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Originally Posted by bottomcrawler
Ah!
Well, as I said, my main interest is aircraft and aviation in general, and conformal fuel tanks and sensor packages are becoming more common there. It just made sense to me to have something similar under water.
Carefully designed, CFTs only add around half the wetted area compared to a pylon-mounted drop tank of the same volume. In addition to that, they free up pylons for missiles and bombs.
For a sub, I figure faster reloading and an increased load capacity would be the main advantage. Having torps in long tubes that are already flooded, outside the pressure hull, would make for quieter launches. I don't know if it's possible, but gently pushing a torpedo out, then have it "hover" silently until the launching boat quietly swims away to a safe distance, would allow very stealthy engagements.
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Sounds like your thinking along the lines of the the Navy's "Tango Bravo" research project
http://www.darpa.mil/STO/maritime/tango.html
I love speculating about future designs as well.
Conformal would make sense if it looked similar to the Ohio Class subs fairwater area [above the missile tubes]. That would be the only way to make them conviently reloaded otherwise the weapons would need be loaded underwater [awkward at pierside and with a 1 ton torp]. Not sure how many torps you could fit at a 'read to launch' position in such a small space though. I say, storage in the ballast tanks would be better.
