U.S.S. Bullshit

We are NOT building a new battleship.

The endless fawning and virtual fellatio with Trump I can’t even.

But we are NOT building a new battleship.

Because we lost the ability to do this four generations ago.

The U.S.S. Defiant, assuming it’s not promptly cancelled by the next administration, will be a poorly conceived 21st century heavy cruiser. Let’s explore this abomination.

Attention Conservation Notice:

Old Man Yells At Cloud takes a break to yell about Navy doctrine and acquisition.

Existing Ships:

If you noticed Constellation Cancellation you know that I pay attention to Navy acquisitions. In this instance, taxpayers thought we were getting a very heavy frigate by building the existing European FREMM design. Instead we got two feeding troughs that will never be finished.

The U.S. has three dysfunctional surface combatant classes - the cancelled Constellation frigate, three of the poorly conceived Zumwalt stealth strike destroyers, and three dozen Freedom/Independence littoral combat ships, when we should have stopped at a pair of each of these smallest of mistakes. We will not spend any more time on these types here.

The two classes we have that work are the Ticonderoga cruisers, with just seven of the twenty two VLS equipped ships still in operation. They didn’t have a great start, stress cracks in the superstructure, but once that was fixed they gave decades of solid service. Here’s CG-56 U.S.S. San Jacinto, which was decommissioned two years ago when she turned forty.

The other class are the Arleigh Burkes. Every single one of the seventy four commissioned ships are still in service. This one is curious - DDG-91 U.S.S. Pinckney is twenty four years old, but she’s got a brand new “muffin top” electronic warfare system. The original ships were just 8300 tons, this one displaces 9600.

Defiant Speculation:

The U.S. has been trying to build a cruiser to replace the aging Ticonderogas, but we keep building Arleigh Burkes, because they just heckin’ work. We haven’t had a successful surface combatant acquisition this century and Navy leadership are right to fear that every new hull type will become a feeding trough.

What’s the difference? The cruisers and destroyers and the same size, but the cruisers pack two 5” guns instead of one, 122 VLS cells instead of just 96, and they have an internal layout for air war coordination and flagship duties. How did they do this when they’re the same size? Dunno, I’m just a nosy civilian, but those are the differences as I know them.

The Defiants, as discussed, seems to be a 30,000 to 40,000 ton displacement surface combatants that will be the flagships of the puke inducing Golden Fleet. This is not a well founded acquisition in response to a carefully considered doctrine change, it’s another Trump ego project.

Based on what little I’ve seen, I think this is what we’re looking at:

• Two groups of 64 VLS cells of the larger strike depth forward and one group of 64 tactical depth at the stern.

• More than one of the venerable 5” guns we’ve been using for nearly a century.

• Various power hungry weapons such as lasers and rail guns.

The best VLS are more VLS, this ship gets a passing grade for doubling the tube count of the Arleigh Burkes. The 5” was supposed to be replaced by the 155mm (6.1”) of the Zumwalts, but those six guns turned into tiny feeding troughs and they’re just for show - we do not make their specialized ammo. If they try this again, which would be a sensible solution in the 21st century, the Navy will DEMAND that they start by firing the vast collection of existing 155mm ammo the Army/Marines use.

The lasers are actually a good move, they’re well tested in the field, and every Arleigh Burke ought to have a pair of them, perhaps replacing the seldom used 25mm surface warfare chain guns at their waist positions. The railgun is just a theory at this point, and it might prove to be a good one, but no current ship has the spare electrical capacity to really do this.

The artist’s concept doesn’t show, but a large surface combatant like that will need a fierce anti-swarm envelope around it. Using current equipment I would imagine that would certainly include four to six of the larger 21 cell Rolling Frame point defense turrets. The 57mm Mk. 110 is a very capable gun that we first saw on the LCS classes, and a pair of these would offer a low cost way of dealing with slow moving drones, leaving the Rolling Frames to handle the fast stuff.

Reality Check:

As I’ve said, I’m just a nosy civilian, not a drunk juicer with bad tattoos, so nobody listens to me, but if they did, the first ship of this class ought to be … a converted America class LHA.

That’s not an aircraft carrier, it’s a (L)anding (H)elicopter (A)ssault ship. There are no catapults or arresting wires, this type of ship only supports vertical lift aircraft like the useful helicopters/tiltrotors, and the godawful Fat Amy - as fighter pilots call the F-35B.

This modification harkens back to World War II, when due first to treaties, then later to the realities of air war, half built cruisers got converted into carriers. People are already speculating on what to do with this type.

If you delete the air wing, that hangar space offers all sorts of room for VLS cells. Keep a little room and the elevator, and this ship could do similar air work to the San Antonio class LPD. And perhaps reload VLS tubes while underway, which would be a major capability.

If you seal up the well deck, that’s room for an additional pair of General Electric LM 2500+ gas turbines, meeting the power requirements for the new wunderwaffe.

There’s plenty of deck space forward to penetrate for a couple 5” or 155mm guns with deep magazines, room to sprinkle the 57mm around, and even some additional small tactical or self defense VLS cells. This could be done at the edge of the deck, the way it’s done on the Zumwalt class.

Conclusion:

This is just my untrained casual historian’s eye view of things. If we really needed a great big strike ship, one that could also protect a carrier, and we needed it quickly, this is how it would have been done by the practical men of the mid-20th century.

I do not think we need this. There are already strike ship concepts but they’re very simple, extraordinarily high VLS volume things meant to replace the four aging Ohio class SSGN cruise missile submarines with their 154 VLS cells.

The cost of a single 30,000 to 40,000 ton white elephant would cover at least three or four of the competent, well understood Arleigh Burke class, or six to eight of the FREMM frigates, were they to be bought finished from European shipyards, avoiding the Pentagon’s seemingly inescapable feeding trough ritual.

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Another conservative, executable plan would be stretching the existing Arleigh Burke design by the length of an LM2500+ gas turbine, upgrading them from four units to six, in order to cover the power hungry new weapons, as well as restoring the buoyancy reserve that’s been eaten into by the additional 1300 tons added topside since they were first designed. The additional 30’ to 40’ of deck space would provide room for a pair of 57mm turrets, or more likely addition 8’x11’ eight cell VLS units.

A pair of such ships, a 12,500 ton displacement evolution of a trusted platform, would immediately fit where the retiring Ticonderogas are now. We already know the 350kw lasers work, so in the event one of the wunderwaffe proves to be untenable, we won’t end up with crippled oddities like the Zumwalts. There’s no doctrine change here, just a more capable carrier/expeditionary strike group defender.

But ego projects, by definition, require one to discard common sense and experience.