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Japan's 27DDG-class Destroyer revealed to be JS Maya (DDG-179), lead ship of Maya-Class (30 July 2018)

Image uploaded less than 2 hours after the reveal

Nagato wants to be a destroyer, too.

Kaga now Maya, I want to see the pictures of her bonding with her younger self, maybe a reunion of all the new generation ones?

ithekro said:

Nagato wants to be a destroyer, too.

yeah, but new destroyers look a bit more intimidating than wwii era destroyers, maybe they don't trigger the nagamon effect

qwertyuipp said:

yeah, but new destroyers look a bit more intimidating than wwii era destroyers, maybe they don't trigger the nagamon effect

Maya 1930 and Maya 2018 are practically the same size. Modern destroyers are alot bigger than their WWII counterparts. Cruisers meanwhile have actually shrunk. In terms of length and tonnage, there's hardly any difference between a modern cruiser and a destroyer.

Steak said:

Maya 1930 and Maya 2018 are practically the same size. Modern destroyers are alot bigger than their WWII counterparts. Cruisers meanwhile have actually shrunk. In terms of length and tonnage, there's hardly any difference between a modern cruiser and a destroyer.

Thanks to continuing automation, for any given role besides aircraft carrier, ships should generally get smaller in the future.

Without automation, if something needs to be done, you have to have a human do it, and that human needs room to work, space in the bunks and food in the galley. Since the power of engines is limited by the technological level of the time when it's built, the larger you make the ship to fit that in, the thinner your armor needs to be spread if you're going to be able to keep that ship sailing at any reasonable speed.

More automation means you can run a ship with the same firepower in a smaller frame that can be more thickly armored even while costing less to both build and operate.

This is before you even start on the fact that armor just isn't going to stop most attacks, anymore, since you're dealing with cruise missiles and much better torpedoes more than gunfire. People built battleships in previous eras because, even if battleships cost ten times as much as a destroyer, they could bear guns that would eliminate destroyers before they even got within range, and even then, destroyer gunfire was essentially ineffective against battleships. You had to build battleships because seemingly the only thing that could stop a battleship was another battleship, and there was simply a greater efficiency in scale - this is why the treaties all tried to limit battleship production. When you have cruise missiles wiping out fleets that never come within 100 miles of one another, and where you just can't make armor thick enough to stop everything, however, battleships just become bigger, juicier targets, and it makes more sense to work on raw cost-effectiveness of platforms for missile launchers.

The same goes for land vehicles - the instant someone makes a drone tank or AI-controlled tank reliable enough for front-line use, tanks will shrink to half their size because not having a crew compartment means less armor can provide more protection to a lighter vehicle.

I disagree about tanks due to the fact that land vehicles, unlike their sea-going counter-parts, are much more salvageable. Man power at sea is different than man power on the land. At sea, damage control has a saturation point where men will only get in each other's way while conducting repairs. On land, an extra set of hands and a strong back when dealing with a 70 ton tank can be very helpful.

At sea, a crew that has lost their ship are dead weight. On land, a crew that has lost their tank are all of the sudden light infantry or whatever other jobs are needed.

Basically there's a reason why the M1 never adopted an auto-loader. For the kind of war the M1 was expected the fight and the role it'd have to perform, the extra crew man and space for him was justified in the overall doctrine. And I really don't see drone warfare taking over sea or land combat. There's too much time spent in the field and we're a long way away from machines being able to do maintenance in the same way humans can.

Steak said:

Maya 1930 and Maya 2018 are practically the same size. Modern destroyers are alot bigger than their WWII counterparts. Cruisers meanwhile have actually shrunk. In terms of length and tonnage, there's hardly any difference between a modern cruiser and a destroyer.

Not really, Takao's supposed 'standard' displacement was like 9,850 tons which was magical pixie bullshit. She was about 11.5k out of the yard. Then she added like a thousand tons more after they refits lading up to the war, by the start of it she was like 12.5 standard and 15,500 full load. Her complete flouting of supposed treaty restriction however isn't much of a shock given she was also like 205 meters overall.

The Japanese "Type A" cruisers were actually very large ships for their type, only the equally rule busting Hipper and post Treaty Baltimore are of similiar scale. The current Maya has a slightly wider beam (about 1.5 meters more maximum), but otherwise is a considerably smaller vessel.

NWSiaCB said:

Thanks to continuing automation, for any given role besides aircraft carrier, ships should generally get smaller in the future.

No, this is ass backward with the trend being toward increasing size for all combatant classes. The issue driving hull growth has nothing to do with crew though, people tend to think of radars and sensors as little things you just bolt on, and during WWII they might have been to an extent, but modern sensor systems are enormously powerful beasts. They require rooms full of computers, dedicated refrigeration plants, megawatts of power.

To give an example that drives this home in a more 'real' manner, the USN decided to test what would happen if an Aegis ship radiating at maximum output sailed into a cloud of chaff. The answer is that when you are blasting megawatts of microwaves into the air and sail into a cloud of aluminum foil you get huge arcing bolts of man made lighting leaping onto the ship that scorch the hull.

By and large the smallest hull that can support a full 'high capability' multi-role AAW, ASW, AuSW suite in terms of space, cooling, and power supply at this time is a destroyer of at least something like 7,500 tons and probably closer to 10,000 in reality. If you're willing to skimp and have lighter weapon loads, shorter range, and less all around capability you can still get something pretty good for 5,500-6,000, but anything less starts rapidly loosing capability.

Honestly just go out and try to find a replacement ship built for an older vessel in the last 20 years that was SMALLER then what it replaced. This is unlikely to change going forward, even if you cut the crew the ships won't shrink. They'll probably get bigger as navies have increasingly finally started to figure out "steel is cheap", basically at this point the actual hull (and even engines) of a ship are one of the cheapest and lowest risk components, so skimping on size to try and save some pittance on construction cost is silly when it's going to be dwarfed by the costs of the fire control, weapons, and EW systems you're putting into the hull.

Without automation, if something needs to be done, you have to have a human do it, and that human needs room to work, space in the bunks and food in the galley. Since the power of engines is limited by the technological level of the time when it's built, the larger you make the ship to fit that in, the thinner your armor needs to be spread if you're going to be able to keep that ship sailing at any reasonable speed.

Modern ships have no real armor (well beside super carriers), this is another reason bigger is better. Since all modern weapons are assumed to penetrate having a bigger hull for more weapons, defensive systems, and redundancy is much superior. A larger hull also provides added mass and buoyancy to absorb said penetrations. Furthermore larger hulls are not necessarily any less efficient then small ones, indeed volume rises faster then surface area, the later is the biggest factor in drag, the former tends to determine fuel load.

This is why capital ships have always had FAR superior endurance then smaller vessels at a given speed.

More automation means you can run a ship with the same firepower in a smaller frame that can be more thickly armored even while costing less to both build and operate.

Armor is useless, small size is mostly useless. The metal for the hull is the cheapest part of the ship. You'll save a pittance on construction costs... then probably pay three times as much over the life of the ship as it proves a bear to maintain and upgrade verses something built bigger to start with.

This is something people utterly fail to understand when they see "oversized" designs, cramming too much shit into too small a space isn't good design. A larger hull volume lets you decompress things and provides room to work and for stores, this is important in actually maintaining a ship at sea. An example that comes to mind is that some European frigate broke down on deployment, it needed a part, but it was a "lean" design and had minimal facilitates for repairs aboard. A USN Burke was able to machine a replacement allowing a temporary repair so it could return home.

Things like that, having the space and personnel to support something like a well equipped machine shop are the sorts of things that 'don't matter' for a ship's nominal combat potential, right up until they absolutely massively do.

This is before you even start on the fact that armor just isn't going to stop most attacks, anymore, since you're dealing with cruise missiles and much better torpedoes more than gunfire.

Armor doesn't stop any attacks which is why the only armor used is composite splinter protection intended to limit the spread of damage within the hull.

People built battleships in previous eras because, even if battleships cost ten times as much as a destroyer, they could bear guns that would eliminate destroyers before they even got within range, and even then, destroyer gunfire was essentially ineffective against battleships. You had to build battleships because seemingly the only thing that could stop a battleship was another battleship, and there was simply a greater efficiency in scale - this is why the treaties all tried to limit battleship production. When you have cruise missiles wiping out fleets that never come within 100 miles of one another, and where you just can't make armor thick enough to stop everything, however, battleships just become bigger, juicier targets, and it makes more sense to work on raw cost-effectiveness of platforms for missile launchers.

Battleship size was driven by capability needs. It didn't occur in a vacuum and battleships didn't burst forth fully formed from the minds of naval planners. The battleship evolved over time from the first iron clad to the last super dreadnoughts, and it's increasing size was driven by capability requirements. The ships got larger because they needed to be larger to support the systems to be effective in combat. Survivablity was ONE of those issues, but it wasn't the only one by any stretch, and regardless it's not like survivablity isn't a consideration in modern designs either, it's just not manifested as foot thick slabs of steel anymore.

The same basic capability factors drive modern vessels the main difference is that sensors and EW equipment has mostly displaced armor as the third principle driver of size. You can't put Aegis on a corvette, or even a self defense capability of much use really. If you want endurance, capability, and some survivablity you're gonna need a big boat and crew accommodations are only a part of that.

The same goes for land vehicles - the instant someone makes a drone tank or AI-controlled tank reliable enough for front-line use, tanks will shrink to half their size because not having a crew compartment means less armor can provide more protection to a lighter vehicle.

Rather unlikely for the following reasons:
-The electronic brain needed to support the vehicle is unlikely to be the size of a laptop, it will likely consume a fair portion of the volume a crew would have
-The vehicle will be unable to maintain itself, passages to access it's systems for maintenance will be required, combined with the above there may end up being almost no volume savings at all internally.
-1500+ Horsepower engines aren't going to get much smaller. Further power demands on future vehicles with more sensors and possibly systems like lasers and various active defense systems will only increase likely demanding supplemental power generation
-They aren't going to stop sucking down prodigious amounts of fuel either
-Modern composite armor arrays work heavily on the principle of trading weight for volume, they are more efficient weight wise, but bulky volume wise
-High caliber guns cannot be mounted on overly light vehicles, the vehicle needs a certain amount of mass to effectively soak the huge recoil impulse of a high pressure gun
-Ground contact area is critical for terrain traversal, an overly stubby vehicle would have a much more limited ablity to cross obstacles or gaps
-A minimum height is required to attain any form of useful depression and hull down firing capability

Regardless ground based drones as front line combat units are extremely unlikely, probably ever. It's far too difficult to maintain a clear and effective signal to them, and that's before you get into any active attempts to block said signals. Drone vehicles aren't viable, they have to be genuinely AI driven able to think for themselves in isolation because the problems of communication on the ground are very severe.

Steak said:

I disagree about tanks due to the fact that land vehicles, unlike their sea-going counter-parts, are much more salvageable. Man power at sea is different than man power on the land. At sea, damage control has a saturation point where men will only get in each other's way while conducting repairs. On land, an extra set of hands and a strong back when dealing with a 70 ton tank can be very helpful.

You have no idea how Damage Control works if you think that in the history of naval warfare a damage control man has EVER fucking said "Man I wish we had fewer men here."

Actually this is the exact OPPOSITE of what many in the navy are saying. Many are extremely wary of automation because even if it works in peace time, you're liable to have absolutely no manpower reserves when you suddenly need to do something beyond what is 'routine', like say try to save the fucking ship from sinking. This also ignores that if a ship is being shot at sufficiently for major damage control operations to be needed that many crew are likely being killed and injured making the necessity of a depth of manpower even more vital.

At sea, a crew that has lost their ship are dead weight. On land, a crew that has lost their tank are all of the sudden light infantry or whatever other jobs are needed.

No, they're a tank crew that is being sent to the rear to wait for assignment to a new tank, just like a ship's crew. If you're using the crews of knocked out tanks as riflemen you are in BAD fucking shape.

Steak said:

I disagree about tanks due to the fact that land vehicles, unlike their sea-going counter-parts, are much more salvageable. Man power at sea is different than man power on the land. At sea, damage control has a saturation point where men will only get in each other's way while conducting repairs. On land, an extra set of hands and a strong back when dealing with a 70 ton tank can be very helpful.

At sea, a crew that has lost their ship are dead weight. On land, a crew that has lost their tank are all of the sudden light infantry or whatever other jobs are needed.

Basically there's a reason why the M1 never adopted an auto-loader. For the kind of war the M1 was expected the fight and the role it'd have to perform, the extra crew man and space for him was justified in the overall doctrine. And I really don't see drone warfare taking over sea or land combat. There's too much time spent in the field and we're a long way away from machines being able to do maintenance in the same way humans can.

It's really the exact opposite. If you take a penetrating hit in a tank, you're generally fucked and should get out ASAP. If you take a penetrating hit in a ship, then you should continue to fight the ship. For example, a tank has one engine. If that engine is gone, you can't move. Ships of decent size usually have multiple engines and multiple screws, which means disabling an engine does not disable the ship.

In either case sending crew into battle as infantry or whatever is a terrible idea. Those men, be it tankers or sailors, are trained for their jobs, and to send them into battle as infantry is a huge waste of human lives and the resources used to train them.

(Also, drone warfare is taking over land, air, and sea combat. Those drones are called missiles, and they are getting freakishly smart.)

Adding to Tk3997's comment, which I mostly agree with, the biggest disadvantage of a big ship is navigation and repair--big ships need big drydocks and big canals. Otherwise, the ocean is a really big place. The second biggest disadvantage is loss of flexibility--you can't spread out your Really Big Ship to counter multiple smaller threats. However, this is balanced by the fact that a smaller ship going 1 vs. 1 against a larger one will likely lose--so you need size to maintain capability.

Awesome!