That’s why we have to start flinging them now. Before the Zs close the trampoline gap. Sure they’d fling a few warships back now. I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed, but it would be minimal casualties. 30 or 40 million tops. Depending on the breaks.
Probably depends entirely on the aerodynamics involved, if we’re assuming it’s approaching as an aircraft. This is kind of an intermediate range, and it has shitty ballistics, so the energy to just get it off the ground will be dwarfed.
So I did some math, and I’m assuming we need about 1/3 of LEO velocity, it would take 707 SpaceX Starship launches to throw USS Abraham Lincoln to Kremlin.
This is of course ignoring air resistance, other physics and common sense + we’re assuming spherical aircraft carrier
Yeah I did some research and calculations, and pulled that number out of my ass
Edit:
Based on this guys math which I trust as much as anything in this community, you’d need 9522km/h velocity, which is pretty damn close to 1/3 LEO velocity (28000km/h).
Okay this might get little bit too credible, but if we were to disassemble the aircraft carrier in 150t pieces and launch to low earth orbit, assemble it again there and then use 1 more starship to slow it’s velocity to deorbit and drop it to target, we would need little over 2100 starship launches. Little bit more if we cover the ship with heat tiles to protect during re-entry.
Honestly this seems well worth it considering how much cooler it would be than the usual designs for kinetic orbital strike.
v = (7130009.81 / sin(245))^0.5
v = (6994530 / 1)^0.5
v = 2644.72 ms^-1
So we need to launch at 2,645 metres per second (9,522 kph, 5,917 mph). To get the energy, we use the kinetic energy equation:
e = 0.5 m v^2
e = 0.584328002644.72^2
e = 29,491,794,808,885.76 joules
e = 29.5 terajoules
For comparison, the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima exploded with about 60 terajoules of energy. So once you account for air resistance you're probably looking at a nuke of energy.
assuming the warship is being fired from a naval gun of truly massive proportions based on the AGS Mark 5, firing a saboted warship based on the LRLAP ( since they were made for the Zumwalt class and cost a million a round, making them the obvious best choice.)
And why not, let’s also make the warship a Zumwaltz class, for flavor synergy.
The LRLAP weighd 225lbs and had an effective range of 150km, so thats ~ 100kg at 150km, and it would travel at 825 mps, let’s say ours needs to go 800, were in no rush.
Projectile Mass: A Zumwalt weighs, rounded down, 15,000 long tons, which is 15,240,704 kg Let’s say 15,000,000 kilograms. They emptied it, unloaded the ammunition, decommissioned the AGS, so it weighs a little less. Zumwalts are 610 feet long, let’s make that 1000 total to account for an aerodynamic sabot and charge, so 300m. The bore length was 378" and the shell 88", so that gives us a ratio of 4.29:1
Our barrel is 1287m long, let’s just say 1200m.
Saboted Zumwalt: 15,000,000Kg
Barrel length of gun: 1200m
Distance: We’re gonna park this gun on Gotland, middle of lake NATO. Well need some space, and that’s right in the middle. It’s 1,168.31 km as the crow flies, so we’ll round up to 1200 km.
So, our 1.2Km long nuclear cannon would send our saboted 15,000,000 ton Zumwalt 1200km @ 800 mps, requiring 1200 Kilotons of energy, rounded up. The boat would be in flight for about 25 minutes.
My math is quite accurate, please do not double check it.
USS Constitution is a warship and still listed on the Naval Register. Fling her and the math gets much easier, nerds, get to crunching. She weighs around, what, 400 tons fully ballasted? Imagine the impact of the mainmast, smashing through the roof of that "civilian administration* building we memed about in March 2022, the one with anti aircraft on the roof. ANTI-AIRCRAFT. They’re fooked!