The Ship Model Forum

Good to hear from you again Dave!

I take refuge in that the ship type in the painting was considered, not by me, but the USN leadership in the late 80's, to be fielded in the 90s and was essentially an Aegis Tico class cruiser in outfit, deleting five inch guns, adding more Phalanx CIWS, Aegis cruiser combat system, presumably with flag facilities of a cruiser, adding a third VLS 61 cell module that was in a large hull that could accommodate a significant number of V/STOL aircraft. This outfit would allow the ship to provide both air defense with SM-2, ASW with VL-ASROC, land attack conventional and nuclear Tomahawks and surface targets with antiship TASM Tomahawks.

The 12 tiltrotor SV-22 sqaudron permitted area ASW defense and patrol, hunting down submarines and surface targets with SV-22s equipped with the same sensor/weapons outfit as the ten plane SA-3B Viking squadron on a CV/CVN with ASW torpedoes and Harpoon antiship missiles attached to auxially wings mounted at the sponsons with the added facility of fusalage mounted self defense Sidewinders the Viking could not carry.

The AV-8B Plus would allow additonal air defense armed with AMRAAMs, Sidwinders and 25mm gun pods that supplemented the anti saturation capabilities of an Aegis combat system with AEW V/STOL aircraft or helos and plane guard helos.

The ship was not intended to be a just a V/STOL carrier but merge the guided missile cruiser and aviation elements on the same hull. It could operate independently in certain areas or it could be flagship of an SAG or add firepower to an ARG or URG as an escort.

This takes us to the question as to whether there is a place in navies for a hybrid ship, armed not with six inch guns but VLS and with modern high performance V/STOL fighter attack F-35B, V-22 and helos. Is there a role for such a ship?

I don't understand why you want to load it with VLS cells. Why not just expand the hangar of the America LHA variant, call it a CV, and at a minimum attach a DDG-51 Flight IIA as an escort? It appears you're trying to make the single ship try to fight and win the war alone.

I meant just to say that the report was out and the most important parts included in the post. That part of the post kinda grew into two paragraphs.

I have not read the whole report either but was very impressed by it.
Freedom class LCS Multi Mission Combat Ship offers FFG versions with 32-48 VLS cells with up to 150 meters length and 6000 tons displacement at the high end (same LCS propulsion) and down to 90 meters length and 1600 tons displacement with 8 VLS cells (all diesel propulsion).

CGV was part of a study in the 1990s for alternate carrier designs. Using CATOBAR and flight deck level hangars, eight F-14, 2 E2Ds and two SH-60s could be accommodated on a 40,000 ton hull with 192 VLS cells.

A STOVL CGV with below deck hangar could accommodate 22 a/c with the same 192 VLS cells on a 25,000 ton displacement. Some info can be found in an older issue of Norman Polmar's Ships and Aircraft ( I do not recall the edition as I no longer have it).

A guess at a possible air group might be 10 SV-22 Ospreys, 8 AV-8B Plus Harriers, three AEW H-60s or AEW EV-22s and an HV-22 for plane guard/utility duties depending on whether or not you emphasize ASW patrol or fighter attack Harriers so some mixing and matching is possible.

Such a ship might provide additional air defense and organic air cover for a SAG or URG or perhaps you could have it operate independently. It could also provide more fighter attack planes, using the F-35B, for air cover of an ARG or provide air cover for an escorted convoy. I don't see it operating with a CSG unless you need some extra fighters but the F-35B only has a 450nmi radius compared to the 620 radius of the carrier based F-35C CTOL fighter attack version.

Heh, I was just looking at the CSBA report today (though haven't had time to read through it all) - the folks did good work on it. A pleasure to have met one of them a few months ago!

I think you forgot to explain how your last two paragraphs relate to the proposed CGV, though. Is it to say that if CGV is incorporated into the proposed CSBA force structure, that the otherwise extra hulls gained by splitting the CGV into its core parts is less important because CSBA emphasizes hull numbers?

I just think it's a better use of resources to build a dedicated LHA-6 to provide that air cover/CAS/strike capability for the SAG - otherwise, another ship of the SAG would have to pick up the air wing gap resulting from the use of the CGV in place of one of the aviation vessels.

This is not a jack of all trades design. It is rather a guided missile cruiser, conventionally powered with a substantial V/STOL aircraft capability, an upgunned Invincible with a CG's standard Aegis fired control system with additional VLS cells, in three VLS modules. The CGV does not have any amphibious warfare capabilities apart from any VLS cells devoted to Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles that might contribute to an amphibious operation. It certainly has no gun systems apart from the Phalanx CIWS installed either and that is strictly an air defense/antiship cruise missile defense weapon.

I would call to your attention a just released CSBA study on force structure for the USN. It is available by going to csbaonline.org and clicking on the appropriate publication dated Feb. 9 titled Restoring America's Sea Power. This study calls for a new class of patrol ships based on either the Swedish Visby or the Egyptian Ambassador class missile boat that is below 800 tons displacement and a new guided missile frigate or FFG class with 16-32 VLS cells devoted to launching medium range ESSM Block II missiles packed four per VLS cell with active radar homing and a 28 nautical mile range as the primary weapon of an ESSM based air defense.

This defense concentrates on using the much cheaper ESSM (about one million per missile) weapons in far greater numbers than relying upon SM-2s (remaining in stock and no longer manufactured for USN) in stock and SM-6s (four to five million per missile) for long range defense in depth. The SM-2 and SM-6s would be used to kill an aircraft before it could launch it's ASCMs as more cost effective than current philosophy that tries to kill the ASCM salvoes using SM-6, SM-2 wide area SAMs down to ESSM local area defense weapons down to RAM and gun based CIWS ship self defense weapons that under current doctrine is in a defense in depth that uses all the missile magazine capacity in a futile attempt to shoot down the ASCM salvo by using the long ranged missiles to attack the launching aircraft or ships (SM-6 is a Mach 3.5 antiship missile in surface to surface mode) before than can launch their ASCMs.

Sciquest2525 wrote:What do you think of the vessel in question? Thanks for putting up the painting!

Most welcome!


Personally, not a fan of these jack-of-all-trades designs. Systems comprise the majority of the cost of a warship (versus the hull/structural elements), and packing two or three different ships' worth of systems into a single hull will make it exorbitantly expensive. As well, doing so reduces the number of hulls available to the fleet - instead of a AAW cruiser being sent to guard against missile or air threats in one operational area and sending a LHD/A to support ground forces at another, you now have to decide which of the two to send this CG(V). In essence, an overdependence on such vessels results in a lack of flexibility for force deployment - put really basically, while you can bring two ships together, you can't split a single ship into two.

I believe there is one VLS battery in the stern. Also please note that there is four CIWS and the hangar elevators are not shown. Aircraft capacity is your best guess as only 12 SV-22s are listed and a Harrier is shown and AEW aircraft would also be needed but at least four of those and a plane guard aircraft would be needed.

What do you think of the vessel in question? Thanks for putting up the painting!

Sciquest2525 wrote:Wikipedia article Cruisers, in the Aircraft Cruisers section now contains description and low res painting of the Mission Essential Unit or CG-VSTOL if you would like to check it out. Googling yields a higher quality painting.

The painting in question:

Wikipedia article Cruisers, in the Aircraft Cruisers section now contains description and low res painting of the Mission Essential Unit or CG-VSTOL if you would like to check it out. Googling yields a higher quality painting.

Such a ship might be used for independent operations as it would have had Aegis/SPY-1, 200 VLS cells, 12 SV-22s(proposed ASW/ASuW V-22 variant), an unspecified number of Harriers, unknown provision for AEW helos or EV-22s, SQS-53 sonar, gas turbine propulsion, 700 foot waterline length, 97 foot waterline beam and 25,000 tons displacement or you might consider it an improvement on the then current Invincible class which featured on a smaller hull; twin arm Sea Dart launcher, ASW helos, AEW helos and Sea Harriers while the larger USN ship would have had much more 'teeth' in it.

Checking a Wikipedia article, Aircraft Cruisers, there was a very low quality picture of a hybrid cruiser/carrier concept painting from the late 80s that resulted from a Revolution as Sea study on the Global Security.org website with some text, that was listed as the Mission Essential Unit or CG V/STOL that featured a V/STOL flight deck with a below decks hangar, three 64 cell VLS, four Phalanx, two islands that had gas turbine stacks/superstructures faired in that mounted SPY-1A(two faces on forward island and two faces on aft island) with deck park or an elevator between them. I later found a much larger and better image on another site and I printed it out. The illustration was very detailed painting.

The raised hangar with flight deck was sponsoned out from the hull, featured a ski jump to port with a VLS beside it. The forecastle was on main deck level and was equipped with a second VLS and P/S Phalanx and still had some unused space. A third VLS was assumed and may have been in the stern below the flight deck level and presumably, two more Phalanx mounts. Shown was a Harrier on the ski jump ramp and a wing borne V-22 nearby.

The text listed the ship as 700 feet long with 200 VLS cells one 25,000 tons with 12 SV-22s(proposed ASW Osprey variant that carries SA-3B sensors plus a dipping sonar for hovering mode, torpedoes, Harpoon and Sidewinder self defense AAMs) listed but no other aircraft. Think super Invincible with AV-8B Harriers for strike and air defense, SV-22s with near fixed wing a/c endurance/helo hovering for use of dipping sonar ASW/ASUW with self defense AIM-9s. At a guess, there might have been up to a dozen Harriers or 24 a/c total using deck park and hangar deck for stowing the air group if it was longer. Conventional vice CSGN nuclear plant which also featured a below decks hangar in one of it's variants, the drawing of That variant has never showed up on the Internet but is described in older editions of Ships and Aircraft

The ship might have been built in the 90s if the Soviet Union had not gone away. In view of another alternative carrier study this summer that will examine carrier sizes from 40,000 tons to ultra carriers much bigger than Nimitz/Ford class 100,000 tons, a CGV with modern sensors, weapons, 192 VLS cells and with greater length, a larger SV-22/F-35B air group with a possible forecastle gun, either AGS or Mk 71 eight inch, operating supersonic F-35Bs and the ASW/ASUW version of the V-22 might make sense as it would be capable of augmenting an ARG air group, operating independently or providing organic airpower to a Surface Action Group. A drawback would be cost and the 'B' version of the F-35's radius is 450nm vice the 620 of the CATOBAR 'C' version but the USMC has demonstrated Osprey tankers while the USN is ordering V-22s for COD

Appreciate everyone's thoughts! Feel free to object or change the design and I would post that picture as an attachment if I knew how to do it!