NationStates Jolt Archive

http://www.capitolsource.northropgrumman.com/images/programs/cvn21_md.jpg


On the horizon- you see them. Defending your nation. Protecting your people. It is a giant. It is a Conquistador.



Design by Sega Arms Corporation

General Charachteristics:

Current Operators: (Laqian) Imperial Navy, French Navy
Preceding class: n/a
Succeding Class: (Planned) Columbus
Ships in class: 35, 14 bought by Laqian Government, 1 bought, 10 for sale
Ships planned but not completed: Total 40
Class type: Nuclear powered supercarrier
Displacement: 150,000 tons
Length: 1,638 feet
Beam: 231 feet
Draught: 100 feet
Propulsion and power: 5 nuclear reactors
Speed: 35 knots
Complement: 6,600
Control: (Bridge) 1 50 foot Conning Tower, Heavily Armored

Armament:

20 SA-17 Grizzly Surface-to-air missiles
40 Sea RAM Close-In systems
Aircraft complement: 115 (Space on deck and in storage)
Aircraft facilities: 1,200 x 175 foot flight deck
Armor: 10 inches thick, 12 on Conning towers

Price: 10 Billion USD

OOC: Now, I'm not a naval expert by any means, and I may be mistaken, but it occurs to me that there's bound to be some issues with the entire top surface of the ship being a flight deck.

ooc: More to the point, there's bound to be a problem with the only aircraft cabailities being the flight deck. Most carriers have storage room in the ship for greater capacity and other reasons.

OOC: I think the 45+ kt top speed is excessive. I'd revise it downward. Maybe 33+.

OOC: Now, I'm not a naval expert by any means, and I may be mistaken, but it occurs to me that there's bound to be some issues with the entire top surface of the ship being a flight deck.

[Tis called a flush deck. Was used on early carriers, last proposed carrier with one was the United States I think. Since they lack conning towers or whatever they are called on carriers, command and control is a problem.]

[Tis called a flush deck. Was used on early carriers, last proposed carrier with one was the United States I think. Since they lack conning towers or whatever they are called on carriers, command and control is a problem.]
ooc: does have the advantage of that there is absolutely no chance of weering into the ship's bridge during a crash landing..(extremely common in ye ole days)

But yea..For one thing, where are you going to put all the command, control, and radar, systems a flat top of this size needs?

(OOC: Personally, I'd rather have decent C&C capabilities and run the risk of hitting the island, which pretty much never happens in modern carrier operations.)

Thanks for the tips. Remember though, I'm new at this.

Okay, errors fixed. No takers?

Construction of a further 10 Conquistadors is complete.

Bump

France places its order for a single one of these ships.

Payment has been given in advance.

Your order shall arrive in 6 months.

OOC:

That's NS months, of course.

Bump. Why is my ship so unpopular in the market? I guess I'll have to buy them all...

Just a coupel points.. with sensors - cameras and wireless feeds visual contact becomes not an absolute necesity, as long as the systems are maintained and the pilots are experienced.

Radar arrays etc.. don't have to be pointy towers, the can be flat or even go along the sides of the ships.. of course you would probably like your dishes etc.. to be well positioned. "remote, or rather adjustable moveable arrays could be used, those that go into the ships hull for protection.

In ICCD's supercarrier using a swath of real life technologies others probably would complain about without a valid reason...

it has retractable and reinforced sensor and communications systems. They also have two flight decks one internal and one external. although only large aircraft can land on the surface deck which may require cleaning after submerged operations.

you don't need a command tower if you loose electronics a command tower wont do much good regardless because com is down, and makes a pretty obvious surface target.. when you could instead have your bridge under the ship in the case of my 'supercarrier sub' bridge is on about subdeck 4 or 5. but there are sensor systems positioned around the hull for a 360 x 360 degree angle of vision.

as for speeds, the supercaviated design has its advantages and drawbacks. Once the caviation buble is maintained it can reach much higher speeds than normal surface ships when submerged easily 50+ knots, indeal conditions. However when surfaced or prior to the caviation buble being formed it is slowed down by the drag and has covnetional speeds, but it also has a lot of engines (since it is very large (bigger than a nimmitz) it has a number of propulsion systems that still make it a fairly fast ship (but still faster submerged then on the surface. - one of the drawbacks is that it can only operate in deep water (because of it's size) and there is a lot more of it to hit. also there are specific issues such as lifesupport which have very critical failsafe requirements. I won't give away all the ships potential vunrebilities, but the ship is based using current technologies.. doesn't have any permanent towers and is a submersible carrier. (strangely this ship costs around the same as this ship 10 Billion production cost, but perhaps this ships sale price is higher than it's production cost.. dunno. (the other draw back is that there are only two shipyards in the Dian Empire that can build the ship (or repair it) ... it also has a long construction (relatively) of 10+ years to build.


but a couple points 35+ knots isn't incredibly fast but it ain't slow. depending on the propulsion system. The command and control deck isn't absolutely required, and you can easily put most of the requirements under the deck, although visually communicated data from people with comms and video feeds are on the surface of the ship still directing the flight. (but there are still small structures on the surface of the 'star'/ 'xing' class subs which can be retracted, such as pop up flight elevators, tethers and sheild barriers.

There is a huge push for conventional design and systems on this forum generally speaking. The logic generally is, if it isn't implemented by a military in bulk than it obviously isn't good enough or there is some reason it can't be done. The actual instance is economics and existing infrastructures, less so then implementation capacity. There was nothing wrong with your no command tower ship as long as you could still navigate (that can be premapped or used with gps or sounding charts by computer. Pilots are more than capable of landing, and friend or foe systems are deisgnable, there are many factors and methods to keep a ship functionable within upper command and controlincluding periscope type systems or other. As for your speed, if the hull design and propulsion systems are able to have the push 35+ knots is doable, and when you ahve a 10 billion budget it is very realistic. The simple logic without going into nautical engineering and physics in this is if they can build an aircraft carrier that goes 30+ knots in 1960 in 2007 building a 35+ knot carrier is not at all in anyway questionable considering the space age leaps in technology in the last 50 years.

A number of litoral combat ship designs are show cased as being 45+ knots.. it is doable.. and 10 billion is a huge amount of money for propulsion and hulling (but I havn't seen much cost on this ship so far, not approaching 10 billion anyway.

I'm confused on the 5 reactors though... (with that much energy I could be led to beleive it is meant to fuel a large propulsion system or something of the like.. .. for instance was about boiling water to create fast thermal propulsion via nuclear venting? hmm? or raising the ship on boilded water (bad joke.. anyway) I don't get why so many people attempt to retard posible designs, why can it down if you can find a way to actually implement the design on the budget.. 10 billion is a huge amount of money.