Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea • Hacker News Board

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#21

Post by zeteo » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 3:10 PM UTC

crikli wrote: post #11

_djo_ wrote: post #7

This is not exactly convincing. Battleships, far from being a ridiculous idea, were a logical and necessary step for any navy wishing to project power at sea. They were so heavily armoured and gunned that for a long time, from the late 19th Century to just before WWII, the only realistic defence against a battleship was another battleship. While the Battle of Jutland may seem silly, the alternative would have been a…

"Manoeuvre warfare is fantastically effective when the circumstances allow for it, but the available conditions, technology and personnel can sometimes make it ineffective. For instance, the German Blitzkrieg was extraordinarily effective against the static French defences in 1940, but the same forces and tactics came unstuck in 1941 when faced with a vicious winter and the Russian scorched earth style of defence." N…

Encirclement was by no means discovered at Stalingrad! The Germans themselves created plenty of kessels in '39-'43. And the classical example is, of course, Hannibal's strategy at Cannae.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#22

Post by isleyaardvark » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 3:15 PM UTC

werpon wrote: post #8

Big warships could accomodate bigger cannons. Bigger cannons could deliver bigger shells further, enabling your warships to hit the enemy while keeping out of their range. These capital ships aren't being built today because missiles and fighter planes suddenly negated their advantage, not because they weren't a good idea to begin with. IMHO it's an overwhelming act of condescension pretending to be smarter than thou…

> IMHO it's an overwhelming act of condescension pretending to be smarter than thousands of admirals and military advisors, many of them with lots of real world experience fighting wars and stuff.

I thought the same thing, but then I remembered that the military leadership and tactics during The Great War were pretty damn lousy (e.g. trench warfare). For some reason it seems like it's surprisingly common for wide varieties of armies to repeat history.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#23

Post by latch » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 3:15 PM UTC

fraserharris wrote: post #4

masklinn wrote: post #2

In the same category, half a century later: aircraft carriers. Although I'm not sure this qualifies as "hacker", let alone "news".

Aircraft carriers are somewhere in between. The aircraft they carry are part of maneuver warfare.

except they are extremely expensive and hard to defend. They are great for projecting power against countries that can't defend against them, but extremely ineffective against a remotely comparable force. They are an obvious high priority.

Ever see Independence Day or, more recently, Battle LA? Didn't you find it stupid that once the command ship are destroyed, the enemy essentially dies? This is what aircraft carriers represent.

Take the $23 billion dollars it takes to build the first Gerald R. Ford Carrier and invest that into various decentralized, independent, small technologies, and your army is considerably better for it when it comes to any serious threat.

It's like our military planners never read Ender's Game.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#24

Post by zeteo » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 3:15 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #17

_djo_ wrote: post #7

This is not exactly convincing. Battleships, far from being a ridiculous idea, were a logical and necessary step for any navy wishing to project power at sea. They were so heavily armoured and gunned that for a long time, from the late 19th Century to just before WWII, the only realistic defence against a battleship was another battleship. While the Battle of Jutland may seem silly, the alternative would have been a…

> They were so heavily armoured and gunned that for a long time, from the late 19th Century to just before WWII, the only realistic defence against a battleship was another battleship. German U-Boats demonstrated battleship's obsolescence during very early WWI (U-9 sank 3 battleships in under an hour in September 1914...), and this was confirmed in the early 20s with aerial torpedoing (which Admiral Percy Scott had p…

Yes, submarines managed to sink a few battleships when they had the element of surprise on their side. As soon as anti-submarine tactics adapted, the battleships were again reasonable safe against torpedo delivery systems. (Even in the 1890s, battleships had been vulnerable to torpedo boats, a challenge surmounted by the adoption of secondary, quick-firing armament.) It was only with the arrival of strong naval aviation that battleships lost their supremacy.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#25

Post by stcredzero » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 3:22 PM UTC

_djo_ wrote: post #7

This is not exactly convincing. Battleships, far from being a ridiculous idea, were a logical and necessary step for any navy wishing to project power at sea. They were so heavily armoured and gunned that for a long time, from the late 19th Century to just before WWII, the only realistic defence against a battleship was another battleship. While the Battle of Jutland may seem silly, the alternative would have been a…

Battleships, far from being a ridiculous idea, were a logical and necessary step for any navy wishing to project power at sea. They were so heavily armoured and gunned that for a long time, from the late 19th Century to just before WWII, the only realistic defence against a battleship was another battleship.

Or, playing the "wolf card" amidst the fog of war and a resourcefully laid smokescreen with a bunch of smaller ships. (Causing the enemy commander to think, "They must have larger ships back there." This was destroyers vs. cruisers, not battleships, though.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar

I suspect that the future belongs to drones. Autonomous Air Independent Propulsion submersible drones would be far less expensive than an aircraft carrier, but very likely to be able to lie in wait for a carrier and torpedo it.

EDIT: Correction -- one could actually say those American destroyers engaged the Yamato, which was the biggest, baddest battleship ever.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#26

Post by brudgers » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 3:22 PM UTC

pragmatic wrote: post #3

The relevant part (to us hackers) is the use of maneuver warfare vs "phalanx" fighting. Think of Msft, Oracle, IBM, Apple as the phalanx fighters. They lock shields and charge, spending millions (billions) of dollars (instead of soldiers). The problem is their tactics are clumsy. Imagine all the Microsoft VP's circling the wagons around really bad _implementations_ (the ideas aren't bad) - I'm sure you can thing of s…

>"The relevant part (to us hackers) is the use of maneuver warfare vs "phalanx" fighting."

As the author points out, the battleship was the fastest thing afloat which makes it more akin to Stonewall Jackson's foot cavalry and the first principal of maneuver doctrine - "get there fastest with the mostest." It is only in hindsight and perhaps anachronistically that one classifies battleships as the phalanx rather than the mongol horde - or perhaps more appropriately Viking Longship. I will add that the scale and costs of aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines dwarf those of the battleship - there is some evidence that pouring money into holes in the water such as the Alpha and Typhoon classes played a significant role in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

[edit] All this to point out, that the distinction between maneuver and phalanx isn't always obvious and neither is the choice as a matter of tactics - when the enemy masses on your front, digging in and calling for aircover is may be the preferred alternative - even for highly mobile force.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#27

Post by johanbev » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 3:24 PM UTC

fraserharris wrote: post #4

masklinn wrote: post #2

In the same category, half a century later: aircraft carriers. Although I'm not sure this qualifies as "hacker", let alone "news".

Aircraft carriers are somewhere in between. The aircraft they carry are part of maneuver warfare.

However, they are extremely expensive to build and keep running, and (perhaps) even more vurnerable than battleships which atleast had armour. And modern silent submarines, for instance those of the Swedish, German, and Norwegian navies reportedly often "sink" modern US and UK carriers in war games.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#28

Post by lionhearted » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 3:24 PM UTC

Actually a pretty good article, despite the inaccuracies noted here in other comments. The author uses some hyperbole and makes some errors, but still an interesting discussion regarding phalanx vs. maneuver warfare.

While we're picking on individual parts, though -

> For missile silos, just target the enemy’s silos with lots of missiles and you can duke it out and win (just like the phalanx). If he puts his missiles on rail cars, you haven’t got a chance of hitting them all.

Technically that's true, but I think the reason countries use missile silos and stationary bases is actually for ability to protect key installations and arms during domestic unrest and rioting, which is a statistically much more likely problem for a world power than getting hit with a first strike from another major world power without any warning or preparation time.

Still, even with some errors and exaggerations, it was quite an interesting read.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#29

Post by jcnnghm » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 3:26 PM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #15

crikli wrote: post #10

I've observed a principle that militaries build to win the last total war they fought. This is why guys like Billy Mitchell ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell ) were ignored about the importance of air power leading up to WWII. The status quo was to gear up for another WWI, complete with entrenched and barely mobile front lines. But of course the German Blitzkreig, a brilliant archetype of maneuver warfare…

But it was the Siegfried Line[1] in WWII that let the Germans concentrate their whole army against the Poles and defeat them before turning west, and that let them attack where the French weren't rather than have to defend the current border. So German tactics in WWII were dependant on the same static defenses that the French used, but they took that and added a maneuver component instead of replacing it entirely. Ma…

I was thinking exactly this. As I recall modern tactics call for suppressing fire to pin the enemy down while friendlies maneuver. It would seem that static and maneuver warfare are intertwined. Additionally, I believe the rule of thumb is that it takes five times as many people to capture a position as it does to defend a position. Like many things, there is probably an element of balance here.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#30

Post by stcredzero » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 3:34 PM UTC

latch wrote: post #23

fraserharris wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aircraft carriers are somewhere in between. The aircraft they carry are part of maneuver warfare.

except they are extremely expensive and hard to defend. They are great for projecting power against countries that can't defend against them, but extremely ineffective against a remotely comparable force. They are an obvious high priority. Ever see Independence Day or, more recently, Battle LA? Didn't you find it stupid that once the command ship are destroyed, the enemy essentially dies? This is what aircraft carrie…

Take the $23 billion dollars it takes to build the first Gerald R. Ford Carrier and invest that into various decentralized, independent, small technologies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_ship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_212_submarine

A fleet of Sea Shadow type vessels and Air Independent Propulsion submarines combined with a good land-based air force would make life very difficult for carrier battle groups.