Shipbucket

For people like you with such obvious spatial difficulties I specifically created a series of graphics in this very thread to illustrate the weapons arcs available. This was for notational purposes, for you it is apparently a necesity.

On the bow the weapon is only masked for 30 odd degrees directly aft of the vessel. Thats at the horizon, that blockage is reduced to a mere 10 degrees as you approach the mast up to approximately 50 degrees (as it isn't drawn yet).

I would, however, like you to explain where you are getting this "front quarter" from.
1.) Please link me to your ship drawing where you have gone through meticulous effort to locate interor components, drawing them from scratch, inside your hull in order to ensure realistic structure and spacing? To be blunt, I am doing the exact opposite of what you are suggesting and something I am quite confident you have never attempted yourelf.

2.) Again, your spatial instincts seem lacking. In this instance placing the weapon on top of the bridge will place it directly against whatever mast I draw. This isn't going to be a skinny mast either, but rather an integrated one as the ship obviously requires so something with quite a bit of breath. I might, MIGHT be able to cover 120-130 degrees off each side of the bow. A better place if you are doggedly married to superstructure placement would be on top of the hanger bay, as the farther from the higher parts of the superstructure you are the better you arc, but then one of the main threat axis for an escort vessel, directly forward, is denied is primary weapon system.

Then there is that little issue of everything else that has to be located around the bridge on a smallish vessel.
In your case its code for "I am a know it all who is married to convention and can't be bothered to explore anything new because it hurts too much to think."

Again, please point me to your drawing so I can learn from your steller example.

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You ned to know that klagldsf is a man that only comment on things if it is totally silly. We have our recident US electonics and weapon expert "Erik-t" but he only comment on things he know will work with just a small tweak. Then we have "acelanceloet" are an shipbuilding student and he is also the person among us that can say that works and that doesn't work, and if he says so than it is that way when it comes up to a ship stability. "Rhade" is just an Polish Government official. And I am just an furniture maker at the moment, because I have happened to get on the wrong side of the school fence. But I am more and yacht designer with a limited knowledge in weapons, but have extreme knowledge about technology.

"acelanceloet" have gave you tips you fixed that.
"Rhade" did say something but I didn't bother to read at that time.
"Erik-t" gave a tip about a file to read, as usual.
"Me" complained on the bow, but I am not saying anything more I just want to see this get finish before I comment if it work or not. But the only thing I think about the laser tech. I believe and what I have read in technology magazines I get, because I was an Engineering student at some point, I understand the Laser weapons would be most likely placed on the aft superstructure or replacing CIWS to a point.
"Klagldsf" He is as I say a very silent man, but if someone is posting something weird or something that could work just by do some rework he comments.


Only a few fast comment frome my side before I am going back in to the sofa and watch this drawing get completed.
[1] CIWS on a carrier can be placed that way because the hull is so high and thus give a big distance from the water and up to the CIWS. And in most normal storms this CIWS is not getting hit by wave just water spray. But when you get that 7 year storm, than every thing on an carrier including the bridge can be damaged.

[2] Yes Salt is bad. out you need to remember the CIWS is an enclosed systems and those parts that is open to the weather is designed to withstand Salt over time, so long it get it's normal service.
Yes. all vessels today have there moorings and anchor systems under deck. Today warships Normally carry one bow anchor, some two anchors on either side of the bow and that is, the anchor room and mooring take very little place.
There was a class of British warships that had they gun's mounted so far forward, I think they had only 6-8 meters from the barrel to the bow. These ships had an serious bow stability problem and had to be redesigned. after what I understand.
[4] The LCS have a totally different bow than and warship. the entire hull of an LCS is build for maximum lift every where on the hull. and he 57 mm gun do also weight almost nothing. you should more look on the Canadian frigate and see how far aft they have mounted the same gun to prevent getting an unstable bow.

[5] true to a some point but but the advantage on mounting the mount up on the superstructure is that the roll will be long but more calmer than it is down on the deck, and thus make it easier to the weapon system to target it's target.



I think that Laser in 20 years in to the future will only be used on ships Cruiser size or carrier size, ships that can have two laser at the same time. Frigates can get them two but they can only have one and with limited arc, they can only get two laser guns when the technology is getting so advance that they can be build small and light enough.

On a side note: You are doing a good work so far. Just some small things that we all know that will not work we just need to find the correct way to explain it.

But now official I am leaning back and will watch this treat until the ship is finish.

Oh my freakin' God



You don't gain any useful advantage in firing arcs by placing it at the bow. Do you want to shoot at targets that are sitting right underneath the fo'c'sle?
They don't illustrate a freakin' thing.
Look at the illustration above. The rear quarter of the ship is blocked regardless where you put it, so why not have it nice and high where it can intercept targets clearly and be out of harm's way?
You understand that things take space but you don't understand the whole picture.
You place it in front of the mast. How is that not obvious? Look at this vessel:



You still have a clear arc to the sides and the front. Yes there is a little nav radar blocking the way but you can move that.

No, you are being dumb and trollish when you start to pull stuff like that.
Go look at the drawings above.

Except both your graphics show that the bow position is superior for firing arc. Funny that.

So while yes I would like to be able to fire directly below the focsle if its a by product, I also like that extra 15-20 degrees to ether side of the stern and 30 degrees aft of the mast. Did you not noticed that? I thought you might have since you colored it but they you deliberately neglected to mention it in your post. Did you forget?
If that is so you won't have a problem explaining to us why. More likely they are inconvenient for you so you are ignoring them.

So your baffling objection to my graphics rightly placed aside, that is four graphics proving you absolutely wrong two of which are produced by you.
You specifically said that the weapon only covered the "front quarter". Even being very liberal with what one might consider the font quarter, the weapon obviously covers significantly more than that.

I have acknowledged that the rear of the ship can't be covered entirely due the limits of a vessel of this size. The question is why you continue to repeat this problem as if it is a new discovery instead of having been acknowledged by everyone including me multiple times, and why when you seem so concerned about it you are actively advocating an inferior mounting position to address this AS PER YOUR OWN DRAWINGS?
Says the guy arguing against his own sources.
Yes, in front of the mast exactly as I said. The problem is 1.) Are you McConrads 2.) that drawing is not using an integrated mast which is far more bulky than the legacy one in that drawing. 3.) You are also using a DDG that is 20 meters longer than my vessel so why you are using it as an example of space usage is beyond comprehension. 4.) Where are the laser weapons? None?
Pull what? Not bow to your yet undefined qualifications concerning, well, nothing?
[/quote]

You mean the two that prove you completely wrong? So where is your ship drawing? Link please.

Your solution to the problem of designing a cheaper ship than Arleigh Burke for low intensity missions seems to be to build an even more advanced ship that is scaled down about to about 75% the size. I wouldn't be surprised if a RL build of "Trident" ended up costing more than Flight III Arleigh Burkes.


I think you should first define what you mean be a low intensity mission as opposed to a fleet mission. To make building two separate classes viable it should really require a much less sophisticated capability.

All comments are appreciated as I said, with the exception of Klagsdsf due to his lack of professionalism. That being said I am still taking his comments into consideration (or was).

I am a 12 year naval officer with 7 years on board Flight I and II Burkes. I am not here to be schooled on anything but art, otherwise I am looking for collegiate discussion that I can learn from as well as provide whatever knowledge I know. Which I have gotten, this is a very good community
Seven year storms happen but are exactly that, seven years. 9 out of 10 ships will never have any major damage due to seas (probably much better than that actually)

As Thiels photo shows even the main guns can be damaged by waves. That off chance though does not prompt all navies across the world to remove their fo'c'sle guns either.

There is risk, it is acceptable to me.
Every naval weapon system is navalized, this laser weapon will be no different. It will also have a steath enclosure so it will be better protected than your average CIWIS.


I could see that for a heavy gun with barrel, auto loader, and under deck magazine. That is a lot of mass to be bobbing up and down. The HELLADS weighs less than a Phalanx. Its designed to be mounted on fighter scale jets. If my weapon ends up twice as bulky it is still more than light enough.
Lift at speed, it won't be going 30 knots in a storm. and despite that its designed whater line gives is 57mm mount 10 meters from the water line, the FFLX mount is 11 meters. On top of that the LCS-2 bow will allow waves to directly impact the mount.

This apparently works, and I suspect the reason is seas that would do that can be easily avoided or are so rare that they don't warrant making design decisions based solely upon it.
Very true, good point.
According to Erik_T the LaWS is going to be ready soon and is small enough to be mounted on a Phalanx mount or 25mm as supplemental fire power. We live in an exciting world!
Thank you, I will march on!

From the OP:
The FFLX lacks two engines, SPY, Aegis, SM2, and Tomahawk. All of that will make it significantly cheaper beyond the physical size (its about 3000-3500 tons cheaper). That being said the FFLX is supposed to be the more expensive of the two because it is taking on the most expensive mission (AAW). I can only speculate as to the cost of laser weapon systems but HELLADS is not prohibitively so and Lancer has a decade from now before fielding. Your assumption is a good as mine, but I am going with mine This ship would be able to replace a CG or DDG in the case of non peer AAW defense, or it could be added to the DDG/CG to significantly upgrade fleet defense while take some of the op burden of the more capable unit.

The FFGX is where the real savings come in because it won't be sitting there with a state of the art world beating AAW suite to fight john boats off Somolia like a DDG51. I haven't said much about this but it will shed both laser weapons and will have expanded space for additional boats, UAVs and room for embarking marine/coast guard/whatever other maritime security detachments or special forces. It would have had in addition one less engine than the FFLX, but ace convinced me to remove the thired engine from that hull.

So what you get is two hulls, both optimized for ASW but otherwise outfitted for either AAW or MIO/ASuW, but that are pretty much identical below the water line.

You exclude AEGIS and SPY and instead fit a newer radar with equivalent or greater (?) functionality, paired with the regular Mk 41 VLS. Cost saving comes only from smaller size as far as I can see, while overall complexity of systems increases. There's no obvious saving here and a good chance of being more expensive than the Arleigh Burke. Tomahawk &c are munition costs not included in ship construction.

Forget the buzzwords, exactly what type of mission do you want this for rather than an Arleigh Burke? If you plan to fight enemy aircraft then you would want an Arleigh Burke. If you want to trawl for submarines on the US side of the Pacific you wouldn't bother with the expensive AAW equipment. So what exactly is this low level mission that just requires a bit (but not a lot!) less of everything? Fighting pirates, sure - but all you want there is a large-ish hull, a hangar and a gun. That sort of ship you could churn out for $50-200m and I see a more solid justification there.

I think you are under estimating how expensive the SPY and related AEGIS gear is, let alone how expensive it is to run. Without the requirement to shoot the SM2 pretty much any modern system that supports ESSM can be used. We are looking at an upper end I-mast level of performance, and that would not even come close to a SPY-1D, not even by half. The Mk41 is a standard VLS, there is nothing remarkable about it and the FFLX/FFGX has less than half the cells of a DDG.
No, if you want to fight enemy aircraft you don't automatically want a Burke. Its pretty good at that, but a CG is better. And the simple fact is many air threats don't need a Burke scale defense unless you think every other Navy in the world is going to be instakilled in the event of hostilities with anyone. More importantly though there are only so many Burkes and we are currently running them into the ground at their op tempo (I am living through it).

When performing fleet or other HVU defense duties you don't necessarily need to have 30 Tomahawks on hot standby, or a gun for NGFS. You basically need to be able to shoot down aircraft and kill submarines. I skimped on the ASMs as that isn't a big deal in USN threat profiles outside of small boats. The new Burkes don't have them either.
Missions that involve fleet defense against non peer adversaries or when you need to beef up air defense/ASW without all the other mission areas another DDG would bring and promptly waste.

Not a lot? How is not having SM2, 5", Harpoon, Tomahawk, SPY, Aegis, and myriad other things not a lot? Not to mention that it has 1/3 the VLS cells of a DDG51. That's half the armament and reduces the max air defense range by 40nm! Detection range by even more.

Its got the two laser weapons sure, but then so will the DDG51s replacement and more than the FFLX.
That's exactly what the FFGX I outlined for you is. It would be more like $350 million. A purpose built pirate fighter would be far to specialized, however, so I expanded it to include general littoral combat which means the ability to fight small fast surface craft, short range air defense against shore launched ASMs or light aircraft, and cababilities against small diesel subs. The Absalon is $250 million and is widely considered to be what the LCS should have been inside the USN officer corps (I agree with them). That's why I used the Absalon to inform my decisions on size and endurance, with the understanding that this vessel is 15+ years post the Absalon's debut. This is the Absalon's armament:

1 × 5"/62 caliber Mark 45 mod 4 gun
2 × Oerlikon Millennium 35 mm Naval Revolver Gun Systems CIWS
6 × 12.7 mm Heavy machine guns
MU90 Impact ASW torpedoes
VLS with up to 36 RIM-162 ESSM/RIM-7 Sea Sparrow (Mk 56/Mk 48 VLS)
3 x 2 × Stinger Point-defence SAM
8-16 × Harpoon Block II SSM

A lot more missiles than the FFLX, but the FFLX has lasers specific to its AAW primary duty (something the Absalon doesn't have), and the FFGX is probably comparable in most regards.