Bruships: A Special - Questions/What ifs till the Bru runs out? (6)

Senior commanders disclaiming strategy is troubling; more serious exercises and future-focused work offer some reassurance.

He thinks it made more sense during the Cold War and now helps create conflicting briefs that obstruct a practical cruiser program.

It could have accelerated competing submarine programs and begun a much earlier underwater arms race.

They are being built in Australian and Canadian yards.

British discussion of a turbine-powered dreadnought armoured cruiser shows that battlecruisers did not have to erase the older cruiser lineage.

Victorious was costly and badly managed, while destroyer-to-anti-submarine-escort conversions were far more convincing.

A Gorgon-like monitor would have supplied the heavy firepower Finland needed for shore support and anti-ship work.

No. He considers the interwar Royal Navy more coherent about its direction than the US Navy is today.

They would have to expand over time, because the resulting security vacuum would be global and expensive to fill.

He sees competition among command bureaucracies as strategically unhealthy, especially when it drives demand for carriers without durable support for them.

He would create an intentionally unbalanced fleet of rebuilt British carriers, Soviet ships, old US submarines, and mismatched British escorts.

It could have altered the treaty gun ceiling and pushed Britain toward a more formidable 18-inch capital-ship response.

A faster class with three twin turrets and more ships would better serve the intended role.

The ships would be usable only after an extremely expensive expansion of supporting infrastructure, potentially on both coasts.

A passage on the US civil-rights movement explains how organization, economic pressure, media attention, and disciplined nonviolence worked together as strategy.

A joke about filling the air with Sea Slug missiles becomes a warning against giving every ship a different experimental air-defence system.

He favors Denmark, followed by Italy and Japan, because they design forces around real strategic needs rather than abstract requirements.

The 40-calibre 18-inch gun fitted to Furious may have been shortened from a weapon intended for a roomier mounting rather than designed short from the outset.

He favours AIP boats because he expects more of them could be built.

The Dutch, Greeks, and Poles would be likely principal recipients, while older or impractical ships would be disposed of.

It would likely answer with enlarged G3/N3-style ships and a move toward 18-inch armament.

No. Taiwan is expected to resist, making easy-capitulation assumptions unserious.

A supertanker-sized arsenal ship loaded with vertical-launch cells.

Taking the bridge and signals could immobilize Nassau and create a second fleet action around the prize.

The Navy might integrate earlier and cooperate better with allies, while Ernest King would make the civil-rights campaign far more confrontational.

He sees the plan as sensible because an escort-carrier-type capability fits South Korea's exposed maritime trade routes.

Model work began early in the twentieth century, full-ship trials emerged in the interwar period, and the modern form matured in the 1960s.

He would force Aegis onto old Danae-class cruisers and buy Soviet Moskva- and Kiev-class aviation ships.

Yes, if Cold War requirements created a need for an escort carrier, probably first through a Unicorn-like fleet-support design.

No. The Burke hull is not designed for that insertion and would be overstressed, while Zumwalt offers more genuine growth potential.

It would likely field larger and faster cruisers that complement battleships and preserve global flagship and presence roles more cheaply.

Yes. British planning considered a larger armoured-deck design with more hangar and aircraft capacity.

The threat from Goeben and Russia's own serious difficulties made the apparent opportunity much less straightforward.

About 150 miles and twenty rounds per minute for a twin mount, with close-in defence offering some interception capability.

Claims of decisive Soviet funding should be tested against ordinary local donations, the limits of surviving records, and the incentives of sources claiming influence.

He links Germany with Romulan technical fragility, Poland with Klingon aggression, US industry with the Dominion, the Commonwealth with the Federation, and Soviet control with Cardassia.

They would encourage larger boats and mixed armament, creating much more dangerous anti-capital-ship submarines.

No ship passes a shock trial without failures; the useful result is which systems break, how many fail, and what those failures do to the ship.

With underarmed Belgian frigates, a French carrier and submarines, and early Arleigh Burke destroyers chosen without a coherent fleet logic.

Missile logistics: navies need more VLS cells and a credible way to rearm them at sea.

Because of cost, a belief that naval guns were obsolete, and the hull strengthening the installation would require.

End LCS procurement, expand Constellation frigates, explore a Zumwalt-based cruiser and light carrier, and strengthen Marine Corps firepower.

It might begin from a Warrior-like ironclad, but two centuries of different technological evolution would make the modern result highly unpredictable.

He would back Hood, unless Lexington landed an early decisive hit.

A large force of fast 9.2-inch armoured cruisers, supported by smaller cruisers and carriers, would be his priority.

Likely yes, but a large shell magazine could still create a saturation problem at a much lower cost than missiles.

The larger torpedo is far heavier and offers substantially greater range and destructive potential, demanding a different launch platform and doctrine.

No. He would prefer more 6-inch cruisers, because the Royal Navy needed hull numbers and greater sustained firepower.

Along a similar path but much more slowly, with AIP, fast submarines, and nuclear boats arriving later.

They came from G3-era work and were considered for other capital ships, cruisers, and even a proposed HMS Eagle torpedo-carrier conversion.

He would look to adapted commercial support hulls and uncrewed vessels supported by crewed mother ships.

Arguments for smaller government become meaningful only when they identify which services disappear and how the state will preserve the capacity to expand when conditions change.

At-sea missile rearming is technically possible in principle, but its cost, risk, and unglamorous infrastructure make sustained development politically difficult.

Possibly in some areas, but cyber tools are not decisive by themselves and protected wartime networks reduce their reach.

Britain had comparable thinkers, but Mahan communicated his naval argument more effectively to a broad audience.

Treaty tonnage limits created the trade-off; larger unrestricted carriers could combine armour with a larger air group.

The divide between scholarship for specialists and scholarship for the public turns partly on whether academics can risk unscripted questions, visible mistakes, and correction.

Do not assume a Western pattern of war; China would try to choose the timing and form of any conflict for itself.

The Polish squadron could cover the North Atlantic, spare Hood, and let Britain concentrate overwhelming capital ships against Italy.

Sometimes because of procurement rivalry or scale, and sometimes because an army weapon is not suitable for saltwater service.

About a year for recoverable ships, but the best candidates had already been sold.

Decarbonisation depends on timely investment in long-lived generation, storage, and grid capacity.

The treaties broadly allowed parity already; US domestic politics, especially the Senate, prevented the Navy from fully reaching it.

It is a reasonably accurate portrayal, helped by a strong source novel and access to recent wartime personnel.

China likely has the short-term advantage, while a fully mobilized West could exceed it in a longer conflict.

It is possible, and an order to fire when bearing permitted is more likely than an independent crew action.

He points to HMS Eskimo, HMS Nubian, and HMS Illustrious as notable survival and repair cases.

Britain first removed uniformed procurement specialists and then generalized the civil service, leaving defence acquisition without either pool of expert buyers.

They would scale the technology that survived combat: uncrewed ships if autonomy worked, or numerous minimally crewed ships if cyber attack defeated it.

Very well: airborne early warning and Phantoms would greatly reduce the effectiveness of Argentine air attack.

Because they see war as the only solution to problems that also deny them the capacity for a long conflict.

The senior destroyer captain would initially control the prize and would be unlikely to surrender it easily before formal reassignment.

Yes. The later Tribal's rate of fire and modern systems would give it the advantage.

A conventional carrier conversion would be very difficult because of speed, though a helicopter or F-35B-style platform is more plausible.

Hull construction may be roughly balanced after mobilization, but ships and missiles still depend on electronic components and materials tied heavily to Taiwan.

Their endurance is attractive, but the drag and resulting speed limits are severe for modern carrier operations.

He sees a resource- and production-control model that can explain Chinese investments better than a simple capitalist or communist label.

Roughly a flotilla of eight 1940-41 Tribals, using their speed, torpedoes, fire control, and high rate of fire.

Both are needed; he would add three Type 45s and spend the remaining equivalent budget on roughly five OPVs.

The 1979 war may have been a Chinese attempt to punish Vietnam and signal a regional hierarchy, although its aims remain contested.

Sloops could still serve in patrol roles, while some later carriers might be adaptable only after substantial modernisation.

No. The F-35B better supports a wider set of British flight decks and therefore a more reliable carrier-air capability.

They would first face a shipyard and infrastructure crisis, making modernization extremely slow and expensive.

They would face a personnel and lost-expertise nightmare as serious as the shipyard problem.

HMS Nubian is his strongest choice because of her extraordinary service record and the case that she should have been preserved.