We have nuclear powered subs.Why dont we have nuclear powered surface ships besides carriers? Also, how much supplies are flown in for carriers out at sea? Is it a constant stream of helis just carrying supplies? Where does the supplies come from? The pacific is pretty fucking far from America.
The US had nine nuclear-powered cruisers, all were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War. They cost too much to maintain. This can be excused on a carrier because they're fucking expensive in the first place, can use massive amounts of electricity and saving bunker fuel space for aviation fuel is great.>in 1964, the USS Enterprise with its escorts, the nuclear cruisers Long Beach and Bainbridge, circumnavigated the earth without resupply, traveling 30,565 miles in 65 days
>>64686575DAMN thats pretty cool. We need to bring back nuclear cruisers.
>>64686575Long Beach is such a kino ship
>>64686567It's a use case issue.>submarinesA huge stumbling block for submarines is that they need to breathe, specifically their engines. Diesel engines = must resurface periodically. For submarines intended to launch ICBMs, this is bad as the whole point of their third of the triad is second strike capacity. Wouldn't want the enemy catching your subs taking a gulp of air. So nuclear power lets them stay underwater nearly indefinitely, as at worst you only worry about what the crew needs to breath which is insignificant and would take weeks to deplete.>carriersForce projection. The whole purpose of a carrier is they act as a floating airfield which locks down an entire region of the ocean or even of land, and to do that without worrying about fuel logistics is the sign of a first world country. And then you have all the things you can do with that extra electricity, like catapults or ice cream factories. Capital ships were always cities at sea, so they need big boy power supplies.>icebreakersA mix of the needs of subs and carriers. Icebreakers are often stuck in the middle of the arctic with no way to supply them, so a nuclear reactor means they can do their job without worrying about anything. And again, all that electricity does not go to waste and can be used for both propulsion and keeping the crew warm.>destroyerUhhh, why?>frigateAgain, why?>cruisersI'd even argue this is questionable despite >>64686575
>>64686591To add, if we had railguns or something with large power requirements, a nuclear powered cruiser/battleship would make sense. But otherwise, you have an expensive power plant in search of a reason to exist.
>>64686593Do you think the new Trump Class will get nuclear reactors for their railguns?
>>64686594It doesn't look like it will, but I wouldn't be surprised if they added or are going to have that.Again, nuclear power produces a lot of electricity. Half the problem besides cost is "what do you do with all that shit?" If you have no use for all that power, then your reactor is going to be underused the vast majority of the time.
>>64686575The thing I find most amusing about that picture is that all three ships in it are one-of-a-kind anime super prototypes
>>64686591i have one use casegiant radar ship
>>64686594setting aside the dubiousness of the entire concept, there has never been any suggestion of nuclear powerevery spec sheet says plain ole diesel like everybody else
>>64686598This is fine too.
>>64686593Rail guns still don't need nukes. Look up the power generation of the Zumwalt, for instance. It all comes down to the drive. It's more than possible to power rail guns and lasers on diesel. The issue with rail guns was always going to (long-term) be the size of the power banks for rapid salvos, and then recharging those banks. It's all problems with chemical and material science. You can fix the problems with the rail gun barrels, but you can't take all the power you need to fire one and shrink it down to a quarter.
>>64686604I don't disagree, but then we fall into the use case issue.>railgun boat is going to be littoral and only used as part of a larger fleetYou don't need nuclear power, as you said.>railgun boat is a huge force projection ship that's going to be patrolling the Pacific either independently or as a complement to carriersMight need nuclear power? This is where we get into reformer fantasy battleships, thoever. And this isn't the new Trump 'battleship' either.
>>64686596>>64686591>reactor underuseThe Big E had eight nuclear reactors, mostly because it was the first time anyone ever tried to build anything like it so they overengineered it. Soon after launch, half of them were turned off. The succeeding Nimitz class was designed with two.It's an absurd fantasy, but I wish just once, maybe at the time of decommissioning, they had just gone full steam. I bet the motherfucker would have hit 60 knots, ripped its own hull apart and caused an ecological disaster.
>>64686598Exists purely for a comic based B movie to be made in the 00s that noone remembers.
>>64686594You don't need nukes for them: >>64686604You need space. Ever since the Zumwalt was really discussed in depth and we discovered the power output, I began to personally wage a campaign of autism to bring back the Battlecruiser. Fast, large, eschew armor, massive guns for air defense, shore bombardment, etc. and then giant, fuck off missiles like the Mosvka has instead of smaller VLS.
>>64686596What if the ships nearly fully automated due to manpower issues? That would take up the power no? Plus radars and sonars and environmental control and railguns and lasers and drones and all that.
>>64686607This was always why the Zumwalt felt weird, however it's mostly because they were projecting Gen. 1 Railgun stats onto the thing where it'd operate in littoral waters (Why have this "future" cannon on it when it can't hit things from 500 miles away?) Always a good question, and the Navy didn't really have a good explanation either besides, "We'll figure it out later." which then turned into scrapping the gun but keeping the power generation. In theory a Battlecruiser has a role (not this fucking abortion though) but in very small numbers, and meant to complement a carrier by being a threat you can't really ignore while simultaneously not requiring all of the defensive vessels a carrier does. Have a few frigates run around with it, let them do ASW, give the cruiser a giant fuck off radar, let the frigates carry a smallish number of missiles, throw some hypersonics for intercept and offensive purposes onto it as well, along with a few chunky railguns and now there is a dangerous thing steaming around which doesn't need planes.
>>646865671) Reactor up-front costs are really high. USN PWRs aren't built to civilian standards; they're designed to not melt down or suffer a steam explosion in the event that a torpedo or missile takes off the bow and inflicts massive shock to the whole ship. The idea is that the only way to breach a reactor is to set off a warhead practically inside the engineering compartment. That's expensive.2) Going along with that, reactors require more highly-trained operators than a civilian plant of similar size, because they have to be able to keep the reactor running even if the ship got hit, and SCRAM the reactor if it happens to take critical damage itself. Threads on nuc school are legendary on /k/. The dropout and suicide rates are absurd. That sharply limits the number of nuclear engineers that can be trained each year, and subs and CVNs are pretty much taking everyone who makes it through.3) Reactors are very nice to have, but not a strict necessity for anything other than large, long-ranged subs (AIP is great, but not if you have to operate thousands of miles away from port for weeks/months). They are very, *very* nice to have for carriers, and doubly so for supercarriers. For anything else, the benefits are smaller and therefore have to be weighed against the costs (see above).Usually only lighter items (people, mail, small spare parts, etc.) are flown in. The big stuff--especially fuel, which CVs still need for jets--can only efficiently be delivered by at-sea replenishment from another ship.
>>64686611I asked someone with first hand knowledge, the answer is that the precession/“porpoising” at 37 knots during the speed trials was too much for comfort, all 8 being on precluded human operation.
Another point is a lot of nations are quite pissy about nuclear things docking at their ports
>>64686611>I bet the motherfucker would have hit 60 knots,You should look up the difference in horsepower between fast and slow battleships. The North Carolinas had nearly 5x the horsepower of the Colorados to go from 21 to 28 knots. Sure, sure, they're heavier and have better hulls for speed, but the correlation between power and speed is hardly linear.
>>64686691The same actually holds true for everything. Doubling horse power in a car doesn't double its speed.
>>64686567>Also, how much supplies are flown in for carriers out at sea? Is it a constant stream of helis just carrying supplies? Where does the supplies come from? Underway replenishment by supply ships.
>>64686587>scored 2 100km Sam kills in the fucking 60sImpressive. Very nice.
>>64686725I figure as much, but don't know enough about cars to make a confident statement in the moment
>>64686746Almost any shitbucket can reach 120mph meanwhile reaching 240 mph you need a high performance car often with 5x-10x times the horsepower. Air resistance is a bitch, water even more so.
>>64686567>Also, how much supplies are flown in for carriers out at sea? Is it a constant stream of helis just carrying supplies?These fucking things
>>64686808Whats that for
>>64686854they keep stuff on it
>>64686859Cant they just fly them in? Its a floating airfield.
>>64686866>Its a floating airfield.the advantage is the floating part, cheaper and easier to just float stuff to it
>>64686611>>64686691>>64686725>>64686746>E=MC2>muh squared velocitySame reason why things like Aurora would need ridiculous amounts of thrust (the SR-71 had it but wasn't designed to graze up to the near-hypersonic regime obviously) and Mach 4-5 cartridges are super necked down from their parent cartridge.
>>64686567>Also, how much supplies are flown in for carriers out at sea?why ignore subs? those need supplies, too.
>>64686644those are USN problems due to pork barreling.French Navy just uses civilian reactors on their SSN. French CVN then gets SSN reactors.
