CVN-90 Stealth Aircraft Carrier

[seadude]

Three days ago, my best friend and his wife dropped off to me a 1/350 TAMIYA USS Enterprise aircraft carrier kit that my best friend wants me to build for him.
Looking at my best friend's kit has reminded me that I still have my own Enterprise a/c at home and how I want to make mine into some form of stealth aircraft carrier. Thing is, I'm not sure what stealthy features to incorporate onto the carrier. So I'm making this post to get ideas and suggestions from everyone on how to redesign the weapon sponsons, radar masts, bridge superstructure, etc., etc., etc.
The carrier I build will still look similar to a regular Nimitz or Enterprise carrier with the same basic flight deck shape, same amount of aircraft elevators, same jet blast deflectors, same locations of catapults, etc.  One thing I definately want to redo is have VLS missile systems instead of the regular octuple launchers.

[RussC]

There are plans out there for future carriers called CVNX, look at the Google images for them to start with. Stealth basically goes with three ideas for ships.

Cover up most holes, places like boat decks, openings for the elevators, anchors need to all be closed up.

Odd angles, no vertical masts- angled instead and angled faces on the ship sides, the island. Round objects forbidden, even railings should be square pipes and not perfect squares but instead a kind of diamond shape.

Loose items get covered or enclosed, like CIWS, Tillie, searchlights, cranes. 

[kerick]

Look up pics of USS Independence, LCS-2 and USS Freedom, LCS-1.  These will give you some ideas.  Prepare to use a large amount of sheet plastic to reshape the outside of the vessel.  Sounds like an interesting idea.

[dragon]

JAG Collective makes a kit of the Stealth Carrier if you want to avoid the headaches- although many in this forum would find the kit pricey.

[Thorvic]

If you look at the artwork for the CVN-78 you will see they have moved the Island back and reprofiled it to be more stealthy, to stealth up an Enterprise is would suggest looking at creating new island of slanted slopping surfaces with a stealth mast  psoobly similar to the one trialed on USS Arthur W Radford.
With the hull i would look to create new cleaner sponsons of an angled faceted appearance, and look at covering up the gaps for the deck edge lifts so they effectively become internal lifts encased in the sponsons. Create the weapons platforms so they are larger to allow the VLS cells to be fitted.

[Hobbes]

You can replace the radars with phased arrays. Using the old island with the SPS-32/33 'billboard' radars as the basis would be interesting.

[pyro-manic]

Look at the Queen Elizabeth/Daring classes as well.

[seadude]

If stealth features could be added to a regular carrier, I imagine some of the following:
1. Enclosed anchors behind doors in the bow.
2. VLS weapon sponsons instead of octuple launchers and CIWS.
3. Retractable LSO platform into the hull side.
4. Life rafts and ship's boats in recessed (and covered) openings in the hull sides similar to this photo:
http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery/misc/lcs/lcs2-350-pvb/lcs2-06.jpg
5. All those long whip antennaes along the flight deck edge that could be retractable.
........etc., etc., etc.

Anybody else got any ideas, concepts, suggestions?

[Hobbes]

I'd add wire mesh screens around the flight deck, to hide the clutter on the deck from radar.