Mk-16G DDM's and the future of light warships

I wanted to see what the forum denizens thought of this analysis.

1 - Mk-16G DDM's represent the state of the art for light (below-the-wall) hyper-capable combatant weapons. Roland's and some larger ships use them internally; BC(P)'s have them in pods; and the range advantage of any multi-drive missile is overwhelming against any single drive missile.

2 - RMN practice is normally to build under the assumption that their units will have to face state of the art opposition.

First conclusion - The Avalon and Wolfhound designs represent either a mistake; a conscious deviation from (2), because the RMN just needed hulls badly and wasn't sure of the Roland's design elements to enable it to use Mk 16 DDM's and didn't want to build everything the size, expense, and crew commitment of a Saganami-C; or a bet that BuWeaps would come up with a missile such that the Avalon and Wolfhound missile tubes could be refitted practically to use it and it'd have the range of a DDM - either a smaller DDM or history's first variable acceleration missile drive. Or possibly a combination of those factors.

3 - Mk 16G's can tear through battlecruiser armor and sidewalls without terribly much attenuation, so the smallest state-of-the-art light warship weapon calls for capital ship passive defenses.

Second conclusion - Near future ship design, unless passive defenses can be made much, much stronger for light combatants, will split between capital ships that do aim at sufficient passive defenses, and light combatants that go essentially unarmored, because they simply can't mount enough passive defense to matter.

The Nike design may represent an early awareness of that. (Hey look, I'm approving of it kinda!) It's the size of an old battleship in fair part because it needs to be to mount sufficient passive defense to handle the current threat with armor and sidewalls in addition to active defenses, it's just that the current compensators allow it to scoot about like a cruiser instead of wallow inevitably like a waller. But I'm not at all sure it is sufficient - given what the Mk 16G's did against SLN passive defenses, even the Nike's armor and sidewalls may not make enough difference to be worth the additional expense vs. a Saganami-C. If the G mod scales up to capital missiles, the wallers themselves may not have adequate passive defenses for the "Mk-23G" threat, particularly given the inherent vulnerability of podlayers and CLAC's.

Third conclusion - Bit of a no-brainer: active defenses become much more critical, not only due to the size of pod-based salvoes and the huge closing speed of missiles with so much time to pile on acceleration, but now also because they will be so awful even without those first factors applying if they get a change to fire laserheads into your sidewalls or (gah) down an open wedge or throat.

I believe your conclusions are interesting, but are based on incomplete evidence. David has explained previously in this forum that Manticore planners are indeed looking toward a time when all light combatants are equipped with DDMS. That is why they expect the sizes of light combatants to grow significantly. Their current prediction is a 300,000 kt destroyer or light cruiser will become the smallest viable light warship--one which is equipped with a smaller version of Keyhole, tube-fired DDMs, and FTL control.

The Wolfhound and Avalon exist because they are not ready to produce this notional 300,000 kt ship. It will require quite a bit more R&D before they can reduce the size of Keyhole and FTL missile control. Wolfhound and Avalon are designed as an interim measure, to deal with the current threat environment until the R&D catches up to the need that they see. DDMs will not fit on current destroyer broadsides, and Roland was seen as an experiment, so equipping Wolfhound and Avalon with DDMs was impossible.

Pretty good. I think some lighter units are already going to SD-scale defences - such as the Katana LAC having SD PDLCs - and the Nikes and Agamemnons with their version of Keyhole have those defences too.

HMS Nike performed substantially better than her BC(P) division-mates at enduring Havenite capital MDMs during the Cutworm raids too.

SWM wrote:I believe your conclusions are interesting, but are based on incomplete evidence. David has explained previously in this forum that Manticore planners are indeed looking toward a time when all light combatants are equipped with DDMS. That is why they expect the sizes of light combatants to grow significantly. Their current prediction is a 300,000 kt destroyer or light cruiser will become the smallest viable light warship--one which is equipped with a smaller version of Keyhole, tube-fired DDMs, and FTL control.

The Wolfhound and Avalon exist because they are not ready to produce this notional 300,000 kt ship. It will require quite a bit more R&D before they can reduce the size of Keyhole and FTL missile control. Wolfhound and Avalon are designed as an interim measure, to deal with the current threat environment until the R&D catches up to the need that they see. DDMs will not fit on current destroyer broadsides, and Roland was seen as an experiment, so equipping Wolfhound and Avalon with DDMs was impossible.

They might have been able to fit broadside DDMs on destroyers if they had gone with an asymmetrical weapons fit? Since missiles can now be fired off-bore, there may be some ground in a destroyer which fires DDMs to the port and the majority of its CMs to the starboard. Terrible for redundancy and taking damage, but well, tincans can't take much damage anyway.

JeffEngel wrote:The Nike design may represent an early awareness of that. (Hey look, I'm approving of it kinda!) It's the size of an old battleship in fair part because it needs to be to mount sufficient passive defense to handle the current threat with armor and sidewalls in addition to active defenses, it's just that the current compensators allow it to scoot about like a cruiser instead of wallow inevitably like a waller. But I'm not at all sure it is sufficient - given what the Mk 16G's did against SLN passive defenses, even the Nike's armor and sidewalls may not make enough difference to be worth the additional expense vs. a Saganami-C. If the G mod scales up to capital missiles, the wallers themselves may not have adequate passive defenses for the "Mk-23G" threat, particularly given the inherent vulnerability of podlayers and CLAC's.

Third conclusion - Bit of a no-brainer: active defenses become much more critical, not only due to the size of pod-based salvoes and the huge closing speed of missiles with so much time to pile on acceleration, but now also because they will be so awful even without those first factors applying if they get a change to fire laserheads into your sidewalls or (gah) down an open wedge or throat.

Your 3rd conclusion is some support for the Nike design over a Sag-C. The Nike is big enough to mount a pair of Keyhole (1s) -- which significantly improve it's active defenses. Both by providing additional PDLCs, but mostly by letting it use active defenses while impossing its wedge towards the enemy -- something a Sag-C can't do without massive loss of effectiveness.

That (in addition to the extra armor and tougher sidewalls) make a Nike much more survivable than an equal mass of Sag-Cs.

One thing I think you are missing about the Wolfhound and Avalon classes are they are older designs than the Sag-C, they are Sag-B stablemates (yes given build times the first 6 Sag-Cs were under construction before the Wolfhounds left the yards, in fact they might have benn started before the Wolfhounds [but then the wolfhounds were likely designed from scratch, unlike it stablemates]). MK-16s were probably still in prototype, and remember, the original Mk-16s were much less destructive, admittedly still more than enough against light warships, and the demi-Apollo of using Ghost Rider Recon was not yet realized, remember that was demonstrated at Monica.

As a matter of fact I wondered, once I saw the specs, why the RMN even took the Wolfhound past the ink-out stage, the cost differential when compared to the Avalon must be minor, while the capability gap was still significant.

SWM wrote:I believe your conclusions are interesting, but are based on incomplete evidence. David has explained previously in this forum that Manticore planners are indeed looking toward a time when all light combatants are equipped with DDMS. That is why they expect the sizes of light combatants to grow significantly. Their current prediction is a 300,000 kt destroyer or light cruiser will become the smallest viable light warship--one which is equipped with a smaller version of Keyhole, tube-fired DDMs, and FTL control.

The Wolfhound and Avalon exist because they are not ready to produce this notional 300,000 kt ship. It will require quite a bit more R&D before they can reduce the size of Keyhole and FTL missile control. Wolfhound and Avalon are designed as an interim measure, to deal with the current threat environment until the R&D catches up to the need that they see. DDMs will not fit on current destroyer broadsides, and Roland was seen as an experiment, so equipping Wolfhound and Avalon with DDMs was impossible.

I guess the question here is that the timing of the Wolfhound and Avalon suggest that the Mk 16, whether currently available or in the pipeline, ought to have had a greater influence on their design, especially with how many of them have been built, unless some odd factor was at work. All of these - including the Mk-16-using Sag-C, Roland, and Nike - are designs to use well ahead of whatever is going to be able to use a Keyhole variant on a 300-400k hull. I'm pegging that light combatant with a KH-II variant as a little bit ahead of the near-future designs I have in mind. (Granted, the assumption that that miniaturization is bit further off is just a hunch.)

Do you suppose that the notional 300-400k light combatant is likely to require a sufficiently different design that they're figuring that all the ships they build before then will be fodder for scrapping rather than refitting to similar specs? I could buy that, and it would explain building so many ships that they expect to see go obsolete while still relatively young. It's a departure from traditional practice, but lately, building ships has gotten much cheaper and refitting new capabilities into them has grown so much harder. That could justify abandoning that tradition of long expected service lives.

HungryKing wrote:One thing I think you are missing about the Wolfhound and Avalon classes are they are older designs than the Sag-C, they are Sag-B stablemates (yes given build times the first 6 Sag-Cs were under construction before the Wolfhounds left the yards, in fact they might have benn started before the Wolfhounds [but then the wolfhounds were likely designed from scratch, unlike it stablemates]). MK-16s were probably still in prototype, and remember, the original Mk-16s were much less destructive, admittedly still more than enough against light warships, and the demi-Apollo of using Ghost Rider Recon was not yet realized, remember that was demonstrated at Monica.

As a matter of fact I wondered, once I saw the specs, why the RMN even took the Wolfhound past the ink-out stage, the cost differential when compared to the Avalon must be minor, while the capability gap was still significant.

Another way to look at the Roland/Wolfhound/Avalon issuses is by use case (or role).

The Avalon excells at the "normal" DD/CL jobs of piracy supression and presence/show the flag. The Roland is the Warfighter - with the least people hazarded with the nastiest stick possible. The Wolfhound was the cost conscious choice, giving you a powerful modern replacement for the hundreds of legacy fleet units, at a (relative) bargain.

If you notice before the war, the focus was on the Avalons and the Wolfhounds. A low cost/broad capability mix to replace the legacy fleet light units, with the Rolands being almost an experiment. Once the war was on, The Wolfhound was dropped from production and production of the Roland was expedited.

JeffEngel wrote:

SWM wrote:I believe your conclusions are interesting, but are based on incomplete evidence. David has explained previously in this forum that Manticore planners are indeed looking toward a time when all light combatants are equipped with DDMS. That is why they expect the sizes of light combatants to grow significantly. Their current prediction is a 300,000 kt destroyer or light cruiser will become the smallest viable light warship--one which is equipped with a smaller version of Keyhole, tube-fired DDMs, and FTL control.

The Wolfhound and Avalon exist because they are not ready to produce this notional 300,000 kt ship. It will require quite a bit more R&D before they can reduce the size of Keyhole and FTL missile control. Wolfhound and Avalon are designed as an interim measure, to deal with the current threat environment until the R&D catches up to the need that they see. DDMs will not fit on current destroyer broadsides, and Roland was seen as an experiment, so equipping Wolfhound and Avalon with DDMs was impossible.

I guess the question here is that the timing of the Wolfhound and Avalon suggest that the Mk 16, whether currently available or in the pipeline, ought to have had a greater influence on their design, especially with how many of them have been built, unless some odd factor was at work. All of these - including the Mk-16-using Sag-C, Roland, and Nike - are designs to use well ahead of whatever is going to be able to use a Keyhole variant on a 300-400k hull. I'm pegging that light combatant with a KH-II variant as a little bit ahead of the near-future designs I have in mind. (Granted, the assumption that that miniaturization is bit further off is just a hunch.)

Do you suppose that the notional 300-400k light combatant is likely to require a sufficiently different design that they're figuring that all the ships they build before then will be fodder for scrapping rather than refitting to similar specs? I could buy that, and it would explain building so many ships that they expect to see go obsolete while still relatively young. It's a departure from traditional practice, but lately, building ships has gotten much cheaper and refitting new capabilities into them has grown so much harder. That could justify abandoning that tradition of long expected service lives.

Jeff, you're missing the cost factor - Janacheck was leading a peace time navy and was ordered to reduce costs was much as possible across the board.

In the real world, the Spruance Destroyer design was originally supposed to be a multi-mission destroyer - in reality, politics and cost cuts gelded it's multi-mission capabilities, and we ended up with a 8K ton destroyer that specialized in killing subs, with barely enough anti-aircraft and anti-shipping capabilities to defend itself. The Kidd classs of ships, ordered for Iran before the fall of the Shah, is what the Spruances SHOULD have looked like, if they were made in their originally speced condition.

A peacetime government isn't going to throw money around, it's going to want the most for the least that meets the needs - and the wolfhound was definitely that

Theemile wrote:Jeff, you're missing the cost factor - Janacheck was leading a peace time navy and was ordered to reduce costs was much as possible across the board.

In the real world, the Spruance Destroyer design was originally supposed to be a multi-mission destroyer - in reality, politics and cost cuts gelded it's multi-mission capabilities, and we ended up with a 8K ton destroyer that specialized in killing subs, with barely enough anti-aircraft and anti-shipping capabilities to defend itself. The Kidd classs of ships, ordered for Iran before the fall of the Shah, is what the Spruances SHOULD have looked like, if they were made in their originally speced condition.

A peacetime government isn't going to throw money around, it's going to want the most for the least that meets the needs - and the wolfhound was definitely that

A good point. And given the crew reduction automation a Wolfhound would have a lower total cost of ownership than the legacy DD it replaces.

With High Ridge and Janesek assuming that the ceasefire would last until they deigned to allow a peace treaty, they weren't worried so much about their DDs coming up against multi-drive pods. But thanks to the Havenite civil war there were ex-RHN, and ex-State Sec sub-wallers out there playing pirate. So having a cheaper hull, with lower personnel costs, that's still capable of doing the anti-piracy patrolling in Silesia and elsewhere would seem like a great thing.
And if it did run into something like a Mars-class, at least it'd have the new LERM missiles and would outrange it.

Wolfhound and Avalon are kind of the pinacle of anti-piracy, commerce protection, units against anybody who lacks DDMs/MDMs. And even now they're pretty useful against Cataphract carrying units. Not as crazy overkill at Mk16 ships would be, but able to fight it out and usually win against at ships at least one class heavier -- which is more that legacy DDs/CLs were ever expected to do.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:Jeff, you're missing the cost factor - Janacheck was leading a peace time navy and was ordered to reduce costs was much as possible across the board....

A peacetime government isn't going to throw money around, it's going to want the most for the least that meets the needs - and the wolfhound was definitely that

A good point. And given the crew reduction automation a Wolfhound would have a lower total cost of ownership than the legacy DD it replaces.

With High Ridge and Janesek assuming that the ceasefire would last until they deigned to allow a peace treaty, they weren't worried so much about their DDs coming up against multi-drive pods. But thanks to the Havenite civil war there were ex-RHN, and ex-State Sec sub-wallers out there playing pirate. So having a cheaper hull, with lower personnel costs, that's still capable of doing the anti-piracy patrolling in Silesia and elsewhere would seem like a great thing.
And if it did run into something like a Mars-class, at least it'd have the new LERM missiles and would outrange it.

Wolfhound and Avalon are kind of the pinacle of anti-piracy, commerce protection, units against anybody who lacks DDMs/MDMs. And even now they're pretty useful against Cataphract carrying units. Not as crazy overkill at Mk16 ships would be, but able to fight it out and usually win against at ships at least one class heavier -- which is more that legacy DDs/CLs were ever expected to do.

It'd help confirm that theory if we knew what changes in light unit construction occurred when the Janacek Admiralty fell - or, for that matter, had good data on the relative construction and upkeep costs on Wolfhounds, Avalons, Roland's, and Saganami-C's. Still, with Manticoran production lines tending to be on the model "pay a lot to set up, just pay a little to keep cranking out copies thereafter", the Alexander Admiralty may have been content enough to keep building them just because they're cheap and the RMN does now find itself fighting technically inferior enemies but in vast numbers all over: precisely where those cheap but obsolescent designs can shine.

I say if "we" knew, but read that as I don't and wonder if anyone else does.