[NGTM-1R]

Against malsupplied insurgents working with aging technology, sure. But what about a clash between modern armies? The technology of anti-tank missiles and similar munitions has advanced almost parallel to the MBT concept, leading IMO to the point where the vulnerabilities of an MBT against a top-of-the-shelf antitank rocket will ultimately outweigh the advantages of having a fully mobile assault platform.

Has the age of the battleship truly passed, or could a revival be on the horizon with the advent of more advanced technology, ie. railguns that can follow the curvature of the Earth to shoot faster, farther, and inflict more damage than an entire Carrier Air Wing?

Top-of-the-line gear was used and has continued to be used (rarely) against the M1A2 in Iraq by insurgents, including some of the latest and best of the Russian ATGMs like the Metis. They were at best capable of knocking a tread off. The Chobham ceramic armor is simply too difficult to penetrate for anything that's not a kinetic-kill weapon, because it simply laughs at the heat-based component of most explosives and is tougher than armor-grade steel.

We do have these things, called "cruise missiles". An Exocet or Sunburn is nothing to laugh at, especially if there is a bunch of them heading your way.

Funny, but true: there are currently very few ships that could put to sea in an active combatant role in the world that could possibly take a hit from one the big Russian cruise missiles like the Shipwreck or Kingfish, and keep fighting. Any US CVN, the Charles De Gaulle, the Adm. of the Fleet Kunstenov, annnndddd...an Iowa-class. The first three get by on size alone. The Iowa gets by because face-hardened armor plate laughs at the HE warheads on antiship missiles.

[TrashMan]

True...modern warship have no armor to speak off.

Well.. standard issue RPGs penetrate past 700 mm of armor...

Oy! That's a good one.
According to you a RPG fired by a soldeir could punch clean trough Iowa and exit on the other side.
Try removing one 0 from that statement and you'd be closer to the truth.

APC and tank armor is in the 60-100mm range. Most RPG's can't penetrate the thicker armor of the main battle tanks.

[Wanderer]

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about... All measured/scaled against 'standard' steel armor

Man portable RPGs i am familiar with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APILAS 720mm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M72_LAW 300mm

ATGM..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW 600 - 900mm

Modern APC has precious little chance of surviving a direct hit from a relatively modern RPG. Or did you think the US added the slat armor - ie. the 'fence things' - on their APCs just to make them look more kewl?




IIRC one interesting idea for penetrating modern high tech armor was a move to old large bore kinetic penetrator (ie. stuff used in WW2). Dunno how feasible it would be but idea was that as modern armor plating is designed to defeat HEAT warhead by directing the stream and to defeat sabots by trying to break the rigid kinetic penetrator it leaves the tank surprisingly vulnerable to non-sabot kinetic penetrators.

[NGTM-1R]

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about... All measured/scaled against 'standard' steel armor

Modern APC has precious little chance of surviving a direct hit from a relatively modern RPG. Or did you think the US added the slat armor - ie. the 'fence things' - on their APCs just to make them look more kewl?

The Bradley can take RPG-7V hits easily. The Stryker has more trouble. Russian BMP-2D can sometimes be penetrated, not often. BMP-3 cannot. BTR-series can. (The Striker, interestingly enough, roughly corresponds to the BTR, as the Bradley does to the BMP. There's a reason the Brad's not being replaced by the Stryker, and it's because the Stryker is much less capable.)

Measurements against standard steel are highly deceptive, as "standard" is structural steel, which is significantly weaker then even light armor steel like STS. 900mm of structural steel is maybe 450mm of light armor steel, considerably less of high-grade homogenous or face-hardened armor steel, to say nothing of titanium or other advanced alloys/armoring materials.

[TrashMan]

If any soldier fired RPG manages to penetrate Iowas armor, I'll eat my own shorts for breakfest.

As ngtm1r said, those numbers are highly decpetive.
What use it is if it sez it can penetrate 1000mm, when it fails to penetrate even a tank armor? I can write pretty numbers to boost sales and look cooler on paper too...

[Wanderer]

Just for reference the RHA refers to steel armor ('rolled homogenous armor') and not to structural steel... RHA is pretty much - if not exactly -  the same thing as the standard WW2 era armor. So modern anti tank weapon has no problems what so ever penetrating Iowas armor. Which shouldn't really be any wonder at all.

Also RPG-7V is rather outdated... no tandem charge, rated barely over 300mm penetration. No wonder any decent IFV (like Bradley/BMP) can take a hit. Though there are several reports of modern RPGs penetrating modern MBTs frontal armor - like British Challenger 2.

And what else would you use as reference if not steel armor plate?

[NGTM-1R]

The RPG-7V is the standard, pretty much, by which light antitank infantry weapons are judged, because it is the most common and most commonly encountered.

The probablity of a Challenger 2, which is one of the best-armored tanks currently in service, getting hit by anything short of a TOW-type heavy ATGM and penetrated, is very low. I think that you might find such reports referring to them being "disabled" "knocked out" but not armor penetration. That's a tread off or a turret jam. More modern versions of LAW and its cousins can stop but not kill most IFVs.

[Wanderer]

Believe what you will... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/13/nmod13.xml

[Kosh]

b)shoot them down

A Sunburn is actually not that easy to shoot down, since it comes at you low and fast.

a)fool them with chaff/flares/ECM

Can;t comment on that, not sure how easy it is to spoof one of them.

Any US CVN, the Charles De Gaulle, the Adm. of the Fleet Kunstenov, annnndddd...an Iowa-class. The first three get by on size alone. The Iowa gets by because face-hardened armor plate laughs at the HE warheads on antiship missiles

In situations like that you would use more than one.

[TrashMan]

So modern anti tank weapon has no problems what so ever penetrating Iowas armor.

I'll belive it when I see it...in other words, never.

[BengalTiger]

So modern anti tank weapon has no problems what so ever penetrating Iowas armor.

Well they do. And a damn big one:
The Iowa's armor is interior, which means the anti tank weapons would detonate on the outside wall, make a huge mess in the room outside the armor, and maybe burn the paint on the belt/deck/bulkhead/barbette/whatever.
Spaced armor on AFV's works the same way.
The only place I wouldn't be surprised to be penetrated by a depleted uranium, tank-fired shell would be the turret, with 50 cm of steel tilted at 45 degrees (giving the round some 700 mm to blast through, possible). But since the DU dart is small, and the turret is huge, it probably wouldn't make any serious damage inside (far less serious than the 16 inch shell that would hit the tank as a 'thank-you' ).

Tank armor and anti-tank weapon website- focused on armor and penetration in mm's of RHA

[TrashMan]

Given that a 406mm cannon round is bigger than a RPG warhead, and Iowas armor was designed to shrug such impacts, I find it extreemly hard to belive that a RPG could do anything to an Iowa.
Especially the turrets - they were the most heavily armored parts on the ship.

[BengalTiger]

Well...


(cross section of the M829 depleted Uranium shell from the Abrams's 120 mm smoothbore, the dart is the only thing that's intended to hit the target, making a hole .8 inch in diameter, and up to 765-795 mm deep, shot 2 000 m from the target)


(largest picture I found, here the whole bullet flies to it's target and makes a 16 inch hole in it, up to 747 mm deep@ 4 572 m)

And another thing:
How does the steel used to armor the Iowa compare to RHA?
The Internets tell me that the Iowa is 30% harder than your avarage WW II tank's armor. What a pity to whoever tries to shoot through the BB's turret with whatever antitank weapon he has (unless he's more lucky than most lottery winners).

And back to the Sunburn cruise missiles:
Those things have huge, 250 kg warheads, but they aren't designed to penetrate heavy armor (ie. no shaped charge). A hit would hurt the Iowa as much as a bomb with the same amount of explosives would, that is *not* drilling deep holes through the ship.

[Wanderer]

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.htm search for 'armor penetration'

You can see that your mighty 16 inch guns are just barely more effective in armor penetration than standard RPGs - and even that is from point-blank range.. And unlike HEAT warheads that armor penetration of kinetic warheads drops quite rapidly. Of the semi-armor piercing warhead in the 16 inch guns (like essentially in all large naval guns) makes a lot effect after the penetration as after the armor piercing cap has gone through the armor the rest of the shell detonates - sorta like high explosive round. Except it happens inside the target.

So sure... 16 inch guns makes more boom - and damage - but as for actual penetration it ain't that miraculous. And neither are Iowa's or other warships' armors.

[Mustang19]

RPGs (shaped charge warheads) depend on inflicting "spall" type damage on the interior of a tank. The idea is to send bits of hot metal flying everywhere, which works fine in a tank crew or ammo compartment but will just start a few fires here and there on a battleship. Battleship shells also have range, plus they have a strong HE effect for shore bombardment tasks. So RPGs just wouldn't feel the same...

[BengalTiger]

In case Wanderer didn't notice:
The AP bullet from the Iowa weighs 2 tons, and makes a hole 16 inches in diameter, the APDS is a dart 0.8 inch in diameter.
What it means is that the tank, who's armor would stop any RPG, sabot or even 16 inch round, will still be bent and twisted beyond all recognition.

Another thing:
Spall proofing in the Abrams was done by installing a kevlar liner all over the inside surfaces of it's armor.

[Mustang19]

Not literally "spall", just the effect of hot metal flying around in the crew compartment, whatever that's called. Spall is when the external armor gets hit so hard that flakes fly off the interior and bounce around even if no actual penetration is made.

[NGTM-1R]

So sure... 16 inch guns makes more boom - and damage - but as for actual penetration it ain't that miraculous. And neither are Iowa's or other warships' armors.

It's the classic case. During the Anzio landings a company of German tanks, including a few Tigers, actually made it as far as the beach, at which point they were engaged by direct fire from a US destroyer. At least two Tigers were hit directly by 5"/38 HC shells. Armor was penetrated for neither of them by the hits, but they were nevertheless knocked out. Concussion from the shellhits turned the tank interiors to dust and killed the crews. In another case for the same action, but further away, a Panzer II was actually flipped over backwards when an 8"/55 HC shell detonated a couple of feet in front of it. A naval shell is not the same as a land artillery shell. They tend to be much bigger and heavier, and fired with much larger propellant charges from much longer barrels.

A parallel more recent in time comes from the First Gulf War, in which on the opening day Kuwaiti Navy patrol boats standing close to shore engaged, and killed, Iraqi T-55s and T-72s with their 76mm/62 OTO/Melara Compact guns. 76mm is no longer considered decent ante for a tank gun, you need at least a 105mm to compete and a 120mm to be a serious contender, and on the surface of it the statement that even a T-55 was killed by 76mm fire is ludicrious. But these were naval guns, firing naval shells.

Also, there is a significant point you missed. Iowa's armor scheme was not the best, pound for pound, that ever went to sea (that honor is reserved to the South Dakota-class), but it was extremely well thought-out and superior to any of her contemporaries. Most significant are two facts: the ship was in fact built of STS steel, so in a sense it was actually made of armor plate. Impact on practically any part of it will count as having to pierce some kind of armor. And in addition to that, there was a 1" STS plate outboard of the main armor plating intended to remove the armor-piercing cap from an incoming shell. Things like the APDS round will still likely penetrate, but shaped-charge and tandem-charge warheads will detonate well before they threaten something vital.

[Kosh]

And back to the Sunburn cruise missiles:
Those things have huge, 250 kg warheads, but they aren't designed to penetrate heavy armor (ie. no shaped charge). A hit would hurt the Iowa as much as a bomb with the same amount of explosives would, that is *not* drilling deep holes through the ship.

That's because the Sunburn was designed to go after Aegis cruisers, not battleships or carriers. For those you'd want a Shipwreck or Kingfisher.

[Mustang19]

A parallel more recent in time comes from the First Gulf War, in which on the opening day Kuwaiti Navy patrol boats standing close to shore engaged, and killed, Iraqi T-55s and T-72s with their 76mm/62 OTO/Melara Compact guns. 76mm is no longer considered decent ante for a tank gun, you need at least a 105mm to compete and a 120mm to be a serious contender, and on the surface of it the statement that even a T-55 was killed by 76mm fire is ludicrious. But these were naval guns, firing naval shells.

Do you remember where you read that? I love info on obscure conflicts.