Shipbucket

Nice ship! To me it has the "Long Beach-ish" feeling to it, because of the placement of the phased array radars.

I suppose these were build to cruiser standards as opposed to destroyer standards? so protected machinery spaces can command and control, at the very least (and lower accepted stresses in the hull, resulting in an larger casco weight, but that is less visible here)

that amount of missiles is huge. I suppose not all of those were shipped at the same time? otherwise it will be an logistics nightmare.

I am wondering where your powerplant is, exactly. I suppose you haven't put the VLS on top of reactor spaces, right? on top of turbines I can kind of understand it, but reactor spaces take a lot of space..... and of course you need to access the top.

I think there will be interesting results if all your missiles have to pass the beam of your radars when launching. especially the seawolf, which only just misses the 'control tower'. I don't think those are on the best possible place, and since you have overloaded your ship with VLS already, which can take the same sea wolf missiles, I suppose it would not be so bad to delete those and get a bit more safety over there. I also suppose you put your reactor underneath that?

The amidships VLS is modular, and resting atop an armoured deck - while it is a weakness in the protective scheme, sections of it are fitted to be lifted off in order to provide overhead access to #2 Reactor - #1 is, as you said, under the Sea Wolf VLS, which is also designed to be lifted out. One turbine/generator room is aft of Reactor 1, the other is aft of Reactor 2. While it is a major job to access the reactors, I see no other option given the limited centreline space.

The ship is built to cruiser standards, yes - but in a vessel with such large electronically scanned radars, there is no option but to have them fly through the beam - it is an S-band surveillance/target indication set, as per Type 985 or SCANFAR, solid state and with the advantage of another twenty years of development behind it.

When the ship was built, it had Sea Wolf in the smaller VLS, and Sea Dart Mark 2 in the main VLS cells. Additional weapons were planned, and eventually entered service later in the ship's lives - as the flagships of a carrier group escort screen, and for over a decade, the only ships in the fleet with a multi-role, long-cell VLS capability, they tended to pick up incredibly eclectic fits. As the largest surface ships in the fleet, replacing almost three times their number, designed in haste, they also tended to be less than optimal and pick up a great deal of 'pet projects' from various project officers.

keep in mind that you have to fit ventilation somewhere for every engine room.... if possible without this ventilation going through watertight bulkheads. it might thus be an good idea to have some structures on the VLS deck, if not on the centerline.

it should be possible to do the way you describe, but I am always somewhat against any design that let's you remove an large weapon system to reach the engines.

note that the reason your centerline space is so limited is because it seems you have way more VLS on board then any design I can think of in the real world, even when compared with its size. I think you have at least 144 or 216 cells? (9*8*2/3)

The number of VLS cells is not exceptional compared to, for instance, discussions during the Surface Combatantant-21 Cost and Operational Evalulation Analysis - where the baseline configuration was 4 x 64-cell Mark 41. (Less said about the Arsenal Ship the better...) This ship has 1 x 64-cell and 1 x 80-cell, certainly nothing that far out of the ordinary.

ah, makes sense. that said, that seems like there is some wasted beam in which the layout can be better then the current one. I mean, the 64 cell block here looks as an 128 to me, compared with the basic Mk 41. it is thus half as wide as the Mk 41 blocks.

why not use an split VLS

In part, yes, there is some wasted beam, to permit better protection of the cells against attacks - the other reason is that, being unsure how to draw a different VLS, I used the Mark 41 as a stand in - but the cells are designed to hold weapons of up to 650mm diameter, with 32 of the cells forward being rated for 750mm weapons. (Abandonment of the idea of replenishment at sea permitted the adoption of a series of adapter launch canisters, at the price of some sustainment capability.)

Between the hangar and a 2-spot helipad, reactor access, and the radar, it seemed to drive arrangement rather strongly, producing what was there - and mounting the cells along the side of the ship would require additional protection to them with the loss of stand-off distance from side weapon impacts.

The field of view of the after array is rather unfortunate. You're going to have some masking at low elevations even in glassy seas.

So did Long Beach. It seems unavoidable, with the weight and size of a first-generation PESA set, the need to provide illuminator elevation, and the snarled mess of congestion atop the fore superstructure block requiring something go on a stub mainmast.