so if you want to sneak up on some fleet, your not going to get there very fast (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Would work something like this:

Yankee/capitalist/pig-dog carrier group is detected by surface assests, and your sub gets intercept order. You plot intercept course and order max quiet speed (15 knots) and go 200 miles (takes around 13 or 14 hours to get there), putting you around 150 miles in front of yankee carrier group. Then you reduce to creep speed of ~3 knots and wait. You will get to shoot at evil yankees in around 8 hours.

A diesel sub would have had to be at the right place to begin with. A nuke sub can run to the right place at max quiet speed, thus making for a much greater operational area.

In a somewhat related note. Any of you play Wolves the Pacific? Fantastic WWII sub simulator, gave me a lot for respect for the Silent Service.

I also like it because on the easier settings I've actually been able to sneak up right next to a big slow ship and shell it to death my little itty bitty deck gun (and the stray shells from it's escorts).

Water and damage effects are pretty cool too.

Agreed but the topic header is what I was basically responding to.

As for who is fastest.....my bet is on the carrier, also my destroyer had massive ~40+ feet variable pitch screws.

As for subs sneaking in, it happened all the time when I was in service but it was mostly our or allied subs doing to the carrier group. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

As for ASW detection, speed is a limiting factor in the detection process. My last ship had towed sonar array, of a vintage design, at that time only two on each coast. But that array with the Ocean Systems Technicians "Old Hands" could and did detect diesels ours and theirs at very long distances 100+ nm. But to perform this sonar magic 1-2 knots was the fastest we could do with out breaking the array cable. Also higher speeds reduced the sensitivity of the array. This also meant my ship was 200+nm ahead of the battle group, with mean we got sh*t for supplies etc.

WMS

there's subs that utilize fuel-cells and the such now, and of course modified engines drawing the power from those sources also making less noise again . . there ARE now pretty much VERY silent things . . there was this gag about looking for the silent spot in the ocean to find certain subs . . but those new ones don't even leave said silent spot, they generate ambient sounds to blend into the background clutter as far as i understood . .

I was/am intrigued by the German WWII designs that used hydrogen peroxide for a fuel source.

WMS

I've heard tell of advanced screw designs that actually induced and controlled cavitation to mimic various sorts of vessels. Not at all sure how true that is though.

im guessing your referring to this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_212_submarine




as if the normal ones wasn't dangerous enough...

LInks
The Walter Submarine Turbine
Type XVIII
Type XXII
Type XXIV
Type XXVI
Were slated to use the Walter Turbine

WMS

Carriers are obsolete, even moreso in 2070.
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?AR...mp;IBLOCK_ID=35

"What the battleship was in 1941, the aircraft carrier is now: a big, proud, expensive... sitting duck."

...

But so damned cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_peroxide#Hazards

*Shrugs*

The article isn't coming up at work so I'll have to reserve my judgement till I get back to my room. However I'd like to see what the replacement for a vessel that can carry all those aircraft, all that distance, and at 40+ knots. It certainly isn't going to be an LCS or really any other ship currently in development in America.

Now give it another 20-30 years for UCAV technology to mature and I'm sure we'll see drone carriers that are much smaller but perform the same function. But as long as the world is pissed off at us and international water remain clear, carriers are going to be the best way to put a whole lot of firepower in theater very quickly.

I'd also point out that we did pull a battleship out retirement almost 50 years after the war it was designed to fight in.

I will agree that super carriers probably don't exist in 2070. As near as I can tell no one has fought a real decisive naval battle since the Awakening nor has the world seen any sort of international conflict where you'd even use something as overkill as a carrier. Most of the conflicts described tend to be very asymetric with weighting going towards the megacorps in the fight. It's not like the huk were going to rub some bamboo together and squirt out a carrier or two.
Plus they're basically useless to megacorps for the amount of money you spend on one. Probably just better to add a few more Thor round launcher instead.

Not really, it' not so much a question of mass, but rather surface area to mass and raw power available. The USS Enterprise used to be the fastest capital ship in the world with a classified top speed that was known to be second only to the Navy's hydros. She earned that title because carriers naturally have a relatively low surface area to mass ratio and because when she was being desinged (way back in the day), the Navy brass didn't believe the engineers when they said she'd only need two of those new-fangled nuclear reactors, so they ordered eight to be installed.

-NR

What can you say, sometimes quantity has a quality all of it's own. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Interesting article. It's really difficult to assess how much of Ripen's success is due to the parameters of the exercise, though, and how successful it would be now it's been seen once. And, as has been said, no matter how vulnerable a carrier is, it can still do things that assets based in the Continental US simply can't. Heck it can provide a level of air support in the former Yugoslavia (for example) that aircraft based in *Italy* can't.

So, as long as "force projection" is a desirable capability, and the supercarrier will be on the scene. It might mutate to be a drone platform, but timelag and fragility of comms combined with lack of trust in autonomous systems to make the right fire/nofire decisions might make the idea of the fast jet pilot have a longer life.

Note that the author of the examples suggests that Argentinian Exocets "shredded" the British fleet in the Falklands. Exocet sank 1 destroyer and 1 converted container ship. Here's a linkto a list. Most of the damage was done by freefall bombs, and if we (the British) had had a supercarrier with AWACS and Tomcats with their Phoenix, the Argentinian air force would have ceased to exist on its first bombing sortie.

The article ignores two keys facts.

1. The Navy has freely admitted since the early days of nuclear warfare that carriers aren't really expected to surive beyond the initial conflict in a high-intensity war and were never meant to. When you go high intensity on both sides, survivability becomes a quaint term.

2. Van Riper earned his victory by cheating as much, if not more so, as the admirals who "refloated" the lost ships. Van Riper did this by ruthlessly abusing the system before the game ever began. He took advantage of the fact that the battle was a computer simulation where the orders were executed flawlessly. If someone had used Van Ripper's system in real life, the odds of it working as well are very low. If nothign else, the sheer scope of the network would have risked singal to noise confusion and also exposure of the orders to intelligence assets on the ground. Likewise, the computer literaly gave Ripper an unlimited number of personnel for kamakazie missions. While there are obviously some zealots who will sacrifice themselves, the number is relatively low. In Palenstine, the radicals couldn't even maintain a one suicide bomber a day rate, and Iran has less than 15 times the population of Palenstine. Thus the odds of them being able to call upon thousands of kamakazies at any one time are virtually nil.

That's not to say Van Riper was utterly wrong. What his cheating did was to highlight something the Navy already knew and was addressing, namely that blue water ships are less than ideal for what amount to littoral combat. There's scads of new ships and weapons systems being designed to address this; however, under the current administration those programs had suffered cutbacks as emphasis was placed elsewhere. That leaves one to conclude that Van Riper's true strategy was to embarass the administration enough to refocus on the programs it already had in palce.

-Nr

Bringing this back to Shadowrun for a sec, who has carriers then? Given how exspensive the are to maintain, I could only see a handfull of naitons and a few corps having the resources to maintain one. I think the biggest battle listed in cannon SR fiction is the Omega order against Aztechnoloy.

Nations that might have active carrier groups:
UCAS
CAS
Russia
Azlan
the Kingdom of Hawaii might have had one, (inherited from the UCAS) but they probably sold it off

Corps:
The corporate court?
Aztechnology

Some beg to differ

As for Shadowrun: I doubt it is useful to have carriers in 2070. Especially with the change to the Movement power you can basically reach most positions on the earth from a normal airforce base. Then again, I guess the need to spend alot of money on prestige/intimidation objects has not changed in favor of a more solution oriented spending.

The CAS is credited in SoNA as having the lagest standing military in NA. They also are said to have the largest navy, and I foresee it having a carrier or two. And your mention of the movement power, why use it on one or two aircraft when you can move an entire squadron with support staff and crew.

Because it is saving so much money. Nothing speaks against long-term binding Airspirits to granting movement and concealment to planes. You would not even need the mages most of the year. I think the Navy would protest as it won't be their budget anymore.

So it all depends on how integrated you see the military by 2070. It would be perfectly logical for them to be as they are now and it would also be perfectly logical to be a highly integrated taskforce including heavy use of magic.
Old nations who had large standing armys will probably still do that, yet I can see some of the new nations/corps to use more cost efficient ways.

In SR, carriers really aren't going to be around anymore... at least, not the supercarriers. Need precision bombing on a target? Send up a half dozen guided missiles with pilot programs or, better yet, riggers controlling them. Don't have time to wait for the missiles to get to you? Drones can hit just as hard as a big aircraft, but will be alot smaller.

hmm, didnt iran do something similar during the iran iraq war?

as in, send young men to the front with basically just a mark of martyrdom and the orders to rush the iraqi positions, get into hand to hand fighting and grab any weapon they could get hold of?

There's still the issue of logistics for those drones, and a place to land them when they're done. Canon (at least, in Rigger 3, IIRC) said that both the Imperial Japanese and UCAS had sizable carrier fleets.

*sigh*... 60 knots is not unreasonable. Many of the large deck ships can reach speeds in excess of 30 knots. Why do all their spec sheets say 30+? Because you don't necessarily want everyone to know just how quickly you can get from point A to point B. In many cases, a large deck is unable to go as fast as the engines would allow due to physical stresses.

With that said, you'd be very surprised at just how fast a Nimitz class (nuclear powered) carrier can go once it gets up to speed. Large doesn't necessarily mean slow top speed. It does however make acceleration a bitch.