My plan was that the two 16-cell AShMs go side by side up front, forming one 32-cell system. It's right at the front, with the two 8.0 Sylvers right behind it and the forward 155mm mount right at the front. Of course, this results in a long bow, but that's hard to avoid here. Two of the 76mm mounts (one on each side) sit on either side of the forward 8.0 Sylver, sitting inside of a section sticking out from the forward superstructure.
This makes it sound a lot like you just shuffled around parts on Kirov, with the forward 155mm mount replacing the Silex launcher, and then swapping the Shipwreck and Grumble launchers around. The 76mm mounts could then be sitting on the small deckhouses that carried 4 x AK-630 mounts on Kirov and two Kashtan mounts on Kalinin.
The forward superstructure (with APAR) is next. Behind that is the 7.0 Sylver and then the ship's boats (which are built over top of the reactor hatches - the reactors are side-by-side on this vessel) and then the UAV section of the rear superstructure, which have two V2A Sea Ceptors on each side of it. (At the front of this section is the catapults for the UAVs and cranes to recover them off of the water, both of which retract to get out of the way of the Sea Ceptors), then the actual hangar for the helicopters and its
control tower, which has the S1850M above it and the SPS-67 forward of that. The after 76mm mounts on either side of the landing pad, the tops of the guns basically flush with the landing platform so the helos don't run into anything, and it means the APAR and S1850M are quite far apart. At the rear is the Makara ASW missile launcher and the rear 155mm mount.
The Russians went with side-by-side reactors on the Kirovs, but every American ship with two reactors has used a fore-and-aft layout. That could be a matter of design preference or practice, but the American ships, unlike the Kirovs, did not have an auxiliary propulsion system that operated independently of the reactors. With this superstructure design, you are now stuffing boats, a 64-cell VLS, and UAV launch and recovery gear between the pilothouse and the helicopter facilities. Also, this VLS is going to have to be very high in the superstructure, practically on deck, to stay above the plant below it. You can see how high in the ship Iver Huitfeldt's Mk 41 is, and this is going to be a substantially larger installation.
The Sylver 2 here is indeed like the Mark 57, because here the British realized the issues with the Aster missile's CG and thus its fin size and wanted something more space efficient. The Makara ASW missile is too big for a 28" cell and the Algoolik is rather bigger than that, so they need to have their own launchers, and the CAMMs are on the sides specifically because A) that can work and they are small enough that thus doesn't cause topside weight issues) and B) this gives more room for larger, longer-ranged missiles in the main launchers. Since these are basically the commander center for the fleet's air defenses, there's no point in going small on the missile capacity, and steel is cheap so if the hull has to grow it will.
1. If they know about the issues with Aster, what is the solution and how is going to a larger VLS cell profile involved?
2. If this "Makara ASW" weapon is too big to fit in even a 28" VLS cell, what advantages does it have over something as small as a VL-ASROC? If it's an anti-submarine cruise missile like the Silex, you already have ASW helicopters already on the ship, and the Silex is far too large for the capability it provides.
3. The Shipwreck was 33 inches in diameter (not counting fins), 10 meters long, and weighed 7 tons. The Soviets required very large launcher installations on the Kirovs and the Oscars, but the missile itself could almost fit in the Chinese GJB 5860-2006 VLS cells on a Renhai-class cruiser. The Soviets needed a missile this big because they thought that a salvo of 20 or 24 missiles might only be sufficient to get 1 missile through a CVBG's defenses, so that one missile would need a big enough warhead, 750 kg in this case, to disable the carrier. Even if you intend to be shooting at something as well defended as an American aircraft carrier and its Aegis-equipped escorts, you would probably be better off increasing your magazine and salvo size and improving hit probability with smaller and stealthier missiles, because the vast majority of modern warships won't stick around after a hit from a missile even a third that size.
4. Merchant hulls might be cheap, but actual warship hulls are not, much less nuclear-powered warship hulls, and the combat systems you stuff in those hulls certainly are not cheap. While surface combatants have gotten larger over the years, they have also gained much larger missile armaments. The Type 42s carried 22 Sea Darts while the Type 45s carry 48 Asters and are getting space for 24 CAMMs. The Burke-class destroyers, with 96 VLS cells, initially replaced Farragut and Adams class destroyers that carried fewer than 40 SM-1s. People say that steel is cheap and air is free, but that only applies if you are willing to constrain your combat systems installation. Proper application of that principle results in designs that look like the Maya and Sejong the Great, which fit Burke combat systems in a slightly larger and less cramped hull. Go too far to either side and you end up with overloaded ships in the Russian style or underarmed ships like the Spruance class or F125s that are derided, quite rightly, for not being competitive warships.
Big thanks for the design, though. I do appreciate the effort. 🙂
You've been sharing your overloaded creations here for the last eight years, and I've been here to bring you down to Earth for the last eight years. This hull isn't as overloaded as the Fraser-class was, but the layout is significantly more awkward. Personally, I think you're putting too many million-dollar eggs in one nuclear-powered basket. This ship is going to cost about $6 billion to build, and then another $1 billion to load with missiles, and it can only be in one place at one time. I would much rather see three or four reasonable multi-role combatants - depending on how expensive tonnage and combat systems are for you, they could be anywhere between a Horizon/Type 45 or a Maya/Sejong the Great. You could get the same level of anti-air capability with the APAR/SMART-L combination while also providing multiple hulls to either sustain full-time deployments or cover more space at the same time. Four ships could each get a 155mm gun, 64 VLS cells, and a CAMM battery and provide the same amount of firepower as the large cruiser with roughly the same cost and manning requirements. You will have to pay for four sets of sensors, but that means also you have significantly more ability to sustain sensors on station or to cover sea space with your sensors compared to a single ship. Single-role surface combatants are on the way out in large part because of the versatility of VLS, which allows you to easily swap between land attack, air defense, anti-submarine, and anti-ship loadouts, but using VLS types dedicated to single missiles defeats the purpose while needlessly complicating logistics and tactics.
