Zumwalt: Stealth and Armor in Modern Naval Combat

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by RedDwarfIV »

A littoral assault ship can make 50 knots at what Americans call 'flank speed', IE, the fastest it can go if you ignore engine overheating and fuel consumption. Its 'full' speed is 20 knots, which is it most economical speed.

The Zumwalt has a top speed of... uh... oh. It is 30 knots. Then again, its that slow because its propulsion is fully electric. Apparently that lets it much more efficiently send power elsewhere, such as to the weapons or RADAR.


I wonder how the Type 45 Daring class destroyer compares to Zumwalt.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by discord »

skjold class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skjold_class 60+ knots.

the zumwalt is about as much a turkey for the navy as the bradley was for the army....emphasis on land attack.....with a single...okey TWO 155mm barrels...yeah, better than a iowa.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Nemo »

Torps are damaging because shockwave propagation through noncompressible water puts more strain on the ship than the same explosion above the waterline. Theres footage of shock tests on youtube, Im sure, but for an extreme example compare the results of Crossroads Able versus Crossroads Baker. Torps are given a lower priority to ASM because of the range, speed, flexibility, and ease of use for a missile. That coupled with the general lack of armor means a missile is more than sufficient, see HMS Sheffield.

Armor plating itself is not effective in a realm of missiles, torpedoes, and guided bomb munitions. Small arms fire is simply not a threat, and plating thick enough across the ship to stop missiles and bombs renders the ship top heavy and unseaworthy. Its not simply a matter of adding mass, its where its added that matters. Many late WW2 destroyers were lost because off the weight of AA guns we added throughout the war. Active defense is the answer, but just isn't being tested properly.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by RedDwarfIV »

discord wrote:skjold class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skjold_class 60+ knots.
The Shield class is a corvette, barely the size of a private yacht. It's to be expected that it can move fast. And it carries nothing that could sink a Zumwalt, since it's emphatically not a torpedo boat. Plus, it can't leave coastal waters.

I'm much more impressed that something like this can reach 50 knots...

... after doing a Google search for images of 'Littoral Assault Ships', it turns out that there is no such thing. A 'Littoral Combat Ship' is a frigate sized ground-attack craft for use near the shore. The Axis Of Time books had me thinking that a 'Littoral Assault Ship' was a kind of armed troop transporter with a whole deck for carrying ground vehicles.


This is the second time my existing knowledge had utterly fallen flat on this thread. Sigh.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

RedDwarfIV wrote:The Shield class is a corvette, barely the size of a private yacht. It's to be expected that it can move fast. And it carries nothing that could sink a Zumwalt, since it's emphatically not a torpedo boat. Plus, it can't leave coastal waters.
While I agree with your larger point, the Skjold actually does carry 8 anti-ship missiles. Harpoons and Tomahawks (or the Norwegian equivalent) are very small and portable and can be carried by vessels not much larger than a rowboat.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Mr Bojangles »

fredgiblet wrote: One point about this, when one of the SAM programs was being tested as an ABM they had to adjust the proximity fuses because the closing speed was so high that the bomber-tuned fuses were detonating the SAM far enough behind the target missile that the damage wasn't sufficient. Networked devices may well work, but you risk that quarter-second delay causing you to miss your target. Of course you can beat that by directly slaving missiles on one ship to anothers fire-control, but it's still a concern.
I remember reading about that. With networked sensors, I wouldn't imagine that you'd want your own weapons slaved to the network. That would indeed introduce lag. Network sensors would see their best use increasing your fleet's interdiction zone. Each ship would drive its own weapons, but the network could potentially reduce redundant targeting, since each ship would know what the others were doing. Sharing sensor data would also cover blind spots.

As for real-world applications, the US Navy has its Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC). What details I've found suggest that sensor data is shared, but no word on what drives the weapons. I'll assume each ship handles its own weapons, but you know what they say about assumption...

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I don't know of any armored weapon system with equal distribution. AFVs, tanks, planes, ships; they've always been armored on the principle of their engagement profiles. How will they enter a battlefield? How will they move through it? What threats are they designed to handle; what threats are reasonable to expect? What are the most critical parts of the machine?

It always comes down to a tradeoff. Armor can be expensive, hard to produce, hard to work with, and hard to maintain (often because it is so literally hard). It adds mass to your platform. The more you have, you need to provide for more power and fuel, complicating your logistics. This will compound the ammo situation, as well; more mass devoted to armor can mean less toward ammo, dependent on much engine and fuel you're willing to throw at the problem.

But, based on your comment, you would just have the whole ship made out of armor material? Because if you're going to use that much, you might as well use it as structural material. Modern naval vessels are generally made from HSLA steels, which are very, very tough. Certainly strong enough to handle .50-cal and related types of bullets.

As for ASMs and torpedoes, Nemo gives a good explanation for why more armor isn't better. And to shrapnel and anti-spalling armor, that's usually provided by fabric lining, e.g., Kevlar. You can find it in AFVs and tanks. I'm not sure about ships, but it wouldn't surprise me if they have some.

The current idea is that a ship doesn't get hit in the first place. Remember, it's much, much easier to develop a new armor-piercing ASM than it will be for you to armor up your fleet.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by fredgiblet »

discord wrote:under ship torps, if that is such an effective way of sinking ships, why not use it more?
I'm fairly certain that all modern torpedoes are designed to do that against surface ships. The reason you wouldn't do that by default with an ASM is because it'll make it heavier and bulkier (since you'd have to have a full-size torp inside a missile) and isn't necessary now.
discord wrote:the zumwalt is about as much a turkey for the navy as the bradley was for the army....emphasis on land attack.....with a single...okey TWO 155mm barrels...yeah, better than a iowa.
Well, they aren't exactly your grandad's 155s, but in general I agree that the Zumwalts are likely to end up being nowhere near valuable enough to justify the cost.

Mr Bojangles wrote:I remember reading about that. With networked sensors, I wouldn't imagine that you'd want your own weapons slaved to the network. That would indeed introduce lag. Network sensors would see their best use increasing your fleet's interdiction zone. Each ship would drive its own weapons, but the network could potentially reduce redundant targeting, since each ship would know what the others were doing. Sharing sensor data would also cover blind spots.

As for real-world applications, the US Navy has its Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC). What details I've found suggest that sensor data is shared, but no word on what drives the weapons. I'll assume each ship handles its own weapons, but you know what they say about assumption...
I was specifically discussing that in terms of a ship blinded by a superstructure ASM hit. So the ship is presumed to not be able to drive it's own weapons.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by discord »

Bojangles: Ballistic steel as Structural material? yeah, that should work...
and on kevlar linings, those are known as spall liners, there to stop spalling(pieces of your armor breaking of inside the vehicle and killing you), not shrapnel.

but on the armor stopping ASM's, riddle me this, how does a subsonic 700kg(at launch)mostly composite stealth materials projectile go through armor that can stop a metric ton AP shell? since it HAS to explode on the inside or do diddly squat.
it would be interesting to see how much damage modern ASM's would do against a Iowa-class, or even a light tank.

reddwarf: 8 harpoon equivalents is either a danger(since ASM's can kill anything) or they are not(ASM's can't kill everything) pick one.

now that you mention it, it makes sense that the non compressible nature of water is what makes it so effective....and the fact that the bottom hull has always been one of the least armored areas for obvious reasons, but that water effect is also why water filled spaced armor is so effective, since to get through the projectile needs to move the water, but it is in an enclosed space and therefore must burst out of it, effectively making the penetration cross section that much larger, that is the theory anyway....it DOES stop HEAT rounds cold though.

hmm, non newtonian fluids for spaced armor? those things absorb kinetic energy like crazy, and has the non compressible thing going for them too.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

Modern anti-ship missiles would destroy a battleship. Armor capabilities simply have not kept pace with the destructive power of guided missiles. (If people could protect their ships with armor, I guarantee you they would.) The Germans were sinking warships (including the battleship RN Roma) with guided weapons, as early as 1943.

There seems to be a misunderstanding of the effectiveness of modern armor penetrating explosives. The now somewhat outdated AGM-65 Maverick, with a 57kg shaped charge, demonstrated an 88% kill rate on tanks. And most of the failures were due to missing the target. Anti-ship missiles are much more powerful. (The Exocet is a small fry, some anti-ship missiles have 1000kg or nuclear warheads.)

The Russians made a wide variety of anti-ship missiles with the purpose of sinking American aircraft carriers.

This is what a Harpoon can do.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by discord »

ice: yes, assuming it explodes INSIDE the ship, HEAT rounds, which is what the maverick is(shaped explosion, or in some cases blast fragmentation, the latter is not really armor defeating), works by creating a very focused explosion for the purpose of defeating armor, it would be horrible, the first hit takes out the coffee storage room, the second the ice cream, the third wrecks havoc in the rec room, and so on, HEAT would damage the first compartment, there is NOTHING important in the first rooms on the sides, hitting the turrets might do some damage with heat, depending on how it hits....but the thing is, no modern ASM uses HEAT, they would not do any significant damage if they were, they are designed to penetrate THEN explode.

and yes, modern ASM would destroy a WW2 battleship, but it would take a hell of a lot more missiles than you seem to think, bolt on some CIWS, sea sparrow equivalents and other AEGIS toys.....and it would be a bitch to sink, kinda like the upgraded Iowas, add more modern armor tech and material(M1 abrams has 110mm, but the RHA equivalent is more than 5 times that thickness) to the equation, and in my opinion armoring would work.

liquid filled spaced armor stops HEAT cold, as proven in the merkava, i heard a 3.1 as effective as equal weight on diesel vs RHA(water is probably similar), weight is not much of a issue on a ship, nor is space really, so why not?
so, 2cm steel -> 12cm liquid -> 2cm steel, would weigh in as 6cm or so, be as thick as 16cm, and stop HEAT like 10cm or so of armored steel.

i wonder if letting the water have somewhere to go(upwards, fighting gravity) would be better at redirecting incoming energy to stop the damage? moving a couple of metric tons will use up plenty of energy, or if contained cells would be better, forcing the shock wave to defeat much wider armor....


the 'armor is not needed, just sensors and lots of firepower' happened in tanks too, they got over it fast as bloody hell as soon as they ran into hostiles with decent equipment AND armor...at the extended ranges they could fire at, the armor actually helped and stopped some of the rounds, but not on the side that had none, basically what i am saying is that those tanks went up against first world stuff and it went badly, lots of losses that some armoring could avoid....as far as i know there has not been any significant naval combat between first rate navies since WW2, or even second rates, all are 1st or 2nd rates picking on 3rd rates, or 3rd rates going at each other.
definition being 1st having many and large ships with current tech, 2nd having current tech but neither many nor large ships, 3rd rates having neither, training factors in as well, but lets not go there.

the only true 1st rate navies today are probably US, Russia, UK, France and japan, plenty of second rates though.
actually, now that i think about it, the 'lets not armor everything' is probably one of the reasons those WW2 ships were top heavy, the bottom was very light(little armor) and that is probably it, they were top heavy because they put all the heavy stuff on top.


bottom line, there is no point in armoring small ships above shrapnel/small arms protection, it is just not practical, and destroyers have always been small....the thing is modern destroyers(especially in the US) are larger and heavier than WW2 heavy cruisers, which CAN be armored reasonably.
and the question is not AEGIS vs armor, it is stealth vs armor. since armor and active defenses work together just fine.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by RedDwarfIV »

Weight is an issue.

You add armour on top, you make it top-heavy. You add counterweights, you make it heavier. You make it heavier, you make it slower.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by discord »

reddwarf: the iowa class BB from 1939 one of the most heavily armored ships that has ever sailed, weighs in at about 5x the zumwalt(from 2015), BB moves at 33 knots, zumwalt projected at 30+ knots.
so no, possible speed is not significantly diminished by size(unless you go silly small), busted.

and somehow i think we can make a better BB today over 70 years later, if we actually put some effort into it.
what are those morons in command thinking? that the zumwalt is a better artillery platform as compared to the iowa? 155mm is the same kind of guns the army already got FFS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M109_howitzer <---- not exactly new tech, but it works, and been around since the 1960's, ship based fire support is supposed to be HEAVIER than the army can field.
fucking morons.

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Re: Zumwalt: Stealth and Armor in Modern Naval Combat

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

I'm going to retract my previous statement, but I still gotta admit, this conversation is getting pretty weird. We've got weapons that can penetrate 6 meters of reinforced concrete. Even if you can put enough armor on your ship to keep it from sinking in an attack, there's still no way to keep it from being crippled. Cause every useful tool is going to have to be on the outside. Propellers, sensors, etc. Once your ship's radar and communications are out, thats a mission kill, and at that point you're done anyways.

I mean, a PG-7VR, a handheld weapon, can penetrate 23.6 inches of reactive armor. (in 2003, one was used to destroy an American M1 Abrams, by hitting the left side hull.) Yes, piercing the armor is not the same thing as sinking a ship, but piercing the armor is something that is easy for anti-ship missiles to do.

Its not just a matter of diameter, warheads have made leaps and bounds in sophistication since WW2. Armor simply cannot keep pace.

(As for the zumwalt itself, I'm still not sure what unique niche it is supposed to fill other than: "yet more defense pork barrel spending." Which is honestly all the role anything in the pentagon seems to need these days.)

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Re: Zumwalt: Stealth and Armor in Modern Naval Combat

Post by lostnomad »

Both Russia and China have missiles capable of sinking a ship at 3000Km. Was the most recent modern naval battle in the Falklands War?

The Zumwalt is more comparable to the South Dakota than the Iowa. Yet the South Dakota is still bigger and slower the Zumwalt at 27 knots.From what I have read, it is a "stealth" floating gun rack with a hangar for helicopters and/or a smaller boat.

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Re: Zumwalt: Stealth and Armor in Modern Naval Combat

Post by pinheadh78 »

Regarding the purpose of the Zumwalt ships being built, its for the purpose of gun-fire support of marines and army in the opening stages of a beach invasion or inland fire-missions. That's why the emphasis was on the two main 155mm guns and not so much on missiles or other capabilities; its a ship with one-job to do; pound inland targets at lowest cost-per-shot. Also those conventional 155mm with LRLAP are a stand-in until the rail-guns are ready. The ship was built with enough power-capacity to handle the rail-guns but the ship was ready before the guns were; I believe the plan is to install those into the Zumwalts once the rail-gun technology catches-up. Before anyone suggests it; no, Burks don't have enough surplus electrical capacity to handle a rail-gun of suitable size for fire-support.

The stealth on the Zumwalt is needed to allow it to get close enough to shore that it can lob those 155mm shells deeper inland. Without the stealth it would have to first stand off from the beach and eliminate all of the coast defenses before it could get close enough to provide gunfire support. With the stealth it can bypass some of the coast defenses and get close enough to provide support.

Yes Burk destroyers have guns too but those don't shoot as far (and thus not as far inland to an LZ), don't carry as much ammo, and can't reload shells as easily. The 127mm on the Burk also doesn't hit as hard as the 155mm so wont be as effective against hard targets. Also the Burks would have to completely sanitize the coast before they could move close enough to be useful.

My 3 cents - carry on :lol:

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Re: Zumwalt: Stealth and Armor in Modern Naval Combat

Post by discord »

ice: what part of penetrate then explode precludes the use of HEAT is difficult to comprehend? all of those examples uses HEAT btw, that leaves kinetic penetration using a pretty slow, rather large(wide) and in many ways sub optimal penetrator.

ASM's of today are designed to go through practically zero armor, a few sheets of thin non ballistic metal.

lost nomad: yup, again, none of those are designed to defeat armor.

pinhead: yup, those rocket assisted magically winged guided rounds that somehow are supposed to carry more boom and get more range...it's still a 155, same kind of gun the army already uses, but somehow it gets 6 times the range of the rocket assisted field artillery out of basically the same gun(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M109_howitzer), okey, longer barrel on the AGS, still just smells fishy to me.
but the biggest question is why? the army already got these guns, on the ground, in self propelled vehicles, why the NAVAL support of something the army already got...only situation i can think of is strategic surprise attack or support of special forces in a country we have no real military presence in.

and stealth on boats? again, this will work against third rate militaries, if nothing else they are quite visible from orbit in the optical EM spectrum, i tell you, somewhere along the line a zumwalt will be defeated by a guy in a wooden rowing boat carrying a couple of frag RPG's(because HEAT would not do any significant damage).

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Re: Zumwalt: Stealth and Armor in Modern Naval Combat

Post by pinheadh78 »

Discord
Your absolutely right about the army's 155 howitzers having been around already and with similar ammo. However those require that the beach or LZ already be established.

Also its not quite so simple to just take an existing field-artillery system and mount it on a ship, case in point the below excerpt and pics.

-----------------
The difficulty with placing 155mm howitzer-class guns on ships is the level of recoil, which can play havoc with a smaller ship’s stability. The Germans have experimented with KMW/HDW’s ‘MONARC,’ external link which uses a self-sufficient PzH-2000 mobile howitzer external link turret mounted on a 6,160 ton F124 Sachsen Class frigate external link. While an intricate elastic mounting system handled the recoil, adapting all of the PzH-2000′s systems for the corrosive naval environment proved more difficult than expected and MONARC appears to have been removed external link from plans for the new F125 Class frigates; Oto Melara’s 127mm lightweight naval gun will be used instead.

Primary link: http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/108 ... ent-03244/
And other link: http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNGER_61-52_MONARC.htm

Picture of FGS Hamburg with the turret from the PzH-2000 howitzer to try out the concept
Image

Failed attempt to put an 8in gun on a modern destroyer type ship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8%22/55_ca ... ark_71_gun

(Follow up edit)
There have also been attempts to mount MLRS type systems on surface combatants but those ran into similar problems to the guns with corrosion, ammo-safety, ammo-handling, etc. There was also an attempt at one point to mount an 8in gun on a knox class frigate but the small frigate couldn't handle the stress of the cannon's weight or recoil either. Basically by the time you get done solving of the problems of adapting a land-based weapons system for the salt-water environment your almost at the point of a new weapons system. Going the reverse from ship-to-shore is quite common and there are setups of AGIS radars paired with MK-41 land-based silos in operation (Poland BMD) or development. Sometimes with containerized missiles (Russian S-300) you can go from land to sea; but in that case the container is protecting the weapons system from the salt environment so there is less to adapt.

For the guided artillery shells with rocket assist; those aren't new either. Base-Bleed ammo has been around for a long time to extend the range of shells by providing additional thrust and also eliminating the pocket vacuum of air that can trail behind a fast moving shell and slow it down. Electronics to guide artillery shells is also not new; look up copper-head and Excalibur for land based systems and its quite common. What IS new is combining those proven technologies into a longer-range shell and putting it on a ship; but that shouldn't take too much to iron out as its just existing tech repackaged for ship use.
Last edited by pinheadh78 on Tue May 13, 2014 8:10 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Zumwalt: Stealth and Armor in Modern Naval Combat

Post by RedDwarfIV »

Yeah, that's a point. A ship can sail in to start pounding an enemy. A howitzer needs to be airlifted or shipped in, during which time it's vulnerable.
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Re: Zumwalt: Stealth and Armor in Modern Naval Combat

Post by Nemo »

I think a few things can be handled here if we see the history of how naval warfare adapted through time. I didn't drop the names of Crossroads Able and Baker just to illustrate how much damage a torpedo could do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADD8_2KO5Bk If nothing else read through the scroll text introduction over the first two minutes.


The gunfire navy was replaced by the carrier navy in WW2. Surface combatants were reduced to fire support and anti-air gunfire. A determined future opponent will defeat your ships, no matter how well armored, if not intercepted and defeated at range. Ship development took that to heart and the early warning aircraft, combat air patrols, and guided missile systems defending the fleet were developed in its place. Active protection systems are a continuation of this theory.

In truth, conventional warheads are sufficient even for an Iowa or Yamato. Armoring the superstructure and decking was avoided to save weight and shift the center of mass down. Hardened armor and structure leaves the vessel more vulnerable to underwater shock, which is defeated by material flexibility and torsion resistance at joints. Take a look at the sinking of the Yamato and the Musashi and you see the bombs disabled the ships capacity to fight while torpedoes, underwater shock, do the sinking. As has been pointed out you can achieve a mission kill by knocking out exposed radars, fire control, and other systems.

A current ASM may not be able to penetrate such a heavily armored ship but only because there are no heavily armored ships to defeat. Building such a weapon is quicker, easier, and cheaper than building such a warship. There is not even a need to resort to nukes, though it always remains an option. Guided munitions are ubiquitous and greatly simplify the problem of putting the conventional warhead where it needs to be to cause the most damage. This is not to say such a platform does not have its place, but it is better suited as a specialized tool than a fleet wide adaptation.

In truth the Marines need the Iowa or a suitable replacement. The brass never got its head out of its ass. Not all war is nuclear. Not all opponents require gold plated future weapons. The fleet needs durable, near shore gun platforms but no politician will ever support it. Politicians and DoD bureaucrats want one size meets all solutions, not specialized tools. They want it new and sexy and job creating (read: expensive) so they can be re-elected.

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Re: Zumwalt: Stealth and Armor in Modern Naval Combat

Post by discord »

pinhead: never said anything about putting army artillery on the ships, just that they are similar and can fill similar function, assuming boots are on the ground and a beachhead is secured.
and yes, you need large ships for large guns, so why the insistence on a relatively small ship(zumwalt) for a job in which bigger IS better?
which means these guns are ONLY useful if you do not have boots on the ground(amphibious invasion, probably opposed, when was the last time that happened? oh right, 2003, iraq, sorta) and support of black ops teams with no ground support nearby, the second is already pretty well covered by cruise missiles really.

and on the rounds, yes, longer range, 6 times longer range? as compared to other rocket boosted artillery out of similar gun?

nemo: just saying you do not need all that much armor to stop ASM's(conventional warheads) and negate HEAT versions.
and armoring scheme, the main reason to keep weight down on the iowa was treaty based, not allowed to build it any heavier, without that, go for a rather simple armoring scheme, 1inch steel, 5 inch water, 1 inch steel, water, steel, compartment, 1 inch steel, compartment, 1 inch steel, etc all over, extra armor on 'vitals' or similar, harden everything, maybe a little more radiological protection and you would have enough armor that a direct hit by a tactical nuke would probably be survivable, assuming crew in the 'vital' areas.
the ship would be scorched and pretty ripped apart(outer layer of armor on the affected side would probably be gone), some counter flooding needed but still floating, crew alive, and still functional.
biggest problem really is the main turrets, they would need to be crazy armored we are talking 500+mm of modern composite armor, CIWS and secondary guns would probably be 'sunk into deck' protected for the backups, sure some gun disabled, get a backup online.

again, just tossing numbers out of my arse here might need 2 inch plates, but i think it would be a lot tougher than you might think.

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