Why don't we have modern battleship sized guided missile combat ships? I mean, instead of having a carrier with 100 planes with their ammo and fuel, navies don't make a guided missile battleship with thousands of missiles?
Why don't we have modern battleship sized guided missile combat ships?
aircraft are basically reusable first stage booster for missile. At that size of a ship you're better off eating the overhead of having aircraft.
Putting all your eggs in one basket by building huge megavessels is a really stupid move. All it takes is one anti-ship missile to sink them. They should focus mass producing more, smaller missile carriers.
Smaller missile carriers couldn't carry bigger missiles with longer ranges. But if the future is of navies are mass producing small guided missile ships, how could someone counter it?
what sized missiles are you trying to fire from surface vessels that you need something the size of an Iowa class battleship to lug it around?
What I meant was that a larger vessel could carry way more missiles and could carry missiles with better range against smaller vessels.
Sure, but they can't outrange aircraft. That's what modern US naval doctrine entails, protecting the longest ranged weapon platforms, the carriers. Everything else is just padding between the carriers and the enemy. And F/A-18 has a combat range of 730 km, add onto that another 220 km from the harpoon missile and consider that all of the aircraft of a carrier can fire off their payloads essentially at the same time and you have a ship capable of launching over 300 anti-ship missiles or anti-air missiles in a single volley for practical purposes with a range of 950 km.
>a larger vessel could carry way more missiles
what would it usefully do with them that couldn't be done better with an aircraft carrier? at some relatively low point the extra missiles become overkill without greatly extended range and targeting capability - both of which aircraft give you.
A submarine can carry dozens of multi-warhead ICBMs. Ship size is not the limiting factor on missile size or range, it's a matter of practicality. 1000 km ranged missiles means that for scale the US could hit nearly any port in China without having to actually send out ships from bases in Japan, Korea, and the Philippines. What would be your plan, sniping US ships passing Guam from China?
>how could someone counter it
Having more, cheaper ships (including unmanned naval vessels).
Having better spotting abilities.
Having better CIWS (including APS or laser-based).
Having an ally with one or more of the above and a willingness to step in on your behalf.
>Smaller missile carriers couldn't carry bigger missiles with longer ranges.
Name one possible conflict where naval based long range missile launchers are superior to land based missile launchers.
>Russia
We have plenty of allies in Europe to base missile sites in.
>China/Korea
Japan and Guam exist.
>Middle East
Turkey exists, and it's pretty convenient to just launch missiles from inside the Persian Gulf
This isn't fricking WW2.
I know land based missiles have greater range, my scenario with this topic is blue waters.
Then you're out of your mind, because the only relevant battlespaces would be the middle of the Atlantic or the middle of the Pacific, and nobody wants to fight there over jackshit nothing. Again, this isn't WW2.
Miniaturization favors decentralization. Modern anti ship missiles, even large ones with supplementary boosters, are just a little bit bigger and might require carving up the vls cells differently. There's no need for a larger ship to carry that capability. There was for ships big enough to mount sixteen inch guns, because the displacement of said guns, their elevators, turret caps etc. was much greater. In the missile age, more ships is always better. More sensor suites, and being able to disperse your launch and search units is an advantage you can't get by cramming more capability onto one boat.
Because for the cost of one giant warship with way too many missiles, we could have a dozen or more smaller warships with just as many.
A larger ship could have a powerhouse to good that it could have dozens of laser-based CIWS and would just take the carrier's place in a fleet.
That what I was thinking but what I meant was if 2 enemies are almost if not equal in all aspects.
>A larger ship could have a powerhouse to good that it could have dozens of laser-based CIWS and would just take the carrier's place in a fleet.
No it couldn't. Because a carrier's role is force projection, not missile defense. It'd be much more sensible to have dedicated laser CIWS ships than "hurr muh battleship that can do anything".
The arsenal ship concept is dead because destroyers already fill that capability and can do other missions on top of that. The new Virginias Block Vs are going to take on the anti-surface role while being much less vulnerable.
Maybe its inevitable to have large fleets of small vessels, in near future major navies will have lots of hypersonic gliders/missiles and there seems to have no counter to a large salvo of that yet.
>there seems to have no counter to a large salvo of that yet.
Oh, you haven't heard?
I don't think that sub carriers perform as good as actual super carriers.
They don't have to perform as good in the face of hypersonic glide vehicle spam, they just have to give you a naval air corps and enough armaments for that corps to hurt other vessels while also being significantly more hard to hit than their surface-bound brethren.
Sub carriers with capability to launch multiple UAVs of flying/submarine type/surface type for total dominance.
Imagine a loyal wingman drone for a sub carrier.
SALUTEM PAVIDOS
The Ohio class retrofitted SSGNs are basically that. Officially they only carry TLAMs, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they could also carry anti ship missiles, and have read (via google) that they may even add the capability to deploy some sort of UAVs.
Was going to say, sounds like OP wants a submarine.