Your Nations Warships, MKII

[Velkanika]

How does fiberglass compare to steel as a structural material when both are covered in burning JP-4 and there are extremely powerful explosions nearby?

Obviously steel is superior as we all know jet fuel can't melt steel beams.

Demo charges can.

9/11 memes aside, I'm legitimately curious about how it holds up to being on fire, blown up, and stopping high velocity steel shrapnel. Does it shrivel up like plastic packaging and loose structural strength, does it char like wood while maintaining strength, or does it just start bending as it softens like steel?

[Velkanika]

How much improvement could be done to U-209/1300, Sigma-class Corvettes and Frigates,Parchims,Fatahillah and Ahmad Yani / Van Speijk class short of buying new ships?

You can modernize some of the electronics and possibly retrofit weapons in place of obsolete systems, but don't expect to be able to do anything crazy. There isn't enough space on hulls that small for many modifications without doing a major rebuild.

[Velkanika]

Radar & ESM
Formidable has a PESA (Thales Herakles) and T23 has an AESA (ARTISAN). Both are excellent but ARTISAN is an AESA. I'm not comfortable on calling the difference between their ESM. Winner: T23

ECM & Decoys
T23 has the Type 675 jammer; I can not find Formidable having a dedicated jammer but could be wrong. T23 has the British Seagnat and Formidable some French system. Again not happy on calling those. If Formidable has a dedicated jammer please inform. Whereas T23 has the outstanding SSTD, Formidable does not appear to have a towed torpedo decoy. Winner: T23

I checked up on these two categories, and the Formidable relies on the RAFAEL C-PEARL-M, which I was able to find some marketing info on. By itself, C-PEARL is just an ESM kit but is designed to be integrated into a larger combat system along with a dedicated ECM suite. I have seen precisely zero information on ECM being fitted to the ships. If I had more time right now, I'd start looking at pictures of the ship and try to ID every antenna on the thing but the text sources I checked do not even mention ECM.

Edit: I personally would call ESM in T23's favor.

[Velkanika]

rip pharthan lol
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36457448

Serious question - is there something in the water on Okinawa that makes people stationed there retarded or is that just the post where they dump the uniformed problem children? If the latter, I wonder if they've considered Greenland as an alternative.

[Velkanika]

Wow you're so edgy and cool.

Says the guy wearing a political ad as an avatar.

I suspect that the incident rate around the Okinawa base is in general much lower than that around bases back in the states or even in Germany, its just that in Okinawa you have a large/vocal part of the local population actively opposed to the bases existance so any incident gets a lot of attention.

Banning stuff and imposing more mandatory training is the typical US military response to everything these days and as ever it fails to address the core issues and just bores people with more death by powerpoint.

I suspect that the incident rate around the Okinawa base is in general much lower than that around bases back in the states or even in Germany, its just that in Okinawa you have a large/vocal part of the local population actively opposed to the bases existance so any incident gets a lot of attention.

Banning stuff and imposing more mandatory training is the typical US military response to everything these days and as ever it fails to address the core issues and just bores people with more death by powerpoint.

I've heard Okinawan military is less criminal than Okinawan GP. This is Japan, however--there is hardly any crime to begin with and every Japanese has a sworn duty to honor the emperor and expel the barbarian.

The US government does tend to react to any problem by condemning large numbers of employees to death by powerpoint and ridiculously corny videos.

As for the protests on Okinawa, has anyone else noticed that the actual protesters are almost all old retirees? When you see pictures of protests, it's hard to find anyone younger than 50 in the crowd.

[Velkanika]

Marines didn't exist at all until the tail end of the Hundred Years' War when man-portable personal firearms started to see wide spread adoption. Even then, naval battles were not nearly as important as they would be later due to everything that mattered being on land in continental Europe somewhere.

Warships themselves were designed around hand-to-hand boarding actions well into the 30 Years' War, and only started to loose those design elements in the 18th Century. Ships were built with castles, or raised platforms, to give the defenders an extremely defensible position and facilitate boarding actions against other ships. These structures are commonly referred to as Forecastles and Aft castles. Forecastles slowly went from being one of the primary offensive structures on a man of war to being a convenient place for crew berthing, and thus went from being two or three decks high to being a half deck protrusion above the weather deck. They were also a common housing for forward-facing cannons clear through to the widespread adoption of armored turrets in the late 19th Century. Aftcastles on the other hand were retained as a command deck due to their excellent visibility compared to being on a flush deck. I'm unsure of the exact timeline for the transition, but sometime between 1700 and 1890 they were replaced with recognizably modern bridges within superstructures build ontop of the hull.

It should be noted that with the widespread adoption of powerful broadside batteries, older warships commonly had their castles cut down to lower their center of mass. This was done to improve the seakeeping characteristics of the ship, which was of greater importance due to the sudden appearance of important interests in the North Atlantic and the Americas. Millennia of increasing populations and agricultural runoff had destroyed the fisheries of the great rivers of Europe, so fishermen had gone to sea instead. This was combined with the dawn of colonialism to create the conditions that led to the formation of the great Empires of Europe, all of which sought a powerful navy to protect their trade income.

[Velkanika]

Virginia. No contest really.

The Virginias excel at operating close to shore and doing all the secret squirrel stuff the US Navy loves to do in Russian and presumably Chinese territorial waters while on a budget. The Seawolves are better at clubbing baby fast attack boats as they surge out of Polynarny into the Norwegian and Barents Seas and boomers in the open ocean be it below the ice cap or the middle of the Pacific.

[Velkanika]

But wouldn't a larger SSK be more capable than smaller one? For my purposes, I require something similar to the Collins class and replacement- a submarine with a massive range, though similar in speed to other SSKs.

Generally speaking yes, but a larger sub needs a larger power plant to reach a given speed. That will take up more internal space, which means that with the power densities of a conventional power plant you're going to take up a lot of whatever space you add with a larger engine room. Only nuclear reactors have the power density to easily run a large submarine.

[Velkanika]

Why do your nation's politicians not just expose the nucleophobes for being wrong?

The nation as a whole has an unreasonable phobia against nuclear power after being nuked at the end of the region's WWII equivalent.

Then you're going to have to stick to conventional subs and all the drawbacks that entails. On the up side, so long as your subs are in shallow water on the continental shelf their lack of towed array sonars won't hurt them too terribly much because any SSNs or surface ships they run into won't be able to use their tails. SSKs excel in shallow water around 300 feet deep, while an SSN is operating at a relative disadvantage due to their reactors generating significantly more noise than a battery does and being unable to use their extremely power hungry passive towed array sonars without risking them being ripped off on a rock.

[Velkanika]

Then you're going to have to stick to conventional subs and all the drawbacks that entails. On the up side, so long as your subs are in shallow water on the continental shelf their lack of towed array sonars won't hurt them too terribly much because any SSNs or surface ships they run into won't be able to use their tails. SSKs excel in shallow water around 300 feet deep, while an SSN is operating at a relative disadvantage due to their reactors generating significantly more noise than a battery does and being unable to use their extremely power hungry passive towed array sonars without risking them being ripped off on a rock.

SSK/SSPs don't have enough power to operate towed sonar arrays? Damn.

Far more than Japan?

Yes.

Yep, towed array sonars are power hogs. SSKs are limited to hull-mounted passive arrays that are far less effective. Their active sonars are roughly comparable, but I'm assuming you're already aware of why that's not particularly useful most of the time.

[Velkanika]

Well this is embarrassing, I didn't know of any SSKs that had a tail until just now. Does anyone know if they're more similar to the long arrays the US and Soviets used or more like a helicopter's dipping sonar?

[Velkanika]

STANAVFORLANT actually had a plan to form roaming ASW Task Forces to intercept and destroy Soviet SSNs running the GUIK Gap early in the war. The idea was to kill as many of them as possible during the initial surge of boats into the North Atlantic while they could get the best possible cues from SOSUS. Depending on the era, these task forces could very well be centered around an ASW carrier.

[Velkanika]

Is it okay to have some Guidance system jammers on my ship so it isnt such an easy target to ballistic missiles and guided Torpedoes? Effective range is only 3 kilometer radius though.

You know what ESM/ECM is, right? You have some reading to do.

[Velkanika]

Plasma sheaths aren't caused by ablation, though ablative materials may increase their density.

IRBMs (and their ship-killing derivatives) aren't fast enough for it to be a huge concern.

Even if it was you can do weird stuff with plasma.

Jammers are probably better for self-defense than missiles.

get gud and use a missile with a megaton yield warhead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFU6fyTx3eQ

Spoofing the guidance is at least as effective as shooting it down, assuming you've got something like the SM-6 which is presumably designed to counter the DF-21. The relative perspective of the terminal radar in the missile will make chaff look extremely similar to an actual ship, especially if combined with radar signature reduction and massive ECM jamming. Home-on-jam is of dubious utility here as well; until it gets close enough to "burn through" the jamming, the missile can't tell the difference between ECM from a carrier or a retrofitted fishing boat, assuming both jammers have the same electronic signature.

Someone mentioned this previously, but I expect the DF-21 to function similarly to the Pershing II and have a nearly identical "pull-up" maneuver to bleed off airspeed so it can more precisely strike its target and clear any plasma interference from its radar.

[Velkanika]

hardkill defenses are overrated

softkill is not "at least as effective"

it's almost the only game in town

save for the handful of times when missiles have countered missiles, and most of that was in the persian gulf (iranian f-14s only ~fleet defender~), hard kill protection would be almost worthless

look at the israeli wars to see how beastin (Latakia, 1973) soft kill is against ashm like termit and silkworm

Just saying, it's been 43 years. Missile guidance is a hell of a lot more advanced and is at the point where it can detect and ignore chaff some of the time.

idk where you got the idea an attack radar wouldnt be able to tell the difference between a warship and a fishing boat, these have quite substantially different returns, id think a carrier would have many more corner reflections given there is an island and such, and it is made wholly out of metal while a fishing boat might be made of plexiglass or wood

it may be different if you mean like a trawler or a factory ship

The radar can't tell the difference if it's relying on home on jam to find the target in a field of heavy ECM. All the missile would "know" is that it is being jammed by ECM that matches X system(s), which might be fitted to any number of ships but are usually only seen on warships. Until it gets close enough to start getting radar returns, all it can do is ride the jamming beam to the source which in the case of ASBMs like DF-21 could easily mean that the missile can't "see" what it's attacking through the electronic "fog" until it's well into the terminal attack and probably committed to whatever it happens to be diving on.

perhaps you are misremembering something else but im sure an attack radar's resolution is greater than say an OTH backscatter array

This is a SAR image of the Pentagon. X-band terminal attack radars probably have a very similar resolution.

chaff does not "look similar" it just makes the RCS bigger

given how attack missiles home in on targets (say if the missile goes for the centroid of the return) a bigger return would make the missile "see" the centroid of the target jump up several meters, and suddenly it corkscrews over the ship and lands in the sea

or suppose it goes for corner reflections then RF decoys will seduce it and it tries to hit them and flies over the ship

No argument there, but the radar centroid will appear to be on the surface of the ocean even if it's actually 100 feet up from the perspective of the missile. That'll mess with even the latest and greatest in signal processing computers that can fit in a missile, especially one that is generating enormous quantities of heat from high mach flight and/or atmospheric entry.

im not sure youd have the CEP to reliably hit a moving/maneuvering warship with an asbm rv though, which is probably why i didnt think of softkill countermeasures, because the only time ive seen guided RVs was for hitting relatively large static targets like bunkers and hitting a moving ship is a much taller order

It's not impossible to get the required cross range capability for the RV, and I think the Chinese have made the thing work adequately enough to be a credible threat to a carrier group.

EDIT: Actually, it's been possible to get the cross range you'd need. Pershing II's warhead can glide 30 nmi according to Wikipedia.

and yes i mentioned pershing ii's RV because the chinese probably copied it, like basically everything else

I don't think it's a copy. The Chinese are capable of designing and building a weapon like that based off of what they've accomplished in their space program and previous ballistic missile deployments. The flight profile is probably close to that of the Pershing II because both missiles were around the same size, fly similar trajectories, and both deliver MARVs.

Edit: fixed formatting

[Velkanika]

that feeling when "revise a few of your modern ship images" becomes "completely overhaul your navy's post-1964 development"

;-;

Yep, I'm doing the same thing. Oh the woes of realizing that the version of me that designed a lot of what I used previously was a fucking idiot.

[Velkanika]

Anyone have thoughts on Supercavitating torpedoes like the Russian VA-111 Shkval?

Redundant as a weapon system and more expensive than other options that work equally well.

[Velkanika]

... wut?

1. Arsenal ship. lolno
2. unmanned. crew of over 1000. wut?
3. Montana-class hull. lolno, have fun reworking the buoyancy and structure to deal with the changes in weight distribution

The real design was supposed to be unmanned. Here it is not. And I have solved the buoyancy issue along with the superstructure. When you look at the photo I am basing it off of, the Montana Class Hull fits as its also nuclear powered due to the railgun

This doesn't work at all if you're trying to obey the laws of physics. Try again from the beginning, and ask questions if you honestly have no idea what you're doing and want to be pointed in the right direction.

[Velkanika]

Against helicopters and small drones maybe.

But against high-altitude fast jets, you need a larger, more powerful radar and larger, more capable missiles. At the very least, you need something like Sea Ceptor or ESSM with a radar like ARTISAN or Herakles for basic self-defense against fast jets and anti-ship missiles, which requires a ship of at least around 1,000 tonnes in all. For a system able to provide area defense you need something like SAMPSON + SMART-L or AN/SPY-1 or DBR guiding bigger missiles like SM-2 and Aster-15 or Aster-30, which will require a ship of around 4,000-5,000 tonnes at least. The size and cost of air defense systems worthy of being designed around as a major capability (as opposed to tacking some MANPADS on a basic mount) make them difficult to build in large numbers anyway and usually warrants putting them on a larger, more survivable platform with enough space for plenty of VLS cells.

So I would be better off using surface systems like the S-300

Ok thanks.

Just adding on to this, but I've actually thought about it and you could use the FACs as platforms for the SAMs. Assuming the SAMs are small enough to fit into whatever tubes you have on your FACs and have autonomous terminal guidance they can be used so long as they have a data link to something that can find targets, such as an AEW&C aircraft, F-35, etc.

[Velkanika]

Just adding on to this, but I've actually thought about it and you could use the FACs as platforms for the SAMs. Assuming the SAMs are small enough to fit into whatever tubes you have on your FACs and have autonomous terminal guidance they can be used so long as they have a data link to something that can find targets, such as an AEW&C aircraft, F-35, etc.

It would just be an even worse version of the arsenal ship.

It's not a terrible idea if it's implemented as at best a secondary feature or as a field modification. This is the type of thing I'd expect to see a small navy make out of necessity rather than build FACs for fleet air defense.

What about connecting with ground radar? Because I don't have the money for either AEWC or F-35s.

That ties you on a string to the shore, which defeats the purpose of putting the missiles on a boat. You can use any radar that has a data link that can talk to the data link on your FACs, but practically I suggest sticking to using aircraft for the targeting, or at worst a larger surface combatant like a Frigate or Destroyer.

[Velkanika]

It's not a terrible idea if it's implemented as at best a secondary feature or as a field modification. This is the type of thing I'd expect to see a small navy make out of necessity rather than build FACs for fleet air defense.

Mk 41 or SYLVER are too large and too heavy to just be dropped into a FAC and it's rather pointless to include a bunch of VLS into the design of a FAC as a "secondary feature," as it will severely affect the boat's other characteristics. They won't provide enough seaworthiness and cruising range to be more useful than just carrying MRAAMs and LRAAMs on land-based fighter patrols, unlike a real destroyer or frigate which can actually extend the anti-air network much further offshore and have enough endurance to loiter there for an extended period.

The Hamina-class carries eight VLS cells for either Umkhonto-IRs or its RBS-15s. I haven't been able to figure out where exactly the AShMs go, but assuming they fit in the VLS cells that means the cells must be comparable to Mk-41 as the RBS-15 is heavier and slightly shorter than the RGM-84.

[Velkanika]

If that could be done why would a "picket submarine" be needed?

Two options: Even more range for the torpedo, so that the 'arsenal submarine' with the many torpedos can stay further back and fire from there out of harms way - or the fact, that water still limits wireless data transmissions greatly, so if one manages that, it will not be as good as it would allow the torpedo to go from the own sub to the enemy ship without loosing the connection (that could also act as a balancing factor ).
And one shouldn't forget scouting.

Wire-controlled UUVs can't carry sonars nearly the size or weight of the ones on a "parent" submarine, which means that their utility in this role is highly dubious unless they use active sonars. All that will do is reveal that there is a submarine within a few miles of the UUV, which might easily be the only cue an ASW aircraft needs to locate and attack the "parent" sub. I expect UUVs to be used for special operations in denied areas and mine clearing activities for the foreseeable future.

As far as the possibility of rediculously long-range torpedoes go, unless an SSN is hunting a really loud enemy like a Chinese or Soviet 3rd Gen SSN/SSBN at the latest the engagement ranges will be quite short, and all that fuel will just allow for longer tail-chase scenarios once the torpedo is detected and is in the terminal attack. That's useful if the enemy boat can run at almost the maximum speed of the torpedo, as the longer range will allow the torpedo to gain on the target and potentially still obtain a hit.

[Velkanika]

So, back to the drawing board... branching off from there, could I use a UUV as a decoy?
I mean, I make my UUVs make the same noise my regular submarines would make, program a course and set it on its merry way. The enemy (hopefully) falls for it, diverts ressources to hunting and destroying these decoys and I can attack from somewhere else with less harassment. Or I just keep him on his toes with attrition, let him have false information and so on.
That sounds like a good idea in my head.

This is a good idea, and has been talked about since the 70s in public-facing NATO military analysis circles. I've seen multiple references to this exact type of asset in quite a few military encyclopedias from 1975 to 1995.

A long-range torpedo is not exclusive to submarine fights, which are historically rare anyway. The most probable use is against surface shipping, a "long range" torpedo would force aviation to search an exponentially wider area and inversely give the submarine control over a larger sea space. With things like LFA giving aviation hours of warning time to kill a SSN at its leisure, while a submarine needs to sneak up to a few kilometers distant from a surface ship, the need is readily apparent and obvious.

The picket submarine is still a dumb idea too.

The problem with wire guidance has already been stated also, but suffice to say fitting more than a couple tens of km of wire into a torpedo is a challenge.

Got me on the spellcheck, lol.

You've got a solid argument here that I agree with. I personally think fitting that much wire into a torp would be a practical impossibility if you want the thing to be a manageable size for existing torpedo rooms and tubes.

The long range "hybrid mode" of a fuel cell powered torpedo would be more for engaging distant convoys or groups of surface ships. Against a sub you'd probably just fire it in high speed mode (60 knots) where it's range is about the same as a run-of-the mill monopropellant torpedo (30-40 km at 60 knots).

Again, this is a solid point that I didn't think of an won't try to argue against. There's gotta be some kind of standoff targeting, but the same thing applies to any kind of sub-launched cruise missile and those are common enough. The only thing that I can say against this is that the torpedo will take a few hours to cover that distance, and that makes it easy to evade by breaking contact with the spotting element of the kill chain and altering course, with most convoys or fleets can reasonably be expected to do a few times an hour.

[Velkanika]

This is a good idea, and has been talked about since the 70s in public-facing NATO military analysis circles. I've seen multiple references to this exact type of asset in quite a few military encyclopedias from 1975 to 1995.

yeah i linked to it only on the exact post you quoted and it's not exactly obscure or secret

it must not be that great because the us navy stopped using them 20 years ago

Yep, you had it pretty well covered.

My guess is that they phased them out due to the lack of any serious threat to the US that required them after the Soviet Navy evaporated. Seeing as the Chinese are getting a little frisky and have been building up their ASW and sub force, we'll probably bring them back like we're bringing back anti-surface warfare with the new AShM programs.

[Velkanika]

I'm late to the discussion, but I see you guys are up on your nuclear strategy.

Then it's in the Anti-Technocratic Syndicalists' best interest, and possibly their moral duty, to strike preemptively, removing half your retaliatory capability with very few warheads indeed.

How? All my active warheads would be carried either in ships, aircraft, or subs.

of which approximately half is sitting in hangars or pierside

Airfields are very soft targets for nuclear weapons due to being built on very flat ground with no hills to create "shadows" in the blast damage and the relatively delicate nature of aircraft. Submarines on the surface are in a better position due to only their sails being exposed to blast damage, but they still are likely to be sunk in the harbor. Warships can be, and have been, built to survive air bursts in their vicinity but that doesn't really change the math when they're in a port that's undergoing a nuclear bombardment from multiple 100 kt+ nuclear warheads.

of which approximately half is sitting in hangars or pierside

Yeah but If I have hundreds of VLS equipped surface ships and several hundred more attack submarines, each potentially carrying several nuclear cruise missiles, destroying all of them would be fairly difficult. And my nuclear cruise missile armed bombers would be dispersed across airbases throughout my nation which means you would have to attack and destroy every single one of my military airfields to completely neutralize my airborne nuclear arsenal.

And even then nuclear cruise missiles would only represent around 30% of my total warhead count, the rest being carried by several dozen or more SSBNs which would effectively be impossible to destroy all at once.

Let's flip this around for a minute, and say you're opposing a nation that relies on nuclear cruise missiles for most of their arsenal. Unlike ballistic missiles, you can't detect their launch on early warning satellites and your first notice of a surprise attack might very well be when cities and missiles fields start turning into radioactive glass. Tensions are high, and you have intelligence that they are contemplating a preemptive nuclear attack. If they get the drop on you, you will lose a significant chunk of your nuclear arsenal and potentially be at their mercy in the resulting peace negotiations due to being unable to hurt them as much as they will hurt you. Do you launch first, while you know you can at least tie the war or do you wait and possibly loose it?