Re:New Warship’s Big Guns Have No Bullets
by smacktoward on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @10:47AM
(#12901134)
> The Zumwalt is not meant to be an "anti-air" ship, it was meant to be a replacement for battleships in the role of shelling land targets from sea
This is misleading.
The design of the Zumwalt class is multi-role, oriented around a few core missions: battle against surface ships, air defense, and naval gunfire support (e.g. "shelling land targets from sea"). Air defense capabilities aren't as prevalent in the Navy's vision for the Zumwalts today as they were when the class was first coming off the drawing board -- there was a time when the Navy would cheerfully say that Zumwalt-class ships would be able to shoot down ballistic missiles, a claim they don't make today. But anti-air is still part of the overall bag of roles the class is (theoretically) supposed to fulfill.
On the question of naval gunfire support, it's true that the Zumwalts are supposed to do that too. But that's complicated by the fact that the Navy, institutionally speaking, doesn't think of naval gunfire support as a mission that exists in the real world anymore. They believe that ground attack missiles have put an end to the days of ships firing guns at shore targets forever. So they have been noticeably unenthusiastic about including any gun capabilities on new ships, including the Zumwalts.
Congress and the Marine Corps disagree with this assessment, however, and Congress found a way to make the Navy pay attention to the subject by legally mandating the Navy to provide certain levels of gunfire support capability over time. The Zumwalts got guns as part of a deal that would allow the Navy to retire the previous ships they'd used to meet those requirements, the World War 2-era Iowa-class battleships.
The Navy had wanted to retire the Iowas pretty much from the moment they came out of mothballs in the 1980s, so they were willing to live with guns on the Zumwalts if that was the price of being able to do so. But the Zumwalts only ever had 6-inch (155mm) guns, as compared to the Iowas' 16-inch guns, so it's difficult to see them as a direct replacement in the gunfire support role. (The Navy argues that the increased accuracy of the Zumwalts' Advanced Gun System makes up for the decrease in weight of iron they can throw, but that's arguable.)
This is misleading.
The design of the Zumwalt class is multi-role, oriented around a few core missions: battle against surface ships, air defense, and naval gunfire support (e.g. "shelling land targets from sea"). Air defense capabilities aren't as prevalent in the Navy's vision for the Zumwalts today as they were when the class was first coming off the drawing board -- there was a time when the Navy would cheerfully say that Zumwalt-class ships would be able to shoot down ballistic missiles, a claim they don't make today. But anti-air is still part of the overall bag of roles the class is (theoretically) supposed to fulfill.
On the question of naval gunfire support, it's true that the Zumwalts are supposed to do that too. But that's complicated by the fact that the Navy, institutionally speaking, doesn't think of naval gunfire support as a mission that exists in the real world anymore. They believe that ground attack missiles have put an end to the days of ships firing guns at shore targets forever. So they have been noticeably unenthusiastic about including any gun capabilities on new ships, including the Zumwalts.
Congress and the Marine Corps disagree with this assessment, however, and Congress found a way to make the Navy pay attention to the subject by legally mandating the Navy to provide certain levels of gunfire support capability over time. The Zumwalts got guns as part of a deal that would allow the Navy to retire the previous ships they'd used to meet those requirements, the World War 2-era Iowa-class battleships.
The Navy had wanted to retire the Iowas pretty much from the moment they came out of mothballs in the 1980s, so they were willing to live with guns on the Zumwalts if that was the price of being able to do so. But the Zumwalts only ever had 6-inch (155mm) guns, as compared to the Iowas' 16-inch guns, so it's difficult to see them as a direct replacement in the gunfire support role. (The Navy argues that the increased accuracy of the Zumwalts' Advanced Gun System makes up for the decrease in weight of iron they can throw, but that's arguable.)
There's a decent discussion of the various issues in play in the naval gunfire debate on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_naval_gunfire_su...