This is an interesting article, Russ! Again good find. I have not been able to really go through that site too much yet. However, with the NTU Flight IB Burke, it would not be shooting down ballistic missiles. My version of the Flight III, however, would, if that addition is indeed only a $12million upgrade. A new CG, a high-end ship, would need to have such a load-out. I am curious about several of the statements in this article, however.
Russ2146 wrote:
...Thanks to Iranian and North Korean ballistic missiles, the U.S. Navy is now scrambling for a way to enable its warships to reload their missile launch tubes at sea...
This is the first I have heard of it. I am no ultimate authority on the subject, but I have been around all of the "new hot technologies" that people want to sell the Navy. I think that if the Navy really was "now scrambling for a way to enable its warships to reload...at sea" there would be more indications, like models and mock-ups beign advertized. 'Just saying.
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...With 18 Aegis anti-missile equipped ships in service now, and plans to have more than twice as many in the next few years.
I think what the author is trying to say is "...with 18 Aegis ships modified for the Anti-Ballistic Missile mission in service now..." Every CG and DDG we have has Aegis on it...and that's a lot more than 18 ships.
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Converting Aegis ships to fire anti-missile missiles costs about $12 million a ship, mainly for new software and a few new hardware items.
All of the Aegis ships shoot "anti-missile missiles". The threat Aegis is best for today is shooting down missiles. Maybe what the author meant to say was "Converting Aegis ships to fire anti-ballistic missiles...". There is a big difference between standard shooting down cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.
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Now the government wants to use Aegis more aggressively to block Iranian or North Korean ballistic missiles. This means buying over a thousand SM-3 missiles...These currently cost about $10 million each, and the next upgrade (which will deliver more accuracy and reliability) will raise that to $15 million each.
...1,000?! Super rockin' awesome sweet! A $15BILLION purchase of missiles?! WOW!
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While the expanded Aegis program will cost about $20 billion, it's seen as the cheapest way to provide reliable anti-missile defense against Iran and North Korea.
Do we know how the Aegis program is going to be expanded by $20Billion? Is that new construction, because the conversion of existing ships to ABM won't amount to that much.
This is pretty fascinating. The technique you suggested, Russ, about modifying the existing VLS to be more like the Army tubes is pretty pricy and time consuming. Unless the modifications were going to be very minor, I don't think the Navy would do it. They certainly won't pull modules. They would rather the ships sprint to Bahrain (If they are in the Persian Gulf) and reload and come back. I think cost, time to install, and how much capacity are you going to sacrifice to accommodate reloading at sea?
Just a thought to this one
HOWEVER, if there were a way for ships to reload their missiles at sea it would be SO cool!