New LAC's

You're missing the point. Your mass and size figures are incredibly off. Your 5 CA grasers by itself would mass nearly as much as an entire Shrike. It is literally impossible to fit them on a LAC sized platform.

Look at MaxxQ's Star Knight renderings. Look at how big those energy mounts are. Do you seriously think that you can fit those on a LAC while still having room for little things like a power plant or a crew?

Brigade XO wrote:This would change the geomerty of the LAC since you would need to make it "relatively" simple to change out the modules. It is also going to change the geometry of LAC bays and probably the munitions feeding systems. Flexabilty is a good thing as long as it doesn't compromise the ability to meet mission needs.

That alone sinks this idea. It's like designing a new carrier airplane that can't be embarked on existing carriers; noone in their right mind would do this. The great innovation of the podnaught and CLAC is that their main battery weapons can be easily switched out for better versions, as long as they can be made to fit inside a few pretty broad design specs; I don't think that concept can scale down to a point where it can be applied at the LAC level.

You are missing my point.

Size the GRASER to the weapons volume. Size the graser so that it's volume (with capacitor rings and other support) is 1/5 the offensive weapons volume.

I had ESTIMATED that the correct size, the size that would make a graser 1/5 of the offensive weapons volume approximatly the size of a SMALL heavy cruiser. If you are right, the graser size that would be 1/5 of the total offensive weapons tonnage would be midway between the the grasers for a light and a heavy cruiser.

The key is that the graser would not necessarily be a CA graser.

the key is that the graser would be 1/5 of the total LAC offensive armament, whatever the actual tonnage would be.

Duckk wrote:You're missing the point. Your mass and size figures are incredibly off. Your 5 CA grasers by itself would mass nearly as much as an entire Shrike. It is literally impossible to fit them on a LAC sized platform.

Look at MaxxQ's Star Knight renderings. Look at how big those energy mounts are. Do you seriously think that you can fit those on a LAC while still having room for little things like a power plant or a crew?

As I understand it, the thing the new 'battle carrier' is designed to fix is the ammo endurance of LACs in a longer battle. A way to bring them in to reload during lulls in a long combat. But you also want the maximum flexability out of your LACs.

Since swapping out a very large weapons system like a grazer seems unworkable, why not have two types of LAC's. A grazer LAC with a some CMs and one to two external hard points. And a CM LAC with lots of CM storage and two external hard points. You put a flat pack pod on the hard points.

Yes, it is kind of a revision to how LACs were first built, but the flat pack pods have come a long way since then. You get the choice of loading up with Mk-16 or Mk-23 pods or both. You can fly through a shoal of pods to rearm since the pods have the tractors. You would not have to fly into a ship to rearm with missiles, with the exception of CMs. And if you make a CM pod for the LACs, for the really heavy missile environments, even then you could reload from a shoal of pods.

Grasers have a minimum viable size. There is no such thing as a graser one-fifth the size of a Shrike's graser. If they were scalable in such a fashion, the RHN would have built their Cimeterre-A with them. Instead, they were forced to use a laser. Or for that matter, you'd see all warships regularly mount large numbers of grasers, instead of forced to utilize mixed energy batteries (in the prewar classes). Warships took mixed batteries in order to balance number of mounts against firepower, but that's contradictory against the idea of arbitrarily scalable grasers. Therefor, you aren't going to get grasers as small as you're saying.

darrell wrote:You are missing my point.

Size the GRASER to the weapons volume. Size the graser so that it's volume (with capacitor rings and other support) is 1/5 the offensive weapons volume.

I had ESTIMATED that the correct size, the size that would make a graser 1/5 of the offensive weapons volume approximatly the size of a SMALL heavy cruiser. If you are right, the graser size that would be 1/5 of the total offensive weapons tonnage would be midway between the the grasers for a light and a heavy cruiser.

The key is that the graser would not necessarily be a CA graser.

the key is that the graser would be 1/5 of the total LAC offensive armament, whatever the actual tonnage would be.

darrell wrote:You are missing my point.

Size the GRASER to the weapons volume. Size the graser so that it's volume (with capacitor rings and other support) is 1/5 the offensive weapons volume.

I had ESTIMATED that the correct size, the size that would make a graser 1/5 of the offensive weapons volume approximatly the size of a SMALL heavy cruiser. If you are right, the graser size that would be 1/5 of the total offensive weapons tonnage would be midway between the the grasers for a light and a heavy cruiser.

The key is that the graser would not necessarily be a CA graser.

the key is that the graser would be 1/5 of the total LAC offensive armament, whatever the actual tonnage would be.

Duckk wrote:You're missing the point. Your mass and size figures are incredibly off. Your 5 CA grasers by itself would mass nearly as much as an entire Shrike. It is literally impossible to fit them on a LAC sized platform.

Look at MaxxQ's Star Knight renderings. Look at how big those energy mounts are. Do you seriously think that you can fit those on a LAC while still having room for little things like a power plant or a crew?

Energy weapons don't scale linearlly. A BC's lasers are less than twice the diameter of a DD's, and probably mass less that 3x as much once you account for ancillary systems. (compared lasers because DD's don't mount grasers; at least not the ones old enough to appear in Jayne's with the weapons's specs)

The Shrike's Graser probably takes up 75% of it's offensive weapons volume. If you tried to shrink it's energy weapon down to only 20% of it's offensive weapons volume you'd need a 4x reduction in volume and wouldn't be looking at a CA graser; you'd probably be looking at something like 60% the power of a DD's laser!

The big question here is, what problems do these modular LACs solve that current designs have?

The answer, of course, is none. LACs have a very strictly defined niche in the tactical and strategic planning of the Navys that use them; They've taken a few roles traditionally assigned to Destroyers or Cruisers in the fleet screen, they're formidable ambushers and scouts, and they're more than adequate for basic system defence duty. Making them "modular" buys you nothing; it doesn't make them any better at handling the mission profiles they're currently flying, and it doesn't open up new missions for them to do. At the same time, the infrastructure adjustments that would have to be made to make them work means that the total number of deployable ships goes down drastically without a corresponding increase in capability.

Take all that together, and it's pretty much a certainty that the RMN or RHN will be stuck with LAC wings composed of a number of specialty designs for the foreseeable future.

Jonathan_S wrote:

darrell wrote:Size the GRASER to the weapons volume. Size the graser so that it's volume (with capacitor rings and other support) is 1/5 the offensive weapons volume.

The Shrike's Graser probably takes up 75% of it's offensive weapons volume. If you tried to shrink it's energy weapon down to only 20% of it's offensive weapons volume you'd need a 4x reduction in volume and wouldn't be looking at a CA graser; you'd probably be looking at something like 60% the power of a DD's laser!

The biggest problem with the idea of reducing the size of a LAC's energy weapons is that you are also reducing the power of those weapons. What made the Shrike a "super LAC" was the power of it's graser -- big enough that it could hurt,or even kill, a capital ship. A DD scale graser, if such could be built, wouldn't even mar the smart-paint of ships the Shrike could kill. It wouldn't matter how many you managed to mount on a LAC if none could damage your target.

The E wrote:The big question here is, what problems do these modular LACs solve that current designs have?

The answer, of course, is none. LACs have a very strictly defined niche in the tactical and strategic planning of the Navys that use them; They've taken a few roles traditionally assigned to Destroyers or Cruisers in the fleet screen, they're formidable ambushers and scouts, and they're more than adequate for basic system defence duty. Making them "modular" buys you nothing; it doesn't make them any better at handling the mission profiles they're currently flying, and it doesn't open up new missions for them to do. At the same time, the infrastructure adjustments that would have to be made to make them work means that the total number of deployable ships goes down drastically without a corresponding increase in capability.

Take all that together, and it's pretty much a certainty that the RMN or RHN will be stuck with LAC wings composed of a number of specialty designs for the foreseeable future.

A CLAC can carry around 100 LACs. But each of the 3 designs is best at one role (Katana anti-LAC, anti-missile; Ferret anti-DD, raid support; Shrike anti-cruiser). Currently you usually carry a mix, and that has to be decided when the CLAC leaves on it's cruise. That mix give flexibility to handle multiple combat scenarios; but it means almost by definition that you don't have the optimal loadout for any given mission.

The weapons modules should be significantly smaller than a LAC, so you should be able to carry the 100 LACs plus a number of spare modules. So if your mission today is anti-missile screening you pull the heavy graser packs (Shrike analogs) and replace them with the anti-missile pack (all CMs or Vipers; Katana analog). So now instead of having, say, 20 Katanas, 40 Ferrets, and 40 Shrikes deployed you've got all 100 LACs (or at least more of them) optimized towards anti-missile.

You could do the same by carrying all Katanas (or at least a mix of Katanas and Ferrets) but then you're in trouble if you need to perform an anti-cruiser strike before having a chance to return to base and swap LAC wings around. The modules should let you optimize loadouts for each fight, rather that for each cruise. Or similarly if you've got a LAC base defensing a system modules let you tailor your capabilities based on recon data for each raid. Not going against somebody carrying lots of missiles, or a CLAC? Swap the katana analogs for more Shrike or Ferret analogs.
(Now whether this flexibility is worth the trouble is a different question; but I see some flexibility advantages)

Jonathan_S wrote:

The E wrote:The big question here is, what problems do these modular LACs solve that current designs have?

The weapons modules should be significantly smaller than a LAC, so you should be able to carry the 100 LACs plus a number of spare modules.

each weapons module may be smaller than a LAC, say 10% of LAC volume when installed, but a full set of Shrike, Ferret, and Katana modules (@ five/LAC) is going to run 150% of LAC Volume. Therefore each full set is going to displace 1.5 LACs; every two modular LACs with associated modules takes as much space as five normal LACs. I don't think reducing LAC load from 100 to 40 is going to increase combat capability much.

Jonathan_S wrote:(Now whether this flexibility is worth the trouble is a different question; but I see some flexibility advantages)

I suspect that "weapons modules" will go the way of "FAST Packs" for the F-15C/D went. The aircraft still have the theoretical capability for the "sensors" and "tactical" part of that FAST acronym but the only (occasional) use is the "Fuel" part -- as in "Conformal Fuel Tanks."