Your assumption was that the beam and the draft remain constant: "Extending the ship's flight deck to be Nimitz/Ford length would've required a commensurate increase in hull length and displacement."
What does it mean then in your opinion?
Yes, that was my assumption.
But a 5% increase in length -- depending on where that extra 5% is added -- may well produce a greater increase in displacement of 5% depending on where that "plug in" is added. I.e.: that the 5% increase in flight deck length would have a proportional increase in displacement. Not an "equal" increase in displacement.
I don't follow your conclusion. You just agreed that lengthening the ship may not have a detrimental effect on the ship's top speed (or that it could even have a positive effect) if the power plant is kept the same. Yet you come back to propulsion being the limiter?
My opinion is that this was a design/cost decision. The designers had a set of KPIs that had to be met with their design. Sure, they could make an ever better ship my making it 15m longer but that would increase the cost. If the shorter ship already met all the KPIs, why build a longer more expensive ship?
Because the benefits of a longer ship in terms of flight deck area -- and therefore in relation to being able to better position the catapults, and in turn the benefits of sortie rates -- are so obvious that if a lengthening of the ship
was plausible without any limitations of propulsion, that it would be strange to not do so, even if there was an increase in cost.
It's certainly plausible they designed this ship to meet a specific KPI and thought the additional cost would not be worth it even if it offered better performance.
But the extra cost given how much associated money they've already poured into this project in terms of infrastructure, R&D, and also the length of time that this ship would be expected to be in service, would strike me as a short sighted decision if propulsion really wasn't a limiter.
