Why do we need runways on aircraft carriers if planes could just land on water and then being towed/taxi into the carrier? That way planes would have practically infinite runway and all kinds of aircraft could land including planes like C-17 Globemaster etc.
Why do we need runways on aircraft carriers if planes could just land on water and then being towed/taxi into the...
Hudson Thomas
Jordan Morales
Floats add a shitton of drag and if the Convair F2Y is any indication, skis can vibrate your plane to bits if you aren't careful. That leaves us with flying boats, and if you have those why bother with a carrier in the first place?
Anthony Watson
Just add vtol so that you can land slowly. There, I fixed it. :)
Samuel Perez
Floats could be just placed on water and plane would need to hit it during landing just like it needs to hit arresting wire on classic aircraft carrier runways.
Elijah Sanchez
Then just land on a carrier.
Asher Ortiz
Carrier = limited runway
Water surface = unlimited runway
unlimited runway > limited runway
Water surface > Carrier
Luis Wright
If you gotta land on a specific apparatus in order to land on the water at all you might as well land on the carrier.
Chase Gomez
No, because length of runway makes a difference. You can't land heavy planes on short aircraft runways. But you can land them on water.
Angel Gomez
but the wire is attached to something on the carrier. the floats would just be floating in the water and pushed and not really be of much use.
Cameron Hall
Where'd you store them? Kinda useless to have that ability (>), if you're limited by your hangar space anyway.
Grayson Morales
But you'd need floats the mass of a rated vessel for the plane to land safely, else the floats will just tip over and sink upon the plane catching the wire(s).
Camden Wilson
Just bring back seaplanes and flying boats.
Then bring back seaplane tenders and load them with anti-ship missiles, CIWS, and sea mines or depth charges.
Then spam enough Zuiuns to block out the sun.
Cooper Hernandez
Why did they go out of style?
They could've made for decent super-long ranged AWACs/Patrol aircraft that don't need no Carrier.
Luis James
Hitting a miniscule float bobbing in three dimensions is going to be far more difficult than hitting a wire. And how would the plane even connect to the float? You need a secure mechanical connection between the float and the plane for it to do anything besides inconvenience the pilot. I want you to try something: go to your local lake or pool, throw an air mattress into the middle, and try landing on it from a running jump. Now imagine you have to not just land on it, but land standing on your feet. Now imagine doing that at 150 miles per hour. In the middle of ocean waves. Throw in some inclement weather for good measure, too. Now imagine you can't actually see the float until you've already started the jump, and you have to rely on your friend shouting directions at you while you're doing your running leap to aim properly. Get the idea?
And even if it were no more difficult than a regular runway and a tripwire, you've got sortie rate to consider. The Nimitz-class can launch a plane every 20 seconds and land one every 40. With the number of steps you've added to the procedure with this float system, those times would almost certainly get longer, plus the extra time required to get planes in/out of the water. Further, because you're dedicating cargo space to all these floats, you're going to have less room for planes.So you're left with a "carrier" that can launch slower, carry less, and can't defend its cargo as easily, for the marginal benefit of being able to launch planes that are a bit larger. The only way I could see this working is something like , where the aircraft have their own floats and are somewhat independent of the tending vessel.
Chairforce has to have them supersonic jets, don'cha know? Anything else wouldn't be HIGH SPEED LOW DRAG enough. And don't forget Lockheeb's shekels either,
Isaac Garcia
As sexy as they are they still are just suckier versions of regular planes and nowadays helicopters can cover most roles that required seaplanes suck as shipborne recon and harbour patrol.
Angel Gray
Why bother with aircraft carriers anymore anyway
Drone carriers would be much cooler
Just imagine one big ship with automatic catapults for launching drones
How cool that would be
Joshua Howard
Why not just make hundreds of artificial islands that can serve as airfields?
Leo Green
I will admit that mass producing the aquatic real-world equivalent of a Protoss carrier is a very tempting idea.
Liam Cruz
Not everyone can afford to construct several hundred South China sea disputes.
Isaiah Sanchez
Float could be made bigger with bigger "connection" area. Carrier's runway also bobs in three dimensions.
That is a solvable problem. It could be some kind of friction mounts. Plane's gear would slide into them during touchdown.
There are already solutions for these problems:
- en.wikipedia.org
- en.wikipedia.org
Sortie rate doesn't depend on duration of float handling. You know planes on regular carriers do not just go from idling to the air in 20 minutes. They are taxiing, doing pre-flight diagnostics.
What is important is right capacity to do preparation on multiple planes simultaneously so that they could be "buffered" and by this non-stop launching/recovering could be achieved.
Dominic Stewart
The difference being carriers are FUCKING HUGE and have lots of inertia, they won't be moving nearly as much as a float that wil have a density of near zero.
So now in addition to just trying to hit the float, you've got to precisely slot the landing gear into friction catches? This is a new level of stupid, to go back to the previous example this is like floating some waterskis in the middle of a pool and trying to leap into them without falling over.
>-en.wikipedia.org
>-en.wikipedia.org
Okay, so in addition to a float for each plane we've now got to have floating landing lights for each plane. The runway is no longer "infinite" in length either. And since between these lights and the limit of how big your floats can be you're putting an upper limit on how big your planes can be, which negates the one advantage of this whole system. You're just recreating an AC deck for a lot more expense and a lot less practicality on the ocean surface, for no tangible gain.
And the pre-flight shit will take far longer in your memecarrier than it would on a regular one, because you have to move everything to the water and keep track of it.
Except you can't even do that. You've got to set out a new float for every plane you want to launch and recover the float for every plane that takes off. Every "runway" you set up has to be completely rebuilt every time a plane takes off.
Christopher Kelly
Fucking hell halfchan isn't sending their best. If you managed to somehow even hit the pontoon and lock into it you would flip over and fucking die because of inertia.
Runway length was never a concern after catapults became standard on all CVs after ww2. Even a C-130 can take off and land on a carrier.
Jeremiah Ross
Fighter jets are neither built to float, nor is their fuselage made to withstand water density. Not even carrier-based ones.
There are these two things called surface tension and pressure, you might have heard of them. They don't quite like a jet grazing by at minimum lift speed (i.e. 200+ kph).
Leo Robinson
The nips still have a handful for SAR, but they don't get a lot of use. They offer greater endurance and possibly greater speed than rotary wing alternatives, plus the ability to actually hit the water and make a rescue, provided seas are calm. The Komsomolets disaster was as bad as it was in part because the Be-12 that located the sub couldn't make a landing.
Helicopters can operate in worse conditions and still deploy baskets or swimmers. The ability to hover is also a great benefit, allowing rescue from a damaged or sinking vessel without necessitating immersion.
Dylan Barnes
There are amphibious helicopters too.
Chase Young
You can make floats longer to prevent tipping over.
Joshua Gutierrez
So now you are storing floats much larger than the planes, which doubles the amount of space you would need to store the fucking things versus if you just had a regular flat top.
Wyatt Kelly
Most of those have very poor stability, excepting a few models, I'd imagine seaworthiness is even lower than fixed wing amphibians. Most are amphibious only to the extent that emergency water landings can be performed with a longer buffer for the crew to bail out. No one really seems interested in reinforced fuselage/boat hull and stabilizer designs anymore. The Mi-14 and S-61 are about it, and both designs are aging fast.
Jaxon Baker
Russia, come take care of your runt, he's shat the bed again.
Brody Miller
Here you go strelok.
Brayden Sullivan
Because that will lead to many ethno-micro nations so (((they))) won’t allow that to happen.
Wyatt Sanchez
You'd need twice the amount of boat to store both the planes and their floats, doing on-deck service such as quick refueling+rearming inbetween sorties would also be a nightmare on the open sea.
This whole idea is so retarded I could feasibly see Lockheeb try this with the F-35B as a workaround to the runway melting issue.
Kevin Gonzalez
the what now?
Aiden Wright
archive.is
hownew.ru?
Angel Smith
Caleb Gomez
Could you make a flying wing boat? I'm thinking about a reconissance drone here.
Robert Smith
The amount of floats is lesser than the amount of planes.
Levi Morales
What's the world come to?
Gavin Barnes
Ekranoplan doesn't really fly at altitude. Damn nice machine though.
Austin Bell
By the way the ruskies are gonna bring it back
Michael King
Don't you fucking tease me like that.
Kayden Wood
Google it. Takes like 3 fucking seconds dude.
Not even fresh news. They've been hinting at it since 2013.
Adam Flores
Some of the small Orion-12 and Orion-14 and maybe 2 (med size) Orion-20 are in service but it's dubious the big ones are ever coming back, Russia has no money.
They can't even build the Be A-40 and had to settle for the considerably smaller and cheaper Be-200 (which is still the best seaplane in service but it's not a monster like the A-40).
The minute they have money Beriev wants to build that (take a breath before clicking):
beriev.com
It's basically the fusion of everything, one giant seaplane that can use ground effect to have stupid endurance but can still fly properly.
Evan King
Adam Evans
Jayden Martin
I had no idea how bad things really are
Henry Wright
...
Brandon Ross
The leaf: never fails to deliver.
Evan Green
I believe there was more but both F-35 threads should still be in the catalogue somewhere.
Everyonce in a while you stop and think about the last ten thousand shitposts you made and get a slight need to make a decent post. Luckily it passes quick.
Jace Flores
Try 2006.
Threatening to give Iran tech is the Russian trump card for the region. Israel is scared shitless, and as a result America is scared shitless. But the problem exists, how to give Iran something really really quickly? Enter large ekranoplan transport aircraft.
The one in that image is an attack variant which I doubt will get built unless Arctic situation gets out of hand.
Nathaniel Mitchell
Liam Mitchell
Why bother make the airframe and air-intake stealthy when you just hung on it 4 external hardpoints and a lazer that have like 20 times its RCS?
Carter Smith
The Hercules was built with extreme STOL in mind.