A little bit of artworks

I drew a flotilla leader, a ship class perfect for carrier escort.

KomissarBojanchev wrote:I drew a flotilla leader, a ship class perfect for carrier escort.

Thanks for explanation, actually I do not have good knowledge about navy and ships.

higurashihougi wrote:@Komissar: please correct me if I am wrong, but it is said that the formula of heavy ships and big guns was not very successful in the WWII due to the rise of aircraft carriers and submarine ?

Not really. Battleships were surprisingly relevant in WW2, as shown by the US and Japan. People thought carriers would replace them, but in reality they just supplemented them... Subs were a big threat, but a single Iowa-class could withstand multiple torpedoes, in fact, they were designed to take as many hits as possible. Pearl Harbor showed that many battleships could withstand tens of bombs and torpedoes, the ones sunk were typically older.

The problem is that an anti ship missile or aircraft with a small nuclear bomb could take out any large vessel.

The anti ship missile meant even a small vessel of corvette size could deliver a battleship like broadside attack with one missile over hundreds of kms... far outside the range of guns.

Equally an aircraft could deliver weapons outside the range of anti aircraft guns to defeat ships... the best defence was aircraft, so carriers were useful, but missile cruisers didn't really benefit from heavy armour so the idea of the battleship died and the carrier pretty much took its place at the centre of a battle group.

For the WWII period however long range air or ship launched anti ship missiles were rare, so armoured ships made sense.

GarryB wrote:The problem is that an anti ship missile or aircraft with a small nuclear bomb could take out any large vessel.

The anti ship missile meant even a small vessel of corvette size could deliver a battleship like broadside attack with one missile over hundreds of kms... far outside the range of guns.

Equally an aircraft could deliver weapons outside the range of anti aircraft guns to defeat ships... the best defence was aircraft, so carriers were useful, but missile cruisers didn't really benefit from heavy armour so the idea of the battleship died and the carrier pretty much took its place at the centre of a battle group.

For the WWII period however long range air or ship launched anti ship missiles were rare, so armoured ships made sense.

That is today, I'm talking about during WW2... In today's world, a battleship would also be equipped with missiles and AShM's. Much like the Iowa in the 80's. The advantage of large guns, is that they are perfect for large scale, and cheap land bombardment. They were wildly successful in VietNAM', though many don't know that... A single shell, costing under $10000 when adjusted, delivers more explosive to a target than a million dollar Tomahawk (for instance). Of course they won't be very accurate, but with large numbers + modern ballistic computers they would do fine. - In Desert Storm, Missouri was surprisingly successful, and fired over 700 16 inchers! 

Nuclear weapons will decimate any ship within range, but during US tests, the Iowa class was very resistant (to a point) against nuclear weapons. The best defense, would be to destroy the weapon before it detonates, preferably with capable missiles... When taking hits from conventional AShM's, they'd be much better off. As mentioned earlier, battleships took tens of hits from bombs and torpedoes in WW2, and the better designed models lived through it...

Blacktaildefense has a great series on the matter, I advise you watch it. - Some of his points are completely false, but most are true and relevant.

Not to mention the possibility to use rocket assisted or guided shells for said battleships.

Here is my shot at a ship that would slot between the Leader and Gorshkov (don't mind my bad drawing);


It is a little off proportion but you get what it looks like... 

It would have a displacement of ~6,000 t, 32 UKSK cells (All mounted at the front on a raised platform, like the Gorshkov. Most of the Redut cells would be mounted in the back, like US destroyers as a result of that.), 48 Redut cells (16 at the front, 32 at the back.), maybe a few 9M100 exclusive cells (Shortened Redut?), a Paket system, one A-192M, and 4 Palma's (Two on each side.) + 2 Pantsir's (One on each side. The reason for not having all CIWS systems be Pantsir's, is to save cost will not really making any compromises.). 

The design uses repeated angles to lower the radar signature...

Thoughts?

Mike E wrote:Here is my shot at a ship that would slot between the Leader and Gorshkov (don't mind my bad drawing);


It is a little off proportion but you get what it looks like... 

It would have a displacement of ~6,000 t, 32 UKSK cells (All mounted at the front on a raised platform, like the Gorshkov. Most of the Redut cells would be mounted in the back, like US destroyers as a result of that.), 48 Redut cells (16 at the front, 32 at the back.), maybe a few 9M100 exclusive cells (Shortened Redut?), a Paket system, one A-192M, and 4 Palma's (Two on each side.) + 2 Pantsir's (One on each side. The reason for not having all CIWS systems be Pantsir's, is to save cost will not really making any compromises.). 

The design uses repeated angles to lower the radar signature...

Thoughts?

wow this one like destroyer type 055（my IDhahahah) 12000ton

It actually does... Funny because I didn't even use it for reference... 

Must be the symmetry throughout the design, as the Type 055 is very symmetrical and so is my "design".

The only real difference is the size...

Morpheus, do you have any info on that ship? Its name doesn't show any related results on Google...

To be honest, most stealth ships looks alike... My "mini-Leader" looks a lot like the British Type 45, which itself looks like other stealth ships and on and on...

Mike E wrote:Morpheus, do you have any info on that ship? Its name doesn't show any related results on Google...

To be honest, most stealth ships looks alike... My "mini-Leader" looks a lot like the British Type 45, which itself looks like other stealth ships and on and on...

That's the Russian (Soviet) cruiser "Proekt 58". It had a full displacement of around 5300 tonnes. Among its plethora of weapon systems, it carried 16 of the supersonic multipurpose cruise missiles of the P-35 family in 2 quadruple reloadable launchers.

Outside Russia it was known as the Kynda class cruiser.

Please note the well-deserved cruiser designation, even with a full displacement of just 5300 tonnes.

The picture I posted is one of the ships in that class named Varyag. Here is a link to a Varyag webpage.

http://navsource.narod.ru/photos/02/154/index.html

Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:

Mike E wrote:Morpheus, do you have any info on that ship? Its name doesn't show any related results on Google...

To be honest, most stealth ships looks alike... My "mini-Leader" looks a lot like the British Type 45, which itself looks like other stealth ships and on and on...

That's the Russian (Soviet) cruiser "Proekt 58". It had a full displacement of around 5300 tonnes. Among its plethora of weapon systems, it carried 16 of the supersonic multipurpose cruise missiles of the P-35 family in 2 quadruple reloadable launchers.

Outside Russia it was known as the Kynda class cruiser.

Please note the well-deserved cruiser designation, even with a full displacement of just 5300 tonnes.

The picture I posted is one of the ships in that class named Varyag. Here is a link to a Varyag webpage.

http://navsource.narod.ru/photos/02/154/index.html

Did this ship(one my cold war favorites) get upgraded to fire the P-500 bazalt?

KomissarBojanchev wrote:Did this ship(one my cold war favorites) get upgraded to fire the P-500 bazalt?

I personally have never heard of such an upgrade, but the fact of me not having heard of something doesn't mean that it hasn't happened.

In my opinion, for such a ship not to utilize multiple varying missile types of the P-35 weight class or not to be upgraded with other missiles of this weight class is inconceivable.

This class received the externally visible upgrade of getting 4 of the AK-630 guns and two of their associated radars.

That is today, I'm talking about during WW2...

In WWII no battleship could just ignore enemy air power, and as carrier aircraft became more capable the battleship became less relevant.

From sinking ships to supporting ground troops aircraft have replaced the big guns.

Building a 60,000 ton ship with heavy armour would be enormously expensive today, plus all the electronic upgrades and new weapons and other equipment it would not actually be worth building from scratch.

In WWII you had an idea of what sort of guns you would be facing so you knew penetration values and roughly how much armour you would need.

Today... what would you protect it against? How heavy is too heavy?

A much lighter vessel with decent guns but also SAMs and a range of attack missiles makes rather more sense than a battleship.

In today's world, a battleship would also be equipped with missiles and AShM's. Much like the Iowa in the 80's. The advantage of large guns, is that they are perfect for large scale, and cheap land bombardment. They were wildly successful in VietNAM', though many don't know that... A single shell, costing under $10000 when adjusted, delivers more explosive to a target than a million dollar Tomahawk (for instance). Of course they won't be very accurate, but with large numbers + modern ballistic computers they would do fine. - In Desert Storm, Missouri was surprisingly successful, and fired over 700 16 inchers!

In todays world there is no way an actual battleship would be built as it would be enormously expensive.

Mounting one super heavy gun turret... perhaps to the rear where there is space and volume for it... a single... say 508mm (equal to about a 20 inch) gun turret with two guns side by side with autoloaders and liquid propellent and EM assistance to get a range of 200km or so to make it effective against a much wider range of targets located further inland.

the vessel doesn't need super armour so it can be much smaller and lighter with a much smaller crew though it can be fitted with modern SAM and cruise missile and radar etc.

GarryB wrote:

That is today, I'm talking about during WW2...

In WWII no battleship could just ignore enemy air power, and as carrier aircraft became more capable the battleship became less relevant.

From sinking ships to supporting ground troops aircraft have replaced the big guns.

Building a 60,000 ton ship with heavy armour would be enormously expensive today, plus all the electronic upgrades and new weapons and other equipment it would not actually be worth building from scratch.

In WWII you had an idea of what sort of guns you would be facing so you knew penetration values and roughly how much armour you would need.

Today... what would you protect it against? How heavy is too heavy?

A much lighter vessel with decent guns but also SAMs and a range of attack missiles makes rather more sense than a battleship.

In today's world, a battleship would also be equipped with missiles and AShM's. Much like the Iowa in the 80's. The advantage of large guns, is that they are perfect for large scale, and cheap land bombardment. They were wildly successful in VietNAM', though many don't know that... A single shell, costing under $10000 when adjusted, delivers more explosive to a target than a million dollar Tomahawk (for instance). Of course they won't be very accurate, but with large numbers + modern ballistic computers they would do fine. - In Desert Storm, Missouri was surprisingly successful, and fired over 700 16 inchers!

In todays world there is no way an actual battleship would be built as it would be enormously expensive.

Mounting one super heavy gun turret... perhaps to the rear where there is space and volume for it... a single... say 508mm (equal to about a 20 inch) gun turret with two guns side by side with autoloaders and liquid propellent and EM assistance to get a range of 200km or so to make it effective against a much wider range of targets located further inland.

the vessel doesn't need super armour so it can be much smaller and lighter with a much smaller crew though it can be fitted with modern SAM and cruise missile and radar etc.

Not true... They complement each other well, but the aircraft never should have replaced the carrier. Assuming that two WW2 carriers go up against each other, each with one battleship, the aircraft will be fighting the others aircraft (as it commonly happened) while also getting attacked by the battleship with its tens of AA guns. If the battleship is alone, that is a different story, but aircraft weren't *that effective* at sinking them. It took something like 400+ aircraft just to sink the Yamato, a ship that was by itself on voyage... Read up on naval battles in the East and you'll know what I mean.

^ I remember reading about how aircraft were supposed to take the role of BB's, and never could... I'll try and find it.

60,000 tons? The most successful class of BB, the Iowa's, weighted "only" 45 tons... Besides, look at how many 100,000 ton super carriers the US has...

Umm... It would need to have at least some protection against AShM's (biggest threat), guided bombs and torpedoes etc.

And a heavier vessel with a boatload of missiles, defense systems and the like makes sense too for offensive purposes. 

^

That would be fine, through a three configuration would even better...

Which is what I've been saying the whole time.

Also, GarryB.... I'm not suggesting that battleships should make a return, just that they aren't as obsolete as most people like to believe... The US could actually return the USS Iowa without much of attention, they've done it before. All they need to do is upgrade the propulsion/technology-related systems, and modernize the rest of the vessel... Add a few Mk 48 cells and it would be fine.

Russia is better off working on the Kirov's when it comes to larger warships, as they are doing right now...

Not true... They complement each other well, but the aircraft never should have replaced the carrier.

Do you mean aircraft carriers should not have replaced carriers?

Heavy tanks are obsolete but battleships are OK?

Battleships are super heavy tanks... like the Maus... they are super expensive and relatively vulnerable.

Assuming that two WW2 carriers go up against each other, each with one battleship, the aircraft will be fighting the others aircraft (as it commonly happened) while also getting attacked by the battleship with its tens of AA guns.

Battleships were mature and would not get much better... aircraft on the other hand were in their infancy and have gotten much much better.

Yamato was a very powerful but very expensive ship... Japan would never be able to make enough for them to have an impact on the outcome of the war.

If the battleship is alone, that is a different story, but aircraft weren't *that effective* at sinking them. It took something like 400+ aircraft just to sink the Yamato, a ship that was by itself on voyage... Read up on naval battles in the East and you'll know what I mean.

Aircraft were not effective against the Yamato because it was the most powerful and best armoured battleship ever made... against other battleships the aircraft would have a much easier time and would be able to strike at ranges where their carrier was well outside the range of the battleships guns.

If battleships had continued in use then specialist anti armour bombs and missiles could have been developed to deal with them.

For instance the Kh-29 was designed to destroy the concrete structure of heavy bridges and has a 320kg shaped charge warhead that would devastate any armoured ship... taking a 1,000kg bomb and redesigning its nose to form a shaped charge and then dropping dozens from 10,000m from B-29s would destroy any battleship eventually.

Most carrier based bombers had limited payloads back then.

60,000 tons? The most successful class of BB, the Iowa's, weighted "only" 45 tons... Besides, look at how many 100,000 ton super carriers the US has...

the Iowa class upgraded in the 1980s was 58K tons.

Umm... It would need to have at least some protection against AShM's (biggest threat), guided bombs and torpedoes etc.

12 Pantsirs and upgraded Klintok should do the job.

And a heavier vessel with a boatload of missiles, defense systems and the like makes sense too for offensive purposes.

The koalition will be a twin barrel system likely fitted to upgraded Kirovs and any new Cruisers in the Russian fleet.

70km range guided shells would make it very good for shore bombardment, but with a 152mm shell.

A new system in 203 or larger calibre would offer even better performance in range and payload.

That would be fine, through a three configuration would even better...

I think having a twin gun allows room for an autoloading system that will allow a higher rate of fire without the added complication of an extra gun.

I think a third gun would take up too much room and actually slow the rate of fire... better to keep the turret with two guns with dual feed auto loaders to each gun in my opinion.

the three gun mount meant three shells fired, but then loading took more time because it was not fully automatic... I would prefer fully auto loading and a higher cyclic rate of fire.

With guided shells a high rate of fire wont be critical anyway.

Both the Soviets and US reintroduced old battleships (Soviets reactivated the Sverdlov class) to improve their naval gun support capability, but I think the Soviet use of 130mm guns on the Sovremmenies and Kirovs was more useful.... modern guns on modern ships.

Russia is better off working on the Kirov's when it comes to larger warships, as they are doing right now...

Would love it if they were developing the 152mm calibre Koalition for the Destroyers and had a 203mm calibre system for upgraded cruisers and new cruisers... but that is just wishful thinking on my part... I have seen no mention of this possibility.

Armaments: TKB-0xx bullpup rifle (wakizashi style bayonet); 1 katana
Armour: neosteel bulletproof vest & helmet (not shown the helmet)

This discussion of BBs/CVs sparked my interest a bit (apologize if too much off-topic, feel free to delete the post then).

Navy, in it's essence, is a very expensive asset. It's a little surprise, therefore, that as time progresses, ships are being designed to be multi-purpose, in order to save costs.

That's one of the main reasons why aircraft carriers began to be preferred over battleships, they could just do so much more for the similar cost.
Later, into the cold war, even carriers began to be unified (from CVA, CVS into CV) and they grew ever larger (from midway to forrestal to kittyhawk).
But hey, notice somethink familiar?

Didn't the dreadnoughts, super-dreadnoughts, post WT battleships have similar evolution?
Indeed they had. And this brings a very interesting proposition: available technology, weapon systems matters a lot then relevance of any particular type of warship must be measured.

For example, advent of aircraft indeed lessened the relevance of big-gun ships, but advent of radars, more sophisticated targetting systems evened the scales a bit

This process continues to this day. And who knows really, maybe multi turreted capital ships with railguns can even become a preffered choice for flagships in the future.

higurashihougi wrote:Armaments: TKB-0xx bullpup rifle (wakizashi style bayonet); 1 katana
Armour: neosteel bulletproof vest & helmet (not shown the helmet)

What's this asian obsession with only japanese weapons. Vietnam and china also made some awesome(and far more universal and practical) blades. As for the trooper, why use a Sablya or Shashka?

KomissarBojanchev wrote:What's this asian obsession with only japanese weapons. Vietnam and china also made some awesome(and far more universal and practical) blades. As for the trooper, why use a Sablya or Shashka?

Well, you can look at my nick name... and see that I am a Vietnamese fan of manga and related stuff, including 18+

May be my knowledge about weapon is severely limited but as far as I know, the japanese katana and related stuffs do not only have superior artistic value, but also have the very top position about quality and durability.

The equivalent of a sablya should be a tanto. Tanto literally means "short cutting sword" and only has a 15-30cm blade.

This process continues to this day. And who knows really, maybe multi turreted capital ships with railguns can even become a preffered choice for flagships in the future.

Guns were brought back (Iowa and Sverdlov) as a naval gun support vessel with low cost fire support.

With railgun technology extending range there is certainly a chance of a resurgence, but I suspect cruise missiles... both subsonic and stealthy, and hypersonic will remain useful while the aircraft adds both vision and reach the UCAV might userp them on many types of missions.

Guns are still useful, but they wont dominate the ships design like they did in the past.

I expect a mix of UCAVs, deployable underwater unmanned armed vehicles, self defence missiles, attack missiles, self defence guns, and attack guns.

Guns were brought back (Iowa and Sverdlov) as a naval gun support vessel with low cost fire support.

Fire support indeed. And now, with those fire support ships gone, you can notice a serious lack of amphibious support capability, which could only be partly replaced by monitor type vessels (aka buyan).

With railgun technology extending range there is certainly a chance of a resurgence, but I suspect cruise missiles... both subsonic and stealthy, and hypersonic will remain useful while the aircraft adds both vision and reach the UCAV might userp them on many types of missions.

And why not BOTH?

You aren't expecting modern battleships, battlecruisers to only have 16inch batteries and bofors AA, are you?

As a matter of fact, modern approaches to big fire support vessels may be radically different from their ancestors, take "arsenal ship" concept, for example:

GarryB wrote:

This process continues to this day. And who knows really, maybe multi turreted capital ships with railguns can even become a preffered choice for flagships in the future.

Guns were brought back (Iowa and Sverdlov) as a naval gun support vessel with low cost fire support.

With railgun technology extending range there is certainly a chance of a resurgence, but I suspect cruise missiles... both subsonic and stealthy, and hypersonic will remain useful while the aircraft adds both vision and reach the UCAV might userp them on many types of missions.

Guns are still useful, but they wont dominate the ships design like they did in the past.

I expect a mix of UCAVs, deployable underwater unmanned armed vehicles, self defence missiles, attack missiles, self defence guns, and attack guns.

We also have to remember to differentiate between railguns and electro-magnetic guns, because the Ru Navy may very go with the electro-magnetic gun with  no rail (that would  increase the durability, reliability and longevity compared to a 'railed' gun) powered by explosively generated batteries that fire projectiles beyond  Mach 6-7 (like U.S. guns) in to the Mach 43-44 range.