Smallest Practicle Carriers ?

What is the smallest a modern aircraft carrier can be in size whilst still maitaining the ability to field a worthwhile air group. Would it be improbable to have afunctioning carrier smaller than the Juan Carlos for instance ?
 
Depends on your particular nation's definition of "Practical Air Group", and the size of the aircraft used. If you're good with using A-4 or Harriers then a Foch class carrier is more than enough. If force projection is your goal then nothing smaller than a De Gaul class or upcoming QEII class will do.

Mission
Air Group size
largest aircraft embarked
 
What is the smallest a modern aircraft carrier can be in size whilst still maitaining the ability to field a worthwhile air group. Would it be improbable to have afunctioning carrier smaller than the Juan Carlos for instance ?
For what role, what opponents and what era? A carrier optimised for the strike role against well equiped enemies will need to be larger to accommodate sufficient numbers of high performance fighter-bombers and carry adequate fuel and munitions to sustain intensive combat operations. An ASW/Sea Control carrier can get away with being smaller as it'll only have helos and maybe a single under strength squadron of STOVL fighters to see off any long-range maritime patrol aircraft or lob a Harpoon or two at stray surface combatants.

For a modern strike carrier Charles de Gaulle probably represents the minimum useful size (42,000 tons full displacement), with the Queen Elizabeth class being closer to ideal (65,000 tons). For the ASW/Sea Control role Chakri Naruebet and Giuseppe Garibald represent pretty much the absolute minimum on 10,000-11,000 tons.
 
Last edited:
As above, it depends on what the carrier is for and what it will carry.

A pure helicopter carrier can obviously be smaller then a fixed wing carrier since it doesnt require a flight deck capable of providing a takeoff run.

Next up in size would be a carrier for STOVL (Harrier, not F-35B) operations. These could probably start in size around the same as the Thai, Spanish and Italian Harrier Carriers.

The smallest possible CATOBAR carrier would probably be something about the size of a modernised Colossus/Majestic class carrier. They would be limited to helicopters and fixed wing combat aircraft the size of the A-4 or possibly a Hawk 200 style derivation of the T45 (or a Navalised Hawk 200).

In all these cases though, you are probably operating a single squadron of fixed with aircraft along with a squadron of Rotary winged Aircraft.
 
Can UAVs take off on shorter runways that regular planes?

Depends on the size and type of the UAV. They range from micro UAVs that can takeoff in a few feet to full sized Jets that take a full runway or a fullsized Carrier. UAVs come in more shapes and sizes than manned aircraft.
 
Depends on the size and type of the UAV. They range from micro UAVs that can takeoff in a few feet to full sized Jets that take a full runway or a fullsized Carrier. UAVs come in more shapes and sizes than manned aircraft.
Ah, I wasn't sure if G-force issues helped out or not.
 
Can UAVs take off on shorter runways that regular planes?
Mostly, take-off distance is a function of size and top speed, the smaller and slower an object, the shorter the distance it requires. For example, the Britten-Norman Islander has a take-off distance of only 380m, while the comparably sized but faster Cessna 401 has a take-off distance of 537m.
 
Ah, I wasn't sure if G-force issues helped out or not.

Well yes indirectly but mostly it is a size and flight profile issue. Slow, small, low flying UAVs tend to have very short take off and landing requirements - and incidentally low payloads and short ranges. While larger high flying faster UAVs tend to have take off requirements that mirror similar sized manned aircraft. UAVs could have shorter takeoff requirements at the tradeoff of some kind of catapult/jet assist (which is how they are launched from some non-carrier warships) which imposes higher G-forces than a normal takeoff but not hugely more than a normal carrier takeoff. In general a rule of thumb is electronics don't really like much higher G-forces than humans in G-suites do, they can take higher sustained forces but transitory high G-forces still damage electronics. So yes higher G for drones but that is not a current reason, give it 3-5 years and that will be more of a reason/use.
 
20,000 tons. Smaller than that and the fixed wing portion is too small to both defend the battle group and generate a reasonable offensive strike. This is true for the entire 52 year period from 1960 through to the present day for the only 3 small carrier aircraft in the world; A4 Skyhawk, Super Etenard and The Harrier.
 

Tovarich

Banned
Whoa, I completely misread the title and thought this was a thread about devising the smallest particle accelerator.

Damn, ninja'd before I even started typing, 'cos I thought it said 'smallest particle' too.

Tora, Tora, Tora.....launch the quarks!
 
Top