Wonder if we'll see those ropes and pulleys like they first shown in the future. Sending and landing a single aircraft means nothing in carrier operations. I'm very interested in how will sortie generation work with both TB3 and more importantly helicopters. Correct me but if i remember only one spot(starboard, in front of the phalanx) is available for helicopters during drone operations.
I think the idea was dropped a long time ago, and it was a wild idea in the early days.
Video footage of the TB3 has also shown how 'thrilling' it is to land without an angled flight deck, although it looks wide compared to the TB3, the landing area is quite narrow during the approach and leaves little room for wobbling. And considering this, I am not worried about the sortie frequency. 3-4 TB3s in the air at the same time and twice that number in the hangar for non-stop surveillance and monitoring is more than enough for Anadolu at the moment. I see TB3 as a complementary asset to the amphibious assault battalion (air wing and amphibious assets).
I think the sortie frequency and other concerns (deck planning) will be solved with Trakya, possibly an angled deck and re-arranged elevators will allow a higher sortie frequency, recovery of the UAV and deck prepping.
We need to work on modular pods asap, the Navy cannot be made to choose between customised TB3s before launching the UAV, and should be able to switch between ESM / Intelligence pod, an IRST or SAR pod just as installing the missiles.
And possibly a solid navalization, a maintanance package and rigs in the hangar to extend the life of the UAV etc. Baykar will need to miniaturise the overhaul/maintenance tools and packages and prepare a rig to fit into the hangar.
1W A-size passive directional sonobuoys packing under 10kg while NATO standard G-size is under 6kg., but I think the sonobuoys dispenser pod for UAVs and the sonobuoy monitoring and control system (SMCS) are the main weights here. The weight of the SDS pod using in the MQ9B is around 130 kg. A system consisting of 8-10 sonobuoys may barely fit. When we talk about detecting subs, a MAD system may also be included. The AN/ASQ-508 Advanced Integrated Magnetic Anomaly Detection System (AIMS) package weight is 27kg in official sources. In the more compact 30W MAD-XR developed for helis, they reduced the weight to under 2kg. But, If we say that CATS is 55kg and a SAR/ISAR optimized for TB-3 is 30kg on average, AIS, conformal antennas etc, unfortunately I couldn't figure it out how to take off.
I guess distributed systems are the best for this class. An ASW+ISTAR teaming system consisting of 3-4 UCAVs can be designed. But in that case, it would be quite challenging to work in different sectors simultaneously.
IMO, the UAV may serve a SAR carrier, situational awareness tool for the helicopters / USVs to deploy dipping sonar / sonobuoys and USVs may be utilized to receive sonobuoy transmission. The payload of UAV is too little to deploy sufficient amount of sonobuoys and its punch is endurance over the payload. We are not bound to make whole CONOP based on TB3, other assets exist to complement the bigger picture. I don't know why people bases the entire CONOP on TB3 and trying to make every ASW ASuW, AAW, AEW missions through fleets only composed of it.
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