View Full Version : OT - Modern Ship Armor?
Why do modern ships today (CG's DG's FG's, etc.) have so little armor? Just read the Battle of the Falklands, most ships were one hit wonders.
Is it cost, weight, speed, stealth, or with todays weapons it just doesn't matter?
Some of todays ships beer can armor couldn't stand up to hit from a 50 cal!
I think it stems from that the idea that in the "gun/armor" race, thicker armor will always be defeated by a bigger gun. Plus, in the post WW2 era there was such an emphasis on nuke weapons (the biggest 'gun') that the idea of armor offering any real protection was gone.
Why do modern ships today (CG's DG's FG's, etc.) have so little armor? Just read the Battle of the Falklands, most ships were one hit wonders.
Is it cost, weight, speed, stealth, or with todays weapons it just doesn't matter?
Some of todays ships beer can armor couldn't stand up to hit from a 50 cal!
There are a couple of reasons for this.
One is that the armor vs gun concept has been replaced by missile vs anti-missile. Closing to gun range in a modern combat scenario is considered impractical, so "armor", instead of a passive system on or in the hull designed to defeat incoming shells, has morphed into an active system operating anywhere from a couple of hundred yards (Phalanx CIWS) to a several tens of miles (SM2ER) beyond the hull, designed to defeat incoming anti-ship missiles.
A second has to do with economics. Warships and their on-board weapons and C3I systems are very complex and expensive to build and operate, and not easily or quickly replaced or repaired. The $$ dictate that the numbers of major combat units in service are much smaller now than in days past, which in turn makes any engagement potentially far more decisive. Global scale conflicts between modern naval powers can (in theory) be won and lost over a period of days or weeks, rather than the several years of previous modern era wars. As a result, production and repair/refit capacity, in terms of an ongoing conflict, is virtually meaningless.
This, combined with the fact that critical sensor, guidance and communications systems cannot be hardened, means that a "kill", for all practical purposes, does not necessarily require that the target be "sunk". Destroy it's ability to detect and engage targets BVR, or coordinate with other elements in it's task force, and the target might as well be sunk. This is referred to as a "mission kill".
Take a look at operational capabilities of the AGM88 HARM, then look at the size of the warhead it carries, and you'll see what I mean.
The result of all this is that weapons don't have to be big enough to sink a FF, DD or CG sized ship in order to "kill" it, therefore ships of that type don't really need to protect themselves against such hits, as any hit is likely to "kill" it... with or without battleship type armored belts.
BTW, the Brit losses at the Falklands were due mostly to bad policy and tactics as well as inadequate design and AA defenses. The idea that a flight of A4's could get close enough to a fully manned and alert modern warship to score 10+ hits with dumb iron bombs boggles the mind.
JD
Firestorm
28 Jun 08, 00:00
BTW, the Brit losses at the Falklands were due mostly to bad policy and tactics as well as inadequate design and AA defenses. The idea that a flight of A4's could get close enough to a fully manned and alert modern warship to score 10+ hits with dumb iron bombs boggles the mind.
JD
Well considering the sad state the Royal Navy was in at that point due to the decades of budget cuts, I think they were lucky to have not lost more than what they did lose. If the Argentines would have waited a few months or year to attack the Falklands. The Hermes and the Invincible would have been sold or scrapped at that point and there would have been no way Britian would have been able to take the islands back by force at that point without any aircover.
What saved the Britons was the fact that the Argentine Air Force and Navy bought the "dumb iron bombs" without the manuals. They didn't know how to change the fusing to conform to their changed tactics and at what altitude the bombs armed themselves. If all or at least upwards of 90% of the bombs that hit RN ships had exploded the RN would have lost about a dozen ships.
There is some light armor on modern ships, mostly splinter armor for the CIC or modular bridge armor on the new German corvettes, who are expected to fight in littoral asymetric settings and are thus protected against HMG's.
Herman Hum
28 Jun 08, 06:12
The Hermes and the Invincible would have been sold or scrapped at that point and there would have been no way Britian would have been able to take the islands back by force at that point without any aircover.
It could well have been a Mexican standoff. Argentina wasn't able to counter even a single nuclear submarine. The SSNs could have kept any additional reinforcements or supplies from reaching the island. Maybe if every plane in the civilian air fleet was used, they could have kept enough supplies flowing.
Fairweather
28 Jun 08, 06:56
The biggest problem in my opinion, was not the tactics but the equipment. There hadn't been a proper missile war at that point (with both sides having more or less the same abilities) and no one was sure how it would work. Coventry was sunk largely because when seawolf tried to engage two targets at once, it found it to be to mathmaticaly difficult, and switched itself of.
BTW, the Brit losses at the Falklands were due mostly to bad policy and tactics as well as inadequate design and AA defenses. The idea that a flight of A4's could get close enough to a fully manned and alert modern warship to score 10+ hits with dumb iron bombs boggles the mind.
But this is my point, again and again we see multimillion dollar hitech hardware (defeated) being taking out with cheap low tech dumb weapons, I wonder how many of the British ships would have been saved with just better armor? There were WWII DD's that took 4 or 5 bomb hits and didn't sink, yet most of the British ships were lost after just a single hit.
Look at what happened in the gulf, the USN CGN Cole was taken out by a motorboat with bomb!
Did the Falklands or the Cole attack effect ship design in any way?
It should be noted that the bombs in the Falklands War were mostly 1000lb (my information anyways) and that was a large bomb in WWII. I am not sure that WWII ships would have stood up all that much better (Japanese carriers at Midway took how many 1000lb bombs?). I think HMS Coventry took 3 x 1000lb bombs and that would have done in most WWII DDs and probably CLs as well. HMS Sheffield probably would not have been lost if better salvage equipment was available and if the weather had been better. The one of the odd thing about the Falklands War was that to me it seemed that the RN had really neglected firefighting. I think that the Sheffield had only 6 sets of breathing apparatus that seems really low and they had a very short duration.
HMS York was lost at Crete in WWII from an explosive motorboat and she did have armour. Large amounts of explosives at close range are not healthy in any situation.
Did the Falklands or the Cole attack effect ship design in any way?
Yes, it did. In the case of the Falklands, two changes resulted directly from that war.
1) The upper structure (everything above the main deck) for new NATO ships would no longer consist of aluminium. Designers had done this to create greater stability by lowering the point of gravity as aluminium is lighter than steel. However, aluminium melts quicker than steel and that created havoc on the ships during a fire.
2) Anti missile systems were developed such as Phalanx and Goalkeeper against incoming missiles like Exocet and Harpoon.
Probably most affected were the German navy ships. From the 123 ("Brandenburg") class on they are not armored per se, but the bulkheads between groups of 2-3 compartments are armored and can be closed of with armored power-operated sliding doors (and are on battle stations). In addition to the keel the compartments are held together at main deck level by two (123) or three (124) heavily built/armored "frame-beams" containing all data/electrical connections. Ladders are not normal style ladders but stairwells that can be fully closed of, so you can bypass a smoke-filled deck levels. The theory being that you would lose just about one seventh of the ship to a missile hit, the missile blast blowing out between the bulkheads and smoke not being able to spread because of closed blast doors and independently maintained overpressure (citadels) in the unaffected compartments. Combined with the older "two island" concept (there is a secondary to every important facility: CIC, Central Engineering, Ship's hospital, Galley...) that should drastically enhance survival chances aginst a hit. The new "scattered" computing system in 124 ("Sachsen") provides additional redundancy because there is no more "central" computer, you can loose every computer in CIC and still be able to operate the radars, stay in Link and shoot missiles from auxiliary CIC. There are four damage control nodes in the ships with every single one of them fully manned on battle stations.
German ships still are the most "hardened" warships afloat AFAIK.
http://www.gamesquad.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=5&pictureid=161 "Sachsen"
The post-Cole 125 class will have four 27mm and 7 50.cal remote-controlled gunstations (numbers still not fixed but that's my info) equipped with infrared, laser range finder, stabilisation etc., that are coordinated by CIC and are specifically designed for assymetric warfare.
http://www.gamesquad.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=5&pictureid=160
Back to the Falklands:
Don't overestimate SSN's and underestimate the Argentine SSK's. The only thing that saved "Hermes" by one account I read, was a "plusminus-bug" introduced in an Argentine SSK's TDC during a refit...
Bullethead
28 Jun 08, 16:29
Some of today's major warships still have armor. IIRC, CVNs have armor boxes around the machinery and magazines, and I've also heard that the Russian Kirovs have some armor. In addition, I understand that fairly thick Kevlar curtains are in widespread use as splinter protection, at least over some parts of the ship.
But this is my point, again and again we see multimillion dollar hitech hardware (defeated) being taking out with cheap low tech dumb weapons, I wonder how many of the British ships would have been saved with just better armor? There were WWII DD's that took 4 or 5 bomb hits and didn't sink, yet most of the British ships were lost after just a single hit.
Look at what happened in the gulf, the USN CGN Cole was taken out by a motorboat with bomb!
Did the Falklands or the Cole attack effect ship design in any way?
And what I'm getting at is they would have been mission kills whether they sank or not. The sinking was just icing on the cake for the Arg's. The Brits simply did not have adequate AA defenses... and last I read up on 'em, they still don't. Not enough to survive a major engagement vs an opponent equipped with modern tech anyway.
RE Cole. Cole is an Arleigh Burke designed in the early 80s for the cold war. Our current naval forces were not designed for the littoral environment or the anti-terrorist missions (eg, sneak attacks by suicide bombers). We have made some adaptations, but they are not and will never be completely effective. The next gen of DD/CG/Whatever (LCS, DDG1000, etc.) warships are designed specifically with this stuff in mind and should do a better job. But again, they still won't be 100% effective in this area... the problem is not just one of technology, but involves politics and ROE.
BTW, the Cole survived but was laid up for repairs for over a year. That again is what I mean by Mission Kill. I'm not sure that anything short of an Iowa could have come away from that unscathed.
JD
Yes, it did. In the case of the Falklands, two changes resulted directly from that war.
1) The upper structure (everything above the main deck) for new NATO ships would no longer consist of aluminium. Designers had done this to create greater stability by lowering the point of gravity as aluminium is lighter than steel. However, aluminium melts quicker than steel and that created havoc on the ships during a fire.
2) Anti missile systems were developed such as Phalanx and Goalkeeper against incoming missiles like Exocet and Harpoon.
True on the second, but the first is something of a myth. Sheffield's superstructure was steel. That the Exocet hit did her in has more to do with poor damage control as another poster mentioned above, poor design (one relatively low order hit took out the electrical system and the water mains), and bad luck that the missile found and exposed those single points of failure.
The Type 21s did have aluminum superstructures, but that didn't play much of a role in their loss. The beating they took from bomb hits would have done in any ship of that size from any nation or any era.
The aluminum superstructure problem actually came to light back in the 60s or 70s as a result of some accidental fires. I don't recall the specifics at the moment.
JD
German ships still are the most "hardened" warships afloat AFAIK.
Yes, but all that does is improve the odds of making it all the home... it does not necessarily harden them against the type of damage that could render them hors de combat. All of that spindly spidery antenna looking stuff in your photo, phased arrays (if that's what they're using), weapons mounts (other than VLS perhaps... is that a SeaSparrow launcher I see there?), and stuff like that are all vulnerable to missile hit. Even if the compartments seal, the smoke is contained, the CIC is shifted, and the aux galley has sandwiches and coffee for the crew, the ship is out of the fight.
JD
Bullethead
29 Jun 08, 00:40
The aluminum superstructure problem actually came to light back in the 60s or 70s as a result of some accidental fires. I don't recall the specifics at the moment.
I believe you're referring to when a CG (Bainbridge?)scraped a CV during UnRep and the sparks ignited the aluminum itself. It wasn't aluminum melting from the heat of a nearby fire, it was an uncontrollable class D fire. As in something you can only put out with several dumptrucks full of sand, which is somewhat hard to acquire in the middle of the ocean.
FWIW, the IJN built aluminum superstructures on some CAs in WW2, IIRC.
All of that spindly spidery antenna looking stuff in your photo, phased arrays (if that's what they're using), weapons mounts (other than VLS perhaps... is that a SeaSparrow launcher I see there?), and stuff like that are all vulnerable to missile hit.
Phased arrays are actually pretty damage resistant. In Desert Storm, our TPQ-36 counterbattery radars had big phased array antennas shaped like the monoliths from "2001". They got numerous shrapnel holes poked through them and they kept working just fine. Older hands told us about a similar set that worked fine throughout the Beirut siege despite having several hundred holes in it. We never believed that until we saw the holes in ours.
What also surprised me was that all the bumping along while being towed, and the constant ground shocks from nearby incoming and outgoing, the wave guides didn't even come loose. That was a problem on my old ship from firing her own guns for a few days.
OTOH, a direct hit by a USAF-launched HARM completely obliterated a TPQ-36 and killed some friends of mine. Despite being launched facing the enemy from their side of the lines (according to the USAF version of the story), the missile did a U-turn and nailed our radar, which hadn't gotten the word to power down due to an inter-service communications SNAFU.
So anyway, seems to me you have to pretty much blow a phased array antenna to bits (or take out the radar's guts and and operators) to knock it out. Fragments from a near miss ain't gonna do it.
This is a very interesting thread; it's great to learn about the ships from guys who served on them.
:popc1:
The 124's even have Active Phased Arrays, the "faces" are made of thousands of transmit-receive elements which can be controlled individually by the software. It's like an LCD screen, loose some pixels and you can still make out the picture. They could loose half or more of the "pixels" in a face and still be able to illuminate etc., albeit with a reduced time-energy-budget. And there is 30°'s of overlap, so a copletely lost face means only 30°'s of coverage lost. The truly vulnerable part is the coolant system.
The launchers are 21cell RAM (Rolling Airframe Missile) launchers, firing the new RAM-HAS. 124's are the only ships with a three-tiered SAM system.
SM2MR
ESSM
RAM
The weakness of the design - apart from truly obscene costs for such a small Navy - is that they only have 32 VLS cells, just about enough for fighting a single COMAO (Combined Air Operations) package ("Alpha strike" for Tom Clancy readers) with 24 SM2MR, 32 ESSM and 42 RAM in a symmetric conflict. We all wished for 64 cells, giving additional flexibility (as PWO-UW I had my eyes on VLS-ASROC) and capacity. Of course the "space-in-waiting" I wanted filled the most was the active/passive towed array...
Keep in mind that armament contracts are, for the deciding politicians in the various parliaments, primarily instruments of economic policy, not security policy (that sometimes not even secondarily). The "pork" phenomenon explains most of the more hm... odd procurement decisions. But that is an international thing, found in nearly every country.
I believe you're referring to when a CG (Bainbridge?)scraped a CV during UnRep and the sparks ignited the aluminum itself.
Yep. Belknap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:USS_Belknap_collision_damage.jpg).
So anyway, seems to me you have to pretty much blow a phased array antenna to bits (or take out the radar's guts and and operators) to knock it out. Fragments from a near miss ain't gonna do it.
Highly redundant apparently (I didn't know that)... but not hardened. ie, vulnerable... cannot be protected by armor. So armoring a Tico or a Burke like a WWII cruiser would not make any difference here. That was the point I was trying to make in reference to the OP's question.
JD
Bullethead
29 Jun 08, 12:02
The 124's even have Active Phased Arrays, the "faces" are made of thousands of transmit-receive elements which can be controlled individually by the software. It's like an LCD screen, loose some pixels and you can still make out the picture. They could loose half or more of the "pixels" in a face and still be able to illuminate etc., albeit with a reduced time-energy-budget.
Yeah, that was how the TPQ-36 worked, too. But it still surprised us that it actually functioned as designed. Most of us in Desert Storm had come up in the 80s, when there was an on-going scandal about how a lot of our vaunted high-tech gear didn't work. The bigger and fancier the thing was, the less you could depend on it. The TPQ-36 was both big and fancy, so we figured it would fall apart just being shipped across the ocean, before the badguys even had a chance to shoot at it ;).
Keep in mind that armament contracts are, for the deciding politicians in the various parliaments, primarily instruments of economic policy, not security policy (that sometimes not even secondarily).
Politicians care only about 1 thing: expanding their personal power. They're more than willing to compromise national security--militarily, socially, and economically--as long as doing so keeps them in office and gives them more control over the lives and money of others. :bandit: Makes you wonder why we let them get away with it.
Bullethead
29 Jun 08, 12:18
Yep. Belknap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:USS_Belknap_collision_damage.jpg).
Yeah, that one. Knew it started with the a "B" ;). Glad I wasn't there.
Highly redundant apparently (I didn't know that)... but not hardened. ie, vulnerable... cannot be protected by armor. So armoring a Tico or a Burke like a WWII cruiser would not make any difference here. That was the point I was trying to make in reference to the OP's question.
I agree. Even if you make some sort of radar-transparent armor, you couldn't put enough of it to be worthwile that high up in the ship. So all you can do to protect the ship's eyes is make the antennas redundant and drape some kevlar around CIC. Belt armor seems rather pointless, too. Even if you had the available displacement, it would do no good at all against torps, and missiles would probably hit above it. In WW2 terms, today's ships face kamikazes, not shells.
Does anybody know what sort of armor CVNs have these days? I'm pretty sure they've got a decent amount around their vitals, I believe on a WW2 CL scale.
As far as I know the armor (ie, protection added above and beyond structural requirements) on modern USN CVs would be considered no more than "splinter" protection in the old days. Depending on which class we're talking about, it's either steel approx 1" thick (Level III) or a combination of thinner steel and kevlar (Level II).
Not much really. But then there's really not a whole lot of info about this floating around out there that I can find.
JD
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