Ideal PLAN Mobile Offshore Base.

Unlike United States, China does not have naval bases in all the oceans of the world. The string of pearl in the Indian Ocean are a shadow of whats needed for a global naval operation. In addition, these ports are vulnerable to attack and insurrection by local forces in the Indian Ocean.

Your challenge, as a civilian consultant to the PLAN, is to engineer a nuclear MOB (mobile offshore base) capable of supporting theater level engagements. It has to be large enough to land the largest transport planes, hold a theater reserve of fuel and supplies, and house an entire army group.

It has to be virtually unsinkable by conventional means, and modular enough to be repaired/ upgraded while at sea.

Best of luck, Comrade. Your family will be well taken care off.

Can't be done for any sum of money that would even remotely be worth the effort.

Totoro said:

Can't be done for any sum of money that would even remotely be worth the effort.

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Here is 50 billion USD, allocated by years of funds that were supposedly "embezzled". Just make us a working prototype or else you'll never see your family again.

Well, sure, you can kill my family but wouldn't you rather spend those 50 billion USD into better equipped air force and/or navy? It'd be much more worth it.

The problem is not in engeneering or technology, such a base IS possible to build. But its just not worth having it. Way too expensive.

Totoro said:

Well, sure, you can kill my family but wouldn't you rather spend those 50 billion USD into better equipped air force and/or navy? It'd be much more worth it.

The problem is not in engeneering or technology, such a base IS possible to build. But its just not worth having it. Way too expensive.

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Agreed. Much rather put that 50 Billion into building a proper High-Seas Expeditionary Force. It should suffice for the down-payment, anyway.

I think this thread should be more about the technical aspect of the prosposal rather than the financial. For example, what kind of missle defense system should we put on it. Whether it can have docks for LPD ships. How big should the ship/platform be. etc. Illustrations are welcome.

proelite said:

Unlike United States, China does not have naval bases in all the oceans of the world. The string of pearl in the Indian Ocean are a shadow of whats needed for a global naval operation. In addition, these ports are vulnerable to attack and insurrection by local forces in the Indian Ocean.

Your challenge, as a civilian consultant to the PLAN, is to engineer a nuclear MOB (mobile offshore base) capable of supporting theater level engagements. It has to be large enough to land the largest transport planes, hold a theater reserve of fuel and supplies, and house an entire army group.

It has to be virtually unsinkable by conventional means, and modular enough to be repaired/ upgraded while at sea.

Best of luck, Comrade. Your family will be well taken care off.

Click to expand...

The US has ben looking at this for years and come up with some very intriguing designs. Perhaps you could start with one of those and go from there.

But in seriousness, I think it's an interesting an constructive hypothetical operation. Is it really that implausible? Personally I think the largest aircraft, a whole army etc is not worth it, but a HUGE oil-rig style platform of middle term deployment is probably cheaper (relative to size/capability) than an aircraft carrier, albeit less versatile.

If we just wanna built something because we can, and we've got next to unlimited funds - then my mobile offshore base would basically be a ship, not an floating-oil rig kind of an island.

Id have bunch of bodies/hulls/whatever for flotation, as many as needed, really, tied all together with somewhat flexible joints. Every one would have independet propulsion. If we'd have like 50 of them, it'd mean the whole megaship would be very resistant to torpedo attacks, especially if way overdesigned, so only 30 or so would really be needed to keep the whole thing afloat. I know, unrealistic, but hey i've got all the money in the world.

If 5 hulls would have their propulsion go to hell, the rest of the hulls would still be able to chug along at couple of knots, which is just fine. Perhaps even 10 knots or so, if one really wants to spend all the fuel, but i see little point in designing the thing for medium speeds.

One could easely implement some kind of passive anti torpedo defences around the whole thing - like quadruple anti torpedo cages, nets etc. Just a reason more why higher speeds would be hard to attain.

Anyway, on top of each hull would be a flexible support column with a gymbal (huge in proportion, naturally) which would support the decks above. Every column would move as needed, independantly, to achieve best suspension for the decks. Realistic? No, but doable with today's tech, IF we really want to. With such approach one could easely get literally tens of square kilometeres of deck space. Ship deck could be something like 2 km long by half a km wide, easely, or double that if needed. Naturally, where possible, the deck sections above would also modular, so one can change only parts of it if needed.

The bottom hulls could have loading ramps and then some kind of elevators to get the stuff to above decks for storage. And best of all, whole ship could be so armored that the ww2 monsters appear to be made out of paper in comparison. Because, hey, we've got unlimited funds.

Downside to the whole unlimited funds thing is time to build such a thing. Past a certain point, throwing more money to a project wont speed it up. So in the time needed to build such a monster, that country could probably win any war in the world if it wanted to, only if it had used up the money allocated for the megaship into proper armed forces.

What's theoretically the largest single hull ship that can be made? I am not talking about Tillman restrictions, but actual physical restricts. Is there a limit in which the durability of steel can't support the hull turning?