The Ship Model Forum

To avoid dragging the Russian Navy topic off topic I decided to make this one.

Maybe we should think outside the box..........Vertically speaking.............

Catapults are simply the most efficient mechanisms, because it does not require the airplane to carry or provide the energy necessary to launch, It is supplied by the ship,

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

I seem to recall that there have been some operational/efficiency improvements in catapults, so that the ( Reagan? ) has but 3 wires as opposed to four, thus saving tonnage, maintenance, etc.

I suppose we'll never see a railgun catapult.

What about a modern, more instantly powerful version of the old 1950's JATO packs? Could you eliminate the need for a catapult at all? Instead of jettisoning them, make them modular so they stay with the plane, and get refilled?

Or how about just somehow making the planes lighter? UAVs, anyone?

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Gerard>
Snohomish, WA USA
If you don't know the definition of erudite, you're not.

As I recall the Gerald Ford (ugh) class will have electric propulsion and electric catapults.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

i thought it was the trap wires that had been reduced to 3?

The wires are part of the arrester system, which is not directly related to the catapults.

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Assessing the impact of new area rug under modeling table.

A novel solution to the issue of launch method has been in service since 1940s. That's using a solid rocket booster to boost an unmanned single-use combat aircraft out of a canister and send it on a one way mission without having to worry about weighing it, or the ship, down with complex, weighty, and design compromising recovery equipment.

Think about it, as electronics becomes ever cheaper and more sophisticated, manufacturing in bulk ever more efficient, and UAV gradually replacing pilots whom it would be unseemly to send on suicide missions, the argument for conventional carrier able to both launch and recover aircraft, manned and unmanned, must weaken next to that for a carrier able to launch just single use unmanned aircraft - ie the cruiser and submarines launching ever more sophisticated guided missiles.

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Assessing the impact of new area rug under modeling table.

Well I remember watching an episode of Thunderbirds where a Carrier launches its fighters vertically from a ramp. I'd assume to land they use VTOL technology. Now granted, Thunderbirds is set in 2065 but still, I reckon if you could work round limitations it would be a clever idea. I know Mig experimented with such a system (it was on a video documenting the history of the Mig fighters).

I suppose the EE Lightning would work well with that system but the Lightning was a point defence fighter. Then again if you equipped a Nimtz with enough weaponary to phase out its need for strike aircraft, then that would make sense. The Mig VLS was based on the same concept of point defence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adBRVYg29fs

You'll see the clip of the VLS during the intro and later on in that part.

Maybe if you had a fighter with a powerful enough boost, or had a rocket booster attached which could be reused the system wouldn't be that far fetched. You could maybe use it on non-Carrier vessels which were big enough.

I think it would be neat if you could store the kinetic energy wasted in the arrester system and transfer it to the launch system.

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Les Foran
On the Oregon Trail

Why? Carriers are not short of steam power.

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Assessing the impact of new area rug under modeling table.

Chuck: Your idea of CGVs won't really work for a broad swath of target types unless we get back to the arsenal ship design or the CGVs have supply ships attached at the hip to replenish their needs. I think they would work well for the initial "shock and awe" type of action, but not for sustained operations.

I suspect that given the accuracy of modern munitions, we'll see a shift towards large "bomb truck" aircraft for CAS in stable environments (I.E. we own the air), such as the B-52s used in Afghanistan. Theoretically we could move to CVLs with UCAVs for the more tactically engaged battles or a mixture of CVLs and CGVs, but we'd have to come up with a new naval AWACS and ASW platform for the smaller decks I think.

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Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman