The Future of Naval Warships

[Goingonit]

I don't see directed energy weapons working against air attack. For one thing, most aircraft are fairly reflective, so laser weapons would be impeded in their effectiveness. For another, energy weapons can't home in on targets. They can only go in straight lines. So you have this plane going at mach 2, and somehow you have to point an energy weapon at the plane for long enough that it does significant damage. Not the easiest thing. Meanwhile, all the pilot has to do is let loose his missiles and fly away.

[pchang]

weapons

Rail Guns -
Rail guns have a big recoil. The force of the recoil is equal to the momentum imparted on the shell and spread out over the time the shell spends in the gun barrel. Thus, the recoil would be bigger than that of present day guns.

Directed Energy Weapons -
Planes are reflective? Yes and no. It depends upon the wavelengths we are talking about. You could tune the frequency of your energy weapon to something that the plane (or something in the plane) would really absorb. As far as pointing goes, it is a lot easier to point a direct energy weapon at where the plane is than it is to point a gun at where the plane will be in the time it takes the bullet to get there. The real problem with directed energy weapons is that we don't have any in production (all examples are still experimental).

[Goingonit]

OTOH, it's far easier to point a homing missile at a plane than a beam weapon. Yes, it is better than using flak guns or cannon. And, if you could get one-hit kills with your weapon, then it could conceivably work as a pretty effective AA gun.

The thing is, if not, it would be fairly hard to get a second shot. Misdirection techniques such as chaff or flares would still work, because the gun would be just as dependent on guidance systems - unless you wanted to control it manually, which brings back the problem of shooting at the mach 2 target that's busy taking evasive action.

[pchang]

Russian Navy

The Russians were working on something they called an achronoplon (sp?). It was a huge ground effect plane that flew about 5 meters above the surface. These craft were frigate sized, carried lots of missiles, and could travel at around 300 knots.

[Goingonit]

EDIT: found a site about these suckers. Called "ekranoplans", the general name for such planes is WIG (wing-in-ground) effect vehicles. They did build a number, including one with anti-ship missiles to attack American carrier battle groups. They got great fuel efficiency due to the ground effect. However, they can crash upon takeoff before sufficient lift is generated by ground effect.

A good page about these: http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question...cs/q0130.shtml

[pchang]

homing weapons

The problem with homing weapons is that they are just as vulnerable (perhaps moreso) to misdrection techniques as directed fire weapons. They use the same techniques (IR, radar, etc.) to home in and their smaller onboard processing systems have less capability to resist/conteract/compensate against the various misdirection techniques.

[pchang]

Russian Flying Ship

They had at least 2 operational that I know of, but they never really got beyond the testing phase. They never went operational. I believe they had about 10-12 hours of jet fuel on board. Then they would sink to the surface and float until they were refueled.

[st_swithin]

Whatever. Their troop ships weren't even as cool as the destroyers.

[johncmcleod]

we need a large navy, because we need to project power around the globe.

Yeah, so we can bully around more people.

What will ships of the future be like? And plus, if we ever developed a laser that could destroy things it would take a lot of energy and it would be more efficient to have conventional weapons. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

[st_swithin]

What we need is a private war - sort of like marriage but instead of yelling, you use rail guns and rocket launchers while smoking in the elevator.

[PLATO]

From the article:

The ship will carry 80 Advanced Vertical Launch System tubes, two 40mm close-in machine guns and torpedoes. The VLS cells are arranged along the deck edge for much of the ship’s length.

Looks like they will have a significant conventional defense system. One would assume that at least some of those tubes carry anti-aircraft missles.

and

“That can take us to systems that can find itty-bitty targets in the exoatmosphere a lot more efficiently than we can now,” Hamilton said. “That’s why this power thing is so important to us.”

Looks like they are planning on solving the targeting problem as well.

Goingonit, Did you even read the article??

[st_swithin]

Like I said YEARS ago - VTOL.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Is there even a rival naval power?

You know, I'm sure the Brits said something along those lines about a century ago.

[st_swithin]

So did the Spanish, and look how it turned out for them.

[The Mad Monk]

Exactly.