Flying aircraft carriers

[hiks89]

y not just put them in space and drop the air craft forom orbit

 

[spectrenihlus]

Seems kinda pointless. I mean what if you returned to base and its gone?

Well then you yell at private Jenkins for taking the base out on a joy ride.

 

[Enkidu88]

In video games and movies, Flying aircraft carriers are a great idea. They're aesthetically pleasing, provide a unique environment to fight in and I don't recall them being used much in games.

In real life they're horrible ideas. In today's era, they'd be akin to the old Dreadnoughts of World War 1. Heavily armored, bristling with weaponry but slow and vulnerable. When they encountered WWII aircraft they were destroyed with ease. Todays wars are all about how fast you can maneuver and supply your forces. And standard aircraft today are so fast and maneuverable that a gigantic floating monolith would be destroyed within minutes. Not to mention the amount of energy it would take to keep something that large aloft in the air. Just all around a bad idea.

 

[Aphroditty]

An aircraft carrier is a big enough target already, putting it in the air wouldn't make much difference either way...

Which means that the inefficiency of an airborne aircraft carrier's power usage would be the main issue. Unless technology is developed that makes us so efficient that we have virtually infinite power, an airborne aircraft carrier will always require a prohibitive amount more power than a normal ocean-based one. Combine that with the fact that conventional airbases and modern planes have no trouble reaching virtually any corner of the globe that you could want to go to, and the airborne aircraft carrier is a bum deal.

If this were WWII and we could somehow get a ship like that to stay in the air, I think it might have worked somewhat, but the airborne aircraft carrier would have been phased out by now because planes wouldn't need 'em anymore.

 

[spectrenihlus]

In video games and movies, Flying aircraft carriers are a great idea. They're aesthetically pleasing, provide a unique environment to fight in and I don't recall them being used much in games.

In real life they're horrible ideas. In today's era, they'd be akin to the old Dreadnoughts of World War 1. Heavily armored, bristling with weaponry but slow and vulnerable. When they encountered WWII aircraft they were destroyed with ease. Todays wars are all about how fast you can maneuver and supply your forces. And standard aircraft today are so fast and maneuverable that a gigantic floating monolith would be destroyed within minutes. Not to mention the amount of energy it would take to keep something that large aloft in the air. Just all around a bad idea.

 

[gbemery]

Not a great idea if you think about the first time their engines fail and about 5,000 crew members have to abandon the massive coffin.

 

[DarkDain]

Maybe an underwater one ? like Supreme Commander !

 

[Enkidu88]

Video snipped

Awesome. Yeah, great ideas in video games!

 

[Nosense]

Do you think flying aircraft carriers would be a good idea if the technology to create them existed

Seriously how awesome is that.

Shit just got serious!

 

[Sansha]

Awesome? Yes. But like zeppelins, they're little more than huge targets, ready to go down in flames with trillions of dollars of technology and materials and thousands of lives.

Plus, something that huge powered by a nuclear reactor crashing into the ground would cause an unimaginable disaster.

 

[Sebenko]

Awesome? Yes. But like zeppelins, they're little more than huge targets, ready to go down in flames with trillions of dollars of technology and materials and thousands of lives.

Totally worth it because of the sheer level of awesome coolness.

 

[Croix Sinistre]

An aircraft that carries aircraft?!

Thats like a gun that shoots guns.

This blows my mind.

 

[Kwaren]

Impractical. Why would you ever need it? To get the airfield closer to the target? Were already well within range with normal carriers/airfields/refueling planes.

Not to mention it would require a bitching amount of resources to keep it running for more than a few minutes (assuming its running on traditional fossil fuels).

Bonuses < Cost

Aircraft carriers are powered by Nuclear reactors .

...right. I forgot about that.

It still holds true, though. You would need a LOT of energy to keep that thing in the air.

I read somewhere that if an aircraft carrier ran on normal gas it would get 6 inches to the gallon.

 

[theamazingbean]

Well, aircraft carriers are useless. Having a hard time seeing how a flying one would be less useless, namely due to it having the exact same flaw: huge multibillion dollar asset that can be downed by comparatively cheap ballistic missiles from half the world away.

 

[cuddly_tomato]

Already been done in the form of airships.

 

[Daipire]

They would be an easy, expensive target, and much too vulnerable. They would also be fucking awesome.

They have high-tech missile system defences on current aircraft carriers, it locks on to any incoming plane/missile and brings it down.

 

[socialmenace42]

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b393/Atlantis-Rising/Valiant1.png

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b393/Atlantis-Rising/Valiant2.png

The HMS Valiant.

No one does Sci Fi like the BBC

 

[Colonel Mustard]

As utterly awesome as it would be, it would be stupid and impractical. Hard to fuel, hard to actually get the massive amount of thrust needed to get several hundred tons of metal airborne and basically a massive, slow target that could be easily taken down with a few hits on the engines.

That said, that's never stopped any military leaders before...

That UAV launcher sounds like a better idea. Convert an AC-130 or two and you're sorted!