I want to emphasize that this drawing is not in my usual style of 'attempting to be reasonable and sensible'.
Well, that's not quite right either. My usual standpoint is 'attempting to be reasonable and sensible (with the set of preconditions that currently persist in the United States Navy)'. The part in parentheses is sort of implied. It means the usual: rotating air search radars are not preferred, RCS is to be kept low but not necessarily minimized, all missiles except RAM must absolutely launch out of VLS, several SH-60 must be supported, major components should be those persisting in the USN (Mk 45 instead of Oto 127mm), etc etc etc.
The same is true here. However, the preconditions are very important and very different from usual. Consider, again, H45. Even if it's not a real proposal (which at this point I don't think it was), we can easily imagine Adolf saying 'DORA MUST BE PRESENT IN TURRETS' (see: 'ME-262 MUST BE A BOMBER', 'I DEMAND A TANK WITH S/G 11" TURRETS', etc.). Or even something that was done in
real life, 'WE MUST HAVE AN UNBROKEN LINE OF RADAR STATIONS 200MI NORTH OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE'. Which we then did, quite rapidly in fact.
So Objective Global Warship is 'attempting to be reasonable and sensible' given a few starting facts which themselves aren't terribly reasonable or sensible. Let me quote again from Rob:
Sea Skimmer at SDN wrote:Actually when I first dreamed up OGW with 24in VGAS and convinced Eric to start drawing it with his own added in details within I dunno, it took like five minutes flat so awesome was the concept, I wanted 24in observation shells which could be fired in-between every dozen or so normal rounds to spot the fall of shot. If optics can’t do it due to breaking on firing … arbitrarily awesome MMW radar sure could spot the craters and confirm destruction of buildings and armored vehicles. Though the long range shell for 24in VGAS is basically on top of a whole stack of screw together rocket boosters to accomplish global range with a sane length of loading stroke, so making optics or LIDAR or something survive firing just might barely be possible. They made the laser seeker on Copperhead survive somehow after all.
The information would be data linked back by small transponders in a chain of other 24in shells flying further behind in a giant arc across the globe back to OGW. So who needs satellites? Won’t let you spot the last shells down as they have no transponder behind them, but who cares? Fire for effect with 7,000lb full size or even 4,000lb subcaliber shells (see Little David video for what 4,000lb at only 380m/s can do) won’t leave a damn thing left. The next fire mission will confirm the last missions results.
Launching small satellites using 28in SM-3 and GBI boosters is easy enough, never mind Super Trident and Space Marine Rocket System; but one assumes that any credible threat to OGW will also very easily deny space with his own ABM missiles and lasers. So satellites are nothing really worth writing home about. I mean if they can't even do that, then OGW will beat them without even sounding general quarters. Just man battle stations VGAS and everything dies.
So we have three absolute preconditions, handed down from on high. The ship, whatever it may ultimately be, must ship PAVE PAWS class radar (120ft x 120ft) and it must support a 24" vertical gun (presumably not shorter than 50 calibers in length). Finally, it must be a warship, not a mobile oil rig that drives around at 5 knots with a big radar on top. These three things drive the design.
So the naval architect, having been handed the RFP with these data points, and having gone back to his desk and knocked back a few shots from his emergency flask, must sit down and try to make something work. That's where we sit now, and that's what I've tried to do. Assuming the ship must carry 120ft radar arrays and a 24" vertical gun array, and it must defend itself, this is where we ended up.
There were two little sidelights. First is an in-joke regarding recent US nomenclature. We've been seeing a lot of
'Objective Interim' designs of various things. Well, what is the real Objective? It has to be just outrageously insane, right? Second, we always see that adding size means you want to add capability which means you need a bigger hull for stability but then there's more space for weapons etc etc... things spiral ever-outward. Well, as the spiral goes further and further outward... does it ever stop expanding? Does it converge to some far-out circle? It kind of seemed to here. I could make it a little bigger and add a few more VLS cells, but why? What do we really gain at that point? OGW got large enough that I no longer felt any pressure to expand. It was interesting to find that.
/trololololo
Love the imput of the desing in explanationary wise, all good own desings (be them this size or smaller) should have good reasoning behind of their purpose. This certainly raises the bar