The Military Thread

-snooooore-

Stupid boats.

I should think submarines would be better off against battleships than missile ships.

The top is all kinds of armored, but it isn't gonna survive a hit to the bottom with a torpedo big enough to crack a cruiser in half...

Lets just make aircraft carriers/submarines.

Submarine aircraft carriers, did you say?

And yes, torpedoes are deadly anti-battleship weapons. A few under-the-keel detonations will send the heaviest battleship to the bottom. IIRC, torpedoes and aerial bombs were the two biggest threats to battleships by WWII's end. (That, and all their jobs were getting outsourced to the bird farms.)

If I hadn't played Supreme Commander, the idea of a submarine aircraft carrier would just sound dorky...

Again the shells even the big 16's can not compare to a cruise missile. Your shells at the largest had only 153 lbs of bursting charge for your HE rounds. Your AP ones 40 lbs but they have the advantage of being designed for AP duty. Amazingly I found out they made a nuclear shell for the damn 16's. The ASM's have 2-3 times the warhead.

Your over playing the capability of the armour and overplaying the armour thickness. The thickness is not uniform all over. The belt ie the side is super thick armour. Even then missiles have ripped holes through those with and without warheads. The missiles were designed to target warships not just merchant vessels. Modern ships have armour not just armour but shaped armour. In addition they have been built with the experience of the past to try and make them survivable. I would love to hear where you and major tom get the false impression modern ships have no protection what so ever.

A cruise missile is not a simple delayed impact fuse like your dumbfire shells. They can be adjust depending on the target. These missiles were designed with the knowledge of the various defence mechanisms you mentioned. They penetrate in as far as they can go and blow a hole in. I doubt your compartments are good against Shaped Charges or Semi Armour piercing warheads.

Want to talk about rarity. We have 4 battleships. There are more missiles capable of killing them then there are battleships. They are all in the hands of nations that are our competitors. Two of them are actively producing new missiles of similar types.

I have not doubts the battleship can be defeated by medium and large cruise missiles. Last I checked several of those missiles can fired by ships and planes. Many more fired by ships, sub, planes, and land platforms. They are even more common.

edited 6th Jan '12 11:11:26 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Everything in Supreme Commander is drone-based except the command units themselves, if I recall correctly.

Then again, that submersible carrier is stupidly huge even with no crew, but who the fuck cares, it's awesome!

Yep, everything except the commanders in Sup Com is a robot.

More on topic and from that list: Holy shit. 12 torpedo tubes, a floatplane, and a pair of 8 in guns on a submarine? Frakking nuts. I mean it's cool, but I can imagine that it'd be nearly impossible not to notice it on sonar.

submersible battleship?

Barkey's Future weapon of issue.

Modern ships have splinter protection, not armor protection: limited kevlar; that's about it. You've got them confused with tanks. I challenge you to find a source that points otherwise. For modern ships, defense lies not in withstanding hits but avoiding them entirely—hence point-defense suites. Almost every page I can find on it cites "kevlar armor over vital spaces". As it happens, kevlar is excellent against fragmentation but terrible against actual missiles.

I've made the point already that explosive weight, against steel armor, is largely meaningless. It's the same reason that a modern tank can withstand several tons of HE going off in contact to its armor: sheer blast makes for a terribly inefficient anti-armor weapon, and most cruise missiles today rely primarily on blast because their targets are unarmored or splinter-armored at best; anti-bunker cruise missiles would be more efficient against steel plate, but most anti-ship missiles aren't equipped with that kind of warhead. In fact, I am fully willing to wager that you can drop a four-ton Blockbuster onto a battleship and watch it steam away mostly unscathed; the AP Mark 8 shell only had a 41-pound explosive charge, not 153. (The 153-pound charge was for the HC, High Capacity, shell; as its name suggests, it was intended for use against unarmored targets, much like modern cruise missiles.) The small burster weight didn't matter, as it was intended to go off after the shell had penetrated the armor through sheer kinetic energy—and 2700 pounds of capped steel can break through armor much better than 1200 pounds of plastics, explosives, and aluminium. Here's some additional proof of it: armor plates protect really well against HE, and missile heads are HE.

Let's say that a sufficiently powerful shaped-charge warhead manages to pierce the armor, keeping in mind that Harpoons and Exocets use bulk charges instead of shaped charges. The after-armor effect would be frankly unimpressive. Yes, you'd make a mess out of that one compartment, but that's it; setting the messroom alight has no effect whatsoever on the ship's fighting ability. On the other hand, an AP shell explodes inside the armor, where the measly 41 pounds of HE can actually do damage. You're making a single neat perforation with a missile, but a big mess with a shell.

On the subject of armor-piercing and semi-armor-piercing missile heads: they, like shells, rely on—guess what?—kinetic energy to pierce armor. An SAP warhead works whereby the head embeds itself into a target before it sets off the explosive charge to wreck what's inside. Only in this case, you're trying to compare 1200 subsonic pounds against 2700 supersonic pounds—and that's not counting for the fact that the AP shell's design transmits kinetic energy much better than the missile body, which would crumple on impact. Now, the armor on the Iowa was designed to resist the latter. I am therefore unconvinced that the former can get through. An "armor piercing" warhead on a modern anti-ship missile is entirely relative; by WWII shell standards they'd be classified as "HC", not "AP". As I've stated before, a 2000-pound bomb dropped from height is far more dangerous to a battleship than a medium ASM.

Just remembered: if you really want additional evidence, look up Sandy Woodward's memoirs of the Falklands, One Hundred Days. On the section against the Belgrano, he'd run through a rough list of weapons that his task force carried: bombs and rockets for the Harriers, torpedoes for the submarines, Exocets for his frigates, 4.5-inch shells for the guns. He specifically made the point that the only effective weapons against Belgrano were 1000-pound bombs and torpedoes. Exocet didn't make the list. Belgrano, you'll remember, was a light cruiser, not even a battleship, yet its armor—proof only against 6-inch AP shells—was regarded as enough to render Exocet ineffective.

edited 7th Jan '12 12:31:19 AM by SabresEdge

Oh gee goes off after it penetrates a target sound familiar. Oh yeah ASM's do that too. You keep conveniently ignoring the fact they do not just explode against their target. They are not strictly HE and operate in a manner more complex then you give them credit for. Shaped charges and SAP rounds are not simple HE and do not burst on impact either. They penetrate then detonate. This concept should be familiar from your argument about the shells.

In fact most AS Ms do not burst on impact. The blow up after they penetrate into the target. Especially harpoons and exocets. There is even footage of both doing just that. Those missiles do not make a simple neat perforation. They blow the hole bigger from the inside out doing additional damage then just simply blowing up. Your still labouring under the false impression the missiles are incapable of making it through the ships armour in any spot and that the missile will be incapable of going through more then one compartment.

Steaming away mostly unscathed after a direct hit from a 4 ton block buster would be absolute horse shit. Going back to Jutland. While the British used contact fuse shells they still managed to quite thoroughly mangle several German ships. A 4 ton Block buster dropped from Operational height is going to hit the ship like a 4 ton sledge hammer. Your deck and everything immediately below it is not going to look pretty and that is if your lucky. Anything on deck or exposed to blast like oh say your bridge, observation decks and anything even remotely open or more thinly protected is going take quite a beating from the shear force of the blast. The closer the blast the worse it will be. Incidentally which big bomb you looking at using? The 4000lb "Cookie" Block buster?

Unlike your shells which will constantly lose velocity the further from the target out of the muzzle, the missiles will have a much more consistent velocity right up to impact. The body of the missile is designed to aide penetration into the target. They do not simply just fly apart on impact.

The missile that has the SAP head is 6600lbs btw. Much better kinetic energy then your shell with better and more consistent velocity. And a much more powerful warhead designed to wreck the guts of the ship once it is inside.

A even more thinly armoured cruiser would be even easier. I would call in to question his judgement that ships armour would be more then sufficient to stop a Exocet. That honestly is the worst thing you could say. A 1000 lb dumb bomb is threat the 1500 lb Exocets are a threat. I found the ship it used to be before the Falklands. Unless they strapped on more armour after Argentina acquired it this guy was an idiot.

The cargo ship that got nearly gutted how much crap did that missile go through before it turned the hold into an inferno again?

You underestimate the missiles and over estimate the armour.

Do Want. That's my new anti-technical weapon.

And you are overestimating the missiles and underestimating the armor.

Let's go through this again, point by point.

It does not matter if the warhead is designated SAP or AP; unless it can pierce the armor via its own kinetic energy before detonation, it will explode outside the armor, uselessly. HEAT warheads are an exception that I have already covered.

• Mass: you'll notice I focused on medium-weight AS Ms like Harpoon and Exocet, because I have already conceded that the heavy supersonic ASMs can successfully threaten warships. Just for argument's sake, let's also throw in some of the heavier ones, Tomahawk and the P-15 Termit/SS-N-2 Silkworm. These are similar in velocity to Harpoon and Exocet, but pack double the warhead.
  • The mass of a medium ASM like Harpoon/Exocet is around 1200 pounds/550kg.
  • The mass of a heavy subsonic ASM like Tomahawk or Termit is around 3000 pounds/1360kg.
  • The mass of a 16-inch AP Mark 8 shell is 2700 pounds/1220kg.
• Velocity: this is what really matters. This is also why I've focused on medium ASMs for my argument; when you get to the supersonic ultraheavy ones, I've already conceded the point there. I contend that it is unfair and impossible to compare a heavy supersonic missile on the AS-4/6 pattern to a medium subsonic missile of the Harpoon, Exocet, Termit, and Tomahawk varieties.
  • The velocity of a subsonic ASM—Harpoon, Exocet, Termit, Tomahawk—is Mach 0.9. Yes, it keeps this speed throughout. This is about 310m/s'.
  • The velocity of a battleship shell is variable and decreasing, but always supersonic. At the moment of impact, depending on range, this can be anything from Mach 1.5 to 3.0. (citation) This is still well in excess of the missile's velocity. For future calculations, I will be extremely conservative and use the Mach 1.5 figure, which is 510 m/s.

I've converted everything to meters, seconds, and kilograms so I can crunch the numbers. Hence, a basic comparison of numbers suggests the following;

• A medium ASM hits with the following kinetic energy: (.5)(550kg)(310m/s)² = 2.64 gigajoules, discounting significant figures.
• A heavy subsonic ASM hits with the following kinetic energy: (.5)(1360kg)(310m/s)² = 6.53 gigajoules.
• A 16-in Mark 8 AP shell hits with the following kinetic energy: (.5)(1220kg)(510m/s)² = 15.87 gigajoules. Note that this is about two and a half times the impact energy of a P-15 Termit or Tomahawk, and six times the impact energy of an Exocet or Harpoon!

See my point?

Now, the armor on a Iowa is rated to stand up to the 2240-pound "light" 16-inch AP shell; she wasn't fully rated to stand up to her own guns. Using Mach 1.5 and 2240 pounds, after the relevant conversion factors (510 m/s and 1016kg), this still yields 13.21 gigajoules—twice the impact of a Tomahawk or P-15, and still five times the impact energy of an Exocet or Harpoon.

Bear in mind that Exocets, Harpoons, and TASMs all carry bulk charges, not shaped charges. Yes, they have "penetrator" warheads; yes, this means they rely on their own kinetic energy to penetrate the target before exploding. And we have seen that subsonic cruise missiles simply do not have the kinetic energy to break through the armor of an Iowa. They will explode outside the armor, and though the explosion may dent the plate and cause spalling, it will not penetrate.

The reason for this is that the penetrator on a subsonic missile is designed for use against unarmored targets—and most ships today are unarmored. In this case, the missile can break through the plating, relying on sheer force of impact, and then explode inside the target. This is what happened to Stark, to Sheffield, and to the Atlantic Conveyor. In all three cases, the target had no armor, allowing the missile to penetrate and explode. Because modern ships lack armor, subsonic ASMs are a real threat to them. This is not the case with an armored warship, which require different methods to defeat. As I've mentioned, the 2000-pound guided bomb and the torpedo both work. (More on bombs later.)

Additionally, there's the matter of sheer mass. Stark and Sheffield both weighed in at about 4000 tons; Atlantic Conveyor weighed in at about 15000 tons, but she was built to merchant standards. A quarter-ton explosion inside the former two would be very deadly, as it was. Conveyor was set ablaze because she was carrying a cargo of Chinook helicopters and truckes in an unprotected cargo hold; the resulting gasoline and kerosene fires made her uninhabitable. Now, Iowa weighs in at 45000 tons. This is eleven times the mass of Stark and Sheffield, three times the mass of Conveyor. Her vitals spaces are buried very deep in her hull, and her internal subdivision is built to warship standards. Unlike today's warships, she was expected to take a severe battering in the line of battle and continue fighting. This fact alone, coupled with her armor plate, makes subsonic missiles a nuisance but not a real threat against her.

Now, I've mentioned that armor-piercing bombs present a threat to the battleship. On this point, kinetic energy is not enough, since an Exocet arguably hits with more kinetic energy than a one-ton bomb. We must look at the construction of the projectile, and into the dynamics of an impact.

Armor plate is designed specifically to either deflect or to break up a projectile when it hits. If the shell yaws sideways upon impact, it will not penetrate, unless the mismatch is especially great (battleship shell versus cruiser armor, for example). If it fails to stay intact upon impact, it will predetonate or shatter; in either case, the armor wins. The projectile must stay intact and pointing forward to break through the armor plate.

The exact details are extremely technical. Fortunately, there's an entire technical board of articles examining just what happens when a shell hits armor. I do advise you to read through them. Back to our subject, an AP shell generally consists◊ of a ballistic cap, a penetrative cap, a hard-steel body, and explosive content. The first we can disregard; it is crushed upon impact. The second, the cap, is examined in detail in this short article. Basically:

So: the cap is there to protect the body of the shell by absorbing the shock of impact. Otherwise, the body of the shell takes the impact energy and breaks up before it can penetrate, possibly setting off the explosive. This is why I was willing to wager that 4000-pound and 8000-pound Blockbusters are ineffective against battleships: their casings consist entirely of thin metal. They were intended to explode on impact with roofing tiles, let alone armored plate. Even if the fuse fails, the impact would break the bomb apart, if it doesn't bounce off entirely. If you need a reminder for just how resistant battleships are to above-water overpressure, recheck the results of Crossroads Able. (By the way, common sense and Crossroads Baker suggests that if said Blockbusters exploded in the water beside the battleship instead of on it, it would do a world of hurt. Underwater explosions have their own dynamics.)

Without the cap, the hard-steel body would shatter. So now we've hit; the cap has done what it's supposed to, protecting the shell and penetrating a little on its down. Now the hard-shell body actually breaks through the armor plate using the kinetic energy acquired when it was fired out of the gun. Note: hard shell. Smashing through armor plate is no business for softer, lighter metals. Only after the shell has torn through the armor will it explode, if all goes right.

So, that should tell you the difference between a purpose-built armor-piercing shell or bomb, and an antishipping missile. Without the hard-shell casing, without sufficient metal at the point of impact to absorb the force of the hit, the projectile cannot go through armor plate without breaking apart. Armor-piercing and bunker-buster bombs are built very similarly to AP shells; hence they can threaten battleships.

On the other hand, anti-ship missiles lack that hard-steel body. For their intended role against soft targets, they do not need it; against a frigate or destroyer the weight that would be invested into a steel casing would be better invested as more explosive filler. They are not intended for use against armored anachronisms, and their construction shows. This◊ is a Tomahawk; this◊ is a Harpoon. Compare their impact section to the diagram of the shell. They cannot pierce armor effectively even if they were somehow made to fly at supersonic speeds.

Now, it's true that deck armor tends to be thinner than belt armor. But, deck armor usually consists of multiple layers, spaced-armor style. The logic in WWII was that a bomb impacting the upper layer would have its fuse set off that much earlier, resulting in an explosion in the upper hull instead of deep within the ship. Also, the weather deck on an Iowa alone is 1.5in thick. This is the deck above the main armored deck. To threaten a ship the projectile must hit the weather deck, not be set off, continue travelling, break through the much thicker armored deck, and then explode. It's a tall order for a thousand-bomb AP bomb, but doable; it's all in a day's work for a 2000-pound bunker buster, let alone the 4700-pound monsters the US likes to use. It's also flatly impossible for a subsonic missile.

It's the same reason that a high-explosive Mark 84 bomb cannot threaten a deep bunker, while a BLU-109 can. The construction is different. General-purpose aerial bombs tend to have hard bodies for the impact, bunker-busters even more so; anti-ship missiles tend to dispense with this feature. They are soft-bodied, which is enough against unarmored ships.

If you want a 3000-pound subsonic cruise missile that can threaten a battleship, look up the AGM-130. It's basically a BLU-109 bunker buster strapped to a rocket and a guidance section; hence, it can actually break through heavy steel plate. As long as the impact is close to vertical instead of horizontal (hitting the deck instead of the belt), it will perform like any other bunker-buster bomb and lance through the ship's armor. Note that it's not even a purpose-designed anti-ship missile; it's a standoff anti-bunker weapon that happens to excel in the role.

On an odd note, what would the likely result have been if Turkey had got involved in World War II, on the allies side? Could they have prevented Greece from falling, or would they just have got rolled over?

Tell me someone else laughed after seeing those words stand alone.

^^ Rolled. The Turkish military was in very sorry shape compared to the Wehrmacht. They were expecting repeats of campaigns like Gallipoli not armored blitzkriegs.

Totally intended nothing by that. Nope.

To be fair, we're talking about hard objects penetrating into objects commonly referred to as "her". This was inevitable.

Dirty-minded bastards.

edited 7th Jan '12 4:34:53 PM by SabresEdge

...Projection much?

@Game Chainsaw,

I don't know for sure, but maybe if the Allies still win then Turkey would be worse off (as would be Greece) after the war, with the opening moves of the Cold War, the Truman Doctrine, etc...

The Greeks might have been able to hold onto Constantinople (Not Istanbul), and the Turks might not have been able to invade Cyprus. Overall, not much would change and they would still hate each other. Greece might be better off economically due to having another major city though.

The greeks couldn't be much worse off after world war 2. They had been completely occupied. Weakening the turks would only help them.

edited 7th Jan '12 5:03:38 PM by Joesolo

I was more thinking about military impact immediately (as in, would the Turks be able to make any significant dent in the Axis war machine or strategically blunt them in any way.)

I'd imagine at the very worst, the Turks would be able to contest the Dardanelles, particularly with British naval support.

edited 7th Jan '12 5:16:41 PM by GameChainsaw

They'd cause no end of trouble, but eventually Germany would deploy a serious force(And hitler would want to kill Mussolini again for even getting involved) And they would be screwed. To a point anyway, the germana likely would have had trouble getting into Turkey proper, as they were lacking in the amphibious assault department. The italians might have been able to help there with their fleet and limited amphibious capacity. Turkey wouldn't be able to do much outside provide a base for allied planes.

In recent news, guess who just saved the lives of a bunch of Iranian sailors just days after Tehran's blustering?

I expect and demand that the news be presented to the Iranians with the biggest, shit-eating-est grin available.

Seconded.

Iran's gov-"Oh, evil carrier evill carrier, keep it away or we kill you!"

New Lady "Today, the U.S. carrier force sent to the gulf rescued several Iranian sailors from pirates. After freeing them, they were given extra fuel and food and sent on their way"

Iran's Gov-*Head explodes*

I support that motion.