New Battleships
- Thread starter Ronsant
- Start date
What’s the range on those drones? Where are the ships operating? How do the drones know where to swarm?
War at sea just isn’t that simple - and the lessons of two nations, who share a border, engaged in a land war, are not completely applicable to the capabilities, or limitations, of this ship.
“Hypersonic”, by definition, means greater than Mach 5. We have had hypersonic weapons for about 70 years, we just didn’t call them that. The speed of an ICBM, for example, is about Mach 25. Way beyond “hypersonic”.
Hypersonic is the scary buzzword - but current adversary weapons are simply evolutionary - and the use of buzzword “Hypersonic” in the criticism of this, or any other, ship is meaningless without context and understanding of the adversary weapon, or the defensive measures.
The speed of new adversary weapons complicates detection and targeting.
But new detection methods and new weapons in our ships remove much of the advantage. Further, a ship makes targeting more complicated because it is moving - targeting the ship itself isn’t a simple matter. Targeting military bases, airfields, or even troops, is simply compared with targeting a ship at seas.
Some of the missiles loaded in the VLS on US Navy Ships have been hypersonic for decades. Anti-satellite missiles, by definition, must be hypersonic. They don’t carry a warhead, no need, when the kinematics of the hypersonic collision obliterate the target.
You guys are worried about the arrow, because the new arrows are so fast - and that is a bit myopic. Why worry about the arrow - why don’t we develop a way to kill the archer first? Then the arrow becomes moot. We have hypersonic weapons of our own, and some of them are built into this ship.
The presence of directed energy weapons, and the power distribution architecture to support those weapons built into the ship design, is the development of a counter to all sorts of things, from swarming drones (no limit on rounds available with a electric laser) to hypersonic missiles (Yeah, Mach 5 is fast, but light is a lot faster).
Do you guys really think that you have some insight into Adversary weapons, Naval weaponry, technology and tactics that was missed by the thousands of people who work on this full time? Much of what they have developed and deployed is still heavily classified, but trust me, it’s already in the fleet.
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Think of all the black budget projects and secret DARPA tech we don't hear about. The President alluded to this and said we have weaponry that "nobody has any idea what it is" and is "far more powerful than people understand." Secret DARPA wildcard tech.
Those are good questions, and I am sure guarded secrets. Drones and hypersonic missiles are the next tech - and they seem to both have quite the range but I honestly don't know. They will only improve whatever the case. Of course its not 1940 and finding a ship in the sea is possible - with long range drones or satellites.
Again, this is far outside of my expertise so let me ask a question of yours. What are these new ships purpose - and who are we going to fighting and where? Seems the likely place would be somewhere like the South China sea, or the Black Sea, or the Persian Gulf. All close to land. So in those cases it would make your questions irrelevant - the drones would come from land, and they would know where the ships were because everyone could see them.
Or do you anticipate a ship to ship battle somewhere out in the South Pacific - and if so - with whom, and for what purpose?
Do you think a bankrupt nation should continue to fund the doctrine that bankrupted us, while enriching china and some CEO's while at the same time hollowing out American Manufacturing and the middle class. We can't build any of this without China's rare earth production. We are completely dependent.
Our founders designed a system that said such expenses need to be funded by a civilian congress, elected by a civilian electorate. Eisenhower warned us. His generation didn't listen. Younger ones are.
You ask a good question - what conflict is this being built for?
You could ask it this way - who do we wish to impress?
If you have an adversary that you wish to counter, you should look at their current, and future, capabilities, and build to that threat.
Some conflicts could take place in confined waters - that is true, but the ones that you named all have NATO allies and bases nearby - so, and I mean this sincerely, let the USAF fight that fight with us. Again, kill the archer, and you don’t have to worry about the arrows.
A smaller water space like the Black Sea makes targeting easier, but we haven’t violated the Montreaux convention in the 90 years it has been in existence, and this ship would be too big to enter the Black Sea, unless we wanted to crate all sorts of problems. The Russian fleet, to be blunt, is a joke - operates as individual units, with smaller, far less capable ships, than our current Aegis Destroyers, so, I would not take many lessons from the Russian-Ukraine asymmetric warfare and apply them to the US Navy. It’s like saying that my drunken, stumbling Uncle was beaten up by a 100 lb boy, so, an NFL lineman will be defeated by a 100lb teenage boy.
Not an extrapolation that we should make, either way.
But the real strength of the Navy is to be able to go forward where there are no bases, no allies, and the USAF, not to mention, US Army, cannot engage the adversary. Those places tend to be open waters, and in open waters, ships can be difficult to target.
It’s really important to understand that in a serious conflict, the ship won’t be operating alone, it would be part of a group, and that group is data-linked together, sharing detection and targeting information and coordinating responses. So, not only harder to find, but part of a team that shares a common operational picture. That picture is built by the sensors of the ships, of aircraft in the ‘net’, and from other sensors and data sources that feed our military. Our lineman in the analogy above is on the filed with an entire team that has trained together, played together, and knows each other’s thoughts.
Not a simple, easy, fight for the adversary.
You could ask it this way - who do we wish to impress?
If you have an adversary that you wish to counter, you should look at their current, and future, capabilities, and build to that threat.
Some conflicts could take place in confined waters - that is true, but the ones that you named all have NATO allies and bases nearby - so, and I mean this sincerely, let the USAF fight that fight with us. Again, kill the archer, and you don’t have to worry about the arrows.
A smaller water space like the Black Sea makes targeting easier, but we haven’t violated the Montreaux convention in the 90 years it has been in existence, and this ship would be too big to enter the Black Sea, unless we wanted to crate all sorts of problems. The Russian fleet, to be blunt, is a joke - operates as individual units, with smaller, far less capable ships, than our current Aegis Destroyers, so, I would not take many lessons from the Russian-Ukraine asymmetric warfare and apply them to the US Navy. It’s like saying that my drunken, stumbling Uncle was beaten up by a 100 lb boy, so, an NFL lineman will be defeated by a 100lb teenage boy.
Not an extrapolation that we should make, either way.
But the real strength of the Navy is to be able to go forward where there are no bases, no allies, and the USAF, not to mention, US Army, cannot engage the adversary. Those places tend to be open waters, and in open waters, ships can be difficult to target.
It’s really important to understand that in a serious conflict, the ship won’t be operating alone, it would be part of a group, and that group is data-linked together, sharing detection and targeting information and coordinating responses. So, not only harder to find, but part of a team that shares a common operational picture. That picture is built by the sensors of the ships, of aircraft in the ‘net’, and from other sensors and data sources that feed our military. Our lineman in the analogy above is on the filed with an entire team that has trained together, played together, and knows each other’s thoughts.
Not a simple, easy, fight for the adversary.
"Battleship" it's a name they chose for this ship should it come to be. Just like Ford called their EV sedan a Mustang. Another poor choice of a name and ZERO similarities. I'm reading through this thread scratching my head wondering if people actually think these ships are going to be recreations from the blue prints of the USS Iowa or another Mighty MO. They're not, not even close!
What doctrine bankrupted us?
Certainly not the military. We spend about 3% of GDP on military spending. A lot lower than it has been in our past. You brought up Eisenhower.
When Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex, the DOD was 59% of the Federal budget. 59%.
Today, the DOD is roughly 11% of the Federal budget. If you’re looking for a scapegoat, perhaps look at the other 89% of the federal budget. In there, you might find the spending that has caused our deficits.
Rare earths are largely controlled by China, true - but in the past year, DOD* has secured the supply we need - they fixed it before the public really became aware of the problem. I knew about the problem of China locking up supplies over a decade ago - but it was politicians who didn’t want to address the issue, so, the problem festered, unaddressed outside of DOD. Again, civilian oversight is often short-sighted because of political objectives and concerns.
Much of what I worked on was classified. Still is. The public doesn’t know, and should not know, how we planned to counter certain threats around the world. We don’t want folks to find out, because then, all the money, and effort, we spent countering a capability, will have been wasted. We keep the good stuff quiet, as we should.
Again, do you think you know something that the DOD, or the USN, doesn’t already know, and hasn’t already been hard at work trying to address?
We are all watching the Russian-Ukraine conflict, but the specious, superficial analysis that results from uninformed observation is not accurate.
*https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/...estrictions-china.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
https://news.usni.org/2025/12/22/tr...l-be-largest-u-s-surface-combatant-since-wwii
Let’s take this discussion away from the name, and the political backdrop.
The US Navy has a pressing need for a large surface combatant as the Ticonderoga class cruisers age out. They have been saying it for a long time and Congress has not listened.
I don’t care what it is called, call it the grapefruit, I don’t care - the point is to deliver a new ship, with a large missile capacity, guns, a great radar and a systems architecture that supports new weapons, needed for future conflicts.
This ship fits that bill.
The US Navy has a pressing need for a large surface combatant as the Ticonderoga class cruisers age out. They have been saying it for a long time and Congress has not listened.
I don’t care what it is called, call it the grapefruit, I don’t care - the point is to deliver a new ship, with a large missile capacity, guns, a great radar and a systems architecture that supports new weapons, needed for future conflicts.
This ship fits that bill.
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US enforcing freedom of the seas is a cornerstone of globalism which is well documented to have bankrupt America by far more experts than I can count. Which is why I asked the purpose of this ship. No one wants any more of that. Definately not the militaries fault - they do what there told.
However somoene brought up the drug boats. Anyone that thinks that is about drugs isn't paying attention. Its a example that freedom of navigation is something we can end anywhere at any time. So if this boat is about disruption / piracy type activities, then we should start building it on the 26th. Not kidding.
Its all back to what is its purpose?
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
Awesome!
Maybe we too can try what someone , (our mostly asleep at the wheel gov @ the time) let China do to us?
All they actually did was to innocently float one of their so called weather balloons all over across the USA for near 7 days while we did absolutely nothing about it. This balloon just happened to float over every single USA military installation where we have all of our main nuclear weapons set up. Imagine that. The wind currents just happened to blow that balloon all over those certain areas.
WoW. I wonder exactly how far one of our disguised "so called weather balloons" would get over the mainland China before the nice and friendly People's Liberation Army would pulverize and blow it out of the sky without even asking a question about it? BLAMO!!! Whooosh.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
Pretty impressive is the drone damage inflicted inside the late great USSR that Ukraine has been making them deal with for quite a while now. They also put a real hurt on the Russian armored divisions that were sent inside Ukraine in the beginning days of the war with all sorts of drones. Any they could lay their hands on from all over the world.
New SSBN is coming. It'll have quite a few warheads on each one. Not to mention the Ohio's still swimming around, including the ones with swarms of Tomahawks.
Funny, everyone thought the tank was extinct because they got beat up at the start of the Ukraine war. Now Ukraine, and Russia, for that matter, can't get enough of them. Why? They've adapted. Combat makes you learn new tricks real fast, including new tricks for old weapons.
