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Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

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Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#121

Post by Daniel_Newby »

derleth wrote: post #108
dmm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The south most certainly could have won the civil war. Why not?

Men, money, and manufacturing: The North had all of them, the South had none.

The South had enough of an industrial base to sustain a 1:1 kill ratio for years. Their mistake was to provoke a hot war instead of a cold war, causing most of their capacity to be diverted to fighting, instead of to industrial build-up and R&D. The time was ripe to replace slavery with automation, and instead they blew it all on a swinging dick attack on Fort Sumter.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#122

Post by crikli »

paganel wrote: post #107
crikli wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 and passage was one of the lessons the American military learned (sort of) from Stalingard that they later executed in the island hopping campaigns of the Pacific. I was just reading Machiavelli's "Discourses on Livy" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourses_on_Livy ) last night, more exactly a chapter called "Fortresses are generally more injurious than useful": > But when the prince has not a good a…

Thanks for the link...I'll be checking that out.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#124

Post by Tuna-Fish »

jrdrake wrote: post #69
lionhearted wrote: post #28

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…

I think missile silos are stationary is pretty easy to understand. They're easier to guard and if you look at when they were built rather than their current functional use (its debatable if there is one when looking at SLBM and B-52/B-2 dropped nuclear weapons). In the 1950s, when ICBM projects began, the threat was not thermonuclear weapons, but fission weapons. It was thought that the silos might survive a direct/i…

The silo parks in USA are still nuke-proof. Because they are far enough apart that you can't get more than one per hit, and it has to be a low or groundburst, but close enough together that the first hit causes a cloud of dust that the subsequent missiles would have to go through to hit their targets. And a nuclear warhead in re-entry has no chance of surviving hitting that dust cloud.

This means that the silos are protecting each other -- you'd need to wait hours between hits to be able to land nukes on all of them. (Or hit them all within the minute.)

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#125

Post by jsnell »

eftpotrm wrote: post #46
crikli wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Not just running out of fuel but general supply line issues. Blitzkrieg (around which the German forces had been designed) was predicated on the assumption that you could quickly overrun a territory before the defenders could react to it. Which works fine in Poland and, to a degree, France (though that was partly due to some interesting internal politics in France at the time) but where's the first defensible border…

> I don't believe there's been a single successful western land invasion of Russia since the Vikings.

Not considering the first World War as a successful invasion seems rather unfair. After all, Russia did get knocked out of the war and ceded huge tracts of land.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#126

Post by latch »

marcinw wrote: post #74
latch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Carriers of today hold 90 aircraft, 2 RAMs, 3 Phalanxs and 2 Sea Sparrow launchers (specs from Wikipedia page on George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier). I'm pretty sure with all this they can defend themselves pretty well.

China, Russia India and France have stockpile of supersonic cruise missiles. India is mass producing hypersonic cruise missiles, while Russia and the US are prototyping.

In comparison, most of the cruise missiles we hear about (Tomahawk for example) are subsonic (though the US does have a few old supersonic ones).

The effectiveness of missile defense systems isn't 100%. It's hard to shoot something travelling at 3600mph. It takes a lot of power, a lot of accuracy, generates a ton of heat, and a requires dash (or two) of lady luck. The defensive system can be overwhelmed for a fraction of the price.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#127

Post by latch »

philwelch wrote: post #99
latch wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the scale I'm talking about. You don't need a fleet of $500 million USD submarines. 11 US aircraft carriers? 11 missiles. $100+Billion vs $15 Million. 30000 soldiers vs 0. During the cold war this is the strategy that Russia took - let the US build expensive ships, they build [relatively] cheap missiles. The Chinese are doing the same with the Dong Feng missiles.

One missile won't get through. You don't encounter a carrier by itself--it has a combat air patrol, one or two Aegis cruisers, and two or three Aegis destroyers. Each Aegis system can track 100 targets at a time and launch countermeasures. However, missiles do scale well. Even 1000 missiles will cost much less than the carrier and will almost certainly take it down.

A single supersonic or soon-to-exist (india is mass-producing) hypersonic missile might get through. But yes, even if 1 doesn't, 100 easily will.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#128

Post by Tuna-Fish »

eftpotrm wrote: post #66
DrCatbox wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard this kind of storytelling before, where the outcome of the WW2 is attributed to the failure of the German army on the eastern front and the discussion is focused on finding factors for that failure. However such a storytelling tends to discard or fade the importance of Russian endevaours, ingeniuity and sacrifice. Another kind of storytelling would focus in finding factors which made Russia the ultimate…

I'm not at all saying the Russian army didn't do a very good job in the end; rather, being willing and able both to retreat nearly 1,000 miles from your starting position while more than doubling the width of your front line - and still retaining essentially undiminished capacity to fight and supply the campaign - gives you an enormous advantage.

> being willing and able both to retreat nearly 1,000 miles from your starting position

The Russian army did not do this in WWII -- the Russian army that faced the Germans at the border was entirely annihilated. Those who didn't die at the front mostly died in German POV camps. The Russians won the war because they had the manpower and industrial capacity to raise entire new armies to fight the Germans at a rate faster than the Germans could destroy them.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#129

Post by Tuna-Fish »

paganel wrote: post #107
crikli wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 and passage was one of the lessons the American military learned (sort of) from Stalingard that they later executed in the island hopping campaigns of the Pacific. I was just reading Machiavelli's "Discourses on Livy" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourses_on_Livy ) last night, more exactly a chapter called "Fortresses are generally more injurious than useful": > But when the prince has not a good a…

> You can very well replace "fortress" with "battleship" and the idea is the same.

No, you can't, because the battleship can move and attack your supply lines.

Battleships won the first world war. Not because of any engagement they participated in, but because the Royal Navy stopped German merchant shipping entirely, while the Kriegsmarine only managed to harass British shipping. You cannot go around a battleship when one of the primary points in it's design is to be fast enough to interdict anyone.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#130

Post by Tuna-Fish »

philwelch wrote: post #87
jxcole wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok come on, there was no need for them to go to war with Russia AT ALL, if Hitler had focused on Britain and waited until the West was completely defeated (a few years at the most), he would not have lost. Russia divided the Germans in a way that was unnecessary.

Britain had the naval and air power to hold off Germany. Russia had sprawling territory and the winter; Britain had the English Channel. Germany would have been better served to win the North Africa campaign; that might have actually left Germany with a defensible position. On the other hand, the entire purpose of the Nazi regime was to conquer eastern Europe, enslave or exterminate its population, and resettle Germa…

> Britain had the naval and air power to hold off Germany. Russia had sprawling territory and the winter; Britain had the English Channel. Germany would have been better served to win the North Africa campaign; that might have actually left Germany with a defensible position.

I firmly believe that the only possible route to German victory would have been capture of Gibraltar soon after the French campaign. German industries sorely needed raw materials, and it's war machine sorely needed oil. The Mediterranean could have provided both, and all the Germans needed to completely secure it would have been the Rock and Suez.

Was the capture of Gibraltar in any way realistic? With Franco joining on the German side, perhaps. The Germans had siege cannons that should have been able to reduce the foundations that Gibraltar stands on into rubble. But Franco had already won his war -- he had little to gain from joining, and a lot to lose.

Without an axis Spain, taking the Rock would essentially have required first attacking Spain. And they had a large, experienced and well-trained army, which would have had good defensive positions on the Pyrenees. I don't know.

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