Long Beach Class 1990s VLS Upgrade (NTU)
Originally concieved as a long range escort for the then brand-new nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise, the Long Beach was the first nucear-powered surface combatant ever built. Over the course of her life, Long Beach would serve the Navy well before ultimately being retired following the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, but what if she got a second lease on life? Throughout the 1980s, Long Beach had been repeatedly suggested for conversion to Strike Cruiser, and later, conversion to VLS-equipped AEGIS cruiser. Ultimately for various reasons, these refits never materialized, but what if they did? In fact, what if Long Beach had sisters and had them recieve these refits alongside her? Well this answers all of those questions and more. Included are three new ships, and additional ships in class for not just the existing vanilla Long Beach, but also Enterprise. Sadly, Long Beach was never planned to have sisters, and the ships included in this mod are all purely hypothetical. Enterprise on the other hand, was planned to have up to five sisters, all of which would ultimately be cancelled prior to even receiving names due to the excessive cost of the CVN-65 program.
I have taken the liberty of proposing several names of my own, and have included five sisters for Long Beach, and three sisters for Enterprise, as follows:
Long Beach CGN-9
Savannah CGN-10
Chesapeake CGN-11
Astoria CGN-12
Olympic CGN-13
Cascadia CGN-14
Enterprise CVAN-65
United States CVAN-66
John F. Kennedy CVAN-68
Franklin D. Roosevelt CVAN-69
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As usual with these kinds of mods, NTU is required for the new ships, though you can access the sister ships on the Vanilla variants of Long Beach and Enterprise without needing NTU. Included are three variants, a standard 215 cell VLS Long Beach, a VLS variant with an additional 32 Sea Sparrow in their own rotary VLS cells, and finally, a late 80s Strike Cruiser style refit fitting with Mk26 in place of the Mk10. The VLS variants also include the Mk71 8 inch gun as was planned, and allow Long Beach and her sisters to pack a major punch for shore bombardment and direct fire.
Merry Christmas and enjoy!
