Shipbucket

I really, really don't like losing the helo capability. The reason the early Burkes got away with it is because the ships they were replacing in the fleet, the CF Adams, had no helos. Burkes would tend to be in support of carrier groups, and there are always lots of helos to go around.

Frigates are going to be stuck in lower-intensity roles, less supported by other ships, out away from the carriers. They arguably need helos even more than larger surface combatants, not less.

I agree with Erik_T.
Unlike the Burke, these ships will be replacing ships with quite extensive flight facilities. A really can't see the Navy accepting any sort of reduction in that area.

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There was a little bit of operational doctrinal change in the meantime too. When those Flight Is were being designed helicopters were mostly either ASW assets (which was served either by other ships or the carrier's organic airborne ASW assets) or UNREP assets (which the Flight I's helicopter pad was adequate for). Since then naval helicopters have pretty much done everything. The main reason why we even keep the OHPs around is because it has hangar space for not one but two Sea Hawks.

My point being, any "blue water" USN surface asset is going to have helicopter space, if not a full two-copter hangar. This is an absolute mandate. Witness the crazy space either LCS design has for helicopters.

I feel you are reinventing the wheel here. You had a nearly perfect design, pricy but believable for the era.
This feels a bit like a shrunken Burke which would raise the question why the USN would procure both types since this lacks the plus points of the Burke and adds very little.

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I prefer the original baby Burke version to this new one. I have a hard time imagining the USN being ok without native helicopters. When you compare the new ship to an OHP I don't think it would be very favorable. You've picked up a VLS system that can deploy Tomahawks but you've lost your helicopters. I just can't see the USN being ok with that no matter how cheap the boat is.

Little Burke

that's horrible, also may I suggest your own thread for the discussion of this design?

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and she would never manage to fit an VLS aft, since you have an twin hangar taking up all the space.

Thank you Shipright. I really appreciate your comment, so don't let what I'm about to say lead you to believe otherwise. There seems to be a general theme here on the bucket that all radars, directors and weapons systems need to have the perfect 360 degrees of coverage. In fact I've got so much flack in this area that I'm really considering drawing a ship that has perfect azimuth coverage for all systems, but I assure you it would be ridiculous. No ship is perfect in this area. if there are deficiency's on a certain azimuth, I promise you that the captain and all the officers will know about it and maneuver their ship to a better angle. I'm pretty sure the only way to accomplish this is to double up on all systems. I'm pretty sure if there were no Burk, and I drew it for the very first time there would be an uproar bucket-wide about how the aft spy panels would be blocked buy the funnels... Anyway, I'm assuming that you are specifically talking about the 49 being blocked by the forward mast? Just as a little background I was a 48 (3D air search) radar tech and I feel pretty confident when I tell you that air search radars for the most part send most of their energy up so very close obstacle's are not much of a problem (unless they are enormous) . If it was a problem the 49 on most carriers would only have about 270 degrees of coverage, The 48 on most NTU cruisers would also be seriously impeded, not to mention the 49 that was usually on the AFT masts for most of these ships would also be seriously impeded by the forward mast carrying the 48 antenna. If this ship did have a forward dead spot the SPQ-9 would fill the gap (which would probably be less that one degree) and the ships combat management computers would transpose both radars pictures on a tactical display.
I'm not reinventing anything. No "baby Burke" or replacement for the OHP have been built, although I concede it looks burkish, but that's what I was going for originally
OK OK, I'll add double wide helo hanger But know this, In my heart I love this little ship. It looks like its ready to go get in a fight, and I just dig it
Is this your drawing Gunship? If so, it Is a nice drawing. is it your own Idea or something you drew off official "plans" I do like it but I wanted to draw a ship that I imagined would be a cool frigate.



thank you all for all the comments. I will do helo hangers just because its a good idea. I am not setting out to design the perfect "real world" Ship here. It's mostly just cause I like it and its fun to draw. I would like to know what you all think about the sensor suite and weapons load out, and just overall feasibility as a theoretical screen type ship. I tried SPY-1f and yall didn't like it. I tried spy-5 and yall didn't like it, so I've stripped it down to the basics. Is this ship good for area AAW defense? the systems seem to be the right choice for the time frame I'm looking at. Y'all said it was to big and expensive, so I've shortened (should be a little shorter than an OHP, but nothing official in numbers yet) and givin it a basic, yet effective sensor system. I concede the helo-hanger issue and will fix it next go round, and I'd love to hear you thought on the rest of the ship

Thank you all

I understand all but I just looked at the Virginia CGN, California CGN, Leahy CG and the Tico CG drawings and none have the air sensor setup you describe with a masively masked aft mounted main air search sensor. It is true some have their sensor masked by either the forward or aft mast but in all these cases the sensor is much higher and the masking mast is a few feet thick at most.

In your setup you are dealing with the encloses Burke type mast which is itself a dozen feet wide nearly to the top, and then the tripod mast supports below that add even more interference not to mention the director in front of that. Given the hieght of the sensor your bridge masks the horizon for an even greater sector and since this is a screen primarily in charge of seeing and or shooting down incoming sea skimming missiles in defense of an HVU this is the true design flaw. Here is what I mean:



You can remove a lot of the horizon blockage by elevating the aft sensor so that it can look down over the bridge, the search is not AS important in screen duties. The problem here though is you mounted your only self contained point defense weapon aft. Since your SM2 requires guidence you are completely defensless for the entirety of the forward cutouts. You could remedy this by putting the Palanx forward.

Also another issue with your air sensor being so low and emitting directly into your mast/bridge is that your bridgewings are now radiation zones during operations where it is in use and you are going to fry and or interfere with all the comms gear on the mast if you are putting any sort of useful power through that thing.
You have the cutout and point defense issues above.

I would recommend axing the Tomahawk to open up cells for more SM2s if AAW is your actual goal. Not only does ot take up lots of magazine space but given the much smaller internal volume you are going to be packed to the gills with supporting combat systems equipment as it is, not having a space and a half of Tomahawk gear would be very helpful not to mention the comms gear that you need that is missing from your mast currently. This would also make your ship appreciable cheaper.

Drop the five". Yes any design process taking place at that time would have to put up with the Marine Corps gun lobby but this ship is designed to be a cheap AAW screen which means it does not need a gun of that size which is on the DDGs basically for NGFS only. It CAN be used as an AAW weapon but good luck with that. In its role as a screen a more rapid fire and ammunition deep smaller caliber gun would make more sense. Take it out and put your savings from this decision and removing Tomhawk to paying for that hanger which would make it a capable ASW screen as well (retain the ASROC). In the end the two things an esport is there to protect an HVU against is aircraft and submarines, with a nod to SUW after Prayong Mantis and later in the 90s after the USS Cole incident.

I also wanted to ask about your machinery spaces as you are a bit Burkesque so it looks like you deleted main one, aux one and aux two from your drawing leaving you with the two GTM from main two and the GTG from aft gen. Did you intend to put another GTG in with the two GTMs for redundant power generation? I ask becaus this is totally doable but may make your ship overheavy aft given the stack placement.