DG/AEGIS

Colombiamike:

Spruance fit 61/64 VLS cells in a much smaller space than is available here. Recall Tico went from Mk 26 Mod 1 (44 rounds) to a 61/64 cell VLS block. DG/Aegis was Mk 26 Mod 2 (64 rounds), and could be expected to have a commensurately larger VLS block replacement. I believe Timothy went with 80 cells here. 96 might be possible, but one starts to run into weight issues as well as volume. Certainly 64 cells is not a great deal for SPY-1A.
Note the replacement of SPY-1 with an ahead-of-schedule active-array set. These are, as I recall, often lighter overall than a PESA but much more of the weight is concentrated high up, in the arrays themselves. This replacement drove the removal of SPG-62 (which would be nice to keep as a backup) and the SPS-49. With the removal of such, it's awfully tempting to remove the large and heavily-built lattice in favor of something much lighter. The total weight is not huge, but the moment arm certainly is.
Likewise, SM-3 is apparently ahead of schedule in this world.
I don't disagree about the 57mm. It's a lot better than nothing, but I'm kind of in the tank for 76/62 in this role.
Agreed about the MGs, but those probably ought to be present on the initial drawing too.

Colombamike wrote:

I can not resist

Oy! Where do I start?

The Mast
- The old mast had to support:
  - SPS-49 (HEAVY, and needed an extra waveguide outside of the mast proper)
  - TACAN (old)
  - LAMPS Comms
  - A surface search set
- The New one only has to support
  - IFF
  - TACAN (modern)
  - LAMPS Comms
  - A surface search set
- By using this style of mast I can pass it off as a modern mast
VLS
- She carries SM-3 because this is circa 2008, at her end of life
- In her Mk-26 mode she had the full Mk-26 Mod 2. This takes up enough space that I could fit 10 eight-cell Mk-41 packs (in a five long, two abreast configuration)
I picked the Mk-110 57mm gun over the Mk-75 as I guessed that the ships would be test platforms for the gun and that gun was introduced after the Mk-75 procuement would have stopped. I think it gives the ship a nice flavor (and we're firmly in Crazy Timothy World™ with this ship).
I didn't add any Mk-38s, Mk-19s, or GAU-16s because I figured as a test ship, she's stay close to home almost all of the time. and thus not need such a fit.

And Erik beat me to most of my points.

By the Way - Mike whenever you save an image the superstructure always takes on a green tint. You may want to get that fixed.

_________________
𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐍𝐄𝐓- 𝑻𝒐 𝑪𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝑺𝒐𝒍𝒗𝒆

Ok, hang on here, guys! Let's see when these ships (number tally unknown!?) were to be commissioned. The Spruances were all commissioned during the mid- to late seventies, and they've all gone. Those ships were so much more capable than this proposed design would've been, so it begs the very serious question: why would the USN, in the fiscal down-sizing period of the late Clinton and G W Bush era have retained these at all??? I offer that they'd go the same way as the Virginias, Leahys, Belknaps and (so ever sad for such fine ships...) the Californias! I did, in fact attempt a SLEP on the South Carolina and she turned out pretty decent, if I may say so, but then the very contention for retaining her and her sister (since the Virginias were already scrapped) was that she was nuclear powered, quite commodious to embark a Fleet Commander and his (her?!?) staff etc. These 'copact' Aegis are not, and, considering that the USN already have relegated three of the earlier 'Ticos' to the scrap yards, I see no viable, realistic future for these vessels post, say 1999/2000. - So, I'd suggest to limit any SLEP overhaul etc to that propable time period, and that's entail no VLS, no SM-3s, no advanced SPQ-9 in liue of the old ones etc. And, as for outfitting the ships with the SPS-49 already by 1979, I believe there'd be a 'waiting period' since the new, planned Aegis cruisers surely would be prioritized. - I do notice, though, Timothy, that you're aware of the possibility of an early withdrawal from the active fleet list.

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My Avatar:Петр Алексеевич Безобразов (Petr Alekseevich Bezobrazov), Вице-адмирал , царская ВМФ России(1845-1906) - I sign my drawings as Ari Saarinen

bezobrazov wrote:

Ok, hang on here, guys! Let's see when these ships (number tally unknown!?) were to be commissioned. The Spruances were all commissioned during the mid- to late seventies, and they've all gone. Those ships were so much more capable than this proposed design would've been, so it begs the very serious question: why would the USN, in the fiscal down-sizing period of the late Clinton and G W Bush era have retained these at all??? I offer that they'd go the same way as the Virginias, Leahys, Belknaps and (so ever sad for such fine ships...) the Californias! I did, in fact attempt a SLEP on the South Carolina and she turned out pretty decent, if I may say so, but then the very contention for retaining her and her sister (since the Virginias were already scrapped) was that she was nuclear powered, quite commodious to embark a Fleet Commander and his (her?!?) staff etc. These 'compact' Aegis are not, and, considering that the USN already have relegated three of the earlier 'Ticos' to the scrap yards, I see no viable, realistic future for these vessels post, say 1999/2000. - So, I'd suggest to limit any SLEP overhaul etc to that probable time period, and that's entail no VLS, no SM-3s, no advanced SPQ-9 in lieu of the old ones etc. And, as for outfitting the ships with the SPS-49 already by 1979, I believe there would be a 'waiting period' since the new, planned Aegis cruisers surely would be prioritized. - I do notice, though, Timothy, that you're aware of the possibility of an early withdrawal from the active fleet list.

Excellent questions. I presupposed that the initial build would be quite small - on the order of just two or three hulls total. As for keeping the hulls as long as I showed there, well I admit I did stretch things a bit, but they have one thing over Spruances, Leahys, Virginias, Belknaps, and Californias - AEGIS. This, combined with the limited number of hulls using common equipment (Similar to that aboard the Perrys and early Ticos) means that they get to stick around longer in a testing heavy roll. I'd foresee them getting a light refit (the hanger adjustment and VLS) in the early 90's and a SLEP (with the new mast, and electronics) in the 99-01 timeframe. The Spruances themselves could have probably gone on another decade or so if they had been properly cared for in the 90's, so I'm not totally in left field with my hull life of 33 years (1976-2009). I do however admit that I was playing around to see what she would end up looking like when I came up with this.

As for the SPS-49, that was a part of the original hull plan, and would have been included on the original build, and I remind you that all of the OHPs received SPS-49 when built (1977 on), so it's not a stretch at all to say that the premier anti-air warfare ship of her day (1976) would receive this radar.

One issue that shows up here on this ship relates to the SM-3. I would have loved to have shown the SM-3 Block 1, but it's externally identical to the SM-2ER Block 4, hence my placing of the SM-3 Block 2+ on the sheet (the same problem is going to crop up with the SM-6)

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bezobrazov wrote:

Those ships were so much more capable than this proposed design would've been

Correction: strictly speaking the Sprucans were no more or less capable than DG/AEGIS because they have completely different missions in mind. The Sprucan design was adapted into two different DD(G)X designs, sure (Kidd/Ticonderoga) but were anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare vessels, while DG/AEGIS was strictly an anti-air vessel (hence its sole armament being a Mk 26 twin-arm GLMS). The capabilities of DG/AEGIS far outstrip Spruance as an anti-air vessel - and Spruance far outstrips the proposed DG/AEGIS as an ASW vessel.

Though I do agree that DG/AEGIS, if it had been built, probably would've been withdrawn and scrapped in the 90s. Actually, DG/AEGIS eventually evolved into CGSN, then to CGN(X), and then canceled altogether in favor of Ticonderoga. But as such, as an aging conventionally-powered destroyer with at this point equally aging equipment, and with Ticos and Burkes, it likely would've went the same as its Belknap/Leahy contemporaries.

Question to klagldsf: What is a Sprucan??? I suppose you refer to

Spruance. Let's keep the names in their correct form, shall we?!? - But you're right about the possible service life of the ships in question. One thing TimothyC didn't address although acknowledging that these are interesting questions, is the fiscal aspect of it, and from that point of view the Aegis austere DDG would've been in close danger of being deleted from service, even beginning in the mid-90s. Remember that the highly capable CV America (CV-66), inspite of having undergone an extensive mid-life refit at the beginning of the 1990s, was withdawn from service after one last stint to the Med as part of the CVBG that subdued Serbia, in 1996. Now she lies on the bottom of the Atlantic, being the first super-carrier ever to have been sunk...

At risk of belaboring the point, any universe in which a late-70s ship receives a major electronics refit is not subject to such minor historical points as when an elderly carrier was sinkex'd. If such systems are in the cards, then we're in a different world where money flows freely.

erik_t, I'm not quite sure I followed your entire reasoning, but it appears we're in agreement: money matters - a lot!

bezobrazov wrote:

Question to klagldsf: What is a Sprucan???

It's one of these

[ img ]

Quote:

Let's keep the names in their correct form, shall we?!?

lolwhy.jpg?

It's pretty clear what I'm talking about, you clearly got it. I can refer to it as DD-964 class and it's still in "correct form," just a little more ambiguous to what I'm talking about especially to those who don't bother to memorize hull numbers.

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