Missile Cruisers/Destroyers Year when it become Obsolete

[anonym_s4TCbLNuhWyC]

When will this types of ships used today will be useless like when ships in the future will shoot down multiple missiles with ease? My Predictions would be 2050 at the earliest and 2115 at the Latest

[lapon2046]

Shooting down a missile is not easy. Newer antiship missiles are Mach 1+, with enough KE left at range to do some terminal maneuvering. Even lasers have a hard time. And the eternal question comes up: if it only takes one or two missiles to mission-kill you, can I afford to throw enough missiles at you that at least that many will get through your defenses? Assuming such a ship carries 154 missiles (the same number as a converted Ohio class sub), And 10% makes it through the defenses, it can mission-kill 7-15 ships. That's a pretty good ratio. I think that ships will transit to smaller, entirely missile armed ships.

[Battleship_Unknown2]

Missiles are expensive, and I disagree with our increasing reliance on them. I believe if you mated 16" guns with actual, modern computer software, you'd create a weapon that -- within 20 miles of the coastline -- would be just as deadly and accurate as any cruise missile. The problem is, very little research into this has been done, and those efforts that have been undertaken were in an attempt to mate rocketry with shells, such as in the AGS. While novel, this idea doesn't really reduce costs. What we should be attempting to do here is to mate low-tech ordinance with high-tech aiming and guidance... not pouring money into systems that are inordinately complex or expensive.

 

I believe that the missile destroyer will remain the mainstay of our fleets until a time (if such a time ever comes) when the world fights another major war. Typically, military designs aren't revealed to be obsolete until combat renders them so. Ergo, it will take a war where the west is seriously put to it -- like pitted against, say, China, or Russia -- to force a change in direction. For example, it might be economically feasible to lob a few thousand cruise missiles into Iraq and call it a day. But what if a war called for a hundred thousand such attacks? Or a million? At 1.4 million dollars a pop, that's going to become outrageously expensive over any protracted period of time.

 

It's like this: high technology is only good if its practical application isn't financially unfeasible. You could invent the world's best robot butler tomorrow, but if they cost 500 million each to produce, it might as well not exist. And such is the case with a lot of our military technology today. We just haven't come to realize it yet because we haven't fought any protracted wars on a grand scale since 1945.

[brian333]

Whoever controls orbital space controls the seas. Period.

 

You can drop rocks from space and take out multi-billion dollar warships. 'Crowbar,' a technology from the '60's, had bundles of tungsten rods with ballistic guidance systems, dropping spears with no warheads whatsoever, and no on-board guidance necessary, through the atmosphere into enemy regions. Do the math: if you get missed by the rod, the fireball gets you.

 

Warships themselves are obsolete if your goal is the mastery of the high seas. They are an expensive luxury maintained only because they are the weapon which won the last war. Like the Dreadnaught which became obsolete at Taranto, the surface and submarine fleet has become obsolete, and has simply not yet had the point driven home in a war.

 

Fleet assets need to be smaller, mission oriented. Ships capable of mounting 16" guns are simply targets in the next war which will be dominated from space.

[DementedMind]

I wonder if once some kind of laser gets strong enough, I think missiles would be pointless?  Super accurate and damaging enough to destroy missiles.

[Battleship_Unknown2]

brian333, on 03 February 2013 - 08:06 AM, said:

Fleet assets need to be smaller, mission oriented. Ships capable of mounting 16" guns are simply targets in the next war which will be dominated from space.

Uh, okay... >.>.

Somehow, I don't see this as being in the cards. I agree that orbital strike marks the end of terestrial warfare, but it also ushers in the great age of space battles (after all, those unmanned satelites aren't going to remain so for long), so I suppose I'd welcome it. But I don't think we're there yet... and certainly neither the U.S. nor Britain think so, considering both countries have recently embarked on constructing the next generation of billion-dollar supercarriers.

While we're in the business of discussing the absurd, I'd like to throw these out there:









Speaking from a purely technical standpoint, building any of these might be possible. Doesn't mean it'll ever happen.

[Krieg]

DementedMind, on 03 February 2013 - 08:27 AM, said:

I wonder if once some kind of laser gets strong enough, I think missiles would be pointless?  Super accurate and damaging enough to destroy missiles.

The new CVX carriers already will have structure & conduits in place to accomodate energy based weapons which will be future developed. They will also have electromagnetic catapults instead of steam ones.

[Eaglecorps911]

Did you get one of those pictures from the avengers movie? I mean the first one that is. As for it being possible, oh yeah it can be. Would it be practical or feasible, not really. As for lasers, they are developing stronger and focused lasers to use on targets. Right now off the east coast of Africa, there is a destroyer i believe that is testing laser weaponry to target pirate boats. So far if I am not mistaken they have lit several boats on fire by targeting the engine and/or fuel tank on the pirate boats.

 

As for the last comment, yeah the next US Carrier the Enterprise, will be coming out with it, the electromagnetic catapults for the planes to launch off of. Yeah recently she was just decommissioned and scheduled to be scrapped. Wont be another enterprise until, i like to say 2032? or was it 2020? idk..

 

Someone please correct me if I am wrong on any of these points, I know I am somewhere.

[Crag_r]

Eaglecorps911, on 03 February 2013 - 09:17 AM, said:

As for the last comment, yeah the next US Carrier the Enterprise, will be coming out with it, the electromagnetic catapults for the planes to launch off of. Yeah recently she was just decommissioned and scheduled to be scrapped. Wont be another enterprise until, i like to say 2032? or was it 2020? idk..

Someone please correct me if I am wrong on any of these points, I know I am somewhere.

I'm guessing you mean the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier? And yes they will have an Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, also to note with that the enterprise is the 3rd in the class and is not due to go into service untill 2025. As well as the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier has it considered to have Electromagnetic launching systems as well

[brian333]

Actually, Crowbar is a technology invented in the '60's, and it is based on a cheap ballistic weapon. It has been feasable for over 50 years, using the technology of the 1960's. It will still come as a huge shock when it gets put into use, which it will, by the first industrial nation facing a superior fleet at sea. It is currently illegal to put weapons in space under International Law, but when war breaks out International Law goes out the window.

 

Bigger ships = bigger target. Navies which want to succed in the next industrial war need many many small, cheap, expendable ships.

[Super_Dreadnought]

Crag_r, on 03 February 2013 - 09:25 AM, said:

As well as the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier has it considered to have Electromagnetic launching systems as well

Our penny pinching government scrapped the idea, so it's ski jumps and F-35Bs for us. Expect them to be second class next to the Gerald Fords and maybe even whatever next gen carrier the Chinese (who are swimming in money) can copy/paste.

brian333, on 03 February 2013 - 09:35 AM, said:

It is currently illegal to put weapons in space under International Law, but when war breaks out International Law goes out the window.

International laws are there to be broken any time of the day, not just war. They are ultimately nothing more than fancy pieces of paper, and you just need a bigger gun than the other guy to get away with it. I don't exactly see much strong international action over N.Korea which built nuclear warheads in violation of international laws.

Nations which are able to put weapons in space, will be nations the international community will shrug their shoulders at impotently.

[Battleship_Unknown2]

Deadnought, on 03 February 2013 - 12:59 PM, said:

Our penny pinching government scrapped the idea, so it's ski jumps and F-35Bs for us. Expect them to be second class next to the Gerald Fords and maybe even whatever next gen carrier the Chinese (who are swimming in money) can copy/paste.

Yeah, the Wikipedia article on them discusses a bit the back-and-forth on the design. It's a shame about the ski-jumps. You would have thought that silliness had gone the way of the dodo when it came to carrier design.

[NGTM_1R]

DementedMind, on 03 February 2013 - 08:27 AM, said:

I wonder if once some kind of laser gets strong enough, I think missiles would be pointless?  Super accurate and damaging enough to destroy missiles.

We already have lasers that are able to engage and destroy missiles. (We've had them since the '80s, I know people who were on the Navy's big laser project and they developed one that can be drop-in replacement for a Mk.41 VLS.) But lasers aren't all-weather capable. No existing, or indeed foreseeable, laser weapon is going to be able to cope with the full variety of at-sea weather conditions. Clouds, fog, rain; these things bother missiles not at all, but each will prevent a laser from functioning effectively. The kind of power needed to "burn through" one of these things simply isn't practical to direct and las with, and will in all likelihood remain so.

[SimulationX]

there has always been an arms race between weapons and armor, and it will always continue. eventually missiles will prove to not be the weapon of choice.

 

there is already some research going into "sonic curtains" (I actually forget what the device is called) these devices are currently being tested on humvees, and whenever a RPG gets close to the vehicle's side, it unleashes a sound pulse that is powerful enough to compress the air in front of the RPG to cause it to explode, as it appears to have hit something solid. if this technology could be scaled up for use on warships it could mean much better protection from missiles.

 

something else would then come into play, possibly rail guns or powerful lasers

[lapon2046]

Orbital systems, especially low earth orbit, are easy to find and actually hard to get out of orbit. See here for a discussion of orbital strike weapons:

 

http://www.projectrh...etaryattack.php

 

Lasers are strictly visual range systems, in addition to their weather challenges. Though electromagnetic gun systems could launch projectiles over the horizon, can the shells can't maneuver to, say, hit an enemy fleet which is 100km away and changing course? The shell will take a few minutes to get there, and the ship/ground target could move up to a kilometer from where you thought it was going to be. Can you update the round's target in flight, for position and movement? A missile can achieve all these goals, but is probably between 10-100x more expensive than a missile. For example, the Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) round was assumed to cost $35,000, but this is deemed to be "unlikely", (http://www.navweaps....S_61-62_ags.htm, note 2) while the Tomahawk missile currently costs 570,000 - 1.45 million per unit (between 11 and 41 times the cost of a shell), depending on the type. The missile can loiter, change targets, and has an effective range of 700 nautical miles, as opposed to the ~100 nautical miles of the LRLAP.

[brian333]

lapon2046, on 03 February 2013 - 04:35 PM, said:

Orbital systems, especially low earth orbit, are easy to find and actually hard to get out of orbit. See here for a discussion of orbital strike weapons:

Yeah... we have stealth now. If they can make an F-117 nearly invisible to detection imagine how easy it will be to do that to an orbital weapons platform. Getting out of orbit is easy: a simple solid fuel rocket on the weapon's nose will brake it sufficiently that it will fall out of orbit. targetting is a matter of ballistics, and they solved the math on that one back in the Roman Empire days. My 1970's TI scientific calculator could compute trajectories.

[triptyx]

Don't the Chinese already have air-launched satellite killing missiles?  Can't recall if I read that somewhere legitimate.

[lapon2046]

We already have that as well http://en.wikipedia....ki/ASM-135_ASAT, http://en.wikipedia....ndard_Missile_3 There are a few problems with the orbital strike argument:

• Heat is always visible. http://www.projectrh...cewardetect.php

• We can already detect "steath" airplanes. http://en.wikipedia....ures_and_limits

• It takes about 1km/s delta-v to drop from low earth orbit, which is a lot of fuel which you have to bring up with you, which increases cost, etc. It only takes 2-3 km/s delta-v to put an object in a suborbital trajectory that hits something in low earth orbit, and you don't need to bring anything with you since when the LEO object smacks your missiles, its going 27,500 miles per hour.

• The ballistics are actually an unsolvable problem (the earth is curved, gravity is non-constant, the density of the atmosphere on the other side of the planet is unknown), though arbitrarily accurate solutions are possible.

• Your orbital weapon cant see anything when it reenters due to the plasma sheath, so you cant target anything until you are too low to change your trajectory significantly.

[brian333]

1) Heat is always visible, if you can see the side of the craft it is emitted from.

2) Detecting stealth planes is possile, stealth doesn't make a plane invisible. However, smaller radar cross section and higher altitude make this more difficult.

3) Any braking whatsoever will result in an orbital object falling. It's just a matter of time. 1 km/s may be necessary to drop it 'right now', but any loss of delta-V is enough. In fact, orbital vehicles always decay or escape orbit, and it requires energy expenditure to maintain orbit. What goes up must come down is not just a good idea, it's a law.

4) Unsolvable, or solveable within a margin of error? Any bullet requires ballistic computation at some level to strike the target, but we've been hitting targets with ballistic weapons since before the Trebuchet.

5) Plasma sheath to impact is less than a minute. If your crowbar is big enough you can't move far enough to be missed in one minute fromt he final trajectory correction to impact at Mach 12 or so.

 

Finally, you don't need to have these up in space all the time. You can launch one from your home base and have it impact anywhere in the world in 90 minutes tops. Harbors will make fine first-strike targets for bundled crowbars, while bunkers can easily be penetrated unless they are extrememly deep. Thor is not needed by a military which has command of the high seas and airspace. But an industrialized nation which has no such command could eliminate the enemy's control of it rather cheaply, without using nukes.

[lapon2046]

All excellent points. Looks like it makes an excellent first strike weapon. Probably couldn't detect it in 90 minutes if it has some stealth/low observability characteristics. 1km/s is the delta-v required for a minimal energy trajectory, but yes, with aerobraking and waiting a bit, it could come down with a much lower delta-v, though it may take a month. Mathematically, the equations are "not amenable to closed-form solutions", which means its not possible to write down something like y=mx+b, but the answer is instead usually an infinite series and you can just compute till you get as close as you want to the solution. Funny you should mention a trebuchet, since it was the first weapon designed which obeys non-solvable equations AFAIK, though it is still an awesome weapon, in every sense. Plasma sheath can vary between 1 and 5 minutes in length, depending on the reentry angle, its short, but if the effective damage range of the weapon is only 100 meters and I can see a big bolt of plasma coming for me, I might be able to move enough. Drop a few rods though, and that possibility goes away quickly. Thanks for that reply, it looks like my assumptions don't hold for such orbital weapons.

[brian333]

Trebuchets are awesome. My once upon a time girlfriend's son built a torsion catapult at age 10 that was darned good at lobbing oranges, so I showed him the plans for a trebuchet and we built one with a cinder-block counterweight and got 60+ yard ranges, (not accuracy, though.) I wanted to put wheels on it and show him how that would increase the range, but he was bored with it and the science project had been completed.