[HN Gopher] USN AN-1 Submarine Aircraft Carrier (2018)
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USN AN-1 Submarine Aircraft Carrier (2018)
Author : luu
Score : 116 points
Date : 2021-01-19 23:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hisutton.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hisutton.com)
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| I imagine we'll see a return to this idea now that drones are
| becoming more ubiquitous.
| krisoft wrote:
| It is already a thing. Cruise missiles are basically pilotless
| airplanes. They have wings, they have air breathing engines,
| they navigate and manoeuvre like an airplane (bank to turn most
| of them for example).
|
| Cruise missile carrying submarines are a staple of the US
| strategy. Every significant engagement starts by such a
| submarine rolling in and unleashing the cruise missiles to
| suppress the enemy air defences. And again the cruise missiles
| are pilotless aircraft in everything but name.
| saberdancer wrote:
| Cruise missiles do not return to base. Also I don't know of
| any cruise missile that is used for reconnaissance but I may
| be uninformed. Are any cruise missiles launched and then
| flown around until you notice something of interest to sink?
|
| Problem with using a cruise missile for recon is that it
| looks exactly like a missile.
| tyingq wrote:
| _" I don't know of any cruise missile that is used for
| reconnaissance"_
|
| https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-navy-raytheon-
| de...
|
| Sounds like it "works", but I don't know that it was
| practical enough for any real field use.
| openasocket wrote:
| > Are any cruise missiles launched and then flown around
| until you notice something of interest to sink?
|
| Sort of, there are loitering munitions which essentially
| hang out until they find a target and then engage it. The
| IAI Harpy from the late 80s is a pretty good example. It's
| an anti-radiation missile, meaning it locks on to enemy
| radar signals and uses that to home in and destroy them,
| degrading enemy air defenses. Usually an aircraft would
| have to detect an enemy radar signal and then fire the
| missile. With the Harpy, you simply fire it and it hangs
| around, potentially for 2 hours, waiting until it detects
| an radar signal, at which point it engages.
|
| The tomahawk missile in theory could be capable of
| loitering behavior. It already has a 2-way datalink,
| allowing it to send information back to a controller and
| the controller to send commands to the missile. It even has
| a camera and can transmit images back to the controller,
| which I believe is used for bomb damage assessment. All you
| would need to do is add some sort of seeker device to the
| missile and some software modifications.
| platz wrote:
| AFAICT, the planes AN-1 planes might as well not either;
| the article doesn't mention landing at all.
| stretchcat wrote:
| The article mentions they were VTOL, e.g. vertical take
| off _and landing_. They were to land vertically on their
| tails. It 's not a very good idea, particularly with the
| technology of the time, but a few projects were
| experimenting with it. The X-13 Vertijet is an example
| from the 1950s.
| nix23 wrote:
| >Are any cruise missiles launched and then flown around
| until you notice something of interest to sink?
|
| No they don't, but they can change the target in flight,
| flight evasive maneuvers, coordinate each others and so on,
| but they are missiles and not Drones.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It's a flexible distinction. Loitering munitions and
| combined ISR+kinetic portable weapons are a major focus
| area for medium to small militaries, and consequently as
| a product for arms exporters.
|
| The key benefit is providing tactical situational
| awareness for militaries that may not have such a
| capability at the strategic level (e.g. optical
| satellites, high endurance drones, air superiority).
|
| Israeli and Turkish systems were used in the recent
| Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering_munition
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9V9mbC-Esmg
| nix23 wrote:
| >And again the cruise missiles are pilotless aircraft in
| everything but name.
|
| No you mean drones not missiles, an aircraft is not made to
| explode, one exception:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokosuka_MXY-7_Ohka
| stretchcat wrote:
| The Germans also had the Fi 103R which their test pilots
| flew a few times but was never put into combat.
|
| As for the reuse of drones, the first drone was a radio
| controlled de Havilland DH.82 (named _Queen Bee_.) This
| drone, and most subsequent drones until fairly recently,
| was a gunnery target drone. It 's job was to be shot down
| in training, and was only made to fly once (like a drone
| bee, which dies after mating) The term 'drone' implied a
| single terminal flight until some years later, when it also
| came to refer to reusable unmanned aircraft in general.
| m463 wrote:
| > Cruise missile carrying submarines
|
| At first glance I interpreted this the other way.
|
| Yet it still might be interesting to drop a reconnaissance
| submarine from a passing cruise missile.
| munificent wrote:
| _> At first glance I interpreted this the other way._
|
| This is why English has a guideline that compound
| adjectives preceding a noun should usually be hyphenated:
|
| Cruise-missile-carrying submarines.
| VLM wrote:
| Cruise missile delivered mine is something to think
| about... Plenty of close in guns and missiles to prevent
| direct attack, yet you could very rapidly area-denial an
| area with cruise missile delivered mines.
|
| If a naval patrol covers more than two hours per leg, they
| can deny incoming missiles from directly hitting a carrier
| or whatever but they can't deny missiles incoming 100 miles
| away at the same time. Either way it prevents the carrier
| from operating in the area.
| WJW wrote:
| Drones launched from submarines are already a thing:
| https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/12/07/the-us-navy-wan...
|
| They use tubes for launching flares and buoys that the subs are
| already equipped with, and perhaps in the future also the
| larger vertical missile tubes for bigger drones.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| i wonder how much money gets wasted on these failed
| explorations/projects.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Probably not a lot, paper is cheap. Typically a concept like
| this is explored by a team of 6-10 engineers over the course of
| 3-6 months, and they may work on multiple projects
| simultaneously.
|
| Even if the project doesn't move past the concept phase, there
| can still be developments along the way that make it into other
| projects. Further, if a concept is abandoned because it is not
| technically feasible, identifying that it can't be done also
| identifies the limits of what currently can be done, which is
| good for determining research goals.
|
| The cost of such a project should also be compared to the
| alternative: it's much cheaper to work through a design on
| paper and finding it's a dead end than to commit to something
| without that evaluation and find out 80% of the way through
| building it that it's a dead end.
| mojomark wrote:
| > i wonder how much money gets wasted on these failed
| explorations/projects.
|
| Failure is not a waste of money if lessons are learned. The
| value is in the lesson. As anyone whosed developed a
| reinforcement learning application knows, there is a balance
| between EXPLORATION and EXPLOITATION. If you don't explore,
| your performance will never improve. This is true even if 99%
| of the explored states are failures.
|
| I suppose if one doesn't want to invest in exploration, one
| could always join an Amish township. They are very content and
| apparently happy with their perpetually static state of
| technological development - and there's nothing wrong with that
| until someone with a missile comes in to take over your land
| amd all you have to fend them off with is a hay fork.
| b3kart wrote:
| > if lessons are learned
|
| This is the key statement. Even in reinforcement learning
| exploring _intelligently_ is an important problem. There's no
| point exploring a new state if your world model is confident
| about what's going to happen there: you won't learn much.
| 0xdba wrote:
| having worked for multiple dod contractors that did prototypes,
| lots.
|
| Sad part is lots of the good ideas get culled when some head
| honcho doesn't like the dpt. it came from, or where the funding
| came from, because politics.
|
| Lot of warfighters/ppl who are actually going to use the
| systems/products give us good feedback and then some O-6 comes
| on and doesn't like it or doesn't understand it.
| cripblip wrote:
| I look at these explorations as eliminating concepts that don't
| work, bringing you closer to finding the one that does;
| necessary investment
| neom wrote:
| Mustard did a fascinating episode about the Japanese version:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxyk84t4Q8w
| TheGallopedHigh wrote:
| Mark Felton did cover that as well on YouTube.
| mcguire wrote:
| Spoiler: Tail-sitting vertical take off and landing aircraft.
| nix23 wrote:
| The Belgorod makes much more sense:
|
| http://www.hisutton.com/Spy%20Subs%20-Project%2009852%20Belg...
|
| BTW: One can find it here:
|
| Google Maps 64.58557915035752, 39.817968886716
|
| Next to the only typhoon still in ~service
|
| 64.57990365204542, 39.791519636530744
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Wow... All the weird stuff they come up with.
|
| And sometimes it actually gets made. Like the Glomar Explorer.
| Wow.
| ksec wrote:
| Sounds like Tuatha de Danaan in Full Metal Panic.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Or the UEF Atlantis in Supreme Commander.
| Y_Y wrote:
| What's that Irish mythology don't in there?
| Y_Y wrote:
| What's that Irish mythology doing in there?
| cm2187 wrote:
| How do they land? Or are they disposable aircrafts? Also the
| whole point of a submarine is to stay stealth until it is
| required. Which means the pilots would get very little flight
| time / training.
| stretchcat wrote:
| They were to be VTOLs, so _very carefully_.
| LordHeini wrote:
| The Japanese and British used float planes.
|
| I would assume the project was scrapped because it is basically
| impossible to land on a submarine.
|
| It is hard enough to land a helicopter on a ship with a proper
| flight deck. But landing a much less stable VTOL on a tiny
| submarine without any sizeable flight deck in the 60s was
| completely out of the question.
| pge wrote:
| The cylindrical hull that makes submarines efficient under
| water makes them roll a lot when on the surface. That would
| make it very difficult to handle planes (whether taking off
| or landing).
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _But landing a much less stable VTOL on a tiny submarine
| without any sizeable flight deck in the 60s was completely
| out of the question._
|
| Hey, it was the 1960s. The times when people pulled off
| stunts like dropping a payload less than a meter wide from a
| satellite and catching it mid-air[0], without anything
| resembling a computer available to design or coordinate such
| missions. I'm pretty confident they could get a VTOL to land
| on a submarine, if they seriously put their minds to it.
|
| --
|
| [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite)
| LordHeini wrote:
| Well i am sure you can find some daredevil who can do such
| a landing under the right conditions.
|
| But the military requirements are such, that good
| conditions are not the norm.
|
| There are missions in harsh weather (and weather at sea is
| a completely different animal compared to weather on land
| or in the air at a few kilometers height).
|
| Up in the sky the conditions are stable and picking up a
| parachute with an aircraft is something you can easily
| retry a few times when you fail.
|
| Missing the landing on a submarine results in a sunken
| aircraft (and possibly pilot).
|
| Pilots have varying skill levels and are expensive to train
| just look at training requirements for the people landing
| on aircraft carriers.
|
| If you look at loss rates of military aircraft in any
| period you will find, that a astonishing portion of the
| losses are due to accidents.
|
| Landing a hard to control VTOL on a small spot on a
| submarine (which itself is somewhat small and thus
| unstable) will cause a tremendous amount of attrition among
| the aircraft and pilots.
|
| It is just far more efficient to shot a cruise missile at a
| target, than going through the hassle of having aircraft
| drop a bomb and then return with a low chance of survival.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I accept your reasoning. Still, I raise you a C-130 with
| rocket engines bolted to it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Credible_Sport
|
| It's a 1980s idea, though.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Hawker Siddeley Harrier (1967) was a VTOL that could have
| done this, although I don't think even Eric Brown was quite
| mad enough to try it.
|
| He did try the "rubber flight deck", an equally crazy
| scheme: why not save weight on landing gear by having a
| rubber deck just after the arresting gear, so the aircraft
| would catch the hook and belly-flop onto it?
|
| https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/blog/david-hobbs-british-
| air...
| rtkwe wrote:
| Well the payload itself was small but they were aiming for
| the line between the payload and it's parachute which is a
| much larger target.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Don't forget they landed on the moon as well. Raw power can
| compensate for a lot of shortcomings in other areas!
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| The Japanese I-400s were originally fitted with float planes,
| but these became fire-and-forget kamikaze aircraft by the end
| of the war (planned attack on the Panama canal that never
| happened).
|
| The Germans had an autogyro that was let out on a cable from
| the U-boat, used for spotting. Not sure if this ever saw
| production / combat, but IMO that's already at the limit of
| what is sensible in submarine aviation.
| briffle wrote:
| They actually did attack Oregon with a similar setup (but
| an I-25 submarine) . They dropped some incendiary bombs on
| the forests near Bandon, OR hoping to cause massive fires,
| damage war critical timber production, etc.
|
| I guess they didn't think about how hard it is to start a
| forest fire on the Oregon Coast in winter though.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_submarine_I-25#Fourt
| h...
| rupellohn wrote:
| > ... landing a much less stable VTOL on a tiny submarine
| without any sizeable flight deck in the 60s was completely
| out of the question
|
| Reminded me of this incident where a Royal Navy Harrier
| landed on a container ship.
| https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/oldies-amp-
| odd...
| daveslash wrote:
| Float planes... that could work. Land on the water _next_ to
| the submarine, then get towed back into the sub by a winch.
| Animats wrote:
| Nope. Here it is, the Ryan X-13.[1] First VTOL jet. Landed
| tail-first and hooked itself to a raised platform. As a demo,
| one was landed at the Pentagon in 1957.
|
| If there had been a need, a fleet of VTOL-fighter carrying
| submarines would have been built. The USSR never built a navy
| which required something like this to counter it.
|
| I came across this in my days in aerospace, and an ex-Navy
| fighter pilot at work said he didn't see that landing as a
| difficult task.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/xT38UcpHFXY
| zanderz wrote:
| On the subject of aircraft launched from a submarine, a rotary
| winged kite was developed in Germany during WWII for
| reconnaissance. Compact when disassembled, it could be deployed
| in minutes, tethered to the sub while it motored upwind, allowing
| a lookout to see much farther over the horizon:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Achgelis_Fa_330
|
| Examples are on display at many museums, including the Deutsches
| Technikmuseum in Berlin.
| mikece wrote:
| I seem to recall in the late 80s and early 90s the idea of
| submarines being able to launch surface to air missiles being
| discussed. If you're a sub and a helicopter is dipping a sonar,
| you know exactly where the helo is but you cannot shoot at it,
| even if you surfaced. The idea, as I recall, was to release some
| buoyant device that, when it surfaced, would launch 1 to 4 SAMs
| that would go into active seek mode and then lock in on whatever
| flying object they found. Lots of things can go wrong with this
| idea... which is probably why nothing has been in the military
| media about it.
| secfirstmd wrote:
| That's a thing that's being implemented at the moment.
|
| https://defense-update.com/20120214_idas-submarine-launched-...
|
| Russians used to keep shoulder launched SAMs also. Less useful
| for obvious reasons though.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| From your link:
|
| "The fiber optical link would then be used by the crew to
| verify the target, confirm the intercept and perform battle
| damage assessment."
|
| This thing is literally dragging a fiber optic cable behind
| it, with a sensor package that is apparently left behind at
| the sea surface when the missile transits into the air, that
| allows the submarine to see the helicopter target before and
| after missile impact, and to abort the missile strike if
| necessary.
| willvarfar wrote:
| Yes, its fairly mainstream these days. Most subs have SAMs, or
| manpads. To pick a classic example, this article on the same
| site about Typhoon
| http://www.hisutton.com/The%20REAL%20Red%20October%20-%20Typ...
| says there are manpads in the sail.
|
| British and Israeli subs experimented with blowpipe slaved to
| the periscope, which was a truly useless SAM. Those kinds of
| details are buried in the articles on that site :)
|
| I'd guess that the idea isn't so much to actually sneak up on
| aircraft, but rather to give them something to evade while the
| sub tries to make its escape.
| openasocket wrote:
| Now that you've got submarines with vertical launch cells like
| the latest Virginia class I've wondered about some of the
| possibilities. Since those are capable of holding Tomahawks,
| they certainly are large enough to hold an SM-2 or SM-6 SAM
| missile (though I doubt they could fire those unmodified).
| Having a submarine with long range SAMs open up some
| interesting tactics. You detect a bunch of enemy fighters
| sortieing out to engage one of your ships with an airborne
| early warning aircraft or fighter on a long range patrol. All
| of a sudden, way before they enter range of your ship's SAMs, a
| submarine surfaces, launches a bunch of SAMs, and the aircraft
| that detected the enemy fighters guides them to targets using
| cooperative engagement. With this technique all you need is a
| submarine and a fighter or early warning aircraft and you
| effectively get a guided missile destroyer which is profoundly
| hard to detect. Fighter might be a better choice, so it can
| chase off ASW helos and aircraft without needing the submarine
| to surface and waste some of its own SAMs.
|
| Lots of things can go wrong of course, and I'm sure it would
| take a ton of engineering effort to make it happen, but it's
| certainly an interesting concept.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| This was one of the operational concepts for Lockheed's Sea
| Shadow.
|
| The Outer Air Battle was keeping Navy planners up at night,
| so the idea of laying a clandestine SAM trap far out in front
| of the carrier battle group seemed like a really attractive
| idea. Using a combo of LPI radar and data links from other
| sensors for targeting, the low observable ships could be in
| just the right spot to surprise that regiment-sized raid of
| Backfires with a bunch of missiles fired from VLS cells.
| yangl1996 wrote:
| The Japanese Navy had similar ideas [1] in WWII. The plan was to
| sail undetected to near the west coast, launch the planes, and
| drop some biological weapon. Basically the predecessor of today's
| missile-carrying submarines.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400-class_submarine
| redis_mlc wrote:
| The Japanese used balloons that drifted into the US West Coast
| with incendiary devices, killing at least 6 Americans:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1945-japanese-balloon...
|
| They used various payloads in China, including fleas carrying
| anthrax and bubonic plague
|
| http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-09/19/content_321872...
| rozab wrote:
| Here's a good video on these from Mustard:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxyk84t4Q8w
|
| They have loads of content on weird military hardware like
| this.
| Y_Y wrote:
| > "Some biological weapon"
|
| It was a box of plague fleas.
|
| See also: Operation Cherry Blossom at Night
| gerdesj wrote:
| Read the article, specifically the section headed: "Earlier
| aircraft carrying submarines".
| lmilcin wrote:
| For everybody that criticizes this, remember, every successful
| idea is accompanied with a bunch of wild and crazy ideas and it
| usually takes time to figure out which ones exactly are good.
|
| I expect that somebody said at some point, "Planes on ships? That
| must be the stupidest idea I have ever heard!"
|
| It is easy to criticize with the help of hindsight. Most people
| at a certain point would say a page to connect school peers would
| never become one of the largest corporations on Earth. Were all
| these people stupid or is this just effect of having seen it
| happen?
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _I expect that somebody said at some point, "Planes on ships?
| That must be the stupidest idea I have ever heard!"_
|
| I don't know about that. Before the invention of the airplane
| we already had balloon carriers - ships that carried balloons
| for observation in naval engagements.
|
| The first flight of a fixed wing aircraft happened in 1903. By
| 1910 a plane had already taken off from the armored cruiser USS
| Birmingham.[0] The French converted the Foudre to be a seaplane
| carrier in 1911 after the invention of the seaplane in 1910.
|
| Planes launched from ships were used in World War I. For
| example, HMS Engandine was a freight ship that was converted
| into a seaplane tender and commissioned in 1914. In 1916 she
| took part in the Battle of Jutland. HMS Ark Royal was a purpose
| built seaplane carrier and was commissioned in 1914. She also
| took part in World War I.
|
| Later we got the flat-deck carriers. HMS Argus was converted in
| 1918, USS Langley in 1920. The first purpose built flat deck
| carriers were the Japanese Hosho and British Hermes. They were
| commissioned in 1922 and 1924 respectively, but the Hermes was
| laid down first in 1918.
|
| Funnily enough, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 cancelled
| the production of more battleships and battlecruisers. This led
| to the USS Lexington and USS Saratoga being converted to
| carriers. And eventually carriers made direct surface combat
| ships obsolete.
|
| Planes on ships probably wasn't a crazy idea.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Birmingham_(CL-2)
| lmilcin wrote:
| I am not versed in that part of history. Probably you are
| right, it might not have been that crazy idea.
|
| But I have read a lot of other history, especially WW2 and
| Cold War, and it is kinda normal that military throws a lot
| of crazy ideas. In the end even if a very small portion of
| those ideas bring fruit it typically tends to give the edge
| that you need in conflict.
|
| So I try to not criticize too much because people who
| prepared this were probably asked to do exactly that -- go
| wild with their ideas with low probability anything they
| produce is going to bring fruit.
|
| At the time this submarine aircraft carrier has been
| prepared:
|
| - Cold War was at its high
|
| - US just started using atomic power for everything they did
| and it seemed nuclear reactors and atomic power are going to
| solve any problem from going very long time under sea to
| having planes reach orbit and other planets
|
| - US had nuclear bombs but had trouble maintaining ability to
| reach USSR territory with them. Having ability for a
| submarine surface close to USSR territory and launch
| completely unexpected attack would be huge advantage and
| deterrent
|
| - US did not have working ICBMs and only perception that USSR
| is leading in development of these, so there must have been
| huge pressure to get ANYTHING to maintain deterrent.
|
| Now, given that kind of environment this idea doesn't sound
| so stupid anymore. At least not more stupid that warships
| made of ice and wood chips.
| Giorgi wrote:
| Yeah, getting from underwater confinement and blasting into the
| air should do works on your health
| stretchcat wrote:
| Submarines like that do not use pressurized atmospheres. They
| hold back the water pressure using the strength of the hull
| alone. (Also the aircraft would be launched when the submarine
| was surfaced.)
| TheGallopedHigh wrote:
| Holding back the sea pressure is implicitly holding the
| submarine at atmospheric pressure.
| mojomark wrote:
| As someone working on ship design for a few decades I can attest
| that this site is an amazing resource for whacky concepts and
| also new concepts, internationally, that were/are being
| experimented with but were/are fairly under wraps. I have no idea
| where the owner gets the info from - probably scraped off of
| remote corners of the web (non-english posts), but a few times a
| year someone sends me a link to this site and something
| inevitably blows my mind. A lot of times very good concepts are
| abandoned due to a technology gap (e.g. control computers,
| materials limits, etc.) that no longer exist.
|
| I think our industry likely owes a great deal of debt to the site
| owner for helping to consolidate and document this history so we
| don't waste time/money reinventing the wheel (saving us from
| iterative condemnation).
| sandworm101 wrote:
| It looks like Russians send him stuff. Nothing really
| classified, but things like the photos of desktop models seem
| to come from people visiting various offices or agencies. Some
| Russian military facilities also run unofficial tours (whatever
| pays the bills) resulting in photos of stuff that would
| normally be behind locked doors/gates. His satellite imagery is
| all unclassified, mostly stuff available via google. You just
| have to know what you are looking at.
|
| Covert Shores has such a reputation in the maritime community
| that he could probably just knock on the door and get a tour of
| their non-classified material. Old/scrapped subs are often just
| sitting on bases forgotten.
| samstave wrote:
| I've always wondered how one gets into ship design...
|
| I worked with a guy who was a technology designer for
| billionaire level yachts, David Person - he worked on both of
| Larry Ellison's yachts (and houses) - but the yachts were made
| in Germany..
|
| but how does one actually become a ship designer?
| s5300 wrote:
| I'd presume in this modern time most are probably born with
| the connections, but aside from that... probably attempting
| to cold-contact everybody related to the profession you can
| find?
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Naval Architecture is a degree at quite a few schools around
| the world. A lot of people seem to learn on the job though
| under apprenticeship like relationships.
| caycep wrote:
| MIT has some amazing exhibits of this stuff in one of their
| main buildings; not sure if they still have that degree
| offered. I want to say US MMA or something like that might
| have a program.
| ranger207 wrote:
| IIRC he does all of his original art in Paint too.
| melomal wrote:
| Honestly, after watching Dark Doc's on YT I have to say that the
| military is totally open to the most craziest ideas as long as it
| has the potential to raise their game.
|
| Whilst the nature of the engineering is pretty awful and causes
| unwarranted pain it does make you think about the level of
| creativity to cause as much damage as possible.
| sslayer wrote:
| It's less "engineering is pretty awful" and more "What risk are
| we willing to accept vs tactical/strategical gain"
| melomal wrote:
| It really is. The level of confidence from test pilots to
| initial designers to firstly propose ideas and then have
| someone sit inside and try it out is pretty interesting too.
| munificent wrote:
| I think the real take-away is that the boundary for "good idea"
| is determined almost entirely by funding. The military has such
| a firehose of cash that they can throw money at almost anything
| and see what sticks.
|
| If we spent $718.69 billion on art funding every year, you'd
| probably see artists making skyscrapers out of butter or
| genetically cross-breeding birds and mammals for creative
| speciation.
| arithmomachist wrote:
| Given that carriers are increasingly boxed out from shore by
| anti-ship missiles and drones are a lot smaller than crewed
| aircraft, I wonder if this design concept is due for a revival.
|
| I could imagine drones launched vertically with single-use rocket
| boosters that would then land on the water for retrieval. You
| could get much closer to shore than a carrier while still
| carrying out a pretty effective air strike, especially with
| several subs.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Reusability creates a lot more complexity vs just cruise
| missiles. Current generation US attack subs have multi-purpose
| tubes that can launch underwater drones, etc. So they are
| designed for some flexibility, but the main use is just
| tomahawk missiles.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Apart from the "reusable" part, your proposal sounds a lot like
| cruise missiles, which subs can and do launch. True, reusable
| is nice. But a cruise missile can also carry a lot bigger
| payload than a reusable drone can.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Didn't everyone design one of these while doodling on the back of
| a notebook while bored in third grade? Several of my classmates
| came up with more plausible designs... If it takes three engines'
| thrust to take off vertically, one engine won't be able to land
| vertically, even if we ignore the only-recently-solved- _now_
| control issues.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Not sure about 3 times less, but planes are usually lighter
| when they come in to land, than they are taking off. (Fuel etc)
| wil421 wrote:
| Harriers, F-35s, and Ospreys are all VTOL aircraft that
| could've launch from a sub. The other airplanes have only one
| engine and the osprey 2. They already land vertically on
| carriers.
|
| I don't think the image in the article would've worked where
| planes take off going straight up without additional thrusters.
| sradman wrote:
| Based on the same Covert Shores article, a Popular Mechanics
| article [1] has more TL;DR context in the title, _The U.S. Navy
| Could Have Had a Submarine Aircraft Carrier_ , and opening:
|
| > During the 1950s, the advent of the atomic age forced the U.S.
| Navy to look at a number of alternate basing schemes for naval
| aviation. One such scheme was AN-1, an enormous nuclear-powered
| submarine that could launch eight fighter jets in just under
| eight minutes.
|
| > Although AN-1 was never built, it's a fascinating look at a
| ship that could have been.
|
| [1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-
| ships/a252415...
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