Well, yeah, you know the saying. This is aesthetically an outgrowth of the Lightweight Nuclear Plant Spruance (link) drawn so capably by Ace. As always happens, it got huge because I am not Congress and I do not have a budget.
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Y'all're never going to read all this damn text without a hint of a picture, so here's a fig leaf:
![[ img ]](http://i.imgur.com/DIF0Olm.png)
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So, Zumwalt establishes for us what the USN thinks is (or thought was) necessary for an objective shore bombardment surface combatant. What if we cross that with this conventional hull and nuclear plant, and the 18' version of AMDR? Lots of commonality with various outgrowths of my Magic Fusion Frigate/Destroyer; the nuclear plant on this boat has grown nebulous, but it's got plenty of volume and weight devoted to it. So, magic, whatever. I don't like uptakes.
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- AMDR-18' is quoted in Raytheon marketing (PDF) as being able to detect (compared to SPY-1D(V)) a target of half the RCS at four times the distance. Because it's in aspirational marketing, I decided upon it as the necessary capability. Because I can.
- IFF is provided by a 10x2' array similar to that shown on EASR renderings.
- AMDR-S is backed by a 6x4' AMDR-X array, sufficient for horizon search and illumination.
- VLS is always a tricky subject, and I decided upon a modular concept that trades steel and air (again, cheap) for extreme upgradability twenty or forty years hence. A 10x6.5x9m (LxWxD) unit holds four 3m drums, each of which is interchangeable with 7 28" cells (Mk 57), 8 24" cells (Mk 41), or 14 18" cells (big enough for VL-ASROC or SM-MR, or quadpack RAM-II or Nulka). Presumably if a very beefy CPGS or similar system is required in the future, we might end up with what would look like very stubby Trident. The point is, the interface allows it without cutting steel in a costly refit. We have four such units, for 20 drums. Presuming a single-size outfit (not shocking in practice), we could ship 140 28" cells or 160 24" cells.
- Two helos is mandatory, obviously, but they might as well be AW-101/Chinook. Steel is... what's the word? Cheap.
- By the power of $$$, nearly all of our ancillary comms are phased arrays. I am presuming Phasor's Ku-band satcom (PDF) technology is adaptable to at least C-band. We handle all satcom with these arrays, as well as TCDL (an outgrowth of Hawk Link) and CEC. On any low-elevation bearing, there are two each C-band, S-band, and Ka/Ku-band 5x5' array, each sufficient for 4' WSC-6 performance at large off-boresight angles. They are all physically masked from high-power radar and ECM. At high elevation, we have larger deck-parallel arrays aft, equivalent to 7' WSC-6.
- UHF satcom appears to be offered by ICAS, but we also have two OE-82-scale arrays for high elevation use.
- I ended up sticking with 155mm AGS, not entirely happily. Events of the last decade make a strong argument for ditching specialty calibers in favor of leveraging development money on 5"/54, which comes from a wide variety of western sources. I ended up deciding that any plausible 5"/54 development (e.g. PDF) could be trivially sabot'd into 155mm, and the latter just plain offers better kinematics and more room for future development. No decision on this design had me wavering back and forth more than AGS versus 5"/62.
- The secondary armament may look familiar; it's the 50mm super-Bushmaster EAPS (PDF 1 2). This CIWS on steroids offers us legitimate C-RAM capability, and I can't imagine it would be unable to cope with AShMs at least as well as a system as pitiful as Phalanx. Guided 50mm with forward-firing multiple EFP ought to handle the small boat threat nicely, of course.
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- Decoys and minor VLS are handled by four each Centurion launchers (PDF) and XM501 NLOS-LS launchers. The latter is a notional lengthening of the real XM501 (PDF) to handle Nulka. Presumably they'd also carry NLOS-PAM or similar to kill all of the light boats. All of these can be reloaded in a seaway from an elevator serving the below-decks magazine.
- 6x2 18" torpedo launchers handle light ASW rounds, anti-torpedo torpedoes (3x ea), and floating decoys. Of course, at present they'd launch sabot'd Mk 54, but if greater capability was required it could be shipped without extensive refit.
- Two Excalibur-derived (PDF) lasers round out the armament. These are notionally 220kW units, sufficient to be death to small boats and UAVs. This is conservatively specified as 1/4 of the power-per-area of Excalibur, and it's not hard to imagine these would actually be 500kW units.
- We have a forward mission bay, helpfully forced by removal space for the forward reactor. This ought to handle at least 4x 9m RHIB if we wanted to ship them, although the low headroom limits use of the inner payloads. More likely, I think, is 3x 9m RHIB (e.g., one stbd serving as a dedicated ship's boat, two to port for VBSS), possibly with some containerized payload inboard of those.
- The rear mission bay is notionally dedicated to ASW payloads, but it could serve up to 3 11m RHIB. More likely is MFTAS and CAPTAS-IV, with a single 9m RHIB on the centerline as a rapid-reaction boat. This bay has 6m headroom, and could transfer payloads over each other.
- The roller doors amidships conceal fairly conventional UNREP spaces.
- I've sort of given up on attempting to understand modern sonar. SQS-53C is at least pretty good, and more and more it seems like long-distance detection and tracking is moving out of hull sonars and into VDS and towed array. Fair enough.
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(takes breath)
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- She's big, 775x73.5x22ft for a full load displacement a hair under 20,000 tons. For a destroyer, twenty thousand blessed tons! Yes, well, whatever. Steel and air are cheap compared to offering stability and survivability to critical systems.
- Plant is two amorphously-defined nuclear reactors serving four AWJ-21 waterjets for, eh, probably 35 knots or thereabouts.
- Backup power is from three LM500 SSGTG (4.2MW ea). Two of these are amidships, above the hangar, and one is right aft. These are backed by three Cat C18 emergency diesels, two forward and one aft. Three Thrustmaster TH1000MLR electric azimuth thrusters (two well forward) offer get-me-home power as well as a semblance of dynamic positioning independent of tugs.
- ESM was a focus of this drawing. We have SEWIP Block 3 in the corners, backed by ES-3701 at the masthead. Comms-band direction finding is handled by ICAS; MF and HF DF is provided by four sets of eight deck-edge antennas as well as a Classic Outboard scale installation high on the mast.
- As usual, comms is also a big focus. As well as the satcom described above, and the obvious ICAS, we have six AS-2537C/SR on tilting mounts for HF from 1600kHz-30MHz. Four VMB-11512-N in the corners provide short-range UHF and VHF coverage. High on the mast we have a pair of VMB-11512-N and a pair of VAS-1016/A for lower frequency VHF. All antennas are Valcom Guelph, to reward them for having an excellent web presence with specifications and manuals available to the public. Ball's in your court, Thales
- Finally, we have a pair of my favorite OE-538, on erectable masts. OE-538 offers reception from VLF-MF, and transceive from HF-UHF. As if that weren't enough, it has IFF transceive and LDR UHF satcom transceive. I love OE-538.
- EO/IR was not neglected. AAQ(SAQ)-37 Distributed Aperture System (PDF) is fitted high on the mast for early warning, backed by UV missile warners like AAR-54 (PDF). These serve eight DIRCM turrets like AAQ-24 DIRCM (PDF), into which I also handwave a laser illuminator capability. Seems not unreasonable - they already have the tracking hardware and software, and I want to be able to spew NLOS-PAM in all directions to handle small craft. Two MX-10MS (PDF) offer long-range high-resolution imaging of specific targets of interest.
- Nav radar is something I've never given much thought, although Fitzgerald's collision certainly reminded me to think of it. Two each Kelvin Hughes Sharpeye S-band and upmast X-band radars (PDF) offer navigation support (although I would have to figure the Seawatcher 100 from the I-mast would offer useful nav support as well). The Kelvin Hughes radars are damnably hard to draw in Shipbucket format, and I'm open to ideas for how to better represent them.
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I do fear that the hull is too shallow at this point to be structurally sound. On the other hand, we have what amount to full box girders running the length of the stressed section. On the third hand, add more steel! Anyway,
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full-size
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and here's an internal cartoon:
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internal cartoon
internal cartoon 2
Edited to add: We can support a crew of up to 450 (Mk 8 liferafts, 12-1 * 50). I suspect the actual ship's complement would be rather smaller, but this way we can support additional manning attached to modular payloads.
A note about phased arrays... the Phasor-based installations are low-power, unsuitable for radar use. However, they're extremely thin (about 1"/3cm), and so they are mounted external to the shell of the ship/mast and do not penetrate. This means they can be mounted quite close to each other and do not have any great structural impact. I've attempted to convey this with subtle shading around the antennas. Substantial radar phased arrays, in contrast, are several feet deep and do penetrate the structure. They must have substantial separation from other penetrations or from the edges of the structure, and they are not counter-shaded.
did you start out with my drawing and kept expanding, or did you follow it's lines (with the reactor removal hatches) and used that as a base for a much larger ship?
