The Ship Model Forum

Okay.

I fail to understand how a defended beachhead could be assaulted from the sea with out suffering unacceptable losses due to fixed and mobile SSM sites placed well inland. Well away from extended range artillery of the fleet. Equally air cover of the fleet would also be vulnerable to apposing aircraft and first layer SAM sites. In short naval gun fire using extended range rounds no matter how sophisticated would not stop the incoming first wave of Mach 3 SSMs which would severely damaging each and every ship they hit .Now convince me that Naval artillery is a worth while asset?
Dave Wooley

How far can a land-based anti-ship radar scan?

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De quoi s'agit-il?

The radar on the missile or the radar on land?

The one on land.

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De quoi s'agit-il?

Hence in a land attack role the gun on modern ships are really useful only for intimidating unsophisticated, or totally down-on-their-luck, enemies who are devoid of any means to fire back.

In other words, the guns on a modern warship has roughly the same role as a Gatlin gun, or a 37mm Maxim gun, on a colonial gun boat of the 19th century. It certainly can not have the role similar to what was intended for battleship guns through the 19th and 20th century as implied at the start of this thread.

Against non-stealthy ships taking care to not expose themselves, perhaps 40-50 miles. If the ships, stealthy or not, should attempt to fire gun in the landward direction, then land based radar can pin point the ship by tracking the ballistic projectile no matter where the ship was.

Hmm, then in 15 years, with the advancement of the 200 mile range railguns using a high angle shot with guided shells, ships can fire beyond detection range of shore defenses, while programming the shells to come at the enemy using an indirect approach.

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De quoi s'agit-il?

The argument you make is equally true for land attack bombardment missiles and shells, the principal difference being cost and size, not range or speed. Cruise missiles have longer range, but are much more expensive, and therefore much less available.

Your argument is also counter to the prevailing "conventional wisdom" in the area of "from the sea" assaults, which have been the stuff of military research for the last several decades. Either you are misguided in your ideas or impressively prescient. Since I am not an expert in this area, I cannot pretend to know which. I also know enough about government programs to realize that several decades of research may mean nothing when it is confronted by reality.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

No, It is not a equivalent argument to say the same about land attack missiles.

Engagement with guns automatically puts the ship in a compromised position. The ship firing the gun immediate betrays his position to the enemy. Provided the enemy has guns that will reach, it immediately puts the ship in peril. The ship can't do much to other worthwhile targets without neutralizing the enemy gun. In such a contest, the playing field between a $1 billion dollar ship, and one quarter of a $3 million land artillery battery, is level. Upon that fueld the naval ship, being a bigger target, is relatively the weaker player.

Engagement with missiles or aircrafts does not automatically put the ships launching missiles and land based missile battery on equal footing. Missile engagements and aircraft engagements can be conducted without betraying the location of the platform to the enemy. The ship can continue to engage the enemy's other worthwhile target without having to neutralize enemy anti-ship defenses first. All types of assets can continue to hunt enemy anti-ship assets while efforts are on-going to suppress other aspects of his defenses.

There is not necessarily heightened vulnerability associated with the use of the weapon in the case of missiles or air strikes. There always will be with guns.

You are correct if you propose using multimillion dollar cruise missiles. A bombardment missile, or an artillery shell, being similarly maneuverable, and of similar range, expose the ship to similar risks.

Since the notional 15.5cm naval gun referred to above can fire 10 shells over the course of one minute and they will all arrive at the target simultaneously, there must be, of necessity, considerable navigation aboard the shells, since some must take nearly twice the flight of others to accomplish this in conventional ranges.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

The cruise missile fulfills quite a different mission than a naval tube or a bombardment missile. They are complementary weapons systems. The cruise missile competes with aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles in a more strategic role. The gun tube and the bombardment missile are close support for ground troops.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

No, there needs to be no navigation aboard the shells to do this. By varying the amount of propellants and the elevation of the gun, you can get a huge range of different muzzle velocities and achieve a huge range of different ballistic trajectories that all connect the same two points. Each of these trajectories would have a different flight time. It is a relatively trivial matter to calculate a different sets of propellant loading and elevations needed to ensure several shells fired at slightly different times arrive on target at the same time.

Doing this does mean, however, the gun could not achieve anywhere near its maximum ballistic range. Maximum ballistic range is associated firing a shell at around 45 degree elevation while using the maximum amount of propellant to achieve the maximum muzzle velocity. In order to get several shells to arrive on target at the same time, it is necessary to fire the fastest shell last ,and give it a low, flat trajectory that would ensure the least air time. Thus to ensure all shells arrive on target at the same time, the high propellant shell must be fire at a low elevation much below 45 degrees. So the gun can only achieve a fraction, in the ball park of 50-60% of its theoretical maximum range if it were to ensure a series of shells fired in sequence all land on the same target at the same time.

In that case the missile is functioning more like Katyusha rockets rather than guided missiles, and would expose the ship just as much as if the ship had fired a gun.

Actually, on second thought, that is not entirely correct. A ballistic shell receives almost all of its impulse at the beginning, and afterwards its trajectory is modified only by aerodynamic forces that can be estimated. So its point of launch can be pin pointed even if the counterfire battery only acquired the shell near the end of its flight.

The bombardment missile receives continues propulsive thrust from its rocket engine for as long as the fuel lasts. In this case, the projectile's trajectory is additionally modified by the magnitude and variability of the thrust, which make it impossible to backtrack the trajectory to the point of origin if the missile was not acquired by the radar very early on.

"Wonder" artillery is like a bombardment missile without the need for a motor section. As a result, you get more "bang" for the buck in a robust, proven system.

These artillery shells are obviously a long way from the munition you are thinking of.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

Bombardment missiles make use of existing airframes, gutted of their original guidance and replaced with a GPS system to make them little more than artillery or smart bombs. The advantage is cost and simplicity for a mission that does not require the sophisticated flight profile or range of a multimillion dollar cruise missile.

Here is a bombardment missile based on SM-1 technology:

A Burke could carry up to 90 bombardment missiles and/or 1,000 or more "wonder" shells. Reloading the bombardment missiles requires a yard visit (or at the very least a tender), while more shells can be delivered by helicopter.

As for cruise missiles, a couple of Burkes could carry more "wonder" shells than the number of Tomahawks which exist in the entire national arsenal.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

, s

And no doubt these smart rounds can turn , dodge and out fly an incoming AMM. I take it these bombardment rounds are fired from naval artillery? What is the range of these rounds? And is the round in service or still under development? The other question is "when is a shell not a shell but a guided missile". What you have described above is more like a guided missile than a shell .
Dave Wooley

I think the big gun is fine if you have already established complete air superiority over the enemy, have taken out his fixed and mobile anti ship missiles and have cleaned out any artillery within the landing zones.
To do this you need Carrier Air Groups operating form a secure position way out at sea. Before you move landing forces in, the enemy must be more or less completely defeated already.
Would anyone care to be on the Gun Fire Support ships before the above situation has be realized? Not me.
Hitler had wonder weapons as well, but they didn't always live up to the the sales pitch. As the Marines say, "The enemy has a vote". Too much supposition takes place when one doesn't consider the enemy.
Guns are no doubt cheaper in the long run for shore bombardment, but they only can exist in so far as the USN has the world class Carrier force it has now. Nothing is gonna happen without the Carriers. If I was going to challange USN sea control, I'de be in the Submarine, High Tech Torpedo and supersonic anti ship missile business. Better to defeat the enemy at stage number One than let then stand off a blow hell out of you from the Carriers for weeks on end.
It gets to be the old "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin" debate. Bottom line is, the Carrier Air Groups will do 90% of the work. The last stage of a landing when the marines hit the beach, you would have made a parking lot out of the rear areas before anybody got a toe wet. Coming within missile range of the coast before the missiles are taken out? The enemy's vote will count very heavily. You can't bombard with guns till that threat is gone. Even with the new wonder guns. Shore based radar isn't the only way to get initial target information upon which to launch anti ship missiles. Passive detection is way underrated, since most USN ships broadcast on enouh radiation spectrums to say loud and clear "Here I am".
The enemy has already figured out that passive detection systems work for both aircraft and ships, and modern computing power can turn all that information into real usable data very easily. It just another possible chink in the armor.


Bob B.

I would dare say that the defining line between a shell and a guided missile is self propulsion of the payload to the delivery point.

As to counterbattery radar, this may as well be true, but let us all remember that there IS flight time for especially long range naval bombardment. Considering that, no ship in their right mind would fire from a stationary position, lest they, as you have so aptly pointed out, be discovered and engaged by counterbattery fire. With naval gun engagement ranges, in WW2, being in the 40-50km range, conveniently the same as shore-based search radar, let us consider the effect of a 40.6cm, guided, rocket-assisted shell. Delivering its payload, fired from the guns aboard, for instance, an Iowa Class. Maximum range, with AP Mk 8, we'll say he's firing against a hardened shore target, a defensive position like a pillbox. Maximum flight range for the AP mk 8, right off a fresh gun, just pulling numbers from Navweaps, reads 38km.

Assuming a similar ration of increase between the Paladin firing Rocket Assisted versus Conventional projectiles, a ratio of roughly 36% increase in range (30km vs 22km) our 406mm shell has now reached a firing range of 51.8km in flight. Outside of shore radar detection range, and that's just assuming older propellant charges, not a newer, more efficient propellant, or a newer shell with better flight characteristics. With the higher muzzle velocity inherent to the rocket-assistance of the shell, it would also, I should think, provide a faster time to target. Our shell is also smaller, thus a harder target for countermeasures to engage, versus the size of a cruise missile, conveniently, such as the Tomahawk.

Gentlemen, you continue to hail and vaunt your modern, or even ~20 year vintage missiles against weapons systems that have only mildly been given lip service by most nations. Of course the missile is more advanced, more impressive performance, more everything, it's also, need I remind you, More Modern. It's like comparing a Sherman beside an Abrams, of course one's going to win. Short of the mind of a genius such as Gerald Bull, whose work remained unfinished, most of the world has set artillery guns aside as pointless and outdated. I should hardly have to mention that had he finished the work, Babylon was projected to have a range long enough to shell Tel Aviv from deep in the Iraqi desert, thus why he was assassinated and made to vanish, before the weapon could be finished. Nothing truely new with regards to artillery has been seen in practice and use, short of new rounds for venerated calibers, since Schwere Gustav.

You gentlemen continue as well to purport that your missiles are immune to the countermeasures you so aptly confer. By no means is the Moskit/Sunburn immune to countermeasures, it simply has the benefit of its ramjet engine giving the unfortunate target all of five seconds to actually do anything about it. Of course, it also comes with a rather hefty pricetag for its impressive performance.

*pulls on his ear defenders for the inevitable barrage of counterfire to his argument, so he can actually tune it down to a dull, comprehensible mumble instead of deafening shouting*

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