Most powerful weapons laser tests successful

[Jay GW]

The Boeing Company fired its new thin-disk laser system repeatedly in recent tests, achieving the highest known simultaneous power, beam quality and run time for any solid-state laser to date.

In each laser firing at Boeing's facility in West Hills, Calif., the high-energy laser achieved power levels of over 25 kilowatts for multi-second durations, with a measured beam quality suitable for a tactical weapon system.

"Solid-state lasers will revolutionize the battlefield by giving the warfighter an ultra-precision engagement capability that can dramatically reduce collateral damage," said Scott Fancher, vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems.

http://gizmodo.com/5013018/boeing-successfully-fires-25-kw-solid+state-lasers-laser-weapons-one-step-closer-to-being-a-reality

[Yggdrasill]

I wonder why there aren't more ship-based laser anti-missile systems. It would be ideal for it.

That should be where we see the first operative worth-while system.

[militant agnostic]

I wonder why there aren't more ship-based laser anti-missile systems. It would be ideal for it.

That should be where we see the first operative worth-while system.

These would be very effective against the various new anti ship missles and flying terrorist gadgets the Chinese have been building and designing.

Last I heard even the community of analysts that are normaly prone to play down the possibility of war with other major powers and the threat of undemocratic mega countries have been worried about the latest grumblings from China.

Appearently a growing contingent of PLA leaders have been pushing the idea that for the current (horrible) governmental system to stay in power in the twenty first century they cannot lean on internet controls and domestic spying alone. They feel that democracy and human rights must be defeated abroad to get rid of the temptation of better living standards and rights and the outrage that the irresponsible poicies of Beijing in Africa and the support of totalitarian governments have generated domestically by people who know better. It's a plan right out of Orwell's 1984.

Appearently the plan was to wait for Chinese military power to match it's population density and then use the manipulative economic policies to undermine America's, India, Europe, and other free nations economies to losen their responsive power. Then when all is ready they would use mass missile attacks to simutaineously obliterate the militaries of the the of the rest of the world and force the formaly free world to be ruled by Beijing.

Without the ability to self advocate, the free world would lose it's ability to plan it's own domestic future and would be replaced by populations freindly to tyrancal Beijing. Massive and inexpensive surveilence would be used to stop any domestic resitance to Beijing rule and policies that favored the natives of free societies to contue living as they were used to.

All of this, however would be thwarted if effective interceptor technology was implimented by the navy and armies of the nations in question. Even if Beijing was to use these technologies themselfs it would still make it far harder and more risky to follow such a strategy. But Beyond that, the geographic nature of China would make it a losing battle against India, Japan, America, and Europe. Surounded on all sides. They would instead be willing to face domestic dissatisfaction and work with other economies like in the past than risk all else. It would also give us the upper hand in fights over rouge nations they supported because our units would be able to reach these countries faster than they would due to our allies geographic proximities.

This is a very worthwhile technology. I hope that if Obama gets the presidency he doesn't poo poo it because fear of alienating our enemies.

[Hyndis]

I'm sure such system would very quickly be mounted on naval vessels once its a reliable system. It fills a role identical to the Phalanx CIWS, except that a laser based system would be more accurate and probably able to intercept more targets than the current projectile based system.

It would be interesting if missile defense technologies became advanced enough to render ships immune to air to surface and surface to surface missiles. Stick enough laser defense systems on board a ship, and about the only thing that could harm it would be torpedoes or old fashioned shells from turrets. The return of the era of the battleship?

[Yggdrasill]

I'm sure such system would very quickly be mounted on naval vessels once its a reliable system. It fills a role identical to the Phalanx CIWS, except that a laser based system would be more accurate and probably able to intercept more targets than the current projectile based system.

It would be interesting if missile defense technologies became advanced enough to render ships immune to air to surface and surface to surface missiles. Stick enough laser defense systems on board a ship, and about the only thing that could harm it would be torpedoes or old fashioned shells from turrets. The return of the era of the battleship?Ships will never be immune to missiles, that is a fantasy, but they can become a whole lot harder to sink. There are really two things that can defeat a really good anti-missile defence:

- Stealth technology. If a missile is traveling in sea skim, is near-invisible on radar and uses a passive seeker, it is very hard to detect the missile before it has already struck the ship.

- Nuclear warheads. The russian anti-ship missiles don't have to even try to hit the ships, they just get the nuclear warhead within a few kilometers of the target and detonate the warhead.

[militant agnostic]

I'm sure such system would very quickly be mounted on naval vessels once its a reliable system. It fills a role identical to the Phalanx CIWS, except that a laser based system would be more accurate and probably able to intercept more targets than the current projectile based system.

It would be interesting if missile defense technologies became advanced enough to render ships immune to air to surface and surface to surface missiles. Stick enough laser defense systems on board a ship, and about the only thing that could harm it would be torpedoes or old fashioned shells from turrets. The return of the era of the battleship?

Oh my my my. I have actually been considering this for along time ever since I began studying military tactics and naval structure. I have always felt that if the missle and small calibre weapons became secondary systems due to avances in armour and intercepter tech we would need to go backto building fleets with cruisers, destroyers, dreadnaughts, frigates and subsinkers. A classic naval line up operating in tactical formations. With rail guns and lasers replacing shells and machine guns.

I was just tickled pink when I opened an article in a tech magzine that gave descriptions of how the US navy is considering structuring its fleet for such a world and found my predictions layed out in it with even the little loving details filled in like they were lifted right out of my dreams. It was like the wet dream of every geek who has played space battleship games like B5 wars or fantasy battleship board games.

Perhaps the biggest effect that this would generate is that it would end the era of the sudden strike and make wars a more attrition based and direct battle based scenario.

That might give world alot more stability. Not to mention it would hose small rouge states that would use the threat of missile attacks to either threaten countries with high risk infrastruture or populations, as well as function as launch sites against their larger neighbors with equipment given to them by more advanced powers. Cuba being a good example.

[militant agnostic]

I'm sure such system would very quickly be mounted on naval vessels once its a reliable system. It fills a role identical to the Phalanx CIWS, except that a laser based system would be more accurate and probably able to intercept more targets than the current projectile based system.

It would be interesting if missile defense technologies became advanced enough to render ships immune to air to surface and surface to surface missiles. Stick enough laser defense systems on board a ship, and about the only thing that could harm it would be torpedoes or old fashioned shells from turrets. The return of the era of the battleship?Ships will never be immune to missiles, that is a fantasy, but they can become a whole lot harder to sink. There are really two things that can defeat a really good anti-missile defence:

- Stealth technology. If a missile is traveling in sea skim, is near-invisible on radar and uses a passive seeker, it is very hard to detect the missile before it has already struck the ship.

- Nuclear warheads. The russian anti-ship missiles don't have to even try to hit the ships, they just get the nuclear warhead within a few kilometers of the target and detonate the warhead.

With the kind of armour advances that will be possible within a few decades the nukes would either have to be prohibitivly large or able to detonate fairly close. Especially if the targets are submarine cruiser hybrids, like with German u-boats.

Keep in mind that the ships would be able to use vessels and sattalites other than their own to track targets low on the horizon. Newer tracking tech will be based on inferred and silluete identification that utalizes very high level computer intelligence. All these things would be able to track even hypersonic objects.

keep in mind I am not suggesting that ships will ever be immune to missle attacks. I am simply implying that they will be secondary systems confined to a different role. They will be like the bombers that fleets in world war two sent at each other and never expected to wipe out the enemy in one blow. We sent waves of fighters at each others fleets as they moved around the pacific that were designed to destroy percents of the enemy armada and disrupt formations by targeting important units. No military power then could have possibly won a war with fighters alone. Fleet engagments were inevitable even when you had alot of fighters, and you would still lose if you failed to whither your enemies ships down enough that they could not defeat you in bambardments aginst other ships and land targets.

I predict that this is how it will be in the future with missles.

Not to mention that eventually these weapons will be mounted on sattalites that have no horizon to worry about. Missles and iron rods may be to heavy and costly to put on sattlites, but advanced and effecient lasers would be effective. Perhaps Grasers and particle beams to if we want to be really exotic.

[Yggdrasill]

Ships will never be immune to missiles, that is a fantasy, but they can become a whole lot harder to sink. There are really two things that can defeat a really good anti-missile defence:

- Stealth technology. If a missile is traveling in sea skim, is near-invisible on radar and uses a passive seeker, it is very hard to detect the missile before it has already struck the ship.

- Nuclear warheads. The russian anti-ship missiles don't have to even try to hit the ships, they just get the nuclear warhead within a few kilometers of the target and detonate the warhead.

With the kind of armour advances that will be possible within a few decades the nukes would either have to be prohibitivly large or able to detonate fairly close. Especially if the targets are submarine cruiser hybrids, like with German u-boats.

Keep in mind that the ships would be able to use vessels and sattalites other than their own to track targets low on the horizon. Newer tracking tech will be based on inferred and silluete identification that utalizes very high level computer intelligence. All these things would be able to track even hypersonic objects.Using satellites is quite unrealistic. You're talking about spotting a gray-blue object against a gray-blue background, where the background has structures that are bigger than the actual object (waves), and the object is moving very quickly in an area of thousands of square kilometers. If you were to use one satellite to monitor an area of 100 km x 100 km, and you wanted a resolution capable of seeing an object 10 cm x 10 cm, you'd need a resolution of 1,000,000 x 1,000,000, also known as 1 terrapixel. Not to get started on the lens!

If you were to cover all US ships in all different arenas, you would need a bunch of these satellites.

Using other ships is useless, if the target can't detect a missile, it is unlikely that other ships will detect it either.

One thing that helps is airplane-based radars above the group of ships, but when the missiles use stealth technology, they are simply not close enough to the missiles to detect them, not to mention that the airplane with it's massive radar beacon is a sitting duck that's shouting at the top of it's lungs "Here I am!". Any modern war machine will shoot it down in a matter of minutes.
keep in mind I am not suggesting that ships will ever be immune to missle attacks. I am simply implying that they will be secondary systems confined to a different role. They will be like the bombers that fleets in world war two sent at each other and never expected to wipe out the enemy in one blow. We sent waves of fighters at each others fleets as they moved around the pacific that were designed to destroy percents of the enemy armada and disrupt formations by targeting important units. No military power then could have possibly won a war with fighters alone. Fleet engagments were inevitable even when you had alot of fighters, and you would still lose if you failed to whither your enemies ships down enough that they could not defeat you in bambardments aginst other ships and land targets.

I predict that this is how it will be in the future with missles.I think you are wrong. And I'm an aerospace engineer.

We'll see more and more missiles, fewer and fewer large ships, more and more stealth technology.
Not to mention that eventually these weapons will be mounted on sattalites that have no horizon to worry about. Missles and iron rods may be to heavy and costly to put on sattlites, but advanced and effecient lasers would be effective. Perhaps Grasers and particle beams to if we want to be really exotic.We might see weapons in space, but they won't be able to replace missiles, they will only be used against especially hardened targets. Missiles are the cheaper and more effective solution for smaller moving targets like ships.

Also, satellite-busting missiles would be used. (And are already operative in several countries.)

[Yggdrasill]

Basically, this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skjold_class_patrol_boat) is the future.

[hasselhoff]

Yay! More multi-billion dollar instruments of death. Now we can spend even more money losing wars to guys with $35 rifles and fertilizer bombs! Let me go wet myself with joy.

[WCH]

Basically, this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skjold_class_patrol_boat) is the future.
Actually, this is the future:

[militant agnostic]

With the kind of armour advances that will be possible within a few decades the nukes would either have to be prohibitivly large or able to detonate fairly close. Especially if the targets are submarine cruiser hybrids, like with German u-boats.

Keep in mind that the ships would be able to use vessels and sattalites other than their own to track targets low on the horizon. Newer tracking tech will be based on inferred and silluete identification that utalizes very high level computer intelligence. All these things would be able to track even hypersonic objects.Using satellites is quite unrealistic. You're talking about spotting a gray-blue object against a gray-blue background, where the background has structures that are bigger than the actual object (waves), and the object is moving very quickly in an area of thousands of square kilometers. If you were to use one satellite to monitor an area of 100 km x 100 km, and you wanted a resolution capable of seeing an object 10 cm x 10 cm, you'd need a resolution of 1,000,000 x 1,000,000, also known as 1 terrapixel. Not to get started on the lens!

If you were to cover all US ships in all different arenas, you would need a bunch of these satellites.

Using other ships is useless, if the target can't detect a missile, it is unlikely that other ships will detect it either.

One thing that helps is airplane-based radars above the group of ships, but when the missiles use stealth technology, they are simply not close enough to the missiles to detect them, not to mention that the airplane with it's massive radar beacon is a sitting duck that's shouting at the top of it's lungs "Here I am!". Any modern war machine will shoot it down in a matter of minutes.
I think you are wrong. And I'm an aerospace engineer.

We'll see more and more missiles, fewer and fewer large ships, more and more stealth technology.
Not to mention that eventually these weapons will be mounted on sattalites that have no horizon to worry about. Missles and iron rods may be to heavy and costly to put on sattlites, but advanced and effecient lasers would be effective. Perhaps Grasers and particle beams to if we want to be really exotic.We might see weapons in space, but they won't be able to replace missiles, they will only be used against especially hardened targets. Missiles are the cheaper and more effective solution for smaller moving targets like ships.

Also, satellite-busting missiles would be used. (And are already operative in several countries.)

Using satellites wasn't my first choice. I was thinking more along the lines of dozens of unmanned UAVs with significantly more advanced optical tracking systems than are possible today. They may even be manufactured on ship. A dozen UAVs per ship and maybe ships that carry hundreds would saturate the battle field with them and create a web that would require allot of interceptors to shoot down. Satellites may eventually be usable though.

Again we have to consider armor. If a missile were only 10x10cm it may slip past inferred sensors but it wouldn't deal enough damage. Having seen how much it took to sink a relatively old ship in recent experiments with surface to surface missiles and plan bombardments I seems unlikely that ships with the kind of armors I am think of (as well as structural integrity) would be sunk by micro missiles very easily.

It would take more substantial missiles to do it reliably and those would be trackable.

Also, future ships that can sink under the water after only a few moments on top launching projectiles would mainly be in danger from UAV like missiles that can circle an area for a long time before tracking a target. Since these are unlikely to be hypersonic, interceptors would be enough to make sure that few would actually hit the ship

As for missiles coming in from space. Well, I agree that is going to be the immediate goal for satellite weapons, but I would imagine large missile coming in from space would be very trackable and interceptable. Difficult to sink ships that carry both missiles and ultra long range bombardment tech would be preferable.

Interceptors are still going to be important even for stealth attacks due to the need to shoot down all the small monitoring equipment a navy would launch for tracking support. So militaries will still need mobile and ship based interceptors that likely have power requirements that make ship based ones important.

Small stealth launchers and long range missile techs will be important, but we will also see that larger extremely heavily armored units with large uninterceptable weapons will be useful to.

[Hyndis]

I don't think armor will significantly improve. There's limits at which you simply cannot make metal any stronger, but the energy of weapons can be easily improved with no real limit. Armor, on the other hand, is extremely heavy which limits how much can be used on any particular vehicle.

Laser interception weapons are an interesting possibility though. I'm not sure how good they will be, but with the ability to kill fast, fragile targets (missiles) and a quick fire rate, several of these weapons could shoot down a great number of incoming missiles. I doubt they'd do anything at all to old fashioned naval artillery shells however, which are simply solid metal slugs propelled at great speed. Torpedoes would also not be effected by these laser systems.

It depends entirely on the reliability and effectiveness of these weapons though, but in theory, they should be able to shoot down nearly anything attacking the ship they're mounted on. Of course, actual battlefield performance is far from the theoretical performance, but it would definitely be interesting if the balance of power shifted back from missiles to guns, such as railguns.

[Kat_Somm_Faen]

And on a cloudy foggy morning somewhere in the ocean...

Say your boat or ship sails into some thick fog. What then?

I just want to say that having tech and fielding tech are quite different things. Lasers are a promising tech but I believe we are a decade or so from fielding it effectivelly.

[militant agnostic]

I don't think armor will significantly improve. There's limits at which you simply cannot make metal any stronger, but the energy of weapons can be easily improved with no real limit. Armor, on the other hand, is extremely heavy which limits how much can be used on any particular vehicle.

Laser interception weapons are an interesting possibility though. I'm not sure how good they will be, but with the ability to kill fast, fragile targets (missiles) and a quick fire rate, several of these weapons could shoot down a great number of incoming missiles. I doubt they'd do anything at all to old fashioned naval artillery shells however, which are simply solid metal slugs propelled at great speed. Torpedoes would also not be effected by these laser systems.

It depends entirely on the reliability and effectiveness of these weapons though, but in theory, they should be able to shoot down nearly anything attacking the ship they're mounted on. Of course, actual battlefield performance is far from the theoretical performance, but it would definitely be interesting if the balance of power shifted back from missiles to guns, such as railguns.

Even if armor cannot be significantly improved laser interceptor systems would still make things much more tricky for pure missile attacks and UAV type weapons, whereas rail gun type shells would be unstopable. The fast attack frigate with stealth, speed, missle capabilities and a perhaps only a single gun mount on it was anticipated long ago and even in an interceptor saturated enviroment it will still play a bigger role than than the numerous cruiser type ships we have today, but don't write off armored battle ships just yet.

Moreover, armor advancements in polycristaline and carbon based armor systems can indeed significantly improve passive defensive power. And remember that these units will likely have the ability to sink underwater to travel to combat areas. In this case they would need to worry about torpedos and possibly shells if they were close to the suface, but in that situation we would still observe that they are no longer suseptable to massive ultra long range missile strikes. Just to make things even more interesting the navy has apearently been working on underwater counter systems as well, though I doubt they would be as effective as lasers.

Keep in mind that if you are making a armored vessel you don't worry about speed at all. Just linear movement and enough turning speed to face the area you need most of your guns. Interceptors and small weapons can be articulated. You put as much armor as possible on an ignore speed all together and just make it as over armored and over gunned as possible. Leave quick manuvers and stealth to small stealthy vessels.

[Hyndis]

If it can be seen, it can be killed.

No amount of armor will defend anything from any serious attack. Even Cheyenne Mountain will turn into Cheyenne Lake should any nuclear war break out.

[Hickdive]

And on a cloudy foggy morning somewhere in the ocean...

Say your boat or ship sails into some thick fog. What then?


That's what I was thinking. Do these lasers have the capability of penetrating smoke or water vapour? What if an attacking missile had a highly reflective coating? How does a laser-based CIWS physically destroy the missile to prevent it simply becoming a dumb, high-speed lump of fuel and explosive hurtling towards the ship?

[Yggdrasill]

Basically, this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skjold_class_patrol_boat) is the future.
Actually, this is the future:What is?

Using satellites wasn't my first choice. I was thinking more along the lines of dozens of unmanned UAVs with significantly more advanced optical tracking systems than are possible today. They may even be manufactured on ship. A dozen UAVs per ship and maybe ships that carry hundreds would saturate the battle field with them and create a web that would require allot of interceptors to shoot down. Satellites may eventually be usable though.UAVs aren't much better than satellites, even if you use 10 megapixel cameras, you'd need about 100,000 UAVs to completely cover a 100 km x 100 km square in a 10 cm x 10 cm resolution.

Again we have to consider armor. If a missile were only 10x10cm it may slip past inferred sensors but it wouldn't deal enough damage. Having seen how much it took to sink a relatively old ship in recent experiments with surface to surface missiles and plan bombardments I seems unlikely that ships with the kind of armors I am think of (as well as structural integrity) would be sunk by micro missiles very easily.I don't mean that missiles should be 10 cm x 10 cm, but that's the sort of resolution you need to distinguish between a missile and dolphin leaping out of the water. If the resolution were decreased to maybe 1 m x 1 m, all you'd see on the image would be five-ish pixels that look somewhat different than the surrounding pixels (on average). It is theoretically impossible to determine that it would be a missile.

Now maybe you could be able to reduce the number of UAVs, by making the camera take maybe 1000 pictures per second, consisting of ten pictures of 100 grids, and then putting it all together into one big picture, but you'd still need about 1000 UAVs.
It would take more substantial missiles to do it reliably and those would be trackable.Wrong. It is pretty much impossible to track a missile that utilizes stealth technology, a passive seeker and cruises at maybe 20 feet above the surface of the water. If you knew where it was, you might be able to have a look at it with a camera based on a UAV or satellite, but you don't know where it is.
Also, future ships that can sink under the water after only a few moments on top launching projectiles would mainly be in danger from UAV like missiles that can circle an area for a long time before tracking a target. Since these are unlikely to be hypersonic, interceptors would be enough to make sure that few would actually hit the shipMaybe it is possible to have such ships, but my suspicion is that it would be too expensive to make sense, they would need all sorts of ballast tanks and stuff. And they could still be torpedoed, so it might be better to simply focus on making the ship harder to detect and defeat.

As for missiles coming in from space. Well, I agree that is going to be the immediate goal for satellite weapons, but I would imagine large missile coming in from space would be very trackable and interceptable. Difficult to sink ships that carry both missiles and ultra long range bombardment tech would be preferable.They're very hard to intercept. A satellite based weapon would be something like a ten ton rod of depleted uranium. A rocket engine sends it on it's way at maybe 10 km/second (Mach 30 at sea level), which gives it an energy of 500 gigajoules. Stopping it is like stopping a freight train.
Small stealth launchers and long range missile techs will be important, but we will also see that larger extremely heavily armored units with large uninterceptable weapons will be useful to.Missiles are basically uninterceptable if done right. And armor doesn't really make a bit of difference, modern missiles can go through a meter of steel without much difficulty. You can't clad a ship in two meters of steel; it would have to be either huge and expensive, or it would sink. And if it's huge and expensive, a modern military would make damn sure to have something like a grand slam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Slam_bomb) lying around, ready to be used. A modern version might be deliverable from a stealth aircraft, even. (Though the ship might simply be nuked instead, or blown away by a space based weapon.)

[Yggdrasill]

And on a cloudy foggy morning somewhere in the ocean...

Say your boat or ship sails into some thick fog. What then?


That's what I was thinking. Do these lasers have the capability of penetrating smoke or water vapour?Water vapour is simply evaporated out of the way. Effectively a laser simply cuts through it. You lose some effect from it, but you should still have an effective weapon up to a couple of kilometers. What if an attacking missile had a highly reflective coating?They can be made to reflect something like 98% of the energy, but this is really already taken into account in the laser. You would use a laser that is powerful enough to destroy the missile with those 2%. How does a laser-based CIWS physically destroy the missile to prevent it simply becoming a dumb, high-speed lump of fuel and explosive hurtling towards the ship?You want it to become a dumb, high-speed lump of fuel and explosive, but preferably so far away that it tumbles into the water, rather than hits the ship. (In any case, if the ignition electronics are disabled, the bomb is highly unlikely to go off. So even if it did hit the ship, it probably wouldn't be a disaster. This is to protect the people who would operate the missile.)

[Yeshi]

bullsheet. When Boing builds it, its clear where it will be mounted: not on ship, not on drone, not on satellite. On BOEING:

http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/photogallery_image/files/articles/19Airbornelaserturret.jpg

here, its mounted already.

[Yggdrasill]

The thing is, that system sucks.

[WCH]

Actually, this is the future:What is?The following... if I said it, it would cease to be the future. :p

[Yggdrasill]

What is?The following... if I said it, it would cease to be the future. :pAh, I get it. But what happens in the future in this thread isn't as interesting as what will happen in the future out in the world... :p

[WCH]

This thread is the world. You are the world. I am the world.

Unless you expect to personally pilot one of these devices, or to be attacked by one... they are not the world.

[Yggdrasill]

This thread is the world. You are the world. I am the world.This thread is a part of the world. You are a part of the world. I am a part of the world.

It is possible to discuss the future without talking about every part of the future.
Unless you expect to personally pilot one of these devices, or to be attacked by one... they are not the world.I work with the NSM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Strike_Missile), so the things discussed in this thread is quite relevant for my future, but everyone is tied in with the devices discussed. Everyone here is a member of a country with a military, coast guard or the like, and what equipment these forces will have 20 years from now directly affects how well you will be protected. In fact, the things discussed here may be a matter of life and death.

[militant agnostic]

If it can be seen, it can be killed.

No amount of armor will defend anything from any serious attack. Even Cheyenne Mountain will turn into Cheyenne Lake should any nuclear war break out.

Sure it can be killed. But at what cost? The point of these ships is that with out relying on nucular weapons it is dificult to sink them before they hit their targets repeatedly. Even then some will get buy. If you have to nuke every major weapon on an enemies side to be serious about defeating them it changes the playing field and considerations.

You will still have a hard time trying to do everything by remote missles to attack multiple nations if the heavly armored units are not completely wiped out. If some get by you have to deal with cannons and close range launching systems against your targets. Missles alone wouln't be enough. You need other units to destroy them and fight with them as they approach, Like nuclear submarines require.

[militant agnostic]

Actually, this is the future:What is?

UAVs aren't much better than satellites, even if you use 10 megapixel cameras, you'd need about 100,000 UAVs to completely cover a 100 km x 100 km square in a 10 cm x 10 cm resolution.

I don't mean that missiles should be 10 cm x 10 cm, but that's the sort of resolution you need to distinguish between a missile and dolphin leaping out of the water. If the resolution were decreased to maybe 1 m x 1 m, all you'd see on the image would be five-ish pixels that look somewhat different than the surrounding pixels (on average). It is theoretically impossible to determine that it would be a missile.

Higher resolution optical tracking is possible if material manufacturing and programing (along with other hyper advanced computing tech) are achieved at a reasonable cost.

Now maybe you could be able to reduce the number of UAVs, by making the camera take maybe 1000 pictures per second, consisting of ten pictures of 100 grids, and then putting it all together into one big picture, but you'd still need about 1000 UAVs.

We could probably get that down to hundreds in a few decades. Besides. A fleet only needs to reach it's target once relitivly intact to use its cannons, so the cost of using hundrends of UAVs per mission is not prohibitily high when they are easily fabricated.

Wrong. It is pretty much impossible to track a missile that utilizes stealth technology, a passive seeker and cruises at maybe 20 feet above the surface of the water. If you knew where it was, you might be able to have a look at it with a camera based on a UAV or satellite, but you don't know where it is.

I am not sure we are talking about the same thing. I am think of inferred tracking and silluette. You seem to be thinking about radar. If I am mistaken and it is possible to make a missle that gives off no heat trail and is invisable to opitcal tracking then I sure the whole idea of tracking falls apart. But are you talking about radar or optics?


Maybe it is possible to have such ships, but my suspicion is that it would be too expensive to make sense, they would need all sorts of ballast tanks and stuff. And they could still be torpedoed, so it might be better to simply focus on making the ship harder to detect and defeat.

For a while that will be true. But I am thinking a few decades after that.
Nucular submarines are expesive as hell, but they are an effective deterent in our era because if one survives an intital attack it can wipe out the enemy targets by blowing them away just as effectivly as land based missile strikes.

They're very hard to intercept. A satellite based weapon would be something like a ten ton rod of depleted uranium. A rocket engine sends it on it's way at maybe 10 km/second (Mach 30 at sea level), which gives it an energy of 500 gigajoules. Stopping it is like stopping a freight train.

But then we are back to cannons and not missles. Kind of the original point. Like you said the sattalites can be shot down. If mounting heavy matter weapons are justified on sattalites they are justified on ships.

Small stealth launchers and long range missile techs will be important, but we will also see that larger extremely heavily armored units with large uninterceptable weapons will be useful to.Missiles are basically uninterceptable if done right. And armor doesn't really make a bit of difference, modern missiles can go through a meter of steel without much difficulty. You can't clad a ship in two meters of steel; it would have to be either huge and expensive, or it would sink. And if it's huge and expensive, a modern military would make damn sure to have something like a grand slam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Slam_bomb) lying around, ready to be used. A modern version might be deliverable from a stealth aircraft, even. (Though the ship might simply be nuked instead, or blown away by a space based weapon.)

But a completely new carbon and crytaline based armor could have amazinly higher resistance. Keep in mind we are talking about a future more distant than a genration of tech or two.


I think virtualy all of what you say is true and will be for a while. But the day is coming when enormous stides in tracking and armor will make units like these a useful weapon to fight with just like nuclear submarines were useful in the cold war. And then we will need units able to fight them directlly rather than make sneak attacks with missles only. The same situation required actual submarines to fight other submarines in decades past.

[Yggdrasill]

What is?

UAVs aren't much better than satellites, even if you use 10 megapixel cameras, you'd need about 100,000 UAVs to completely cover a 100 km x 100 km square in a 10 cm x 10 cm resolution.

I don't mean that missiles should be 10 cm x 10 cm, but that's the sort of resolution you need to distinguish between a missile and dolphin leaping out of the water. If the resolution were decreased to maybe 1 m x 1 m, all you'd see on the image would be five-ish pixels that look somewhat different than the surrounding pixels (on average). It is theoretically impossible to determine that it would be a missile.

Higher resolution optical tracking is possible if material manufacturing and programing (along with other hyper advanced computing tech) are achieved at a reasonable cost.That goes without saying. Anything is possible if it becomes possible.

But really, this sort of tech is so far ahead into the future, that there's really no point in discussing it. By then we might all be a part of the world union, and most militaries have been disbanded.
Now maybe you could be able to reduce the number of UAVs, by making the camera take maybe 1000 pictures per second, consisting of ten pictures of 100 grids, and then putting it all together into one big picture, but you'd still need about 1000 UAVs.

We could probably get that down to hundreds in a few decades. Besides. A fleet only needs to reach it's target once relitivly intact to use its cannons, so the cost of using hundrends of UAVs per mission is not prohibitily high when they are easily fabricated.Regardless of how much work would be done on the imager, the lens would still have to be pretty awesome, it would have to be able to divert enough light onto the imager to have to be pretty huge. If we say that one UAV covered 33 km x 33 km, and you captured it at 20 pictures per second, and a microbolometer with a pixel size of 10 um x 10 um was used (that's less than half the current size), it would have about 110 gigapixels, and the imager would be 3.3 m x 3.3 m (yes, really). The lens would have to be bigger than that to avoid noise, especially at night. (You see, for a given resolution, the bigger the pixels on the imager, the better quality the image will be, and the smaller the pixels are, the worse the image quality will be.) It's been a while since I had a class about cameras, but maybe someone here knows what a common ratio of aperature size to imager size might be. Anyone?

Maybe you would be able to fit it onto a A380 sized UAV, but I wouldn't bet on it, it might have to be bigger, and you would still need 9 of them to cover a 100 km x 100 km. (Can you say SAM fodder?)

I think it's pretty much a fantasy to think UAVs will ever have the real world capabilities you're suggesting, and they certainly would never be cheap.
Wrong. It is pretty much impossible to track a missile that utilizes stealth technology, a passive seeker and cruises at maybe 20 feet above the surface of the water. If you knew where it was, you might be able to have a look at it with a camera based on a UAV or satellite, but you don't know where it is.

I am not sure we are talking about the same thing. I am think of inferred tracking and silluette. You seem to be thinking about radar. If I am mistaken and it is possible to make a missle that gives off no heat trail and is invisable to opitcal tracking then I sure the whole idea of tracking falls apart. But are you talking about radar or optics?Both. Modern stealth technology tries to limit both radar cross section and infrared radiation. By spreading the exhaust over a wide area, by mixing it with air, you can make the temperature difference basically undetectable, and if the surface of the missile doesn't radiate a lot of heat, even when the surface is quite hot, it doesn't appear on infrared cameras. This is possible to achieve by coating the surface with a material that has a low emissivity. Radar is defeated by deflecting and/or absorbing the EM radiation.

Visible light is defeated by painting the missile the same colour as the background, and that's usually quite effective.
Maybe it is possible to have such ships, but my suspicion is that it would be too expensive to make sense, they would need all sorts of ballast tanks and stuff. And they could still be torpedoed, so it might be better to simply focus on making the ship harder to detect and defeat.

For a while that will be true. But I am thinking a few decades after that.
Nucular submarines are expesive as hell, but they are an effective deterent in our era because if one survives an intital attack it can wipe out the enemy targets by blowing them away just as effectivly as land based missile strikes.Submarines will continue to exist, no doubt about that.

They're very hard to intercept. A satellite based weapon would be something like a ten ton rod of depleted uranium. A rocket engine sends it on it's way at maybe 10 km/second (Mach 30 at sea level), which gives it an energy of 500 gigajoules. Stopping it is like stopping a freight train.

But then we are back to cannons and not missles. Kind of the original point. Like you said the sattalites can be shot down. If mounting heavy matter weapons are justified on sattalites they are justified on ships. Technically, it would be a guided bomb. It isn't propelled by a cannon, nor does it have a rocket motor; it uses gravity to propel itself.

But this kind of weapon isn't easily doable on a ship, you would need a rocket motor to propel the impactor, and the rocket motor would add too much weight and create too much drag to make the impactor reach satellite-weapon type speeds. Satellite based weapons are also more flexible, because if you put them into the right orbit, they can hit any point on the planet over a 24h period. If someone is hanging out in a bunker in Mongolia, you can kill them in a matter of hours. (Much less if you have more than one satellite.)
Missiles are basically uninterceptable if done right. And armor doesn't really make a bit of difference, modern missiles can go through a meter of steel without much difficulty. You can't clad a ship in two meters of steel; it would have to be either huge and expensive, or it would sink. And if it's huge and expensive, a modern military would make damn sure to have something like a grand slam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Slam_bomb) lying around, ready to be used. A modern version might be deliverable from a stealth aircraft, even. (Though the ship might simply be nuked instead, or blown away by a space based weapon.)

But a completely new carbon and crytaline based armor could have amazinly higher resistance. Keep in mind we are talking about a future more distant than a genration of tech or two. So they increase the size of the bomb.

Any way you cut it, it's easier to make a bigger/better bomb than it is to make better armor.
I think virtualy all of what you say is true and will be for a while. But the day is coming when enormous stides in tracking and armor will make units like these a useful weapon to fight with just like nuclear submarines were useful in the cold war. And then we will need units able to fight them directlly rather than make sneak attacks with missles only. The same situation required actual submarines to fight other submarines in decades past.Missiles can always be improved, and they are vastly cheaper than a ship. This means that large ships are doomed. It's just too damn cost effective to make missiles.

[JaeIsGod]

Appearently the plan was to wait for Chinese military power to match it's population density and then use the manipulative economic policies to undermine America's, India, Europe, and other free nations economies to losen their responsive power. Then when all is ready they would use mass missile attacks to simutaineously obliterate the militaries of the the of the rest of the world and force the formaly free world to be ruled by Beijing.



Are you for real?

[militant agnostic]

Appearently the plan was to wait for Chinese military power to match it's population density and then use the manipulative economic policies to undermine America's, India, Europe, and other free nations economies to losen their responsive power. Then when all is ready they would use mass missile attacks to simutaineously obliterate the militaries of the the of the rest of the world and force the formaly free world to be ruled by Beijing.



Are you for real?

It's a possibility. I used to consider it unreal by any standard, but I was slowly convinced that there really is somethings to the "China is preparing for war against America" concerns.

I wouldn't bet on it. I am not entirely sure China's growth can continue with all the corruption and enviromental problems, but it still worries alot of serious anylists.

Perhaps the bigger leason to be taken away from this is that it is not just the threat from major countries like China. Small nations that can't afford ships can still get a hold of missles and use them to seriously disrupt international stability.

Sattalite weapons will likely be usable by them in the forum of small attack sattalites that can ram the main weapon and comunication sattalites of other major powers.

Interceptors can reduce this risk.

[spamandham]

Doesn't 'the art of war' propose that economic war IS war, rather than proposing it as a precursor to battle? The Chinese are currently waging (and winning?) the war that will matter in the long term. If another population is in your debt and completely dependent on you for their continued survival, why bother with bombs?

[militant agnostic]

Higher resolution optical tracking is possible if material manufacturing and programing (along with other hyper advanced computing tech) are achieved at a reasonable cost.That goes without saying. Anything is possible if it becomes possible.

But really, this sort of tech is so far ahead into the future, that there's really no point in discussing it. By then we might all be a part of the world union, and most militaries have been disbanded.
Regardless of how much work would be done on the imager, the lens would still have to be pretty awesome, it would have to be able to divert enough light onto the imager to have to be pretty huge. If we say that one UAV covered 33 km x 33 km, and you captured it at 20 pictures per second, and a microbolometer with a pixel size of 10 um x 10 um was used (that's less than half the current size), it would have about 110 gigapixels, and the imager would be 3.3 m x 3.3 m (yes, really). The lens would have to be bigger than that to avoid noise, especially at night. (You see, for a given resolution, the bigger the pixels on the imager, the better quality the image will be, and the smaller the pixels are, the worse the image quality will be.) It's been a while since I had a class about cameras, but maybe someone here knows what a common ratio of aperature size to imager size might be. Anyone?

Maybe you would be able to fit it onto a A380 sized UAV, but I wouldn't bet on it, it might have to be bigger, and you would still need 9 of them to cover a 100 km x 100 km. (Can you say SAM fodder?)

I think it's pretty much a fantasy to think UAVs will ever have the real world capabilities you're suggesting, and they certainly would never be cheap.
Both. Modern stealth technology tries to limit both radar cross section and infrared radiation. By spreading the exhaust over a wide area, by mixing it with air, you can make the temperature difference basically undetectable, and if the surface of the missile doesn't radiate a lot of heat, even when the surface is quite hot, it doesn't appear on infrared cameras. This is possible to achieve by coating the surface with a material that has a low emissivity. Radar is defeated by deflecting and/or absorbing the EM radiation.

Visible light is defeated by painting the missile the same colour as the background, and that's usually quite effective.
Submarines will continue to exist, no doubt about that.

Technically, it would be a guided bomb. It isn't propelled by a cannon, nor does it have a rocket motor; it uses gravity to propel itself.

But this kind of weapon isn't easily doable on a ship, you would need a rocket motor to propel the impactor, and the rocket motor would add too much weight and create too much drag to make the impactor reach satellite-weapon type speeds. Satellite based weapons are also more flexible, because if you put them into the right orbit, they can hit any point on the planet over a 24h period. If someone is hanging out in a bunker in Mongolia, you can kill them in a matter of hours. (Much less if you have more than one satellite.)
So they increase the size of the bomb.

Any way you cut it, it's easier to make a bigger/better bomb than it is to make better armor.
I think virtualy all of what you say is true and will be for a while. But the day is coming when enormous stides in tracking and armor will make units like these a useful weapon to fight with just like nuclear submarines were useful in the cold war. And then we will need units able to fight them directlly rather than make sneak attacks with missles only. The same situation required actual submarines to fight other submarines in decades past.Missiles can always be improved, and they are vastly cheaper than a ship. This means that large ships are doomed. It's just too damn cost effective to make missiles.


Missiles are certainly cheaper, but if you can make a weapon that is more expensive yet are able to greatly increase your ability to ensure delivery of your weapon loads regardless of how badly hit your forces have been and you only need a small number of them to use then it's justified to build them.

The era of mega missiles will be more like today’s era of moderately powerful missile systems due since a u-boat like vessel with good odds of surviving to deliver weapons thanks to armor and interceptors will take them place of the menace of the nuclear submarine.

This is part of the reason that small states with allot of missiles don't really try to form alliances around the idea that if they could just combine all their missiles together to overwhelm mega nations. They would still get creamed by ships, and submarines.

After such weapons are built you would also have a motivation to make these ships capable of sinking other ships themselves and other units that can support them, like sub sinkers and full subs with anti ship weapons.

And personally I think that powerful guns that don't require rocket powered launch systems are possible. Obviously if they are doable then it would be good to put them on ships since satellites are vulnerable to small stealth weapons as well.

Another issue is that while it is true that bombs can be made bigger and bigger, at a certain point that is actually a problem for stealth missiles.

Huge bombs are actually usable as flak. A missile that isn't detectable enough to intercept buy radar and optical tracking can still be intercepted by exploding a big enough bomb in its general area if it you can at least know it's general area.

It may be possible to make a ship be defended enough to make it reasonably survivable short of iron rods and nukes. But I doubt that it's possible armor a missiles enough to survive powerful near explosions.

[Yggdrasill]

Missiles are certainly cheaper, but if you can make a weapon that is more expensive yet are able to greatly increase your ability to ensure delivery of your weapon loads regardless of how badly hit your forces have been and you only need a small number of them to use then it's justified to build them.The thing is, there's not much room for improvement over missiles. That's provided you have the right kind of missile.

An ICBM has about a 95% chance of hitting it's target, modern anti-air missiles have about a 90% chance of hitting their target, modern anti-ship missiles have about a 75% of hitting their target, modern cruise missiles have about a 90% chance of hitting their target.

If you want survivability, stick the missiles on submarines, bunkers, and small camouflaged units. That way you will be prepared for anything.
The era of mega missiles will be more like today’s era of moderately powerful missile systems due since a u-boat like vessel with good odds of surviving to deliver weapons thanks to armor and interceptors will take them place of the menace of the nuclear submarine.What are you trying to say? That sentence wasn't coherent.
This is part of the reason that small states with allot of missiles don't really try to form alliances around the idea that if they could just combine all their missiles together to overwhelm mega nations. They would still get creamed by ships, and submarines.Ships and submarines are pretty much useless by themselves, they need missiles to be effective.

And what "small states with a lot of missiles" that would be inclined to attack "mega nations" are you talking about? It isn't necessary to assume they don't cooperate because they'd be destroyed, if the nations you're hypothesizing about don't actually exist.
After such weapons are built you would also have a motivation to make these ships capable of sinking other ships themselves and other units that can support them, like sub sinkers and full subs with anti ship weapons. Ships are already capable of sinking other ships and submarines. And submarines are also capable of sinking other submarines as well as ships.
And personally I think that powerful guns that don't require rocket powered launch systems are possible. Obviously if they are doable then it would be good to put them on ships since satellites are vulnerable to small stealth weapons as well.Of course it's possible to make powerful guns, that was proven centuries ago. Powerful guns aren't practical though, because:

- Projectiles can't go around corners.
- Projectiles can't physically avoid countermeasures.
- Projectiles can't travel in sea skimming mode.
- It is very hard to implement stealth technology in projectiles.
- You can't target things that are over the horizon.
- You can't target things that are behind mountains or islands, or inside fjords.
- You can't use them without giving away your position.
- Cannons are big and heavy, which:- Slows down ships.
- Makes ships easier to detect.
- Makes cannons more expensive to buy than missiles.
- Makes cannons more costly to maintain than missiles.
- Means you can carry more firepower per ton if you use missiles.
- You can't upgrade cannons, whereas a missile upgrade can be as simple as replacing some software.
- Hmm, I'm out of reasons.

I hope those 14 reasons makes you think hard about your position.
Another issue is that while it is true that bombs can be made bigger and bigger, at a certain point that is actually a problem for stealth missiles.Not really, you just improve the stealth capabilities. It certainly costs money, but the physics aren't a problem. And if the missiles were to have to get really big (which is pretty ridiculous in the first place, ships will never have that kind of armor), you could just use a small nuclear warhead.

It might not be politically correct, but if it is military necessary, it will happen.
Huge bombs are actually usable as flak. A missile that isn't detectable enough to intercept buy radar and optical tracking can still be intercepted by exploding a big enough bomb in its general area if it you can at least know it's general area. It's general area is "near you", by the time you detect it at all, so maybe it isn't a good idea to start blowing shit up, as you would get caught in the blast.
It may be possible to make a ship be defended enough to make it reasonably survivable short of iron rods and nukes. But I doubt that it's possible armor a missiles enough to survive powerful near explosions.You don't armor missiles, you make them undetectable.

[militant agnostic]

Missiles are certainly cheaper, but if you can make a weapon that is more expensive yet are able to greatly increase your ability to ensure delivery of your weapon loads regardless of how badly hit your forces have been and you only need a small number of them to use then it's justified to build them.The thing is, there's not much room for improvement over missiles. That's provided you have the right kind of missile.

An ICBM has about a 95% chance of hitting it's target, modern anti-air missiles have about a 90% chance of hitting their target, modern anti-ship missiles have about a 75% of hitting their target, modern cruise missiles have about a 90% chance of hitting their target.

If you want survivability, stick the missiles on submarines, bunkers, and small camouflaged units. That way you will be prepared for anything.
What are you trying to say? That sentence wasn't coherent.
Ships and submarines are pretty much useless by themselves, they need missiles to be effective.

And what "small states with a lot of missiles" that would be inclined to attack "mega nations" are you talking about? It isn't necessary to assume they don't cooperate because they'd be destroyed, if the nations you're hypothesizing about don't actually exist.
Ships are already capable of sinking other ships and submarines. And submarines are also capable of sinking other submarines as well as ships.
Of course it's possible to make powerful guns, that was proven centuries ago. Powerful guns aren't practical though, because:

- Projectiles can't go around corners.
- Projectiles can't physically avoid countermeasures.
- Projectiles can't travel in sea skimming mode.
- It is very hard to implement stealth technology in projectiles.
- You can't target things that are over the horizon.
- You can't target things that are behind mountains or islands, or inside fjords.
- You can't use them without giving away your position.
- Cannons are big and heavy, which:- Slows down ships.
- Makes ships easier to detect.
- Makes cannons more expensive to buy than missiles.
- Makes cannons more costly to maintain than missiles.
- Means you can carry more firepower per ton if you use missiles.
- You can't upgrade cannons, whereas a missile upgrade can be as simple as replacing some software.
- Hmm, I'm out of reasons.

Actually rail guns and a few theorized matter projectors would be small enough to not need a large ship to be mounted on. Very small units with a single gun, allot of armour and some interceptors would be effective since they would be able to hit with VERY powerful bullets like a battleship but at the same time would require a direct hit themselves to be sunk. With these it would be possible to make an assualt force made out of them the same way the small stealth ships shown earlier were to be used.

The velocities associated with rail guns are so high that it's hard to imagine how it would be possible to intercept them. If they cannot be intercepted then stealth is irrelivent.

Submarines would still have a large ship role though.

Of course, small attack craft could operate underwater as well.

I hope those 14 reasons makes you think hard about your position.
Not really, you just improve the stealth capabilities. It certainly costs money, but the physics aren't a problem. And if the missiles were to have to get really big (which is pretty ridiculous in the first place, ships will never have that kind of armor), you could just use a small nuclear warhead.

It might not be politically correct, but if it is military necessary, it will happen.
It's general area is "near you", by the time you detect it at all, so maybe it isn't a good idea to start blowing shit up, as you would get caught in the blast.

Actually even a not so huge ship with the kind of armor I was thinking of would not be at serious risk from an explosion that was not relativly close.

It may be possible to make a ship be defended enough to make it reasonably survivable short of iron rods and nukes. But I doubt that it's possible armor a missiles enough to survive powerful near explosions.You don't armor missiles, you make them undetectable.

Is it really possible to make a powerful missle so stealthy that it is impossibe to get a genreal idea of where it is?


I may be wrong about larger ships being used for these. But I don't think that rail guns that are small, have amunition that that is small enough to not be that heavy and are uninterceptable are useless. Large missle launching abilities with stealth may make large targets to dangerous to build and use. Smaller units, however, could be made to use them and it would still be a case of whether to use guns or missles to destroy them. Missles would have a hard time by virtue of the fact that they are interceptable and you would be targeting many small units that can suddenly sink underwater. Guns may actually be better since they can blow apart the things just by locking on and firing on them. And of course other small units with small powerful cannons. Hypersonic matter bolts may even be usbale underwater strange as that sounds.

Of course all these reasons had me convinced that battle ships were not useful to me before and I was convinced again that they are useful by something else.

[militant agnostic]

Actually, come to think of it. You could use lasers on small craft as well. A small craft with one of these would be able to be more effectiv than missle delivery unit at closer ranges. So long as it didn't need to shoot over the horizon or through mountains.

[spamandham]

There's also the diversity factor. It's always a good idea to have multiple basic technologies at play, in case an enemy figures out a way to universally disrupt one.

For example, missiles are severly crippled for long range application if the gps sattelite system is disabled. Lasers can use direct targetting without dependence on gps.

[Yggdrasill]

Is it really possible to make a powerful missle so stealthy that it is impossibe to get a genreal idea of where it is?It's not "impossible", but it is pretty hard. And you basically know exactly where it is, or you are completely unaware of where it is. There is very little middle ground.

I don't know exactly how good stealth is, and in fact very few people do. It is a closely guarded secret of every country who has stealth technology.
I may be wrong about larger ships being used for these. But I don't think that rail guns that are small, have amunition that that is small enough to not be that heavy and are uninterceptable are useless.When large (worthwhile) rail guns haven't been built yet, it is a bit early to talk about small rail guns.
Large missle launching abilities with stealth may make large targets to dangerous to build and use. Smaller units, however, could be made to use them and it would still be a case of whether to use guns or missles to destroy them.Rail gun projectiles would probably be interceptable once you refine some technologies. You could probably use a rail gun to shoot down a rail gun projectile.

If you basically use a rail gun "shotgun", you don't actually have to destroy projectiles, you just have to push the projectiles enough of course to miss the ship. Given that the projectiles travel in simple ballistic trajectories, it isn't a huge difficulty to crunch the numbers and aim the counter-projectile rail gun.
Missles would have a hard time by virtue of the fact that they are interceptable and you would be targeting many small units that can suddenly sink underwater. Guns may actually be better since they can blow apart the things just by locking on and firing on them. And of course other small units with small powerful cannons.It doesn't sound like a good place to be, many small ships in the same area shooting at each other. In those circumstances, the side with the most ships would probably win, which is why I think the side with fewer ships would avoid confrontation.
Hypersonic matter bolts may even be usbale underwater strange as that sounds.Doubt it, they would probably just skip off the water, or disintegrate as soon as they hit the water.

It's no problem to use missiles underwater though, you can simply add a depth charge or torpedo payload, and equip the missile with maybe ten small sonobuoys that they could use to detect underwater vessels. The missile would travel in sea skim and drop sonobuoys until it detected a target, swing around in circles and narrow down exactly where the target is, and then deploy the payload. It might be a good idea to use several missiles that would fly in formation. That way they could share the task of finding the submarines by dropping the sonobuoys in a grid, and when the target is found, they could all converge on the target and deploy their payloads.

Those missiles might be somewhat larger than their current counterparts, but that isn't a huge difficulty.

[militant agnostic]

If what you are saying is true then would it be true that a large number of assault craft are the most logical military make up. I guess thats adds a certain degree of the kind of fighting I was thinking of earlier. You would have a recreation of actuall combat fleets but on a small scale.


One more thing I have to think about, however, is what would happen if you were to abandon rail guns and use lasers or grasers in their place? Having them still be mounted on small attack craft.

Also. I heard that the only reason that the navy kept large destroyers in the first place was because they claimed that they needed them to ship troops around. But I also have read alot about how the Russian fleet and the US have been considering upgrading ships they have now as true battleships.

What do you think is going on here?

[Yggdrasill]

If what you are saying is true then would it be true that a large number of assault craft are the most logical military make up. I guess thats adds a certain degree of the kind of fighting I was thinking of earlier. You would have a recreation of actuall combat fleets but on a small scale.


One more thing I have to think about, however, is what would happen if you were to abandon rail guns and use lasers or grasers in their place? Having them still be mounted on small attack craft.Lasers are completely uninterceptable, so they would have their uses, especially in closer quarters, where the beam is the most focused and powerful, but you can't use them against targets that are over the horizon, or behind mountains or something, so it is unlikely that they will be the primary weapon.
Also. I heard that the only reason that the navy kept large destroyers in the first place was because they claimed that they needed them to ship troops around. But I also have read alot about how the Russian fleet and the US have been considering upgrading ships they have now as true battleships.

What do you think is going on here? I don't know specifically, but I know the US has an offensive military designed to be able to bomb the shit out of dirt-poor countries.

Battleships are perfectly usable to attack countries that do not have the high-tech missiles of western nations. The battleships would be toast in a Russia vs. US war or the like, but if they don't think such a war is very likely, they could outfit their militaries for a US vs. Somalia kind of war.

Russia and the US do have good reasons to think that a US vs. Russia war isn't too likely, primarily because of MAD. Neither country wants to cease to exist.