Its time.
We've seen the vids and the powerpoints.
We've talked about it forever and a day.
Its time for HQMC to return to its experimental roots and wargame this Maersk concept. The ground work for WWII was laid by the work done between the wars. We should be laying the foundation for our nations defense today...instead of worrying about seatbelts.
The potential looks amazing...time to put it to the test.
This thread might interest you:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,691.0.html
(you have to register to see the pics but it's worth it).
When I see this I wonder what the reaction by the world navies would be if the Danish armed forces bought a couple of ships and put this into action
ReplyDeleteProbably a lot of head scratching.
Deletei think people would say damn it why didn't we do it first!
Deleteits a perfect concept and is simply outstanding. this is an easy do.
we should but i bet the Chinese do it first.
@ sterrin
DeleteI love it when silly asides are taken serious by trolls.
The Danish military is quite forward thinking, quite successful, and good at making slim resources go along way. They are still a people who look to the sea. The West's militaries won't always be running around land locked sand pits. The next war will be somewhere either with a sea flank or indeed possibly just at sea. Knowing the Danes I would be very surprised if Maersk (a Danish company) didn't run this idea past their RDN first. I will even go as far to say I wouldn't be surprised if the team responsible for the idea didn't have more than one ex-navy guy in its ranks. The Royal Malaysian Navy have already trialled the idea,
http://www.marinelog.com/DOCS/NEWSMMIX/2009jun00015.html
this is a very good idea, cheap aswell, therefore will never happen!! be perfect for the royal navy, couple hundred thousand tonne carriers on the cheap !! you could easily have 2 of these for couple billion ££
ReplyDeleteyou're right darren1678.
ReplyDeletei haven't crunched the numbers but i bet you could get 3 of these for the cost of one San Antonio class LPD.
and it would be so much more capable and if you put the right power plant in it then it would be just as fast.
i like it.
a container ship can do 14-17 knots fully loaded, i'm sure it can do more than that with half a load, which in essence is all it would ever carry, even if fully loaded with chinooks and tanks!!
ReplyDeletefor costs sake i wouldn't replace the engines, simply augment them for electrical generation, (i'm a cheap bastard), the point of this thing is cheapness not speed, you have carriers for that.
carriers get to the hot spot fast do the initial damage, along with an meu, a few days later here comes the reinforcements, with heavy armour, by the bucketload!!
imagine how survivable this thing could be with all those bulkheads!!!!! going from top to bottom. fitting a secondary hull would be easy, to further enhance it survivability.
imagine aswell how many missiles this thing could carry, a mini arsenal ship too boot!!!!!!
You are right about survivability. But I would add the extra tweak of filling the bottom three tiers with empty containers filled with oil drums.
ReplyDeleteAs for speed the bigger ships are capable of service speeds of 25kts.
I like the idea of "it" being an electric ship but it would be difficult to approach efficiency levels of big diesels.
hay steve,
ReplyDeletei was thinking maybe along the lines of containerising all the accommodatrion, storagage etc accessed by corridors, and by filling the voids between containers with aerocrete. this has multiple benefits.
1. completely fireproof, no off gasing zero flame spread.
2. it floats
3. it would add alot of structutural Rigidity, e.g. "sandwich type effect" steel-aerocrete-steel all bonded together!!
4. acoustically superior noise insulation
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI had been for filling the oil drums with a simple flame retardant foam. But I had been considering using what you Americans term cinder block in the drums to add weight and some resistance. Not that cheap drum and container steel and block would stop something doing 600kts or more. My thinking being that an explosion would be damped by the mass it is trying to move being resisted and not the explosion itself. To that I would have the container seams double welded. The other reason for foam was to stop free surface effect. My idea is all about maintaining the block of buoyancy provide by 3 x 10 (say) block of containers. You can fight a large explosion. But yes aerocrete solves both those problems doesn't it?
As for sandwich effect I have also wondered if this could be used somehow,
http://www.rina.org.uk/Inteligent_engineering.html
As for the actual modules I have stayed away from using actual containers preferring modules constructed to fit into bays. That is to say module would have the same volume as a block of containers 4 high, 2 wide, 10 long. But just building bigger steel boxes seemed a cop out. Using aerocrete based structure brings all those advantages you suggest. Leaving steel just to provide the weather and sea proofing.
Yes I like it!!!
ok lets get real here. First off the US Congress will not let a foreign built ship to be used by the US Navy, this applies specifically to sealift type ships. As versatile as the Maersk S-Class is it ain't happening until the big US shipyards relase their grasp on the congressional critters.
ReplyDeleteThat is OLD news, here is NEW news that USN has apparently decided that converting old amphibs to be AFSBs is the expedient answer, and then dumping many tens of millions into converting the MLP to AFSB is the long term solution. Both of which are way wrong IMHO.
Whenever posters start talking about changing main propulsions systems and double hulling as being easy or cheap, I suggest they go read a book on naval arcitecture. News flash they are NEITHER. Been there done that.
We do know it'll never happen lol. did kinda say that in the first sentence, of my first post!! never did mention changing main propulsion, i said the exact oposite, becuause of cost grounds, double hulling a containership, admitedly, will cost 10's of millions plus pumping aerocrete or other suitable foams to give a ridgid structure. it maybe manpower intensive therefore expensive, i wouldn't say technically hard to do.
DeleteDidn't the us navy just buy or lease austrialian ships? plus buying second hand i dont think that really counts, all the work would be carried out in the u.s. converting them.
Comments were combined for all posters. S-Class conversion is a dead concept per Maersk.
DeleteThe US bought the WestPac Express back in 2002 when the Congress allowed it, not so now. It makes no difference to the Hill types if millions of USD were to be spent in US shipyards for conversion work. Not enough bucks for their biggest supporters~
@ leesae
ReplyDeleteI have fifty expensive books on ship design.
Not everybody who posts here is a Yank.
The USN has had ships build abroad. Not often but it has happened.
As I said above changing away from those large slow diesels would be problematic. And I think nobody here as discussed double hulling just an expansion of the container module system. Building a water tight box is a lot simpler than building a hull that has to be both water tight and manage hydrodynamics.
You are not being real just a tad boring, sad, unimaginative, and negative. If websites, especially defence websites, just stuck with realism nobody would hardly comment it would be just too boring.
Yes in the past US bought foreign built ships, not allowed anymore - much the pity.
ReplyDeleteI thought the S-Class conversion was a great idea when it came out and said so on mulitple sites, its that I can't change what the congressional critters mandate so have moved on.
BTW I have brought many ships into USN service several of unique designs.