Military to civilian ship conversion

How hard would it be to convert a Military ship to Civilian transport?
Plug missile ports, pull some or all energy weapons, upgrade life support, upgrade electronic boards, Upgrade communications, etc...

It seems like most of the old school military ships, captured or mothballed could easily be converted to civilian or 'coastal' duties quite easily for a lot less money than building a new ship.

Internal missile magazine space alone would free up a huge amount of space for civilian uses.

The Kingdom could add 300 to 600 SD sized "cruise ships". Military wedged, Fast for commercial ships, well defended for commercial ships, etc... Keep and upgrade defensive systems, CM and PD, Sidewalls and armoured hulls. Perhaps not the latest systems, but something that is useful.

Most of these SD already have restaurants, movie theaters, etc... Lay some carpet, upgrade the decor, Gymnasiums already exist, swimming pools etc... Could even fill missile tubes with windows and make staterooms or promenades.

Given the new territories that have opened up 300-600 transport / Cruiseships could be very handy.


Deploy several hundred Empire "coast guard" Destroyers / Cruisers. Anti Piracy / Customs control duties. Lerm / Erm missiles etc... Battle cruisers for system defense in small systems, using Erm missiles, in Silesia and Talbot.

No.

Military ships, especially SDs, are intricately subdivided and compartmentalized, with cofferdams and bulkheads of the strongest armor that humans have learned how to make. You know, the stuff that was such a massive pain to cut through that in SVW it made more sense to pull Nike's reactor by cutting up from below, though dozens of decks worth of compartments and circuitry/control runs, than to try to go through the armor?

You are simply *not* going to be reconfiguring the internal anatomy of a ship of the wall in the sort of way you propose, at least not for any remotely economical cost in terms of money or effort. You are not converting graser bays or missile tubes to staterooms without cutting armor. You are not converting missile magazines into staterooms without cutting armor. And you are not, in general, grossly rearranging the internal compartments of a SD (e.g. to create cargo bays) without cutting armor. And if you're cutting armor, you're spending *enormous* amounts of time and effort in yard hands, which makes these conversions the exact opposite of 'quite easy'. (And where you get the bizarre idea that SDs already have *restaurants* and *movie theaters* in them, I have no clue.)

And even if you could wave a magic wand and instantly transform these obsolete wallers into the ships you propose, they would still never be worth using. Military tech ships are *expensive* to operate, *especially* the old manpower-intensive designs. All that military tech - the defensive armament, those military-grade propulsion systems and sidewalls and rad/particle shielding, the massively-redundant life support and grossly overkill (for a civilian design) multiple reactors - all of it is not only expensive to build, it's expensive to *operate* and maintain. Not to mention the salaries of all the highly-trained military personnel you'll be needing to operate those systems. Even the Hauptmann cartel only operated a handful of armed liners. Those were essentially only civilian designs with a few military addons, and they *still* needed to run with nearly full passenger loads to show a profit. Where on earth are you going to get such an enormous demand for passenger service to justify *several hundred* (enormously more expensive to operate) SD-liner frankensteins?

And where do you propose to carry out these conversions? After all, if I recall correctly, Manticore and Grayson currently have a grand total of exactly zippo building slips between them. And even if you'd want to ship them to Haven or the Andermani, why on earth would they want to waste their yard capacity on refitting obsolete white elephant SDs into pointless civilian conversions, instead of, oh, *building SDs of their own*?

And where do you propose to get the military-trained crew to run these things? Sure, they won't need as large of crews as they used to after you rip out their offensive systems, but they'll still need massively larger crews than regular civilian designs. (Especially if you're suggesting this as a use for the 'old-style' manpower-intensive solly designs.) Manticore and Grayson are still scrambling to fill the gigantic holes left in their personnel ranks by oyster bay, and while Haven and the Andermani didn't take the same hits, they're also still commissioning new construction that needs crewing. Why should any of them divert desperately-needed trained military personnel to crew these abominations?

And most importantly, why the hell do you even *need* this monstrosity? As usual, you have failed to answer (or even contemplate) the question of 'what *need* are these ships intended to fill?' Any of the new Manticoran territories don't need armed liners - those systems are now patrolled by LACs and light warships and are thoroughly safe from piracy. Silesia doesn't need armed liners anymore either - now that the systems are under Manticoran and Andermani management, they can actually be patrolled by honest armed forces and will, again, be safe from piracy. And in general, any of the more hardscrabble sparsely-settled areas that will be prone to piracy won't have high enough demand for passenger or cargo services to justify deploying one of these (extremely expensive to operate) conversions. So where are they supposed to go? What environment will actually both justify their ridiculously expensive/overkill military capabilities while also allowing them to profitably operate? In short, why the hell should anyone bother building these things even if it *were* remotely practical?

Warship:




Freighter:




Spot the differences.

MuonNeutrino wrote: Even the Hauptmann cartel only operated a handful of armed liners. Those were essentially only civilian designs with a few military addons, and they *still* needed to run with nearly full passenger loads to show a profit. Where on earth are you going to get such an enormous demand for passenger service to justify *several hundred* (enormously more expensive to operate) SD-liner frankensteins.

And those Atlas-class liners were only BC sized, and hard to keep booked up. Scale them up to SD sized, 16x the size, and you'd never get them half full with paying fairs. Guaranteed money loser.
The few times in the 20th century where warships got converted to carry freight they were wildly inefficient. I'm thinking of the destroyer conversions - even after pulling a boiler to make them a fast transport they were expensive and sucked down fuel. In special circumstances it can be worth having a few of them, but only where military imperatives override normal efficiency concerns.

Jonathan_S wrote:

MuonNeutrino wrote: Even the Hauptmann cartel only operated a handful of armed liners. Those were essentially only civilian designs with a few military addons, and they *still* needed to run with nearly full passenger loads to show a profit. Where on earth are you going to get such an enormous demand for passenger service to justify *several hundred* (enormously more expensive to operate) SD-liner frankensteins.

And those Atlas-class liners were only BC sized, and hard to keep booked up. Scale them up to SD sized, 16x the size, and you'd never get them half full with paying fairs. Guaranteed money loser.
The few times in the 20th century where warships got converted to carry freight they were wildly inefficient. I'm thinking of the destroyer conversions - even after pulling a boiler to make them a fast transport they were expensive and sucked down fuel. In special circumstances it can be worth having a few of them, but only where military imperatives override normal efficiency concerns.

Very true on the Destroyer conversions. The US Navy during WWII had several of them. Most were converted either during construction (DE conversion) or functionally obsolete (DD conversion). IIRC the DE's could carry roughly 2 platoons of troops for 7-10 days maximum and the DD's could carry 1 company for 10 days maximum. They were most often used in conjunction with other amphib operation by seizing other nearby objectives. The ships were so crowded it was said if the man on the bottom rack wanted to flip over from his front to his back the other men in the bunks above him had to get out of there racks first.

Jonathan_S wrote:The few times in the 20th century where warships got converted to carry freight they were wildly inefficient. I'm thinking of the destroyer conversions - even after pulling a boiler to make them a fast transport they were expensive and sucked down fuel. In special circumstances it can be worth having a few of them, but only where military imperatives override normal efficiency concerns.

In general, the only circumstances where someone might need to do this (noone in their right mind will ever want to) are situations where the need for cargo carrying capacity so vastly outstrips the available capacity that any capacity (no matter how marginal) becomes not only useful, but necessary.

The E wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The few times in the 20th century where warships got converted to carry freight they were wildly inefficient. I'm thinking of the destroyer conversions - even after pulling a boiler to make them a fast transport they were expensive and sucked down fuel. In special circumstances it can be worth having a few of them, but only where military imperatives override normal efficiency concerns.

In general, the only circumstances where someone might need to do this (noone in their right mind will ever want to) are situations where the need for cargo carrying capacity so vastly outstrips the available capacity that any capacity (no matter how marginal) becomes not only useful, but necessary.

Or if your infrastructure is so wrecked and your enemy's commerce raiding tactics are so insanely successful that there is a dangerously low supply of materials and metals.

IOW, if necessity really became the surrogate mother of invention.

cthia wrote:Or if your infrastructure is so wrecked and your enemy's commerce raiding tactics are so insanely successful that there is a dangerously low supply of materials and metals.

That is not materially different from the case I described There's a demand for carrying capacity that cannot be matched out of existing ressources, thus new ressources have to be developed in order to meet the demand, even if those ressources are at best marginal.

(In the context of the Honorverse, and particularly Manticore, your case isn't a thing though: To disrupt the flow of raw materials to the Manticoran shipyards and stations, an attacker would have to be able to operate within the Manticoran asteroid belts with impunity, a situation that I think is highly unlikely)

The E wrote:

cthia wrote:Or if your infrastructure is so wrecked and your enemy's commerce raiding tactics are so insanely successful that there is a dangerously low supply of materials and metals.

That is not materially different from the case I described There's a demand for carrying capacity that cannot be matched out of existing ressources, thus new ressources have to be developed in order to meet the demand, even if those ressources are at best marginal.

(In the context of the Honorverse, and particularly Manticore, your case isn't a thing though: To disrupt the flow of raw materials to the Manticoran shipyards and stations, an attacker would have to be able to operate within the Manticoran asteroid belts with impunity, a situation that I think is highly unlikely)

Or with malignancy. As in the probable case with the Lenny Dets.

Hence the adjective "insanely" successful.

another reason the hauptman armed crusie liners worked was that they were being used mainly for the Silesia run where the odds of meeting a pirate were such that people were willing to pay the extra to improve the chances of making it to their destination safely.

from the way i read the text ev this pirate's haven existed in Silesia and almost nowhere else so using the same cruise liners for travel to say the Andermani's would not have been cost effective.