More: "old ship use" for armchair admirals

You do remember the part about Manticore and Grayson not having any new-build or much in the way of any spacebased manufacturing, don't you?

So lets say you have a early production CLAC that has a considerable amount of damage but no place to repair it given what is already in the queue for the yards and repair ships available. Lets say that it still has hyperspace capacity but perhaps not able to use a wormhole and has -more or less- the capacity to deal with about half its standard compliment of LACs.

What do you do with this, other than strip for parts, crew and then scrap the balance?

How about parking it in a system in Talbot as a LAC Tender and use it as a system defence asset? You already have the crew, such as are left from whatever crippled the ship. You have the surviving LACs, a bunch of spare parts, consumable weapons, at least some of its original repair and maintance facilities and a tactical/sensor suite of a major warship. SEM at least is already deploying LACs in multi-squadron groups as system defence packages in a number of places even if they don't yet have purpose built basing available. This gives you a base location and it could be moved if needed. It could also fight its way out (mostly run away while providing itself covering and counter missile fire) of at least a modest FF raid on the system. It probably can do at least some meaningfull self-repair work to improve it's usefulness in such a posting.

Since it has that full-up warship tactical package and still has drones available or could be shipped in, it could also be given pods which could be deployed both for self defense (tractored alongside) or system defence and put in position by the LACs in normal course of patrol.

This certainly does carry some risk that a heavy or well planned attack could pin the CLAC in the system and it could be captured (or destroyed) but that is a risk no matter what you place for system defence.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

stewart wrote:
See the Soviet / Russian Muskova class Aviation Cruisers. Effectively a heavy cruiser front half and a LPH rear deck. Effective ONLY as a helo-capable aviation platform with little aft defense.
The class did, however serve as a training platform for the Soviet Navy's first foray into Naval Aviation in the 1970's and 1980's.

Stewart

And how did that work out for them. I suppose I should have said that no navy with any experience with aircraft carriers would consider building such a beast - The United Kingdom, US, Japan (not post WWII but prior).

Well prior to WWII nobody had anti-ship missiles.
But that didn't stop the US from building it's first big carriers (Lexington and Saratoga) with the weapons fit of a heavy cruiser (4 twin 8" turrets), despite how that potentially compromised both flight operations and gunnery. (And there were carrier design studies with heavier guns than that).

As far as I know the UK and Japan never gave their dedicated carriers anything larger than about a 5" gun (for defense against aircraft or destroyers). OTOH during the war Japan did a partial conversion to produce the bastard battleship-carrier hybrids Ise and Hyūga which retained their forward 14" guns and gained a (very short) carrier deck aft of the funnels.

For that mater, their semi-recent Hyūga-class helicopter destroyers mount Mk41 VLS cells. I wonder if the combat systems installed can handle launching a tomahawk missile (or other cruise missile) from the cells? (But even if they can they probably don't routinely carry them)

Brigade XO wrote:You do remember the part about Manticore and Grayson not having any new-build or much in the way of any spacebased manufacturing, don't you?

So lets say you have a early production CLAC that has a considerable amount of damage but no place to repair it given what is already in the queue for the yards and repair ships available. Lets say that it still has hyperspace capacity but perhaps not able to use a wormhole and has -more or less- the capacity to deal with about half its standard compliment of LACs.

What do you do with this, other than strip for parts, crew and then scrap the balance?

How about parking it in a system in Talbot as a LAC Tender and use it as a system defence asset? You already have the crew, such as are left from whatever crippled the ship. You have the surviving LACs, a bunch of spare parts, consumable weapons, at least some of its original repair and maintance facilities and a tactical/sensor suite of a major warship. SEM at least is already deploying LACs in multi-squadron groups as system defence packages in a number of places even if they don't yet have purpose built basing available. This gives you a base location and it could be moved if needed. It could also fight its way out (mostly run away while providing itself covering and counter missile fire) of at least a modest FF raid on the system. It probably can do at least some meaningfull self-repair work to improve it's usefulness in such a posting.

Since it has that full-up warship tactical package and still has drones available or could be shipped in, it could also be given pods which could be deployed both for self defense (tractored alongside) or system defence and put in position by the LACs in normal course of patrol.

This certainly does carry some risk that a heavy or well planned attack could pin the CLAC in the system and it could be captured (or destroyed) but that is a risk no matter what you place for system defence.

Some points to consider that complicates the tactical scenario:

1) If the damaged CLAC has hyperspace capability, but can't use a wormhole, that tells me that it has damage to one or more alpha nodes and therefore cannot generate (a) Warshawski sail(s). Therefore, if it has to enter hyperspace, it can't use gravity waves for travel, and might possibly be run down in hyperspace, depending on how the gravity waves are arranged in hyperspace near the (normal space) star system it is in.

2) And if the star system it was damaged in lies directly in a gravity wave, it is stuck there (entering hyperspace from normal space where you would immediately be in a gravity wave requires both Warshawski sails be rigged).

The first point complicates running away, the second point makes it impossible.

Other than that your suggestion may be workable as a temporary expedient, provided that the 2nd point (if it applies) was the result of a successful attack that the attacking forces did not need to immediately withdrawal from the star system. If it was the result of an unsuccessful attack, the ship would have been scuttled or been destroyed fighting (similar to Ajax at Solon).