Re: Air Force Seeks Bush's Approval for Space Weapons Programs


Pat Flannery (flanner@xxxxxxxxxx) writes:
> Andre Lieven wrote:
>
>>Its also fair to point out that the very small number of post 1950s
>>design ships having been sunk in combat makes figuring out an
>>" average " of damage taking capacity of such ships very difficult.
>
> I think one of the main problems was that everyone on NATO's side
> thought that in wartime they would be fighting the Soviets, and what
> your ship would be engaged by wouldn't be shellfire, but rather a cruise
> missile with either a very large conventional or nuclear warhead. Since
> either of those probably couldn't be stopped be any reasonable degree of
> armor protection, it was somewhat pointless to armor the ship at all
> against anything heavier than small to medium arms fire that one might
> encounter on routine non-wartime duties.

The whole armour issue is one that well predates missiles, and was already
a limited area of actual protection for battleships even in the early
dreadnought era, to say nothing of WW2 and afterwards.

Plus, late and post WW2 combat systems, including weapons, ammo spaces,
and C&C spaces, became so volume intensive that the concept of armouring
them was swiftly & correctly seen as beyond impossible, so after the spate
of early missile ship cruiser conversions were done, it was on to passive
protection systems, that worked with the hull of the ship, rather than
trying to slater on kilotons of armour plate.

> In that way the cost and
> production time of the warship could be significantly reduced, while
> allowing higher speed for the same installed horsepower, and also
> allowing you to make more vessels for the same financial outlay.

Incorrect. As modern combat systems were swiftly becoming the driving
factor in both ship design ( volume ) and cost, the cost kept going up,
and the cost of even armour was a small factor next to that.

It was the utter uselessness of armour on large ships that doomed the
plate makers.

> Of course the flaw in the argument was that even though the ship might
> not be able to survive a direct hit by a Shaddock missile with a
> conventional warhead, armoring it might keep it afloat long enough for a
> large number of its crew to take to the lifeboats.

The trade off was, either a ship whose ability to survive a hit might be
upped ~10%, while paying for that in seriously degraded and reduced
detection and weapons systems, or a ship with the better detection and
weapons systems fits, such that it could reduce it's chances of taking
that hit by far more than the 10%.

Norman Friedman's book on the trends in post WW2 naval technology is a
good primer on these issues.

Andre

--
" I'm a man... But, I can change... If I have to... I guess. "
The Man Prayer, Red Green.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Air Force Seeks Bushs Approval for Space Weapons Programs
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