Shipbucket

I'd like a better view of the dorsal side before I comment.

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I saw that in the ship bucket version and like the new tail.
I would be very careful adapting aircraft propulsion based on air to naval propulsion based on water. Besides the obvious pressure and density differences you have to remember water does not compress (at least not easily) and water is generally full of a lot more stuff (marine life, suspended particles) than air.
Oh I have done little research on this, just leaning on my naval engineering experiance.
I have serious doubts about its feasibility matched with the requirements of a pressure hull. Granted we have weapons bays that penetrate the hull and are loaded and unloaded (sometimes explosively) but these are usually purpose build enclosures for one thing, mostly don't have pass through access to the rest of use hull (the obvious exception being torpedo tubes) and most importantly do not hold human cargo. I am not sure what the mission modules are for but if it's just UUAVs you could just adapt that to a general use VLS or torpedoe tube for deployment. Perhaps an intel signals package could be useful? I wouldn't want to use a sub for mine hunting...

All and all special ops is probably what those modules would support more often than not and I would think a back mounted module as is used now to be a superior option than dedicating an entire section of every boat to a mission module space most will never use 99% of the time. You could probably put a dedicated wet lock in that spot for half the space and call it a day, use the rest for something else.

This. I could see a 4 block of D-5 sized tubes (which is to the base unit for the US and UK SSBN-X programs), with some space around them internally, but large hull cut outs are Very Bad Things™ on submarines.

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I like this idea. Judging from what I've seen online and in Janes, the D-5 Missile Tube would be a good basis for my modules, since deterence is one of the missions the NX-AS can be tasked with. I've seen pictures of the modified Virginia VLS system that looks like a 6 shooter arrangment in a large cyclinder and I could have the SDV in a similiar cylinder with a lockout chamber.

The big problem would be ballasting with the different loads. Ideally the mission packages would have similiar weight and weight distribution. But reality is never the ideal. So...

I don't think the idea was to use those D-5 sized cuttouts for actual ballistic missiles, but rather leverage the engineering behind those standard sized openings to create your mission module area. There is a lot of other equipment that goes into a SSBN's kit besides the actual missile tubes that your SSN will not have, or if it does makes it no longer an SSN.

What I would do is leverage the SSGN tubes which are themselves a varient of D-5 tubes but are already optimized for the multipe Tomahawk inserts. Preserve this capability to give your SSN a large stike capability but perhape optimize them to accept other modules as well? This is basically how the SSGN tubes are used now actually. If you really want to double load this thing for stategic deterance you can reintroduce the nuclear tiped Tomahawk.

Like this?

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Morten812

Morten Jensen
Randers
Denmark

Traffic Manager

Yep.

This has way more thunderbirds stuff than I ever imagined. But obviously some very smart people are looking into it.

As I understand it, there are many factors to consider.

• As one would expect, the wing-like American-pattern sail acts like, well, a wing. The center of rotation when the submarine is turning is around amidships as I recall, and the sail is well forward of that. Therefore, it has a local angle of attack and tends to roll the submarine outward of the turn. This "snap roll" is a very annoying problem, and tends to limit maneuverability.
• I think/suspect the wake of an American-pattern sail is rather tighter and better defined, which means the acoustic interaction between the screw and the sail is stronger.
• The nearly-right-angle interface between the sail and the hull is not as hydrodynamically favorable as a well-optimized smooth interface.

On the other hand...

• The nearly-right-angle interface is more hydrodynamically favorable than a badly-optimized smooth interface, and it's a lot easier to do right. For just this reason, many older civilian light aircraft have no fillet at all between the wing root and the slab-sided fuselage. If you want to avoid a shit-ton of expensive tank testing, you may want to avoid the Russian-pattern sail. There's a relevant comparison with the bulbous Yamato bow here.
• It's very hard to have an Akula-style sail with sail-mounted dive planes. The USN favored sail-mounted planes for many years for... reasons which I can't exactly remember right now. A variety of control dynamics aspects.
• It's simply cheaper to build, and to build precisely. An American sail is all one-dimensional curves, rather than the compound curves of the Russian pattern.

As computer controls become more accepted in the USN submarine arm, as CFD becomes cheaper and better, and as materials fabrication and processing gets better, the Russian-pattern sail becomes more and more attractive. This certainly doesn't mean that the American-pattern sail was the wrong choice, say, twenty years ago. There are many competing factors, as with any interesting engineering problem, and the optimum solution is not always obvious.

Initial render of standard D-5 missile tube cut outs along the dorsal section of the sub. Modeling isn't complete just some roughed in shapes. This configuration shows 6 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles.