An 15.5 foot Voyager 2 half cabin with a 130 hp and fuel for about 5 hours weighs in a two tonnes without bait and fat fishermen and with no sensors to speak of unless you count the fish finder. A smal vessel of this type has significant sea state limitations but is considered a good offshore boat. Its effective operating limits are smooth or partially mooth waters.
Your vessel will need a good stabel power source (24 hours remember) as well as sat coms and control system in addition to your sensors.... all adds weight
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Ok, maybe 5 tonnes maybe 10 tonnes, but i would think of it like an amphibious vehicle to come in/out of the dock, with wheels, a little engine for the wheels for that, but not for going into the road etc. If you want to put one above the other, you can use containers, if it fits, or if containers can be above other (144 containers total capacity).
With the wheels they could roll from the garage to the water through the two lcme1, well, i dont know if the last door can open to the angle need for going to the water of it is just horizontal for comunicating to the back lcme1. Anyway we can remove the lcme1. Imagine we want to be able to quickly launch the drones, then we use one channel for them, parked next to the ramp in the garage, the other channel with 2 lcm1e, and supercats, the free channel can be used for sports for the crew, tennis, basketball, futsal, bowling, etc.
The no danger sea state level of the lhd is 9, 5 for the helos operations (with the retractile fins), and 4 for the lcme1 and amphibious vehicles. Of course we can improved the release and recover of the drone like designing "rast" type mechanisms, ttied to the walls of the dock, etc.
In addition don't forget your sensors are not going to be happy if their reference point is a cork in a choppy sea.
Sorry i dont understand with they are going to be unhappy with an champaigne bottle opened...to celebrate the victory.
Slewing cranes have an operating limitation of 5 degress max in heal (and it must be a modern unit to do that) and less than 1 degree in trim. They cannot be operated in dynamic conditions (i.e in a sea way).
The heavy deck crane is a bridge crane, they say able to move any heavy load, i suppose they mean tanks as well, but as i see the height of the deck and one tank above other it seems very little space, i suppose is for moving them for parking, but anything in that size can be moved above the tanks, like the supercats, and the crane reaches the end of the dock.
Davit launch is really you only option and those are not light and take deck space and must also be motion compensating if you want to operate in a varity of sea states..
Forget the dock......it has siginficant operating limitations an it wouel be a brave captain who woule open it at sea in anything that is not smooth,
Containers, interesting concept.... where are you going to stow them and don't forget to factor in reinforcing for the deck. Racking forces will be in issue (on the container and deck fittings) as you dont want these things rampaging about.
Moving a 2 to 4 tonne boat in a sea way will need to be cone carefully and will again involve equipment.... you cannot simply push these things arond the deck
Sorry it remains a silly idea as a ASW platform
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These drone are the same principle as uav´s, i am sure they are useful, also easier than uav´s because sea is easier than air complexity designing. The utility is fleet task in the ocean and in the coast as well, for making a total aware perimeter, in the coast the subs can hide behind the capes etc. In the ocean, when the fleet is stopped they will give you more sensors, information superiority for own subs and helos, while the fleet is moving they can follow the fleet for some hours i suppose, it depends it you add 1 tonne of fuel it migh be days fixed in the perimeter, then come back for refuelling. I suppose when the dock is floaded the ship can move, maybe a bit slower. You can use the drones for freeing the subs from defensive task and use them for attacking of being away of the fleet,etc.
Thank you.
