If the Admiralty of the Royal Navy, or the Secretary of the United States Navy, or the admistrator of some leading modern Navy tasked YOU, that's right YOU, with designing a modern battleship for both NSFS and surface combat concerns, how would you design it? What would it's armaments be? How thick would it's armour be? How fast? How manueverable? What would power it?
Anyways, theoretical ship designs are a big interest of mine and i'd like to know how other battleship enthusiasts on this board would design their ideal modern battleship. I also like to here thoughts upon these theoretical ships. Well, here's my design. Sorry if you don't understand metric. Here's a site with metric conversions:
>:: World Wide Metric ::<
Trafalgar-class Advanced Modern Battleship (AMBB)
Length: 270 metres
Draught: 10 metres
Beam: 35 metres
Crew: 650 officers and men
Propulsion: Electric engines for silent movement. Steam turbines just in case the electric engines malfunction.
Cruise Speed: 33 knots
Hull Design: The hull of the Trafalgar-class would be in the tumblehome form, i.e: the ship's sides slope inwards coming down towards the water. This reduces radar cross-section.
Torpedo Countermeasures: Prairie-Masker noise reduction system, the bands mounted on both the propellor and the main hull, to mask the potential target of the ship. Very little sound will penetrate a curtain of air bubbles, making sonar identification rather difficult
Missile Countermeasures: 6 x Phalanx CIWS positioned along the ship's sides with overlapping fields of fire for maximum effect against incoming missiles.
Armour:
Belt: 307mm
Bulkheads: 290mm
Barbettes: 300mm
Turrets: 505mm
Decks: 195mm
All steel armour
Armament:
9 x 342mm (13.5") main guns in 3 x 3 turrets
35 x Tomahawk cruise missiles in VLS cells
20 x Harpoon AshMs, also in VLS cells
18 x 127 mm (5") secondary guns in 2 x 9 turrets
2 x torpedo tubes, flush with hull (like on a submarine)
That would be my design. Any others?