the future of navel avation

[buddhafabio]

I remember reading in a popular mechanics the cover story a few years ago that we were researching designs for stealth carriers. one design was this guy it was only a concept. in the article they said stealth carriers could end up like this. it said the next carrier we build was to be a modified nimitz class with a smaller island and that it may possibly be in the center of the deck. the pic i found does not incorporate the center island but it looks smaller.

the article said it was nearly impossible to make a carrier invisible to radar but if they could make it look smaller, say the size if a fishing boat. it would force the enemy to look for the carrier amonst the hundreds of fishing vessals on the worlds oceans.

aw cool i found the article pop mechanics

i also know that the navy is experimenting with trimarain hulls and they have a carrier concept here more popular mech.

Edited August 28, 2004 by buddhafabio

[eugimon]

yeah, the next gen stuff seems very interesting, but I wonder how willing the pentagon boys will be when some of that stuff looks so different from what they think a ship should look like.

edit: fixed some grammar mistakes... like adding words I forgot to type.

Edited August 28, 2004 by eugimon

[Hurin]

Dude. . . I don't want aircraft anywhere near my navel. It's ticklish.

H

[Max Jenius]

Yeah, they had an article about stealth ships w/ trimarine hulls a while back... pretty cool stuff. I hope they can roll them out in the next couple years. I mean.. its been at least a couple since I saw the original one.. and that was for the battlships.

[Knight26]

I actually like that stealth carrier concept, very effecient use of deck space, the only forseeable in my opinion would come from the low launch decks. Turn the wrong way at take off and Bam, lost jet. Plus it would be quite susceptible to high seas. As for the central island on a carrier, sorry, not a modified nimitz, never happen. The concept of twin angled recovery decks won't happen either as it would require multiple traffic patterns, sorry won't work, plus pilots will have to adjust for the wind from different directions. It should be interesting to see which route CVX eventually takes but I doubt that it will be a radical redesign or trimaran hull. You have to understand that the admirals will make the final decision on the eventual configuration and they will not be inclined to make too radical a design, they like their ships to look alike. What we will more then likely see is the low profile nimitz type unless Rumsfeld gets his way and we get the smaller escort carriers or Corsairs he wants. Of course IMHO the whole concept of a stealth carrier is foolish, a carrier has so many holes, sponsons, radars, etc...

[Drad]

Flying bellybuttons. Ooo.

[Zentrandude]

dont think making a full size stealth carrier would be practicle. with spy satlites in orbit its not hard to miss a carrier the size of the empire state building tipped over.

besides i would want carriers to be the oppisit of stealth, being a symbol of power you want people to know its there going to send planes to drop the bombs on your sorry butt.

but i do think there might be a small chance a supersmall stealth carrier that only carries 1 squad and has only enough provisions to last the short covert operation.

[VF-19]

dont think making a full size stealth carrier would be practicle. with spy satlites in orbit its not hard to miss a carrier the size of the empire state building tipped over.

besides i would want carriers to be the oppisit of stealth, being a symbol of power you want people to know its there going to send planes to drop the bombs on your sorry butt.

but i do think there might be a small chance a supersmall stealth carrier that only carries 1 squad and has only enough provisions to last the short covert operation.

There is one tiny catch. A carrier is only so big. The Atlantic and Pacific are much much bigger. Granted, if the sattelite is overhead the carrier and taking pictures at the same time, then yes you'll spot the carrier where it was. Since carriers are almost always on the move, such information would be useless.

Spy sattelites are great, but they can't see everywhere at once. Now, I know its fiction, but Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels do point out the limitations of such sattelites quite frequently.

[hellohikaru]

Nah....they should chuck away the stealth carrier idea and just produced submarine aircraft carrier like in macross zero

[Retracting Head Ter Ter]

Dont think the stealth advantages would be worth the operational trade-off.

After all, you have all these humans and planes on the deck, sure to mess up your RCS. And even if you load up the ship with navalised YF-23s you still have the problem of deployed landing gear messing your RCS. poo, there is just so much to mess up a carrier's RCS.

Edited August 28, 2004 by Retracting Head Ter Ter

[Coota0]

I like the Tri-Hull. I don't know how well it would work from a blakc shoe' point of view, but from a pilot's point of view, better stabilization in all seas is a good thing.

[David Hingtgen]

Here you go: How to hide a carrier battlegroup. (or 2)

http://www.warships1.com/index_tech/tech-031.htm

Edited August 28, 2004 by David Hingtgen

[buddhafabio]

granted we have BIG oceans in which our carriers can hide. as a matter of fact the admirals of the navy constantly hid the battle groups under storm fronts from russian satellites. for practice.

but they are not invulnerable to attack. a few examples i have read are a few books (fiction of course) that list the super carrier obsolete. one author Michael DiMercurio has a couple of carrier battle groups get nuked and hit by theoretical plasma warheads by enemy drone subs (far fetched i know) in his series of books. nukes have always been a threat to a carrier battle group. And this book kilo class has a super quiet kilo sub sit and wait and get the carrier with a nuke torpedo

and two books i read in high school 10 years ago was scifi. and set in this time period to the next few years has a carrier battle group "accidently" sunk by an orbital laser from an asian nation and the navy pretty much mothballs the carriers and resort to a coverted icbm subs, to house mini attack subs to fight arab commanded subs with their own mini sub fighters that were produced by the same asian nation for oil.

[Retracting Head Ter Ter]

Here you go: How to hide a carrier battlegroup. (or 2)

http://www.warships1.com/index_tech/tech-031.htm

Interesting stuff. As usual, the US C3 tips the playing field.

[Macross_Fanboy]

Fantasy made into reality, well, almost. Any ideas as to how long the stealth carrier concept has been around? If it's only recently, somebody must be a Macross fan. Either way, that stealth carrier will have to be equipped with the naval variant of the F-35, as well as stealth choppers that don't exist yet.

[Phyrox]

If by stealth you mean designed to remain undetectable (or at least dificult to detect) for extended periods, then the early aircraft-carrying submarines would be the first stealth "carriers." I would say that you have to wait until the IJN I-400 class to have AC-carrying subs intented to act like their larger cousins (and not as simple raiders/scouts) however.

If you mean traditional surface carriers with low radar and visual cross-sections, I believe the concept has been around longer than Macross.