Your Nation's Warships, Batch 3

[Rich and Corporations]

in nationstates scale nations send fleets across an ocean twice the length of the Pacific
transporting across such distances may even merit transport submarines, and special forces submarines with hangars

it is a unique situation not comparable with the real world, far more constrained by resources and with shorter distances

is it worth a billion dollar submarine to launch an aircraft to support a commando raid or to use an electro optical missile to hit a key transport hub when all GPS communications are being jammed as a result of wartime requirements?

[The Pacifican Islands]

Then how can I defend my littorals?

Build a true blue-water navy (ideally with nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and attack/cruise-missile submarines) to meet the enemy navy in battle long before they reach your littorals or have your capital and vital cities in range of their strike aircraft.

Anything else is merely vanity and an appeal to deterrence while hoping for a Big Brother or "the international community" to come save you.

EDIT: completely unrelated question. Would arsenal ships be useful in my navy (for any role)?

Existing large combatants such as cruisers and the Arleigh Burke family of destroyers (including the Korean and Japanese classes) can carry enough land-attack missiles to conduct any normal land-attack strike, while being able to defend themselves and other ships. This capability tends to increase in custom-design NS cruisers and destroyers, but not drastically so its not as bonkers. Cruise missile submarines like the Ohio SSGN conversions carry 154 cruise missiles each which is quite plenty.

Arsenal ships, being quite literally floating missile magazines with engines on them, cannot defend themselves. Meaning you concentrated a lot of firepower on something that can be easily killed. "too many eggs in one easily burnable basket" problem.

Most NSers think they can correct that by putting radars and defences, which invalidates the whole point of the arsenal ship in the first place - which is to be a *relatively* cheap platform (compared to a full 90-100Ktonne aircraft carrier and its air group, or a 10-30Ktonne cruiser with a sophisticated sensor suite) to launch SLCMs.

And doctrinally, arsenal ships would be invalid for you anyway since they are best used by blue water navies who intend to go around bombing brown people/weak countries, and can cover its weaknesses.

But if you can cover its weaknesses, chances are you already have enough organic firepower in existing ship classes to not need them.

Thank you, but I forgot to mention in both posts I'm in the process of building a blue-water navy. Is there anything I should know or anything to develop? The strategic opponent my nation faces has a large navy with an advanced missile defense system.

[Kassaran]

Lasers.

And Railguns.

Boom, you just defeated him. gg wp PMT for the win.

In all seriousness, you should probably just do what the Russians did, if they have better surface control, go all-in for a massive submarine fleet. Submarines are the battleships of the modern-world. The last soldiers to die in a nuclear holocaust, are likely to be those upon the SSBN's that launched some of the first to strike.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Subs especially diesel electrics still needs to find a way to have actual persistent sea control over an area more than a 40 nautical miles in diameter circle and 40 warshots. :3

[Gallia-]

Not really. Ekranoplans are aircraft, not boats. Aircraft that carry substantial quantities of high power missiles, like Shipwreck Brahmos. Think of them more as Fast!Oscars or Mega!Backfires.

I think they're more like Big!Osas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lun-class_ekranoplan

Armament:
Six fixed-elevation P-270 Moskit antiship missile launchers

It has six Sunburns, which are an OTH weapon. It's somewhere between an SSGN and a Backfire. It's faster than the SSGN, slower than the Backfire, carries fewer missiles than the SSGN, but more missiles than the Backfire. Realistically speaking, it should belong to the AV-MF and be organized into ekranoplan regiments in the same manner as Backfires, or further back, Myasishchev's nuclear powered floatplanes.

The actual reason is it's too expensive to not operate as part of a comprehensive sea denial system, though. It's so expensive the USSR could only afford to make three of them and barely afford to operate them. It's also really not fast enough to justify the expense (it has eight engines and only goes 250 mph lmao) and its armament is too small (comparable to Tarantul) to make it a useful member of a sea denial force.

Which is why it really died: It was a useless white elephant. At least as an anti-shipping weapon. It's possible WIGs have some utility, but it hasn't really been discovered.

I suppose if you give them a more powerful missile, like BrahMos, and more of them, they might become useful enough for a group of three or four ekranoplans to do the job of a whole squadron or wing of fighter-bombers. Whether this is better than incorporating BrahMos-A into a VLO strategic bomber that can carry ten to twenty missiles is also questionable. A high altitude, conventional aircraft will be able to target without needing OTH guidance, be faster, be more difficult to detect and kill, carry more missiles, and probably be cheaper to operate.

So they still don't have a use because they're stuck in a bad halfway house between actually useful things like strategic bombers (B-2, B-1, H-6, etc.) and things their armament emulates (Visby, Tarantul, Pegasus, etc.)

[The Akasha Colony]

Why not?

As has been mentioned, they don't really serve a purpose. Not for your needs, at the very least.

The point of the arsenal ship was basically to be a floating missile barge filled with Tomahawks and with almost no crew aboard and no self-defense capability, to keep it cheap. This was supposed to allow it to serve as a massive shore bombardment platform for amphibious assaults and what not, taking some of the burden off the aircraft carrier fleet and the air wing operating from the LHDs. The USN briefly considered the idea in the 1990s because at that point it looked like police actions like ODS were going to be the US Navy's future, now that the USSR had collapsed. But it was never a high priority because its job could be done well enough by existing assets and eventually Congress funded the SSGN conversions for the first four Ohios, so the USN got better arsenal ships anyway (since the Ohio SSGNs are faster than the original arsenal ship concept and much better protected by virtue of their stealth).

But arsenal ships have no real utility in naval combat. They're too slow to keep up with naval task forces and they're stuck operating behind the escort screen, so their missiles take longer to arrive on target. The natural response is to give them better engines for higher speed and their own sensors and self-defense armament to be able to spot their own targets, but now you've turned it into a regular (albeit unnecessarily massive) surface combatant.

And lastly, arsenal ships were proposed under the assumption that naval task forces faced a VLS tube shortage that the arsenal ship could fill. But in fact it's generally been the other way around: practically every navy (including the US Navy) has had a hard time keeping the tubes they have filled, given the cost of missiles and the proliferation of VLS across practically every major surface combatant these days. The arsenal ship may have been cheap, but the missiles to arm it would have cost more than the arsenal ship itself.

Ultimately, modern surface combatants carry enough missiles for their purposes. And carriers provide much more flexible capabilities, although they are obviously more expensive. "Cruise missile spam" is also a less effective technique than many think it is, given the high dud rate of cruise missiles and the relative ease with which it can be countered, as well as the relatively limited damage incurred.

Thank you, but I forgot to mention in both posts I'm in the process of building a blue-water navy. Is there anything I should know or anything to develop? The strategic opponent my nation faces has a large navy with an advanced missile defense system.

Carriers and submarines.

[Gallia-]

Lasers.

And Railguns.

Boom, you just defeated him. gg wp PMT for the win.

Bad memes pls go.

In all seriousness, you should probably just do what the Russians did, if they have better surface control, go all-in for a massive submarine fleet. Submarines are the battleships of the modern-world. The last soldiers to die in a nuclear holocaust, are likely to be those upon the SSBN's that launched some of the first to strike.

The last soldiers to die in a nuclear holocaust are probably not the last soldiers.

Rather, the final surrender is signed by Lieutenant Colonel J. Higgins, 4th Battalion, 951st Infantry Regiment, Nebraska National Guard; because he's the highest ranking American officer still alive. Or maybe Major General S. Dahlquist, 102nd Infantry Division (Mechanized) who was found inside a command post carrier in Alaska, awaiting the final Soviet invasion that never came.

[Connori Pilgrims]

Not sure if this belongs here, since its a ship for use by the Connori Oram Custodes (Coast Guard) rather than the I̱no̱ménes Eparchíes Naf̱tikoú (United Provinces Navy), but its based off a not-Type 45 hull...



This 8000-tonne cutter is designed for service in the Far East - publicly its raison d'etre to square off against "heavily armed terrorists, poachers and pirates," but its actually to counter the stupidly large cutters fielded by the likes of the China Coast Guard. Asides from the 130mm deck gun, 30mm automatic cannons, Goalkeeper CIWS, and HMGs, it's also equipped with less-lethal weapons, specifically two heavy-duty water cannons on the otherwise-unmodified and unoccupied VLS deck house, and a pair of experimental ship-grade microwave emitters where the S1850M L-band tower normally is.

[New Korongo]

At the dawn of the twentieth century, New Korongo’s most advanced armoured cruiser was already five years old. The Erja Diriak Batu, named after King Diriak I, was the first armoured cruiser to be built in New Korongo. It was based on the plans of the French Amiral Charner-class, though a number of modifications were made to suit Korongolese requirements. The ship was commissioned in 1895 and immediately assigned to the First Cruiser Flotilla. This unit was renamed the First Armoured Cruiser Flotilla in the following year. In 1899 the Royal Naval Service embarked on the ambitious ‘Seventy-Five’ shipbuilding plan. This declared the Erja Diriak Batu to be obsolete. However, as the RNS prioritised battleship construction, the number of armoured cruisers available never met the requirements of the Seventy-Five plan. Thus, the Erja Diriak Batu served alongside its replacements until the early 1920s.

[Urran]

If I were to build an offshore patrol cutter would the current US concept for it be a good place to start or would an Independence LCS be a better base design?

[Connori Pilgrims]

If I were to build an offshore patrol cutter would the current US concept for it be a good place to start or would an Independence LCS be a better base design?

For patrol cutter purposes the Legend-class National Security Cutter is good enough for typical coast guard missions and is probably cheaper than an Independence LCS for the task.

[The Akasha Colony]

If I were to build an offshore patrol cutter would the current US concept for it be a good place to start or would an Independence LCS be a better base design?

An actual cutter would be a better basis for a cutter than a ship like LCS. Patrol craft are generally designed for better endurance, economical operation, and to have space for additional crew and do not need the sprint capability that LCS was designed around. So yes, the Heritage-class would be a better idea than a converted Independence.

[Theodosiya]

With US looking for Frigates with FFG (X) program, which frigate have biggest chance to be adopted?

[Urran]

New Fast Response Cutter

Thoughts?

[Taihei Tengoku]

Mark 71!

[The Corparation]

New Fast Response Cutter

Thoughts?

Looks okay so far. Detailing could use some work. The choice of gun confuses me though. It appears to be a SB scale gun on something that isn't SB scale.

[Urran]

New Fast Response Cutter

Thoughts?

Looks okay so far. Detailing could use some work. The choice of gun confuses me though. It appears to be a SB scale gun on something that isn't SB scale.

I can't draw guns well. It's supposed to be a 25mm cannon.

[Vassenor]

Well that's a pretty NS-fag-tastic Naval list WIP.

I am going to go sit in my shame corner now.

[United Earthlings]

(un)fortunately there is a point where you start to see diminishing returns with regards to how many more sorties you can generate per thousand tons of extra displacement, you also start to run into issues of command and control and your ability to manage that many aircraft from one place.

both of these things start to take effect around about 100,000 tons, after this point your sortie generation rate plateaus, so while you may be able to carry more aircraft you can't actually put any more of them in the air a day then the Nimitz can.

To be fair, I wasn't overly concerned with sortie rates per say since I was more interested in what a practical 650,000 ton ship design would evolve into if any nation was ever stupid enough to attempt such a feat than the more realistic side of things that you all brought up that would doom any crazy project from ever being seriously considered in the first place.

However, minus the sortie problem, while difficult from a practical point of view I don't think solving the C2 issue is insurmountable for a number of reasons.

Your choosing to see the design I proposed as one carrier controlling one very large air wing, I view it more as two carriers with each responsible for its own air wing and operations, they just happen to be in this case linked together into a single hull-separate, but equal*. Furthermore, multiple carrier groups have operated together going back to World War II and if Carrier Task Forces were able to solve their C2 {C3} problems even 40 or 70 years ago, as I said earlier from a practical matter that issue isn't insurmountable.

*What I mean by separate, but equal is that the two carrier sections aren't connected meaning aircraft from one side can't be transferred to the opposite one on the flight deck for launch operations, furthermore neither are the two hanger areas connected.

[Gallia-]

250,000 tons of carrier could do what your 650,000 tons of carrier does. Which is to say, two Nimitzes or Fords are better than your goofball idea that wouldn't make sense even given unlimited resources. Efficiency doesn't care about resource values, it cares about return on investment. If you can make three Nimitzes for the price of one of your dumb megacarriers, the Nimitz is obviously better.

Diminishing returns means that capability does not scale linearly. Nimitz and Ford are already well past the peak of the s-function and into plateau territory. Ford's major improvements are a correction to the Nimitz list (I think), more reliable catapults and arresting gear, and reduced crew/operating/procurement costs. Its ability to produce sorties is comparable to Nimitz, despite its advanced technology, and this isn't something that "more carrier" can fix.

[The Corparation]

*What I mean by separate, but equal is that the two carrier sections aren't connected meaning aircraft from one side can't be transferred to the opposite one on the flight deck for launch operations, furthermore neither are the two hanger areas connected.

Why. What conceivable purpose is there to liteeally split the carrier's air wing in two like that.

[Laywenrania]

*What I mean by separate, but equal is that the two carrier sections aren't connected meaning aircraft from one side can't be transferred to the opposite one on the flight deck for launch operations, furthermore neither are the two hanger areas connected.

So... you have two carriers... without having two carriers, aka all the drawbacks of one carrier combined with all the drawbacks of two carriers?

[New Korongo]

The KT27 class was a group of eight 24-knot coastal torpedo boats built in New Korongo between 1897 and 1900. They were designed to protect the ports of the Royal Naval Service. The Whitehead torpedo was the main offensive weapon of the class. Three were carried: two in a rotating launcher and one in a bow tube. The defensive armament of the KT27 class consisted of two Hotchkiss 3-pounder cannons and a pair of Korongolese Extra-Light Maxim machine guns.

[The Central Shadow Nation]

New Fast Response Cutter

Thoughts?

Doesn't look convenient enough. Quite lackluster tbh

[Gallia-]

ultimate warship confirm

galla just has eternal FFG-7 forever

ultimate mass production ship for the ultimate mass productionocracy