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Executive Summary
 The intent of this design was to explore the nature of ship which would augment the magazine capacity of a Navy carrier battle group. A battle group could find itself engaging so many incoming threats that its missile magazines are depleted while the ships still retain the ability to engage further threats.
The CMX was intended to provide a way to increase the battle group's missile loadout while decreasing the average ship cost. In essence, the ship would carry a large number of missiles which would be fired by other ships of the battle group. The CMX would not require the complex and expensive sensors and control systems to allow it to detect, engage and kill threats. Other ships of the battle group would use their sensors and control systems and fire the missiles contained in the relatively simple CMX which would be, in essence, a floating auxiliary magazine.
In evaluating the effectiveness of the design, the students examined four warfare scenarios and for each determined the degree to which substitution of CMXs for ships with the Aegis weapons system could improve overall battle group effectiveness. For three of the 4 scenarios it was concluded that the resulting large increase in the number of missiles more than offset the small loss in number of Aegis systems, resulting in an overall increase in effectiveness. Only in the case of a short burst of very high density enemy raids would a decrease in effectiveness result.
More Information
The following documents are available for download.
- Final Report
PDF file, 324 pages, 8.88 MB.
- Arcs of Fire
This drawing is intended to verify that all sensors and weapons have satisfactory "areas of coverage" which will permit the ship to detect and engage threat targets.
- Ship View
The ship was designed to augmnent the firepower of a Battle Force with large numbers of VLS missile tubes, whose contents could be fired by other ships in the force.
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