Midway class battlecruiser

[SOLariss]

Armament layout:


Rear view (for reference):


Description:
Technically, it is a hybrid of an overgrown Independence class LCS ship and DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer, but with extremely big guns. While Zumwalt itself was intended to be a shore bombardment ship, its guided rounds came out to be extremely expensive and their production was abandoned. But if instead of 155mm they were bigger, same amount of expensive electronics, but more explosives, basically more bang for the buck? Then I stumbled upon an article about a Strategic Long Range Cannon…

The main purpose of this ship is to support amphibious landings by providing anti air cover and artillery support. Unlike battlecruisers of the past, high speed is intended not to chase enemy cruisers, but to rapidly deploy the ship to a war theater.

Type: Battlecruiser

Length: 175m

Beam: 37m (trimaran)

Draft: 10m

Propulsion: 2x GE LM6000PF+ gas turbines (53 MW each) in combined cycle (2x1) with total output of 142MW + 2 x AG9140RF generators (4MW each) + 4 diesel generators. 4 electrically driven AWJ-21 waterjets and a retractable bow-mounted azimuth thruster.

Speed: 40 knots

Complement: 150

Radar: Dual band X/S band AN/SPY-6 radar. AN/SPY-6 is also used for electronic warfare and communication.

Main weapon: two 18”/80 Strategic Long Range Cannons installed in a single turret with modern autoloders. There is very little information about this project so let’s assume, that it is something similar to Project HARP but with some additions of new technologies: electrochemical propellant, smooth bore and two stage (solid rocket and scramjet) hypervelocity saboted projectile. Actually two types of projectiles: long range (1000 miles) ground attack round (with optional thermonuclear warhead) and anti-ballistic missile round, designed for exo-atmosphere interception (with highly maneuverable solid fuel second stage).

VLS: 20x4 mark57 28” VLS (for possible next gen missiles) located in sponsons of the trimaran. So the ship can carry 80 mark57 and mark 41 compatible missiles. Location of the VLSs provides certain advantages:

1) They are located by both sides of the helipad flush with the deck, so that missiles can be easily replenished with the use of a modified forklift loader. The main idea of the ship is to provide sustainable firepower without returning to port. New missiles can be brought onboard by helicopters or transport boats through the rear mission bay.

2) VLSs are modified to direct missile launch exhaust into the space between ship’s hulls (where water deluge system is installed) to increase safety of the crew that may work on deck and reduce IR signature of the ship.

3) In case of VLS explosion/fire the main hull will more likely retain structural integrity.

Standard missile armament consist of RGM-109 Tomahawk, AGM-158C LRASM, RIM-174 Standard Extended Range Active Missile (ERAM) SM6, RIM-161 Standard Missile 3 (SM-3), RUM-139 VL-ASROC and quad packs of ESSMs. 6 additional Nulka decoy launchers (derived from XM501 NLOS launchers) with 30 decoys in each are installed on the ship.

LRASM satellite data-link can be used to enhance precision of main guns. Basically, just one LRASM can be sent to a general direction of the enemy fleet, upon locating it, the missile sends back exact coordinates of the ships and then guided long range hypersonic rounds are shot. It is possible to intercept one ASM, try to intercept a dozen of 18” incoming hypersonic rounds.

The secondary armament consists of five 130mm electrochemical smoothbore guns installed into BAE Systems Mark 45 gun turrets. Available ammunition:

1) Hyper Velocity Projectile for missile defense (cruise missiles and terminal stage ballistic missiles)

2) Guided anti air/anti small vessel round.

3) Advanced Multipurpose Round similar to one, used in tanks to fight other vessels at medium to close range. Can be set to airburst, explosion in contact or after obstacle penetration.

4) APFSDS for disabling engines of enemy ships without blowing said vessels into pieces.

Why go all electrochemical? First of all, this technology provides significant velocity improvement for a projectile of the same caliber and with the same charge size over a conventional gun. The second point is safety, one needs extremely high temperature to ignite ETC propellant (a plasma arc), thus making ammunition storage much safer.

Additionally Midway is equipped with two 150kW solid state lasers, mainly to fight light UAVs.

Antisubmarine defense: 6 Mk 54 torpedo launchers (2 forward, two amidships, 2 aft). 8 CAT anti torpedo launchers (2 forward, 4 amidships, 2 aft).

AN/SLQ-49 'rubber duck' persistent inflatable radar decoy

Aviation: CH-47, SH-60 Seahawk, 2 small antisubmarine helo drones equipped with sonars.

[The_Sprinklez]

Retracted

[dtn]

Awesome!

[Colosseum]

Just to start with some basics, without even getting into how ridiculous the concept itself is, both images are JPEGs and therefore artifacted/compressed, you've used large parts of other drawings (Miklania's superstructure and what looks to be DarthPanda's Independence Class hull) that aren't credited, both of which have different color palettes that do not match, and there are spots where it appears that pieces have been cut and pasted together and don't line up properly.

I agree with you that any crediting issues need to be resolved ASAP and this is arguably the most important feedback we can give...

That said I don't think your post is very constructive and it's not great to see new members treated this way after posting their first work. Please try to be friendly to newbies and help guide them to the right result vs. just starting in with insults about "how ridiculous the concept itself is" right off the bat...

[The_Sprinklez]

I shall retract my post, apologies for any perceived insult, it was not my intention.

[SOLariss]

Just to start with some basics, without even getting into how ridiculous the concept itself is, both images are JPEGs and therefore artifacted/compressed, you've used large parts of other drawings (Miklania's superstructure and what looks to be DarthPanda's Independence Class hull) that aren't credited, both of which have different color palettes that do not match, and there are spots where it appears that pieces have been cut and pasted together and don't line up properly.

I agree with you that any crediting issues need to be resolved ASAP and this is arguably the most important feedback we can give...

I'm sorry, I know about crediting policy, initially this was a quite different project I tried to do a while ago, that I remembered of after stumbling upon articles I mentioned in the description. I totally forgot where I got Zumwalt's superstructure as for independence hull, it didn't have any credits at all. After some digging, it seems that I found the hull source, and from some minor details, the superstructure originates from Miklania. Gonna update the pictures. As for image format, it seems that devianart compressed it (originally it was .png), gonna try figure something out.

As for ridiculousness, what exactly do you mean?
-Main guns? They are currently in the works, however might be scrapped due to the US exiting Intermediate ballistic treaty. Although who knows, they either are highly classified, or very immature. There are very little information about them. However reading about Project HARP inspired me to make this monstrosity.
-Speed? It's just slightly faster then original LCS Independence, while having ludicrously powerful turbine.
-Powerplant? Yes, it might be overpowered for such vessel, frankly speaking, I was just lurking upon GE site for something suitable, but didn't like low efficiency of Ticonderoga's LM2500. Originally I was tempted to choose something like 9HA.01/.02, but it seems to be more suitable for something like aircraft carrier.
-130s in Mark45s? Yes, they are totally made up as an amalgamation Rheinmetall 130mm smoothbore tank gun and US electrochemical developments of the US in 1990s-early 2000s. The Idea was to have something navally compatible, that could shoot HVPs as fast as 175mm M107, that were used in the round trials this year.

[acelanceloet]

Hello, if I may, I have some comments.

First of all, let me point you at the official templates http://shipbucket.com/wiki/index.php/Sh ... _Templates.

Second, I think the jpegged/pixelated issues do not come from deviantart, but from the fact that some parts look scaled. Keep in mind that shipbucket art is basically colourised pixel lineart, meaning that we work mostly with single pixel black lines to set the base of our drawings. Scaling and/or drawing with anti-aliased tools creates a 'messed up' look, similar to the issue you are now running into.

Now, the design. First of all, keep in mind that while gas turbines and waterjets offer very high speeds for an relatively light powerplant, you will probably run into fuel issues: Neither of them is known to be very efficient, and a very high top speed to cross the world as fast as possible might be counterproductive. The ideal answer to getting to any theather fast, would be nuclear power: nuclear power allows your cruising speeds to be the same as the top speed: you won't run out on any of those. Nuclear plants are heavy and have a big impact on your ship design however, so it wouldn't be as simple as sticking a nuclear plant on this hull.
Speaking of weights with a large impact on your ships design: Note that the LCS-2 hull has a lot of it's volume aft of midship, so about 2/3 of the weights should be aft of midship. Looking at that enormous gun, it doesn't really look that light, and while you have all the VLS aft, I still suspect that is not twice as heavy as the gun system.

Lastly, for now, Keep in mind that you can't fill all the hull volume with systems (like the Mk 41) as you still need passages to actually access those systems, the electronics, cooling, and the ships hull structure around it. The VLS aft is because of that in my opinion extremely cramped, as are the aft guns.

[SOLariss]

Hello, if I may, I have some comments.

First of all, let me point you at the official templates http://shipbucket.com/wiki/index.php/Sh ... _Templates.

Second, I think the jpegged/pixelated issues do not come from deviantart, but from the fact that some parts look scaled. Keep in mind that shipbucket art is basically colourised pixel lineart, meaning that we work mostly with single pixel black lines to set the base of our drawings. Scaling and/or drawing with anti-aliased tools creates a 'messed up' look, similar to the issue you are now running into.

Now, the design. First of all, keep in mind that while gas turbines and waterjets offer very high speeds for an relatively light powerplant, you will probably run into fuel issues: Neither of them is known to be very efficient, and a very high top speed to cross the world as fast as possible might be counterproductive. The ideal answer to getting to any theather fast, would be nuclear power: nuclear power allows your cruising speeds to be the same as the top speed: you won't run out on any of those. Nuclear plants are heavy and have a big impact on your ship design however, so it wouldn't be as simple as sticking a nuclear plant on this hull.
Speaking of weights with a large impact on your ships design: Note that the LCS-2 hull has a lot of it's volume aft of midship, so about 2/3 of the weights should be aft of midship. Looking at that enormous gun, it doesn't really look that light, and while you have all the VLS aft, I still suspect that is not twice as heavy as the gun system.

Lastly, for now, Keep in mind that you can't fill all the hull volume with systems (like the Mk 41) as you still need passages to actually access those systems, the electronics, cooling, and the ships hull structure around it. The VLS aft is because of that in my opinion extremely cramped, as are the aft guns.

Hello,
Fixed the template, thanks. However could't figure out what to do with a rear view, so put it seperately.

As for the devianart, I meant that I had turned on the compression (by mistake) hence .jpeg. As for scaling artifacts, fixed some of them manually.

As for your design comments:
As for powerplant, I considered going nuclear, but IMHO it's too much of a hustle. Reactors are extremely expensive and heavy, require highly qualified and specialized personnel for running and refueling. Also it goes against the main motto of the ship "Availability". The idea here was replacement for both Ticonderoga missile defense cruiser (hence so many missiles and exoatmospheric interception rounds) and Zumwalt destroyer (actually fulfilling the role it was designed for, but failed), so there should be plenty of these (and some might be lost during an actual conflict) so reactors don't actually fit with this idea. That's exactly why only one turret and as small ship as possible to fit Ticonderoga's armament + Strategic Long Range Cannons. IMHO better have several smaller cruisers than one super battleship with multiple turrets and nuclear power, because it will have to return to port even to fix some moderate damage. GE's LMS100 is actually quite efficient (up to 51.6% for combined cycle), that's the advantage of the large turbines (the bigger they are, the more efficient they are, especially if you add steam cycle).

As for weights, please bare in mind, that this ship is much larger then Independence (175m vs 127.5m), the main hull is both wider and sits deeper in the water, this adds much more buoyancy towards the bow. While the cannons are going to be heavy indeed (Project HARP cannon weight was about 200t, also some weight can be shaven with carbon fiber wrapping technology and other modern materials), so cannons alone would weigh at least 300t (combined) other turret machinery would probably add about 50t. But there gonna be counterweight at the stern: large electric motors to drive the waterjets and water in waterjets itself.

As for ammunition, pay attention for back view drawing, VLS assemblies are actually relatively thin, albeit long, with all missiles located in the sponsons. Such location provides some advantages: ability to divert missile launch exhaust between hulls to reduce the infrared signature and make operations on the deck safer. The other advantage of such layout is related to resupplying ammunition, one of the main features of the design is ability to be resupplied at sea (large boat hangar and helipad) as well as to rearm its weapons (trimaran design for lateral, and wave piercing nose for longitudinal stability) the helipad can also be used for placing and moving cranes and loaders involved in rearming VLS.

As for rear guns, pay attention to weapons layout on the second drawing, I've shown Mk45 below the deck machinery there, it should fit, albeit barely.

[erik_t]

As a very rough rule of thumb, modern warships are pretty carefully designed for operability and maintainability. Improvements can be nibbled away on the margins, but if one finds oneself sketching out a super badass cruiser of doom that is a dramatic advance on existing ships in nearly every respect, there's probably something you're missing. In this case, the chief shortcoming is the new artist's common mistake of trying to fit ten tons of equipment into a three-ton bucket.

That is to say, modern surface combatants from the Americans, British, Russian, Chinese, etc. all look fairly similar and carry fairly similar loadouts relative to their size for a reason. People who spend their whole careers analyzing this stuff have all come to the conclusion that it's the best way to do things.

(it's a lot better than my first drawing)

[acelanceloet]

Something went wrong with the reupload, you have 2 times the same image now.

The rear guns and VLS fitting 'just barely' is exactly the issue: with the personnel access, ammunition elevator, reinforcements against shocks (as a gun happends to provide shocks to a ships structure) the amount of space required is about 2 or 3 times the amount of space you currently have. The VLS either has no hatch at the bottom, in which case seawater ingress (in heavy wave conditions) will result in damaged missiles and systems or requires a hatch down there that will require maintenance and is also still a risk in heavy weather. All in all, this will not reduce the required space (the maintenance access might even increase the required space) while offering just the very minor advantage of having a lower infrared signature.... while the infrared signature of the orignal system is only there when firing missiles out of the top, in which case there will be a lot of heat above the deck anyways.

I agree nuclear would not fit the concept, but then you should wonder, if the goal is to have this ship in numbers, does high speed make sense? if you have enough of them to station them around the world, there is no need to have very high speed long range relocations.

Also, note that the ticonderoga was build on a hull originally designed to take less systems. You add the big gun, high speed (and all the required power for that), 50% more VLS on a hull the same length on a hull shape that will likely result in less displacement. In other words: displacement wise, this hull is in my opinion between 30 and 50% of the displacement I would expect for the weapon systems you are listing. And that is without taking into account the amount of fuel required for an high speed ocean crossing.

As for the weights. I was talking not about any dimensions, but about relative dimensions. It might be bigger, but the shape is generally speakign the same, so the center of bouyancy is definitely not amidships, so the center of gravity also shouldn't be. The issue might be less then on LCS-2, but it will be there.

Note that a cannon weight of 300t is an immense weight high up in a warship btw. Note that the ticonderoga class's total armament weight was 311 tons. And you have 2 or 3 times that weight on an less weight efficient hull of roughly the same size.

Oh, btw. The electrical motors for the waterjets, apart from the fact that I don't think there currently are any meant-for-ships electric motors close to that size, if they would exist I would expect those 4 142MW motors together to weigh over 500 tons (probably more). The total propulsive weight of a tico is 779 tons. So again, you end up much higher then you would be able to manage on this hull.

As a drawing, it really isn't that bad, and I look forward to seeing your drawings improve even more, it is as Erik stated of higher quality then most peoples first work. But I also have to agree with Erik, these specifications do not fit the ships size, however smart it is possibly laid out.