>US Navy tells Gibbs & Cox to figure out some way to make it easier to reload VLS at sea.
>Gibbs & Cox thinks a large stable platform with cranes which can trundle around the western pacific at 5 knots sounds like a good fit.
>Engineer has to figure out how to store VLS canisters on an oil rig so they can quickly be accessed via crane and transferred over to ships.
>Realizes that this means storing them vertically in a grid, exactly like a normal VLS setup.
>Realizes they can be stored IN a normal VLS setup so the platform can defend itself if necessary.
>tfw the most heavily armed ship on earth is an oil platform
Kinda based. I like the new era of the US MIC shifting towards storage/logistics autism. It appeals to me as a civil engineer. Practical, simple, easy to transport and organically multi role. Super elegant bespoke artisanal solutions are overrated. I <3 palletization. I <3 mass production .
in the era where hypersonic missiles are threatening the most advanced of ships, you call an entirely static platform "based"
are there any limits at all to how moronic you can be?
>m-m-muh loGisTicS
then go build an entirely unmoving jet for the sake of your "logistics", homosexual.
How about you go be a hypersoBlack person somewhere else.
Get back to us when something actually dies to a Hypersonic.
>are there any limits at all to how moronic you can be?
on /k/?
no, its limitless, rabid stupidity here
of the most aggressive, 'baltic' variety
>bitches about the Baltics completely unprompted, a place everyone on earth forgets even exists with one exception
Yep, a butthurt Russian was here
Your English isn’t that bad but it’s still stilted. You should study the way English speakers talk, we have a natural flow.
I get the same feeling when reading AI generated text, tho it's a different kind of stilted. It's funny how easy it is to pick up on subtle ESL language differences when you've been around native speakers your entire life.
i miss battleships bros
You never experienced them so you don't miss anything. Just pretend. Cartoons help. I miss triremes.
homie this IS a battleship. The future is now old man.
>ywn be chink scum watching doom approach at like 4kph from your pillbox on the shores of occupied Taiwan
or we could just fit them onto the US Navy's underway replenishment ships.
But with these rigs you can have the resupply ships resupply closer to ops area.
Why would the rig be able to placed closer to the operations area than a supply ship ?
Combatant ships can provide any protection to the supply ship that can be placed on a fricking oil rig. Why would the enemy allow you to build a fricking oil rig if the area is too dangerous for a supply ship to transit ?
being that slow on the surface make you a big juicy target tho ...
More pork and waste on a vanity project
Great. But now how do you reload this thing at sea?
With a bigger oil rig
we can't afford an oil rig gap
This can only lead to truly unfathomable arsenal platforms
kek
Not going to lie, this thing seems like it was literally dreamt up by a third-world engineering team. I have no idea who Gibbs & Cox are but I hope it’s just a Chuck’s Feed n’ Seed gag and this isn’t an actual MIC contractor in the United States proposing this thing as a serious concept to a military request. I could understand if it was just a scam company for insider trading purposes, those happen, but I’m going to be salty if it’s a real solution provider in the MIC.
they're a major naval architect who designed the Perry and Burke Classes but also the Freedom Class LCS. they're just happy to deliver whatever design the pentagon is paying for, whether it's a good idea or complete crack pipe nonsense
If the Navy really wants something that 3rd-world then it’s time for a MAJOR shakeup because the leadership is in crisis.
Cope
>I have no idea who [famous institution in the field I'm pretending I know something about] are but I'm sure they're dumb!
Get filtered Black person.
The half-assed, drive-by nature of these naysayers leads me to believe thirdies and chinks are actually genuinely afraid of the VLS Rig.
Imagine some beanpole making delusional theories on how to survive a single punch from prime Mike Tyson only to find out he will arrive at the fight with both gloves.
no, there's two versions. one is the bmd platform in your pic (note the radars)
the other version is resupply, refuel and repair platform
That looks so comfy for some reason.
>Tfw you get to chill on the floating gas station during WW3 thousands of miles behind the lines while everyone else has to go risk their asses against Chang
The only way to get this to work smoothly is to have a large floating wet/dry dock that can pick up the ship inside its sheltered docking area so that it can be replenished even in heavy waves and strong winds. As a bonus it could also be used to salvage barely floating wrecks and transport them away at speeds higher than towing.
alternatively, have a crane rig both powerful enough to cancel out the momentum of a suspended two ton missile canister and portable enough to be brought over from a replen vessel and mounted on a destroyer deck
being on the same deck eliminates the difference between the replen ship and the destroyer
what is this
They are thinking ahead to when global warming makes the sea rises.
Troll A platform in Norway.
Oh neat. My grandpa and his team used to make all the offshore platform models and ships in Norway by hand before 3D modelling became a thing. This was both to simulate the effect waves/wind would have on the structures but also how the installation of pipes and various quarters would be. You can go to the Oil museum in Stavanger and see some of his work.
that's more impressive than most people will give credit
Thanks. He was also involved in this project (dubbed the Leaning Tower of Jåttåvågen) which pretty much was a test to showcase that it was possible to pour concrete sideways and in various thicknesses for the platforms legs, being 50 meters tall and going 16 degrees sideways. He had a big-ass model at home which my mom now has.
This just makes me think of that Rogue Wave phenomenon that actually managed to damage one of these things.
Having the DDG inside a mobile floating drydock ship would be much better since you could most wave and all vind influence on the ship. Also, if you pump the drydock so much that the ship is lifted it will follow the motherships movements so loading becomes more easier.
instead of doing essentially picrel it would be cheaper and faster to design a removable gantry crane rig that can set up on the destroyer deck, preferably over the VLS farm itself, and load that way
I think your idea would work if the crane was a fixed installation on the ship. Having a removable crane that has to be lifted over from a supply ship just looks like another problem.
>fixed installation
no space
>Having a removable crane that has to be lifted over from a supply ship just looks like another problem
it's better than going back to port, and eliminates half the sea state problem
I'm sure the idea has already occurred to the USN, they just want an even better solution probably
>one is the bmd platform
We're all just going to ignore this erection factory of a statement?
BMD does seem like the most promising mission for a bunch of semi-staionary VLS. Park one near ashore to Tokyo or Guam, or wherever else.
so they're wanting to make arsenal ships again, but ugly? neat
this gives me the idea of an ace combat style arsenal bird but as a ground effect type sea vehicle
It's just a floating supply dump
I mean if that's what they want why not do the exact same storage sections but on a Lewis B Puller?
Thinking on it some more it does make sense from the PoV of long endurance platforms that you can move as needed but are perfectly capable of sitting their ass in a single spot and just fricking anything that wants to be an issue until the next one comes to relieve it. Put a few PD lasers on it to deal with drones and 2-3 of these could do the job of everything we've sent around Yemen and probably have a far smaller crew at that.
perhaps the oil platform is more stable
Name: Mark VI Raft
Nation: United States
Operational as of: 2090
Offensive systems:
Heavy, medium, light DEW batteries; capable of hitting targets in space and (via mirror-satellites) anywhere on Earth
Serves as mothership for underwater, surface, air vehicles; maintains two fully-equipped launch pads capable of supporting heavy space lift.
Defensive systems: DE can be repurposed against incoming attacks; in addition, the armor is so strong it could survive a near surface burst from a tactical nuke.
Mobility: 20 kilometers an hour; however, in practice, this ship remains immobile.
Comments: The inevitable response to weapons too fast to dodge was to make ships too big to sink. A single Raft possesses (and carries) the firepower of more than a hundred carrier groups of the early 21st century. Ten Rafts are currently operational: two in the North Atlantic, two in the South Atlantic, one in the Indian Ocean, three in the eastern Pacific, and two in the Arctic Ocean.
It's all coming true. Just as foretold.
I mean SpaceX did prove that landing at sea isn't much more difficult than landing on dry land. The big issue for vessels like this is that as thin as it is a rogue wave would likely snap it like a twig.
>I mean SpaceX did prove that landing at sea isn't much more difficult than landing on dry land.
SpaceX has proven that exploding over the sea isn't much more difficult than exploding over dry ground.
SpaceX is the future
>redditor who hasn’t even heard of falcon 9 but simply MUST seethe about elon
lol, lmao
Falcon 9 has landed a first stage more times than any single other rocket has flown
At this point why wouldnt you just make this thing nuclear powered, put a couple of CIWS on it and place a bunch of them in strategic places along trade routes as low maintenance area denial platforms?
You just reinvented the nuclear powered cruiser but without the mobility
So, reading up on the topic it looks like the Navy is getting around to addressing sustainment of VLS on combat deployment. They want to figure out a way to load VLS without having to go to a port facility. They’ve tested with a custom crane system but can’t make it work on the open ocean because of two much movement making it unsafe. They can move the containers onto the deck via another method but they still need to figure out how to erect and insert the containers after being delivered.
IMO this is probably not solvable as the VLS containers are just two big and cumbersome to handle vertically like they want. They’ll probably have to integrate a crane into the firing ship itself if they want to UNREP (underway replenish) these things realistically. And here’s the other issue — why bother? If you want more shots available on deployment and those must be handled safely while following the fleet to wherever in fully crewed ships of their own….then why not just build more combatants? Install a bunch of VLS cells into converted cargo ships, perhaps some older ones? A 5 knot platform with a clownish crane setup isn’t needed or desirable, just float more tubes.
BTW the arsenal ship concept when translated into an actual naval vessel existing in reality would just be a guided missile cruiser. Something like the Type-055 is going in the right direction: big hull with maximum VLS. In the PLAN’s case I understand that they’ll be operating nearby to port facilities to reload in a few days and not weeks, but who cares as long as you win? Sink the other guy and his reload time is infinity days. So it’s have enough shots or don’t have enough, worrying about sustaining after the shots seems secondary.
Note that early Mk 41s sacrificed a few cells per installation for a light crane that was intended specifically for that purpose. I don't know if resupply with that crane simply didn't *work* at sea, or if they blew it off because they didn't need the capability for 20+ years.
The crane only worked in the calmest of sea states and the reloading process still took forever, it ended up being more practical to just go home and rearm there.
Thanks, that answers the question. Do you know anything about the PVLS? Would that be any easier or harder to reload at sea?
>PVLS
just as difficult to reload in practice and even more difficult to design a future solution for
picture trying to slide that two-ton canister full of fuel and explosives into a snug slot that's pitching, rolling, yawing and bucking up and down every which way with the force of nine thousand tons behind it
So why didn't they build a double-armed crane? You can do fully computerized controls nowadays, it'd be easy enough to have the crane hold on to both ends of the tube and move the arms in unison until the bottom end is securely deposited in the slot.
>4 ears
that crane was built before computerisation
I can think of a modern setup that might work: consider an articulated crane rig that is brought over by the ammunitioning ship onto the destroyer, that sets up over the VLS farm, picks up missiles from the deck and loads the cells
but who knows really, I'm no engineer
livestream yourself fricking a house pet i fricking dare you
Why can't they do a main crane plus computer tensioned cable system to hold the VLS stable? In the age of CnC and 3d printing it should be trivial.
>Why can't they do a main crane plus computer tensioned cable system to hold the VLS stable?
well, firstly, this system had to be small enough to fit economically on a Burke, the whole point was to enable a destroyer to self-reload from as small and minimal a resupply ship as possible
secondly,
>In the age of CnC and 3d printing
this was 30 years ago
no doubt we have the tech today to do better, but it hasn't been a priority for a while
the USA has a massive defence budget but really, people need to stop thinking that it can afford gold plated solutions for literally everything
>it's not practical for real world combat operations to want to rearm ships as close to the front line as possible
A computer controlled multi-ton electric winch is basically free. The expensive part is paying the engineers to figure out where the mounting points on each ship would be and then verifying the software.
>is basically free. The expensive part is paying the engineers to figure out where the mounting points on each ship would be and then verifying the software
US industry can do that very quickly as well
the actual hangup is the US Navy deciding how it wants to reload its ships in future, and for that they need to look at their classified war plans and projections into the next 30-40 years
>Underway replenishment is something naval ships have been doing for hundreds of years
"therefore"
>that is so obviously flawed ?
you're acting like this proposition is self-evidently true, it isn't.
The US Navy designed their surface warfare combatant fleet around a weapon system that can not be replenished at sea. Not only that , it requires specialized port facilities that excludes most of the worlds ports.
The fact that navies have been using underway replenishment for hundreds of years does in fact make underway replenishment of primary weapons systems a self evident requirement.
The US Navy is now saying they have to figure out a way to replenish these weapons systems close to potential combat zones. It is self evident now.
> requires specialized port facilities
Don't know about that. Tenders exist and they can supply subs at anchor. Can't be harder to load missiles than sling torpedoes.
And even if, an adapter for standard dock cranes seems obvious.
>It is self evident
No, it's not, and the structure of your own post twice demonstrates that:
>X has been done for hundreds of years
>if A cannot do X it sucks!!
THAT is your proposition, not self-evident ground theory, and it is wrong.
For starters, name me a competing weapon system that can be replenished at sea, I'll wait.
>Not only that , it requires specialized port facilities
No, it doesn't.
It's a 4,000lb container of fuel and explosives and the hole is a snug fit, not a football field
Black person the obvious solution is to 3D print the missile in the cell. Models downloadable from some chink website.
Here's a dumb idea... what about some sort of drydock or breakwater attached to the resupply platform so that the ship being reloaded isn't pitching and rolling independently?
when all hope was lost and the world needed them most... they retvrned...
Can't you just make some kind of four wing pneumatic thing so the crane doesn't have to be that accurate? just fasten a line to the middle and unhook when it's within the guides.
This is the Navy getting shit scared out of their pants about drones isn't it? Recent developments have shown drones can saturate any defences. Looks like the future navy will be all submarines.
tard tourist
It's far cheaper to have a metaphorical supply dump with only a few guys manning the platform, minimal self defense measures, and no real provisions for actual combat then it is to buy more combatants, especially since something this big could actually accept the VLS missiles from a traditional cargo ship and then load them into the cells themselves with the crane. Having the reloading platform even halfway between China and the US would effectively double the missile output the US could field, since transit time is going to take far longer then emptying the tubes in an actual war, without having to try to keep "cheap" arsenal ship you mention both safe from aggressors and actually in a useful striking range, since what you're proposing is essentially a carrier which requires a CSG around it to keep it safe.
So, it's basically an arsenal ship that recognizes the flaws inherent in arsenal ships so it stays out of range and hands over the missiles to a half-dozen or more DDGs which are more dispersed and survivable. That might work, especially if you give it a DDG to protect it from the really big ASBMs that might reach that far, and a FFG or SSN to protect it from enemy subs.
Stupid question: have VLS reloads ever been carried by chopper? Could you fly them in a couple at a time on Ospreys from, say, Pearl, so the platform doesn't have to sail all the way back into port when it runs out?
Redundancy should also be easier since you don't have to focus on a hydrodynamic hull, too
China builds artificial reefs that continually tumble back into the Pacific like literal sand castles.
AUKUS: picrel
Oh, yeah, I'm old enough to remember the MOB, the Voltron concept that sounded so cool but never made sense from a procurement standpoint.
These things are legitimate applications for Russia's intercontinental nuke torpedo.
They'd eat long range torps and not be able to do much about it
or any asbm really because they're so slow that you could probably get targeting data w/ just satellite tracks instead of needing midcourse targeting
>you could probably get targeting data w/ just satellite tracks
The platform would have to go dark with full EMCON, and the ship towing it would have to do the same, even turning off navigation radars. Probably throw SAR jamming on it as well. But you could hide it from enemy satellites.
still that would diminish it's utility a bit if it had to be fully blacked out whenever it gets west of hawaii. My point is that it's overall much less survivable than something that moves fast enough that midcourse targeting data is needed and thus there are more weak links in the kill chain.
it's utility is resupply without having to go all the way back to a port
you can move the platform, you can't move a friendly port. you can also use diesel subs to blockade a port, this makes sure that's not an issue. sure, subs could get to it, but the pacific is huge. even if you only parked it halfway between hawaii and china, that's a huge amount of fuel/time you're saving to resupply.
obviously that's assuming there's issues with other friendly ports like korea, japan, phillipines, guam, and australia
it isnt something to rely on but it does fill a logistical shortfall
>Tfw some fat frick platform waddles up to your coastline and just explosively sharts 500 fricking missiles all over your third-world peasant navy like an Ace Combat protagonist, crippling it instantly
>Refuses to elaborate
>Waddles away at like 4 knots
It’s like the naval warfare someone OCing an M2 Browning on a Wal-mart mobility scooter, I love it.
>Future warfare is just militarized logistical shipping pallets/containers and oil rigs
From Gibbs & Cox -- the designers of the Freedom Class LCS.
Sounds good. You guys take a check?
>US Navy tells Gibbs & Cox to figure out some way to make it easier to reload VLS at sea
In other words, we need to figure out to manage the flaws of another expensive wonder weapon that is not practical for real world combat operations.
>From Gibbs & Cox -- the designers of the Freedom Class LCS.
This is just another MIC kickback scheme at this point
>not practical for real world combat operations
and sailing 2000km back to your home port is?
The US Navy's primary weapons system can not be replenished while the combatant ship is underway. Underway replenishment is something naval ships have been doing for hundreds of years.
Yet the US Navy's primary weapon system can not be replenished while underway much less in or near a combat zone. In fact , this weapon system requires specialized port facilities which are not available at most of the worlds ports.
I am amazed. How did the US navy design their primary surface combatants around a wepons system that is so obviously flawed ?
dude, do you know how hard is it to put a 7m long tube into a tiny hole while everything is shaking around? no navy on this earth can do it, no one.
You don't have to sail back to your home port, just a friendly port with your dragon hoard of missiles.
I wonder if they packed multiple VLS into a pod like GMLRS if the less skinny, but heavier pod would be easier to maneuver.
That or a reverse rocket gantry to set it on a braced rail before lowering into the VLS pit.
>5kt 10000000t floating treehouse
If they empty all the ballast can they make it a catamaran that can cruise at +30kt?
>NFL whips a stabilized 300lb camera above a football field faster than a quadcopter
>Navy can't hold a missile reload stable over a hole in sea state 2
How much does the stadium tend to move depending on the prevailing weather conditions? How can you possibly be this ignorant?
VLS reload from tender:
Looks like a standard lift. Any crane operators around?
Speaking of video. Much more on MODERP:
BTW -- the pic in the op isn't the resupply point. It's a platform acting as a zone defense Battlestar Galactica.
Pic related is the Mighty Moderp spawn point.
Just turn the entire VLS rack into an enbloc clip and eject the empty when spent, use a skycrane to reload a new one.
>skycrane
oh yeah, cause it was not difficult enough to have a ship reload a ship, now have a chopper reload a ship
Ok ok ok. What of we adopt a push through loading system that uses an umbilical loading system? Like an old Hotchkiss machinegun.
>chinks think they're so smart, going to all that effort to build small islands that need building back up after each typhoon
>burgers decide to build upon their vast experience with oil rigs and dominate the sea with gigantic floating fortresses, each one by itself having enough payload to sink the entire chinese fleet in one go
>the fortresses will probably have burger king restaurants onboard
This is the weird and kinda cool future I wanted
Couldn't you make the VLS tube itself float? Then you wouldn't need a vessel and reloading would be a non factor.
>Pitching VLS blocks into the sea like fricking crab pots
Although now that you mention it, that makes a much more interesting naval mine if you just dump remote controlled missiles in little floating silos. Of course you could just put them on boats, but since de-centraliziation of firepower is the dominant mode of thought in naval doctrine right now I'm surprised we don't see more interest in separating the CIC from the launch site.
*kicks crane* Work damn you work!
>oh thank god, it's only the USS Gerald R Ford right off our coast
>as long as they don't send the Borg Cube, we might still win this war
>the herd of three landwhales, utterly mogged by human imgenuity, waddle away
Oil rigs are begging to be weaponized. LET THEM JOIN THE FIGHT.
This is amazing to me. The United States Navy can not replenish its primary weapon system at sea.
who else can? China?
>chinese people's liberation army navy
>being at sea
Maybe the people's liberation army navy air force could resupply using helicopters
soon the US Navy will be the only navy that can reload VLS at sea
how about that?
Par for the course, not very implessive.
we did it
its happening
What about something like a shallow diving sub (enough to be less visible when needed and to ride smoother through the sea) but no need to be super sturdy.
I imagine you could have a very limited crew, storage for other things and maybe even a very very heavy lift drone for the future.
Ideally you would have these things ferry out from bases on the way as I don't imagine they would be fast
We're going about this the wrong way. Here's what we do:
>Put rockets into GMLRS style packs
>Put a moon pool in the bottom of every ship
>Load the packs from above in port and at sea
>Drop spent clips into the sea when empty or have configurable space
BAM. Bonus points if the packs go PING when ejected.
HUGE ENEMY CRAB but American
>Walks on the seafloor to avoid sonar detection
>Can float like a submarine when needed
>Appears on a beach, shells the frick out of you, disappears back under the waves before a counterattack hits
>heavily armed ship on earth is an oil platform
There is something so deeply American about this.
why not just build a submersible arsenal ship?
instead of going through the hassle of making some offshore missile tender rig, just build another missile carrier ship.
they should weaponize these. they're already doing loyal wingmen to augment air power, they need to do the same with sea power. low cost autonomous picket defenses with a low footprint. just a floating radar/VLS box/ASW to fan out to extend the CBG/MEU picket and come back in to the tender once a week or so for replenishment/service.
It's coming at the end of 2024
Problem is that, legally, China and Iran can steal them and, legally, they are a violation of international maritime law.
>steal them
don't touch our boats. we don't like when people touch our boats.
>legally, they are a violation of international maritime law
really? source? i wasn't aware of anything like that.
Dontchu know? Anything that makes thirdies sad is a violation of international law.
Iran already shot down US's drones before, it's not a new concern. And the purpose-built Defiant doesn't have any place for meatbags to hijack and command the thing, so you have to shoot at it and collect the remains, just like a sky drone.
>legally, China and Iran can steal them
China asserting something doesn't make that thing true. Furthermore, the Bowditch incident was based on the untrue premise that the 9-dash line is a legally recognized extension of Chinese territorial waters in the South China Sea. It is not.
>legally, they are a violation of international maritime law
Made up.
resurrect the Navy's StreetFighter concept
Because submersible arsenal ships already exist, and are called SSBN/SSGNs/SSN with VLS. They are some of the most complex and expensive things that humanity has ever built, so practically any alternative to them that you can implement to solve a solution where all of their characteristics (stealth, endurance, survivability, payload mass, payload variety etc) are not simultaneously absolutely necessary will end up being far more economical.
>solve a solution
Yeah I'm a based moron.
>just build a submersible arsenal ship
they're called USS Ohio, Michigan, Florida, and Georgia, or Oh My Fricking God, which is what we expect the air defence officer on the receiving end to say (albeit with deity of choice, Allah / Buddha / Mao / Kim) when the payload is spotted on radar
That's cool, but how about a nuclear-powered, armored, high-speed vessel equipped with 500 of those tube modules?
>let's just put literally all the Tomahawks the USA possesses into one basket
I've seen this movie before
expand missile production
t. raytheon investor
So then how do you reload the oil platforms when they run out of VLS cells?
Vertical crane setup is probably not doable. There would be way too much force at play dangling a VLS container trying thread it into place safely. A robotic arm that grabs the container at both ends is probably too massive in order to counteract all that force. I’m picturing a HORIZONTAL crane that stacks them into the VLS block horizontally. This would require the block to be rotated 90 degree to go into a loading configuration requiring a major refit of the boat unless it can be self-contained in a standard form factor and you sacrifice cells for the machinery needed. Trying to make it work with standard cranes bolted onto tender ships or trying to convert oil rigs is low-IQ.
mother base!
>gibbs cox
It could work, but not optimal to try to slot the canister into its socket using a crane.
Use the crane to lower it into a hydraulically tilting cradle placed on the warship’s deck, and then jack the cradle up while using a winch and removable eye in the nose to control the package’s descent into the slot.
This is kind of how drill pipe is loaded onto drilling rigs. The rig’s crane picks up the bundle of 3-5 sticks, and then loads the individual sticks into a vertical cassette that holds them vertically so that they can be connected together on the drilling floor when the previous stick is flush with the floor.
t/ worked at sea fro over 30 years in Oil Patch and Government and Commercial.
I mean it's okay to have a few of them but it's not something you really want to rely on outside of a niche.
US MIC:
>Gibz
>wienerz
It swallows up both.
Kek.
How about WW2-style mostly-surface submarines?
Made to the general design of SSBNs but made much cheaper. Instead of nukes, VLS missiles go in the tubes. Sub submerges under ship, ship opens hatches underneath, missile gets hauled up, repeat.
you took one problem and created another dozen or so to not really even solve the first.