On a battleship, the price is the same. Death.
New adventures of the supercruiser "Neuvulimets" in the format of market relations. The main question on the agenda is: "How much?"
War requires money, money, and more money. How much will it cost? At one time, battleships were more expensive than aircraft carriers. An armored ship needs a huge amount of armor steel, increased complexity of manufacturing, engine of a different level. How much will it cost more?
Comment by MaxWRX
And the reason is a huge and very expensive hippopotamus, for which there are no corresponding tasks. The monster is the size of an aircraft carrier, and it will be armed like a destroyer - because the entire displacement reserve will be devoured by armor.
Comment by Aspeed
Dear colleagues, if you think that a highly protected ship is several times more expensive than an ordinary unarmored destroyer, then you shouldn't think so. A number of obvious evidences inevitably indicate that the differences in the cost of construction will be in the range of 10-15%.
At first glance, this seems impossible. Thin lining of the sides and high-grade armor steel with a thickness of one and a half dozen centimeters. Everyday logic refuses to believe that the process of manufacturing and assembling armor plates can be the same in terms of cost and labor costs as the technical process for manufacturing ordinary sheathing sheets. The explanation of the paradox is a simple fact: the hull of a modern ship is not worth ANYTHING against the background of its high-tech "stuffing".
This is exactly the case when “the game is not worth the burned out candles”. The destroyer's hull is such an insignificant line of expenses that there is not even much to argue about. Even if you make it entirely from superalloys with alloying additions in the form of tungsten, the cost of making it will still be less than the cost of radars and weapons.
Let's see this with real examples.
200-meter landing "Mistral". With helicopter lifts, a dock camera, interior decoration, a flagship command post, the Zenit-9 BIUS (which has little to do with the BIUS installed on the destroyers, but still). Radars, communications and other military systems. Advertised amenities, hospital and gym. Finnish diesel generators and rotary rudder propellers "Azipod".
The contract with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation provided for the payment of 600 million euros for each of the two UDCs. How much of this amount was the direct cost of manufacturing the hull of a huge ship?
An even more paradoxical example:
The infamous supertanker "Sirius Star" (Daewoo, South Korea, 2008). Length 332 meters. Empty displacement ~ 50 thousand tons. Deadweight 318 thousand tons. The cost of building a sea leviathan was $ 150 million.
150 million - an unusually huge amount due to the outstanding dimensions of the "Sirius Star". Conventional commercial tankers are much cheaper.
Series of tankers of mixed navigation (river-sea) project 19614 (“Krasnoe Sormovo”, Russia, 2002-2011). Length 141 meters, deadweight - 5600 tons. Unit cost - $ 6 million
In terms of war, six million is nothing. Three missiles "Caliber". A vanishingly small amount by the standards of a modern Navy.
As for a purely civilian tanker, this cost, in addition to the hull, includes all electrical fittings, a fire extinguishing system, 12 isolated tanks with pumps and a viscous cargo heating system, navigation equipment, equipment for living quarters and, of course,power point. In order to prevent spills of oil products, the tanker of project 19614 has a double side and a double bottom.
It took no less metal than it did when building a warship in the ocean zone. In this sense, the tanker project 19614 is a weight and size analogue of the American Aegis destroyer. Moreover, their cost differs in an incomprehensible way by almost three orders of magnitude!
In 2011, the Pentagon signed a contract for the construction of three Aegis-equipped missile destroyers (John Finn, Ralph Johnson, Rafael Peralta). Amounts from 679 to 783 million dollars were allocated for the construction of each ship.
But do not rush to stigmatize the American military for excessive greed and waste of funds. This amount (600-700 million) is indicated WITHOUT taking into account the Aegis system. In original: do not include government-furnished equipment such as weapons and sensors which will take the average cost of the FY2011 / 12 ships to US $ 1, 842.7m per vessel.
Those. with a full set of installed radars, consoles and fire control devices, the cost of each of the destroyers will be the indicated $ 1,842 million, and in fact - even more expensive. There are 90 rocket launchers aboard the ship. Each may contain a Tomahawk strike ($ 2 million) or a Standard anti-aircraft missile ($ 4 million). In addition to them, each of the destroyers regularly carries two multipurpose MH-60 helicopters ($ 20 million each), a wide range of aircraft weapons (very expensive) and unmanned underwater vehicles.
Taking into account the ammunition load and additional equipment, the cost of a modern destroyer will boldly exceed 2 billion evergreen dollars.
Great numbers!
It remains to find the answer to some questions.
The destroyer is the battleship of the XXI century
The modern destroyer-class warship is a floating treasure, the loss of which could cause irreparable damage to the budget.
The Yankees with their printing press can build Burks in batches of 60, saving money through standardization and bulk purchasing.
The navies of other countries have a harder time: their piece products are truly “golden”. And the countries themselves capable of building a ship for 2 billion dollars can now be counted on one hand.
Destroyers - warships of the ocean zone with air defense / missile defense systems and universal weapons are now being built by Great Britain, Japan, India and China. A couple of units are available in the French and Italian navies.
And that's it!
This remarkably repeats the situation that was observed at the beginning of the twentieth century. The modern destroyer ("Burke", "Daring" or the Indian "Kolkata") is an analogue of the expensive "dreadnought", which everyone wanted, but only a few could really afford.
Russia has the sixth largest fleet in the world (and by a number of indicators we are in third place). But the construction of a domestic destroyer is postponed indefinitely. The Krasnoye Sormovo shipyard can grind hulls of any shape for 6 million. Another question is what to put inside? Where are the domestic analogs of AMDR and Standard-6? Where even when choosing the type of power plant, universal disputes arise. However, this is not about that.
We come close to the burning question:
Why so expensive?
Because it is VERY difficult. A radar capable of distinguishing targets in low-earth orbit. A missile capable of intercepting another missile (like hitting a bullet with a bullet!) Or destroying an enemy satellite. A sonar of thousands of hydrophones, capable of “grope” for submarines, fired torpedoes and even simply finding mines in the water column, miles from the ship. There are quite a few systems on a modern destroyer, the capabilities of which can only be explained by the use of dark magic.
So it turns out that the body (power set, sheathing, shut-off valves, internal bulkheads), coupled with the power plant of four most powerful gas turbines (100 thousand hp), fuel fittings, propellers, an electrical system with its power sources (three Allison gas turbine generators), compressors, power drives, elevators and conveyors, finishing and equipment of living quarters on 300 people is only a third of the cost of a modern destroyer.
How much falls directly on the ship's hull (the cost of purchasing thousands of tons of metal, manufacturing and installation of metal structures)? If we take into account the above examples with supertankers, then no more than $ 100 million.
Only this answer. The modern unarmored "tin" in terms of the hull design is fundamentally no different from a civilian vessel.
Increased resistance to hydrodynamic shocks (additional frames of the power set), five armored bulkheads one inch thick (“Burke”, starting from sub-series No. 2) and anti-nuclear protection (maximally sealed body with a minimum of holes) - all these are trifles that cannot or influence the situation.
Why argue if initially there was a threefold difference: 700 million (hull, power plant and all internal "stuffing") - versus 1.8 billion for a completely finished ship (without ammunition).
Even if tens of millions have settled in someone's pocket (war is the most profitable business), this does not change the essence in any way. The case does not cost anything against the background of other items of expenditure. Feel free to add thousands more tons of metal structures and armor plates - this will not affect the cost of a modern warship in any way.
For cost, what type of missiles is installed in the cells of the UVP is much more important.
Bank Chances Game
The poker player is familiar with the situation. It is necessary to deliver to the bank an amount incommensurate with the one that is already “at stake”. And even if your chances are small, but at the minimum cost, you can snatch a huge jackpot.
In the case of a highly protected ship, we are no longer talking about ghostly luck. This is a real benefit: 150 mm of Krupp armor will protect against all existing anti-ship weapons, maybe, except for the most exotic ammunition (the disappearing "Granite", etc.). Experience in naval battles is a guarantee. Where solid blanks could not cope at two speeds of sound, subsonic plastic "Harpoons" have nothing to catch.
Even in the event of a meeting with the exotic three-mahov "Onyx" / "Caliber", the presence of armor plates will prevent serious damage to the ship by the debris of the downed missile (the real precedent is a fire on the frigate Entrim, after the debris of the shot down target hit the superstructure, 1983).
Realizing (and correctly understanding) that conventional attack schemes would not work, the participants in the discussion proposed original methods of "reprisal". For example, to detonate a cluster munition over the ship, which at one time will cripple all detection equipment, the deck and superstructure of the "Invulnerable".
Great, no one paid attention to the fact that in order to deliver the ammunition to the indicated point (at a height of a couple of tens of meters ABOVE the ship), some maneuvers would be required. This will greatly increase the vulnerability of the ammunition (compared to the low-flying anti-ship missile) and give extra seconds to the air defense calculations. After all, the creators of "Invincible" are not going to abandon the "Dirks", "Goalkeepers" and other active means of defense.
Increase the mass of missile warheads, perform them in a tandem scheme, pervert as you want. In total, there will be one - an increase in the mass and dimensions of the anti-ship missiles, coupled with a reduction in the number of their possible carriers. Which again will play into the hands of the ship's air defense system.
Instead of an epilogue
An indirect confirmation of all these theses is the situation in the first half of the 20th century, when developed powers massively built "monsters" without encountering difficulties in processing thick armor plates. What are the 330-mm “walls” of the Queen Elizabeth superdreadnoughts (1915)! Without automatic plasma cutting machines, 3D printers and CNC machines.
After all, magicians were shipbuilders in the last century. Perhaps their secrets are forever lost, as well as the recipe for Dwarven Steel.
Comment by kalach
During World War II, the Americans built 12 LKR and LK, not counting 20 heavy cruisers of the Baltimore and Co family, as well as 27 Cleveland-class “light” cruisers. The thickness of the armor plates of the latter reached 127 mm, while the armor protection of the "Des Moines" (the most advanced TKR) consisted of 150 mm belts and a 90 mm deck.
Almost 60 super ships. Modern unarmored destroyers, with their mass, are resting.
When building the Invincible, you can use the best materials and technologies of both eras … Armored steel of the Krupp brand with a cemented outer layer, ceramics, Kevlar, a unique “perforated armor” (which should be considered not as a set of holes, but as a system of sharp hard edges that explode the ammunition and dissipate its energy). Etc. Etc.
The thickness of the armor plates: six inches is enough against modern ammunition (of course, the booking scheme is differential). Pay special attention to the system of isolated compartments and internal anti-fragmentation bulkheads: breaking through the first layer does not mean that the ship is out of action.
And, of course, the appearance and layout of the "Invulnerable" will not be similar to any of the existing ships or cruisers of the past.
What is the weight of the armor? According to the most rough estimates (15% of the standard displacement, as on the heaviest TKRs of the Second World War) ~ 2 thousand tons for a ship similar in capabilities and armament to an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.
How to ensure the buoyancy of this "iron"? Obviously, additional body volumes. There are no international restrictions on tonnage in our time. And the cost of the metal structures themselves is vanishingly small against the background of other items of expenditure (which was discussed in the main part of the article). The power plant will remain unchanged - the speed qualities of the ship are weakly correlated with the increase in displacement, the innuendo of 3 knots does not matter.
However, all these are particulars.
The main idea is that the installation of the reservation is worth a penny (against the background of the same ammunition), while providing the ship with unique capabilities. Unprecedented for modern "Aegis" combat stability, survivability and immunity to conventional means of air attack.
