Nuclear powered guided missile battlecruiser

They've never built any surface ship that size. Let alone a battlecruiser ..of nuclear power no less. It would be quite an untertaking. Seeing how we China watchers have been waiting for the mystical PLAN CV?/CVH/LPH/LHA/LHD to appear for the last few years. And yet we still don't see one.

Considering the number of complex systems that a CVN incorporates, would it be worthwhile for the PLAN to build a large BCGN of ~28000 tons to serve as a systems testbed for several of these, such as nuclear powerplant, advanced C4ISR systems, tracking radars et al? This could help simplify things when time comes to build a CVN.

Only if they will put the time(several years) and effort into the ship with PLAN R &D and little if no outside influence.

The PLAN has been operating nuclear subs for years, and its newer frigates and destroyers have pretty advanced radar. So that isn't the issue for operating a carrier. They would have much more difficulty with mastering air ops. Also I doubt the PLAN's first carrier would be a CVN.

Originally Posted by Finn McCool

The PLAN has been operating nuclear subs for years, and its newer frigates and destroyers have pretty advanced radar. So that isn't the issue for operating a carrier. They would have much more difficulty with mastering air ops. Also I doubt the PLAN's first carrier would be a CVN.

Finn, there is quite a diffrence in operating nuke subs and nuke surface ships. I'm not at all sure what the paraimeters of the operations are I just know it takes a larger power plant and more technicians to operate a surface nuke ship.

The USN decomissioned all of it's nuke cruisers 1993 til' 1999.

PLAN R &D and little if no outside influence.

Why with little or no outside influence? Wouldn't outside influence help speed up the process?

Originally Posted by bd popeye

They've never built any surface ship that size.

You should correct that to warships.

China already builds VLCC tankers.

http://www.dnv.com/news_events/news/...assedbydnv.asp

Some rather large containerships and an LNG.

http://www.eagle.org/news/press/apr08-2008.html

Originally Posted by FriedRiceNSpice

Why with little or no outside influence? Wouldn't outside influence help speed up the process?

Not much, the Russians don't have any recent experience (within 20 years) with nuclear powered surface combatants.

I think one can test latest radar, ISR and comm suites on any bigger test ship and a nuclear propulsion outside of a full fledged BC. Such a ship, with all the systems would be enormously expensive and probably not worth it. I also don't think such a class is needed and it probably will not help that much in gaining expeiance building a CVN.

Originally Posted by crobato

You should correct that to warships.

China already builds VLCC tankers.

http://www.dnv.com/news_events/news/...assedbydnv.asp

Some rather large containerships and an LNG.

http://www.eagle.org/news/press/apr08-2008.html

I thought that was implied. I'm well aware of the PRC shipbuilding capablity. But a bulk tanker, container ship is not a warship. As I'm am sure you all are aware there's quite a diffrence between merchant ships na warships.

Originally Posted by FriedRiceNSpice
Why with little or no outside influence? Wouldn't outside influence help speed up the process?

I'd like to see the PLAN build their own design in a larger warship class.. I'm sure they can.

071 is already a very large warship. Other than that and a possible carrier, i doubt we'll see very large combat ships for PLAN in the next decade or so. Meaning larger than they're building now. There's just no need for that.

I'm leaning towards the idea that building a ship such as Popeye has proposed would be a good idea. It won't be the best surface warship necessarily, but that doesn't matter. You learn by doing, and learn from your mistakes. The Chinese know the principles of warship construction, nuclear propulsion, how to build large ships and much else besides. Bringing all this expertise together in a single shipbuilding project like this would be of enormous benefit to the Chinese, and will open up the possibilities for the successful completion of other major projects. For example, lessons learned from the design of the underwater hull and subdivision/watertight compartments will translate relatively easily to a larger hulled warship likea carrier than simply scaling up from a frigate or destroyer design.

Historical parallell, in 1905 nobody had ever built an 'all big gun' battleship, but that didn't stop Jackie Fisher from going ahead. In a year and a day Dreadnought entered service and the rest of the world's fleets became obsolete overnight. Mistakes were made (eg putting the forefunnel in front of the fore mast so that the spotting top was uninhabitable when underway) but the lessons were learned and following ships were improved steadily and empirically. For all Dreadnought's faults, and remember she herself had become obsolete by WW1, she was worth the effort, and I believe the hypothetical chinese battlecruiser would also be worth the effort, even if only for the learning experience.

Well, true, but are there more cost efficient ways to gain such experience? Would several smaller programs where each subsystem would be trialed on their own be more beneficial?

Anyway, even if a large guided missile battlecruiser is ever built, i hope it has at least *some* actual combat value. Meaning, it should look nothing like Kirov. It should be, in effect, half missile cruiser and half helicopter carrier, equipped with AEW helos. That'd be much more important than having, say, two dozen huge supersonic antiship missiles and a hefty SAM battery. Then, naturally, we get to the question: why even build a battlecruiser, and not a full fleged helo carrier?

Even though I still think it'd be gross mismanagement of resources, here's an idea for the half helo carrier, half guided missile cruiser. The drawing should be pretty self explanatory.

Judging by the image, it should be some 213 meters in length overall, some 201 meters at the waterline. Beam should be some 26 meters and i'd guesstimate the displacement, judging by other ships of similar size, to be around 20 thousand tons.

Helo deck lift (and hangar beneath the deck) is sized for helicopters of nh90 dimensions. I'd say 5 of those would fit in the hangar. (four of them hopefully being AEW&C aircraft, also hopefully offering very decent maritime surveillance radar modes.)

Red squares are weapons systems, four being some kind of ciws, (missile or gun based, whatever fits) with rest of the red rectangles being VLS cells. I've figured ones positioned in the back would be relatively shallow ones for ship defense, holding something in the aster 15 class, while the bays in the front would be configurable to hold a various array of VLS, from more ship defense missiles to long range sams to land attack missiles to large, supersonic antiship missiles, if needed.

Perhaps it looks nice but it's still not a terribly good idea. Would cost a fortune, hopefully it wouldn't have to be run by a large crew.

Originally Posted by Obi Wan Russell

Historical parallell, in 1905 nobody had ever built an 'all big gun' battleship, but that didn't stop Jackie Fisher from going ahead. In a year and a day Dreadnought entered service and the rest of the world's fleets became obsolete overnight. Mistakes were made (eg putting the forefunnel in front of the fore mast so that the spotting top was uninhabitable when underway) but the lessons were learned and following ships were improved steadily and empirically. For all Dreadnought's faults, and remember she herself had become obsolete by WW1, she was worth the effort, and I believe the hypothetical chinese battlecruiser would also be worth the effort, even if only for the learning experience.

Actually, the Japanese battleship Satsuma was designed to be a all big gun battleship, but due to gun shortages, she only ended up with 4 12" guns...

Furthermore, the US South Carolina class battleships were also designed prior to Dreadnought, but construction progressed so slowly that they ended up being launched after Dreadnought.

Originally Posted by Totoro

071 is already a very large warship. Other than that and a possible carrier, i doubt we'll see very large combat ships for PLAN in the next decade or so. Meaning larger than they're building now. There's just no need for that.

True. Anything that's going to be nuclear powered is going to be underwater. I would think that the underwater displacement of the 094 submarine is larger than the full displacement of the 051C or 052C.

Popeye, who do you define a warship then? Where the line that separates warship and other surface warship construction? When you reach a certain scale, the kind of engineering that goes into a very large container ship and tanker is truly something else. In fact, I really cannot think of a better example to demonstrate the fine art of engineering and technology of ship building than with very large container ships and tankers. The sheer automation that goes into those ships alone are most remarkable.