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this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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to power lasers and a railgun? sure, why not. it's not going to get built anyway
600KW isnt that much for a gas turbine the size of a large missile crusier's. The MiG-25's radar unit had a rated power of 600-800KW in its highest range mode, and allowed it to overpower NATO radar jamming. And that was using 2 (albeit powerful) jet engines.
The railgun is a bit more fucky. They're more in the megawatt range and the fire rate is abysmal because charging and barrelwear isn't solved. There's a reason Russia and China just went straight to hypersonic missiles - railguns are still a meme technology.
That's only the output, it'd take closer to 6mw to power it which still can be done (i think the zumwalt could output 78mw or so) but it'd be a decent chunk of the energy for only one system
no there will be a separate coal power plant just for the lasers
people think its the lasers and boom bang stuff that is the weapon, but really its just idling this belching disaster near our geopoltical rivals to fuck up the environment that is the real weapon.
Not to nerd out but the inclusion of a diesel powerplant along with a gas electric turbine is directly due to the lessons from the Ticonderoga class. The tico has very poor range because it only has a gas electric turbine and it drinks fuel. Including the diesel is for this new design to have a long endurance cruise and the turbine for all other times (sprinting, war maneuver, powering the lasers and other bullshit, etc).
I believe this also was an issue for the LCS, I think that too was turbine only. A ship designed for close in work on shores and littoral waters that drinks fuel. No ability to stay on station. Ridiculous.
It would make more sense to build them with the same nuclear reactors as the carriers with the theoretical far range they have with rail guns and silly flashlights they call lasers onboard. Like having it as a stand-off far-range sea artillery piece in that aspect would make some sort of sense.
I think honestly the navy knows it's a huge floating high value target, and they're not willing to make it even higher value target by putting a nuclear reactor on it. It would need to be a guided missile submarine for them to invest it with a nuclear reactor
At least it'll be slightly less devastating to the local ecology when one of these meme machines ends up splattered by a houthi-manufactured dongfeng hypersonic AShM
The range issue with LCS was that they nixed fuel tanks in favor of speed, so it can’t even sail from San Diego to Hawaii without refueling