NationStates Jolt Archive

Okay, I'm attempting to plan the development of a weapons platform sometime in the future of my nation once it has reached the wealth and capacity to research, develop and deploy such a weapon. However, I am a total novice at this, and would appreciate any and all help with regards to designing such a platform.

Design Concept:

A Mobile Nuclear Weapon Platform utilising deployment of Intermediate Range and Intercontinental Range Ballistic Missiles through the use of a Coilgun on a ballistic trajectory. This results in a stealthier launch which does not involve any use of rocket motors, thereby rendering the projectile harder to detect during the launch and early flight phase.

Platform Design Ideas:

Large, tracked vehicle
Bipedal Platform (ala Metal Gear)

Sidenote:

I'm going with the concept of a Coilgun because I am trying to keep everything as close to MT as possible, with the leeway of going into Early PMT if I have to. From my limited reading on the Coilgun so far (ala Wikipedia), it appears to have less of the design problems associated with its compatriot Railgun design. Whereas the Railgun suffers from the associated sideways recoil issue that would damage the rails used to propel the device, the Coilgun uses a series of coils around a track activated and de-activated in sequence to pull the projectile up the barrel to a high speed. This seems to be a more plausible for research and deployment purposes closer to MT.

As for the actual design of the platform, I would personally like to go for a Bipedal unit, aka "walking tank" design. However, I do not know what the current problems with such designs are, nor how to get around them.

Any and all constructive comments along the lines of any of what I have outlined so far are greatly appreciated.

Bump for interest

It sounds like the old Nuclear artillery cannon idea. I see two problems:
1. The legs would be massive, and thus slow. One blow to the legs, and your weapon falls over.
2. To offset this, you might have a treaded vechicle, but the sheer weight gives it the problems of the "Super-Heavy Tank" designs.

Or maybe im seeing wrong. I imagine it as a massive moving cannon capable of launching nuclear artillery rounds. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Or maybe im seeing wrong. I imagine it as a massive moving cannon capable of launching nuclear artillery rounds. Correct me if I'm wrong.

That's sort of what I'm going for essentially, yes - basically a cannon capable of throwing large rounds over intercontinental distances due to the power of the Coilgun.

As a slight defence of the Bipedal Tank idea, an intercontinental nuclear cannon isn't likely to be placed nearby a big battle, but lets look at the idea of the Super Heavy Tank. What are the issues here?

When on pavement, it basically cracks it and destroys the road; very slow; sinks like a rock in mud...and good luck moving it; vulnerable to air-strikes; not very stealthy.

an intercontinental nuclear cannon isn't likely to be placed nearby a big battle

Yes, but any country worth it's weapons would keep an eye on this thing at all times. How do you move it? To transport to the battlefield.

1. Gets in plane capable of lifting it
2. Flies over
3. Unloaded in airport
5. Has to crawl it's way to the location

This is no where near what you are thinking, but perhaps you may want to design a launch platform that fits onto rail cars. That way, you can move your weapons around on your nation's railways and launch them from anywhere. If your nation were to build a maglev network instead of railways, you could seriously increase the speed at which you launch your missiles and improve their range (mgs3 concept). There are obvious flaws, but with this method it is easier to conceal and transport weapons than with a giant treaded or bipedal tank.

With NS's satellite whorage, it doesn't really matter about its concealment and movement, a lot of players would simply track the shell back to its origin, moving it wouldn't make much difference, only slow down those determined to find it, I suggest going for the Super Heavy tank design, while it may be more vulnerable to air strikes, it would look a lot cooler, hell, who cares if you get spotted when you look that good...

the crew would die in a good looking machine, joking apart, you could counteract the air strikes with simple air defenses, or turn the weapon into a land fortress, with its own CIWS and SAM systems... its just a suggestion..

oooh, sounds like someone has been playing a lot of MGS, k, did some research on Bipedal Tanks, they suck outright, but my main concern is in the coils, I assume by this you mean a Gauss Gun and not the Rail Gun, things is that the Gauss Gun also sucks outright and no-one has been able to yet perfect the design, better off using a Rail Gun, I believe they are close to stopping the Barrel damage and it would make perfect usage in high PMT, but I'm loving the whole MGS feel you've got going, man I love those games...

Sugested reading, this gives a possible cure for the air strikes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THEL

if you're planning to do this then I'm sure the nation of Toops would ICly love to help you...

@Toops

The Gauss Gun, aka Coilgun, is much closer to perfection than the Railgun as coilgun technology is used to magnetically accellerate the round in some NS MT tanks.

Railguns however are still far from completion to military standards, with the lack of a solid-state superconductor and the rails reppelling each other. Ammunition also has an annoying tendancy to weld itself to the rails.

Railguns are perfectly acceptable in PMT, but to be constucted on this sort of scale is simply not possible within 10-20 years of now.

@Toops

The Gauss Gun, aka Coilgun, is much closer to perfection than the Railgun as coilgun technology is used to magnetically accellerate the round in some NS MT tanks.

Railguns however are still far from completion to military standards, with the lack of a solid-state superconductor and the rails reppelling each other. Ammunition also has an annoying tendancy to weld itself to the rails.

Railguns are perfectly acceptable in PMT, but to be constucted on this sort of scale is simply not possible within 10-20 years of now.

my bad, I did say Railguns for high PMT, but Wiki must have lied to me cos it said that Coilguns had many design flaws which made them useless for the field, well I'ma go back to looking up things which end up my making me look like an idiot...

When on pavement, it basically cracks it and destroys the road; very slow; sinks like a rock in mud...
Untrue. These would only happen if you give it a rather low surface area on the treads. The higher the surface area, the lower the ground pressure of the tank. Most NS supertanks actually have ground pressures less than those of an Abrams.

I have a question for Zarustra: why replace conventional silos with the machine you've envisioned? Alternatively, couldn't you simply use more proven ship or plane launched cruise missiles? I don't want to rain on your parade, by the way. I'm just curious what situations would require this kind of machine.

I see it more as a railway/ship/fixed gun mount myself.

It is feasable, but it would be massive. There is very little you can do to make this mobile,let alone self propelled.

The siuations these would be used are mostly
short range nuking
Psychological
When attacking targets with heavy ICBM defenses

?Cost (no fancy rocket motors)?

The problem with a supertank such as this is that it will either be very heavy or very large in surface area. It will inevitably be expensive, slow and/or difficult to maneuver. This makes it vulnerable to close quarters combat. It could, perhaps, sport an array of weaponry that would make it effective in levelling fortified targets or large armored divisions, but could be overwhelmed and possibly destroyed by geurilla attacks. This, as I see it, would result in the user of this take deploying it to a very narrow scope of combat and spending most of the time worrying it would be damaged. Plus, since it is so large, it would probably need a lot of maintenance, extra logistical support and the like .

By making this tank nuclear-equipped, it will become much larger. The fact that it is carrying nuclear weapons will warrant additional defences, such as anti-air systems and even greater anti-ground defenses. Since it is larger and moves slower, it will be even easier to track.

Realistically, if a giant tank carrying a nuke was anywhere near my borders, I would stop it by any means necessary. Even with anti-air systems, it would be feasible to fire cruise missiles at it. Even if anti-cruise missile systems were installed, it would be possible to drop fuel/air bombs or even tactical nuclear weapons on it. The blast radius of a nuclear weapon would enable an aircaft to stay out of the range of its anti-air systems, or the nuclear weapon can be fired by an artillery piece. I would not hesitate to use a nuke on a nuclear equppied battle tank. I personally believe that it would be better if you kept your nukes in your own nation on mobile platforms.

The Shagohod of mgs3 was an interesting concept, in that it was, according to Sokolov, was to simply accelerate the launch of IRBMs. He said, in the game, that the tank could fire IRBMs at the range of an ICBM using only a 3 mile runway (I think it was 3 miles, but I don't remember for sure and my PS2 died, so I can't check at the moment). With a system such as the Shagohod, one could launch nukes from an air force runway runway or even an open stretch of highway.

Mahria: The reasons I was going for the development of something like this is largely because I want something cool to play with in my military, t'be honest. I know it's probably a bad idea to design something on that basis, but...

Siap: I like the idea of the Shagohod as a basis for the weapon as a launch platform. However, I still prefer the idea of strapping a Coilgun to it for the launching process due to the reasons I mentioned before (lack of rocket motor, stealthier launch - at least against nations that don't have satellite access.) Also, I would envision the deployment of the actual projectile as being cheaper in the long run as it would essentially be a large shell thrown intercontinental distances. On that point, Siap, where you said about the concept of a tank being close to your borders, essentially the point of firing this projectile intercontinental distances is that it doesn't have to get too close to anybody's borders.

I think I'm going to go with a Super-Heavy Tank design of platform, with air and ground defences against potential conventional attack. I think at this point I'm going to go away and write down some basic specifications for your scrutiny to help with my development. If anyone has any further comments to assist me at this point, I'd appreciate it.

I frankly do not see the point of constructing a super tank if its not going to leave your borders. Wouldn't it be easier to put a coilgun on a train or maglev?

Ultimately, its your defense budget though, so do as you please.

Okay, perhaps describing this as a tank was the incorrect phrase; I am looking more at developing a Super-Heavy mobile deployment platform for Intercontinental-distance nuclear artillery, hence the lack of use in actual battles.

Again, I will write up some basic design statistic ideas and bring them back for scrutiny within the next few days.

You keep saying cannon, so I keep envisioning this. (http://www.bighugegames.com/riseoflegends/images/art_concept_02b.jpg)

I was thinking more like THIS (http://www.worldwar1.com/foto/fww2703.jpg)

Personally, I would go with a nuclear powered dreadnought and make the coilgun a spinal mount that runs the length of the ship. Surround it with an escorting battlegroup, and scare the crap out of everybody.

Sounds intimidating and expensive.

Personally, I would go with a nuclear powered dreadnought and make the coilgun a spinal mount that runs the length of the ship. Surround it with an escorting battlegroup, and scare the crap out of everybody.

Wouldn't a spinal mount suffer from being forced to fire on a very flat, and thus shorter ranged, trajectory? This is unless your mount is angled, but that leads to host of other issues.

You could just get a PROHT CR-18 railgun off the shelf and "roll your own" ammo for 300 mile shots (warhead limited to 500 pounds).

Ad (can't help it, at the very least you might get a sick twisted chuckle from it):
Recently used a CR-14 (14" railgun)to shoot some of The Parthians paratroops at point blank range (zero degrees elevation) with a 1000 pound cluster shell, his force was 3,500 infantry and 75 light tanks. It has been 2 weeks and he has yet to figure out/admit his losses, and now is going on a 12 day seista.

End ad

Or scrap the whole gun system and mount your ICBMs on balloons and satalites.