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My prediction for the Ford carrier program is that it will be cancelled and replaced with... Even bigger carrier. Significantly bigger. China can bomb shit ou

by vlehto 10y ago

My prediction for the Ford carrier program is that it will be cancelled and replaced with... Even bigger carrier. Significantly bigger. China can bomb shit out of Guam airstrips. Or from submarines any airstrip that stays stationary. U.S. can in near future do everything a 100 gigagram Ford carrier can do with 45Gg America class carrier. With the exception that Ford will have triple the planes, triple the cost, triple the price and about double the range of planes aboard. In near future you can do almost everything with three Americas than with single Ford, with almost exactly the same $/kg of ordnance delivered. This happens because V-22 osprey and F35B have short takeoff and landing while having incredible capability. Ford will rely on F35C, V-22 and super hornet. The hornet being mostly stopgap measure. But Ford is still limited to planes less than 30 tons and less than 1700km range. Something that could launch C130 super hercules (70 ton weight, 3800km range) safely, would make super-duper-giga-hyper-carrier look like worthwhile investment. The weight of Ford is not the main problem, but it's not long enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar-poc38C84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar-poc38C84 Now you could replace significant portion of Guam with floating airstrips. You could dominate entire northern pacific with single carrier with it's organic refueling. The alternative for hypersupercarriers would be America class + some flying boats acting as refuelers, gunships and transports. That would be more robust way to do things, as you are putting your eggs to more baskets. But it's also something that China and India and Brazil can somewhat easily replicate to lesser degree. (They don't get V-22, but anyhow.) So for reasons of military industrial complex and to appear unachievable military power(Trump?), U.S. will make something huge before Ford program runs its course.

DonHopkins 10y ago
TIL they measure the weight of aircraft carriers in grams. Is it to make them seem bigger yet less expensive? So what's the typical cost per gram of a modern aircraft carrier? How about its range in centimeters on one load of nuclear fuel?
- zimpenfish 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_C._Stennis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_C._Stennis 103300 long tons => 1.049576e+11 grams according to Google. At a cost of $4.5bn (Wikipedia) that gives you about 4.3¢/g if I'm not mistaken. Same article says the range is "unlimited; 20-25 years" but doesn't qualify that with speeds. Although if it could sustain 35mph for 20 years, I make that approximately 987bn cm range.
- vlehto 10y ago
  They don't, it's me. 100 000 tons = 100 000 thousand kilograms = 100 000 thousand thousand grams. You have three different ways to say "thousand" there, one nested. Which seems bit overcomplicated compared to Gg. The 100Gg is huge, 45Gg is WWII huge, 10Gg is interwar "treaty maximum". 4Gg is what USN currently regards "seaworthy", 2Gg is biggest things that sailed with sails and anything less than 1Gg is no longer ship but a "boat" in modern standards. Convenient?

by vlehto 10y ago

DonHopkins 10y ago

TIL they measure the weight of aircraft carriers in grams. Is it to make them seem bigger yet less expensive? So what's the typical cost per gram of a modern aircraft carrier? How about its range in centimeters on one load of nuclear fuel?

zimpenfish 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_C._Stennis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_C._Stennis 103300 long tons => 1.049576e+11 grams according to Google. At a cost of $4.5bn (Wikipedia) that gives you about 4.3¢/g if I'm not mistaken. Same article says the range is "unlimited; 20-25 years" but doesn't qualify that with speeds. Although if it could sustain 35mph for 20 years, I make that approximately 987bn cm range.
vlehto 10y ago
They don't, it's me. 100 000 tons = 100 000 thousand kilograms = 100 000 thousand thousand grams. You have three different ways to say "thousand" there, one nested. Which seems bit overcomplicated compared to Gg. The 100Gg is huge, 45Gg is WWII huge, 10Gg is interwar "treaty maximum". 4Gg is what USN currently regards "seaworthy", 2Gg is biggest things that sailed with sails and anything less than 1Gg is no longer ship but a "boat" in modern standards. Convenient?