New Aircraft carriers

I was just browsing the images as you do for new pictures and then i typed in Future Aircraft carriers. What would make a good aircraft carrier?
What about a stealth Aircraft carrier?
Post all your pics and videos.

Here is some great info on some of this:
New class aircraft carrier

also here are some pics of of the CVX which are going to replace the CVN's after the which I believe the last CVN is the USS George H Bush

Those look expensive can we afford them?
And what would there weapons be like?
About the ski jump carriers what if there attacked and the ski jumps are damaged? The aircraft carrier would be useless because of the planes that rely on the ski jump would also be use less! The stealth is a good idea but the low strip isn't a good idea due to need for height plus its pretty short. ok this should be my last edit ( No promises)

[edit on 2-1-2008 by Semoro]

[edit on 2-1-2008 by Semoro]

Originally posted by Semoro
About the ski jump carriers what if there attacked and the ski jumps are damaged? The aircraft carrier would be useless because of the planes that rely on the ski jump would also be use less!

The Royal Navy has been operating ski jump enabled carriers in battle for 30 years now ( the Invincible Class commissioned 1977), including in the Falklands conflict, and has never ended up with an unusable deck because of it.

A ski jump also enables aircraft to take off with a higher weight than a standard deck.

Originally posted by Semoro
Those look expensive can we afford them?

Defense budget like a bottomless pit? Yeah, I'd say it's affordable if the current defense funding persists. Also, one of the chief goals of the project is to reduce costs all around, which would alleviate one of the biggest current problems of the carriers: Colossal beasts require large amounts of food, or in the case, money.

And what would there weapons be like?

Nimitz carriers have Phalanx CIWS systems (anti-missile systems), RIM-116 (Anti-air missiles) launchers, and Sea Sparrow launchers (more anti-air missiles). It would be reasonable to assume that future carriers be armed with advanced defense devices that are still in the same roles.

About the ski jump carriers what if there attacked and the ski jumps are damaged? The aircraft carrier would be useless because of the planes that rely on the ski jump would also be use less!

Something hitting a carrier that's big enough to damage a deck on a carrier is a bad thing no matter what launch system is used. Craters in ski jumps, craters in catapult decks, I think we agree that neither is fun to deal with.

The stealth is a good idea but the low strip isn't a good idea due to need for height plus its pretty short.

It's about the same length as a Nimitz, I wouldn't call that short.

Originally posted by Darkpr0
It's about the same length as a Nimitz, I wouldn't call that short.

I think he meant deck length.

Anyways god bless the souls that attempt to make a stealth carrier. That's an oxy-moron right there. At least in my opinion.

Shattered OUT...

Nice artwork and all, but if you read the whole thing, there is a little note at the bottom which reads:

[ Rifts® is a registered trademark owned by Kevin Siembieda and Palladium Books Inc.]

Rifts is a Sci-Fi roleplaying game, and these carriers are just fantasy artwork. If you think a stealth carrier is a daft idea, just imagine a "submersible carrier" as mentioned early on in the piece.

Oh well, Happy New Year

KW

And if you read one line further it says

Image from U.S. Department of Defense for CVX program

Shattered OUT...

What would make a good aircraft carrier?
That depends on your mission. Assuming that you want a power projection platform (mission similar to current carriers) then you need the ability to handle between 50 and 85 aircraft, enough bunker capacity to support them for several months of peacetime / low tempo operations or at least a week of combat-level operation. You need several months worth of spare parts for the planes, and several months of supplies for the (rather large) crew and air wing. You need good communications, good sensors, and a high speed. Stability, good damage control characteristics, and room for future growth are also very desirable.

Everything else falls under "Good to have if we can get it"...it would be nice to have heavy air defense and missile defense systems, but adding those consumes volume, and drives up tonnage and cost. Stealth could be applied to an aircraft carrier (there is, in fact, mention of a Lockheed model for a stealthy CV(N) in Ben Rich's book "Skunk Works"), but what will it cost you in terms of your primary mission (sustained aircraft operations)?

Getting to the point (it's about time, isn't it? ), the next generation of aircraft carriers (and the one after that, and after that) probably won't look too much different in a general sense than the current ones. There will be extensive changes in detail (note the change from WWII 'gun galleries' to the modern missile launcher, or the loss of the funnel as examples), but the overall design is mission-driven. Form follows function, and as long as the function remains unchanged, the basic form won't change much either.

Originally posted by KwazyWabbit


Nice artwork and all, but if you read the whole thing, there is a little note at the bottom which reads:

[ Rifts® is a registered trademark owned by Kevin Siembieda and Palladium Books Inc.]

Rifts is a Sci-Fi roleplaying game, and these carriers are just fantasy artwork. If you think a stealth carrier is a daft idea, just imagine a "submersible carrier" as mentioned early on in the piece.

Oh well, Happy New Year

KW

If you want some pictures not from a sci-fi site, the navy matters site has lots of information on the current UK CVF project, including early stealth (and trimiran) concept sketch.

navy-matters.beedall.com...

P.A.

Originally posted by Brother Stormhammer
Getting to the point (it's about time, isn't it?

), the next generation of aircraft carriers (and the one after that, and after that) probably won't look too much different in a general sense than the current ones.

Do you think there will be 2 more generations of carrier?


I'd guess the next gen will run through to when? 2050? Maybe longer?


By then most manned platforms will be, or will shortly be orbital or sub-orbital I would imagine.


The only thing a carrier might be useful for would be CAS - but with directed energy weapons that could be done using a modified C-whatever.

reply to post by kilcoo316


I don't know for a fact that there will be two more generations of aircraft carriers in the current sense. Given the track record of DDX-D1000 and the LCS, I'm not sure there'll be any new carriers, no matter how many the Navy orders, but that's a whole different rant.

That said, I think it's *likely* that we'll see carriers for a long, long time. For one thing, the technologies that are most often cited as 'the end of the aircraft carrier' are still either paper exercises or prototypes with a lot of development left before they're ready to enter service. Once they are service ready, we have to get them through the same procurement process that did such a stellar job with the DDX, the LCS, the F-22, and the F-35. While all of this is going on, the carriers will have to keep soldiering on.

There's also the fact that (projects like DDX aside), military groups tend to be very conservative. Notice how long it took for the aircraft carrier to totally replace the battleship? Notice that an M-1 Abrams still looks like a World War II tank (in general configuration, at least)? It's not because the military folks are stupid, nor are they Luddites. It's simply that they can't afford to guess *wrong* about the future of warfare, so, for the most part, they tend to err on the side of 'things as they are'. This obviously isn't a hard-and-fast rule, but if you look through history, change comes rather slowly. The carrier is the accepted weapon of choice for the USN, and it's going to take time to change that perception, no matter how good the alternative is. Remember...in spite of Taranto, Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, and Midway's evidence that the carrier was *the* strike force of the modern navy, battleships hung around until the late 50's, then came out of reserve for special use up until the 2000s. It's going to take a similar time frame to move the carrier from center stage.

So, nothing is a certainty, but I wouldn't be surprised to see carriers continuing through two more developmental generations.

Why should the Carriers disappear at all?

While the mission profile still requires the carrier, there will always be carriers.

When the Navy decides having the carrier's capabilities isn't important, then they might give it up.

Shattered OUT...

The 3 designs posted by kdial1 were concept art from the US Navy's CVX program - they date to at least 1998, and are featured prominently in this October 1998 Popular Mechanics article.

Per that article, no one ever expected a "stealth" carrier to be stealthy in the way that the B-2 Bomber is stealthy:

While the weight reduction from the new catapult and powerplant would make the carriers faster, their smaller size could help make them stealthier. No one expects a carrier of any size to go undetected in enemy waters for long. However, by reducing the radar cross section of very fast carriers to roughly the size of, say, a fishing trawler, stealth technology could delay detection long enough for a carrier to launch and recover aircraft.

The USN ended up going with something quite similar - at least visually - to the Nimitz design we're all familiar with for US Supercarriers. The new class of carrier has been named after President Gerald R. Ford and will feature improvements over the current Nimitz class such as electromagnetic catapults, advanced arresting gear, a larger flight deck, and greater automation - and, hence, a smaller crew. The navy hopes that the last of these will lead to lower operating costs.

does anyone know how long it normally takes for Aircraft carriers to be replaced

how long the military uses them for before they make new ones

well the very first nuclear carrier is still in service USS Enterprise she was laid down 4th feb 1958 - which makes her 50 in 4 weeks time

she is due to be replaced by the USS Gerald R. Ford (lead ship of the new class) in 2014/2015 - depending on how long the fuel lasts.

reply to post by PhloydPhan


Interesting info on the Ford class...though I'm rather disappointed that the Powers That Be decided to name yet another carrier after a politician...I was hoping that some sense of tradition might actually flare up, and we might see "Lexington", "Saratoga", or "Enterprise".

I know that the graphic in that feature was just an artist's impression, but one thing jumped to my attention. The flight deck is bigger (per the article), but there are only 3 lifts, rather than the current standard of 4 (one per catapult). If that's not just a flaw in the artist's impression, I wonder how the reduced lift capacity impacts sortie generation?

here is something about a future video game, cool designs thou'

empirethefilm.com...

reply to post by Brother Stormhammer


You have to take into account the logistics under the flight deck and the size of the lifts and so on. If you have 1 main lift the serves the main catapults and that can handle 2 aircraft I don't see a problem.... unless the lift failed in which case we are talking about surviablity again.

To point out as well though this design isn't the current design being developed.

[edit on 22/08/06 by Canada_EH]

Just so people have a proper reference the following images are the CVX version/proposal that the US Navy went with and has called the Ford Class. The thing that we have to keep in mind when discussing the pros and cons of these designs is what the Naval aviation focus is (high-volume firepower, survivability, sustainability and mobility) for the 21st Century and beyond. You can break these key points into subgroups like powerplant an defences but those are the key points.

Here is the Imagery as mentioned.





As you can see much more conservative then the other CVX proposal highlighted in the 2nd post. And just to point out it has the standerd 4 lifts and the new deck configuration would require 30-40% less manpower for operation hence safer design. Be interesting to know what was changing to do this.

For some good reference check out the link. www.globalsecurity.org...

[edit on 22/08/06 by Canada_EH]