I got your Nilgiri point...
I guess Ranvijay also fits BrahMos by turning the VLS cells sideways, although rear is wider.
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But a basic size comparison reveals that bigass Shivalik's big-ass could hold as many BrahMos or AShBM as we wanted.
Then why are we doing away with flush tops?
Nilgiri started like this, based on Shivalik...
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...then came a cut.
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And now the whole midsection is trimmed down.
Keep the SAMs at the front deck, & keep the offensive weapons at the rear.
Well in case of Rajput class, it's simple; they are the oldest we have so do whatever experiment you like with them. Some of the Rajputs were fitted with inclined launcher and some with VLS, just to see the feasibility of both the systems. Like now they're the test bed for VL-SRSAM.
As for Shivalik, I agree with you.
The rear raised deck is much higher than front and is used for Barak VLS so we could have accomodate longer missiles in the rear if we wanted.
As for the changes in CGI and models of Nilgiri the only explanation I can come up with is that the initial design might have been dominated by RCS team but then the fabrication and accounting team used their leverages.
That i can answer... On Shivalik one officer commented something on the lines of "what stealth, it's 6000tons if visibility".
His explanation was LO doesn't really matter for large size warships. Their signatures can be brought down to replicate small fishing trawlers, but no enemies going to be fooled by a dozen fishing vessels moving in formation, they'll have satellites & they'll know soon. THE point was LO should be secondary for large warships, but important only for small missile-cutters. They could basically become a small dingy in the sea, & do fast hit & run manoeuvres alone, in very small groups or hovering in & about larger ship's formation.
That is definitely one way of looking into it; with the advent of high resolution satellites no matter how much stealth or even camouflaged you make your ship, your wake would still be more than enough to ruin everything for you.
But here's a counter argument.
In aircrafts the more stealthy a plane would get the less aerodynamic it would become. Hence it's such a pain to design a plane that's both aerodynamic and also stealthy. You can easily end up with a "
wobblin goblin" like F-117.
But that's not the case with ships. In ships it's pretty straightforward, have a continuous flush deck, least amount of superstructure possible, two flat sides and every protruding thing (like gun, CIWS, radar, antenna) faceted...that's it, nothing to worry about performance. So if it's this easy then why not make it a default and reduce the RCS as much as possible.
Oh I get that part but why even bother calling these boats stealth when they clearly are not??!!
The same reason we have just four generations of jets from 1st to 4th but almost a dozen in between 4th and 5th...marketing.
So it's kind of like naval equivalent of 4.5/4+/4++/5- genration jet fighters.
Simply cause their STEALTHEIR than their predecessors. Its all relative.
I mean definitely yes, but that's not how how things work. B1-B was exponentially "stealthier" than previous bombers but still it's termed as a LO platform instead of VLO.
Similarly in vessels only two three qualify as true stealth; Zumwalt being the pinnacle, followed by Visby and then probably Skjold. Everything else is just a LO platform with varying degrees of effectiveness.
in her unraised flush deck.
