Sup k, I just watched a video about Hawker Siddeley Harriers (the full name is just bad ass), really cool, and basically a lot of dangerous junk, and I'm not gonna make any rude F35b comments... for now.
That brought me to the conclusion that they really wanted to stick Jets on destroyers and stuff. Now I had the idea to just catapult a regular light jet like a strengthened F16 them from a rail, preserving fuel and load capacity for what actually matters. Now how do you land? Considering that aircraft usually burn their fuel, there should be some potential buoyancy in an airplane and ships tend to swim. Now I would make the aero surfaces bigger to enable a very low stall speed, brake parachutes or even an airbag in front of the plane plus some hatches sealing the inlets from water and maybe a foam sprayer for the nozzle... or an overall saltwater proof turbine design. Pilots would rotate in from Carriers or Airbases because this wouldn't be something you do all the time. That sounds like a lot but half of it is really not a big deal and there would be almost no restrictions to the airplanes original capabilities and to me that's all that counts... Keep in mind that it's the 70s and we are really horny on sticking airplanes on smaller vessels...
Thought?
Vtol?
>just catapult a regular light jet like a strengthened F16 them from a rail
Braindeadwojak.jpg
duuh?
crew is assembling the cat while the plane is getting unfolded, loaded and spooled up. then the crane lifts it into the rail, meanwhile the boat has turned into the wind and come to speed. If the vessel is so small that this imbalance throws it off, they just pump some fuel around.
goes without saying that the plane doesn't require any conventional gear.
You're proposing crashing the planes in the ocean as a means to recover them after a mission?
Your idea is impossible in very many ways but the points that really stand out are the modifications you want to make to the planes. Making them glide a lot better will make them worse at high speeds, there's a reason they didn't just "make the aero surfaces bigger" as opposed to using a complicated, dangerous and failure-prone cable to stop the planes. Also, the "waterproofing" of the turbine with hatches. It would never work. Also, the turbines aren't the only things that are sensitive to salt water. I don't think you understand how corrosive that shit is.
>Keep in mind that it's the 70s
This doesn't help your argument, material science has come a fucking long way in 40+ years.
We did that in the 40s, it was incredibly inefficient for anything other than fleet defense and even then it wasn’t optimal. Launch and recovery times are too long and there are no advantages besides saving space.
>incredibly inefficient for anything other than fleet defence
Even then, the vast majority of catapult-launched planes were used for spotting for naval gunfire and SAR for downed airmen. And for both of those roles we currently have helicopters that are MUCH better for the role, even if we only use the heilos available back in the 70s.
Keep in mind that I'm just brainstorming freely into this whole thing and the issues you bring up.
>You're proposing crashing the planes in the ocean as a means to recover them after a mission?
Yes.
>Making them glide a lot better will make them worse at high speeds
I was thinkig about airbrakes, spoilers and slats, everything should be able to fully retract.
>there's a reason they didn't just "make the aero surfaces bigger"
It's because regular high speed fighters have "good enough" stall speeds or in case of carrier based environments a hook.
I would rather count on parachutes and brake parachutes at this point anyways because the redesigning wouldn't be that intense I guess.
>I don't think you understand how corrosive that shit is.
They had planes operating in and around salt water since decades before. The grade of material and oding should do just fine and the time spent in water til it's recovery should be brief.
yeah but so is every vtol, like constantly. Difference is that my idea wouldn't compromise the plan on op but rather during the maintenance periods until the system would have evolved due to experience based 2nd gens. This wouldn't have been in tended to replace carriers, but rather for emergency based scrambles.
>They had planes operating in and around salt water since decades before.
Yes, but those planes are either boat hulls with wings or prop planes on non-retractable floats, not fighter jets. There's a huge difference.
hewwo I was in service duwing uwwu2 but my jet engine was so dummy thicc that it burnt thwough all my fuel so I had to operate in close proximity to seapwane tenders and maintenance was twickier and more expensive than comparable carrier launched airplanes of the day even though they were piston props so I was phasedy-wasedy outy-wouty uwu
Ok, so for a start something like the F-16 with a massive, chin mounted intake would be stupid, as it would scoop up water on landing and sink the aircraft while also flooding the engine, potentially damaging it. Let's instead start with something purpose-built for the task like the Convair Sea Dart, as it was designed in the 50s. A major issue for the design is going to be size. Destroyers are small, and the catapult is going to take up a lot of room. So it's going to need folding wings. Now the mechanism for folding the wings, and keeping them watertight when the plane is on the water, is going to weigh quite a bit and will thus cut into range and performance. However, as the design is 10-20 years old by the 70s, we can assume that the J46 engines get replaced by something that isn't hot-running shit. Thus improving your overall speed and maybe getting you supersonic. As the nose is small, you won't be carrying a radar capable of guiding BVR missiles, at best you'll have a navigation and gun-laying radar. We can assume that you'll probably retain the pair of 20mms from the original sea dart, so it's not all bad. Hardpoints underneath the fuselage would create more drag when touching the water, which is very bad. So instead you're gonna want to mount them over the wing. Due to weight constraints your going to be limited to a pair of sidewinders.
So the design we are looking at is basically a bastard between and F-5 and a Sea Dart with folding wings and two over-wing hardpoints for sidewinders. It would have poor range, be limited to a single mission, and a maintenance pig on a tiny ass ship. And for all that space, you could just fit a flight deck for a heilo, a hanger for 1-2 of them, and a spot for some more CIWS guns and point-defence missiles like the Sea Sparrow. And the heilos can perform SAR, hunt submarines and possibly even engage aircraft in the case of the NUH-2C (which was used to test launch sidewinders and sparrows)
Meanwhile in the america it was more interservice rivalry that killed off the Seadart and Seamaster programs than practicality – the air force wanted total control over strategic nuclear bombers, and the navy wanted to have some nuclear strike capability ontop of submarine launched ICBMs and strategic bomber seaplanes so it was agreed upon that the navy wouldn't operate nuclear armed seaplanes and thus ended the seamster program and thus its escort fighter program, the seadart, was ended too.
A seaplane based international bomber/escort package honestly work as a cheap alternative to full carrier fleets, the problem is that tender fleets tend to introduce a similar single of weakness to deployed seaplane flights as carriers have and introduce similar deployment issues (you can in theory deploy seaplanes to an area without a tender at hand but they can't do much, so the seaplanes are never faster than the fastest tender you have)
>I was in service
No you weren't, you were an experimental aircraft that flew for the first time almost two years after WW2 ended. Other big problems (other than the fuel issues and being obsolete before they finished prototype stage) were that they performed a lot worse than land- and carrier based equivalents due to their fuselage shape among other things.
>over-wing hardpoints
Isn't this terrible for a plane? Or maybe the wings didn't have much of an aerodynamic profile to begin with?
Damn, this is pretty well thought out. Why doesn't the navy do this?
They don't ruin aerodynamics much more than underwing ones, but with normal planes they're harder to load and unload which is why they went out of fashion as wings got a bit thicker again and wheels were moved to the main fuselage off of wings and space for underwing pylons was opened up.
It does hamper the aerodynamic performance of the aircraft to an extent, but it's the only way I see to mount air-to-air missiles on the aircraft without destroying the aircraft upon landing. Under-wing hardpoints would cause a large amount of drag in the water, which would make landing very unsafe. Best case scenario is that the hardpoint gets ripped off, water floods into the aircraft, and there is a small window for the pilot to escape the aircraft before it sinks. Worst case scenario is that the aircraft goes out of control on landing, breaks apart and kills the pilot. Either one is not good.
I've already had an idea how to get a catapult onto a Spruance class in and
edit,
>the first section of the catapult can be piveted up/out and is supported with the triangular thingy structures which rotate down and link into locking points along the destroyers frames. Should be "sturdy enough" and enable the whole thing to not get in the way while docking and taking group photos.
>The part that extends over the bow "simply" folds down.
>The crane is designed to exactly rotate from the upper rear deck into the 0 position of the catapult.
You're a complete cretin
and if needed the entire catapult is slightly angled towards the starboard side in order to have the wing and the hardpoints clear the mark 45, which aren't over wing mounted because the airflow is supposed to be faster there.
The superstructure underneath the bridge could be redesigned, there'S nothing absolutely essential there anyways, or at least nothing that can't be anywhere else...
That's a terrible idea.
I know, but that's not the point here...
why is that?
>why is that?
>It would have poor range, be limited to a single mission, and a maintenance pig on a tiny ass ship. And for all that space, you could just fit a flight deck for a heilo, a hanger for 1-2 of them, and a spot for some more CIWS guns and point-defence missiles like the Sea Sparrow. And the heilos can perform SAR, hunt submarines and possibly even engage aircraft in the case of the NUH-2C (which was used to test launch sidewinders and sparrows)
>why is that?
Removing helicopters means severely restricting the vessel's ASW and maritime surveillance capabilities. Its also completely pointless.
STOVL is not inefficient compared to your idea. Sortie rates are much better and aircraft design is simpler. Salt water and supersonic aircraft do not mix well, doubly so when you add in RAM. The maintanence added would be fuckhuge.
To summarize:
Pros
>can put on smaller ships
Cons
>limited capability due to weight additions for water landings, aircraft shape for water landings, etc...
>caters to an outdated role for single-mission aircraft (interception/fleet defense) in an era where multirole is key.
>adds a fuck ton of time to launch/recovery compared to STOVL
>can’t be used in rough seas, meaning it’s often useless unless you're comfortable losing aircraft and potentially pilots to ditchings and bailouts.
>takes funds away from developing other aircraft that fill more roles.
CAM aircraft were limited in success and that was back when speciality aircraft were common, this shit would never work and isn’t worth pursuing for any military. Better long range SAMs would accomplish your goal far more effectively.
Raise the hangar roof a bit and swap the Seaking for a twin huey or a westland lynx, if we want jets, there is gonna be compromises, that's how it is.
On further "investigation" the whole " if needed the entire catapult is slightly angled" thing looks rather scary once visualized. But here's the twist, the pilot will never see it from picrelated angle, therefore he an't see how sketchy it looks
Helicopters are better for the majority of operations from a ship. Aircraft carriers exist for all other occasions.
It’s a fucking retarded idea. The goddamn ICBM with an Su-33 in the nose was better than this garbage.
add ramps to both sides to have two fighters launch at the same time!
Fantastic idea sir
>The goddamn ICBM with an Su-33 in the nose
Tell
me
MOAR!
Oh hey OP, I guess you've not heard of this cold war fuckery?
Deathtrap or work of genius? You decide.
>"Following the Falklands war, British Aerospace explored the Skyhook, a new technique to operate Harriers from smaller ships. Skyhook would have allowed the launching and landing of Harriers from smaller ships by holding the aircraft in midair by a crane; secondary cranes were to hold weapons for rapid re-arming. This would potentially have saved fuel and allowed for operations in rougher seas.[100] The system was marketed to foreign customers,[N 10] and it was speculated that Skyhook could be applied to large submarines such as the Russian Typhoon class, but the system attracted no interest."
Death trap. Definitely death trap.
This was done in two ways. Either you launch a fighter and just assume it's gonna ditch and you're gonna lose the plane (but it costs less than losing a ship) or you launch seaplanes with floats.
>tfw you're so cucked by the treasury you'd rather pluck aging airframes out of the air using rickety gantry cranes in salt spray conditions than build a proper carrier
I have indeed not heared about it. It is truely fascinating.
I don't question the qualities Harriers design, like I mentioned in my leading comment, I might add... But it's the early to mid development stage of vtols in the 60s to 70s in my scenario and there are tons of mediocre designs with huge drawbacks. all around the world. I want to design a space efficient solution that takes the slim chances of success on developing something like the Harrier into account.
Mentioning chutes once again, Soyuz capsules have an impact speed of a running man, I don't see why we can't have an aircraft that survives running into saltwater while sealing one intake and one nozzle, like I suggested with a hatch and a foam sprayer...
And to make sure maybe even a vacuum pump to check and strenghten the seal before impact sucking the turbine shut and if necessary activating an emergency foam sprayer?
Again, a normal plane, just painted different, with a big chute, some gadgets and no landing gear.
Sealing the engine or not, letting seawater touch your aircraft is a dumb idea. You're also counting on the aircraft floating, which presents another problem of keeping the thing light enough to float.
You're asking very specific requirements while asking for significant effort in redesigning aircraft(when the requirements force more maintenance work on the aircraft because of how specific they need to be), just to put them on a destroyer.
Might as well have a proper carrier at that point.
close to empty internal fuel tanks, the entire turbine volume and then we are starting counting in wing space, empty, or lightly filled bomb bays (where ther gear used to be) the cockpit...
>close to empty
>wanting to even let your pilots think of going as close as they can to zero fuel before they touchdown
You just know that some idiots will skirt the limit so close that eventually one of them runs out of fuel before they land, all for the e-peen of "I landed my plane with 1 liter of fuel left in the tank".