Nuclear powered guided missile battlecruiser

I'm leaning towards the idea that building a ship such as Popeye has proposed would be a good idea. It won't be the best surface warship necessarily, but that doesn't matter. You learn by doing, and learn from your mistakes. The Chinese know the principles of warship construction, nuclear propulsion, how to build large ships and much else besides. Bringing all this expertise together in a single shipbuilding project like this would be of enormous benefit to the Chinese, and will open up the possibilities for the successful completion of other major projects. For example, lessons learned from the design of the underwater hull and subdivision/watertight compartments will translate relatively easily to a larger hulled warship likea carrier than simply scaling up from a frigate or destroyer design.

Historical parallell, in 1905 nobody had ever built an 'all big gun' battleship, but that didn't stop Jackie Fisher from going ahead. In a year and a day Dreadnought entered service and the rest of the world's fleets became obsolete overnight. Mistakes were made (eg putting the forefunnel in front of the fore mast so that the spotting top was uninhabitable when underway) but the lessons were learned and following ships were improved steadily and empirically. For all Dreadnought's faults, and remember she herself had become obsolete by WW1, she was worth the effort, and I believe the hypothetical chinese battlecruiser would also be worth the effort, even if only for the learning experience.

Well, true, but are there more cost efficient ways to gain such experience? Would several smaller programs where each subsystem would be trialed on their own be more beneficial?

Anyway, even if a large guided missile battlecruiser is ever built, i hope it has at least *some* actual combat value. Meaning, it should look nothing like Kirov. It should be, in effect, half missile cruiser and half helicopter carrier, equipped with AEW helos. That'd be much more important than having, say, two dozen huge supersonic antiship missiles and a hefty SAM battery. Then, naturally, we get to the question: why even build a battlecruiser, and not a full fleged helo carrier?

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Even though I still think it'd be gross mismanagement of resources, here's an idea for the half helo carrier, half guided missile cruiser. The drawing should be pretty self explanatory.

Judging by the image, it should be some 213 meters in length overall, some 201 meters at the waterline. Beam should be some 26 meters and i'd guesstimate the displacement, judging by other ships of similar size, to be around 20 thousand tons.

Helo deck lift (and hangar beneath the deck) is sized for helicopters of nh90 dimensions. I'd say 5 of those would fit in the hangar. (four of them hopefully being AEW&C aircraft, also hopefully offering very decent maritime surveillance radar modes.)

Red squares are weapons systems, four being some kind of ciws, (missile or gun based, whatever fits) with rest of the red rectangles being VLS cells. I've figured ones positioned in the back would be relatively shallow ones for ship defense, holding something in the aster 15 class, while the bays in the front would be configurable to hold a various array of VLS, from more ship defense missiles to long range sams to land attack missiles to large, supersonic antiship missiles, if needed.

Perhaps it looks nice but it's still not a terribly good idea. Would cost a fortune, hopefully it wouldn't have to be run by a large crew.

Obi Wan Russell said:

Historical parallell, in 1905 nobody had ever built an 'all big gun' battleship, but that didn't stop Jackie Fisher from going ahead. In a year and a day Dreadnought entered service and the rest of the world's fleets became obsolete overnight. Mistakes were made (eg putting the forefunnel in front of the fore mast so that the spotting top was uninhabitable when underway) but the lessons were learned and following ships were improved steadily and empirically. For all Dreadnought's faults, and remember she herself had become obsolete by WW1, she was worth the effort, and I believe the hypothetical chinese battlecruiser would also be worth the effort, even if only for the learning experience.

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Actually, the Japanese battleship Satsuma was designed to be a all big gun battleship, but due to gun shortages, she only ended up with 4 12" guns...

Furthermore, the US South Carolina class battleships were also designed prior to Dreadnought, but construction progressed so slowly that they ended up being launched after Dreadnought.

Totoro said:

071 is already a very large warship. Other than that and a possible carrier, i doubt we'll see very large combat ships for PLAN in the next decade or so. Meaning larger than they're building now. There's just no need for that.

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True. Anything that's going to be nuclear powered is going to be underwater. I would think that the underwater displacement of the 094 submarine is larger than the full displacement of the 051C or 052C.

Popeye, who do you define a warship then? Where the line that separates warship and other surface warship construction? When you reach a certain scale, the kind of engineering that goes into a very large container ship and tanker is truly something else. In fact, I really cannot think of a better example to demonstrate the fine art of engineering and technology of ship building than with very large container ships and tankers. The sheer automation that goes into those ships alone are most remarkable.

crobato said:

True. Anything that's going to be nuclear powered is going to be underwater. I would think that the underwater displacement of the 094 submarine is larger than the full displacement of the 051C or 052C.

Popeye, who do you define a warship then? Where the line that separates warship and other surface warship construction? When you reach a certain scale, the kind of engineering that goes into a very large container ship and tanker is truly something else. In fact, I really cannot think of a better example to demonstrate the fine art of engineering and technology of ship building than with very large container ships and tankers. The sheer automation that goes into those ships alone are most remarkable.

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I think the idea is that there is a totally different standard for military grade ships and non-military grade ships. It would have to be built at approved shipyards and using special steel. Military grade ships will have to handle damages from getting hit by missiles and such. The Koreans are certainly capable of building LNG carriers, but building a nuclear carreri would be out of the realm of their expertise.

Still, commercial standards are very high because of the insurance companies setting the standards. Tankers for example are pretty redundant, with double hulls nowadays, lots of compartmentalization and bulkheads, designed to withstand collisions, running aground, breaking some ice, even a possible attack. When you're hauling that much of flammable liquid into both ecologically sensitive and high population areas, you're looking at setting some of the most stringent safety and fail safe requirements on the planet. If a ship is hauling 200,000mt or 300,000mt, that's more than double even an aircraft carrier. That's a lot of special steel and structural integrity going into it.

Pointblank said:

Actually, the Japanese battleship Satsuma was designed to be a all big gun battleship, but due to gun shortages, she only ended up with 4 12" guns...

Furthermore, the US South Carolina class battleships were also designed prior to Dreadnought, but construction progressed so slowly that they ended up being launched after Dreadnought.

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My point was prior to Dreadnought being built nobody had experience of actually BUILDING an 'all big gun battleship',though several countries had theorised it was the way to go and planned accordingly. For all these countries at some point they had to go ahead and actually start construction, and the resulting first generation 'Dreadnoughts' though impressive, were full of flaws in terms of layout, secondary armament, protection etc to varying degrees which didn't become apparent until the ships were completed. Learning by doing, as my old woodwork teacher used to say.

The only resemblence to a Kirov should be overall size IMHO, as I think a lot more versatility could be achieved for a ship in this size range. Not a criticism of the Kirov's designers as such, they were planning a ship to fulfill a specific mission. I would also go with a large heli deck/hangar aft to support up to six helos (ASW/ AEW/ OTHT) with a mixed gun/missile battery forward.

Popeye, who do you define a warship then? Where the line that separates warship and other surface warship construction? When you reach a certain scale, the kind of engineering that goes into a very large container ship and tanker is truly something else.

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The modern day container and tankers are truely marvels of the sea. Quite an engineering feat. So are modern day warships.

As a sailor the first thing you notice on a civillian ship will be the compartmentation(rooms). USN Warships have many more compartments that civillian ships. Many more. USN Warships have a much more redundant firefighing system than a civillian ship. Not to mention more redundant communication, auxillaries,medical & electronic systems..among others.. The tensil strenght of the steel cut to be used in a warship is much stronger in a warship than a civillian ship. It is of a diffrent standard.

Obi Wan is somewhat of a "wanted to be naval engineer" than I. I'm sure he can piont out even more differences between the two than I.

I really cannot think of a better example to demonstrate the fine art of engineering and technology of ship building than with very large container ships and tankers. The sheer automation that goes into those ships alone are most remarkable

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I think technology on board Nimitz class or a Ford class would be equal or superior to any other type ship being built today. Just my opinion.

I'd have to agree with Popeye. As impressive a feat of engineering a modern Tanker or Container ship is ( and I get to see the latter up close and personal on a fairly regular basis in Southampton Docks), in construction terms a warship, especially a carrier, is in a different league, not least for the reasons outlined above. Consider an anti ship missile such as Exocet or Harpoon targetting a large merchat vessel. After penetrating the outer skin of the ship, an probably an inner skin too in modern designs, it will most likley enter the cargo area/hold. if it is a tanker then the detonation will be in the middle of huge quantities of flammable material (Oil for example). the average tanker has a crew of 30-40 and minimal firefighting capability. As was shown in GW1 (1980-88 Iran vs Iraq, 0-0 after extra time) tankers that survived such attacks were mostly burned out hulks.

Now consider a similar attack on a carrier. Let's just suspend reality for a moment an assume the missile has made it past all the defensive layers of the task force to strike the side of the carrier. A CVN has over a thousand watertight compartments. That's a lot of high quality steel toabsorb the kinetic energy of the misile and contain any explosion, minimising the overall damage. A merchant vessel does not have the physical structure necessary to provide anything like this level of containment, which is why large merchant vessels can be fatally wounded by a single hit and a much smaller warship can remain operational when struck by a similar weapon.