Iowa class BB, they don't build them like that today

No dispute there at all. Crews will be much smaller in the future. Much damage control we be robotic.

 

I admitted I was wrong about the 1991 incident as that was an Optically Guided Munition dropped from F-111's.

But I proved that Optical Guided Tomahawks exist that can precisely hit....and we are talking about the ability to fly a Tomahawk into a little window that is 4 feet by 4 feet.....and when you use the Hyperbaric Warheaded Tomahawk variant it would just blow the top of the turret right off.

This is right in the article I posted.....

TacticalTomahawk would add the capability to reprogram the missile while in-flight to strike any of 15 preprogrammed alternate targets or redirect the missile to any Global Positioning System (GPS) target coordinates. It also would be able to loiter over a target area for some hours, and with its on-board TV camera, would allow the warfighting commanders to assess battle damage of the target, and, if necessary redirect the missile to any other target.

AboveAlpha

 

There are no optically guided Tomahawk, never have been and never have had an anti-ship version much less a hyperbaric version. Guidance is radar or GPS but not optics.

 

The BGM-109 has been given the (ATWCS) upgrade....Advanced Tomahawk Weapons Control System.

Tomahawks have ALWAYS had an optical system for terrain following at low levels and the (ATWCS) upgrades just are an extension to this as the onboard computer uses a camera to follow terrain to target and then they added a secondary camera so that the BGM-109 can loiter around an area and either seek out targets of opportunity and be DIRECTLY GUIDED TO TARGET OPTICALLY.

Honestly this is really not that big of deal tech. wide as all that was added was another camera and the ability to change targets, loiter over an area...and then chose a target and hit it precisely where you want to.

The Hyperbaric Warheads are Classified as (STAM)....Special Tactical Advanced Munition.....and they were specifically developed in not just missiles but as Optically Guided Munitions designed to be dropped by the F-22, F-35 and Heavy Bombers can drop them as well.

But they were specially designed to be used to be guided into the mouth of an Mountain Cave in Afghanistan that we thought might be a Command Center so if we used the Thermobaric Munitions they would burn to a cinder any intel. in the cave where the Hyperbaric Munitions concussive force would kill every human being in the cave system no matter how large or deep but we could recover paperwork, battle plans, computers, cell phones...etc.

AboveAlpha

 

Wrong, targeting is by GPS and the model is land attack. No sea attack variant. The optical system was just on later block weapons and it essentially acts as drone. BTW 6 US dreadnought BB's were hit by Kamikazes which for practical purposes are cruise missiles. Not a single one was put out of action, in fact all stayed at their action stations.

 

The great mistake Navys of all countries made (fortunately) prior to WWII was to continue to plow their money into battleships. Battleships did nothing for Germany. Had that same money and focus been on their submarines they could have starved out the UK. The British thought the battleships could save Asia. They were quickly sunk. The USA at war immediately became dependent on our small carrier fleet. Battleships did little for Japan. Had Japan put that effort into submarines - and MANY submarines could be built for cost of a battleship - Japan could have wrecked havoc on America's entry into WWII in the Pacific.

Some time ago as just a mental exercise, I calculated the weight of steel and the dimensions of a battleship - and armoring not only the sides but also deck and bottom. The danger to battleships no longer is just broadsides. For example, Billy Mitchell succeeded in sinking the old German battleship by exploding 2000 pounds underwater beside the ship, not on the ship, because the armor plate is on the side and the density of water reduces the explosion force from dispersing. Building a battleship enough to carry enough armor on all sides is essentially impossible as the size and weight to the structure to support that armor also increases and the sheer weight then becomes the ships own enemy.

For example to carry 16 inch armor for the entire sides, deck, desk structures and bottom would require increasing the volume of the ship a bit over 200%. Yet that still offers no protection for radar and other highly vulnerable deck structures.

If the tonnage sunk either in the Atlantic or Pacific in WWII is examined, the submarine was the most important and destructive naval warfare ships of WWII. If I recall correctly, subs sunk more tonnage not only in the Atlantic but also the Pacific than did aircraft - and battleships all but irrelevant in actual naval engagements. The workhorse gunships were not battleships, but destroyers.



The USA's submarine based nuclear deterrent is THE most critical of all our national defense systems.

 

Look at my post #145.

BGM-109 Tomahawk

Tomahawk is an all-weather submarine or ship-launched land-attack cruise missile. After launch, a solid propellant propels the missile until a small turbofan engine takes over for the cruise portion of flight. Tomahawk is a highly survivable weapon. Radar detection is difficult because of the missile's small cross-section, low altitude flight. Similarly, infrared detection is difficult because the turbofan engine emits little heat. Systems include Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver; an upgrade of the optical Digital Scene Matching Area Correlation (DSMAC) system; Time of Arrival (TOA) control, and improved 402 turbo engines.

It was adapted for Ship to Ship or Sub to Ship use when it got the (ATWCS) upgrade.

You can launch one of these off a destroyer or from a sub and you can use GPS to get it to an area and then switch over to Optical Guidance and LITERALLY FLY IN CIRCLES AND LOOK FOR A TARGET!!!!

Once you decide on your target you can optically guide this missile in a window if you wanted to.

Honestly this is old news.

I don't understand what you are having such a hard time with it as if you look at the LINK I provided you it states you can use this Tomahawk and LOITER around in an area and chose a target and optically guide it in where you want it to hit!!??

AboveAlpha

 

The Iowa Class is a great ship but it's obsolete in the modern era.

A Destroyer that costs just a tiny amount of what it would cost today to build a Iowa Class can destroy her or at the very least put her out of commission during a battle.

And she would be a sitting duck for a modern attack sub.

AboveAlpha

 

Not quite true. Mitchell's sinking of the Ostfriesland was a publicity stunt and the ship had been hit and bombed multiple times before. The ship was unmanned at the time and naval inspectors weren't allowed to board. It took her hours to sink. BTW I'd really learn something how belt armor was arranged. The builders of the WW1 dreadnoughts were quite concerned about about plunging fire below the waterline. It wasn't just the BB that was vulnerable to aircraft, it was all ships.

 

You cannot fly it like a drone. The camera is really for damage assessment, you can only set a course much like an autopilot. Plus, you can only program in the GPS coordinates to target and it IS NOT AN ANTI SHIP weapon. And now we're talking subs. What's next, a Romulan bird of prey? Please. It's you having a hard time here. You don't know a thing about the systems other what you think you know from a wiki search and you don't know squat about ships. Really, you way out of your league here.

 

What is going on with you?

The LINK clearly states that the Tomahawk can be directed to LOITER around and area and then it can be used to strike any target using Optical Guidance ONLY IF IT HAS THE (ATWCS) upgrade!!!!

If it doesn't have the (ATWCS) upgrade it can't do this but if it does IT CAN!!!

AboveAlpha

 

The first guided missiles used TV optics going back to the Germans during WW ll.

During the Vietnam War the Bullpup ASM first used visual guided then soon adopted TV guidance system. The Maverick ASM based upon the Bullpup used TV guidance optics as did the first batch of Tomahawk cruise missiles. But TV guided optics are very easy to defeat using counter electronic warfare systems. So on the modern battlefield they can be defeated.

During the Kosovo war the USA used the Tomahawks to blow up an aspirin factory, the chi-coms Embassy and hundreds of plywood tank decoys. What was funny, Kosovo civilians would be sitting in their living rooms watching old reruns of American television programs from the 60's and 70's on their television and then they would see their village and soon their house on the television screen. The Tomahawk TV guidance system was broadcasting on the UHF band, the same frequency as UHF television.

Now some of us are old enough to remember a time before TV remote controls, satellite dishes and cable TV. Instead you had either a TV antenna on top of your roof or rabbit ears antennas on top of your television. And we all remember what happened when one of your neighbors happened to be an amateur ham radio operator.

Most of today's weapons guidance systems can be easily defeated by electronic counter measure systems. Last year a Navy Admiral reported that anyone having some knowledge of electronics could walk into a "Radio Shack" with a hundred dollar bill and walkout having the components needed to defeat most of today's high tech weapons systems.

excerpt:

Just reported 16 hours ago. -> http://freebeacon.com/national-secu...electronic-warfare-in-syria-as-tensions-rise/

 

Just to add....I know as a FACT that we used a few of the (ATWCS) upgraded Tomahawks in Afghanistan in 2008!!!

There were caves that were high in the mountains where they could see us coming for 20 miles and the only way to get that intel. before the bugged out was to fly a Tomahawk with the (ATWCS) upgrade and the (STAM) Hyperbaric Warhead.

We would hit them before they could take off and we gathered a world of intel.

AboveAlpha

 

Your right.

The Tomahawks that have not undergone the (ATWCS) upgrade could easily be diverted for those people who know how to do it.

AboveAlpha

 

You're just wrong and persisting in it. YOU say it has it has optically targeting ability, it does not and never has. It can and will send terminal imaging, but that's about all you're going to get. What you're saying does not exist presently.

 

Let me ask you this.

If the (ATWCS) upgraded Tomahawk can fly around looking for moving targets and then chose a target and precisely be directed to impact any point of that target......

....how do YOU think it's doing that?

AboveAlpha

 

My point was that the bombs that did sink the ship were deliberate dropped to explode below water beside the ship, not on the deck of the ship. This buckled the hull plates below the armor belt. My point was not about the overall validity of the ship, but that side armor and turrent armor is not sufficient. The greater vunerabilities now are the deck and the bottom, not the sides and turrents. And again, the question is not really of sinking the ship, but disability as to effectiveness.

"At that point, 2000-lb bombs were loaded for a flight of two Handley-Page O/400s and six NBS-1s. One O/400 fell out for mechanical reasons, but the NBS-1s dropped six bombs in quick succession between 12:18 and 12:31 pm, aiming for the water close to the ship. Three of the bombs were close enough to rip hull plates and cause the ship to roll over. It sank at 12:40, 22 minutes after the first bomb. In a wry salute, a seventh bomb was dropped by the O/400 on the foam rising from the doomed ship."
http://www.aerofiles.com/ostfriesland.html

 

You're talking a fleeting target and not a moving target. There is a huge difference. New GPS targeting is by other measures including ground, drone, radar etc that do not involve the missile or its operators. In short you're not going to hit a moving truck, but you can hit a truck that has moved from point A to point B. That's what it means.

 

Apache, you're wrong. The German guided bombs did not use TV and didn't come close. Neither did Bullpup. They were optically tracked.... from the plane by following a flare with guidance using a radio link. The TV system, you're thinking of is the Paveway or HOBO guided bombs. Tomahawk never used optical system guidance. Some early ones used Bullpup warheads but these were the cluster bomb packages and were rapidly replaced.

 

What you describe is the Tomahawk Baseline Improvement Program, it was never funded. Parts were funded in later upgrades but not the entire program.

The Tomahawk data link is a SATCOM link, which has a long time delay and is not suitable for man-in-the-loop control of the missile. Its used to send target templates and GPS coordinates, and to select one of many preplanned mission profiles. Its not easy to do real-time target identification, selection, and retargeting a Tomahawk based on real-time Tomahawk images, probably not doable.

I don't know if Tomahawk will loiter and send back battle damage images, that's not a very good use of resources. As the Tomahawk is flying its mission to attack a target, as it passes over an area it might send back images which can be used for battle damage assessment, but it doesn't make sense to have it loiter. During Kosovo, AGM-130's were used for BDA and to check for targets, they have a gimbaled TV/IR seeker and a data link which transmits seeker video back to the aircraft, the weapon systems officer in the plane can take control of the seeker and look around while the AGM-130 is on its way.

 

I stand corrected in re: to the Bullpup, I meant the AGM-65 Walleyeye that was actually a smart bomb.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/agm-62.htm

As for the Germans during WW ll, they had so many weapons systems they were using during the war. All I can do is go by what I have read or seen on the old Military Channel.

 

That was the case prior to the upgrade.

Seriously it's not all that big of a deal to do this.

And missile that can fly around looking for a target with an added optical guidance can hit what ever it wants.

It's just a camera and added flight control software.

Not a big deal.

AboveAlpha

- - - Updated - - -

Well they designed it to loiter.

It's right in the LINK on my post #145.

I works very well.

AboveAlpha

 

You're just wrong, It IS a huge deal. You're going to fly something down on the deck at better then 900km/hour with a camera? Ridiculous. It's like your statement about building bomb racks that can hold 15 tons. No basis in fact and very little clue about engineering. A sea-skimmer used in an anti-ship capacity has it's own set of engineering problems including wing in ground effect that is a different problem over water. BTW you "this" works well just how. My son, asleep in the next room and aero engineer who has actually worked on drones is going to have a huge laugh when he sees this.

 

Fortunately you are NOT on any aircraft design team since you believe exactly everything - even if accomplished decades ago - is technologically impossible. The impossibility of building a 15 ton bomb rack? LOL

The F35 is being built to carry a bunker buster, but a 1 ton bunker buster. To make up for the lower weight, the bunker buster has a rocket engine at the back so it doesn't impact at Mach 2.5, but around Mach 7. 2000 pounds hitting at 5000+ mph would go thru 7.5 inch armor plate with easy. That is aproximately 200% the penetration ability than the Iowa's 16 inch shell's impact (which would easily penetrate 7 1/2 inches of armor).

In short, the Iowa is an invincible as was the HMS Hood. One hit amidship on the deck and it's game over for the Iowa. You're going to have to increase deck thickness (and weight) to about 40 inches. Unfortunately, then the Iowa become a submarine, so-to-speak, because it is too heavy to float. As I stated earlier, once protecting the sides, deck and bottom becomes necessary, the weight versus bouyance becomes an impossibility. The more armor it has, the bigger it has to be. The bigger it has to be, then the more armor and structure weight increases.

Nor have either of you Iowa advocates even pretended you have any solution to there being no way to protect radar or any other deck vital equipment, nor the bridge, the rudders and the propellers.

And I noticed there is no response to the astronomical annual operational costs of an Iowa at upwards of a billion dollars a year.

 

Wrong Jake, I have more than enough engineering experience in knowing what it would take to build an bomb rack that can hold 15 tons. You, not so much. Ever take into the account G forces? Nah, that never occurred to you. And according to you using existing attack aircraft, it would have to be external. Just where on the airframe are you going to attach that? But now, were talking about bunker buster bombs against the ship. What's next? Klingon photon torpedoes? The original OP was about how the Iowa Class moved from the gun age to the missile age and was able to do it well. The second point was the ability of the ship to absorb battle damage. What this has degenerated into is a weak form of oneupmanship on your part using fantasy weapons that don't exist except in your imagination.