...I'm sorry. You envision a laser on the bow?
I appreciate the thought and effort, and the gusto with which you defend your ideas, but this frankly hits me as somewhere between foolhardy and insane. I invite you to consider a number of points.
That’s what they said about the flint lock
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif)
Who is laughing now!
This is a long reply so sorry, but you obviously put thought into your post to me so I did the same.
- While it is true that you do not need to accomodate a magazine per se, a moderately high power system will require substantial internal volume. Even the MLD-scale system envisions something like 8x8x12ft, which is very substantial. And the connections between the internal volume and the beam director are not trivial -- a little bit of flexing between one point in an optical chain and another means that mirrors won't line up properly. If you're lucky, this will only make your laser hopelessly misaimed, rather than a lump of glowing slag.
Agreed on all counts. The HELLADS, however, is designed to be mounted in a single B1-B weapons bay, so there really is no question whether or not a ship mounted version of such weapons could be mounted in even a corvette. They can.
I think the MLD foot print is highly optimistic for my purposes. The FFLX as it stands has a 52’Lx17’Hx1’7W (the width is approximate as the hull is not drawn and will taper in the forward part of the compartment), which honestly is enough space to park a few tanks. It’s bigger than the VLS.
This bulk of the supporting equipment, and the weight of the batteries as ace pointed out, is one of the reasons I don’t think mounting it as high in the super structure. If you separate the mount and equipment too much you are inviting problems even if it doesn’t use an optical chain.
[*]Aha, I hear you say, but it is such a small system that everything is on-mount! I counter: then it is a rather feeble system, and will not be capable enough to be worth the headache of mounting it in a position with such apparent command. No such system believed possible, even in a laboratory environment, could be even as effective as RAM. Just carry two, if you care so much about 360deg laser coverage.
The durability of the system is an assumption based solely on the fact that it is new and high tech. This does not follow automatically and honestly none of the literature I have read (including the link you posted) mentions any sort of assumed problems with fragility. The LaWS is again being proposed for mounting on a CIWIS, right next to a 3000 round per minute Gatling gun! Two things regarding this
1.) The laser weapons proposed have far fewer moving parts in the mount than legacy gun based CIWIS systems. No belt feeds. No ejected shell casings. No rotating barrels. No missiles. All of this mechanical movement increases complexity and any of it can be jammed (and in the case of Phalanx very often does).
2.) Both gun and missile based CIWIS have to absorb and compensate for violent vibration and recoil from things like 20mm rounds going off at high speed or whole missiles being launched from the mount. In the case of a missile based system like RAM its not so important as it just has to be pointed in the general direction and let the missile do the rest. In the case of a gun based CIWIS it had to not only handle that explosive force and mechanical barrel and feed belt movement without breaking outright, it has to be able to remain stable and still mechanically track targets miles out with less than an inch of shift in line of fire AT THE TARGET, that means millimeters of movement at the mount.
Honestly both those above are far more daunting challenges to overcome than either increased low speed movement at the bow due to normal pitch and roll (which any mount anywhere would have to deal with to some degree as well) or what can only be described as infrequent wave action.
The design does carry 2 SeaRAM, though the new builds after the Lancer introduction will shed their forward SeaRAM to save cost.
As to optical chain weapons I have put a lot of thought into how to mount these and it is quite the challenge. I would very much like to hear your thoughts on this. Some of my thoughts.
1.) The firing arcs of these weapons are rather small because they are too large to be turreted and you can only change the beam direction so much when it leaves the weapon via reflection. The stationary emitter might be able to achieve at max arc of 180 degrees but I would imagine 100-120 degrees is more realistic.
2.) The length of the optical chain takes up a lot of space. This is not a big deal in a large aircraft mounted weapon because they are generally used for niche missions and not expected to do anything else. The ballistic missile defense version had a plane at high altitude (which greatly increases beam strength do to less atmosphere, particles, etc.) and far away looking towards a known threat axis. Even a reduced firing arc covers a lot of space at 100km away, and can let a single weapon cover a large fixed geographic area like say North Korea. Ships have to deal with the horizon and they are not dealing with niche roles, and maneuvering to engage fast approaching air targets all the time is not viable especially in any saturation situation.
Here is was my initial idea for a DDLX before I switched gears to the FFLX trying to address the size and rigid positioning requirements of a large optical chain laser:
![[ img ]](http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Shipright/FFLX/large_laser_proposal.png)
Four systems positioned internal to the superstructure on the 01 Level , each covering a corner. Restrictions on how far you can bend the beam lead to a cone of arc of about 130 degrees or so which leads to some blind spots close into the ship. Most importantly though the ship has no coverage directly overtop and for a wide area around the ship at higher altitudes. A less powerful laser or maybe a secondary missile system can cover this.
Because there is no restriction on fitting the entire laser into a turret you can get a lot more powerful. Because of this I assumed you could only fire any two at once. This setup only works, however, if you have enough systems to provide enough arc to cover a significant amount of the sky. I went with a turreted laser in the FFLX because it doesn’t have enough space or power to fit so many weapons onboard and fire them.
[*]Your command isn't so fantastic, even in a dead calm with dry air. Even a little bit of ship motion will mask bearings and elevations that, on paper, you can fire on. Observe how IIA Burkes have their after SPY-1 arrays elevated to clear the helo hangar that is, strictly speaking, already below the original array location. How much of that theoretical after coverage is going to be blocked by ship motion? Probably quite a lot.
Honestly there is no location that does not encounter this problem unless you mount it on the top of the mast or otherwise so high it has no obstruction what so ever as they were able to do with the SPY arrays. I would posit that this was easy to do with the SPY arrays because they integrated them into a vertical surface for one, and secondly because they have four of them so there is no need to worry about any ones visibility arc outside of the 160-170 degrees needed to cover their quarter. As it is the aft two arrays still have restricted arcs aft due to the stacks, while the forward arrays actually have quite a bit of overlap in the forward arcs (and side arcs with the aft arrays)
The issue of masking due to movement is fundamentally different when you are limited to one weapon attempting to cover as much arc as possible. Solutions that remove upwards of 180 degrees of arc so that you can avoid the momentary infrequent loss of 10s or degrees of arc are not optimal.
[*]Nothing plays havoc with beam quality like various sorts of humidity. And you don't even need to be taking spray over the bow for this to be a problem. Water nearer the sea surface is more humid, especially in warm weather, and even relatively light sea states exhibit light windblown spray. And of course, sometimes the weather is bad, and you are taking spray. Elevating a laser, and moving it relatively further aft, mitigates these problems. This is why you see the notional Burke laser mounted where it is, and I suspect it is one reason why DDG-1000 has such a broad and flat deckhouse top.
1.) The FFLX’s bow mount is 12 meters above the water line, normal or even moderate storm waves are not going to impact it. Humidify at 12 meters is the same as any other point on a superstructure this size. I carrier might notice a change, a DDG or FFG is not.
2.) Spray in normal conditions is going to affect anything on the weather deck or anything several levels above it the same. The fact is most sea spray comes from the waves parting along the bow, sliding up against the hull and then getting picked up by the wind and pushed over the lower bow deck closer to the superstructure. The waves on the FFLX will actually break BEHIND the mount in the first place, then the mount is protected by the flare of the upper bow structure. Simply put, water breaks around the bow, not over it, and then travels along the hull and sometimes over it depending on the wind. All of this happens aft of the pointy end.
3.) Every weapon has to be navalized and that means surviving sea salt and wind gusts and myriad other things. If the Phalanx can somewhat survive it there is no special reason a laser weapon couldn’t.
4.) The notional Burke laser is not mounted where it is due to sea spray, though if you have a source that says otherwise I would be open to seeing it. I suspect the real reason it is located where it is entirely different and I will address that below.
[*]You don't need to crack a gunhouse in half in order to have taken damage. Even guns much further aft can be deranged by light or moderate green water contact. Gears slip, teeth jump, and suddenly the mount doesn't point exactly the same direction as the fire control system thinks it does. This is bad enough on a 5" gun with, say, a 50ft damage radius due to a VT fuse. It's much worse on a laser, which has a damage radius of exactly the beam radius.
If 50’ off target sounds acceptable to you then I suggest you never attempt the NGFS course! (its not acceptable to them).
This was discussed earlier regarding the CIWIS and withstanding the violence of thousands of 20mm rounds going off in rapid succession. That is far more violent than any normal wave would be.
As to blue water and green water? That happens (rarely), there is nothing that can be done about that. As you said it very rarely takes out deck guns, but we still have deck guns.
Here is an illustration of the three USN ships:
![[ img ]](http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Shipright/FFLX/wave.png)
The smaller wave is the max expected in the North Atlantic including two large storms for the next seven days.
http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display ... tla_height
28‘, which it would be unheard of for a frigate or destroyer to be in for the USN. We would go around it.
The second is a 50’ swell which is generally the max you will see during a normal hurricane if you are lucky. Or in other words any mariner with any skill or sense will never see such waves, nowhere close. Either that or you are a crazy Norwegian.
Most importantly though is how we can expect the waves to affect these ships. The first graphic column is the shape of the bow at the frame of the weapon. The second is a profile of the bow. The forward mount of all of these are within about a meter of each other in height.
The primary difference between the LCS/Zumwalt and the FFLX is that the first two have tapering hulls and tapering bows. In the case of the Zumwalt its entire bow is tapered. In the case of the LCS it is so thin its going to slice right through a wave due to the shape and lack of beam and the Zumwalt will do the same due to no flare. The point is neither hulls offer significant resistance to a wave and it will roll right over it the entire length of bow. Both the AGS and the Mk57 on each are sitting ducks for destructive weather according to many of you here.
Now let’s look at the FFLX. First off the angle of the bow and the weapon placement mean that the wave will break on the bow after it has already passed the weapon. Second, the bow is flared out along the entire forward part of the bow meaning not only will the hull offer significant resistance and absorb energy from the wave, it will physically deflect it away from and down the hull. This is the reason bows are shaped like this conventionally in the first place.
So in summary, waves of the destructive nature speculated on in this thread are rare. Very rare. And the hull of the FFLX is better at dealing with them and protecting its most forward mount than multiple state of the art warship designs that have those weapons aft of the FFLX mount. The point is not to suggest those designs are flawed (though some here would have to if they are going to be consistent), but rather they are or will work just fine. If it works for them, it will work for the FFLX
[*]No set of actuators is perfect, and can accelerate to speed and slew to a precise angle in zero time. For a system that has to actually dwell on a target for several seconds, as a laser does, this is a very serious challenge. This is likely why, again, you see the notional Burke laser around the 3/4 point aft, the point of least ship motion. I am no naval engineer, but I would wager that the extreme tip of the bow is the point of greatest ship motion.
I think putting it near the point of least ship motion, which is actually far lower in the ship than on top of the hanger bay but it is around that frame, is a good idea. It’s a good idea for any weapon system though.
No, being intimately familiar with the inner workings of a DDG51 I put forward that it is entirely due to space. As you said you need a good size area to fit even the current model MDL. Where in the bow can you fit that on a Burke? In place of the anchors and windlass, where do they go then? Further back and you run into the gun and VLS. On top of the Bridge? It’s pretty crowded up there already and forget about having room for of the support equipment until you are below the array rooms and even then you are now inside officer country, then CSMC, then Combat… On top of the stacks? Those are pretty much solid with mixing rooms and intakes, no luck there. Maybe amid ships but then you have no CONREP station and you block off the port and starboard passageways not to mention reduced arc, you would need one each side taking up even more space. The flight deck is obviously out.
Pretty much the only place that you could put it is either on top of one of the hanger bays and sacrifice it to house the equipment or relace one of the CIWIS mounts that the weapon is designed to replace anyway. The forward one still probably doesn’t work because the space below it for the normal Phalanx equipment barely fits there as it is. The aft mount is better because you have the normal Phalanx space and can probably still use up one of the hanger bays as they are close by. Maybe you can use CSER3 but what do you do with all the gear already in there? Maybe use up the aft officer berthing, but then where do they go?
The point is the MDL is often depicted where it is because it’s the only place it can go just taking into account deck space. Even that might not work so well once you peel that deck back.
Honestly the only way we will ever see any laser on a Burke that is not designed to replace and fit into a current weapon’s system space is if it shows up on the Flight III. They are already close to three billion a piece though.
[*]If this bow position is so advantageous, why has it not been used for other systems that require no magazine? Fire control radars might be the best example of a system that could benefit from this allegedly superior position. Indeed, SPG-62 illuminators care relatively little about mist and spray, and would require only a tiny waveguide from some position further aft. They do not need to dwell so precisely, since their beam is much wider than a laser (more than a degree, I suspect). Yet I would bet a substantial sum of money that you would be unable to find any notional designs from the USN or any other navy that put a fire control radar in such a position.[/list]
“If planes are so good, why did nobody put them on ships before!” –USN Admiralty circa 1918
1.) Prior to the adoption of very bulky missile based AAW weapons air defense artillery was a common sight on the bows on many US warships. I am sure this was a combination of putting weapons wherever the hell you could fit them during the war, and also due to their excellent field of fire from those positions. An example has already been posted.
2.) When anti aircraft artillery was replaced in favor of missile systems, those systems were enormous. In fact most ships had to be purpose built around those systems like a battleship around its turrets. Even today VLS largely occupies the same space as a turret would have in 1950. Guided missiles made any advantage from bow placement minimal, and VLS made it nonexistent. You can put a turreted launcher nearly anywhere and its missile will provide you dozens of degrees of extra arc, and the VLS is a 360 weapon regardless of where you put it. Now that we are dealing with direct fire weapons again, however…
3.) Bolt on weapon systems beyond CSWs are relatively new. Phalanx is sort of bolt on but not really. RRAM was first fielded in 1992 but has only seen widespread use in the last decade. However, these are all CIWIS or missiles with some sort of guidance. If you are going to be optimizing weapons arcs you give them to your unguided direct fire main weapon first. For ships even today that means deck gun, and while these are getting smaller they still have multiple decks of equipment below them. If you have a laser, especially a powerful one it is now your main direct fire weapon and takes precedence over your deck gun in most cases. And it just happens to be light enough for a bow mount.
4.) Stabilization is an issue, and providing that for direct fire weapons was a tall and bulky order until the 80s. It’s not anymore, and with a laser weapon dealing with minimal self generated forces it is even less so for it than a legacy weapon.
5.) So now we do have several bolt on minimal deck penetrations weapons. Which vessels currently in service were not already designed with their bows clobbered with large and bulky installed gear? The CG47? The DDG51? The FFG7? Now that we are seeing new classes coming out what did we end up with? LCS2 with its 57mm right on the bow, exposed to the elements far more than any drawing I have made yet doing just fine.
I don’t know much about illuminators so I can’t tell you. What I said about not blocking your primary gun system in favor of none primary weapon system applies here as well. I would also imagine that it is helpful to have an illuminator positioned so that it has relatively the same arc as the air search radar that feeds it targets. Not sure.