Fullbore USS St Paul

[kham]

What a Girl
As Sal puts it
And he's right. When did the Navy take the fork in road, and decide that serious metal firepower was unnecessary?
War hasn't changed. Just the morons that think they know what they are talking about have
With Midway 75 coming up, and going over things, yeah. Some old school ideas need to come back
We're probably gonna need them

[Mynock]

He makes a good point.....if you want a real LTS take a BB from 70 years ago and put a nuke plant in it.

[kham]

Yeah
The BB-size guns are gone though, not for tech reasons, but just because there are no Gunners Mate's around any more who would know what they were doing. And in guns that big, that's a BFD. And will kill you. See USS Iowa explosion for details

[Mynock]

The rail guns they're cooking up would look nice in a triple mount.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj1b8wh2Ul4

[kham]

They'd be line-of-sight only though. No bursting charges, but I imagine the KE would be substantial. You won't see it. They really haven't thought that whole railgun thing through. It's another of the transformational!! toys that sound cool, but have limits as actual weapons systems. The high-energy laser system would actually be better

[jadokast98]

The high-energy laser system would actually be better

Wow, that bad, huh? During certain conditions lasers are great. But mist, fog and haze really take a toll on the.effectiveness of any system. Works great when mounted on an airframe to take out a ballistic weapon at an altitude. They had problems in the desert at White Sands Missile Range back in the 80s. Great in test conditions but they knew that there would be atmospheric limitations.

[kham]

Yes, they have been making progress on that
But it would be ideal as a defence weapon against incoming missiles. And against little retard waaalllluuu snackbar iranian bayliners , it would be fucking awesome to turn them into screaming molten fibreglass if you gonna have a high-tech system, don't stop using it on ONLY things, you use it on the fucking scumbags as a weapon which is also terrifying. Especially if the beam is invisible. Think having them just burst into screaming flames or EXPLODE be a laugh? I fucking do

[jadokast98]

We had Counter IED systems that flew ahead of a convoy and their intent was to jam a command signal. Well... inadvertently the signal would cause gasoline to catch fire. Great if you had that whole "target rich environment ", not so much when Abu is just trying to get to work like the guy in front.

Life was so much easier in the 80s when bad guys wore uniforms...

The Bayliner scenario is definitely doable like the Stark scenario, agains the Iranian swarm tactic too. I know the powers that be have a R.O.E. for lasers; water reflects so no unintended targets in the AO. Also only enough, you can't use it to blind the enemy. One blind bad guy getting plucked from the water and brought back home is going to be a victory for them.

[kham]

One tactic they had batted around a while back, was use the Airborne Laser version, as a weapon of liquidation, and psyops; you pick out some scumbag in the crowd, doing his usual ragebitch imitation , target, and hit him with a max power blast; this would of course make him explode. Without any warning, sound or whistle of a bomb. Maybe just a crack and then a meat-explosion
Fuck with their Heads

[water_bug_62208]

Ah, yes, USS Saint Paul... she was the heavy cruiser featured in the movie, In Harm's Way, starring John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Patricia Neal, Burgess Meredith, and Henry Fonda. And, yes, just like there still needs to be a gun on a warplane in these modern times, there still needs to be some form of "old time" naval artillery on warships. At least the Ticonderoga and Arleigh Burke classes carry 5-inch mounts.