HMS Dreadnought 2050 Concepts - Rewriting the rules of Naval Combat

[andrew123]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/defence/11833043/Dreadnought-2050-Heres-what-the-Navy-of-the-future-could-be-sailing.html

 

 

Quote

Warships of the future could be built from ultra-strong plastic and graphene, armed with weapons that fire at the speed of light and operated by crews a fraction of the size needed by current vessels.

The proposals are just some of the ideas from naval architects and engineers who were tasked by the Royal Navy and Ministry of Defence to imagine how the future fleet might look.

The challenge was issued by Startpoint, the new procurement group which brings together experts in naval defence from government, military and industry to provide advanced technology against a backdrop of tightening budgets.

Under the title “Dreadnought 2050” – a reference to HMS Dreadnought, the warship that entered Royal Navy service in 1906 whose revolutionary technology meant she outclassed all previous vessels – the project sought outside the box ideas about systems future warships would be equipped with.

 

[NovaSilisko]

The "replace sensor masts with a giant drone" thing seems like a stupefyingly bad idea. It's not something you can quickly and easily retract in an emergency, it needs to touch down carefully and presumably be re-latched to the ship.

Also, why's there a ten meter high giant scissor lift on the back of the ship? The aircraft certainly don't look like they need the clearance.

[Spartwo]

I would guess the scissor lift raises up at a high speed to get the small drones into the air quickly.

[Randox]

As long as the sensor drone stays tethered to the ship, it would actually be very quick to retract in pretty much any sea state. All you have to do is haul it down with a winch while the drone keeps trying to hover; this keeps the tether tight and prevents the drone from being smacked into tiny pieces by the ship when it hits a wave. This would basically be the 'bear trap' system for landing helicopters Canada developed a while back, now used by many navies. I'm not sure what the advantage would be to a drone system though. It adds a lot of maintenance/point of failure to a critical system, and doesn't strike me as being much more durable, if any. Also, depending on the role, you still need to have proper helicopters, either for the load capacity, or people carrying capacity.

Still, I think the idea is less "this is what naval combat is going to look like" and more "here are some outside the box things that might happen", and I think that's certainly a worthy exercise.

 

Oh, and the scissor jack might be a turbulence thing? That hull shape looks like it could create some turbulence on the deck, and the scissor jack would clear it. I don't know if that's even a problem though.

[p1t1o]

Scissor lift is a bit weird, the only thing I could think of is that they are drones, not helicopters - perhaps they are light enough to be blown about by each others' downdraft? Hence the lift for takeoff/landing?

The airborne sensor "mast" is useful because it can be made much higher than a mast, and height = detection range = first shot = victory. Its possible that it can be made with a lower radar cross section as well (as long as those fans are obscured).

[kerbiloid]

If they yoke these drones together, they can tug this ship against the wind.