What-If USN CV-59-sized "Baby Carrier"

[MAJOR-B]

Good day,
Just read they want to replace the ford class with a smaller or baby carrier. But it would be the size of conventional cv.
They want either a one time recator or hybrid powerplant. This peaks my interest because i have two 1/350 carriers that are low on my list to finish the jfk and connie. I recently moved to the Philippines due to family need. So i have limited space for carriers. I have two nimitz a kitty and two intrepid. Plus some other carriers plus several Alaska and a montana. I originally thought of doing the jfk with a nimitz island and mast configuration. For the uss George town a fictional supercarrier . your thoughts.

[MAJOR-B]

This carrier would be a cv59 size. With nuclear powerplant. Anything smaller would not be able to handle an e2 or f18 growlers. Plus would not have enough aircraft for sorties to make it a threat. This was in response to a rand corp study. They felt the ford class has to many issues. And not worth the price. Your thoughts.

[Admiral John Byng]

The problem is that a Forrestal size carrier with nuclear propulsion would probably be proportionately more expensive than a Gerald Ford and less effective. If the idea is to save money then the Charles de Gaulle manages to operate E2 but has the smaller Rafale so F-18 might not work.

There really is no useful alternative to a big carrier and the global trend is to build them bigger.

[Dick J]

The navy has no current design/plan for a Forrestal sized nuke, and working a design up from scratch would make the project cost way more than simply adding another Nimitz class to the program. Remember, the hull steel is the cheap part of the design. All the heavy expense is in the electronics, power plant, catapults, arrestor wires, and all the other deck-handling features. A Forrestal sized ship would have the same cost in these areas as a Nimitz. So the extra cost of steel for a Nimitz would many times more be offset by the design cost of a "nuked-up" Forrestal. (That is quite aside from the fact that the Kitty Hawk's were the same size as Forrestal, but had the improved deck layout.)

During the Carter administration, the president proposed a Midway sized conventional CV. However, according to Freidman (in his US CV's book), you couldn't simply copy a Midway because as had been pointed out above, there is a need to operate E-2's and EF-18's. The Midway's 18 foot hangar clearance wouldn't accommodate the E-2 (or the F-14) and the airbosses really hated how having them in permanent deck park cramped aircraft spotting. So the 25' hangar height would be needed. That sets the beam, unless you want it turning turtle with too much top weight. Based on relative speed, the runout distance for trapping (landing) these aircraft sets the length of the angled deck. With those two parameters somewhat fixed, only the overall length can be adjusted to keep the displacement within limits. As mentioned above, electronics are already at a minimum on current designs, so no savings there. Limited length created a trade-off on internal space where the powerplant was competing for space with munitions and fuel, and short, fat ships need more power for a given speed than long, skinny ones. What the designers of "Carter's CV" ended up with was a ship with only two elevators and two catapults, with a top speed (6 months out of dock) of 23 knots. The airgroup was less than half that of a Nimitz. This ship only had enough magazine space for two days of full operation of this smaller airgroup before having to replenish. So for 80-90% of the cost of a Nimitz, you got less than half the airgroup (if there was enough natural wind to launch - the ship was not fast enough to compensate for no-wind days) for two days of combat operation. A Nimitz has internal space for 9 full days of operation before replenishment. Add in that a slower ship would probably require a longer angled deck to boot! (Runout is related to speed relative to the deck - the lower the ship speed, the higher the landing aircraft's speed differential) Also consider that this design didn't even address the further space limitations that nuclear power would have imposed.

The biggest issue with the Ford is too much of it is based on "cutting edge" features that have to have all the bugs (big bugs!) worked out. And all of them have to be fixed to make the ship functional. So if you are looking for an alternative, and cost is the actual priority, a repeat Nimitz will actually cost less than a "Forrestal sized" ship, and be many, many times more useful, functional, and cost-effective than a "Midway sized" one.