I voted for this challenge purely for the memes and when it was first announced as a possibility I took it as an inspiration and started on the classic meme that is the Arsenal Ship. A class of vessels which so often gets depicted as continuing the traditional battleship number schemes. My initial concept was relatively straightforward and simple. Take a commercial hull, slap electronics and Mk 41 on it and call it a day. While it wasn't strictly applicable to the challenge and it wasn't guaranteed that the Battleship Challenge would win, It was an idea I liked so I started work intending to finish it regardless of which challenge won.
The obvious choice for hull was the Alaska Class tanker, as there is a real life precedent for a militarized derivatives of the hull in the form of the Montford Point class and Chesty Puller Sub class. As a cost cutting measure I decided on less alterations to the hull. I'm not sure of a complete list of changes between the Alaska and the ESD/ESBs but some obvious ones a are the step down on the stern of the Alaska, the more vertical bow of the Navy ships. In addition the Navy ships are significantly shorter which I assume was achieved by whatever the opposite of a hull plug is.
I'd started on the hull and made good progress when the actual challenge actually started and the rules revealed.... Two 11 inch guns. The pure arsenal ship idea had been torpedoed and some new meme must rise from the ashes. Never one to waste work I began thinking of what possible justification there could be for sticking battleship guns on an arsenal ship and eventually decided on Congressional meddling. Several failed turret drafts later I decided to take a turn for the worse and switch to a vertical gun. Partly for the memes but mostly because it saved me the trouble of drawing turrets. Various bad ideas came and went during the development including a quartet of MLRS, ICBMs and at one point a below decks hangar for a half dozen ospreys before I reeled myself in to on deck parking for some seahawks and a single pair of HIMARs.
For the electronics fit I decided to be as minimal as possible. Mk 23 and Illuminators so she could carry Sea Sparrow for self defense. Originally I had a SPQ-9B but I realized that the main guns would never be engaging the sort of targets SPQ-9B is used to track. Instead I decided on a counter battery based on the inclusion of one on some old fire support ship concepts. Beyond that I gave her the various data links and satcoms she'd would need to coordinate firing at things, SLQ-32 for self defense and some various other generic electronic greebles representing no real specific systems.
Other things I added were launch/recovery gear for Scan Eagle as well as the RQ-21 Black Jack (Which technically uses different gear I decided not to draw to avoid clutter and totally not out of laziness) some replenishment gear, and reloading equipment for the VLS based on a NAVSEA concept prototyped in the 90s.
As far as weapons beyond the main guns go, I threw on a few light autocannons to deal with boghammers, a bunch of VLS, MLRS and your normal CIWS. For CIWS I debated on the exact breakdown/layout of Phalnax / Sea RAM Only 1, 1 of each, 1 of each again but arranged the opposite way or only the other. Eventually I settled on the current one for the drawing and decided it would vary between ships. The HIMARS set up is less than ideal. I kept them on the center line for survivability reasons so the canisters for the rockets can't just be chucked over the side and need to be removed between each salvo. They can fire the normal MLRS stuff, ATACMS, Rockets and also Ground Launched SDB. For the VLS I danced between 32 Cell Blocks and 64 before settling on 64 due to the potential to swap in a pair of regular Vertical guns during a refit. As far as missiles go she'd mostly carry tomahawks (And later arclight) for land attack, some LRASM for surface warfare and ESSM for self defense. She can also carry SM-3, SM-6, ASROC and Sea Lance if she has somebody to spot targets for her.
The Machinery is the same as the basic Alaska with the addition of some extra generators amidships for hotel load (Although in theory they could power the motors at a crawl in a pinch) . Nothing really special.
The Ship Badges were sketched up in response to some people on the discord drawing anime girl badges for their ships. I don't usually draw things like that but it was a fun exercise in doing something different.
Beyond that not too much to mention beyond the time I furiously checked charts after realizing that the Alaska Class Tankers were not in fact built with full loads of oil and that the completed ships would have issues leaving the yard they were built at. A nice exercise as it allowed me to bring the Pacific battleship fleet home after 80 years.
Initially proposed as Arsenal Ships, the Montana Class Battleships were fated to serve as a prime example of the pitfalls of design by congressional committee.
In the late 1990s with the impending retirement of the last Iowa Class battleships less than a decade out, the US Navy foresaw the newly proposed Arsenal Ship as the ideal replacement for providing fire support for the Marines. A low cost commercial derived hull could be packed full of Tomahawk missiles giving the ground
forces a seemingly limitless magazine of missiles at a relatively low cost. The powers that bee agreed with this initial assessment and the "Affordable Land Attack Ship"
program was begun. Initial design work began in 2001 with the selection of NASSCO's Alaska Class tanker as the base for the conversion. The center tanks would
be replaced with Mk 41 VLS and the side tanks would be filled with foam to provide reserve bouncy and increase survivability. With the majority of the design finalized
the ship was nearly ready to be laid down when Congress intervened. In the eyes of Congress, the idea of a battleship replacement without guns was outlandish and
they inserted a clause into the budget that stated that any potential Iowa replacement was required to have "A Main Battery of Battleship Caliber Guns." This was the
beginning of the program's long struggle with Congressional meddling. The changes demanded by congress were many. They ranged from the trivial (Demanding
"Battleship" replace "ship" in the program name), to the absurd (One Senator requested Joint Strike Fighters be embarked.) The Navy was able to eventually sway
Congress away from many of the extreme demands, but the damage was done. The ships ended up nearly decade behind schedule and what were once conceived as "affordable"
ships were now well over budget. As a cost saving measure 2 of the 6 ships planned were canceled.
The basic configuration from the early days of the program remained roughly the same with the main changes from the inital design being the replacement of half
of the VLS with four 16"/62 Battleship Vertical Guns (BVG) and the addition of navalized HIMARS launchers amidships (Crewed by the ship's marine detachment).
The magazines for both the guns and HIMARS were located in the bottom of the hull below an armored deck. The original tank bulkheads were reinforced into armored
bulkheads with a small number of hatches cut between them for crew access. While the center tanks were primarily replaced with armament, the side tanks were instead
filled with a mixture of ballast (For stability) and foam (For buoyancy in case of damage). Another significant change from the original Alaska Class hull was the addition of
armor around the machinery spaces and a set of backup generators to deal with the increased electrical load. Aviation facilities were minimal, with deck parking for
helicopters and accommodations for a number of UAVs. All four Ships were laid down at NASSCO San Diego, however their planned final draft was too deep for San Diego Bay
so fitting out was done at the newly reopened Long Beach Naval Shipyard. After completion BB-73 and BB-74 would remain stationed there as the newly revived Battleship Division One, representing the first time since 1940 that Battleships called San Pedro Bay home. Overall the ships saw moderate success in service and were not entirely White Elephants. Although they were slow to deploy to crisis zones, once in theater they offered considerable firepower with their deep tomahawk magazines and MLRS launchers. When it came to
Congress's much loved 16" guns however, more often than not the ship's escorts provided more effective support with their smaller, cheaper and faster firing conventional
5" and 8" guns.
