Friday, February 06, 2009

On Displacement

I was a bit shocked when I found out that the CG(X) was mandated by Congress to have nuclear propulsion. Okay, that's a bit unnecessary, but it does offer strategic benefits and you can power a hell of a radar with all that electricity.

Then I found out that after disappearing off the map for a while, it's reappeared and planned to be displacing 22 000 tons.

What the fuck?

How does anyone manage to justify such a massive ship? The current Ticos it's going to be replacing are "only" 9600 tons. The first all big-gunned battleship HMS Dreadnought was only 18 000 tons. Hell, Britain's STOVL carrier HMS Ark Royal is 20 000 tons. It's going to be impossible to build enough of these to maintain a meaningful presence. It's so ridiculous that people are theorizing that the USN is trying to get the class canceled.

One would hope so, a CCGN is definitely not what the world needs.

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