The 21st Century Battleship?

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With more news breaking since our BB-in-the-News Substack last week, we might as well start the week on the topic.

In case you missed it, in Friday’s WSJ, Lara Seligman and Alexander Ward let us know there is more in the wind than just our friend John Konrad’s pleadings.

Senior White House and Navy officials are in early discussions to replace the current mix of warships …

The new fleet would comprise a number of large warships outfitted with more powerful long-range missiles, along with smaller ships such as corvettes, the people said. The Navy has 287 ships in its current inventory, mostly destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, amphibious ships and submarines. A new class of frigates is also in the works.

Specifically, the White House and the Pentagon are in early talks about building a heavily armored, next-generation ship that could weigh as much as 15,000-20,000 tons and carry more powerful weapons, even potentially hypersonic missiles, in larger numbers than current destroyers and cruisers, the current and former officials said.

OK, out of the box we should stipulate that, at best, nothing “new” here would displace water for at least a decade. A ship of 15-20,000 tons? OK, let’s make sure everyone knows what we’re looking for.

Remember the canceled CG(X)? It was going to be used as an air defense ship, and before it was killed, there was an attempt to shoehorn in the Zumwalt’s engineering plant, but the hull and energy demands simply were not there. Then, right before it was killed, we were looking at something over 20,000 tons.

For a reference point, the WWII German pocket battleship Graf Spee displaced 16,280 tons.

If the goal here is to design a ship around long range missiles, then we’re talking about Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) missiles.

From this May.

The U.S. Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs is continuing on the path toward the nation’s first sea-based hypersonic fielding with a successful end-to-end flight test of a conventional hypersonic missile from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This test marked the first launch of the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) capability utilizing the Navy’s cold-gas launch approach that will be used in Navy sea-based platform fielding.

This test was the next step in the Navy’s flight testing program of the common All Up Round (AUR) that is being developed in partnership with the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office. In 2024, the programs completed two additional end-to-end flight tests of the AUR that will be fielded to both the Navy and Army.

“The cold-gas approach allows the Navy to eject the missile from the platform and achieve a safe distance above the ship prior to first stage ignition. This technical achievement brings SSP one step closer to fulfilling our role of providing a safe and reliable hypersonic capability to our Navy,” said Vice Adm. Johnny R. Wolfe Jr, Director, Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs, which is the lead designer of the common hypersonic missile.

What makes it extra sexy? It uses the Salamander-endorsed cold launch.

The Zumwalt DDG are being converted to be able to carry a dozen CPS.

Can we reclassify them now as CAG?

You can see a good view of the concept here, with the 4x3=12 replacing the forward white elephant gun.

Will we make the Zumwalts CAG-3, 4, and 5 after conversions? If a larger ship with even more CPS is a BB, would the Zumwalts now be pocket pattleships?

The US Navy never had those, we had battlecruisers (CB) instead. The last ones we had were the glorious ALASKA Class CB.

That would be CB-7, 8, and 9, then. Or, because they also have guided missiles, CBG-1, 2, and 3.

All sorts of options…but really, the Zumwalts whose baseline model weighs in at 14,798 tons were never destroyers anyway.

So, Zumwalts become battlecruises.

The “Golden Battleships?” Not a bad name, as they will (throws something against the wall), cost 2/3 of a CVN, especially if they are nuclear powered, which they probably need to be as you will need the “white space” in the design for the weapons and radars that are coming, all of which are power hungry.

That’s $8.5 billion a hull, not including the cost of the weapons you’ll put on them.

What does that give you? Well, look at the USS Salamander at the top of the post. It has 31 Advanced Payload Modules (APM). That gives you 31x3=93 CPS missiles. The Zumwalts carry 80 missiles besides CPS, so a battleship should have at least 50% more than that. Let’s call it 120 missiles in MK-57 or MK-41 VLS cells.

So, a nuclear powered, guided missile battleship. USS Salamander (BBGN-1)...or if we want to simplify things as the “G” and “N” are just too much unnecessary clutter, (BB 72).

Commissioning date of 2035.

Next slide.