NationStates Jolt Archive

Description: A principle surface combatant arsenal ship for the missile whores of the world. This thing can blow away entire surface fleets in a heartbeat.

Displacement Design: 160,000 tons.
Length Overall Length: 412m
Beam Waterline Beam: 115m
Draft Hull Draft: 10m

Top Speed: 35 knots
Cruise speed: 30 knots.

Armaments:

216x20 VLS cells carrying 4320 anti-shipping missiles.
25x25 VLS cells carrying 2500 SAMs.

Armor: 3 hulls, each with thick composite armored belts and torpedo bulges. Armored bulkheads and internal blast doors also prevent hits that penetrate from doing too much damage. VLS cells, if hit, vent their explosions upwards, not sideways. VLS tube top bulkheads heavily armored to prevent top kill weapons from destroying missiles.

Sensors: LADAR, LIDAR, search, track, millimetric wave, and passive radar, SONAR and underwater LIDAR (for targeting missile launched torps), Infrared sensors, MAD.

Crew: 600
Cost: $8 billion if you provide the missiles yourself.
$23 billion for a full loadout of Pwnage Black Raptor ASMs and Hero IX SAMs.

Bump!

BUNp!

as i understand i automatically get the production rights?

Yup.

I would like to purchase 10 of these vessels without the missiles for them, I have already developed missiles that I could use for that project. Money wired upon confirmation.

Confirmed.

SIC:

Hell, we'll take 30 of these bad boys for USD$900,000,000,000. Send them to Pearl Harbor.

Constantine Huang
Commander
Free Xenizen Forces

Confirmed.

Money has been wired.

OOC: Do you have MSN Messenger?

I'll take four and as soon as you confirm money will be wired.
The Imperial Navy praises the Harpy class. By the way One will have missles provided the rest i will use my thunder class missles.

Confirmed.

ooc: yes, check the side buttons.

money wired. Thank you MassPwnage.

1 one these ships with missiles equipped

Confirmed.

OOC: Not to nit-pick, but how exactly does underwater LiDAR work? I mean, isn't LiDAR basically bouncing focused light off an object and then seeing what is absorbed, deflected, and reflected in order to garner a visualization of it? Given that light bends rather wickedly underwater, wouldn't be rather hard to make use of a sensory system whose medium of detection is light?

OOC: Not to nit-pick, but how exactly does underwater LiDAR work? I mean, isn't LiDAR basically bouncing focused light off an object and then seeing what is absorbed, deflected, and reflected in order to garner a visualization of it? Given that light bends rather wickedly underwater, wouldn't be rather hard to make use of a sensory system whose medium of detection is light?

[OOC: U.S. testing with blue-green lasers has actually come out quite well. In any case, I rather just have my LIDAR transmit through electrical pulses, so I designed that. But in the case of traditional LIDAR, then yes it would be a problem, however, again, blue-green lasers seem to work fine without too much bending.]

ooc: BUMP!

OOC: Not to nit-pick, but how exactly does underwater LiDAR work? I mean, isn't LiDAR basically bouncing focused light off an object and then seeing what is absorbed, deflected, and reflected in order to garner a visualization of it? Given that light bends rather wickedly underwater, wouldn't be rather hard to make use of a sensory system whose medium of detection is light?
Light doesn't bend in water. Or, well, anything. It refracts when it moves between substances of different density, therefore there will be no such problems so long as he isnt beaming the LiDAR beam into the water from above the waterline, and I dont see why he would do that.

Ankhmet will buy one of these ships.

Money upon confirmation.

Confirmed.

[Okay, first, and I'd never thought I'd say this on NS, but this thing is way overpriced. Second, no ship with those dimensions and that light an armament is going to weigh 95,000 tons, you might get 40,000 out of it.]

216x20 VLS Cells= (216 VLS cells, 20 tubes per cell=4320 Anti-ship missiles)

Also, it's longer and wider than an Iowa Battleship.

The cost is around accurate i suppose.

Ok, i took a calculator to the number of missiles involved.

I cut the price down a bit.

[Um, in a VLS system a cell is one tube. Size depends entirely on the missiles being launched, but I've never seen a VLS tube with longer than a double length in size.]

ooc: That's not exactly what I got...

Generally a nice vessel, but with one truly glaring problem.

As I can see now, that thing is WAY too small for the crew, armament, and sensors stated. You could make a case for maybe 1500 total missiles at that size, but this thing will not have sufficient weight and internal space for everything needed here. The US arsenal ship concept envisioned a 30,000+ ton vessel with minimal (around 50) crew, limited protection, and minimal on-board sensors, which had 512 cells, each about 0.65m in diameter and 6.6m long. This is only 3 times the size, but has 20 times the crew and a complete long range sensor suite. As for the missiles, that's a bit more complicated. Your SSM cells, which are stated as holding the Black Raptor, each would require at least 2.25 times the deck space and 5 (!) times the internal space of a Mk.41 cell. We're talking over 40 times the armament space requirement of the original arsenal ship with the ASMs alone. I won't even bother with the Hero IX SAM, as that weapon itself is in need of some serious stat tweaking.

Another issue is weight. We're looking at somewhere in the ballpark of 27,000 tons of missiles (!). Now, for armored vessels, generally only about 20-30% of the maximum displacement is dead weight (for usable stores like fuel, food, water, ammunition, people, cargo, aircraft, etc). There's about 28% of the (I'm assuming) maximum displacement in missiles alone. Now, even assuming significantly lighter armor than a battleship of that size, it still hardly leaves enough for the crew, food, and water, let alone the fuel needed to get this thing moving!

My best guess for this vessel, as it stands, is at least 200,000 tons, and adding a few billion to the price for that would be a good idea (I don't know what SS saw before, but with the size, armor, and sensor systems, this should definately be a very expensive vessel). Naturally, significant increases in length and beam would also be necessary (this needs about 24 times the deck space for VLS as the original arsenal ship concept, which was 150-240m long)


Also, while I was looking at them, I noticed some things about the missiles:
1) Scrap the diamond tips on the AShMs. Diamond may be hard, but it cleaves very easily, so while a diamond cutter is good, a diamond penetrator is worthless because will simply shatter due to the high stress, thus being counterproductive.
2) The Hero IX is too small and too cheap. With all the systems in there, it should cost 5-10 times as much (an SM-1 can cost more :p ), and it's more than a bit small and light for the range. Look at the weight and booster sizes for the SM-2ER and Aster-30 missiles, and you'll get an idea of how far it's lacking. The missile should be at least 4 times the weight, and should have a greater diameter, or at least a booster larger than the basic missile, as in the Aster and Standard missiles.

ooc: Hmm... i could drop the crew complement a bit... I think the size is correct however. The fins of all my missiles fold up flat onto the sides when not in use. I probably have to increase the length another 50m to accomodate all the missiles however, that and raise the price a bit.

ooc: Hmm... i could drop the crew complement a bit... I think the size is correct however. The fins of all my missiles fold up flat onto the sides when not in use. I probably have to increase the length another 50m to accomodate all the missiles however, that and raise the price a bit.
Actually, I was using the base diameter of the missiles. A Mk.41 VLS cell is 0.65m in diameter, but with the arrangement of VLS, it's essentially 0.65m square. Your missile is 1m in diameter, not counting fins, which depending on how they would fold, might notably increase the size of the cell needed. Using the 1m and 0.65m, your cell has ~1.538x the length on two axes, or 2.367 times the deck space, per cell. I'll go a bit further this time and use a 768 cell arsenal ship at 35,000 tons, which is probably about the limit. That could fit 324 of your missiles based on deck space, or only 162 if internal space is a factor. Again, this is with no long-range sensors. Your ship is about three times the size, which would be about 1000 large antishipping missiles, tops, with possibly a few dozen SAMs.
This ship is indeed way undersized, and I might have been notably understating how big it would have to be. You must understand that not only do you have a phenominal number of missiles, but those are big missiles. This becomes a major issue.

Also, you still have to address the issue of weight. Dropping the crew won't solve it. Providing a range of 1000nm without resupply, while noting rather poor armor might solve it, but I don't think you want that. If you want this to be well armored, that heavily armed, and capable of autonomous operation, it needs to be a heck of a lot bigger.

According to my sketches, the ship should be much wider than it actually was.

So i widened it to 115m.

I wish to purchase 25 Harpy Class Arsenal Ships, with the missiles included. The total cost comes to $575,000,000,000. Money will be wired upon confirmation. Thanks!

Confirmed RB.

Confirmed RB.

Thanks, money wired.