Reply to post: Re: Return of the Battleships?

Brit semiconductor tech ended up in Chinese naval railgun – report

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: Return of the Battleships?

While a battleship is slightly smaller than an aircraft carrier, it would sink much more swiftly thanks to its large weight of armour. (Although a reasonable design decision would be to have no armour, as any hit would be fatal regardless).

I haven't yet seen any coherent explanation of how a railgun would actually hit anything at ranges of over about 10-15 nautical miles. It may pack a lot more power than a conventional 16-inch battleship gun, but what about accuracy? In WW2 state-of-the-art battleships fired thousands of rounds at targets that were well in sight above the horizon, and missed almost all the time. When firing over the horizon you need to fire a number of ranging shots before bracketing the target and firing for effect.

Another question is why a battleship with railguns would be able to survive directs hits by hypersonic missiles. The missiles would come from sources well out of range of a railgun - or even within range, as a railgun could never hit an aircraft or a missile - but would still arrive before the railgun could even reload after its first shot.

The bottom line is that guns of any type are hopelessly outmatched by modern missiles. Unless, of course, the gun fires a guided projectile which is itself a missile.

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