Arsenal ship
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An arsenal ship is a ship which was proposed by the US Navy in 1996. It has since had funding problems, with Congress cancelling some funding, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) providing some funding to individual contractors for prototypes.
In concept, an arsenal ship is a floating missile platform, intended to have as many as five hundred vertical launch bays. Such a ship would initially be controlled remotely by an Aegis Cruiser, although plans include control by AWACS aircraft such as the E-2 Hawkeye and E-3 Sentry.
Such a ship would be low-profile, stealthy, and double-hulled, to provide it a high degree of survivability. The strategy would thus be to move the ship into a theatre as fast as possible, combined with either airborne (such as AWACS) or seaborne (such as a Ticonderoga-class cruiser) remote control and guidance. This provides an enormous amount of force projection, and would put minimal personnel in danger. The benefits of this are many, but perhaps the most significant is the (possible) obviation of the need for the standard Carrier Battle Group and associated costs.
The Tomahawk has a range in excess of one thousand kilometers.
The estimated cost of these ships is on the order of $500 Million each, with a roughly $500 Million cost for the armaments, which would include Tomahawk and other cruise missiles.
See Also
- FAS page on Arsenal Ships (http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/arsenal_ship.htm)