Theoretical warship: Evaluate

Manji · Post by **Manji** » 2002-08-07 02:37pm

Length: One mile (1.6 KM)

Beam: 900 feet (274.3 meters)

Depth: 450 feet (137.2 meters)

Tonnage: 4 million tons

Armor: 3 feet thick (91 cm)

Watertight bulkheads;

Transverse (side to side): 53

Longitudinal (bow to stern): 9

Decks: 43

Propulsion: Nuclear, octuple screw.

Shafts: 8

Maximum speed: 27 knots

Armament:

Twenty four 16 inch guns in 8 triple turrets (four turrets per side)

64 Boeing Harpoon surface-to-surface (anti ship) missiles.

600 Raytheon Tomahawk cruise missiles, of which 250 are land attack (TLAM) missiles with Tercom Aided Navigation System, and 350 are of the anti-ship variant.

Standard SM-2MR Block 4 SAMs.

Twenty 660mm torpedo tubes;

Torpedo armament: 200 Gould Mk-48 ADCAP

The ship is outfitted with the Aegis Combat System.

Aircraft:

The ship's upper surface is a flattop such as an aircraft carrier would have. Due to the length of its flight deck,, the ship can base certain types of aircraft not suited to conventional carriers.

200 FA-18 Super Hornet

60 JSF CTOL

40 JSF STOVL

6 A-10 Thunderbolt II

4 C-130 Hercules transport aircraft

200 AH64 Longbow attack helicopters

60 Blackhawk helicopters

40 CH-53E Super Stallion heavy transport helicopters

56 CH-47D Chinook medium transport helicopters

Evaluate it as a military vessel.

How, in your opinon, would it fare on its own in combat against a US CVBG (starting position: 500 miles (800 KM) from the battlegroup)?

What, in your opinion, would be required to "take out" this ship?

Mr. B · Post by **Mr. B** » 2002-08-07 02:51pm

WTF is a CVBG

And this ship would be a sitting duck to decent submarines.

Manji · Post by **Manji** » 2002-08-07 03:09pm

Mr. B wrote:WTF is a CVBG

And this ship would be a sitting duck to decent submarines.

Carrier Vessel BattleGroup

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2002-08-07 03:15pm

How would you turn such a monster?

LordChaos · Post by **LordChaos** » 2002-08-07 03:31pm

Same reply as on SB. It's a complete waste of resources, and a hiddious boondogle as well. Even if you could pull out enough magic tricks to keep the thing from sinking at launch, it's combat effectiveness would be mathimaticaly so close to zero that there would be no difference.

Acclamator · Post by **Acclamator** » 2002-08-07 04:08pm

Umm... it's kinda, a bit over the top.

It'd be a bitch to kill, but its size and power only means that the enemy will concentrate on it and bring near everything they have to bear on it. Possibly including nukes.

Acclamator · Post by **Acclamator** » 2002-08-07 04:09pm

LordChaos wrote:Same reply as on SB. It's a complete waste of resources, and a hiddious boondogle as well. Even if you could pull out enough magic tricks to keep the thing from sinking at launch, it's combat effectiveness would be mathimaticaly so close to zero that there would be no difference.

That's as may be... but when all is said an done, I know that I would most certainly not want to be the person facing this ship, or the person tasked with stopping it. Unless I had about a dozen nuclear missiles handy.

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi · Post by **Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi** » 2002-08-07 04:34pm

Such a warship would be a giant leap from the 300m-400m ships we have today. It would be cheaper and more efficient to get a few dozen destroyers. And how many people would crew this beast? An aircraft carrier has a crew of about 6000.

Cpt_Frank · Post by **Cpt_Frank** » 2002-08-07 04:42pm

This ship surely would be very impressive. But the practical value is doubtful, except for the intimidation factor. Better you bild a bunch of moderately sized ships from the money.

RayCav of ASVS · Post by **RayCav of ASVS** » 2002-08-07 05:02pm

I'm simply going to say that this is the most insane thing yet.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2002-08-07 05:03pm

Complete and utter lunacy.

Graeme Dice · Post by **Graeme Dice** » 2002-08-07 05:07pm

The armour alone is going to weigh close to 100 times the maximum displacement of the hull. The ship doesn't have a chance in the world of floating. On second glance, I see you've made it 4,000,000 tons. Well, then your 3' thick armour is going to cover about 0.1% of the ship.

Did you give _any_ thought to these numbers before you posted them?

What would be requried to take out the ship is to launch it, as it will never float.

Barring that, knock out the sensors.

Admiral Piett · Post by **Admiral Piett** » 2002-08-07 05:10pm

First of all you cannot use a conventional hull,it would simply break apart.
You need to use something else,probably a large number of small hulls on which the ship is fitted.A mile long ship can be done,but not with a conventional hull.
Then if you want a evaluation there are two possible answers,a short and a long one.
The short one is:it does not make sense.
The long one...Well there is the embarass of the choice.First of all it is obviously too much expensive to be taken even only in consideration.
Then that is better to have larger number of smaller carriers than can be in more places at the same time etc.

As far destroying it goes it is not really that difficult.A Kilo class submarine with a nuclear warhead torpedo is all that is needed to destroy this monster.
The engines of a mile long ship will make so much noise that it will be absolutely impossible for it to detect a submarine.And a small underwater
nuclear explosion will be more than enough to break the ship apart.

RadiO · Post by **RadiO** » 2002-08-07 05:32pm

A ship like this would start a new wave of anti-ship weapon development and rearmament - maybe massive rearmament. Good news for the arms industry, but ultimately bad news for this supership.
Imagine the disappointment when, on Day 1 of the next war, the "baddies" opt for saturation attacks with nuclear ASMs and that big, beautiful ship gets its upperworks stoved in by the blast effects from one solitary "leaker".

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-08-07 06:08pm

I don't think it would be cost effective, and it really does not have a place in todays' militaries. What you have is a cross between an aircraft carrier and a battleship, but one of those is nearing obselescence (sp), and the other one's effectiveness will be dramatically limited by the battleship components. Also, there are several physical limitations to aircraft carriers. Your ship would only be able to launch and recover a few more aircraft per minute than modern super-carriers, but it would be far larger and require greater crew numbers and resources to run. I don't think it would be very practical, though it would slaughter anything in the water today, one on one.

That and the turrets would prevent an angled flight deck, which is considered essential on modern ships.

LordChaos · Post by **LordChaos** » 2002-08-07 10:26pm

Acclamator wrote:
LordChaos wrote:Same reply as on SB. It's a complete waste of resources, and a hiddious boondogle as well. Even if you could pull out enough magic tricks to keep the thing from sinking at launch, it's combat effectiveness would be mathimaticaly so close to zero that there would be no difference.
That's as may be... but when all is said an done, I know that I would most certainly not want to be the person facing this ship, or the person tasked with stopping it. Unless I had about a dozen nuclear missiles handy.

Hell, I'll face it. Odds are I could do so in a dingy and win (with the numbers he gave it's not seaworthy enough to actualy survive long enough to finish building).

However, assuming it DOES, somehow, make it out of port, one could likely put it back in for repairs for decades with a single Kilo class sube with a few modern torps.

Acclamator · Post by **Acclamator** » 2002-08-08 02:42pm

According to calculations I ran on the dimensions given, the absolute maximum displacement for a cuboid of those dimensions would be somewhere over sixty million tons.

However, ships typically are not a cuboid - the ship's volume will be less than that of the cube of its greatest dimensions.

Lets be generous and say the actual volume (and therefore max displacement) was two thirds of that. Forty million tons.

However, you probably don't want more than half the ship to be underwater. So lets make the limit twenty million.

With a maximum acceptable displacement of 20,000,000 tons, over the dimensions given, how thick could its armor be (this is where I'm asking someone to take over who knows how to do these things...)?

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2002-08-08 02:49pm

Most important question of all....who would pay for this beast?? A single aircraft carrier costs something on the order of 6 billion dollars. This looks like orders of magnitude greater than that, not to mention you probably have to design a whole new way to shipbuild to make this thing work. No way, you probably could build several carriers for what it would take to lay the keel on this monster. Its way overkill. No one NEEDS this ship.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2002-08-08 04:40pm

Eight shafts? That gives you 640,000-shaft horsepower, maximum. This thing wont even be able to maintain steerage on that.

Manji · Post by **Manji** » 2002-08-08 05:46pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:Eight shafts? That gives you 640,000-shaft horsepower, maximum. This thing wont even be able to maintain steerage on that.

Uh... why?

Big engines. Big shafts. Big propellors.

Why is that hard to grasp?

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2002-08-08 06:15pm

Manji wrote:
Sea Skimmer wrote:Eight shafts? That gives you 640,000-shaft horsepower, maximum. This thing wont even be able to maintain steerage on that.
Uh... why?

Big engines. Big shafts. Big propellors.

Why is that hard to grasp?

Problems with big propellers

There's probably other limitations for why each shaft maxes out at 80000shp.

Mr. B · Post by **Mr. B** » 2002-08-08 09:32pm

If I had a single Seawolf class sub. And this monster had no escorts, could I take it down. I'd put my money on it. A few torps near the magazine or reactors and this is going down, BIG time.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2002-08-09 12:43am

Hell, even if it *did* have escorts. Sure as hell passive sonor would be worthless for the escorts next to that monstrosity.

Mr. B · Post by **Mr. B** » 2002-08-09 12:45am

I could probably take it down with a cheap russian deisel sub.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2002-08-09 12:50am

How about a German U-boat?

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Theoretical warship: Evaluate

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