JeffEngel wrote:The other big operating cost reduction I have in mind is a lot more radical, but given the nature of the mission and evolving RMN practice, I think it's got a shot at acceptance. The idea is to eliminate on-mount weapon crews for the missile launchers and grasers at least. They're only back-ups in case damage eliminates the ability of those weapons to fire from central control. I submit that that is not essential to the mission of the smallest effective warship. You would lose some ability to take mediocre shots under some damage conditions, all of which usually obtain, if at all, only when you're losing badly already.
That is just not correct. That is stating a belief that either the ship remains in pristine condition, or the battle is a loosing one.
One of the primary differences between military and non-military ships has always been the ability to continue to function despite battledamage, and while it looks good on paper, heavily cutting down on that ability is going to make your suggested ships severely crippled from the start.
Oversimplified, such a change would effectively mean that you need twice as many ships in any battle that isn´t a curbstomp. In any real battles, you MUST expect to take damage.
JeffEngel wrote:And back-up links should be easy enough with that spare tonnage, though that's maybe one place where the 1980's vision of the future on which the series is based diverges from a 2015 vision of it.
There´s a huge difference between "a link", and a reliable, hard to damage, hard to kill link...
JeffEngel wrote:I think they can go for both, given the cruiser mission. Just reducing missile throughput increases time it takes to empty magazines (which is taken as an unalloyed good when RFC compares the BC(L) to the BC(P) - not something I can agree with
Quite so. Saying that is just stating that whoever is in command of doctrine doesn´t understand how to use the BCPs. For a modern/semimodern battlefield analogy, they would be divisional sized units of rocket artillery. Except without the ability to reload much. And i might add that the Soviets used division sized artillery units in WWII with devastating effects when employed properly.
BCPs wont ever be able to effectively guide all they can fire, but seriously, who cares? That´s like trying to have them act as extra launchers for the wall, totally negating their speed advantages, which is pretty much wasting them.
However i think a better idea for this CL of yours is to INCREASE missile throughput per launcher, as you are reducing the number, this combined with the offbore launchers means you retain much of the tactical ability of a larger ship.
RFC wrote: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.
That is, i´m afraid i have to say, an absolutely dreadful comparison to make. Most of all, because the USN post WWII developments have not mainly been a matter of technology but of politics.
Essentially it´s the same troubles that plague the F-35 or the Zumwalt developments, the apparently unstoppable drift towards "oooh shiny, we simply MUST have that ( since we can´t afford as many of the ships/planes as we really need )".
Main problem with the comparison is that the Arleigh Burke has ended up a decent DD -despite- everything rather than thanks to deliberate thought and intention.
Also, it´s not really a good comparison for another very simple reason. Most WWII destroyers were already at the time noted as not really being of suitable size.
Japan was the only one to really put it in official print, estimating that for destroyers with the tech at the time to be 100% effective, they would need to be 3500t minimum, and possible as large as 5000t.
Add to that, that the Danish Ivar Huitfeldt, German Sachsen and Dutch De Zeven Provincien frigates all have pretty much the same capabilities as the Arleigh Burke, but at 2/3 the tonnage (just over 6000t), yes the USN DD has larger magazines and room for an extra helicopter, but OTOH, the Ivar Huitfeldt class has twice the operational range so a big *meh* to that, overall the comparison becomes more and more flawed.
And as a final coup de grace, the Fletcher class was a much more effective ship compared to tonnage than the Arleigh Burke ever will be.
And i expect that if the suggestion for making the Fletcher a 3300t ship had gone through, it could have been superb.
RFC wrote: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.
I get the feeling that RFC is looking at this too strictly adhering to the common RMN idea of jack of all trades.
A small warship will NEVER be able to stand up to anything remotely powerful with the advent of MDMs and pods, end of story.
But the requirements for small warships does not need to include such. Trying to include it anyway is letting the powercreep become far too great(or the desirecreep perhaps).
That´s just going the "oooh shiny" path again, because really, did anyone expect a pre MDM DD to fight a pre MDM waller? Eh, NO!
So why is such thinking taken into account for a nextgeneration DD/CL/CA?
Yes a nextgen light warship needs to be able to defend itself vastly better than earlier ones, but noone expected previous generation CLs to surive against BCs, why should next generation be different?
A small patrol/scout/recon/delivery boy etc warship needs to be able to fight LACs, pirates and ships of its own size, nothing more.
Otherwise you just end up with Nike-sized ships patrolling every little backwater starsystem, at ridiculous costs.
Based on current knowledge?
I would expect the future to include a DD at 200-300kt(for when you really just need a hyper capable presence), a CL/CA at 400-600kt and
maybe a CA somewhere not so much larger.
Because really, the missions for DDs isn´t what is disappearing, but rather that of the heavy cruiser, as anything smaller than a Nike is going to have a hard time surviving in a fleet on fleet engagement anywhere near the wall.
