Discussing future and (im)possible carrier technology

I agree, the issue with lasers was the surviveability in an environment with increasingly capable anti-carrier missiles. Most editors considered the new lasers the answer to neutralizing such threats. So we started a discussion on how laser defense works and its problems. Close in weapons defense may not seem at first glance important for carriers, but because they are large capability packages they strongly rely for continuing existance on good countermeasures and close defense against appearing threats.


Carrier economics and a different balance between aircrafts and boots on the ground:

I spent some time thinking about carriers and "economics".
Carriers are big ships that are hard to build fast.
Training pilots to operate from carriers is difficult.
Fixed wing aircrafts operated from carriers face extremely high mechanical stress.

You could fix this with one technological and one organizational leap:

The technological leap would be reducing landing and take off speed on carriers while increasing chances of catch. EMALS might be the way to go among other system for external energy supplies and computerized control steps for achieving simplified operation. Simplified operation in turn enables to make carrier opertation basic curriculum for all pilots and most airframes could quickly be enabled to use that capability.
The organizational leap would be to have less operational aircraft carriers, but group supply ships of the same design, but not brought to the same high finish, that are 1:1 aircraft carrier convertible. The great thing about aircraft carrier is being fast and nuclear, so you have a really big supply ship that can partake in all fleets. It can even do civilian cargo runs from time to time in order to save operation costs by being paid for it. In case of conflict these group supply ships aren't yet carriers, but they can help get lost of boots on the ground in the crisis region by transporting these from A homeland to B base and amphibious warfare ships transport them from B into battlespace C. After you got boots on the ground that can hold defensible positions with less expenditure than taking these back from an enemy (because he was there faster and in more numbers than the US Marines and Army). So after you have secured your positions, you can start converting the group supply ships into the aircraft carriers they are designated to be on demand. in the meantime, like in all great wars some of your original carriers will go down or be damaged beyond repair. Guess what, replacement is ready, unlike the current situation with maximum number of sustainable peacetime carriers and long delays for wartime loss replacements.

A great advantage of these group supply ships could be installations for operating helicopters, that can include ASW and MCW for safe transit through dangerous waters and transport helicopters for many purposes.
You might want to convert one into an oil spill emergency vessel with tried and tested equipment for global help, that will bring you more friends than an aircraft carrier in front of the same shore.
Group supply ships for commando carriers could have 2 of them readily filled with material people would need during one of the frequent natural and man-made disasters on earth. Another great bonus for soft power.
Currently, the Germans have dispatched one of their group supply ships to fight pirates of the Somali coast. The advantage of this deployment is the small, but steady capability to exercise sea control without putting something seemingly large and dangerous there that might create the wrong impression of intentions.

Concerning the US, I would suggest about 8 operational aircraft carriers with 8-12 group supply ships that can be carrier converted and have the same basic design.
To this add many amphibious warfare ships because these are commando carriers and sea control ships in one flexible package, the best a sea-power can have. Of course some of these may also operate as group supply ships to have ready replacements. Something like 20 40ktons displacement commando carriers and 10 group supply ships of the same size. For ships smaller than this class it's not necessary to have hulls in stock because they are small enough to be built quickly enough under war pressure if required.

To someone familiar with Soviet warfare doctrines might ring a bell because they considered utilizing multipurpose production of equipment. The rapidly useable numbers in warfare could be a great advantage over somebody with a more limited number of dedicated warfare equipment quite different from his civilian products.
There's a discussion whether these Chinese aircraft carrier casinos aren't a covert attempt at creating back-up carrier convertible hulls.:china:

Your opinions on that?

siegecrossbow said:

I think it was brought up in an earlier post that lasers may be a source of viable point defence on future carriers. If you don't think they are relevant I can move the posts to the Space Warfare section.

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No problem..keep the discussion here..if the discussion get to geeky and techno we shall move it.. Thanks!

Lezt said:

mmhmm, you are looking at it in a very human way - your eyesight is stabilized, and the human brain have great processing ability.

But imagine this, you are on a moving ship which have motion vertically, horizontally and transversely. The ship also pitches, yalls and rolls. Since a laser require a burn time, the stabilization system of the laser needs to keep track of the ships movement. at 1.6 km (1 mile), a degree of pitch equals a 28m or close to 100 ft of elevation change. You need stability system which is precise and have a large range of motion.

If we can draw on modern tanks as a comparison, their gun stability system are only that capable on slightly rough terrain to hit targets 2 km out -> targets which are really slow in comparison with missiles. Even APS have to engage generally in close range and mostly by proximity detonation or shotgun type area munitions.

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It's not really like modern optical mounts are unstable and today's computer chips are slow. In fact, in terms of simple mathematical processing they surpass the human brain by a lot. Or why do you think everyone uses computers to solve difficult math formulas (not create them, but solve).
Mordern laser gyros also provide an incredible amount of fast and precise orienation & movement information of any object in 3dimensional space. Gun CIWS on a rolling & yawing ship also need to be stabilized. And that has been the case now for many years.

lets say 10g is the limit on a ASM traveling at mach 1 at sea level - 340 m/s. lets say the laser needs a 3 sec burn to burn through the shell of the missile. the missile would have traveled 441 m in any off axis direction and would be 1020 m closer towards the ship in straight line terms, and since it is 3 dimensional space, the missiles could be closer or further away from the ship depending on its heading. To detect, track, predict and engage the missile is a daunting task.

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If it's going M1 (340m/s) than that's 1020m in 3s, so how do you come to the conclusion that it also went 441m in any off axis direction? Or vice versa? Even an AShM can only travel one way at a time. If the missile makes a move, distance made towards the ship will shrink with increasing off-target pull to increase lateral movement. So the more violent the maneuver becomes to make lateral way, the more distance has to be traveled, the longer it takes to reach the ship.
If something at M1 is traveling in a 45° (wich is a lot) off axis direction towards a target, at 2km away, from the target that object is changing azimuth by around 7,5°/s. That's how fast the optical turret would have to move.

By the way, while a laser isn't that good in a tropical thunderstorm, the EO / IR / RDR seeker of an AShM aren't really in their best operating conditions themeselves. So if they don't see you in the first place, there's no need in killing them.
I also have a feeling people believe when AShM are capable of performaing erratic maneuvers, that means multiple corkscrews and what not in front of ships. A 10g object at M1 has a 1000m turn radius. It can't just veer off target and come back, it would fly circles around the ship because it could never shrink the circle to be able to come back on. And if the missile flies a 10min display for the crews to watch, then it's just increasing the time the defender has to shoot it down.
The missile will have to come at the target in a very straight line, otherwise it's again self defeating. Those maneuvers are just short, hard pulls in one direction, and then in another a second later. So there will never be really high lateral speeds.

Btw, just for the record, I do not intent to make lasers look like the they solve every probem, the fog of war will obviously allow for things to slip past these systems.

Scratch said:

By the way, while a laser isn't that good in a tropical thunderstorm, the EO / IR / RDR seeker of an AShM
I also have a feeling people believe when AShM are capable of performaing erratic maneuvers, that means multiple corkscrews and what not in front of ships. A 10g object at M1 has a 1000m turn radius. It can't just veer off target and come back, it would fly circles around the ship because it could never shrink the circle to be able to come back on. And if the missile flies a 10min display for the crews to watch, then it's just increasing the time the defender has to shoot it down.
The missile will have to come at the target in a very straight line, otherwise it's again self defeating. Those maneuvers are just short, hard pulls in one direction, and then in another a second later. So there will never be really high lateral speeds.

Btw, just for the record, I do not intent to make lasers look like the they solve every probem, the fog of war will obviously allow for things to slip past these systems.

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Just as a thought, the corkscrew could be best suited for terminal guidance because it allows precison with maximum non-target closing movement.
You could vary the diameter of the corkscrew and I consider it possible to switch the corkscrew and move into a corkscrew next to the original corkscrew if the missile has good enough foldable wings. Any aerobatics here to give input?

Without being too intimately familiar with the properties of those missiles, I'd guess that for such a maneuver to be stable, it would have to be flown rather smooth, wich is once more self defeating. If you fly violent corkscrews I would think that when center of pressure and center of gravity are not in the same spot the missile will start to wobble around very rapidly. If it is easy to design a missile to inherit said properties or not I don't know.

Another thing I think we have to keep in mind is that although missiles have very high G force tolerance on paper, this does not necessarily imply that the missiles have maneuver capabilities that far exceed those of combat aircraft. An AA missile turning at 9 Gs may have the same rate of turn as a fighter aircraft turning at 2-3 Gs.

Scratch said:

Without being too intimately familiar with the properties of those missiles, I'd guess that for such a maneuver to be stable, it would have to be flown rather smooth, wich is once more self defeating. If you fly violent corkscrews I would think that when center of pressure and center of gravity are not in the same spot the missile will start to wobble around very rapidly. If it is easy to design a missile to inherit said properties or not I don't know.

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It's pretty easy because missiles are the least bit comlicated to calculate, you just need to adjust to the changing weight and weight distribution, so ideally you start the missile with center of gravity shortly in front of the pressure center and move on to a very stable flight with more forward center of gravity during fuel depletion. So a missile is much more stable during terminal guidance.

This was the largest of a whole zoo of V/STOL projects, some of them less suitable to aircraft carriers like the Bell X-22 with four shrouded fans on the tips of short tandem wings. In Germany there was a tandem wing project with four lilting rotors at the wing tips. It was advertised as suitable to carry tourists to small and fast growing holiday towns on the Mediterranean coast to be used until, perhaps, a conventional airport was built.
There were many smaller aircraft, of the size of the XV-3, which was the ancestor of the XV-15, which was the ancestor of the V-22.

NikeX said:

More on the pressure of light to move objects. In a defensive system what you want to do is deflect the incoming missile to where it hits the water and not the ship. This would work very good against supersonic missiles of the anti-ship type where their seekers have to maintain a lock on during terminal approach. Any disruption of the flight path would not allow time for the missile to regain lock on to the target again

The research to weaponize this concept is just now being explored and the results are promising

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Any missile is very large compared with something a hundred times the size of a bacterium.

Any missile is very large compared with something a hundred times the size of a bacterium.

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What does a bacterium have to do with things? Besides the use of a laser knocking something off course is still being researched. It is too early to rule anything out.