Battleship armor was not a constant. It was an ever evolving concept that saw
continuous changes in metallurgy, manufacturing, and structural arrangement. In other words, armor was continuously
improving … at least until the post-WWII years at which point it was fairly
abruptly abandoned for reasons that remain a mystery (though not for lack of
undocumented speculation!). As such, it
is reasonable to expect that the more modern the ship, the better the armor
protection. Given that a ship’s design
is locked in at the moment it is laid down, the following list shows the dates
that various representative battleships were laid down. This chronological list suggests that the
effectiveness of the ship’s armor scheme was greatest on the latter ships
and least effective on the earlier ships.
Thus, the Iowa class would have been the ultimate in battleship armor
development both in terms of metallurgy and structural arrangement. Of course, we’ll never know for sure.
There’s no particular point to this post, just an
interesting observation and speculation.
 |
| Iowa Class Armor Scheme Cross Section - note the internal main belt and incline |
How about we put on reactive armor like what Ukraine puts on the tanks we sent them? Much like below? With drone jammers and modern explosive reactive armor, heck even buy navalized versions for the armor Ukraine used for below:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/10/07/ukraines-up-armored-drone-jamming-m-1a1-abrams-tanks-are-the-ultimate-m-1a1s/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/01/14/the-ukrainians-m-1-tanks-already-have-thick-armor-the-tankers-are-adding-more/
We can put explosive reactive armor on our ships like Ukraine and tanks? And of course "cope cages" to defend against drones much like how Ukraine modified their tanks we gave them.
https://www.twz.com/land/ukrainian-m1-abrams-tanks-get-elaborate-cope-cages-soviet-explosive-reactive-armor
Of course I make no claims to be an experts so maybe someone who knows more can add in but I think we can just start putting add-on reactive armor to our ships. Maybe...have the navy already did studies sometime somewhere?
Reactive armor is an interesting concept but I doubt it would be effective or practical. It's one thing to stop or mitigate a tiny rocket impacting a tank but it's inconceivable that we could stop or mitigate a several thousand pound missile impacting at Mach+ speeds. The degree of 'reaction' required would likely blow a gigantic hole in the side of the ship. Remember that ships have NO armor so even the reactive armor burst would be devastating!
DeleteA ship's reactive armor takes the form of close in weapon systems. What can, and should, do is add many more such units to each ship.
Reactive armour is designed to defeat a shaped charge.
DeleteThe explosion of the reactive armour disrupts the jet formed by the shaped charge, turning what was supposed to be a plasma jet into useless cloud.
More elaborate ATGMs
have dual warheads, a small leading warhead to trigger the reactive armour, then the main shaped charge can blow thru the main metal or composite armour.
ASHM aren't shaped charge warheads, so no reactive on ships.
A better tank analogy is the Trophy system which we already have in the form of CIWS, albeit insufficiently numerous.
Delete"ASHM aren't shaped charge warheads, so no reactive on ships."
DeleteTo be precise, that's not entirely true - there are a fair number of Russian designs which utilise shaped charge warheads. The significantly larger size of these missiles (Kayak is 3 times the diameter of TOW) versus ATGM allows the shaped charge jet to be larger and punch deeper into the hull, with the intent to cause damage to the ship from the blast wave of detonation and the shaped charge jet punching deeply through multiple unarmored bulkheads to cause penetration into the ship and lighting compartments on fire.
It's just not feasible to protect against a shaped charge of this size using ERA, which is why the protection measures are jamming (analogous to IR jammers like Shtora and lazer dazzlers on tanks) and firing ESSM to intercept the missile at the radar horizon, with point defenses being the last line of defense.
That said, it's true that the vast majority of antiship warheads are using HE or blast fragmentation, which are just as lethal as shaped charges (if not more so, given all the explosives weight is being dedicated to making as big a localised explosion as possible, instead of a shaped charge jet).
"there are a fair number of Russian designs which utilise shaped charge warheads."
DeleteI'm unaware of any VERIFIED claims of anti-ship missiles with shaped charge warheads. Russia makes lots of claims about all manner of things and most turn out to be false or propaganda. Do you have a link or reference to an AUTHORITATIVE documentation of a Russian missile with shaped charge warhead?
One reason I'm skeptical is because there is no ship in the world with armor sufficient to require a shaped charge warhead!
I'll be interested to see what you can find.
"One reason I'm skeptical is because there is no ship in the world with armor sufficient to require a shaped charge warhead!"
DeleteNot today, but definitely in the past.
The main examples are the Styx missile and it's Chinese deriviative, the Silkworm, which collectively comprise the most produced antiship missiles in the world. The Soviets designed the Styx during the 50s, the time period when NATO still had large numbers of heavily armored ships in its fleet - which is why it's a 1000 lbs warhead in a missile that's 2 feet wide, giving it a significant larger diameter for a shaped charge jet (TOW is only a 7 inch diameter). The P-15 has been well studied by the US; post German reunification, some 200 missiles from East German stocks were given to the US to further missile defense efforts.
There's also the Kh-22, which has a shaped charge warhead even larger than the Styx, flies supersonic at Mach 3, and engages in a popup dive attack aimed at the deck (as opposed to Styx, which was intended to attack the belt).
Also, while our aircraft carriers are not armored, they are very large warships, and being big is a defense in and of itself - the British battlecruisers at Jutland were doing decently well absorbing fire from the Germans, despite only having cruiser armor, because they were battleship sized.
There's a counterintuitive value in using a shaped charge warhead against an unarmored ship, btw: the shaped charge triggers on impact. This means that your fusing is a significantly easier proposition in the 60s, even into the 90s, when variable fusing was a challenge for missiles. A delay action warhead holds the risk of overpenetration on a smaller warship, or failing to go deep on a larger ship. A HEAT warhead solves that problem by just blasting a large hole on impact, further damaging the ship by fires and blast overpressure.
DeleteThat said, in the modern era, electronic fusing is significantly more sophisticated than 90s mechanical fusing, so you don't actually need to make a shaped charge warhead, you can just use a blast fragmentation warhead (which also allows your antiship missile a secondary use as a land attack missile).
And for a linked example there is below. I would think that a taken apart and modified shaped charged warhead is proof it is/was in fact a shaped charged warhead to quote from below (it was modified to put on remote controlled vessel as stated below):
DeleteThe warhead is from a P-20 Styx anti-ship missile. This is a Soviet-era weapon and, while still in service in Russia, is generally viewed as obsolete. It has a noticeably powerful warhead though, it’s main merit. Both Russia and Ukraine likely have easy access to this type of warhead.
The warhead is mounted on a crude wooden frame in the forward deck of the boat. It is a ‘4G20′ model which is associated with P-20 export model variants of the Styx missile. It weighs just under 500kg (1,100lb) of TGAG-5 explosives which is 60% TNT, 20% RDX, 15% aluminum powder and 5% phlegmatizing wax. For context, this is over twice the size of the Harpoon anti-ship missiles’ warhead.
Interestingly, the Houthi Movement has also used this type of warhead on some of its explosive USVs. The Houthi’s had access to these warheads from legacy Yemeni Navy stocks so there is no suggestion of a direct link to this new vessel.
The warhead has a shaped charge at the front to punch a large hole in the ship before the main charge detonates, thus causing more damage. This is described as a high-explosive-cumulative charge. In the missile the shaped charge is facing slightly downwards to cause maximum damage. On the USV however it is desirable to direct the shaped charge directly forward, so the whole warhead has been mounted at an angle. While the stand-off detonation from the USV is less desirable than the penetrating hit of the missile, the size of the warhead makes this USV formidable.
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2024/04/sea-drone-found-in-black-sea-is-american-boat-with-massive-soviet-warhead/
While not exactly Russian, Houthi has been known to use shaped charged antiship missiles as shown below and West Point should be an AUTHORITATIVE documentation as linked below ASBM is Anti Ship Ballistic Missile in case you do not want to go to link:
Deleteonly exists to suggest two types of ASBM are regularly used in Houthi service: The first, probably more numerous, is the liquid-fuel Mohit, which is a converted SA-2 surface-to-air missile with a range of about 275 kilometers and an electro-optical infrared seeker.124 Use of this system is likely because the components—SA-2 SAMs—are still available in significant numbers and have been regularly employed by the Houthis in a surface-to-surface role (as the Houthi Qahir-1). The other—which the DIA says has been used in the current conflictby—is the solid-fuel Asef, a copy of Iran’s Khaleej-e Fars (the navalized Fateh-110) missile with a range of at least 300 kilometers and also an electro-optical infrared seeker.125
Both these missiles have the advantage of a much large warhead (350 kilograms for the Mohit, 450 kilograms for the Asef) versus either Houthi drones (15-40 kilograms) or cruise missiles (165 kilograms with shaped-charge armor-piercing effects).
And from Iran and anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCM):
Interceptions of Houthi arms-smuggling vessels have revealed no ASCM types other than the Mandab-2, with its distinctive fuselage, engine, and multi-directional shaped-charge warhead. The Houthis have received Quds-series land attack cruise missiles from Iran
https://ctc.westpoint.edu/assessing-the-houthi-war-effort-since-october-2023/
The Styx missile was assessed to be capable of forming a 2 foot diameter shapr charge.jet penetrating 60 to 90 inches. On the low end, thats 5 times the Iowa's belt armor, or 3 times the turret armor.
DeleteThe more concerning issue is that this was a missile cheap enough to be fured in the hundreds.
"The Styx missile was assessed to be capable of forming a 2 foot diameter shapr charge.jet penetrating 60 to 90 inches."
DeleteI have heard that many times and have never been able to find a link to any actual documentation of how that was arrived at. Do you have any information? I suspect it's one of those things that isn't true but just gets repeated often enough that it has come to be accepted.
I find it hard to believe that WW2 battleship armor, designed to stop 2700 lb armor piercing shells, wouldn't be effective against modern anti-ship missiles.
ReplyDeleteLutefisk
The armor would be extremely effective especially since modern missiles have no armor piercing ability. The challenge in WWII was not stopping the 2700 lb shell, it was negating the armor piercing capability.
DeleteCould it tho? I'm unaware of any battleship in WW2 whose deck armor could have defeated our 16" AP shells, even the Yamato, where the terminal velocity would be mach 2 at a 60 degree plunge.
DeleteKh-22 dives at a 60 degree angle, impacting at mach 3. That's faster than 16" AP shells.
"I'm unaware of any battleship in WW2 whose deck armor could have defeated our 16" AP shells"
DeleteYou seem unaware of actual armor design and unaware of the purpose of armor.
Battleship armor was designed to provide immunity against 16" plunging fire within a certain envelope of range and angle (among other factors). Here's a nice writeup with some basics about armor: Armor
You seem to believe that armor's only purpose and value is to provide 100% immunity and this is patently false. Read the "Armor for Dummies" post which is linked to the right of the post column. Armor serves multiple purposes and is invaluable even when it can't provide total invulnerability.
Deck armor is only 8 in thick, theres only sp much it can do
DeleteSure, but plunging fire was the main mechanism we intended to inflict damage on enemy ships. If it wasn't effective, nobody would be doing it.
Delete"Deck armor is only 8 in thick,"
DeleteYou seem not to understand the structure and purpose of deck armor. It was not a single layer of steel. It was multiple layers (decks) with the uppermost intended to detonate a bomb/shell and the lower layer then protecting the decks below.
No one has claimed that armor provides 100% invulnerability to every weapon past, present, and future. Armor is intended to mitigate damage so as to allow a ship to stay in a fight longer. In some cases, against some weapons, armor will provide immunity such as the designed immunity to plunging fire under certain circumstances. Or, battleship armor would be largely immune to cruiser caliber guns. And so on.
"plunging fire was the main mechanism we intended to inflict damage on enemy ships. If it wasn't effective, nobody would be doing it."
DeletePlunging fire was not a choice, it was a result of the laws of physics. A large caliber gun, fired at range, must follow a ballistic arc which is another way of saying plunging fire. Only at very close ranges would guns fire at somewhat horizontal angles.
You seem to think that if we were to build a modern battleship that we'd build an exact duplicate of a WWII battleship. That would be foolish. If modern missiles largely use popup or diving trajectories, the modern ship designer would alter the armor scheme to address that threat, right?
"You seem to think that if we were to build a modern battleship that we'd build an exact duplicate of a WWII battleship. That would be foolish. If modern missiles largely use popup or diving trajectories, the modern ship designer would alter the armor scheme to address that threat, right?"
DeleteThe challenge with armoring against missiles is really that unlike guns, you have two bands that are equally capable of being threatened.
What the above Anons have failed to appreciate is that the point of deck armor is to allow the battleship to weather the plunging fire until it gets into close range brawls. An Iowa's deck has a zone of immunity from 16"/45 shells at 18,000 to 30,000 yards; below that band, the shells could penetrate the deck armor, but that's a moot point because that's where the belt armor comes into play. With the use of scouting planes, radar, and good seamanship, we can maneuver our Iowa to keep in the most advantageous position possible for us to weather incoming gunfire, taking it on the deck and the belt as needed.
The problem with missiles is that at any range, they'll equally attack the belt and the deck based on their programming, so both the belt and the deck need to be sufficiently armored. Antiship missiles can do both popup and belt attacks, so that means we need belt and deck armor. While the adage is that steel is cheap, and armor is certainly cheaper than softkill EW and decoys, we'll definitely have to pay for it in terms of fuel bunkerage*, size and speed (or spend more on powerplants to get more speed, like the Iowas).
On the other hand, how much more costly would an armored DDG be? Burkes are already 1.8 billion dollars, afterall. If we can afford that, surely we could afford to spend maybe 2.5 billion on an armored warship? Besides, do we really need ships to go fast? 15 knots cruise, 25 knots flank sounds like a perfectly reasonable speed to me!
*Perhaps we need to reconsider reviving the nuclear powered CGNs to address the fuel issue! I have a soft spot in my heart for Long Beach and Virginia.
"The challenge with armoring against missiles"
DeleteYour comment is one of the better ones I've seen. Well done!
So many people seem to think that just because there exists a weapon, somewhere, that can defeat armor that armor has no value and can never have any value or effectiveness and that's simply not true. I've pointed out the immense value of armor above and beyond totally stopping every weapon ever known.
Beyond that, though, there is another aspect that no one has recognized and that is that armor is not, doesn't have to be, a simple, single plate of steel. Just as torpedo armor evolved into a SYSTEM of layers and voids, so to, I would assume, any ship armor would be a SYSTEM of layers with different properties, voids, and other measures that, in their totality, would be sufficient to protect against even the largest missiles. Note that when I say 'protect' I don't necessarily mean total invulnerability (though that would be nice!) but, instead, total survivability so that the ship can absorb multiple hits and still fight and function. Hmm ... I may have to do a post on this.
Again, excellent comment.
Something to consider. I've seen video of the SM-6 test shot against ex-Vandergrift. The missile went right through the bridge and buried itself in CIC before detonating. Yes, a 140lb warhead is relatively small potatoes, all things considered, but this is still a one ton missile impacting at Mach 3.
DeleteHad this been a live ship with a live crew, it would have been instantly mission killed. Can't steer the ship without the pilot house; can't fight the ship when the CIC is on fire and all the crew inside are dead.
We really need to look more into supersonic antiship missiles of our own.
'"cope cages" to defend against drones'
ReplyDeleteI would think that Phalanx 20mm CIWS would be perfect against aerial drones and Goalkeeper 30mm CIWS with HE rounds would be perfect against surface drones.
Lutefisk
It would be wonderful to see a WWII era battleship sail into the straits at the mouth of the Red Sea and invite the Houthis to do their best against it. Unfortunately there may be little reason to believe that it could do them much damage either.
ReplyDelete"Unfortunately there may be little reason to believe that it could do them much damage either."
DeleteOpen your operational imagination up a bit! A BB cruising up and down the coast could lay waste to every target within 20 miles of the coast, destroy the ports that are receiving incoming missiles and supplies from Iran, sink Iranian supply ships, and counterbattery missile shots from close range. Put some SpecOps teams ashore to locate manufacturing and storage locations for drones and missiles and have them call in naval gunfire. Put constant drones in the air and the Houthis couldn't make a move without being seen and subjected to large caliber gunfire. And so on.
We're just no used to waging real war so you're not used to thinking like that.
Yes, this is certainly true.
DeleteDuring the Falklands campaign I remember all the concerns that the British had about losing their precious aircraft carrier HMS Invincible - if the 1914 incarnation of HMS Invincible with its massive guns and heavy armor had somehow magically been reincarnated the war would have been over PDQ.
"A BB cruising up and down the coast could lay waste to every target within 20 miles of the coast, destroy the ports ..." And yet the US has withdrawn her aircraft carrier from those waters. Does that mean that that carrier group, with all its fighter-bombers, can't do that job?
Delete"Does that mean that that carrier group, with all its fighter-bombers, can't do that job?"
DeleteOf course a carrier group could do the job. What we lack is the will to do it. We could have forty battleships and it wouldn't do any good because we don't have the will to use them.
We've also forgotten the concept of "weight of fire". One CWIS forward and one after won't be enough to stop a sizable volley of missiles. Even with SeaRAM launchers. There was a reason ships started WW2 with lower numbers of defensive weapons that increased substantially til the end of the war. It required larger numbers of platforms to put enough metal into the air to counter the threat, Armor is only half the equation.
ReplyDeleteThe reason for the vast increase in anti-aircraft guns over the course of the war was partly the increased threat from aircraft but, mostly, the inherent inaccuracy of the guns of the time. Today, we believe that our anti-aircraft weaponry is much more accurate (despite all evidence indicating the opposite!) and, therefore, we don't need as many weapons. Even so, a SeaRAM, for example, has only 11 shots. Unless it's nearly 100% accurate - and fatal - that's nowhere near enough shots. Even if it is 100% accurate and fatal, that's still not many shots when you might potentially face dozens of incoming missiles.
DeleteWe need to return to the WWII philosophy that you can't have enough anti-aircraft weapons, regardless of their accuracy.
This also illustrates the folly of the Navy's refusal to test defensive weapons under realistic conditions. It would be useful (mandatory is the better word) to know the real world accuracy of SeaRAM, CIWS, and others.
TBF today’s radar-controlled 20mm and 30mm anti-aircraft weaponry is far more accurate than the eyeball directed guns of WW2.
DeleteTrue, but the old adage of "quantity has a quality all of its own" does come into play. I'm curious as to manual backups to any of the radar controlled anti-aircraft weapons.
DeleteYou'll want to look at the Med - Spain has the Meroka turret, with a dozen 20mm guns, and the Italians have DARDO turret with twin bofors.
DeleteThese madlads have also made a super light 76mm gun to act as their RAM equivalent. Italians.