How could a Arleigh Burke Flight IIA defend itself from ground forces?

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Sea Skimmer
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Re: How could a Arleigh Burke Flight IIA defend itself from ground forces?

Post by Sea Skimmer »

stardust wrote:What Jub said. Good to know.

I was more thinking if they could spot tank columns alongside a riverbank, that their missiles and gun system would outrange any tank based weapon. But feel free to prove me wrong!
The 5/54 would outrange tank cannon, but only when you reach 17-18km and at that point existing 5in caliber ammunition from a single gun barrel would just not be effective against moving tanks. Tomahawk missiles are not suitable for attacking moving tanks ashore. Vague chances would exist to score hits, but the destroyer isn't equipped with the systems needed to make that useful. They would have value against artillery pieces, if said could be located, which is iffy since SPY-1 radar isn't designed for counter battery missions and has very limited if any ability to do so against cannon type weapons, locating rockets and missile launches is much easier as they have much larger radar signatures. A 155mm shell is almost a stealth target just from being small, missiles, as well as mortar rounds, have big fins which make them way easier to detect with an S-band radar.

The X-band SPY-3 does have a dedicated counter battery mode but that's only on the Ford class aircraft carrier, and to be but not yet fitted to the DDG-1000 hulls which are not yet operational. It may never see service on anything else as the USN is now designing a much more advanced radar for future Flight III DDG-51s in the mid 2020s with largely classified capabilities and design goals.

Now meanwhile the odds of the destroyer detecting a concealed tank on the shore are pretty damn low, a bit ironically the best USN optical fire control systems are actually on the ESSM illuminators for aircraft carriers and amphibious ships, and if the tank was not detected before it fired then unless the range is over 5,000m it would stand a high chance of scoring a first round hit on or near a specific vital spot on the destroyer, like the CIC or the Mk41 silos, or the 5in handling room, all of which are above the water line.

Seriously back in the cold war the USN assumed its 5in 54cal gun armed destroyers would loose to the Soviets 130mm S4 mobile coastal gun (a towed weapon no less) and modern mobile artillery pieces are far more capable. The original solution to that was a naval 175mm gun, as all the old cruisers and battleships were leaving the fleet, which morphed (due to army abandoning 175mm) into the 8in Mk71. But that things thunder was stolen by the short lived reactivation of the Iowa class... and after the Iowa class went away the present efforts for extended range guided ammo and the 155mm AGS began...and have all faltered in turn largely due to unrealistic and shifting requirements. Plus the lack of pressing need and the enormous leaps taken by guided artillery missiles like GMLRS, which work both ways too, anyone who can build a computer can build something like GMLRS. It might not work as well or be as cheap or reliable, but if just enough of them work that doesn't matter.
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Re: How could a Arleigh Burke Flight IIA defend itself from ground forces?

Post by Pelranius »

Speaking of Arleigh Burkes and bombardment duty, IIRC, Tom Clancy had the Pacific Fleet do exactly that on the Chinese coast in the Bear and the Dragon (even 13 year old me thought that was pretty stupid at the time). And Chinese tanks armed with with 115 mm cannons!

It just shows you that the only non NATO military that Clancy knew anything about was the 1980s Soviet military.
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Re: How could a Arleigh Burke Flight IIA defend itself from ground forces?

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That's open to question too, remember Red Storm Rising's main combat parts were all written by Larry Bond.

Funny China is also one of the few countries left that still fields a serious amount of sea coast artillery, though none appears to have ever been heavier then 130mm; generally in the form of naval pattern turrets they copied from the Soviets and then installed on concrete bases, or in some cases on rails to slide out from shelter bunkers. Though I'd wonder how much of that is still fully operational now vs even 10 years ago now that the Chinese Navy has managed to become a functionally independent service branch. Multiple rocket launchers really stole the remaining thunder of these sorts of defenses several decades ago. But if you already own the guns and ammo they've still got a certain value, and have some utility in situations missiles or rockets would not, such as basically asserting control of a harbor in a huge country where basic law and order are weaker then the government would like it to be.
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Re: How could a Arleigh Burke Flight IIA defend itself from ground forces?

Post by Elheru Aran »

Random question: could not the Arleigh Burke conduct recon with its helicopter or possibly drones (I don't know if they are standard equipment at this point? kinda don't think so) and set GPS coordinates that they could fire the Tomahawks at, without needing forward observers or whatever? Granted this would be of little use against mobile targets like tanks, but if there were emplaced positions to fire at...
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Re: How could a Arleigh Burke Flight IIA defend itself from ground forces?

Post by Jub »

Elheru Aran wrote:Random question: could not the Arleigh Burke conduct recon with its helicopter or possibly drones (I don't know if they are standard equipment at this point? kinda don't think so) and set GPS coordinates that they could fire the Tomahawks at, without needing forward observers or whatever? Granted this would be of little use against mobile targets like tanks, but if there were emplaced positions to fire at...
Wouldn't you want to send your only mobile eyes out alone over hostile territory? Helicopters are fragile and make easy targets for most forms of ground based AA, let alone actual aircraft. If the enemy can maintain and deploy a decent number of T-72s I would expect them to have some AA. Plus, you really aren't gain much in risking them.
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Re: How could a Arleigh Burke Flight IIA defend itself from ground forces?

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Yeah the Seahawk is not a platform for recon over land. Maybe in a SOF we gotta sneak up on the terrorists kind of situation at night, but not against a conventional mechanized force. Recon helicopters are built physically small for good reasons, while serious attack helicopters have armor! The Seahawks do have a FLIR-laser turret, and should be able to locate precise targets given a chance, but they'd be shot down by just about anything. Its a transport....loaded down with a huge amount of weight of ASW gear!

Some Burkes have small Scan Eagle drones, but that's also not really an amazing overland system either (it can fly a long time, but not high, or fast, like 30mph, or far from the ship), nor is Firescout which is very rare on destroyer decks, and in general, and basically a failure technically in its small form, leading the new Bell 407 based Firescout C with absolutely nothing in common with the original except the control equipment. Scan Eagle IIRC has no laser, so it can't really generate precise target locations suitable for targeting a Tomahawk where you really need the location within say 10m for the missile to be effective, unless the target is very soft and then up to 30m locating error might be acceptable for an air burst. But not any greater, its only a 1,000lb warhead at the end of the day.

This is pretty directly linked to why LCS became a thing, all these new unmanned systems just don't fit on existing hulls designed in the 1980s before any of this was a consideration. Its not just a matter of finding a place to put them in a hanger space for the dedicated spares, control equipment and new people, all completely different from the equipment needed for a Seahawk present a major problem. And DDG-51 is a low margins ship, they used up about all the margin it ever had to put on the helicopter hanger in Flight IIA. An attempt to put on a composite deckhouse to hold the Remote Minehunting drone failed; structure so lightweight it constantly cracks up in service. So that halted at nine hulls converted. Which in fairness has not been a huge problem because RMS itself has never worked right; reliability is too shitty and its close to being abandon as a program.

Also as someone else already pointed out, destroyers just aren't really setup to target land attack Tomahawks at all. They don't have a dedicated space to do this in, that work is normally done shore side or on a CVN or Amphibious ship which has dedicated operational command spaces for those kind of purposes distinct from the CIC. Modern warships are entirely meant to be part of a networked team.
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Re: How could a Arleigh Burke Flight IIA defend itself from ground forces?

Post by FancyDarcy »

Jub wrote:
Elheru Aran wrote:Random question: could not the Arleigh Burke conduct recon with its helicopter or possibly drones (I don't know if they are standard equipment at this point? kinda don't think so) and set GPS coordinates that they could fire the Tomahawks at, without needing forward observers or whatever? Granted this would be of little use against mobile targets like tanks, but if there were emplaced positions to fire at...
Wouldn't you want to send your only mobile eyes out alone over hostile territory? Helicopters are fragile and make easy targets for most forms of ground based AA, let alone actual aircraft. If the enemy can maintain and deploy a decent number of T-72s I would expect them to have some AA. Plus, you really aren't gain much in risking them.
What about smaller drones? I heard from somewhere that Burkes would occasionally carry.... unmanned drones around, which could be used as scouts.. These are probably smaller than the on-board helicopters, so I would imagine that a drone would be.... difficult to shoot down.

The destroyer is also outfitted for anti-ground self-defensive weapons....as the enemy is not expected to have a great presence in the air.

Sea Skimmer seems to have a.... exquisite grasp of... knowledge on these things. Mhmm.
I wonder how he... acquired such knowledge? I enjoy reading detailed informative information on these types of subjects. Is the Federation of American Scientists - MAN a decent source? How does it compare to globalsecurity.org or other sites? Thanks....
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Re: How could a Arleigh Burke Flight IIA defend itself from ground forces?

Post by Ziggy Stardust »

Why are you writing like that? You only used ONE of those ellipses correctly ...
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Re: How could a Arleigh Burke Flight IIA defend itself from ground forces?

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Fundamental problem with any kind of ship transiting a river through hostile teritory is ship is a big, slow, obvious target while ground forces can be easily hidden, can relocate quickly to avoid counter attack. Even an individual soldier with anti tank missile is a serious threat to destroyer in such situation. Since there is no serious tank level armor over vital areas few missile hits most likely could mission kill a destroyer. Ship just isn't the right tool to use to clear enemy ground forces in close quarters combat.

A destroyer while still at sea covertly deploying marines via boat to do reckon on enemy forces near canal may work. At least they could locate tanks and artillery pieces, ambush some of those if lucky and send coordinates to target Tomahawks.
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Re: How could a Arleigh Burke Flight IIA defend itself from ground forces?

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Sea Skimmer wrote: 2017-06-22 07:08pm That's open to question too, remember Red Storm Rising's main combat parts were all written by Larry Bond.
I enjoyed those.

A question - are you familiar with his other work and is it worth investing money in?
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Re: How could a Arleigh Burke Flight IIA defend itself from ground forces?

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Thanas wrote: 2017-07-25 05:03am I enjoyed those.

A question - are you familiar with his other work and is it worth investing money in?
I'm familiar with his other older work, and its all about the same style, he's a wargammer and behind the Harpoon tabletop game before he wrote anything so it kind of follows from that, the basic plot premises may have limited connection to reality but they can unfold in interesting manners.

Red Phoenix, which is Korean War 2 in an era when it was still sorta plausible conventionally, Vortex, where South Africa tries to stay racist,and The Enemy Within which is a look at what some real literal state sponsored terrorism might look like, from Iran naturally, were all pretty good reads to me back in the day. Dunno on anything newer then those, I think Red Phoenix now has a remash 2016 version which has been the only one to interest me. Believe almost all his novels are coauthored, but the style of those first three is just like Red Storm Rising.
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Re: How could a Arleigh Burke Flight IIA defend itself from ground forces?

Post by Thanas »

Thanks for the info, I will look if I can find some of his stuff in bookshops around here.
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