In my previous article we looked at how having 100+ VLS cells on a destroyer is a very common sight for vessels built by certain countries. Let us take a very scientific approach to study the other end of the … Continue reading What is common b/w INS Kolkata, HMS Daring, RNNS Nansen??
How did the world come to have 60-100 Universal Vertical Launch System (UVLS) cells on a single vessel? For our audience, here is what UVLS means. It means that a family of missiles or different missile designs modified to fit … Continue reading Arleigh Burke & Ticonderoga classes: How 60-100 UVLS became a norm?
Zumwalt class was supposed to be the successor to the very potent Arleigh Burke class destroyer. It would further the bar of naval vessel capability beyond any system either testing or serving today. They went from that to having a … Continue reading USS Zumwalt: From Being the Best to Barely Practical
Let us test your memory. Think of a conflict where a carrier was used in combat. I am sure, several WW2 conflicts would first come to your mind. Let us think post WW2 and lemme throw in another challenge, the … Continue reading Carriers of the Indian Navy: INS Vikrant R11
The original Top 5 Carrier article compared USS Nimitz, Admiral Kuznetsov, Liaoning, FNS Charles de Gaulle and INS Vikramaditya. Since the addition of USS Ford, HMS Queen Elizabeth and Shandong would have made it too long for our readers, I … Continue reading Top 5 Carriers Part 2
The advantages of nuclear propulsion are well known. For a fixed mass penalty, nuclear propulsion allows a vessel to sail for 2 and a half decades in the case of American supercarriers. The Forrestals (CV-59 to CV-62) displaced around 60,000 … Continue reading Why haven’t we seen carriers significantly bigger than USS Enterprise?
The Chinese just like their Soviet counterparts maintained that they won’t be building aircraft carriers for the naval arm of People’s Liberation Army i.e. PLAN. Changing geo-political scenario and the rise of carrier centric fleets forced China to review its … Continue reading From HMAS Melbourne to Shandong: The Story of China’s Aircraft Carrier Programme
The Soviet defense ministry had the tendency of changing requirements during development of new weapon systems. For some years, they would maintain a particular requirement and then change it. Several times this meant that capable weapon systems were scrapped or their … Continue reading Ships of the Soviet Navy: Slava class
The Soviets knew that their arch rivals were developing a new nuclear powered attack submarine, first of which will be entering service in the early 1970s. The USN already had an impressive fleet of attack submarines which posed a massive … Continue reading Ships of the Soviet Navy: Udaloy class
INS Vikramaditya, the former Soviet heavy aircraft carrying cruiser Admiral Gorshkov will take over as the flagship of the Indian navy after INS Viraat R22 retired in 2017. She started her life as an aircraft carrying cruiser named Baku. She … Continue reading Carriers of the Indian Navy: INS Vikramaditya
