UXV Combatant - UK Warship Redfines Stealth

not seen a post on this, soo:-

www.nwemail.co.uk...

forums.techpowerup.com...

looks intresting

sweet!

i live across the bay from BAE's Barrow shipyard,

if you could make unmanned secret cockle pickers for when the tide is in morecambe bay it could pay for the R+D on this thing,

godbless the 23 chinese cockle pickers who died there in feb 2004,

doesnt Sweaden have some nifty stealth ships?

Well since its just a concept I wouldn't get too excited, I remember that the US Navy actually built a stealth ship as a testbed for stealthy naval technologies but not much has come from it quite yet(publicly anyway).

reply to post by danwild6


If you're thinking about the Lockheed Sea Shadow, quite a lot has come of it, just not in as dramatic a fashion as most people expected...I suppose that's one of the problems with research prototypes

If you look closely at the DDX (or whatever they've renamed it this month) concepts, you'll see a lot of carry-over from the Sea Shadow's angled stealth design. Full stealth (like the F-117 or B-2) really isn't an option for major warships...no matter how stealthy you make the hull and superstructure shape, you're going to need active sensors to allow a warship to do its job (unlike a bomber, which can use passive methods). Also, (and this is an "IIRC', so feel free to be very skeptical) I think they found that the Sea Shadow could be tracked by essentially tracking its wake, rather than the ship itself, which made the design trade-offs needed for stealth a lot less attractive. Check out Ben Rich's book "Skunk Works", since I think that's where I read that.

As to the BAE concept ship, it's an interesting idea. The use of UAVs as a ship's 'main battery' has some very interesting implications. I'm also intrigued by the hull openings below the flight deck..are those exhausts for the ship's gas-turbine plant? Venting them low like that might reduce IR signature, but could have an impact on habitability. I'd expect to see a larger VLS on a production ship, and (if I were really being greedy) a hangar for the ship's helicopters.

Maybe I'm missing something but the featured design has a very small deck to be a truly affective LHD like the modern classes in service. And it also features what appears to be one VLS module in the front with a high caliber cannon… It can't compete with other ASW, AAW dedicated ships nor with dedicated LHD’s which would offer much more capacity and versatility in terms of type of aircraft and air operations, UAV's or not. Not to mention the conflicting roles which compromise effectiveness in both roles… I hope this is just a preliminary concept as it makes very little sense, both from a design and operational standpoint.

As for "redefining stealth", hardly, from what I can see there are designs which will enter service soon (Zumwalt Class) that feature a greater amount of all aspect stealth.

reply to post by WestPoint23


Can you throw up a link to the stealth ships you talk about?I'd normally just go google it for myself but you seem to know your stuff so I figured you might have a good link.

thanks

If you read the text the ship is not just designed to have UAVs/UCAVs onboard but also umanned surface vessels and unmanned submersibles too. The large openings under the flightdeck are to launch and recover said USVs from.

there was an article about this in 'the sun' today

www.thesun.co.uk...


[edit on 1-10-2007 by Sepiroth]

Ok you can have all the stealth in the world but it doesnt help a thing when you have NON stealthed helicopters clear on your flightdeck making your stealth worhtless.

And yes it is a nice ship but does the army have enough money to purchase this or is this ship part off an ever growing list off proposals who do not leave the drawing board at all???

Originally posted by James R. Hawkwood
Ok you can have all the stealth in the world but it doesnt help a thing when you have NON stealthed helicopters clear on your flightdeck making your stealth worhtless.

And yes it is a nice ship but does the army have enough money to purchase this or is this ship part off an ever growing list off proposals who do not leave the drawing board at all???

Well...I dont know if the army would have enough to buy it....or have somewhere to put it or use it.....

Can you mount a chally on the back of that thing?

It's a ship... why would the Army be buying ships? That's the Navy's job

Anyway, I'm sure there's something to be gained from this ship otherwise it wouldn't have got past the ideas stage. The Royal Navy/MoD/BAE seem to think it's a worthwhile investment so they probably have a use for it that we perhaps haven't thought through or haven't been told about.