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Similarities and dissimilarities of naval warfare and STO

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
edited March 2012 in Ten Forward
Continued from here.

The question discussed is if attacks such as those on the USS Cole or the USS Stark would take out a WW2-era battleship for a few months or not.
An Iowa Class could have shrugged off a boat loaded with explosives ;) Ships in WW2 had a different design philosophy behind them than modern ships. They were designed, early on, to slug it out with ships of equal tonnage, and missiles were a gleam in the germans eyes when the ships were built.

I don't think so. The armor belt would have taken some of it, but if I am not mistaken, no armor belt went too much below the waterline, for practical reasons: The ship has this nasty requirement to be afloat. :)
I'm sure a boat of explosives, where the explosion is distributed in a sphere, rather than directed like a torpedo, or shell, would be nothing more than a foot note in a battleships battle history.

A torpedo these days does not deliver a directed explosive load to the ship's hull, but explodes below the target ship, producing a giant gas bubble that momentarily lifts up the center of the ship and displaces the water in the middle below it. So at first, the center of the ship is lifted up, and then it falls down more than its fore and aft. The longer the ship, the more likely it will crack from this structural stress, making it unfit to continue its mission. Months at shipyard will be needed.
Now the missiles, that depends on where the missile hits the ship. The armor on a battleship isn't uniform. Pretty much all the heavy armor was at the waterline, and the over and around the ammo magazines. A missile to a weak area on the waterline may sink her

That would be a unit kill, which i doubt, but certainly a section or two would be flooded. In any case, a mission kill would have been the result.

And this is, of course, inacceptable for a ship that displaces 40 000 tons or more amd is thus ten times as expensive as a modern frigate. Which is why I say that really big ships are too vulnerable for their cost. (Yes, I am also of the opinion that aircraft carriers are a waste of lives and money in a real war today.)
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  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    Hypothetical missile hits on a WW2 BB:

    Case by case redneck engineered imaginary simulation:

    Hit on waterline by wave-rider ASM:
    Missile detonates against the thickest armour belt on the BB - possible heavy blast damage to local area and immediate superstructure knocking out FCS, radars. Partial mission kill if its a small-ish subsonic missile like Exocet. You need multiple Exocets or Harpoons to take out something as big as a BB, preferably in an anvil attack from multiple directions or a big continuous salvo to guarantee the kill.

    If it's a big missile like a P300 Granit, forget it, the ship is 100% mission killed. Those huge missiles were specifically designed to take down CVNs. 1 will seriously cripple and mission kill, 2 or 3 following will destroy the hull.

    Scenario 2 - Top attack
    Missile flies a top attack terminal profile, either aeroballistic like the early Cold War Russian "Kickback" (NATO codename) or lofts up and dives into the deck of the target, bypassing the thicker waterline armour while having a chance to destroy crucial sections of the superstructure (My guess is top attack is ideally programmed to hit where the stacks are)

    This is a potentially very deadly attack as the missile could destroy large sections of lightly armoured superstructure (significant % chance of mission kill) or if the missile has a SAP warhead or delay fuze, it may even penetrate the BB's deck armour or even into critical machinery spaces before detonating. If it's a giant Russian aeroballistic weapon like Kickback, forget about surviving it.

    Scenario 3 - Brute force hypersonic "BrahMos" impact.

    I think it's going to be obvious that you either intercept this nasty thing way, way out with a long range SM2ER or SM3 interceptor, because if it happens to achieve a direct hit on -anything-, bye bye. 100% chance mission kill and lord knows what kind of internal damage here.

    Scenario 4 - fore or aft hits.
    BB armour belt is designed to protect in a broadside engagement against both direct and plunging fire. If you get a missile in from the front or the rear you have serious possibility of heavy damage to the ship. Harpoons and other ASMs can be programmed to fly 'dog leg' attack patterns making it very easy to bracket a target.

    My redneck conclusion is - please don't build big ships to survive modern ASM impacts. Focus on detecting and killing the launch platforms first and you have no missiles to worry about.

    Also notable that besides Russia and India currently, no other nation can field those deadly supersonic long range ASMs, at least to my knowledge. BrahMos in terms of its high supersonic speed and long range is actually one of the 'ultimate' ASMs today. China is still using subsonic ASMs with less capability than a Harpoon.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    Pretty much.

    Now, imagine STO-type shield entering the scene. Suddenly, big ships are the way to go. :D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    sophlogimo wrote:
    Pretty much.

    Now, imagine STO-type shield entering the scene. Suddenly, big ships are the way to go. :D

    Big ship = bigger reactor = more shields.

    But the Defiant as I read in an earlier forum discussion had the benefit of stronger shields because the energy was emitted over a smaller spherical area. This makes the idea of (non Trek) Independence War style "local area" shielding very effective if you ever wanted to create a shield that effectively negated any attack against one opponent only.

    What now?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    There's a reason why Cruisers have thin hulls (compared to WW2 standards) and are loaded with a TRIBBLE ton amount of weapons. They're built for redundancy, and the ability to seal off areas of the ship should a breach below the waterline occur. Battleships were built with shells and torpedos in mind.

    now the torpedo thing, the armor belt, and the ships hull geometry at the time would have allowed a lot of absorbsion of the shock you describe. The belt provided rigidity, while the shape of the hull allows it to bend (within tolerance) and still not crack. A ship with uniform thickness hull, with a V or U shaped hull would have a hell of a time weathering such a thing. Battleships (iirc) had a more rounded lower hull, angling together near the deck.

    EDIT: btw, I don't claim to be an expert. I know some engineering, and bunch of physics, but the terminology many of you have used is not something I know, lol.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    carmenara wrote:
    Big ship = bigger reactor = more shields.

    But the Defiant as I read in an earlier forum discussion had the benefit of stronger shields because the energy was emitted over a smaller spherical area.

    I can only think of the cube-square law here: A ship with twice the sphere diameter will have about 4 times the sphere (and thus shield) surface, but 8 times the sphere volume (and thus reactor power and shield projector mass).

    I always thought it that the Defiant was just a regular trek ship, minus all the multi-purpose gear and giant crew acommodations, and with actually weaker shields but more super-duper-armor ("ablative" understood as "regenerates armor using replicator technology", which might allow some stunts undoable with real world armor), and relying, mainly, on not being hit due to maneuverability and ECM.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    Adondria wrote:
    There's a reason why Cruisers have thin hulls (compared to WW2 standards) and are loaded with a TRIBBLE ton amount of weapons.

    And that reason is that no sane amount of armor could stop modern weapons anyway, so your only real chance is to hit the other ships first.

    (Of course, there is some armor in modern ships, but it is not designed to withstand missiles or torpedos, as that would be a vain attempt.)
    They're built for redundancy, and the ability to seal off areas of the ship should a breach below the waterline occur. Battleships were built with shells and torpedos in mind.

    That sealing off is a very old feature in shipbuilding, as far as I know - it was known and used in WW1 already.
    now the torpedo thing, the armor belt, and the ships hull geometry at the time would have allowed a lot of absorbsion of the shock you describe. The belt provided rigidity, while the shape of the hull allows it to bend (within tolerance) and still not crack. A ship with uniform thickness hull, with a V or U shaped hull would have a hell of a time weathering such a thing. Battleships (iirc) had a more rounded lower hull, angling together near the deck.
    [...]

    That is possible, though I doubt it.

    In any case, the fate of the I.J.S. Shinano should show quite clearly that armor won't save your ship from torpedos, even if they are of the old-fashioned drect-hit type.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    sophlogimo wrote:
    In any case, the fate of the I.J.S. Shinano should show quite clearly that armor won't save your ship from torpedos, even if they are of the old-fashioned drect-hit type.


    Shinano's weakness was the fact she was still wasn't finished. She was leaving Tokyo harbor to go to her final fitting out at the Kure Shipyards, which had more anti-aircraft protection than the shipyards in Tokyo. Her problem though is that 70-75% of her crew had no experience at sea or in damage control. Plus she had severe design flaws in her hull (probably due to her being converted from a stout Yamato class Battleship, to a Supply Aircraft Carrier). One of these major flaws, was that due to her being lighter than a typical Yamato, her Anti-Torpedo bulge didn't go down far enough. So when Archer-Fish's torpedo's struck, they struck her where she was vulnerable. Add to that, since again she was still technically inderconstruction, alot of her watertight compartments, weren't so water tight. If she had made it to Kure, I would imagine her final fitting out would have fixed alot of this, but we'll never know now.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    -yes-had-the-model-
    a-distressed-situation-as-crew-qualities-pool-diminished-
    harken-back-to-Trafalgar.

    Green-crews-lead-with-less-ten-standard-officers-corps-compound-poor-situations
    i-think-in-modern-classical-unclassified-terms

    STO-would-relate-well-to-scenarios-involving-the-Soviet-Black-sea-fleet-with-Admiral Kuznetsov carrier
    support-jump-jet-carrier-and-the-
    battlecruiser Kirov

    Setting-out-in-a-eastern-mediterranean-showdown-with-the-USN-6th-Fleet
    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/USN_Fleets_%282009%29.png/800px-USN_Fleets_%282009%29.png
    Dear-Cryptic
    the-above-maps-showing-fleets-and-areas-of-responsibility
    hint-6th-fleet-was-a-VA-now-its-COmmanded-by-A-4-star-full-on-Admiral-Admiral
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    sophlogimo wrote:

    That sealing off is a very old feature in shipbuilding, as far as I know - it was known and used in WW1 already.

    Of course it was old practice, but you stay with what works, right? ;)

    In any case, the fate of the I.J.S. Shinano should show quite clearly that armor won't save your ship from torpedos, even if they are of the old-fashioned drect-hit type.

    Well, the Bismark took a few torpedos and was scuttled, rather than being sunk. The only reason it was scuttled was due to a lucky shot to the rudder. Otherwise, it would have been damaged, but wouldn't have been laid up that long, or even have had to go into port at all, from what I remember.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    Adondria wrote:
    [...]
    Well, the Bismark took a few torpedos and was scuttled, rather than being sunk. The only reason it was scuttled was due to a lucky shot to the rudder. Otherwise, it would have been damaged, but wouldn't have been laid up that long, or even have had to go into port at all, from what I remember.

    Yeah. but the lucky shot was done at a cost of merely risking one pilot and one (outdated) airplane. Now compute how many of those planes and pilots you could buy for the price of one battleship plus crew, and correlate with the probability of such a lucky shot per plane.

    No, big surface ships without shields are just a bad idea, and have been since the invention of submarines and airplanes, if not much longer.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    The construction of battleships /escorts/frigates have changed so much and contiue to change not just everymonth, but weekly.

    Comparing "Treknology" i.e sheilds. Lets remember the defiant shall we, small overpowerd ship....they didnt fit it with more sheilds, they went with a blade of armor

    My point; shuttles and small craft can go right thru sheilds, I imagine projectile weapons would as well

    As I recal the attack on the Cole was only effective because they came at the ship in a smaller craft to get inside the patrol area and attach a bomb ( my facts may be in error)

    Now day the armor it would take to stop a spent uranium round is getting thicker and thincker, making battlewagons with weighty armor yesterdays dino. Now the ships stay small , more manuverable, and come with the ability to be altered for mission specific armaments.

    As I ramble on, I think I said what I ment....heck I dunno:D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    sophlogimo wrote:
    In any case, the fate of the I.J.S. Shinano should show quite clearly that armor won't save your ship from torpedos, even if they are of the old-fashioned drect-hit type.

    RE: Bismarck vs Shinano torpedo survivability.

    Depends on where the torpedo hits. Conventional WW2 firing solutions for unguided torpedoes went specifically for hull hits because well, torps are unguided, you fired them in a spread towards the target from the side in the hope multiple torps will hit it and cause fatal flooding by destroying a section or sections of said vessel.

    We all know that magnetic detonators back then didn't function reliably and the USN and German U-Boats reverted to mechanical fuzing after some very nasty malfunctions. So yes the torpedo belt was important in that era both for surface combat and also surviving submarine hits.

    Same logic for shell penetration applies here - torpedo hit on the side where you have TDS (torpedo defense system) coverage, ship will survive. But any, repeat, any ship that takes a hit to the stern is going to lose propulsion and steering, guaranteed. It will also start to flood in the stern and that ruins your ship's sailing trim, reducing whatever speed you can muster.

    Which brings me to the case of modern torpedoes...

    For an active seeking torpedo (or torp on active mode), are they still programmed to go for the centre mass using proportional navigation? Or do they end up in a stern chase (pursuit curve) and impact the aft section of the target? Because something as huge as a Mk 48 ADCAP homing in on a big ship's props = 1 hit and the poor ship is dead in the water. Currently there are little means of active defense against incoming torpedoes other than decoys (NIXIE) or just running as fast as you can away from the torp and hope it doesn't manage to catch up.

    The key point is once again you have to find the damn submarine first and either destroy it or scare it off with your ASW sensors. If you let a submarine close to say, 10,000 yards and let its computers or crew get a valid firing solution on you, your surface ship is toast. Many modern torpedoes travel up to 50 kts speed and that is at least a 20 kts advantage against most mid-sized to heavier warships in battle trim. If you manage to fire a torpedo at a relatively short range to the target, even if it turns tail to run immediately (assuming it manages to detect torpedo launch acoustics and run the right way in the first place) there is a very, very large 'no escape zone'.

    It's nasty - knowing something very big and very deadly is coming up your stern in the next 10 minutes and you can do zilch to shake off the torpedo.

    Suffice to say you don't put a huge torpedo belt on a Ticonderoga class to survive torpedo encounters - you add a LAMPS III ASW helo on the back :)





    And of course this is very different from STO gameplay. Our shields are very very efficient vs torpedoes and all we need to do is worry if the power levels are going down.

    If STO game balance were geared towards extended-range combat (out to 100km for instance) with canon levels of weapons power (one hit kills more likely) then we will adopt an RL style approach to 'detect first and kill first, or be killed'.

    Despite what everyone says about Star Trek not using modern naval philosophy, consider that those who do not know history, are doomed to repeat it.

    The works of Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and those of many other great military theorists are evergreen and their strategic concepts will likely remain timeless even in an age of photon torpedoes and warp cores.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    I don't know if comparing the Cole to a WW2 ship is fair. During the WW2 era, the terrorists' boat would have been shot at the moment it turned toward the ship. They were a little less concerned about political correctness in those days.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    I don't know if comparing the Cole to a WW2 ship is fair. During the WW2 era, the terrorists' boat would have been shot at the moment it turned toward the ship. They were a little less concerned about political correctness in those days.

    LOL.....Ya know, it does seem like the more we care, the more we get killed
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    Rotton wrote: »
    LOL.....Ya know, it does seem like the more we care, the more we get killed

    I'm just sayin'. General Patton would have declared martial law and said that anyone out during curfew would be shot. He'd have dropped leaflets on Baghdad saying "City is being leveled in three days. Get out!"

    None of this Military Police business.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    Rotton wrote: »
    LOL.....Ya know, it does seem like the more we care, the more we get killed

    Hence why I don't care about offending others ;) I stay alive that way.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    I don't know if comparing the Cole to a WW2 ship is fair. During the WW2 era, the terrorists' boat would have been shot[...]

    Not even my country's navy of that time would have done that without any indication of hostile intentions, much less yours.

    I observe a degradation of your country's ethical standards since then.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    carmenara wrote:
    [...]
    Which brings me to the case of modern torpedoes...

    For an active seeking torpedo (or torp on active mode), are they still programmed to go for the centre mass using proportional navigation?

    I do not know for sure (it's been a while since I was in active service, and even then I mostly did boring land duty), but I would guess that it either depends on the type of torpedo or is programmable by the weapon's operator.
    The key point is once again you have to find the damn submarine first and either destroy it or scare it off with your ASW sensors. If you let a submarine close to say, 10,000 yards

    I was taught back then that if that happens, your are dead even without such fun things as the Shkval or the SKULK, because current range of conventional torpedos is more like 30nm.
    And of course this is very different from STO gameplay. Our shields are very very efficient vs torpedoes and all we need to do is worry if the power levels are going down.

    If STO game balance were geared towards extended-range combat (out to 100km for instance) with canon levels of weapons power (one hit kills more likely) then we will adopt an RL style approach to 'detect first and kill first, or be killed'.

    I don't know if one-shot kills are canon in Star Trek. I mostly remember the opposite. But yeah to the idea of different ranges for different weapons. :)
    The works of Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and those of many other great military theorists are evergreen and their strategic concepts will likely remain timeless even in an age of photon torpedoes and warp cores.

    I would say that is only true for their more general advice. Clausewitz, for instance, is heavily influenced by the Napoleonic wars wherever he goes in to the details, which is natural, but ultimately useless for today and tomorrow.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    Interesting thread. I like the debate. But...
    sophlogimo wrote:
    (Yes, I am also of the opinion that aircraft carriers are a waste of lives and money in a real war today.)

    Why do you think this is a waste of lives and money in war today? I spent 8 years in the US Navy in fighter squadrons. First with an F-14A squadron attached to the USS Enterprise and then an F/A-18F squadron attached to the USS Nimitz. Carriers are designed to project the US Navy's power of air superiority around the world. Not only are they a projection of power but they are vital in the support of ground troops where ever they are.

    As for lives, an aircraft carrier is well protected. The following pic if of the USS Abraham Lincoln's battlegroup. All the ships surrounding the Lincoln have one mission, to protect the carrier at all costs (well, except for the supply ship :p).

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Abraham-Lincoln-battlegroup.jpg


    Though it has never come to that as the shear shock of the power projection of an aircraft carrier and its battlegroup has, at times, prevented the proverbial poo hitting the fan.

    Just my $0.02 :)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    OP, in DS9, many a Miranda dies to one shot ;)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    Capt.Spade wrote: »
    Interesting thread. I like the debate. But...



    Why do you think this is a waste of lives and money in war today? I spent 8 years in the US Navy in fighter squadrons. First with an F-14A squadron attached to the USS Enterprise and then an F/A-18F squadron attached to the USS Nimitz. Carriers are designed to project the US Navy's power of air superiority around the world. Not only are they a projection of power but they are vital in the support of ground troops where ever they are.

    As for lives, an aircraft carrier is well protected. The following pic if of the USS Abraham Lincoln's battlegroup. All the ships surrounding the Lincoln have one mission, to protect the carrier at all costs (well, except for the supply ship :p).

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Abraham-Lincoln-battlegroup.jpg


    Though it has never come to that as the shear shock of the power projection of an aircraft carrier and its battlegroup has, at times, prevented the proverbial poo hitting the fan.

    Just my $0.02 :)

    In fact, just one of our carriers has more air power than the entire Iranian Air Force... and we have 11 of them. It is our superior firepower that does protect lives on the ground. Many a ambush had been thwarted by an F-14.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    sophlogimo wrote:
    Pretty much.

    Now, imagine STO-type shield entering the scene. Suddenly, big ships are the way to go. :D

    Haha well....cloaking devices were tested on a naval ship once...from what I recall the entire crew got server radiation sickness.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    Haha well....cloaking devices were tested on a naval ship once...from what I recall the entire crew got server radiation sickness.

    The Navy finally realized that when you have missles with ranges of several orbits, you don't actually need to put your ships near any actual danger.

    Plus, we have lasers coming soon.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    Plus, we have lasers coming soon.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pozlp_wnkRk

    :D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    Capt.Spade wrote: »
    Why do you think this is a waste of lives and money in war today?

    Note the little world "real" in my statement. Carriers are great for beating up vastly inferior forces even if they are very remote from any allied bases. But that's it. In a war where both sides are at least in the same order of magnitude of force strenght and technology (such as in a hopefully-never-to-happen-US-Chinese war or something like that), carriers are big and vulnerable just like battleships of old ages
    As for lives, an aircraft carrier is well protected. The following pic if of the USS Abraham Lincoln's battlegroup. All the ships surrounding the Lincoln have one mission, to protect the carrier at all costs (well, except for the supply ship :p).

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Abraham-Lincoln-battlegroup.jpg
    [...]

    Allow me to answer with another picture. :D

    http://www.dutchsubmarines.com/pictures/images/tijgerhaai2/scope_tijgerhaai2_uss_america_med_oct93_2.jpg

    And this kind of pictures is extremely common from NATO maneuvers even in the last couple of years, or so I am told.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    In fact, just one of our carriers has more air power than the entire Iranian Air Force... and we have 11 of them.[...]

    Not one of which is as unsinkable as any Iranian air base, though.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    The Navy finally realized that when you have missles with ranges of several orbits, you don't actually need to put your ships near any actual danger.

    Plus, we have lasers coming soon.

    Can't waitt for those finished products...not the sissy crowd control ones. I met a retired officer in the airforce once who used to work on a laser system for planes under the Clinton admin. A fun talk it was....but so much science. :p
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    It's true, AA lasers will very likely be a game changer regarding the role of airplanes on the battlefield everywhere, but they will remain less useful against attacks from beneath the surface.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    sophlogimo wrote:
    Not one of which is as unsinkable as any Iranian air base, though.

    Moving targets are harder to hit. Besides, we destroyed the Iranian navy in the early 80's. I'm sure we could do it again.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    Moving targets are harder to hit. Besides, we destroyed the Iranian navy in the early 80's. I'm sure we could do it again.

    Well, the US Navy could do that, of course. The question is, how much would it cost. In war, there is risk.
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