From:     "Edward J. Rudnicki" (FSAC-SID) <erudnick@pica.army.mil>
Subject:  Re: Marine Aircover <was New Carrier Plan>
Organization: NCR Corporation -- Law Department
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 14:40:36 GMT


From     "Edward J. Rudnicki" (FSAC-SID) <erudnick@pica.army.mil>


Arthur Leung writes:
#there has been a lot of discussion about how hard it is
#        1 - penetrate BB armor
#        2 - sink a BB
#        3 - repaint a BB
#given the average weapons of today.

Someone else posted about exSov ASMs with 500 kg and 1000 kg warheads,
and the usual answer is that they'd have little effect on a BB because
they would simply burst on the surface of the armor.

I've been thinking about this a bit. The AP projectiles that IOWA class
ships are meant to shrug off contain <50 lb of HE, and that HE is 
chosed on the basis of shock insensitivity rather than performance.

A 1000 kg ASM warhead is another matter. Since it sees fairly low
stresses during flight, the proportion of HE filler should be roughly
comparable to an aircraft bomb. A 2000 lb Mk 84 contains about 1000 lb
of HE, so our warhead should contain about 500 kg of HE filler, give 
or take. Again, since this is a low stress/shock situation, you can use
good filler, some sort of high RDX composition (Comp A series or
equivalent). This amount of HE going off next to a ship is going to 
cause SERIOUS blast damage. If the missile hits above the belt it's
even worse. The BB-vs-BB-critical parts of the ship (engineering, main
battery, conning tower) will no doubt survive, but much of the superstructure,
missiles, secondary armament, masts, electronics, stacks, etc. may not
fare all that well. Phalanx doesn't necessarily improve the situation, 
since our system's kill mechanism is (you guessed it) detonation of the
missile warhead. The ship will survive such a hit, but will not be fully
mission-capable afterwards. All IMHO of course - comments requested.



#a scenario might be for coast defence artillery to fire
#DPICM (cluster) and try and scrub the topsides.  while

An interesting thought. I don't know that any coastal artillery systems
use DPICM, because the high MV (and pressure) required for short TOF and
flat trajectory are deleterious to DPICM. Since coastal guns fire in
low quadrant elevations, continued course changes by the ship toward and
away from shore would slow down the rate of fire of this hypothetical
DPICM through the need to constantly change the time fuze settings, and
would also lead to submunition ejection at non-optimum heights. Lastly,
these coastal guns would quickly be subjected to the mother of all
counterbattery fire. All this of course assumes that the BB is close
enough inshore for the coastal guns to hit it.



On the topic of "scrubbing topsides", I was discussing this sort of thing
with a gunner's mate on I believe it was USS YORKTOWN. He said that if
they (for Lord knows what reason) were engaging a ship with the 5 inch
mounts the tactic they would use is to fire prox fuzed rounds targeted 
just above the ship to strip her of her fire control sensors, and then
engage with delay fuzed HE to inflict substantial damage. Anybody run 
into this sort of thing?


Ed Rudnicki     erudnick@pica.army.mil     All disclaimers apply
"War must be looked upon as a business, and subject, like any other business,
to business principles. War is the business of destruction of life and
property of an enemy.....The most deadly and destructive implements of war
are the most humane, and the producers of them may justly be looked upon as
humanitarians."     ----- Hudson Maxim (the other Maxim)

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