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Mothballed ships; decommissioning

stofsk

SOC-13
So I figure that you have to decommission ships after a certain point. Traveller posits a future where ships can be in service for a century at least.

Would you need to mothball ships for decades after their century of service? (if it turns out that naval ships actually have more or less time in service in Traveller, so be it) Assuming a relatively slow tech progression, a ship that was made two centuries ago might not be up to the standards of the day's modern battleship, but in cases where you're running out of ships and need anything that can fly, bringing a ship out of retirement is still an option.

Problems though: antiquated computer systems, a hull that's probably marked with micrometeorite impacts, and no doubt other maintenance concerns that would necessitate the ship still costing money even whilst in mothballs.

Or would you decommission the vessel? Today, when you want to get rid of a vessel properly you basically sink the thing and create an artificial reef. In space, what do you do? I imagine you can program a course orbit that will take the ship into the local sun. Or if there is a gas giant nearby then a one-way ticket down would work in a pinch.

Some particularly famous ships can be converted into museums. For everything else, that one final voyage is made.
 
Mothballing certainly seems to be the case, some places mention the use of skeleton crews to maintain the vessels.

AHL & Kinnunir have a couple of interesting decommisioning concepts. The Gash is a prison hulk created from a Kinnunir class. A number of AHL's were converted into bulk transports.

Also scrapping a vessel seems to be quite common, today and mentioned in various Traveller publications. Strip out the equipment for resale on the surplus market and chop up the rest.

Finally, sell the ships on, to subsector/planetary navies and client states.

Mothballing, scrapping, surplus sales and foreign sales all have a contempary equivalent in both US and UK Navies, though the time scales are different.
 
“Would you need to mothball ships for decades after their century of service?”

How else could you have vast fields of old ships for players to sneak around in? ;)

What is removed from a mothballed ship? I assume the that weapons come off first but how about jump drives, computers that kind of stuff?

What does the navy do today?
 
Looking back into history I find the British R-class dreadnaughts as well as HMS Repair and HMS Refit (aka Renown and Repulse).

Against a modern Battleship or a massive upgrade (Bismark, Yamato, Roma, Andrea Doria...) they where little more than mobile targets. But against a Q-Ship or a roaming Heavy Cruiser/Panzerschiff they where a capabel deterrent.


I see mothballed warships in Traveller in a similar light. A modern Terranian or Zhodanie warship (TL-14) can punch out any comparable class of the old "barely TL-13" ships we see in the Depots in IIRC "Survival Margin". But two or three of those around a convoi should keep all the SwordWorld and Vagr raider away just nicely.

A second use is bombardment. Attacking a defended planet will be costly for the Navy. Better to loose old, obsolete hulls than to risk top of the line TL-15 hulls.

Third role in a war is system defence monitor. During peacetime large and powerful monitors are too costly to keep up. So if war brews on the Horizon, the Navy starts re-activating old hulls, jump them to the critical systems and leave them there until war is over.

What comes off:

Judging by mothballed warships the external electronics are pulled. I'd go so far as to say anything external is pulled to prevent micro-meteoroid damage. Fluids are purged (to prevent them gumming up), consumables and personal gear/battledress etc taken of the ship(1), ordonance is pulled and so are small crafts. After that the turret/bay sockets are welded over by protective plate and the ship is filled with Nitrogen gas(2)

Anything that needs cutting through the hull (Drives, Reactors etc) is left in place unless the ship is salvaged.

(1) Named cutlery might be stored
(2) To prevent vacuum welding
 
IMO, Michael's 2nd and 3rd ideas are great.


Overall, though, I am not thrilled with mothballing. Of the vast number of US ships mothballed after WWII, the only ones I recall being recalled to service were the Iowa class battleships. Then, they were also in refit facilities for something like a year before becoming fit for service.

I think something like the scheme the British Navy used in the late 18th century and early 19th century might be more appropriate for Traveller. IIRC, this was only used for 1st thru 3rd rates and not lesser ships. After a war, the ships were divided into 3 schedules, with a rotation to active service.

Not sure, tho, how that would work with Traveller ships.
 
First, remember spaceships will be different as they are essentially modular designs. Also, there is always a modernization effort but in such vast distances it is impossible to bring the latest ships always to the fore. Furthermore, there is also the Reserve & Colonial Fleets & Planetary Defences that the Navy may delegate to different planetary systems as a way of beefing up their defence and this could also be a form of mothballing (just as the US sells old equipment to Third World countries like Canada).
 
Originally posted by BillDowns:
IMO, Michael's 2nd and 3rd ideas are great.


Overall, though, I am not thrilled with mothballing. Of the vast number of US ships mothballed after WWII, the only ones I recall being recalled to service were the Iowa class battleships. Then, they were also in refit facilities for something like a year before becoming fit for service.

I think something like the scheme the British Navy used in the late 18th century and early 19th century might be more appropriate for Traveller. IIRC, this was only used for 1st thru 3rd rates and not lesser ships. After a war, the ships were divided into 3 schedules, with a rotation to active service.

Not sure, tho, how that would work with Traveller ships.
The low number of mothballed WWII ships returning to service has three reasons:

+ Technologie made some huge leaps soon thereafter

- WWII submarines where out-dated fifteen minutes after the Allies got their first Typ XXI U-Boot

- Electronics forced new design principles, starting with more powerful electrical systems

- Missiles forced new design principles like launchers and later Vertical Launch Arrays

- Guns went out of favour


+ A lot of the stored ships where IIRC frighters and replentishment ships

+ Quite a few of the "modern" ships where sold of, i.e the Fletcher class DD where given away like candy on Carnival. Even germany got some

+ The carriers where mostly used and used up over the years.


Otoh the Navy re-activated quite a number of WWI destroyers early in WWII. Some (either 50 or 100) where sold to the RN, the rest ended up with the Navy. Unlike the Fletchers, those "Flushdecks" made it into great literature. The "USS Caine" from "Mutiny on the Caine" is one of those re-activated ships.

Another problem is, that no one has really tried to "mothball" large amounts of capital ships. The Imperial Navy decided to store their ships under Scapa Flow(1), the Italiens heavily upgraded theirs (Doria), the US and British scrapped the eldest/weakest (i.e. Dreadnaught, the "Firecrackers" disguised as Battlecruisers etc) and kept the rest, the Japanese (re)build and the French (who had few to start with) scraped most before 1930.

http://www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk/royal.htm


(1) Not recommended. Rust-prevention and keeping the ship clean is a major problem
 
Many of the TL14 AHLs were laid up, obviously not in great conditions though as when a platform for the new TL15 meson guns came up only a few were considered worth refitting with the new systems and were recommissioned.

One of the early Traveller Digests also had an adventure revolving around ships in a mothball facility (Atlantic class cruisers and Regal class battlecruisers)which went into some detail on how vessels were prepared for deactivation. Unfortunately I cannot find the issue now though I remember it showed a ring of large vessels.
 
Mothballing ships in vaccum should be pretty easy: pump out the fluids and open the airlocks.

Micrometeorite damage is an issue in the centuries to millenuim range, and is negligable if you stow sensor arrays inside the hull.

The sealing and nitrogen atmosphere used in "Wet Navy" mothballing is to have a pressurized (inert) atmosphere inside so things don't rust out: a high vaccum is even better for preservation. Remember that the best vaccum that we can make (earthside) is a pretty crappy "low vaccum" for inter-orbital zones, let alone deep space.

Recomissioning may be more of an issue, depending on the tech advancement rate, but if you are looking at the "age of empires" (around the Napoleonic era) you will find lots of examples of recomissioning hulls several decades old and using them as "ships of the line" (albeit not "first rate") The Victory was *not* a new build (and was close to obsolete at Trafalgar)

I don't *ever* see the "toss it into the sun" alternative being an option. With Nuclear damper technology even a radioactive hulk can be quickly rendered "safe" and (worst case) resmelted into raw materials far more cheaply than some random chunk of space debris (or asteroid)

Scott Martin
 
Given that spacecraft and starships have hull armour which is meant to deal with micrometeorites this aspect should not be a real problem anyway. In the virtually stagnant Imperium (it only seems to change technology when a new edition is coming out) technological obsolescence is also not a real problem. The imperium does purchase warships from TL11 and up, look at those BB-11 battleships from the MT era. Then there were the Voroshilefs built at TL13 with a TL15 power plant and TL16 spinal weapon refitted into them.

The real problem is one of wear. At some point the ships are just worn out.
 
Look at the B-52 program for an example of how a weapons platform evolves and remains a potent system.

When the B-52 was first designed and built its primary role was that of strategic nuclear bomber. It was packed with 1950's era tube technology avionics, manually operated defensive gun turrets and additional crewmembers to handle the large number of on-board systems.

The mission of the "BUFF" has changed with the changing political climate over its long service life. Today it serves as a world-range, heavy, tactical bomber.

The tube technology systems have given way to transistors and microchips. The aircraft can function with fewer crew members as computerization takes over the role of monitoring the on-board systems.

The airframe itself, subjected to the rigors of atmospheric flight and pressurization cycles, remains sound due to proper care. To combat their aging and stressed fuselages the maintenance crews follow their scheduled maintenance routine without fail, 24/7/365.

OF course all of this is only possible due to the periodic Service Life Extension Programs that the planes have received. These SLEPs allow the 40+ year old planes to receive major upgrades and repairs.

When all is said in done it is expected that the last B-52 to be retired will be nearing it's 80th birthday.

In a Traveller setting I can see where an older hull might receive several upgrade/refits over it's history. But two factors would weigh in at some point:

1) Cost ratio: New vs. Refit...In the case of smaller hulls it probably would not be cost effective to refit. As stated previously, the Royal Navy only placed Ship-of-the-Line into ordinary due to their high construction costs. Refitting the older hulls was much more cost effective than building new.

2) Increased maintenance cost: As the system ages the maintenance crews have to fight harder to keep the "old girl" together. Time between scheduled overhaul cycles get shorter, meaning the ship spends more time at the drydock than newer ships. To simulate this you could increase the number of maintenance crew members carried on-board by 10% and require the ship to be pulled off of active duty for a few months here and there for whatever SLEP upgrade it was receiving. Add to that you could modify the annual maintenace cost of the ship from 10% to 12-15% (or higher) of cost.

These two factors more than any would affect the decision to keep the system or scrap it.
 
I think ships would wear oou much more slowly operating in vacum. Ships that reenter the atmostphere with regularity would be another thing. (look at real world examples of planes like the C-130 or B-52 that are in service for over 50 years)
 
I wonder how old the oldest operational warship in service in the real world is?

The Arrival Vengeance gives a pretty good idea of how long a TL14/15 refit can remain in service.

Looking at the third Imperium ships, and going by High Guard/MT/T20, TL14 ships can be greatly improved by computer replacement, weapon and screen upgrades, and a possible power plant upgrade.
Hull, armour, drives, launch facilites, crew quarters etc. stay the same.

Refitting a TL14 fleet to TL15 may be a better idea than new builds - ships would be placed in ordinary while awaiting upgrade.
 
Strictly speaking I suppose HMS Victory is still officially on the Naval lists, it is considered the flag vessel of the Second Sealord who is CinC Home Command.

It is kept in ocean going condition but I doubt it could hold up against a Harpoon ASM.
 
The INS Viraat was HMS Hermes and dates from 1959. The Argies have a pair of domestic built frigates from 1946. The Brazilian aircraft carrier Sao Paolo was ex-French from 1956.

I'm sure there is older.
 
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