Now I am not saying gaint naval gun thick armor battleships, nor do I mean the arsenal ship design. Instead I mean 30 000 ton behemoths with a huge amount of deck space used solely for missiles, however it would be very much manned and have a ce trial superstructure unlike the arsenal design. The reason why I am spewing out this blastphermy is that circumstances seems to be making this more viable and usefull. You need larger ships for more energy and ammo. These ships may sit dozens or hundreds of miles away as it bombards other ships with hundreds of missiles and projectiles for days. It would also be interesting to see a few small to medium sized turret guns with some sort of long range technology, maybe ETC or something. Just to make sure I am not endorsing trumps battleship design, I swear.

Or my favourite the Nelson class

I just finished reading von Mullenheim-Rechberg's book.
Quite nostalgic, as I first read this a teen in school, influenced by a friend's grandfather who was a big Bismarck buff.
I got more out of it now, as I have more references and background knowledge, but I was wondering if any of the baron's claims or hypotheses have been, if not disproven, then perhaps challenged by later works?
Or books that expand, in a substantial way, on his story?

I did read Zetterlings book in the past too, which I thought was good.

Most capabilities? Most deployments/combat experience?

Two companies that were passed over for the U.S. Navy’s Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel program are taking the service to court over the decision, USNI News has learned.

Saildrone and Blue Water Autonomy filed suit in late June in the United States Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., with two separate complaints alleging the Navy didn’t follow its own rules in how it selected contenders for the first generation of larger autonomous vessels.

In May, the Navy tapped seven out of about two dozen companies to build a prototype for the MUSV program that would test the vessels by the end of 2026 and then be placed on a list of approved vendors for the program, USNI News reported at the time.

The basic requirements for the MUSV is for the vessel to travel 2,500 nautical miles at 25 knots in sea state 4 carrying a payload of up to 25 metric tons across at least two 40-foot shipping containers.

Saildrone’s Spectre, built in cooperation with Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Wisconsin, and Blue Water Autonomy’s Liberty USV were both offered up to the Navy’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Robotics and Autonomous Systems for the MUSV awards.

In the two redacted complaints, which were unsealed this week, Blue Water Autonomy and Saildrone allege the Navy didn’t follow its own selection criteria and passed over the two companies for consideration for the MUSV program.
Lawyers for Blue Water Autonomy argue that the company had already invested millions for a prototype under construction for the Modular Attack Surface Craft. The Liberty prototype was selected for the MASC program, according to the complaint.

“A few months before it issued the [request] for MUSV, the Navy selected Blue Water’s Liberty vessel for its predecessor prototype program, Modular Attack Surface Craft (‘MASC’), which similarly sought medium USV prototypes. The Navy evaluated Blue Water’s vessel solution through a multi-stage process and selected Blue Water’s solution before the Navy abruptly canceled the MASC program and replaced it with the MUSV program,” reads the complaint. “Rather than allow Blue Water to test its surrogate vessel and demonstrate that its vessel met the Navy’s requirements, the Navy arbitrarily and prematurely excluded Blue Water from further consideration in the competition.”

Saildrone said its Spectre offering exceeded the requirements and was likewise not appropriately evaluated based on the Navy’s own criteria. The complaint said the Spectre concept exceeded the Navy’s requirements had reached early American Bureau of Shipping certification based on scale model testing but was still rejected via an “arbitrary and capricious evaluation of Saildrone’s proposal by Navy Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Robotic and Autonomous Systems,” reads the complaint.

“Despite these qualifications, Saildrone first learned from a public news article that RAS had selected seven other awardees. Only after Saildrone inquired did RAS notify Saildrone, in a four-sentence email, that its ‘proposal was not selected for further consideration under this solicitation,’ offering no explanation tied to the criteria,” reads the complaint.
The PAE RAS’ specifics on the rejection of both Liberty and Spectre were redacted in the complaints. A Navy spokesperson, when reached by USNI News this week, said the service does not comment on pending litigation.

A company official with Blue Water Autonomy referred USNI News to the complaint.
In a statement to USNI News, a Saildrone spokesperson said Spectre met the MUSV requirements and there was a “misunderstanding” that led to the rejection of the company’s design.
“Our 170′ Saildrone Spectre has been in detailed design for over two years, with extensive testing and industry validation, to assure we met the MUSV requirements. Our fully compliant MUSV submission to the U.S. Navy should have qualified for advancing to the next round, in which we would participate in sea trials and develop a prototype at our own cost,” reads the statement. “Including all qualified bidders in the next phase of the evaluation leverages significant private capital to ensure the Navy has the best options to choose from, providing maximum advantage to the warfighter. We support the Navy’s mission and believe there has been a misunderstanding in the evaluation of our bid.”

The Navy has said it intends to buy 36 MUSV in Fiscal Year 2026 as part of the $5 billion in the 2026 Reconciliation Act using other transaction authorities after years of churn over requirements for larger unmanned craft.

With the development of drones as anti-ship weapons, will ship defense fall back to WW 2 style ships with large number of guns? Lots of gun tubs filled with Bofors, large caliber machine guns etc.

Phalynx systems will still remain as well.

I'm building a scale model of the Yamato, and these little platform things appear on many old photos of the Yamato and not on other photos. Perhaps the photos without those things are the sister ship Musashi? Perhaps they were strictly maintenance related and removed for operations?

These platform brackets are not on the 1/10 scale model Yamato in Kure, but I cant find info on what they were for, or weather they were part of the Yamato's construction.

As the pictures suggest, I think that the biggest issues are that of patrol vessels and manned aviation.

The patrol vessel issue is pretty self explanatory, there is a pretty passing note that they will look into it but nothing concrete and the allocation of 200M Pounds isn't enough for replacement of even the Batch 1 River class which will be coming up decommissioning in only a few years. The role of ships like this not only can't be done by any drone, but they also seem like the type of vessels which could be used to leverage drones in the Royal Navy as a command platform for them. With fewer ships overall it might also mean that things like the Type 31s or the few mine countermeasure motherships could be forced to be inefficiently used where a patrol ship would do.

The other place is manned aviation. There's only the promise of unmanned systems yet to be developed to do things like replace the Wildcat while the Merlin is held on to as long as possible. This at least to me seems an issue as manned aircraft are still the most effective anti-drone platforms as well as offer the ability for long range command and control of drones.

But what do you all think?

Does anyone know the name of the cannons by the side of the ship? I searched it on every place i could think,i just found this image from AOT,i realy wanted to know

While the submarine arm of the Royal Navy is set to expand based on the Defense Investment Plan, the surface fleet is set to stay in mostly its suboptimal state with a large emphasis on as of yet to be developed drone technology for both surface and aviation assets,

Areas of specifically mine countermeasure and patrol are being left quite bare compared to what things were even in recent memory.

Is there anything that y’all think will be added, or is this even maybe a better than likely outlook on what the future of the British military will be?

I’m admittedly a fairly clueless Yank, so I’m wondering about if there’s any insight into reactions or political will which might make light of possibilities. Or if past experiences with similar things could inform on this time.

I was thinking about a "soft" armor scheme— a scheme that focuses on withstanding the consequences of an impact rather than the impact itself.

For example, let's say a 25,000-ton battleship using this scheme had a 100mm armor belt and 300 to 400mm of armor protecting the magazines.

The remaining weight would be allocated to reinforcing the internal bulkheads as much as possible.

That way, in the event of a hit, the shell would detonate within a single compartment; that compartment would contain the blast and prevent damage from spreading to the rest of the ship.

I am making a 6 Iowa fleet in 1:535th scale and I’m making each one unique E.G. USS Iowa 1943, USS new Jersey vietnam, USS Wisconsin temper temper, USS Missouri peace treaty, USS Illinois Evangelion appearance, and USS Kentucky BBG-1

The way it's set up is the two green ones fire as normal, then the two blue ones fire at a delay from each other and finally the red one has the depth charge roll off of the rail or what it's called, I'm sorry if this is t allowed but I didn't know where to ask

Image credit: Nammo

Relatively few options have been available especially defensively for underwater attacks on surface ships. Even if you say saw/heard a torpedo coming, you had best hoped you could outrun it as you had limited options to hitting it. With underwater and especially semi-submersible drones this could be a bigger issue than ever before

But maybe super-cavitating ammunition is a solution?

The USN already has one in service in the 30x173mm Mk 258 Mod 1 as seen in the graphic above, primarily in to my knowledge use for minesweeping, there’s theoretical usage even discussed by Nammo themselves which could include close range torpedo and submarine defense.

One of the big issues with this type of method would be that you would of course need to hit an underwater contact, which usually one doesn’t have a perfect position for. The other is that even the best performing projectiles can’t go that far underwater which would mean a pretty short ranged defense.

The bigger the projectile the longer ranged so if one had say a 5” (127mm) version it would have a massively higher effective underwater range and a meaningful explosive charge though you’d be giving up as good in-air performance.

But what do y’all think?

Could this be useful in a defensive role for surface ships? Or is it only good for mine clearing realistically?

There was a request for some plans of the IJN Akagi - this is what I found in my files for you. Hopefully it's helpful!

NS

At least right now, this page on a German WW1 torpedo boat mentions that on July 7th, 1915, she collided with the German depot ship Indianola in a fog off what is now Poland. How did the Kaiserliche Marine end up with a ship named after (one of several- Iowa, Mississippi or Texas) very small American towns? I don't think it would have been an American ship that was confiscated- not in 1915, not while trying to keep the US from going against them, it would be a terrible look.

All of my googling ran into the Civil War Indianola (famous for the dummy ironclad Black Terror which caused the Confederates to destroy the wreck rather than salvage it). So, can anyone else shed some light on how a fairly obscure American town came to have an Imperial German Navy auxiliary named after it?

Hi everyone,

I am looking for the hull frames / body lines plan for the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi, but I've hit a dead end with the usual sources.

Here is what I have already tried:

Miyukikai: They have completely stopped selling their drawings and have no plans to reopen.

Kagero (Super Drawings in 3D): I have the book, but it does not contain the complete hull lines

Yuzuru Hiraga Digital Archive: The original blueprints are either incomplete, too distorted, or difficult to properly align for an accurate reconstruction.

Does anyone happen to have scans of the old Miyukikai plans, or perhaps the hull lines from the out-of-print Polish A.J. Press monographs or Japanese Gakken books?

Any help or point in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!