Battleship to regain dominance in sea warfare ?

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by ael65, Jun 2, 2008.

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  1. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    In order for the battleship to be revived, there will need to be a driving issue. Some event to cause a sea change in thought leadership. Most of the Navy's senior officers have deep seated ties and emotional commitments to naval aviation. Those ties will need to be broken before the battleship will come back into the fleet. When naval aviation began there was serious foot dragging on the part of Navy leadership, they were old battleship guys. Now the aviation guys are in charge.

    Aviators are not going to give up their place in the plane very easily.
     
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  3. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    UCAV and Lasers should do the trick. Not really like the old battle ships per say, probably nothing beyond 25kt in displacement, these will simply be heavy cruisers at best, but with laser cannons and maybe a rail gun they will have the firepower of 10 of todays cruisers!
     
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  5. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    Sorry, you can't replace a M-1 eyeball, or a Sentient Computer, on site.
     
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  7. Echo3Romeo One man wolfpack Registered Senior Member

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    I'm well aware of the horizon equation, Mr. Uppity. If you read the thread, you'll see a running comparison between the capabilities and limitations of a laser weapon and the various contemporary methods of kinetic strike, and how they might affect the longevity of the paradigm (guns, missiles, and aircraft). What the military needs now is the ability to project power ashore many hundreds of kilometers, well over the horizon of a surface vessel. Lasers cannot do that, and will never be able to. I think the numerous advantages of laser weapons in air warfare are well understood by all of us already.

    As for the blooming issue, researchers have been trying to overcome that one since the late 1970s when HELSTF opened. The only way that has had any success has been to use a reference beam that parallels the main beam as I described in my previous post. I'm trying to picture an application of your solutions and it doesn't seem very practical with present-day technology. The chemical and semiconductor lasers being looked into for weapons use are beholden to certain wavelengths by virtue of their internal medium, and are not readily tuneable. I like the idea of coordinating multiple beams onto one target simultaneously, but we need to walk before we can run.
     
  8. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    No, laser are for defense, for render aircraft attacks against ships useless in a way that would have given WW2 admirals orgasms. Even attacking missiles and artillery can be knocked out of the sky.

    The wavelength of the laser is chosen by design, I never said anything about tuneablity, then again a free electron laser does not have that problem.

    Remember we are talking long term here? Single laser beams will be replaced by arrays once the technology gets cheap enough.
     
  9. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    We are talking about the use of small, cheap weapons against a big, expensive floating target. It don't wash economically. Next.
     
  10. Echo3Romeo One man wolfpack Registered Senior Member

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    Like Terrence Howard's character said in Iron Man: "No unmanned plane can match a pilot's instinct and judgement."

    Manned and unmanned aircraft both have their places in today's battlespace. There are things each of them can do that the other can't. With that said, I personally think the services need to embrace UAVs faster than they have been. Especially the Air Force, whose fighter pilot officer culture doesn't like the idea that enlistees fly the unmanned stuff, and some zit-faced 20 year old A1C from rural Pennsyltucky could end up being the one who waxes Osama with a Hellfire-armed Predator.

    I agree with that part of what joepistole was saying; every halfway decent military in the world has a lot of institutional inertia behind it. Most of the time it is a good thing. As you'll agree, we draw a lot of our strength from our traditions and history is a great source of the esprit de corps for any warrior culture. But sometimes, as is happening with the adoption of UAVs, that conservative reverence for tradition becomes a stumbling block that inhibits evolution. As far as the US military goes, for the most part we keep a good coefficient of tradition without being too stuffy. Just like the move to 5.56mm, right SFC?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  11. Echo3Romeo One man wolfpack Registered Senior Member

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    In that case, we're on the same page. The Navy is already doing some exploratory work into free electron lasers:

    http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=841301

    *splooge*
     
  12. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah, but no manned plane can maneuver, fly as tirelessly or unwaveringly or even as cheaply as an unmanned plane could.
     
  13. hypewaders Save Changes Registered Senior Member

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    Tele-judgement, Tele-impulsivity, and even secure-uplink Fly-by-Ire are all available now.
     
  14. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    But they first must locate it which in todays stealth subs is very hard to do. Unlike a huge battleship that is easily detected by satellites then sending there whereabouts to the submarine.
     
  15. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    I have more confidence in technology. And I would say, no man can do 12G either. Technology would allow us to have military platforms that are not limited by human physical limitations.
     
  16. Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

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    Cosmictraveller:

    There are advantages to huge, unstealthy stuff, too. See: Tanks compared to commandos.
     
  17. Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

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    Electricfetus:

    The vastness of space is such that entire star systems can go unexplored even in billions of years. Moreover, the most conservative elements only place 10 civilizations in the galaxy's history, and it is very likely that owing to evolution, that they'd not have the whole of 4 billion years of this generation of stars/planets to evolve to the point of space travel by sapient beings. They might have a billion years for that, which is no proof that we'd ever have contact with them, past, present, or perhaps even future. But it is almost certain they are out there.

    It makes perfect sense and is reasonable. War is an inevitable occurrence amongst sapient beings. Even amongst non-sapient beings, such as ants, we get this.

    No, I mean civilization itself. War is a noble, glorious thing, that is inalterable as part of any civilization without disaster.

    Neither will that happen. We are Gods. So long as we keep our war-spirit, at least.
     
  18. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    No the most conservative place 1 civilization in the whole universe: us. Although the probability we are the only ones is unlikely it's still exist because we can't at this time determine how often sentient life happens, let alone life of this planet, with a survey of 1 we are kind of guessing in the dark how many other civilizations are out their: it could be many, it could be none.

    Now if they are out their we can calculate how advance they will be, based on how long our civilization has been around chances are that alien civilization will either be un-evolved worms or far more advance then we, just 100 year difference in technology would doom us.

    Animals make war, already noted, try again with a being not driven by Darwinian forces.

    Then by that definition we won't have a civilization, we will have something better!

    LOL, we are just animals that think to much of our selves. When we do become gods we will be immortal and omniscience, we will be free from human emotions like hate and anger, even disagreement will be non-existent, and we won't be animals or humans anymore.
     
  19. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    Semper Fi Mac, but I am still a 7.62 man, reach out and touch some one.

    But I will agree, that we do need to embrace the UAV, as you say there are time when UAVs, are far more efficient for the task at hand.

    As for me, I really don't care if a A-1-C get the OBL, or Pilot with a over inflated opinion of himself, or a hard ass 0317, a hard kill, is a hard kill, and I give credit full credit to anyone, who has the balls to pull the trigger, something a lot of our politician don't have the balls to do.

    The biggest screw up for the military can be traced back to the REMF in Washington City.

    REMF=Congress
     
  20. Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

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    Electricfetus:

    That assumes a relatively normal level of advancement in technology. We're fast approaching a point where innovation will take centuries and millennia again.

    and I was referencing the standard "equation" for the likelyhood of other civilizations of sapient beings.

    Any sapient being, Darwinian or not, will make war. So long as it requires resources, so long as there are ideologies, so long as they need living space, so long as their is money, religion, love, hate, et cetera, there will be war. And when there is no war, we'll be so decadent as to be unsavable. We'll likely revert back to being apeish.

    No, we'll de-evolve, in a sense. We'll become more animal than man.

    We shall never be immortal and omniscient and freed from hate or anger. Hate and anger are useful and good things - one should hate and feel anger towards bad things. Disagreement will not be "non-existent" as there will always be controversy.

    ANd oh, we shall always be humans. But humans are themselves Gods and Gods love war.
     
  21. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    Exactly so.

    Or rather, one needs to consider why bringing the battleship "back" makes sense. The entire point of a battleship was that it was large enough to be a platform for massive guns. Such weapons are redundent now, thanks to cruise missiles and air strikes.

    The fact a battleship could possibly protect itself better now, to me, has nothing to do with launching a revolution. The battleship would still have to pull close to shore, where it would lob antiquated shells at targets easier and more effectively destroyed by missiles and bombardment.
     
  22. Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

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    Countezero:

    You forget a host of reasons why battleship guns are superior

    1. Shells are far more affordable than guided cruise missiles or guided bombs.

    2. More shells for equal damage can be carried onboard a single ship compared to aircraft bombs or cruise missiles.

    3. Sustained bombardment is higher than missile or airstrikes.

    4. Modern artillery is as accurate as missiles and airstrikes.

    5. Artillery requires no fuel.

    6. It is more difficult to destroy a battleship than it is to shoot down a fighter bomber (this wouldn't matter much in the cruise missile debate).

    In WW3 (not in limited wars) the battleship fullfills EVERYTHING a Naval commander will want.
     
  23. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    lol! and what gives you that idea? True the human brain is reaching its limits but we relying more and more on computers to assist us.


    Yes, Yes I know.


    No, not talking about a sapient being, first of all our succesors might not even qualify as alive, they don't reproduce rather they manufacture, an don't evolve Darwinian they evolve psuedo-larmarkian, they won't have money, religion, hate (they may have love) they won't need air, water or food, being immortal time will be irrelevant, they don't need form as they can take any that can be manufacture. I would call that omnipotence not decadence.

    You don't keep up with modern futurism do you? Singularity, transhumanism, etc, all over your head? Their a big difference between Sci-Fi and Sci-Spec, one is a fantasy (like stellar battle ships) the other is a honest projections of the future (powerflight, cars, cell phones, computers, internet, AI, technological singularity, transhumanism.)

    Your still thinking as if we will be human.

    Three scenarios, we upgrade, we coexist or we go extinct, coexistence is grossly unstable so eventually its either upgrade or extinction, thus we will either be something greater then human or dead.
     
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