Roland-class DD

Why RMN is classifying them as destroyers, when they're a size of bigger light cruiser and should be able to eat any light cruiser?
They're fragile but they have big sledgehammer and most of World War Two cruisers were similar to them, if they were to close to the capital ships they were in danger. In other situations roles would change cruiser would be aggressor. Roland would be better if her hull would be bigger and could have launchers in broadsides, rather than in hammerheads.

Draken wrote:Why RMN is classifying them as destroyers, when they're a size of bigger light cruiser and should be able to eat any light cruiser?
They're fragile but they have big sledgehammer and most of World War Two cruisers were similar to them, if they were to close to the capital ships they were in danger. In other situations roles would change cruiser would be aggressor. Roland would be better if her hull would be bigger and could have launchers in broadsides, rather than in hammerheads.

"Fragile" may not be the most apt description for something with Manticoran ECM, and it may not be relevant for something able to poke an enemy outside the range at which the enemy can reply.

It is mighty large for anything called a destroyer in the Honorverse, but the RMN classifies ships by intended role, not size. It's why the Nike is a "battlecruiser" and not the RMN amazingly taking up the construction of battleships. The Roland is meant to carry on the small, intense fleet screening and pirate suppression role, rather than the longer range, longer deployment profile of a light cruiser. It's not the sharpest of distinctions - it shouldn't have to be - but the Roland certainly doesn't attempt to carry lots and lots of ammunition for repeated combats or a long engagement; it does not have spare personnel or Marines for prize crews and boarding or even many inspections; and I doubt the bunkerage is terribly generous.

Chances are it would be better overall at what it is meant to do or will end up having to do if it were larger. But this is an era of transitional designs. I think that destroyer/light-cruiser distinction is going to get even hazier, and (this part is pretty much from RFC) that's going to be on a 300-400,000 ton platform before long. Some of the old DD role is being sucked up by LAC's and recon drones; what remains just plain takes more space but generally less crew.

Draken wrote:Why RMN is classifying them as destroyers, when they're a size of bigger light cruiser and should be able to eat any light cruiser?
They're fragile but they have big sledgehammer and most of World War Two cruisers were similar to them, if they were to close to the capital ships they were in danger. In other situations roles would change cruiser would be aggressor. Roland would be better if her hull would be bigger and could have launchers in broadsides, rather than in hammerheads.

Because Manticore has always classed ships according to the mission they are designed to execute. Rolands were designed to carry out the mission that Manticore has traditionally assigned to destroyers, within the environment of MDM and DDM missiles.

Now, the Roland was always considered a transitional design; the RMN knew it was not an optimal model. But the environment has changed radically, and operational planning has not quite fleshed out all the implications of multi-drive missiles and off-bore firing. So in some ways, the Roland is also a testbed and an interim design to help BuOps and BuShips figure out what direction to go with the next designs.

David has said that BuShips is considering the possibility that the smallest viable ship once things settle down and everyone has caught up to Manticoran tech might be a 300,000 kt light cruiser.

I am thinking "shipyards space", the RMN had plans for other size ships but with Hephaestus and Vulcan gone, you go with what you can build the most of in the short term.

I'd hazard a guess that whatever shipyard space survived the Yawata Strike might only be able to build smaller ships, because it's the SD(p)s and CLACs that the Mesan Alignment wants out of commission, as those are the only ships capable of taking out whatever is up their sleeve at Darius, etc. The MAN didn't have enough ships to finish up the whole sector, or they would have taken out Haven and the Andermani in the same sneak attack.

Following that logic, back over to the RMN "pre-Yawata: because of Talbott and Silesia they were ramping up to do a lot of scouting and pirate swatting, which is the ideal role for a "better Hawkwing". In fact, they know that they want to do so with slightly higher ranking officers out towards the Verge which is why they put a bigger command deck in EVERY Roland, plus make the ships compatible with the DD's and tractor'd pods.

Post Yawata, I'll even toss in a poor man's "stipulation" in this post that maybe afterwards the RMN isn't in a position to build many more Nike(s) for quite a while. So right now (aRT) we need big powerful scouts, and lots of them, and then the proven Sag-C to control wormholes, control ammo-ship pods if need be in fleet engagements a la Spindle and in general fill in for the big boys "we can't build for a while".

What you don't have time to do is go back to building anything other than Rolands or Sag-C's until the GA missile production comes online with Beowulf's help, and Bolthole's combination of Forraker plus Hemphill figure out some crash conversion strategies and the agreements for force deployment yada yada yada...

Meanwhile, the Alignment rubs it's evil hands together and...

SWM wrote:[Snipping fore and aft]Now, the Roland was always considered a transitional design; the RMN knew it was not an optimal model. But the environment has changed radically, and operational planning has not quite fleshed out all the implications of multi-drive missiles and off-bore firing.

Also, spider-drives. The motor-torpedo boat and the fleet motor-torpedo-boat-destroyer iterated from the 1890s to the 1910s before there was a "wait, wait, submarines, the destroyers have to get the anti-sub weapons because they're the only thing we've got enough of". That's probably going to be true in the Honorverse as well.

I expect in the Honorverse it's not going to be specialized weapons that are the problem but specialized sensors; shooting a spider-drive ship isn't especially awful if you can see it.

So "destroyer" role hulls will get bigger just because there's this new mission being added; more drone space, more passive sensors, more FTL channel space, something like a Keyhole as a "towed array", I have no idea but whatever the response is it won't reduce the existing mission requirements, so you get a bigger ship.

Plus, keep in mind that BB-4 IOWA, from 1896, displaced 11,500 tons or so. BB-61 IOWA, about fifty years later, displaced four times that despite the best efforts of various treaties to limit navy size and costs. Or compare HMS OSTRICH, 1900, 400 tons at full load, with HMS DARING, D05, of 1947, 3,800 tons at full load. No matter how much you want to pay as little for a warship as you possibly can, technological innovation makes them larger and more expensive. The Honorverse has been innovating like crazy and it's just stumbled into new physics. The innovation consequences are only going to get worse for naval construction.

Draken wrote:Why RMN is classifying them as destroyers, when they're a size of bigger light cruiser and should be able to eat any light cruiser?
They're fragile but they have big sledgehammer and most of World War Two cruisers were similar to them, if they were to close to the capital ships they were in danger. In other situations roles would change cruiser would be aggressor. Roland would be better if her hull would be bigger and could have launchers in broadsides, rather than in hammerheads.

It's a DD because it's designed to fill DD roles. It doesn't have the extra endurance (or crew) that largely differentiate a light cruiser from a destroyer.

But the LERM equiped Avalon-class does have those, so it's considered a CL despite being smaller than the Roland despite their design periods overlapping. (It was only launched a year before the Roland)



As to putting the missiles in the broadside, the Roland isn't big enough to fit Mk16 launchers there - the launchers are just too long. To put broadside tubes in you either need a smaller missile (like the LERM the Avalon CL and Wolfhound DD use) or a bigger ship (like the Sag-C CA which does mount Mk16s broadside)

We're told even the Sag-B at 422,750 tons, and a 71m beam isn't quite big enough to mount Mk16s, you need the little additional size of the -C (483,000 tons, 74m beam). So there's no change of mounting them there in the (comparatively) little (188,750 ton, 54m beam) Roland.

Graydon wrote:So "destroyer" role hulls will get bigger just because there's this new mission being added; more drone space, more passive sensors, more FTL channel space, something like a Keyhole as a "towed array", I have no idea but whatever the response is it won't reduce the existing mission requirements, so you get a bigger ship.

Plus, keep in mind that BB-4 IOWA, from 1896, displaced 11,500 tons or so. BB-61 IOWA, about fifty years later, displaced four times that despite the best efforts of various treaties to limit navy size and costs. Or compare HMS OSTRICH, 1900, 400 tons at full load, with HMS DARING, D05, of 1947, 3,800 tons at full load. No matter how much you want to pay as little for a warship as you possibly can, technological innovation makes them larger and more expensive. The Honorverse has been innovating like crazy and it's just stumbled into new physics. The innovation consequences are only going to get worse for naval construction.

Or more directly compare the USN's final WWII destroyer class with their post war attempt to design a destroyer truly capable against the new generations of post-war submarines.

Gearing-class Destroyer, introduced 1945
Displacement: 2,616 tons
Length: 390.5 ft (119.0 m)
Beam: 40.9 ft (12.5 m)
Draft: 14.3 ft (4.4 m)

USS Norfolk Destroyer, introduced 1953
Displacement: 5,600 tons
Length: 540 ft (160 m)
Beam: 54 ft (16 m)
Draft: 26 ft (7.9 m)

In less than a decade the threat had changed enough that the minimum size necessary to counter it (with the tech of the day) had more than doubled! (And IIRC the cost increase was worse than that. Enough that the USN decided it couldn't afford the build more of them)