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



Andre Lieven wrote:


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.



On of the strangest picture I've ever seen is a photo of the aft deck of the dreadnought battleship U.S.S. Mississippi (BB-41, commissioned in Dec. 1917), with the two stern turrets being replaced with dual thin Terrier SAM launchers.
Now _this_ is a really unique looking battleship!: http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/014118.jpg
http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/014103.jpg



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.



If one were to make a Frigate that carried the same armament as a Oliver Hazard Perry class ship, with the same number of rounds for its armament, same electronics systems, same speed and range... and had to armor it up to the level enjoyed by say a WW II era heavy cruiser (which you would need to do to get it anywhere near surviving something like the Shaddock's one ton warhead), you would be talking about a far larger and more expensive ship. That's what I was driving at. Particularly in regards to need for installed horsepower to drive it, and the fuel to power those motors (assuming conventional power) to the same range, significant weight savings of a lightly armored design mean a significantly smaller hull to achieve the same capabilities, and hence lower cost for the hull, leaving the actual cost of the armor plate aside.



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%.



But of course you never tell the crew "Oh, BTW, if we ever do take a direct cruise missile hit, it's all over- pronto" although I did talk to a destroyer crewman who knew that was the case, as oddly, the topic kept coming up in the crew's conversation, especially when they were within range of Iran's Silkworm missiles. ;-)
The thing I'd like to know is how we expect to be able to deal with multi-mach sea-skimming cruise missiles like the newer Russian ones that have stealth characteristics- and are intended to be launched in salvo attacks in which individual missiles in the salvo can transmit information back and forth between each other to aid in targeting themselves, as well as defeat enemy countermeasures by comparing radar and thermal emissions of the enemy target vessel from different directions.
That's going to be a tough nut to crack with vertically launched Standard missiles- by the time you detect the incoming missile, get the Standard fired, and have the Standard turn downwards to meet the incoming missile, it might well have hit you.

Pat
.

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