Shipbucket

A long time lurker who loves the drawings but has little skill.
But I would like to submit a challenge for any willing to try:
A modern gun Frigate/Destroyer.
The premise being the USN has realized the economic reality that in any protracted war you can not afford to shoot 2-4 (or more) million dollar missiles of different types at each incoming million dollar missile. Looking at the lessons of history, the USN has chosen to treat an ASCM as a modern Kamikaze. The economic solution being to put as much lead between the target and the incoming missile. The ship based idea: Guns.
Basic requirements: Use of the standard GT propulsion as found on the Tyco CG/Burke DDG. 2 sets for a DD design, 1 for an FF design. SPY series radar. Missile systems (if installed) limited to point defense (RAM/SeaRAM). NO VLS!!! Directors as required per systems installed.
Guns: Main battery comprising of the current 5"/62 and/or OTO 76mm. Secondary batteries of CIWS (Phalanx/Goalkeeper/etc). Manned guns (50cal, etc) where appropriate.
Baseline short range ASW sensor and MK32 tubes. May also employ the new anti-torpedo torpedo under development. No helo's since the intent is to maximize gun emplacement.
The intended use of the ship is an interior close escort to High Value Units (CVNs, LHDs, etc). The missile based CG/DDGs will deal with the longer ranged air/missile/ABM threat while the new DD/FF will provide that (relatively) inexpensive "wall of lead" to handle leakers and in-close ASW threats.

Have at it. It will be interesting to see what modern versions of the Fletcher DD or Atlanta CLAA you gentlemen can come up with.

IMO the best defense against ASHM's are still low-cost missiles. Guns are not really that effective against supersonic missiles.

The USN already treat missiles as Kamikaze planes. The lesson back then was that your best bet was to shoot it down before it started its attack run which is why they started to develop missiles in the first place.

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

these thoughts are in line with current technology. When thinking about the future, ASM missile will become faster. The best way to counter speed is with more speed. This is missiles were so effective when they first started deploying. Their speed far outpaced the danger at the time. Speed gives you time and makes fire control solutions easier to figure out. I believe if you counter a hyper-sonic ASM with a hypersonic SAM that you have only "leveled" the playing field. I personally do not believe in a "fair" fight. you need to give yourself the highest advantage possible. In this case it would seem to be more speed. The only thing I know of currently being studied is rail-gun technology. This technology promises to put a projectile in a specific place in an ass-load of a hurry.

this is a quote from Wikipedia ;

"Railguns have long existed as experimental technology but the mass, size and cost of the required power supplies have prevented railguns from becoming practical military weapons. However, in recent years, significant efforts have been made towards their development as feasible military technology. For example, in the late 2000s, the U.S. Navy tested a railgun that accelerates a 3.2 kg (7 pound) projectile to hypersonic velocities of approximately 2.4 kilometres per second (5,400 mph), about Mach 7.[3] They gave the project the Latin motto "Velocitas Eradico", Latin for "I, [who am] speed, eradicate".

This number is from a 2000 test firing, and I've seen numbers as high as Mach 10 in newer stories. I realize that ASM's will be sea skimming so you still have to deal with line of sight and all that. But think about the 2000 number, 5400 MPH. The time involved in getting a projectile out to 12 miles (horizon) in milliseconds. this translates into feet regarding how much an ASM has moved in the amount of time it would take a Mach 7 projectile to reach the ASM. That makes for one easy fire control solution. Using the projectile size of seven pounds mentioned in the wiki article and you have one dead ass cruise missile. Now think about how much a seven pound projectile costs compared to an $800,000 ESSM

I realize that the technology needs more development before its deployed, but think about the possibilities. Then remember the old adage "everything old is new again" I personally believe that we will again see gunships, like the one envisioned with this challenge, in the future. I will see if I can think of a good platform from the challenge

If speed is what you want why piddle around at a measly mach 10? Go straight for lightspeed. Laser based CIWS are going to be ready long before high RoF railguns. Both platforms have some basic problems though, namely that lasers are strictly line of sight and rail guns are balistic and unlikely to be able to produce a high enough rate of fire to compensate for it.
That means you'll need missiles for long range air defence. And with ofboard targeting becoming more and more of a thing they can engage at ever increasing ranges as well.

_________________
“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

Worklist

Source Materiel is always welcome.

Railguns and directed energy weapons get massively over-hyped in the media compared to the actual uses they are being developed for in reality.

For local area air defence applications, both suffer from the problem that the atmosphere at sea level is both (a) very thick and (b) very opaque. I don't have the spreadsheets on my home machine, but a hypervelocity projectile will be subjected to a deceleration of tens of gravities at sea level. The primary use case for railguns is long range bombardment, where they are fired steeply into the upper atmosphere to reduce drag. The second role propsed, ABM defence, uses very similar trajectories (up then across).

Weapons such as the Blitzer railgun and basically all the solid state laser projects (Laser Phalanx, laser Millenium gun etc) are about point defence - particularly defending bases against RAM attack in hot and dry places. This requires very fast reaction times, but only short ranges (CIWS). Water vapour is excellent at absorbing IR, so greatly limiting the performance of lasers when firing horizontally.

The other two purposes for DEW - specifically IR lasers - are providing less-lethal methods to defeat small boats at short range (but greater than 750m or whatever the self-destruct range of RPG-7 is) and ABM - the latter by firing straight up thus through less of the soup at sea level. There is of course, the question of HPM weapons, but these are also subject to environmental limitations and may well end up being integrated with the radars themselves.
At 2.4KPS it will take 8 seconds - ignoring any drag. The incoming missile - assuming SS-N-27 attack stage - will have covered approximately 8Km in that time. Railgun projectiles will in fact be small guided weapons, possibly similar to the DART projectiles fired from the Oto 76mm. As to whether they will actually be cheaper than a guided missile, I wouldn't be so sure - given the massive acceleration and EM environment on launch, per pound they will almost certainly end up being more expensive than a conventional missile, the question will be; how much more?

Of course, this is not to say that railguns and DEW are not going to be on future ships - they almost certainly will. However the limitations of the physics involved make it unlikely that they will completely displace missiles soon. *Eventually* they may well do, however. (I worked out that they should have a much lower carbon footprint! )

RP1

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"Yes siree, the excitement never stops." Togusa, Ghost in the Shell

I don't believe in that you need faster missiles to take down fast missiles. that missile you are going to take down is coming toward you, so you don't need an missile to outrun it. What I think is the best way to defend an fast missile is have bigger detection range than we have today, so you can detect it earlier and thus launch you'r missile much earlier. thus speed is not so important, okay some speed is okay. it need to reach that missile within an given time.

or the attacker just develop an missile that can outsmart you'r radars and jam you at the same time. then you are f***. something similar perhaps a bit more high tech than Naval strike missile, and they do already outsmart an radar, jam all communication, and have tactical skills if launched together with multiple missiles, and can self detect and chose target... oh wait what was we talking about (When shall I learn to not stick my head up my ar**!)

a modern DD already exists in the format of the Korean KDX-2 and Japaneses Mursame to Akizuki family. To me a modern DD is simply a ship that doesn't have a full AAW suite and can preform strike (gun and missile) missions.

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Supreme Commander of the Astrofleets