage if necessary.

- Have you taken a look at current Rules of Engagement (ROE)? I think they will probably go right out the window in a major war, but ask yourself how firing a 2700, or 1800 lb 16" shell into a school or Mosque to kill three or four gomers with a mortar fits in with ROE.

What is the principal weapon of a CVBG used to destroy/degrade air defences prior to launching strikes overland? Answer: Tomahawk. It could also be provided by systems launched from B-1/2/52s, P-7/8s.



The U.S. buys capabilities, not platforms. What I am saying is that if we need a capability, then we need to address that. I do not think four ships provides that capability. It helps, but does not really fix the issue. I advocate fixing the issue, which requires actually buying whatever the system, or more likely group of solutions is.



Late stages of a campaign means exactly that *later stages*: first ASW and deep strikes, followed by, air superiority, followed by screening operations, then a minesweeping campaign and finally the battleship/amphibs gets called in.

The issue is how to conduct effective operations to degrade/destroy the enemy at minimal cost to our forces. Explicitly, what are our national goals, and why should we fight our way into littoral waters if it is not needed? This puts our fleet at the disadvantage, and is exactly the problem battleships – they need to get close to bring their principal weapons to bear.

Warfare is a two-way range where the enemy gets a voice in the matter – why do something that plays the game to his advantage? In 1940, the Western Allies were thinking trench warfare; the Germans didn’t want to play the attrition warfare game and tried a different operational model. So should we.



No, a Burke is about $1.2B – about $800M for the systems.



I am not against bringing back the battleship, in fact I think that there is room for a fire support ship (monitor, CA, whatever).

What I am against is ill-considered groupthink that favors one course of action over another without looking at vital national objectives, and current fleet capabilities (especially the gaps).

I do not think that the battleship provides true strike capability as called for in the way the US is thinking about employing fires in future major conflicts. It does have a role for Amphibious operations.

On the CVN shortfall – the obvious solution is to build more, supplement them with smaller less capable carriers ( stretched CATOBAR LHDs, Converted Merchant Hulls), or look for other options to fill gaps: arsenal ship, conventional tipped, ballistic missiles, land based air (P-8s, HAVs, etc.), heck put kinetic warheads on satellites...

I think the idea that you are going to modernize an Iowa today for less than $1B is a fantasy.

Why?

1) Please cite where the Secretary of the Navy, or better yet the SECDEF has formally responded to Congress with a budget proposal for modernizing the battleships in the last five years? Urban legends from this, that, or the other source do not hold weight. Even *internal* Navy cost estimates do not have weight until the Department as a whole reviews and evaluates them.

2) I would not put much faith in any cost analysis, or budget projection from DOD even after signed by the Secretary. I am not being mean spirited; it is simply fact. You will be laughed off Capitol Hill if you told anyone to not at least double any estimate that the Secretary actually does sign.

3) The last time the BBs were in service is the 1990s - they are generations behind in communications technology, computers, data systems, crypto systems etc.. It isn't just a matter of "adding Aegis" etc.. These ships will have to be able to work with not only todays Navy, but also the Army, Air force, and USMC as well. They had limited capability to do this in 1990. You simply cannot imagine the technology, or way the military handles networks, data, communications etc. unless you have been to Iraq, or Afghanistan in the last couple of years. The game has changed that much. To highlight the difference, a US Army infantry man today is carrying about $11,000 more in body armor alone than his 1990 counterpart. The optics on his standard issue M4 carbine cost more than his rifle (maybe 4-6 times the cost of the rifle) no one who wasn't a sniper had those in 1990. He is probably carrying an MBITR radio and a ton of other high dollar gear that his counterpart from 1990 did not have. All in all probably $18-25K per soldier in additional, expensive gear, per knuckle dragger (said with the utmost affection ).

4) I think that even the detailed modernization studies ignored manpower costs, not just of crewing the ships, but re-establishing training pipelines for crew ratings that no longer exist, or no longer resemble the jobs aboard a battleships, new training guides, videos etc.. At a minimum the engineering plant, CIC, and of course turrets will be hugely affected. And then there is the issue that there are just four ships meaning that advancement for the reestablished boiler tech rating will be massively limited. How many guys are going to want to enter a rating with limited opportunities for advancement? Will the Navy have to offer bonuses to keep guys? All this will cost a lot more $$$ than people seem to acknowledge.

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My points:

1) A BB is a marginal strike platform in their current/proposed configuration

2) A BB cannot replace a carrier

3) The cost of returning a BB to service is not known

a) this is configuration dependent (obvious)
b) it is likely to be more expensive than people seem to think
c) the operating costs are likely to be more extensive than thought

4) In spite of all of the above - there is a gap in US in the ability of the Navy to support forced entry operations

a) There is a gap is in artillery (gun and rocket systems)
b) There is gap also in dedicated CAS and interdiction aircraft
c) there is a gap in mine sweepers and other craft

5) Supporting forced entry operations will require a mix of weapons platforms and weapons systems - it *might* include battleships

6) The fleet faces critical shortfalls in ships, logistic support, and weapons that are a higher priority than supporting forced entry operations

7) The fleet is also unbalanced in capabilities

Confusing all of the above is the the budget mess we find ourselves in *and* the reality that we are still fighting a global low intensity war.

My priorities for the fleet:
1) Off the shelf buy of 6-8 squadrons of EMB-314 for the USMC, possibly two squadrons for USN (SOF support) - this addresses the current war

future wars/deterrence forces
2) New SSN, 2-4 per year if possible -
3) AOE(X) - needed desperately to fill looming logistic ship shortfalls
4) Accelerate CVN production, possibly convert some fast commercial hulls to CVs to plug gaps
5) CG/CGN(X)
6) SSBN(X)
7) Continue building DDGs, possibly with AGS if it works, without if it is a bust

Kill:
1) LCS
2) F-35B (STOL version)
3) not really a kill, but I would slow amphib production considerably

@busto: I think I'm going to just drop out of this. You're asking us to present non-existent documentation, then stating it wouldn't mean anything anyway. You mention the importance of time on target, then state that all that matters is the moments of the actual strike; that response time and ability to get munitions on target in a timely fashion is not a factor. You quote 800 meters as the safe zone for the 16", and yet 300 yards was the figure for the Missouri in Korea when called in by a spotter, ( http://books.google.com/books?id=Y5QcTr ... ea&f=false ) and they've reduced CEP since then, to the point getting a 14 shot 220 yard pattern in 1987 off of Crete with no external spotting.

I'm not disagreeing with any of your conjecture about needing a different ship, I'm just finding fault with pretty much everything you're presenting as fact.

There has been a lot of very good discussion here, and it is probably some of the best contribution in this entire multi-year thread. I really thank those who have contributed.

There are a lot of inaccurate claims out there that fall into the "battleship myth" category. busto's quote about an 800 meter danger close area is a new one. In the worse case situations, conventional un-guided rounds lad a maximum of 300 meters off target, and the kill radius is 150 meters, so a maximum of 450 meters danger close. That's better than 5" at 600 meters dispersion/deflection at 19nm. The 16" projectiles can be made precision guided with a fuse swap with an enlarged Precision Guidance Kit, and subcaliber rounds can take advantage of the techniques utilized with the 155mm Excalibur round.

As carr and I have discussed many times off-line, the situation is not equality with an aircraft carrier or the need for NSFS. The issues are that:

- CVNs are rapidly being reduced to levels that cannot support the USN's mission.

- Building new, smaller CVNs/CVs for the future fleet is a long-term solution, longer than waiting for a new administration.

- The near to mid-term problem is that we need more strike groups that can deliver heavy amounts of ordnance than we have carriers in order for the Navy to accomplish its missions of sea-control, presence, deterrence, strike, and tactical support capability.

- No matter how effective they are, AC-130s, A-10s, etc cannot always arrive to an area of operation in question, and we have so few strategic bombers that we cannot rely on them being around when forces near the coast need them.

- There are too many trouble spots that need a carrier-level strike capability than we have CVNs. Smaller group of CGs or DDGs cannot meet such a requirement. An SSGN cannot meet such a requirement.

- Lybian style operations are a severe waste of very limited TLAM resources. The Lybian TLAM strikes were naval gunnery jobs. Because the USN does not have an effective gunnery system it was forced to use TLAMs that cost depending on the version between $1 million and $2.5 million a piece. If the USN had begun to equip DDG-51s with the Mk71 MCLWG 8"/60 caliber gun as Gibbs&Cox proposed in 1991, naval gunnery could have accomplished this task at a very, very small fraction of the cost.

- A modernized battleship would indeed fill the above role in most situations.

The reason why the battleship is so attractive is because it is a near-term solution. The concerns about spare parts being in short supply, machinery being worn beyond tolerance, boiler techs, etc are all myths. The Navy has sustained parts for the battleships, and Boiler Techs were folded into Machinist Mates. We still have all of the LHAs and LHDs (except for Makin Island) are boiler powered. There is a LOT of boiler experience existing in the Navy. The only issues are 16" gun barrels, propellant, and a few other issues. Everything else from new parts to maintenance are normal concerns with any class of ship.

As I have pointed out many, many times, NAVSEA has maintains that the Iowa-class battleships are just as maintainable as an LHD or CVN.

This goes on and on. Without rehashing everything that has been established, the issue boils down to the fact that battleship reactivation and modernization is indeed feasible, and as the Battleship Project manager Richard Landgraff has stated several times, the Iowa-class battleships were supposed to be in service until 2010. NAVSEA has supported this with their own statements.

If one has qualms with how the warfighter would use 16" gunnery at all as strike and support, one only has to see how DDG-1000 is to be utilized. The battleship is the exact same, only a different caliber and larger variety of ammunition. The 51nm to 75+nm 11" and 13" ammunitions can be adapted to precision guidance. The 11” and 13” subcaliber rounds would offer a more manageable detonation on target around the supported forces (danger close). Precision Guidance Kits can be fitted to 16” 1900lb HC rounds making them GPS guided as well. I would suggest that building rounds up in the air to rain down in a massive multiple round impact is unnecessary, because 9 guns are available to land 9 rounds at a time anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... D78E3E11CD

So, back to the question I asked:
How would one arm the battleships to carry into a theater a similar super heavy strike capability to that of a CVN? Hopefully once people suggest an equipment arrangement I will lay out what I have in mind

My next question is:
If we look past the near-term solution of utilizing some if not all of the Iowa-class battleships, how would one arm and equip a new-build battleship OR heavy cruiser? I am specifically talking about:

- Armament
- Electronics
- Hull protection
- Propulsion

It seems that a lot of people get way, way wrapped up in the "battleships were made obsolete" argument/myth instead of just viewing the battleships as what they are: extremely heavily armed and highly, highly survivable surface combatants.

If one is to be honest, then one has to understand that if the best of the surface combatants, battleships, are somehow ineffective because of aircraft, then so are all of the rest of the surface combatants.

Food for thought! and better yet...discussion!

_________________
Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

Obviously you have never called in NGFS and are not a qualified forward observer.

From USMC Field Manual FM 6-30 Tactics, Techniques, Procedures for Observed Fire, Chapter 4-6. METHOD OF ENGAGEMENT, paragraph b.:

"b. Danger Close. DANGER CLOSE is included in the method of engagement when the target is (rounds will impact) within 600 meters of friendly troops for mortar and artillery, 750 meters for naval guns 5-inch and smaller, and 1,000 meters for naval guns larger than 5-inch. For naval 16-inch ICM, danger close is 2,000 meters."

Danger Close is not the same as CEP, it has much more to deal with "safe standoff" distance from munitions, overflight of rounds etc.. In actual combat people have called in air and artillery strikes atop their own positions - this is obviously a act of desperation, and is not the way to plan to do business even in combat. Note that "Danger Close" does not mean a FAC, FO cannot call in fires, but it does throw a flag, and triggers a lot of other actions.

Like I said, I am a professional (retired) who has been on the pointy end of the radio. I know my stuff. I am trying to have a friendly and professional discussion. There is mountains of detail and nuance regarding air and artillery spotting, weapons effects, reliability, etc. that is way outside even a forum for enthusiasts, but still affects "what works, and why." Please refrain from commenting, or at least pm me, before you you start "refuting" or calling "conjecture."

Thank you.

BTW - I still think the figure was 800m, but then I am getting old

BTW: here is an excellent article from the Marine Corps Gazette on Fire Support in Fallujah. It focuses on CAS, but discuses relevant points about how all fires, air, artillery, organic mortars are worked in combat: http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/article/close-air-support-0

Close Air Support, A core contributor to successful integrated operations in Fallujah

"Airstrikes came continuously and in harmony with other fires; most were danger-close and rapidly sequenced. One battalion air officer remarked:

"I tell you what, for like three weeks, it felt like nothing but a continuous faucet, a continuous fire hose of airplanes. I never knew a time in November when I had a TIC [troops in contact] when I didn't get an airplane within about a minute"

"The ever popular, and omnipresent, Air Force AC 130U droned overhead, its optics and sensors surveying and reconnoitering the urban battlefield, exchanging information with FACs and air officers on the ground. Its sensors could pick up body heat, and when they did, insurgents were quickly ushered into Allah's waiting arms. It was music to the Marines ears at night, . . . background music for everyone. He would lull everyone to sleep with the giant potato gun. The Marines loved it."

Busto963,

Interesting comments. I understand that many of the guys on here including myself may seem and sound like armchair generals/admirals, and most on here have not been in the service at any point, and some like myself are and have been on the radios as well.

There are a lot of really smart guys on here who think outside the box, and it's outside the box thinking that gets us things like AC-130s in the first place. Please entertain those of us on the board, because it does seem you bring a lot of expertice to the thread! I would like to hear what you have in mind for battleships and heavy cruisers in a modern environment. As you can see from my posts that I believe the battleships are far more useful than simply NSFS platforms. While they do not offer as much flexibility as a CVN, they do offer a lot of ordnance on target from a single round to 17 tones or ordnance per minute on any number of targets. I don't know if you are aware, but when the battleships were decommissioned they were finishing development on the forementioned subcaliber rounds, and the Warship Improvement Program was going to install the Mk160 GFCS so the ship could accurately fire them beyond 50nm. The only reason why the battleships did not carry the 11 inch discarding sabot round into Desert Storm was because the existing GFCS could not be modified to have range tables for the new rounds.

I look forward to what else you have to say!

_________________
Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

Dave you are a fantastic modeler and I am glad you serve!

Dave: Good luck with the modeling and discussion.

Carr: Thanks for a lot of insight.

I've rewritten this about 15 times to try and stay civil, and failed, so I'm seriously just dropping out of the conversation.

I have been reading your linked article. http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/arti ... -support-0 One thing it made me realize I needed to point out was to specify that I don't believe that the USS George Washington needs to be decommissioned, because a battleship can take its place.

Instead I believe that one or two battleships need to be reactivated because the George Washington is going to be decommissioned. Yet another aircraft carrier is going to be taken away from us. We are going to step below 10 carriers, fewer than needed for the US Navy to accomplish the national defense needs of the US Navy (15 preferred, 12 needed, 10 essential). The battleship is significantly more affordable than a carrier and provides an incredibly flexible platform for strike warfare. We need the capability so if we can afford a carrier, let's have a carrier. Because we cannot afford a carrier, we need the most important part of that capability. Battleships are the only other platform that can provide the most important part of what a carrier provides: high volume, flexible, and sustained strike warfare.

In the NSFS/TACAIR aspect as you are aware, but for the benefit of the audience, TACAIR and artillery support (NSFS in this case) are not replacements for each other. Instead they are complementary. I was able to sit in a four days of the NSFS instruction at the Little Creek NSFS school. When I return to Virginia I would very much like to go to that course of instruction. Learning the in depth ways and means of NSFS and TACAIR would be greatly valued knowledge.

So, back to the on going topic of battleship fit!

_________________
Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

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For the sake of argument, if you are intent upon making a BB a strike platform, it needs strike weapons with long range. Looking at maps of likely adversaries this calls for a range of 500 nm minimum, and an object of 1000 - 1500 nm desired. And it needs a lot more than the handful of armored box launchers installed on the Iowas.

I will define strike weapons as those capable of destroying, or neutralizing enemy centers of gravity and targets that facilitate friendly maneuver (C4ISR -Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance; air fields, air defense sites, repair facilities, logistic infrastructure, troop assembly areas etc.).

The physics of this call for a long range missile system of some flavor - could be a ballistic system, a cruise type (preferably hypersonic).

The simplest/cheapest way to do this to a BB appears to be to remove the 5" 38 guns, and replace them with VLS launchers, preferably the larger Mk57 systems (allows room for future weapon growth).

A more ambitious, flexible, and lethal, (but politically risky see debate on "Conventional Trident") modification would be to replace the 5" 38 guns with ballistic missile launch silos. Most ballistic missiles are able to loft a payload roughly equivalent in weight to a 16" shell; the trick is the missile can achieve velocities an order of magnitude greater than guns (x10). Since penetration correlates to kinetic energy, and kinetic energy increases linearly with mass, but by the square of velocity, a ballistic missile can deliver up to 100 times more kinetic energy to a target than a gun launched projectile of equivalent mass. With that kind of energy, you do not have to have an explosive warhead to literally bore a hole through the side of a mountain! For comparison, the velocity of a 16" shell is ~750-850 m/s. Ballistic missile velocities range from from mach 8-24 (2,700-7,000 m/s). But the missile can deliver everything from ultra deep penetrating rounds, to area denial munitions, and finally, special munitions designed to destroy electrical grids, communications, radars, etc.. And the ballistic missile can put emergency satellites in orbit - useful if the enemy extends the war into space and starts shooting down our satellites (which there is reason to expect them to do exactly that).

These modifications are going to cost a substantial sum. After installing the updated communications, data, and other systems, it seems reasonable to just go ahead and add a "minimal" Aegis combat system and SPY-1D. No, AAW would not become a primary mission area for the ship, but even CVBGs have ended up with only a single escort or two (e.g. Kittyhawk 1987) during a deployment, and that is too few, for task force with organic fixed-wing air power. The implications for a BB task force are obvious. I also note that during WWII, U.S. carriers were armed with an extremely heavy AAA batteries, and devoted increasingly larger percentage of their air wings (up 62%) to fighter, rather than bombers and torpedo aircraft. Current CVNs are increasing their defenses - that suggests more, rather than less capability is needed.

Very interesting. These are some pretty extensive and very expensive proposals, especially the modifications to equip Trident missiles.

While that would make an interesting model, this topic was meant to propose a modernization scheme that might actually be feasible. That's why this thread has a few heated exchanges in it. Some people think boiler automation is feasible, and some don't think it's worth it. Some don't believe 11" sabot rounds were produced, and others have posted pictures of the existing projectiles.

So we have been working in the realm of existing weapon systems compatible with the existing hull of an Iowa-class battleship that can improve the ship's value and capability in the near and midterm and to try to keep it at a price that would be well worth the funds. This is guessing what the Navy could actually do to modernize the ships.

Here is what I would say concerning your proposals:
For as useful as a conventional Trident could be, that would be upwards of a $70 million shot. That is not very cost effective at all, and mere price I can see why the conventional Trident was dropped. The political ramifications are also considerable. It is very confusing for other powers such as Russia to see a Trident ballistic missile with a range of 6000 miles arching through the air for any reason. The conventional Trident may have uses, but it comes at too prohibitive cost for the scope of this project.

I would exclude hypersonic cruise missiles as well, because the US Navy does not have any nro is it working on any. It has been developing a super sonic Tomahawk for about 10 years. I don't think a hypersonic cruise missile could appear on the scene any time soon, either.

The Mk57 PVLS is probably going to stay on DDG-1000 only. It is a missile launch system that only gets you about 1/2 the storage capability of current Mk41 launchers. There are no missiles on the horizon that would need the extra space provided by the Mk57. The battleships would be armed primarily with TLAMs and would benefit from as many tubes as the ship could hold without compromising the ship's gunnery capability.

The addition of Aegis would also push the modernization cost well beyond that of feasibility of mission scope and cost. An $800 million weapon system on top of the modernization and reconditioning would shut a project like this down fast. By the way, Arleigh Burke-class DDGs are not $1.2 billion. They are closer to $2.3 billion a piece, and the Flight IIIs are going to be significantly more expensive with the AMDR weapon system.

The Aegis Weapon Direction System is a weapon system for AAW missioned ships, not for self defense. Carriers and LHDs don't have Aegis, because they don't need it. Instead they have the SSDS, or Ship's Self Defense System, and it's pretty darned good. It is a modernized Mk74 Tartar D NTU weapon direction system that draws its radar data from the SPS-48G, SPS-49A, and the SPQ-9B, and it is specialized for directing NATO/Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles. Four ESSM quad packs would give the battleship as many ESSMs as a Nimitz class carrier. The battleship does not need to be able to track and shoot down satellites and the moon like a DDG does. A battleship only needs to defend itself from weapons approaching the ship at medium to close range.

This is why I don't believe a battleship, carrier, or LHD would need Aegis, and the extra mission load that would come with the system simply by it being there would disrupt the ship's core missions.

In trying to address near-term fixes to exisitng problems that are being unaddressed, in this case falling carrier numbers, we can only work with what we have in a very constrained fiscal environment. That's why I am working with existing weapon systems and technology. That's why I have chosen the battleships to fill a critical shortfall.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance