
Converting Merchant Ships to Missile Ships - protomyth
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2019-01/converting-merchant-ships-missile-ships-win
======
jpm_sd
Acronym explanation:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_launching_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_launching_system)

In general, this is not a super new idea, but it's interesting to see it
getting a bit more traction.

Here's another pair of articles on the same general topic.

[https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/6/22/supporting-the-
fight-...](https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/6/22/supporting-the-fight-ashore-
when-the-marines-ask-for-someone-to-bring-the-rain-the-us-navy-is-in-a-
drought)

[https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/7/nsfspar2](https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/7/nsfspar2)

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opwieurposiu
Naval ships are typically built to a much higher standard then civilian ships.
Thicker plating, more fire resistance, heavier bearings etc. This makes them
cost more. The navy has at times tried to relax these requirements, but so far
it has not worked out. Designating a ship as civilian level hardness from the
git-go may be a way around this.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/idUKN2017353120100121](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUKN2017353120100121)

~~~
gaius
This is why HMS Ocean had such a short service life, to “save money” she was
built to commercial not military standards.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ocean_(L12)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ocean_\(L12\))

~~~
mattmanser
Seems like you're being a bit disingenuous, or you need to explain a bit more.

According to the very Wikipedia article you link to, firstly she's been sold
to Brazil for £80 million and so is still in service, and she also cost 2/3rds
what it would have cost to make it to military standards. That doesn't sound
bad? (For context the article claims her cost is the equivalent of £288
million in 2016, so roughly sold for 30% of her original price).

 _VSEL 's bid was £139.5 million compared to Swan Hunter's £210.6 million...
The Financial Times described the different philosophies adopted by the two
bidders; while Swan Hunter viewed the ships as entirely military, "VSEL
thought the design was basically a merchant ship with military hardware bolted
on." VSEL's decision to sub-contract the build phase took advantage of lower
overheads at a civilian yard as well as efficiency drives by its parent,
Kværne_

I don't know anything about the expected service times, etc., so I'd be
interested to hear if it's turned out as bad as you made it seem?

~~~
gaius
How the Brazilian government allocates it’s defence budget is it’s own concern
of course but consider that a comparable-role ship HMS Hermes was laid down in
1944, sold to India in 1985 and served until 2017. Ocean will never manage
that. HMS Ark Royal served for 30 years too.

São Paulo, the ship Brazil is replacing, a former French vessel was intended
to have a total service life of 80 years!

—————————-

Reply here as I am “posting too fast” apparently

 _The idea that in 20 years, let alone 40 years time, we 'll still rely on
human piloted planes is pure stupidity._

They said that 50 years ago when the first guided missiles were coming into
service. They will probably still be saying it in 50 years!

The truth is that military tech just doesn’t change that fast. The B52. The
1911 pistol - that’s the year. Warship hulls are supposed to last 50+ years
and you occasionally upgrade the radar. That sort of thing.

~~~
mattmanser
Does that make sense in this day and age? Tech is advancing fast.

The ship that replaced her cost £3.1 billion, over 10x the cost, even when you
inflation adjust.

Seems like Ocean was a bargain to me.

Edit: The more I think of this, the more insane it is. The idea that in 20
years, let alone 40 years time, we'll still rely on human piloted planes is
pure stupidity. What a colossal boondoggle we've bought, and not one, but two
of them!

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tivert
That's an interesting idea. It seems like many of the most useful and longest-
lived weapons platforms are general purpose and easily adaptable, like the
B-52. If the Navy adopts something like it, it could really save a lot of
money and enable more incremental innovation.

As far as survivability, I wonder if something like this could scale out fast
in wartime by redistributing the containers among more ships? Maybe the
containers could even be watertight, so they could be fished out of the sea
and reused if the ship that was carrying them is sunk.

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ansible
It seems to me that the super-giant container ships these days would not be
optimal in the role.

Presuming the VLS containers are standardized, I'd expect it would be better
to have more smaller ships. If that's the case, the Navy could pick up some of
the older container vessels relatively inexpensively, because they aren't as
economical to operate as the Maersk Triple-E class ships.

~~~
rtkwe
I think those smaller ships are the types they're talking about. The Maersk
Triple-E are way more expensive than the 25-50 million quoted as the per ship
cost in the article. Maybe they fall a a lot on the used market because new
Triple-Es are $190m.

> In heavily trafficked areas, a missile merchant without sensor masts would
> be hard to discern from other merchant ships at range. Electronic emissions
> that could be correlated to U.S. Navy assets pose risks that must be
> mitigated as much as possible. Automated ship reporting systems should be
> used judiciously.

This seems dangerous to me, it seems like it will inevitably get a regular
cargo ship sunk. Especially considering this second line where they also
suppose that these missile merchants could draw fire from more traditional
ships because of their threat.

> Drawing enemy fire could become an important function, perhaps protecting
> higher value, more-densely manned combatants.

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jonathankoren
Containerized weapon systems are pretty interesting because they leverage the
intermodal infrastructure of the global shipping industry, and potentially
provide the flexibility of "mission modules", that typically haven't provided.
Being somewhat self contained, they also provide a cross functionality across
sea and land based assets.

Patria's 120 mm NEMO gun [http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-
zone/6440/this-120mm-gun-bui...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-
zone/6440/this-120mm-gun-built-into-a-shipping-container-is-pretty-damn-
genius)

Northrup Grumman's containerized AGM-88E system [http://www.thedrive.com/the-
war-zone/24111/northrop-grumman-...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-
zone/24111/northrop-grumman-shows-off-shipping-container-launched-anti-
radiation-missile-concept)

IAI's LORA ballistic missile system [http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-
zone/11723/israel-just-launc...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-
zone/11723/israel-just-launched-a-containerized-ballistic-missile-from-the-
deck-of-a-ship)

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KaiserPro
> the air wing will only have a range of around 700 nm—about half that of many
> antiship cruise missiles.

Which basically means that unless the US has very very effective anti ship
missiles systems, their entire navy strategy(and thus Nato's) is broken.

The whole point of an aircraft carrier is that it provides a dome of
protection. It pushes ships capable of launching anti ship missiles out of
range. This means that the rest of the navy is free to do other things.

Without that cover, the navy can't move about without being destroyed.

So you either need loads of little ships (which are much more expensive to
eliminate, cheaper to produce, but have smaller weapons, or have a system to
effectively intercept missiles, or the missile launcher.

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ForHackernews
> To get to 355, the Navy’s 2019 ship-building plan proposes an eventual
> composition of 12 aircraft carriers, 12 ballistic-missile submarines, 66
> attack submarines, 104 large surface combatants, 52 small surface
> combatants, 38 amphibious warfare ships, and 71 combat logistics and support
> ships.

Wow. For comparison[0], China has 129 ships and Russia has 79. I guess the US
Navy believes in overprovisioning.

[0] [https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-five-most-
powerful-...](https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-five-most-powerful-
navies-the-planet-10610)

~~~
stcredzero
_Wow. For comparison[0], China has 129 ships and Russia has 79. I guess the US
Navy believes in overprovisioning._

The long standing US policy has been to maintain enough force to fight a major
conflict in both the Atlantic and Pacific at the same time. It's basically
what the British Navy was designed to do, when Britannia ruled the waves and
had a globe spanning empire. The Brits basically went broke doing this and
mortgaged their position as world hegemon to the US to pay for WWI and WWII.
So now, the US has to maintain enough force to patrol the world's navies.

(Between WWI and WWII, there was serious talk about the US and British navy
duking it out over the issue of the British war debt to the US. There were
even naval war plans drafted.)

~~~
alexhutcheson
Including a detailed plan for the invasion and annexation of Canada:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red)

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dmos62
Interesting ideas, good no-filler writing.

~~~
smacktoward
The USNI blog is very good overall, if you're interested in seapower issues.

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theincredulousk
"Advances in high-performance computing, software virtualization [...] enable
[...] cruise missiles to fit into [...] shipping containers."

Wut

~~~
scrumper
The point there is that virtualization permits operation of necessary
computing services that previously relied on dedicated hardware. Dedicated
hardware that has uses a lot of power - more than a civilian ship is capable
of providing - and is tough to cool.

Commodity hardware is massively more powerful, uses less power, and is easy to
cool compared to the dedicated stuff that sits in warships. So, the thinking
goes, virtualize the warship software stack and run it on off-the-shelf PCs on
a merchant ship and you're now able to operate your containerized VLS missiles
from a civilian vessel.

~~~
theincredulousk
Oh I see, so the whole weapon system including the computer systems etc.

The way the quote literally reads is that software virtualization and HPC
somehow solved a physical geometry problem.

