Late one night last week, Bill was wondering — just in an offhand way — whether it would be cheaper to refurbish the four Iowa-class battleships (all are museum ships today) or simply build new ones. THE NEXT DAY, President Trump announced the first of the eponymously named BBGs: Guided Missile Battleships. After 80 years, the game not only changed… it looks like it actually changed BACK.
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Like idea of larger fleet of (nuclear) battleships, especially as number of carrier groups decreases, and when considering multiple operational theatres. I feel this is a ‘deal’ to (1) expand multi-theater force projection, and (2) sustain USA ship building infrastructure & jobs. My ‘issue’ is that anything aloat (carriers included) are horribly vulnerable due to their relatively snail-pace speeds. Inexpensive masses of drones can overwhelm air defenses. Underwater drones/mines that can lie & wait, then implode keel. Air/sea/land based sea skimming hypersonic (Mach 5+) weapons. Super-cavitation torpedoes (VA-111 >250 knots UNDERWATER). Undetectable guided “low-observable” munitions delivered from 60,000 feet. “Rods… Read more »
The Babylon Bee said the Trump Class battleships need four pegs to sink in the boardgames instead of three.
Steve: your audio was cutting out towards the end. I have noticed it on some other videos, so you need to check your setup or replace it as I do want to hear everything you say.
Yes, please!
Expect two more announcements soon. New bigger Navy shipyards to build the fleet. Second, frigate sized drone fleet oilers hauling fuel and aviation gas. Some of those may also be lightly armed with 32 of 64 VLS missiles serving as “semi-expendable” arsenal ships. They are never going to tell you which is the tanker and which is the arsenal ship. A carrier or battleship group will have two or three drone fuelers running back and fourth. These drone logistics ships may have some humanoid, non combat, robots onboard for maintenance and to repel boarders with fire hoses. We know the… Read more »
trump supports a child trafficker, putin and I have PROOF that trump flew on epsteins plane and putin IS selling children. trump has become a threat to that American way
If you really have proof of all this, submit it to the authorities. Otherwise, and I belive you dont, then you are just bloviating.
YYSSW, Komrade lil’ Kommie Donny. Whatever you say. After all, we’ve all seen how much you “know” to be factual, right? Here’s an idea — Go find a small to medium sized telescope. Look at the planet Jupiter. There are other planets but that’s by far the easiest one to find and it’s BIG so it’s easy to observe too. Notice that in any decent telescope you can see features moving across the face of Jupiter, appearing on one side, traversing the area you can see and disappearing on the other side. Only to eventually come around again and repeat… Read more »
Its diesel electric plus turbine so it can keep up with the carriers. Diesel for range and turbine for a burst of speed when needed. Someone’s been playing world of war ships. Carrier groups are limited in speed by the tankers hauling aviation gas for the carrier groups planes and choppers. The BBG’s main defense will be decoys, Australia makes those. Point defense is for port and choke point ambushes and that one missile that is not targeting a smoke cloud and a decoy on empty sea. The guns allow it to engage second tier ships and land targets. It’s… Read more »
America is acting like it has endless money and America WILL collapse like russia when it becomes bankrupt. His in moral decline like Roma and it collapsed
Remember when I said no one is ever going to consult you on naval strategy? Yeah, go ahead and add history to that list. Along with an inability to function in the English language.
Ukraine has PROVEN big ships are nothing but targets. Ukraine builds OVER 10,000 drones per DAY and NO amount of ammo will stop a top down drone swarm. FYI radar domes are made of fiberglass and ONE thermite dragonfire drone to blind the entire ship.
LOL, taken out a lot of big ships have you? Ukraine has proven that second rate broken down RUSSIAN warships and unarmed merchantmen are susceptible to drone attack. Duh. A warship of the United States Navy is a whole ‘nother critter. You might have noticed that the Houthis didn’t have much luck using drones on our ships. Or probably not, you don’t ‘notice’ anything that doesn’t promote your Burn America Down narrative. Your statement merely betrays your ignorance of how this stuff works. No surprise there, though as usual your abysmal ignorance is entertainingly astonishing. Just when I thought you’d… Read more »
The advantage of a nuclear propulsion system is a matter of electrical power generation. I can’t believe you guys missed, or didn’t care that this new ship is going to mount a rail gun. Which uses massive amounts of electrical power.
That rail gun is very nearly as important as the VLS capability. While a missile might cost a million dollars or more a rail gun slug costs almost nothing by comparison. Thousands can be carried aboard in stores because they take up almost no room. That rail gun is a really, really big deal for a surface warfare Battleship.
I was thinking the same thing. Rail guns are vastly underrated as weapons. If going very fast they are very destructive and nearly unstoppable. F=MV. Force equals mass times velocity. That is why a small bullet is so deadly. It’s moving so fact. You know musket balls were much bigger but did less damage. They were much, much slower and thus less deadly. Given cheaper ammo, I really wonder why they are given less emphasis. Only thing I can think of is the range is less than missiles and they are ballistic, not guided. But as missile defence and close… Read more »
Or maybe not so close in? I’ve seen information that the 32 mj railgun has an effective range of up to 100 miles. That technology is going to do nothing but improve, just like anything else. That railgun could chew up an enemy ship, aircraft or missile in short order. You’re right about F=MV as far as that goes. The rounds from a railgun are kinetic kill slugs. However, a musket ball is just as deadly as a 5.56 round from any of the standard NATO infantry small arms. It’s not velocity that kills, it’s energy dumped on target. A… Read more »
Harry – I hate to do it but I have to since it reinforces your point:
F = ma, or F = mV^2
The speed is much more important. Also why kinetic energy in the form of hypersonic weapons can be so deadly even without armament. Throw something like a Buick at the ground at Mach 15 and it makes a big hole and big shock wave.
That’s one of those “it works in theory but not in reality” things. The math is correct. The terminal ballistics are another matter entirely. I was addressing small arms projectiles being as Harry used that example but it applies to anything ballistic. It’s the effect on impact that counts, not the math. A large, relatively slow musket ball will, at its effective range of course, often do more damage to the target than a small, fast rifle bullet. The .45 ACP round is proven by real world, real data gathered by a guy named Evan Marshall, to be one of… Read more »
Geek alert: Force = Mass * accelleration, where acceleration = Velocity/second = ft/s/s … Momentum = Mass * Velocity. That said, the message is correct, in that for a given momentum the mass to velocity ratio can be traded for equal effect (more or less). ‘Ideally’, more mass, requires proportionally less velocity for equal momentum. More mass however (large musket balls) create more drag, which slows the ball faster, reducing velocity and range. So for ‘equal’ effect punch & range, more power (powder to accellerate mass) is needed. The issue becomes the force (F=M*a) required to accelerate the mass to… Read more »
Why the ads?
So … You don’t ever read all the other comments people post on that subject? Just curious. Because we’ve covered that in great detail in the past.
Just FYI, I didn’t see any ads at all.
What ads? I have not seen any ads–but I am signed in to my BW account.