We cannot afford to become a fixed on any one weapon or other system as a panacea to our Pacific Problem. Huntington Ingalls are s in the process of converting the three Zumwalts to carry CPS, and how many do you get for 16,000 tons of ship? Twelve. That’s it. And all three of the class will *not* be on station when you need them, simply because they can’t be. And how many can you retrofit onto a Burke or Constellation? This is truly one of those situations where the enemy controls the near ground and has adequate range and hiding space to prevent you from getting a targeting solution before he fires.
There are no easy fixes. CPS may be part of the solution, but not all of it.
I think it’s perfectly on brand for the $8 billion destroyer to have the guns we never bought ammo for replaced by tubes for a weapon that has never been tested and would cost at least $600 million for a combat load.
One man's "Window of vulnerability" is another man's (apologies to anyone who I offended with my insensitive choice of...identifiers) "Window of opportunity". Given the current state of our logistics and preferred munition magazine and pipeline depth(s), we are vulnerable. We must win fast or lose in any Pacific conflict. How long it takes to "close this window" remains an open question. In fact, one could question if it is even being asked at the policy level above the logistician level (those who know the bitter truth and the numbers). One could ask...The other side of the coin is the "window of opportunity" and those who weigh the cost / benefit of waiting or striking sooner. Are we at our lowest ebb, and therefore at our most vulnerable? Is governmental leadership (and the U.S. election a critical variable in their decision calculus? The world wonders...
It's more of a window of vulnerability for the US until the early 2030s. Deter until China collapses under its own demographic, economic weight should be the name of the game.
No, we are most vulnerable from the beginning of the Davidson Window April 2027 (or debatably earlier OCT 2024/April 2025) until we have fielded a lot of the platforms in the pipeline developed over the past decade to contend with the A2AD problem/ China's economic and demographic death spiral really takes hold approximately 2033.
I'm more optimistic about the Chinese demographic and economic crisis destroying their capacity to project power by the mid-2030s, but the technological developments is the other factor in that mid-2030 bookend.
If you think China's economic and demographic problems do not pose a serious threat to their ability to project power than you need a few more decades of perspective as well. The arc of history has lessons for everyone.
They do, but do not ours also? Our more recent immigrants are not going to play nicely with our mission to further western civilization and civil liberties
But hypersonic missiles can hurt us or at least our undermanned and poorly supplied forward positions.
Has anyone in this administration ever considered negotiating with our adversaries rather than waging proxy wars, imposing sanctions, issuing indictments, hurling insults or engaging in sabotage and theft?
Not since Ronald Reagan negotiated the strategic arms limitation treaties with the Russians in the 1980s and managed to establish such a good working relationship with the Soviets that they could collapse without panicking and lobbing nukes at Omaha.
One can only hope the Chinese have as great a communicator.
Did any of their provincial governors spend the 90s making a movie with a Panda?
How much of Czechoslavakia are you willing to give him Prime Minister? And what assurances have you received that after gobbling up that morsel, Chairman Xinnie the Poo won't ask for more?
If we assume that every deal is appeasement, and every conference is Munich 1938 then there can never be any negotiations, whatsoever. Only perpetual warfare.
Europe managed to hold two conferences in the 19th century in Vienna and Berlin that resulted in a century without a world war. That's my model.
Not every deal. Just the ones that look like appeasement and Munich 1938. If the deal is giving an expansionist dictator territory in a neighboring country that he has threatened/ invaded in the hopes that he does not invade other countries and take more territory, than the appeasement situation applies. This is exactly the situation we face with Putin and Ukraine.
Vienna and Berlin do not apply here since there is no imbalance of power. Precisely the opposite, there is contested struggle for power, which is why there is open war. Peace can only be secured by one side dominating the other until they submit. Otherwise, you will just have more war or a frozen conflict from which war will spring up again.
What guarantees has Mr. Putin given you Prime Minister, to secure peace in our time? Are you going to waive a piece a paper in the air or claim that he has given you, his word?
True, and yet not entirely. After 1820, much of the next 100 years seems to have been spent developing and assessing new weapon systems and tactics and assessing who was going to stumble into the next "we can definitely win with our new stuff" policy with sadly horrific results from 1914 to 1945.
To clarify, I agree not every negotiation is "appeasement."
Which Prime Minister? Churchill giving Kaliningrad (Konigsberg) to the Soviets (not to mention eastern Europe). Churchill, again, giving Sakhalin to the Soviets? David Lloyd George promising territory and other benefits to Romania and the Jews?
Giving away the territory of other nations is an ancient practice.
Good God even Stevie Wonder can see this is a waste of money and resources. We need to increase the amount of the current systems we are employing now. Not “future capabilities for the warfighter”. If we dither we won’t have warfighters. Only casualties.
Do our sea services do ANYTHING competently anymore? Seems we're asking too much of any Rear Admiral (Fogs A Mirror) to cut a check to a shipbuilder and follow through to ensure we get a frigate, or a destroyer, or an icebreaker, or missile warheads, or some more dry docks …
Hate to come back again with more negative vibes, but at that price point, I'm not a fan. If goes 3000k, why not put it on land?
As for the name, Pershing is available again.
Buy more SM-6
PS: put Elon on it, I'll bet he can build a reusable booster that dramaticly lowers the price. Alternately, load Falcon 9's with iron rods not Starlink
I still want Rods from God(TM). New Glenn, Falcon Heavy, and (possibly soon) Starship will have the capacity to LEO to make that technically and fiscally possible.
2027 is 27 months away. Top priority - fix what you have and buy more ammo. 2nd priority - build new ships. 3 dozen exquisitely expensive missiles aren't going to move the needle on anything but the defense budget.
Picking up from yesterday, mount Drakon (CPS) to Typhon and tie down twenty-four of those glorified CONEX boxes (MK 70 Mod 1) onto the deck of an ESD/ESB and you got a cheap, jerry-rigged Arleigh Burke Destroyer (96) with Hyper Sonic Missiles. If you got a faster, cheaper way to close the VLS gap West of Wake, I'm all ears. The Navy has 8 ESD/ESBs right now. Otherwise, you will be waiting until late 2025 for 3 Zumwalts (I'll believe that delivery time when I see it) or 2028 for four block V Virginia in order to get these missiles in the field on Navy ships. Not only will it be delivered faster and have more missiles embarked than Zumwalt or Virginia. Due to the range 2,906 nm, you could establish launch boxes 86 nm west of Guam and improve your survivability (from Army trucks in Guam itself) and positioning problem. Alaska class tankers are built for long blue water transits. Station keeping for prepositioned launchers would be doable. Keeping with the theme of naming platforms after pithy ancient mythology, I'll name this ugly yet powerful platform: Vulcan Class DDGs. After the roman god of fire, depicted as an ugly but mighty blacksmith of the gods.
They definitely picked exquisite platforms to deliver an exquisite, as yet unproven, capability. The game changer is realizing cheap and many is good. Get these missiles off the ground and skip the heavy booster. The chips should be all in on aircraft launched. It needs to be such it can ride on the heavy hardpoints of the F-35 so anyone can be loosing the arrow (At least F-35, F-15, F-22). Then adding to bombers makes it easy. Not sure of the rating for the stations on P-8s. But any and all of that would be many and useful.
Aircraft launched glide vehicles were already tried and failed. The program was cancelled last year. The only remaining air launched hypersonic program is HAMC for scramjets. However, the source article pours cold water on that program and questions whether the juice is worth the squeeze from hypersonic scramjets v. high supersonic missiles with slightly shorter range and slightly longer detection times.
" While Lockheed Martin chose not to continue into phase 2, Mako benefits from the innovations and maturation efforts invested in it as the Air Force’s first fully digital acquisition missile."
This article is just a face-saving exercise for their stockholders.
Can we create a hypersonic missile launcher out of the cargo area of a C-17 or a C-130? No tankers needed. Just a rotary launcher and some drogue chutes, and some very cautious loadmasters. Right?
The point is to employ technology available now. Not pour more money into another RnD program. The article points out that air launched glide vehicle program was cancelled, and cargo planes are not fast enough or survivable enough to launch the scramjets even if HAMC is worth developing over high supersonic missiles.
First, let me applaud your thinking outside the (conex) box. I haven’t examined the naval architectural details of that class, so please excuse my ignorance here. Your suggested conex additions will eat up weight and stability reserves in addition to their deck space. Are the ships able to absorb a hit of this size? Stability can often be the first design vector that hits the stops, LCS being a perfect example. I also feel it appropriate to note that this conversion wouldn’t really make them ersatz DDGs in that they would need a combatant or two to escort them.
No argument there. However, doubt we will make the choice to start something. And deterrence requires a credible commitment to making someone very sorry they did something.
One in the tube is better than four in the R&D environment. Give me something now that we are using,and if there's money left over after that procurement, develop the fancy new stuff. Think to the future without compromising the job currently in front of us.
Every day in every way, the Complex re-demonstrates that Ike was right with MR, and in fighting against the Pentagon and the Complex.
If we’re not serious, why fight? If we’re serious, we’ll use the most productive weapons we have, maximizing enemy KIA while minimizing ours. War is politics by other means, right? So if we’re going to fight a war, ensure it is war, and not combat-without-war, which is what conventional fights are. Conventional weapons are weapons of combat. Nuclear weapons are weapons of war. Tac nukes are useful, as is the strategic ambiguity of - will he or won’t he?
But investing a few $B to create the system, then spending $50M per round to deliver less than a quarter-ton of bang is just dumb. The ONLY thing that matters is the size of the bang.
We haven’t won a conventional fight since May, 1945; we’ve either gone unconventional (Japan), or tied (Korea) or lost (Vietnam, Afghanistan, iraq(?)) ever since. Our continued insistence on combat-without-war is politically and economically stupid, to say nothing of the unknown number of doctors, artists, composers, scientists, authors who will never be born because their never-to-be parents lie dead on some sand dune or jungle trail or sea floor from a fight we never even planned to win.
We have been watching an exceptionally rapid evolution in the theory and practice of aerial drone warfare as it is being applied on land in the Russia-Ukraine war.
What kind of serious work -- if any -- has been done by the US in the area of aerial drone technology and operational practice in a naval warfare setting?
Aerial drone launching platforms and launch systems? Types of aerial drones and their ordnance? Aerial drone command & control systems for a bluewater combat environment? Tactical applications in a bluewater combat environment?
Just for one example, could a variant of a Standard Missile be developed which carries four or six anti-ship drones which are deployed by the missile within a few kiilometers of a targeted warship with the goal of complicating ithat warship's defensive problem?
MIRV ASM. Not sure about drones, but maybe breaking off into several other missiles along the way. Probably pricey. Think SM-6 with Hellfire or a MALD with a warhead, or not a warhead.
How many “high value targets” are worth $50M? Sinking a capital ship might be worth it, but there are more cost effective missiles. And how much destructive force does a hypersonic 225kg warhead have?
Let's dial in a little more and ask what sort of scenario we're likely to face.
In the grand scheme of things, the PLAN has a very short distance to cover. All they really need is to extend air cover over a very short (hours long) transit for their assault and supply ships. Put simply, they don't need capital ships at all to reach their victory requirements.
If we sink their carriers, that's nice, but I guess the question is so what? How is it going to stop an invasion?
All this isn't to say we shouldn't have ANY of these missiles, but that I don't get the emphasis here when the obvious threats seem to lie elsewhere.
I looked at high value as command and control locations/bunkers. I think the trick is that would cutting off the head stop the monster from making the crossing?
I think it is relevant to note the 4 large tubes for 12 missiles on the Zumwalts is only going in where the forward gun had been. Pretty sure that will be forward of a major bulkhead allowing the PVLS protection system to be maintained. Also leaves that aft gun area for a future, "better idea."
To be fair, I'd happily pay $74 to send one kilo of warhead to the local school board, but that's just local politics.
Edit: In light of recent escalations in political "resistance" nationally, I'd like to make clear the big "just kidding" on this post!
We cannot afford to become a fixed on any one weapon or other system as a panacea to our Pacific Problem. Huntington Ingalls are s in the process of converting the three Zumwalts to carry CPS, and how many do you get for 16,000 tons of ship? Twelve. That’s it. And all three of the class will *not* be on station when you need them, simply because they can’t be. And how many can you retrofit onto a Burke or Constellation? This is truly one of those situations where the enemy controls the near ground and has adequate range and hiding space to prevent you from getting a targeting solution before he fires.
There are no easy fixes. CPS may be part of the solution, but not all of it.
I think it’s perfectly on brand for the $8 billion destroyer to have the guns we never bought ammo for replaced by tubes for a weapon that has never been tested and would cost at least $600 million for a combat load.
Umm, does it have a volume air search radar?
TBF much of that $50 million per missile assumes the cost of refitting/ building the platforms to launch them.
However, my Vulcan Class DDGs (details below) would only need a moderate refit to cut the Conex box lashing points in the deck of the ESD/ESBs.
Below?
One man's "Window of vulnerability" is another man's (apologies to anyone who I offended with my insensitive choice of...identifiers) "Window of opportunity". Given the current state of our logistics and preferred munition magazine and pipeline depth(s), we are vulnerable. We must win fast or lose in any Pacific conflict. How long it takes to "close this window" remains an open question. In fact, one could question if it is even being asked at the policy level above the logistician level (those who know the bitter truth and the numbers). One could ask...The other side of the coin is the "window of opportunity" and those who weigh the cost / benefit of waiting or striking sooner. Are we at our lowest ebb, and therefore at our most vulnerable? Is governmental leadership (and the U.S. election a critical variable in their decision calculus? The world wonders...
It's more of a window of vulnerability for the US until the early 2030s. Deter until China collapses under its own demographic, economic weight should be the name of the game.
There is a lot of ruin in a nation
I thought we were at our most vulnerable in 2012-2015 before then happened. Now I think our most vulnerable is next year in perpetuity.
No, we are most vulnerable from the beginning of the Davidson Window April 2027 (or debatably earlier OCT 2024/April 2025) until we have fielded a lot of the platforms in the pipeline developed over the past decade to contend with the A2AD problem/ China's economic and demographic death spiral really takes hold approximately 2033.
You think we’ll ever field any of them? And they will work? That seems optimistic based on recent history.
I'm more optimistic about the Chinese demographic and economic crisis destroying their capacity to project power by the mid-2030s, but the technological developments is the other factor in that mid-2030 bookend.
Sounds like you need another decade to gain my vantage point.
If you think China's economic and demographic problems do not pose a serious threat to their ability to project power than you need a few more decades of perspective as well. The arc of history has lessons for everyone.
They do, but do not ours also? Our more recent immigrants are not going to play nicely with our mission to further western civilization and civil liberties
The world wonders, but I'm stockpiling food and ammo:)
But hypersonic missiles can hurt us or at least our undermanned and poorly supplied forward positions.
Has anyone in this administration ever considered negotiating with our adversaries rather than waging proxy wars, imposing sanctions, issuing indictments, hurling insults or engaging in sabotage and theft?
Not since Ronald Reagan negotiated the strategic arms limitation treaties with the Russians in the 1980s and managed to establish such a good working relationship with the Soviets that they could collapse without panicking and lobbing nukes at Omaha.
One can only hope the Chinese have as great a communicator.
Did any of their provincial governors spend the 90s making a movie with a Panda?
Maybe a Panda. But I doubt if they made a movie about a college football coach.
How much of Czechoslavakia are you willing to give him Prime Minister? And what assurances have you received that after gobbling up that morsel, Chairman Xinnie the Poo won't ask for more?
If we assume that every deal is appeasement, and every conference is Munich 1938 then there can never be any negotiations, whatsoever. Only perpetual warfare.
Europe managed to hold two conferences in the 19th century in Vienna and Berlin that resulted in a century without a world war. That's my model.
Not every deal. Just the ones that look like appeasement and Munich 1938. If the deal is giving an expansionist dictator territory in a neighboring country that he has threatened/ invaded in the hopes that he does not invade other countries and take more territory, than the appeasement situation applies. This is exactly the situation we face with Putin and Ukraine.
Vienna and Berlin do not apply here since there is no imbalance of power. Precisely the opposite, there is contested struggle for power, which is why there is open war. Peace can only be secured by one side dominating the other until they submit. Otherwise, you will just have more war or a frozen conflict from which war will spring up again.
What guarantees has Mr. Putin given you Prime Minister, to secure peace in our time? Are you going to waive a piece a paper in the air or claim that he has given you, his word?
The Führerbau in Munich still exists and be be rented for those special occassions.
True, and yet not entirely. After 1820, much of the next 100 years seems to have been spent developing and assessing new weapon systems and tactics and assessing who was going to stumble into the next "we can definitely win with our new stuff" policy with sadly horrific results from 1914 to 1945.
To clarify, I agree not every negotiation is "appeasement."
Which Prime Minister? Churchill giving Kaliningrad (Konigsberg) to the Soviets (not to mention eastern Europe). Churchill, again, giving Sakhalin to the Soviets? David Lloyd George promising territory and other benefits to Romania and the Jews?
Giving away the territory of other nations is an ancient practice.
I missed the part where Romania was threatening peace and security of Europe with their territorial ambitions....
Good God even Stevie Wonder can see this is a waste of money and resources. We need to increase the amount of the current systems we are employing now. Not “future capabilities for the warfighter”. If we dither we won’t have warfighters. Only casualties.
Do our sea services do ANYTHING competently anymore? Seems we're asking too much of any Rear Admiral (Fogs A Mirror) to cut a check to a shipbuilder and follow through to ensure we get a frigate, or a destroyer, or an icebreaker, or missile warheads, or some more dry docks …
How many officers stay in a position from the time the contract is sealed and the promised delivery date?
They are good at DEI.
Dead end initiative
Hate to come back again with more negative vibes, but at that price point, I'm not a fan. If goes 3000k, why not put it on land?
As for the name, Pershing is available again.
Buy more SM-6
PS: put Elon on it, I'll bet he can build a reusable booster that dramaticly lowers the price. Alternately, load Falcon 9's with iron rods not Starlink
> As for the name, Pershing is available again.
Has Douglas MacArthur had a weapon named for him yet? We could call a hypersonic missile strike a 'Mac attack.'
Big Mac?
And it fits in with the legendary American Consumerism!
Mac-F-U-Up
Make the Navajo Cruise Missile Great Again!
I still want Rods from God(TM). New Glenn, Falcon Heavy, and (possibly soon) Starship will have the capacity to LEO to make that technically and fiscally possible.
Read a lot of Jerry Pournelle the past few years. Good stuff.
2027 is 27 months away. Top priority - fix what you have and buy more ammo. 2nd priority - build new ships. 3 dozen exquisitely expensive missiles aren't going to move the needle on anything but the defense budget.
Picking up from yesterday, mount Drakon (CPS) to Typhon and tie down twenty-four of those glorified CONEX boxes (MK 70 Mod 1) onto the deck of an ESD/ESB and you got a cheap, jerry-rigged Arleigh Burke Destroyer (96) with Hyper Sonic Missiles. If you got a faster, cheaper way to close the VLS gap West of Wake, I'm all ears. The Navy has 8 ESD/ESBs right now. Otherwise, you will be waiting until late 2025 for 3 Zumwalts (I'll believe that delivery time when I see it) or 2028 for four block V Virginia in order to get these missiles in the field on Navy ships. Not only will it be delivered faster and have more missiles embarked than Zumwalt or Virginia. Due to the range 2,906 nm, you could establish launch boxes 86 nm west of Guam and improve your survivability (from Army trucks in Guam itself) and positioning problem. Alaska class tankers are built for long blue water transits. Station keeping for prepositioned launchers would be doable. Keeping with the theme of naming platforms after pithy ancient mythology, I'll name this ugly yet powerful platform: Vulcan Class DDGs. After the roman god of fire, depicted as an ugly but mighty blacksmith of the gods.
They definitely picked exquisite platforms to deliver an exquisite, as yet unproven, capability. The game changer is realizing cheap and many is good. Get these missiles off the ground and skip the heavy booster. The chips should be all in on aircraft launched. It needs to be such it can ride on the heavy hardpoints of the F-35 so anyone can be loosing the arrow (At least F-35, F-15, F-22). Then adding to bombers makes it easy. Not sure of the rating for the stations on P-8s. But any and all of that would be many and useful.
Aircraft launched glide vehicles were already tried and failed. The program was cancelled last year. The only remaining air launched hypersonic program is HAMC for scramjets. However, the source article pours cold water on that program and questions whether the juice is worth the squeeze from hypersonic scramjets v. high supersonic missiles with slightly shorter range and slightly longer detection times.
I don't believe Lockheed's claims on MAKO, but the idea isn't dead. https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2024/mako-a-hypersonic-missile-thats-more-than-ready.html#:~:text=Weighing%20in%20at%201%2C300%20pounds,%2D22%20and%20F%2D35C.
Keep reading:
" While Lockheed Martin chose not to continue into phase 2, Mako benefits from the innovations and maturation efforts invested in it as the Air Force’s first fully digital acquisition missile."
This article is just a face-saving exercise for their stockholders.
Can we create a hypersonic missile launcher out of the cargo area of a C-17 or a C-130? No tankers needed. Just a rotary launcher and some drogue chutes, and some very cautious loadmasters. Right?
The point is to employ technology available now. Not pour more money into another RnD program. The article points out that air launched glide vehicle program was cancelled, and cargo planes are not fast enough or survivable enough to launch the scramjets even if HAMC is worth developing over high supersonic missiles.
Got it. Didn't click through to the article.
First, let me applaud your thinking outside the (conex) box. I haven’t examined the naval architectural details of that class, so please excuse my ignorance here. Your suggested conex additions will eat up weight and stability reserves in addition to their deck space. Are the ships able to absorb a hit of this size? Stability can often be the first design vector that hits the stops, LCS being a perfect example. I also feel it appropriate to note that this conversion wouldn’t really make them ersatz DDGs in that they would need a combatant or two to escort them.
No argument there. However, doubt we will make the choice to start something. And deterrence requires a credible commitment to making someone very sorry they did something.
One in the tube is better than four in the R&D environment. Give me something now that we are using,and if there's money left over after that procurement, develop the fancy new stuff. Think to the future without compromising the job currently in front of us.
Every day in every way, the Complex re-demonstrates that Ike was right with MR, and in fighting against the Pentagon and the Complex.
If we’re not serious, why fight? If we’re serious, we’ll use the most productive weapons we have, maximizing enemy KIA while minimizing ours. War is politics by other means, right? So if we’re going to fight a war, ensure it is war, and not combat-without-war, which is what conventional fights are. Conventional weapons are weapons of combat. Nuclear weapons are weapons of war. Tac nukes are useful, as is the strategic ambiguity of - will he or won’t he?
But investing a few $B to create the system, then spending $50M per round to deliver less than a quarter-ton of bang is just dumb. The ONLY thing that matters is the size of the bang.
We haven’t won a conventional fight since May, 1945; we’ve either gone unconventional (Japan), or tied (Korea) or lost (Vietnam, Afghanistan, iraq(?)) ever since. Our continued insistence on combat-without-war is politically and economically stupid, to say nothing of the unknown number of doctors, artists, composers, scientists, authors who will never be born because their never-to-be parents lie dead on some sand dune or jungle trail or sea floor from a fight we never even planned to win.
We have been watching an exceptionally rapid evolution in the theory and practice of aerial drone warfare as it is being applied on land in the Russia-Ukraine war.
What kind of serious work -- if any -- has been done by the US in the area of aerial drone technology and operational practice in a naval warfare setting?
Aerial drone launching platforms and launch systems? Types of aerial drones and their ordnance? Aerial drone command & control systems for a bluewater combat environment? Tactical applications in a bluewater combat environment?
Just for one example, could a variant of a Standard Missile be developed which carries four or six anti-ship drones which are deployed by the missile within a few kiilometers of a targeted warship with the goal of complicating ithat warship's defensive problem?
MIRV ASM. Not sure about drones, but maybe breaking off into several other missiles along the way. Probably pricey. Think SM-6 with Hellfire or a MALD with a warhead, or not a warhead.
UAV carrying submarine to make the air dales obsolete once and for all. (Cue evil maniacal laughter)
Submerged drone minelayers, zillions of them. There's a headache our opponents deserve to have.
Wow. $50M per round, that only delivers a small warhead. Doesn’t sound relevant in a major conflict.
For High value targets, but will it actually take out a high value target if it hits it?
How many “high value targets” are worth $50M? Sinking a capital ship might be worth it, but there are more cost effective missiles. And how much destructive force does a hypersonic 225kg warhead have?
Let's dial in a little more and ask what sort of scenario we're likely to face.
In the grand scheme of things, the PLAN has a very short distance to cover. All they really need is to extend air cover over a very short (hours long) transit for their assault and supply ships. Put simply, they don't need capital ships at all to reach their victory requirements.
If we sink their carriers, that's nice, but I guess the question is so what? How is it going to stop an invasion?
All this isn't to say we shouldn't have ANY of these missiles, but that I don't get the emphasis here when the obvious threats seem to lie elsewhere.
I looked at high value as command and control locations/bunkers. I think the trick is that would cutting off the head stop the monster from making the crossing?
I agree.
I think it is relevant to note the 4 large tubes for 12 missiles on the Zumwalts is only going in where the forward gun had been. Pretty sure that will be forward of a major bulkhead allowing the PVLS protection system to be maintained. Also leaves that aft gun area for a future, "better idea."
By the looks of the graphic, it will be four banks of three missiles mounted inline in two groups replacing both guns.
What graphic? https://www.twz.com/navys-stealth-destroyers-could-get-massive-upgrades-beyond-hypersonic-missiles
The graphic embedded into the article. Scroll up and look under APM. It is a three-missile bank.
Yeah, see that, knew that. Where do you see it replacing both guns?