Re: [DS] Tank designs [and battleships] was Re: [ds] Ogres

On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, John M. Atkinson wrote:
> Thomas Anderson wrote:
> > ever hear of economies of scale? this is why ten million pounds
sterling
> > of battleship will beat ten million pounds sterling of destroyers.
> 
> Not nowdays.

yes nowadays, as i will attempt to demonstrate.

>  How many destroyers firing how many SSMs do we get for
> that?

oodles. but they still mount less SSMs in total than the battleship
would.
and have less thickness of armour, and can't see as far with their radar
(although airborne radars negate this disadvantage), and don't have the
same concentration of point defence or fire control.

>  That might be why nobody has battleships anymore,

they do; it's just that these days, battleships mount aircraft not guns.
carriers are just battleships with a different weapons fit, if you see
what i mean. i know it's stretching the point, sorry.

anyway, carriers replaced the battleship when the only battleship option
was guns; now we have missiles, who's to say it won't make a comeback?
no
more risking valuable - and media-sensitive - lives over foreign
countries, just missile them. this is already a preferred tactic in many
cases; witness the US attack on that aspirin factory in Khartoum. i know
that tomahawk and harpoon have neither the range nor the striking power
of
an F/A-18, but trident does. twelve conventional warheads with an
11000-km
range, anyone? i know they currently have a CEP of 120m, but bung in
some
active terminal guidance and you're laughing.

my data on trident is from www.naval-technology.com (no, i am not in
their
pay), which interestingly gives different data for trident 2s on
vanguard
and ohio class boats; the british missile is heavier and more accurate
...

> but everyone
> from the RN and USN down to thrid-world countries with 6 feet of
> coastline and a military budget measured in quarters has destroyers.

actually, a lot of navies don't have destroyers. many just have frigates
and missile boats. for instance iraq, which is why the navy was wiped
out
totally in the war. i think the norwegian navy is a bit thin on the
ground
in this respect, if not as badly as some.

the real reason people use destoyers these days is that they can be
spread
out more, so they are useful for showing the flag, fisheries protection,
customs, picking up evacuees from foreign countries having civil war
etc.

the same applies in battle: they can spread out and find submarines
better, since the range for detecting subs is tiny, on the order of tens
of nm with towed sonar and helicopters. you need a big screen to protect
your capital ship. if we could see subs 100 nm off, then destroyers
would
not be so useful, as you could just mount a big asroc battery on your
battleship. there is also the fact that you can set up a better air
defence screen if you can push some units forward, but that works with
cruisers too. still, the main reason for today's huge split between
carriers and destroyers is the submarine.

> > > You have to cross bridges during COMBAT operations.
> > not if it's a static defence, or a defence of a prepared area. i
don't
> 
> You don't win wars fighting static defenses.	You delay defeat and
> nothing more.

are you saying that an army never needs to fight a defence? if so, you
are
wrong. armies sometimes have to, and that is where something like the
maus
is useful. still, nice to know you can parrot doctrine with the best of
them!

> > otoh, an AVLB conversion of a maus might be able to carry a bridge
big
> > enough to carry another maus.
> 
> No AVLBs in WWII,

fair enough.

> and no, it wouldn't.	Do you know what a MLC 120 (I
> think that's what the website listed earlier said it weighed) bridge
> looks like? 

nope, but i know the AVLB conversion of the Challenger can put down a
bridge which can carry other Challengers. it won't carry them very far,
though.

> > >  How long does it take to unload?  Of course, much
> > > cheaper and easier to drop 5 inch rocket off P-47, but that
applies to
> > > all tanks.  Except that if I drop a 5 inch rocket on a force of Pz
IVs,
> > > there are some left.  I drop on Maus, and the only one you got is
dead.
> > 
> > ratios are not that extreme; 3:1 at the very most. so, air attack on
3
> > maice or 9 pz4s: maybe you're left with 3 pz4s or 1 maus. same
difference,
> > roughly.
> 
> 3 Mauses, 9 Pz-IVs.  You loose 3 Mauses, or 3 Pz-IVs.

only if both are equally easy to kill. the point of the maus is that it
is
harder to kill, having thicker armour. thus, fewer are destroyed.

>  So you're left
> with either 6 Pz-IVs, or a train.  I know what wins.

the train, every time. this is why the world's language is english
(well,
english-american) and not mongol.

Tom