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[EnigmaticHat]

I'm just going to put this out there: naval bombardment  isn't that great.  I can't think of a single time in history its been used as a primary tool for fighting a land war.  Used on ports, I guess, but that's irrelevant in the modern age.  A crapton of mines, a few demolition charges, a few civilian ships sunk in strategic locations, suddenly your port isn't going to host enough supplies for a naval invasion.

More practically.  The Iowa was an expensive ship and the state of the art for its time and really for history, and yet its guns are still relatively short range.  Looking it up, 20 miles.  That's just *barely* not enough to hit the NK capital, which is quite close to the shore, and firing such inaccurate guns with no pretense of supporting a land force might be a war crime anyway.  Furthermore, even in its heyday, shore bombardment via the Iowa would not have been logistically ideal.  An Iowa is 1% ammo, 99% heavy shit we don't need.  We were the Saudi Arabia of the world back then, but now we're importing oil and we need to worry about this.  We have access to a land border which is presumably where a chunk of the NK military would set up anyway, why not use modern artillery?

[smjjames]

I'm not in a position to find the link, but I distinctly recall a news article where China straight-up said that they would not intervene in a war that NK starts.

I do believe that if NK leadership finds itself in a position of actually losing face or firing a missile, they will fire that missile.

They were warning that if NK does something to start a new war like firing the first shot which escalates things wildly, that China would not intervene. With an implied message to the US that if WE fire the first shot, they will intervene.

Only thing though, who fired the first shot may not be immediately clear.

That can be overcome with proper diplomacy with china right now, stating that should Un decide his nuclear dildo needs to fly, the US will flatten him with conventional only means (as a diplomatic courtesy to them, to avoid fallout landing in their back yard.), but should china launch nuclear devices, they will not get the same quarter.

If anything, a conventional-only retaliation (that is successful) would put a big sock in the mouth of small rogue states that feel that having a few (as in, just a handful) of nuclear devices makes them big boys. It reminds the world that the REAL big boys can flatten you WITHOUT nukes.

Proper diplomacy? Have you seen what Tillerson has been doing to the State Department?

EH:

Land war is VERY VERY BAD IDEA in NK territory.  The boarder is protected by MILES of minefield.

Instead, I remind you about the size of NK, and the absurd reach and firepower of US conventional artillery guns on warships. It is quite likely that a nuclear standoff with NK will involve such political posturing as deployment and arming of such convoys.

This forces NK to make a choice-- keep civilian centers in SK their targets, or target the US naval presence.  Should NK target the naval ships, civilian casualties will be greatly mitigated in the initial barrage, as the guns can only fire so fast, and it takes time to aim them. (this means a tactical missile barrage can remove the batteries before they can completely destroy SK assets)  If NK keeps on civilian targets, the US naval artillery can flatten their installations in a matter of minutes.

Not to mention NK is very mountainous, not too dissimilar to some areas of Afghanistan actually. Also, the DMZ wouldn't actually stop a land war from happening, it just keeps the land units from taking that route.

I'm just going to put this out there: naval bombardment  isn't that great.  I can't think of a single time in history its been used as a primary tool for fighting a land war.  Used on ports, I guess, but that's irrelevant in the modern age.  A crapton of mines, a few demolition charges, a few civilian ships sunk in strategic locations, suddenly your port isn't going to host enough supplies for a naval invasion.

More practically.  The Iowa was an expensive ship and the state of the art for its time and really for history, and yet its guns are still relatively short range.  Looking it up, 20 miles.  That's just *barely* not enough to hit the NK capital, which is quite close to the shore, and firing such inaccurate guns with no pretense of supporting a land force might be a war crime anyway.  Furthermore, even in its heyday, shore bombardment via the Iowa would not have been logistically ideal.  An Iowa is 1% ammo, 99% heavy shit we don't need.  We were the Saudi Arabia of the world back then, but now we're importing oil and we need to worry about this.  We have access to a land border which is presumably where a chunk of the NK military would set up anyway, why not use modern artillery?

The last time that I know of that land bombardment played a major role in a land invasion is the Normandy D-Day landings.

[sluissa]

Re: Battleships

Let's just say you can find a legitimate use for 9+ large guns in a modern battle. I won't even argue they're useless. That is a lot of firepower.

Battleships are from a different era, and even by WW2 they were completely outmatched by other modes of warfare. Despite their massive amount of armor designed to absorb or deflect artillery fired at them, that armor does nothing to protect against modern weapons, bombs, missiles, guided torpedoes. These are all things North Korea does have in SOME number.

Now, most of these have modern countermeasures, but they don't include armor. You can add these countermeasures to a battleship, at a cost, or surround them with ships that do have these countermeasure (and thus taking away their ability to be more agile in battle), but you still have a large, impressive, but ultimately fragile target sitting very close to an enemy coast in order to be effective.

It doesn't even matter if North Korea doesn't have these weapons in significant number (I'd say significant enough.) At MOST we'd have 4 battleships available. It only takes a small handful of weapons to sink one. North Korea more than has the ability to sink 4 ships, even ships as large and impressive and well armored as the Iowa class. The political and morale price of losing something as big as a battleship would be staggering. More than anything it's a symbol of power, and if that symbol gets sunk you're hurt much more than simply losing one ship. The risk of putting these ships in harm's way is much more than any benefit that you would gain from them. Modern destroyers and cruisers are more agile, provide more accurate and flexible firepower, in simple terms of protection have better defensive measures, and unfortunate as it is to admit, are more expendable simply because we have more of them.

Finally though, if you do need to deploy massive ordinance, we already have the carriers in the fleet. Two F/A-18s will deploy more ordinance weight than a single broadside from a battleship and can be deployed from at least 10x the distance away. A single carrier can field ~40 aircraft for a single "alpha strike". Or put out two every 30 seconds or so roughly the same fire rate as the battleship's guns. Re-fuel and re-arm time might slow it down a little if you have to start sending the same planes out again after landing, but quick google estimates suggest turnaround time could be as short as 10-15 minutes which wouldn't slow the pace much, if at all. (By the time you launched the last ready fighter, the first one landed could be less than 5 minutes from being ready to launch again. Although round trip travel time complicates things too depending on distance.) The point is however, you have very comparable capability to deliver ordinance and it's already available, in significant numbers, and it's much more flexible, being able to deliver more types of ordinance to more places.

[Madman198237]

Sluissa is somewhat correct, though his unflattering depiction of armor is universally wrong. Also, surrounding a battleship with countermeasures vessels does NOT take away their agility---it's not a very agile ship to start with.

So, US battleship armor: More than a foot of armor on the belt, a lightweight deck with a "splinter deck" beneath it, and lots and lots of antiaircraft guns.

Now, the belt armor will stop a LOT of missile damage. However, battleships can't take that fire without issues and they can't take hits like that indefinitely without suffering lots of damage, which is why the carrier is so much better at taking on aircraft.

The deck armor will stop non-armor-piercing-bombs perfectly well, and will prevent a lot of damage from AP munitions as well. Not that dive-bomber-launched armor-piercing bombs are a thing, anymore, now it's all fancy GPS-guided missiles/bombs/etc. The deck is going to be something of a weak point.


As for everyone's points about the uselessness of naval bombardment---that's CUTE. Alright? CUTE. Battleship guns are more accurate than you give them credit for---capable of sinking a moving target at 20 miles or MORE, firing only based on radar. When the target isn't moving, and the ship isn't moving? They're DEADLY at ground support, capable of staying on target for MONTHS compared to the hours or minutes of a regular plane. They can rain down shock-and-awe like nothing else in the world's arsenals, and they can do it much, MUCH faster than aircraft, which have to be sortied, flown to the target, and THEN they hit the target. A battleship lines up the guns and fires, and within three minutes any target within their range is getting hit with massive explosives falling from the sky. There is a REASON that the US reactivated the Iowas for Vietnam, Korea, and the Gulf War, and it's not because they were useless.

As for carriers, that's highly inaccurate. A carrier can be EASILY crippled with a single lucky hit. If the deck (Specifically the catapults) receives damage, the carrier's done for. With a battleship? You can take antiship missiles to the side, have an entire turret get knocked out by guided missiles, and keep on firing.

It's what they DO---it's much, MUCH harder to sink a battleship than it is to sink a carrier, provided you can reach both equally well. That's the carrier's strength, and the reason that a battleship is better at shore-support (Within 24-26 miles, anyway)----the carrier hangs out further away and can attack, but takes more time to attack. Yes, a carrier strike can hit a lot harder than a single battleship salvo. But in the hour and fifteen minutes to launch one attack and fly to the target, the battleship has gotten (85 minutes x 2 rounds per minute x 9 guns = 170 * 9 = 1530 shells) enough salvos off to fire every shell in its ammunition bunkers, and every shell in the bunkers of several comparable battleships.

Which is a LOT more destructive firepower than a single carrier sortie, even if we bow to reality and say that the ship has PROBABLY only fired off half the shells in its bunkers because the target is nothing more than a set of large craters in the landscape.

[Strife26]

.  .  .

[Dorsidwarf]

yeah, the advantage carriers have is that they don't need to be within counter-fire range to launch strikes.

On the flipside, its not possible to shoot down a barrage of 12-inch HE shells

[NullForceOmega]

So, I guess I owe you an apology madman, I really felt like you were directing some heat my way and I am sorry that I cut you off like that.

On the subject of battleships in a support fire role: The Iowa-class battleship mounts nine sixteen inch guns in three turrets, they can have sustained fire rates of more than a hundred shells an hour through each barrel.  Those shells are unguided solid or explosive munitions weighing 2700lbs moving at a velocity of 2500' per second (762m per second), they have been known to leave 40' craters at the point of impact.  While each individual round is less destructive than the total payload of an aircraft carrier launched bomber it will deliver many, many more of those munitions during the mission duration of a carrier sortie, as madman has already asserted.

Those cannon are also so precise that they can be used to target individual trucks on a bridge at their maximum range, so they can be used to destroy individual targets and further, those shells are basically impossible to intercept, unlike aircraft.  They also cost far less per unit than guided missiles, especially since we aren't even paying for new rounds, we have stupendous amounts of 16 shells sitting in storehouses all across the world in our naval bases, all we pay for is powder and loading of the magazine.

Battleships will probably never be kings of the ocean again, but ignoring their potential as military resources is foolish, and I for one would love to see a fully modernized design put into production, but due to all the idiotic treaties in sway, that will never happen.

[Lord Shonus]

There is not a single treaty that restricts battleship design or construction. Nobody is building them anymore because they are completely and utterly obsolete as a concept and a colossal waste of resources. Even tripling the range of the guns won't make them viable for naval combat, and their utility in land combat is sharply limited. There is an outside chance that the rise of laser weaponry will cripple air and missile combat to the point where the battleship rises again, but that's the only way any sane planner would ever consider building the things again.

[smjjames]

Really should offramp this derail to the armchair general general thread.

[Dunamisdeos]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/senate-gop-abandons-latest-effort-to-unwind-the-affordable-care-act/ar-AAstYYp

BACK ON TOPIC looks like this one died too.

“I personally think it’s time for the American people to see what the Democrats have done to them on health care,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah). “They’re going to find they can’t pay for it, they’re going to find that it doesn’t work. . . . Now that will make it tough on everybody. Maybe that’s what it take to wise people up.”

Your lives will be ruined, and then you'll be sorry.

[MrRoboto75]

can't wait for the 6th (7th?) attempt in october

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That'll be Mk. IX.

[nenjin]

I just can't wait to hear how they justify getting nothing done when they hold all the cards.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

RINO traitors and the cuck media conspiracy for the sake of the coastal elite, of course. Real America sabotaged from within again, saved only by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[smjjames]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/senate-gop-abandons-latest-effort-to-unwind-the-affordable-care-act/ar-AAstYYp

BACK ON TOPIC looks like this one died too.

“I personally think it’s time for the American people to see what the Democrats have done to them on health care,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah). “They’re going to find they can’t pay for it, they’re going to find that it doesn’t work. . . . Now that will make it tough on everybody. Maybe that’s what it take to wise people up.”

Your lives will be ruined, and then you'll be sorry.

I wonder who's REALLY responsible for the state of the healthcare system as it was before ACA was done?

That'll be Mk. IX.

Counting the 60 something attempts while Obama was President, it'd be more like MK. LXVIIII or thereabouts.