Royal Navy has always been at the forefront of military advancement. Since Britain is an island, it had a strong navy to defend its shores from the very beginning. It has fought many intercontinental wars, two World Wars and maintained tight control over the seas just because its navy was the largest, most disciplined and well-equipped with cutting edge technology. Such is the traditional might of the British naval arm that no other country has been able to invade its shores through sea till now. So, we can look towards the future tech of Her Majesty’s Naval service and see for ourselves what kind of warfare the future has in store for us.
It was in 1908 that the great battleship HMS Dreadnought was commissioned by the British Navy. Its speed, cutting edge weapons delivery and other innovations made it a terror throughout the seas and rendered almost every other warship obsolete. So, the Ministry of Defense (MOD) of England has recently decided to revisit the fervor of the Dreadnought by underlining the concept of the future warfare with its Dreadnought 2050 design. It will be a fusion-powered surface warship with Laser weapons, Hypersonic cruise missiles, composite material hulls and high-speed torpedoes that can travel at 555 km/h.
After declaring a national contest for engineering students throughout the country, all proper design considerations were taken into consideration while making this extraordinary claim of a vehicle thirty-five years into the future. It is an encapsulation of some ideas, and it will hardly be built according to the same specifications as the technology and military will change dynamically by then. The entire idea pushes the limits of engineering right now, and further advancements will pave the way for its realization. The warship has been designed to have roughly the same dimensions as that of a Type 26 frigate.
One of the main characteristics of the earlier Dreadnought was its stronger Hull that avoided a potential breach due to less powerful attacks. The Dreadnought 2050 will also have a strong acrylic hull made of composites, and it will be made translucent for a better viewing capacity. A Graphene coating will ensure streamlined flow over the water. The three hulls of the unorthodox ship will also be equipped with ballast tanks that can submerge the entire ship if it wants to carry out stealth operations.
The ship will have unlimited range owing to its fusion based engines. If the vessel is ever developed, it will have highly efficient turbines propelling it at 50 knots or 92 Km/h. A quadcopter drone will always be hovering over the ship to take down incoming enemy missiles with laser weaponry and multi-spectral sensor based weapons.
There would be a large expandable flight deck onboard the ship that will be used to launch Unarmed Combat Aerial Vehicles (UAVS). An interesting idea that came up with drones was that they can be easily manufactured on board by that time with the help of 3D printing technology, so there would be no limitation of running out of fighters and bombers in this arrangement. Add it to the unlimited range, then whoa! We have a ship that has unlimited firepower and range. It won’t have to come back to the docks for re-arming and maintenance as well.
An electromagnetic railgun will also be thrown into the fray. It will roughly have the same range as that of today’s cruise missiles. Their hypersonic velocities would mean that they will destroy their targets with sheer momentum and velocity rather than the amount of explosives present. The command table will be a hologram-based virtual entity showing various points of interest and give live hologram feed from those areas. The Star Wars inspired table will be able to rotate and zoomed if required. The captain of the ship can make decisions based on highly detailed live data straight from the battlefield itself. Smaller holographic pods will be available for each crew member, and it will show the information and commands on their own screens.
So, this beast of a ship will surely rule the seas and the skies in the future. All this modern tech will be useful in maintaining strategic advantages and secure the trade routes from pirates as well.