US Navy Surface Effect Ship (SES) Concepts

Too large to be attached, but can be found below. Information on the specific design is limited as the paper is post cancellation and talks mainly about enabling technology and how it might be reused. Still its far more detail then I have ever seen before on any specific T-Craft concept. Shame, I really want specs for the giant giant amtrack design launched from a high speed LST. https://www.navalengineers.org/ProceedingsDocs/FAST2011/A3-1.FAST2011.Moore.pdf
 
NAVSEA SC 1000 concept (& derived Institute for Defense Analyses SSC-1000 concept):
 

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Just to carry on from my last post. The hoverliner of the 60s is exemplified by this artwork from one of a pocket book series on ships.

The US also got in the hover carrier act and I know these are familiar but make no apologies for posting them to show that the idea was still alive and well in the 70s. Finally, doesnt this Disneyplanes carrier have more than a touch of vstol hovercarrier about it?
 

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Via Dark Roasted Blend:

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http://www.foils.org/butler.htm
 
Clicking on the link below you will find a 1978 study by the Center for Advanced Research of the Naval war College for a SEC or Surface Effect (aircraft) carrier:


http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA060083

F_T
 
Following on my previous post:

Clicking on the link leads to a page with the abstract of the paper and the link to the paper itself.

The paper is long (about a 100 pages) but it has a nice 10 page summary with also a topside view of the SEC compared to CVNs, a (poor quality) artistic image and a table with summary carachteristics.

Unfortunately when I tried to extract those pages from the original PDF to make them more easily availabe here I received error messages so that I couldn't do that.

best
F_T
 
Hmmm. There are no Adobe security restrictions on the file, so you should be able to extract pages and so on. Or were you trying to do that via Adobe Acrobat Reader?

I've extracted one page of "art" using full Acrobat - between the high-contrast microfiche and the JPEG artifacts, there isn't much to work with...

Sorry.
 

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I'm not sure actually. I think it was in the 50-60 knot range.
 
I'm not sure actually. I think it was in the 50-60 knot range.

Rings a bell, I remember reading about them many many years in a magazine that lasted 3 editions IIRC.

Presumably no deck part when at high speed.
 
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I was looking through the Navy Heritage and History Center site and found concept art of different kinds of Surface effect ships.





 

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SES-MX concept:

Just stumbled across a USNI Proceedings August 1983 "Comment & Discussion" letter by Michael Stoiko* and William White that may be related to this design. It's titled "An SES MX" Concept.

The MX-SES ship described in the letter is ~11,000 tons, with a length of 535 feet and a beam of 105 feet, and a main deck to keel measurement of 48 feet. Speed was 59 knots with a range of 4900 nm or 15 knots hullborne for a range of 22,000 nm, using 3,350 tons of fuel. Cushionborne propulsion was via (4?) LM5000 gas turbines driving four 13-foot supercavitating CP props. There were also six 7000-hp diesels to power the lift fans. Two of the diesels would also provide hulllborne propulsion.

MX-SES as described was designed to carry 20 MX Peacekeeper ICBMs, arranged in banks along each sidewall. The launch tubes were angled at 30-degrees from the vertical and extended from the keel to 33 feet above the main deck, with each bank of missiles being 154-feet long. The missiles would cold launch and then ignite about 200 feet above sea level.

Alternative parametric designs covered anywhere from 2 to 20 missiles, but 10 was considered the minimum economical design. They also studied various launch options, including versions where the missiles were stowed horizontally and erected for launch. I suspect the SES-MX drawing here is one of the smaller studies -- it looks like maybe 4-6 missiles in a hangar that would be moved aft and erected for launch, with the exhaust pointing over the transom.

* In 1982, Stoiko was the Chief of Advanced Design in the Surface Effect Ships Office of the Naval Sea Systems Command. William White is harder to pin down, but I'd guess he worked in that office or possibly on the MX program.
 
I've seen some deck-jettison and CVN silo-launch ICBM concepts before, but the SES concept is new to me and bananas.
 
I've seen some deck-jettison and CVN silo-launch ICBM concepts before, but the SES concept is new to me and bananas.

Isn't it, though? MX brought out so much absolute insanity. This specific proposal feels like they were trying to use as many of the cool 1980s ideas as they could all in one program -- MX, SES/hovercraft, SL-7, Arapaho, you name it.
 
I've seen some deck-jettison and CVN silo-launch ICBM concepts before, but the SES concept is new to me and bananas.

Isn't it, though? MX brought out so much absolute insanity. This specific proposal feels like they were trying to use as many of the cool 1980s ideas as they could all in one program -- MX, SES/hovercraft, SL-7, Arapaho, you name it.

You get the impression that Jeremy Clarkson had a hand in some of those proposals......how hard can it be?
 
Yes... the idea was to get a SES carrier that could go fast enough that neither catapults nor arresting gear would be needed.

Without those, and the deck space needed for them (and for aircraft to slow down in) the vessel could be smaller and cheaper.
 
Intriguing, an hovercraft aircraft carrier...
I missed such concept.
 
The Janes Book on hovercraft and hydrofoils is a treasure trove for such designs and can be found quite cheaply as Libraries ditch their stocks.

The weird and wonderful designs were found to be too costly and impractical.
 
How can you do without a maintenance team that constantly hangs out on the deck of a modern American aircraft carrier? They'll all be blown overboard here
 
How can you do without a maintenance team that constantly hangs out on the deck of a modern American aircraft carrier? They'll all be blown overboard here
The difference in relative velocities for surface effect carrier is much less significant - landing is simpler.
 
Such a ship can reach a speed of 50 knots. The aircraft needs to gain the same amount, and this is 150 - 200 meters of distance.

My friend participated in the presentation of a radio-controlled flying model of the ekranoplan "Secunda". Two MiG-25 models with powder engines were launched from the ship. The estimated flight speed of this ekranoplane is 500 km/h, which is more than the take-off speed of the MiG-25
 

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How can you do without a maintenance team that constantly hangs out on the deck of a modern American aircraft carrier? They'll all be blown overboard here
The difference in relative velocities for surface effect carrier is much less significant - landing is simpler.
On the other hand, landing is much more difficult for the deck crew, on account of not having wings. Refuelling and rearming would likely have to be done below deck or at reduced speed, either of which would reduce sortie rate.
 

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