Oil rigs and other offshore platforms.

[seadude]

Ok, so it's not an aircraft or a ship or a vehicle. But I had the thought of what WHIF's could you make out of an oil rig and other offshore platforms? Some possibilities are:
* Military radar platform http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea-based_X-band_Radar
* U.S. Coast Guard/U.S. Customs/DEA platform  (Dale Brown's HAMMERHEADS novel, Picture of the platform on Page 170 of the paperback novel)

What other WHIF's could there be for an offshore oil rig? I've always wanted to do a model of a military offshore defense platform, but the only model kit available comes in a wrong scale and I think it might be out of production?

[Cobra]

Seadude, ever Heard of the Texas Towers? you can find Videos of them on Youtube! You're Almost talking about those,in a sense.just Google Texas Towers to see what you get. Hope this helps. Dan

[Mossie]

Scalorma?  Change some of the detail parts, cranes, railings, lifeboats etc and exchange them for 1/350.  Might be a big job.

Alternatively you can get hold of kits and detailing parts in 1/200, not too expensively.

[Rheged]

This link may be of interest:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunsell_Forts

I suppose the Palmerston forts off Portsmouth might also be ofinterest.

[kerick]

I've thought about such a defense platform protecting a harbor or oilfield rigs against pirates or takeover by an invading force. Standard navy weapons and adapted tank turrets for close in protection. It would be a big project!

[Captain Canada]

I was looking for that kit when it was due out....seems it came and went ( at least in Canada ) without me knowing ! I'd love to see it.

As for a 350 scale sea defense type rig, I think scratch building your would be the way to go. Trying to scale down a 200 to a 350 on something that big and intricate would be pointless.

The Hibernia platform on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland would be a neat starting point. It's a giant concrete base with ridges to break up ice....

In my 'vision' I would have ski-jumps angled down from the helikoptendeck so Harriers ( or F-35 ) could 'drop in' to flight !

[kerick]

Scratch building a strictly defense platform might be easier than an oils drilling platform. A couple lengths of PVC pipe for the "legs" and build up some boxy "decks". A nice Aegis type radar tower and VLS missile launchers would be interesting. An Aegis class ship on a fixed platform defending a vital harbor or coastline.

[jcf]

Scratch building a strictly defense platform might be easier than an oils drilling platform. A couple lengths of PVC pipe for the "legs" and build up some boxy "decks". A nice Aegis type radar tower and VLS missile launchers would be interesting. An Aegis class ship on a fixed platform defending a vital harbor or coastline.

Fort Drum redux for the 21st century? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Drum_(El_Fraile_Island)

Although, I'm not sure what you'd be defending against with fixed coastal fortifications in this day and age. 

On the other hand, sci-fi scenario now, perhaps increased vulcanism worldwide leads to an atmosphere so
heavily polluted with volcanic dust that aviation as we know it grinds to a near stop. So the surface
warship regains its paramount role and the ACV, in full-skirt and SES sidewall designs, finally comes into
its own. Aviation largely returns to the reciprocating engine, with the exception of helicopter turboshafts,
due to the requirement to highly filter incoming air to prevent component destruction. The boats, ships
and ACVs can relatively easily carry the massive, high-flow rate filters required to operate air-hungry turbine
engines, and, most importantly, the crew required to clean them out constantly.
The airdales mourn, the black-shoes are exultant and US Army Coast Artillery Corps is reborn. 

p.s. as a result of the new conditions the turbine-powered, tracked-skimmer is reborn to fulfill the
role of high-speed cross-country passenger carriage. Take that Southwest and Easy Jet. 

[kerick]

Truthfully, no fixed installation would survive in todays world. If it doesn't get destroyed the enemy can just go around it. Remember the Maginot Line? The Germans went around it through Belgium and destroyed it from behind. The fortress Eben Emael in Belgium was captured by the Germans in one day with 56 men. So, this leaves us with whiff world. Its nice to be unencumbered by history or facts.
A platform with radar, comm masts, modern guns and VLS would be an interesting project. I propose a network of torpedo nets and defensive devices to keep small boats and such away. Who has lots of left over ship parts laying around?

[jcf]

Truthfully, no fixed installation would survive in todays world. If it doesn't get destroyed the enemy can just go around it. Remember the Maginot Line? The Germans went around it through Belgium and destroyed it from behind.

Actually the main fortifications of the line were still intact and in French hands at the Armistice of 22 June.

[kerick]

Because the Germans went straight to Paris first. They cleared the forts out as time allowed. Point is, once the Germans outflanked the Maginot Line it became irrelevant.
Tom Clancy had a good description of what happens to fixed defenses in his book, The Bear and the Dragon. Chinese forces overwhelm Russian border defenses made up of obsolete tank turrets set up on concrete blockhouses. It would make some interesting dioramas.
Whiffworld will allow us to build whatever looks cool.

[zenrat]

Who's to say it's a fixed installation?
Maybe below the surface is much larger submerged hull in which swarms of VSTOL fighters are hangered.  These fighters being moved to the launch platform up a lift hidden in a central tower.
When the whole thing needs to move fast it surfaces, lowers the "rig" so it's flush with the top of the hull and reveals it's true nature as a nuclear powered Ekranoplan.

FAB

[PR19_Kit]

Tom Clancy had a good description of what happens to fixed defenses in his book, The Bear and the Dragon. Chinese forces overwhelm Russian border defenses made up of obsolete tank turrets set up on concrete blockhouses.

In that example the Russian forces had designed the blockhouses to be overwhelmed after they'd performed their delaying tactics and the crews had escaped by means of the APCs garaged behind them.

In the book it worked a treat, suckering the Chinese forces into extending themselves so far into Russian territory that their supply lines were cut, their reserve forces were out-flanked and their main force withered on the vine.

[rickshaw]

Fixed defensive installations still have a value into today's world.  A mistake often made by amateurs is that they believe such works are intended to stop offensive thrusts from an enemy force.  They are actually intended to channel such thrusts, forcing them to move into what are effectively "killing grounds" for the defender, where they can be contained and destroyed, usually through counter-attack by mobile forces.

The Israelis used such channelling defensive works on the Golan Heights in 1973 against Syria.  While the Moroccans were very successful in using such defensive works against Guerrillas in the Western Sahara in the 1980s.

The Iraqis used such defensive works in the Iran-Iraq war, against the Iranians.  If used intelligently, they can be effective.  If not used intelligently, they end up being a disaster, as the French found in 1940 and the Iraqis in 1991.    The Maginot line was not, as is usually contested a failure.  It effectively channelled the Germans into attacking the low countries.  The French problem was that government penny-pinching (and deliberate misunderstanding of the purpose of the line) meant that the mobile, armoured forces which were to be deployed behind the line to counter any outflanking manoeuvres or breakthroughs were not created in sufficient strength to counter the German forces.   A similar situation resulted for the Iraqis - they had become too reliant on their fixed defences in the Iran-Iraq war and failed to take note of what their Soviet Advisors had taught them - that they must be ready to counter any flanking or breakthrough by their enemy.

Only the Israelis were successful in using such defensive works because they didn't rely on them but saw them as an adjunct to their mobile manoeuvre forces.  The Moroccans were successful because they used them to channel and contain the movement of insurgents (their campaign in the Western Sahara resembled if anything, the final phases of the 2nd Boer War, where such defensive lines with "blockhouses" connected by telephone and mounting guns and machine guns were so successful at preventing the movement of the Boer Commando columns across the veldt.

[Runway ? ...]

Delete, delete, delete

Also
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSifCF8k27A