BB(P/C) for rear area security

drothgery wrote:

SWM wrote:You still aren't getting it. The League is not relevant for this discussion. Manticore is not looking to get rid of destroyers during this war. The R&D brains are looking at long-range planning, ten, twenty, thirty years or more down the road. They hypothesize that eventually EVERYONE will have DDMs as the very minimum missile armament, legitimate navies and pirates both. They are evaluating this potential future, and are at the very beginning of speculating what kind of forces Manticore might need in that threat environment. Their current speculation is that the smallest hyper-capable warship which is survivable in that environment is the size of a current cruiser.

That's overstating things a bit. I don't imagine pirates with DDMs any time soon; I don't think RFC is either, or he wouldn't be speculating about LAC modules for freighters in the rare (post-Silesian annexation) scenario where you need to bring your own protection with you.

SWM wrote:Thirty years from now is not "any time soon". And it is not ridiculous to suppose that eventually pirates would be using DDMs. If regular navies aren't building single drive missiles, where would pirates get SDMs from? They have to buy or steal arms from someone, and if the standard minimum missile being deployed is DDMs, that's what pirates would get. Unless you are hypothesizing someone designing ships and single drive missiles just for a pirate market, which seems a bit odd. Especially when a pirate armed from such a supplier would be destroyed from outside his own range by the first destroyer he meets.

drothgery wrote:

kzt wrote:It all depends. If your commerce protection strategy is based mostly on LACS then I'm going to sit on the Alpha side and wait for customers.

And if you do that, it's apparently very easy to completely avoid you except in a handful of places with unusual hyperspace conditions.

kzt wrote:
Sure, but then you can't be using a "secure area" on the other side of the Alpha wall, now can you?

kzt wrote:You want to argue with David about his universe you can feel free, but that's what he says.

Tenshinai wrote:

kzt wrote:You want to argue with David about his universe you can feel free, but that's what he says.

If you read and understand what i wrote then you will know that i do not in any way contradict what David has stated.

There is a darned huge difference between ships capable of deploying as part of a fleet battle, and the ships that does all the "little" things in between those events.

A wet navy built from nothing but battleships is not going to be very useful 95% of the time.

runsforcelery wrote:I don't think you quite understand how these weapons are likely to develop and proliferate post-war and what that implies for peacetime building patterns. At the moment, the Nike has absolutely no peer competitor, so there's exactly zero point in making her armament still heavier, which will almost certainly remain true up to the end of the current war. Post-war, the decision making process for warship design is going to be faced with an entirely different set of constraints and menu choices rather than those the RMN currently faces.

The all up MDM is unlikely to get a lot smaller, nor are the magazine handling systems or the launcher-related hardware necessary to bring up their power plants and launch them. It is possible (although not likely) that a single tube, somewhat larger than the current MDM launcher, might be developed which could handle both MDMs and dual-drive missiles like the Mark 16, although one rather wonders why someone would go to the effort. The number of missiles which can be carried internally is a factor of the individual missile's size, and all of the support equipment would have to be built to handle the largest missile which might be carried, so it would be rather like putting 16" turrets, shell rooms, and shell hoists into a 10,000-ton cruiser. You could probably do it, but why in the world would you want to?

It won't be many years before there are several competing varieties of MDMs and (probably) DDMs floating around the galaxy. It will then become a matter of tweaks to maintain marginal areas of superiority rather than a case of one side having the capability and the other being utterly at the first side's mercy. When that happens, this particular paradigm shift will be effectively completed. The RMN already sees that day coming, which is one reason Honor and others have been working on evolving defensive doctrine to handle massive attacks launched by someone else. (Obviously the RHN was a driving factor in that earlier on, but note that they are continuing the search for a new doctrine even after the GA has been created.)

Certain constraints are going to remain, however, and one is that an all up MDM is going to be much larger than a DDM. Another constraint is going to be that you can't build an unlimited amount of SD-sized vessels. And a third is going to be that the only function of an SD is to fight another SD, but there will always be a need for cruisers and cruiser equivalents for all the jobs they've always done and which will continue to need doing.

In an MDM/DDM universe, the Saganami-C is likely to become the new light cruiser (effectively) and the BC(L) is likely to become the new heavy cruiser. The Roland is a transitional design, but assuming the DD survives as a role-defined type (which is far from certain at this point in many Honorverse naval analysts' thinking), its replacement will probably actually be at least a little larger and it will probably also be armed with the Mk 16 or its descendent.

The notion of designing a "fast battleship" in the Honorverse is sort of a nonstarter, anyway. The maximum velocities of types are equivalent across the board; the differentiation is in acceleration rate. It's true that in some ways that equates to the functional equivalent of a speed differential, but it isn't the same thing. At this moment, the Nike comes closest to a "fast BB," but the BB as a type is extinct for a very good reason: you can't build one big enough to be a true waller, and there's no point building a ship with ship-of-the-wall weapons that isn't survivable against another ship-of-the-wall. The Manties are very clear on this point, and they have always visualized a BC as the largest, most powerful ship below the wall.

In many ways, the SEM is in the position of the British Royal Navy between WW I and WW II (or will be, once the current unpleasantness with the League is tidied up). The Brits really, really needed cruisers to meet their responsibilities to the Empire and for trade protection, and they needed them in greater numbers than anyone else. They had, however, sort of shot themselves in the foot in the treaty process which began in Washington in 1921 by pressing for hard limits on individual cruiser displacements and armaments and on total cruiser tonnage (and hence numbers of dcruisers) for all signatories. What they wanted was a cap on everyone else's cruiser strengths and a qualitative limit (i.e., on individual tonnage and armament) which would prevent the evolution of "super cruisers" someone else might use against their commerce. (They also pressed for and got --- aside from France, which refused to ratify it --- a treaty agreement to ban the submarine as a commerce-raider, and we all know how well that worked out.)

What they got instead was a classic example of the law of unintended consequences. The other naval powers --- specifically, the USN and the IJN --- began building individual units right up to the maximum individual size and gun power allowed. Partly that was because of the operational ranges both of them were going to need in the Pacific (which required a large ship with deep bunker capacity), and partly it was because neither of them needed the sheer numbers of cruisers the Brits did, so they could afford to "waste" more of their total tonnage on individual ships. Ironically, it was the Germans who came closest during the inter-war years to producing the types of cruisers the Brits most feared; they were called "pocket battleships" and put 11" guns into a cruiser-sized hull. The ultimate expression of the type the Brits were afraid of, however, was the Alaska class which, fortunately for them, was designed by an ally and which also came right in the midst of a drastic paradigm shift thanks to the vastly increased capabilities of carrier aircraft.

Absent a similar shift --- which would require yet another new technology as profoundly game changing as the MDM/DDM --- the BC(L) (which is the Honorverse equivalent of the Alaska) is going to be highly relevant for a long time to come. It doesn't need to be able to kill opposing SD(P)s as part of its day-to-day work, but it has to be able to survive and encounter anything below the wall, which will include adversaries armed with Mark 16 equivalents. Ideally, it should also be able to survive at least briefly --- longer survival would be good, of course ---against Mark 23s (or their equivalent), given the chance that in a new war it will almost certainly find itself tasked with commerce protection and destruction. Also, it should not be forgotten, that the Mark 16 is capable of reaching out to exactly the same ranges as the Mark 23; it just takes it a little longer to get there and its warhead is lighter when it does, but this is not the same as comparing a 6" gun to a 16" gun. The USN's 6"/47 was absolutely limited to no more than about 26,000 yards and its AP projectile weighed about 130 pounds, whereas the 16"/50 had a range of 43,000 yards with a 2,700-lb. AP shell which could penetrate 36" of side armor at point-blank range. The Mk 16G can reach out to Mark 23 range and is powerful enough to penetrate SD-scale armor at that range, although it will not penetrate it as well as the Mk 23, whereas the 6"47 had only 60% of the 16"/50's range and could penetrate neither the deck armor nor the side armor of an Iowa-class BB at any range. The 16"/50 would absolutely gut a Brooklyn with only one or two hits (assuming they detonated on their way through) while the best the 6" could hope for against an Iowa was to kill topside support systems (like radar and range finders) or possibly the 5"/38 secondary guns; it could not knock out any of the BB's core systems or main battery weapons under any circumstances.

The Mark 16G can knock out core systems even on an SD, however, which means a Nike is heavily enough armed --- and tough enough herself --- to force even an SD(P) to "honor the threat" she represents, which is the classic yardstick for a screening/convoy protection unit.

The plain truth of the matter is that once the galaxy steps back from war-for-survival scale military spending, no one is going to be able to maintain vast active duty fleets of wallers, which means that a peacetime presence and commerce-protection fleet isn't going to have to worry about a squadron of SD(P)s dropping in unexpectedly to wreak havoc. It is going to have to assume that potential trouble makers and rogue states will be able to afford to build DDM-armed ships suitable for guerre de course operations. Those are what the BC(L) will be needed to counter, and there's no reason at all to be building anything larger than the minimum platform needed for the job . . . which happens to be something about the size and about as tough as Nike.

The cruiser the Brits really needed in 1919-1939 was something like its Leander class (7,200 tons, 6 x 6" and 4 x 4" guns with 8 x 21" torpedo tubes) rather than the USN's Brooklyn (9,700 tons, 15 x 6" and 8 x 5" with no TT) or the CL version of the IJN's Mogami (11,200 tons, original armament 15 x 6", 8 x 5", and 12 x 24-inch torpedo tubes; final armament replaced the 6" with 10 x 8"). If the other side was building monsters like Brooklyn and Mogami, however, the Brits had little choice but to counter with something which could hope to survive against them like the Southampton class (11,700 tons, 12 x 6", 8 x 4", and 6 x 21" TT). Unfortunately they could build 1.6 Leanders for the same tonnage as 1 Southampton, which meant they couldn't possibly afford to build Southamptons in the same quantities as Leanders, and that would have equated to too few platforms to meet their deployment needs.

The same sorts of calculations are going to have to be made by the Manties and any peer competitors in an MDM-dominated Honorverse: "What capabilities do I need and how broadly to I need to deploy them?" will drive decisions on numbers and combat power of platforms, and there simply isn't going to be a niche which needs something twice the size of the Nike with all up MDMs. There certainly won't be one in peacetime, at least, and even the RMN is going to prefer building more ships perhaps a bit larger than the Sag-Cs to building still more Nikes. They'd rather save on their building budgets (which are going to be much smaller in peacetime, even for the RMN) by building the minimal platform needed for the cruiser duties they absolutely have to discharge in peacetime and wartime and spending every penny left over after that's been paid for on building and maintaining true ships-of-the-wall for the battle fleet.

runsforcelery wrote:I should perhaps have said that something evolved from the Saganami-C would become the new CL equivalent. This is an area where thoughts are still evolving --- in my own thinking, as well as the RMN's --- so it would be a mistake to think that anything I've said above is the cast in stone word of God about How Things Will Be. My comments are more an analysis of how the situation is evolving and what the designers' constraints and options are likely to be/revolve around. I have some very definite idea of where the technology itself is going, but that doesn't automatically equate into what will prove to be the best way to implement that tech. To a large extent, that sort of thinking works its way out as I work on the books.

So, yes, the Sag-C is a transition type, but what it transitions into is likely to become the standard CL of the RMN. The "notional" 300,000-tonner may never go into production at all. On thing you can be pretty confident of is that warships aren't going to get a lot smaller. Assuming that you take DD tonnage as lying somewhere in the 100,000-120,000 ton range and you assume the same proportionate growth as that between a WW II Fletcher class DD and a Flight III Arleigh Burke class DD, your Honorverse DD would grow to 500,000-600,000 tons, which is moving you up towards something bigger than a Sag-C even for a DDD.

Frankly, I haven't made my mind entirely up, but I'm thinking the classic DD role/mission no longer applies and we'll be looking at simply deleting that class and going with a single cruiser niche below the Nike. I'm not saying that's the way things will happen, but the truth is that most of the DD/CL/CA screening roles for the battle fleet are nonstarters in an MDM/DDM universe. What is going to be needed is a platform that can be built in sufficient numbers to deploy everywhere you need it (which implies as cheap and small as possible) and yet remain survivable enough to do its job in peacetime and wartime alike (which implies not-cheap and not-small). As always, the designer's unenviable challenge will be to somehow reconcile those conflicting requirements.

SWM wrote:Checking out hyper transit echoes? Send out a CLAC and escort, and use 100+ LACs to search the volume.

SWM wrote:For strategic scouting, I would need something the size of a cruiser. Even in the current environment, destroyers are not used for strategic scouting--they use at least light cruisers and more often cruisers.

SWM wrote:Commerce protection in hyper? Darn right I need something the size of a cruiser. It needs enough endurance, a deep enough magazine, and enough armor to take a couple shots from the DDM of that time period.

SWM wrote:The Roland is not the ship of the future, and it was never intended to be. It was to be an interim platform only, leading the way to the new future. The future is bigger.

SWM wrote:You still aren't getting it. The League is not relevant for this discussion. Manticore is not looking to get rid of destroyers during this war. The R&D brains are looking at long-range planning, ten, twenty, thirty years or more down the road. They hypothesize that eventually EVERYONE will have DDMs as the very minimum missile armament, legitimate navies and pirates both. They are evaluating this potential future, and are at the very beginning of speculating what kind of forces Manticore might need in that threat environment. Their current speculation is that the smallest hyper-capable warship which is survivable in that environment is the size of a current cruiser.

SWM wrote:Thirty years from now is not "any time soon". And it is not ridiculous to suppose that eventually pirates would be using DDMs. If regular navies aren't building single drive missiles, where would pirates get SDMs from? They have to buy or steal arms from someone, and if the standard minimum missile being deployed is DDMs, that's what pirates would get. Unless you are hypothesizing someone designing ships and single drive missiles just for a pirate market, which seems a bit odd. Especially when a pirate armed from such a supplier would be destroyed from outside his own range by the first destroyer he meets.

Tenshinai wrote:

SWM wrote:Checking out hyper transit echoes? Send out a CLAC and escort, and use 100+ LACs to search the volume.

Grave mistakes made:
1. Setting yourself up for having capital ships EASILY ambushed.
2. Deploying capital ships piecemeal.
3. Drastically increasing the number of capital ships needed. You think they grow on trees or something? Or that the only place that needs this sort of coverage are Manticore and Haven?
4. Vastly increasing your vulnerability to diversionary tactics.

Grave mistakes made:
1. Setting yourself up for having capital ships EASILY ambushed.
2. Deploying capital ships piecemeal.
3. Drastically increasing the number of capital ships needed. You think they grow on trees or something? Or that the only place that needs this sort of coverage are Manticore and Haven?
4. Vastly increasing your vulnerability to diversionary tactics.