this 'concept' was one of the more exotic ideas of the COEA group. critics of conventional warships often said that the best way to ensure survivability would be to take an really big hull and fill it with bouyancy material. that was exactly what concept 3C3 was, an armed supertanker. the original plan was to use the massive supertanker hull for VLS and helicopter spots. the version illustrated is essentially four FMLAC superstructures build on top of an massive hull. each has a 5''/62 gun with an Mk 48 Sea Sparrow launcher alongside it. apart from electric motor drive rooms and foam, the hull is empty. Electric drive made it possible to put the gas turbines themselves in the superstructures. clearly the design shown was not altogether serious, since all four superstructure elements are identical and therefore quite redundant. however, the design does make the point that a very large hull would permit sufficient redundancy that the ship would probably survive multiple missile hits, either in the hull or in some of the superstructure elements.
an real ship based on this concept would thus have VLS in the hull. this design is not to be taken as an design, but as an starting point, from what an effective warship could be developed.
concept and information from friedman's US destroyers.
my own notes on the design are these though:
- if you have such an huge displacement and volume available, why use gas turbines? diesels could make the structure much smaller (due to putting the engines below it) and the fuel economy much better.
- very stealthy structures on that complete brick of an hull?
- the split bridges are an quite bad idea
- I would not recommend landing an helicopter next to the middle 2 structures, wind is gonna be mad out there.
