Cartoons, Meet Combat. Combat, Cartoons.

 

Cars 2 starts with not only cars but boats. Minutes in, we’re introduced to Tony Trihull, who’s guarding a platform swarming with Bad Guys (or Bad Cars). I didn’t find out his name until later, and at that moment thought, “what an odd boat, it looks almost like a submarine”. It turns out it was a boat (the name being a bit of a giveaway), and like any vehicle in the Cars franchise, it’s got a liberal grounding in The Real.

Tony Trihull and the USS Independence

 

It’s the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) and, as its name implies, is a vessel intended for close to shore, or sea-to-shore operations. As is implied by Tony’s name, it’s a trihull and has no forward decks to speak of. As you’ll see in the diagrams (or even by just watching Cars 2 as Tony turns around), there is a substantial  rear deck for most configurations.

Segueing into configurations, it’s modular and can be fitted with a number of these modules depending on its intended application. So much hardware is in the modules and tied with vessel systems that it almost becomes a different ship depending on which module it’s fitted with, as the some of the names imply: Mine Hunter, Surface Warfare, Anti-submarine Warfare, etc. One carries a number of new-ish helicopter drones (the MQ-8B UAV), making for quite a sexy package.

MQ-8B heli-drone

Israel had initially expressed an interest in the LCS, but opted to build its own. Other potential customers include Saudi Arabia and China.

While we’re at it, a trivia question (prize TBD): how many countries have no Littoral (coast, i.e. “landlocked”), ocean or even large lake? BONUS: how many countries have no coast but still have a navy?


Incidentally, I’d come up with a moniker for a country completely enclosed by another (only one, with only one border): “statelocked”. Lesotho https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/lt.html is my personal favorite; the Holy See (Vatican City) is perhaps more obvious, but it’s not so much a “state” and certainly isn’t in the UN pantheon (though it is an observer, as is the Palestinian Authority). There are more of these than you might think…

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One Response to “Cartoons, Meet Combat. Combat, Cartoons.”

  1. Mark Haller August 24, 2011 at 8:02 pm #

    landlocked countries… hmm 47 – according to wikipedia, 44 in the cia factbook. both of which,and geographers with them seem to think that inland seas (lakes) don’t count.

    11 landlocked countries have navies though… and most of them have large lakes of some kind. lake malawi is the home of the pseudotropheus zebra,as you might recall. but seriously, if we threw out the countries with large (not sure how to define) lakes, or river borders.from our landlock definotion, i’m not we’d have any landlocked navies.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navies_of_landlocked_countries

    3 are “statelocked”, or enclaves which are not exclaves.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_enclaves_and_exclaves#Enclaves_which_are_not_exclaves

    despite a good chance of being wrong, i enjoyed learning all of that. thanks!

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