What-If Modern US Navy Ships and Aircraft

[Spino]

An A-5 wouldn't need a buddy store. With the central bomb tunnel filled with extra tanks, the hose reel could be right at the stern, unreeling through the bomb hatch that's already there.

That's given me an idea for a Trumpeter and FROG A-5s I have stashed in The Loft. Thanks for that. 

Actually the canoe on the RA-5C might make a better spot for a hose reel now that I think about it.  I need to make some tanks for the A-5s.

[thundereagle1997]

Sorry I thought the aircraft was an A-5. Wish we had amphibious seaplanes capable of Mach 2.2 armed with 30mm cannons and air to air missiles while using a aerodynamically  & hydrodynamically designed ski with a wide track undercarriage an armored 360 degree bubble canopy canard foreplanes a mig-21 style tailplane & twin vertical fins

[Spino]

Photos of the F/A-201 Kestrels coming soon!

[Spino]

Kestrel time!  These things are relatively easy to make, although not as easy as the A-12s were...

[NARSES2]

Neat 

[Spino]

Aviation Strike Cruiser, or my take on it.  Has a 64-cell VLS in the aft portion of the superstructure, 16 Naval Strike Missiles (in cannister launchers), and 16 large launch tubes similar to the Virginia Payload tubes for the Flight III and IV Virginia class SSNs.  And, oh yeah, don't forget the laser dazzler systems to foil incoming missiles!  This is kind of a what-if 2020s upgrade of the original CSGN Mk II (or the strike cruiser with the aviation deck).

[Dizzyfugu]

An A-5 wouldn't need a buddy store. With the central bomb tunnel filled with extra tanks, the hose reel could be right at the stern, unreeling through the bomb hatch that's already there.

IIRC, a refueling palet with such an arrangment had actually been developed for the Vigilante, but it was never fielded.

[NARSES2]

I like that Strike Cruiser    although I must admit I find modern naval gun turrets rather weird looking 

[Spino]

The naval gun on that cruiser is the Major Caliber Lightweight Gun system, essentially a single mount of the same 8in/55 autoloading guns that the Des Moines class cruisers carried, in a new turret.  Not a very modern thing at all, it was actually tested on a Forrest Sherman class DD in the 60s.

[NARSES2]

The naval gun on that cruiser is the Major Caliber Lightweight Gun system, essentially a single mount of the same 8in/55 autoloading guns that the Des Moines class cruisers carried, in a new turret.  Not a very modern thing at all, it was actually tested on a Forrest Sherman class DD in the 60s.

Thanks I didn't realise that. Mind you I was brought up on images of RN destroyers with "open" turrets and 6/8 crewman feverishly working the 4.7" gun wearing heavy duty duffle coats and Wellington boots 

[Spino]

Here's a photo of the real-life mount on the USS Hull:

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[NARSES2]

Cheers