Naval Historywith Dr. Alex

Q&A · 59:44-1:00:58

Could an interwar missile ship qualify as an auxiliary?

A hypothetical interwar VLS vessel separates treaty classification from the much larger problem of supplying the required missile technology.

Counterfactual HistoryMissilesNaval Arms ControlNaval AuxiliariesVertical Launch Systems
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Question

Would the naval treaties prevent a ship with vertical-launch missiles from qualifying as an auxiliary?

Short answer

Its classification would depend on the ship's other characteristics, but operational VLS in the interwar period requires a substantial technological counterfactual.

Notes

An imagined vertical-launch ship would still have to satisfy the treaty criteria governing its classification. A vessel qualifying as an auxiliary could be larger than 2,000 tons, and Unicorn is used as a size comparison for a support vessel. A forward-support rocket vessel is the proposed way to frame the concept. The larger difficulty is technological: making VLS work in the 1920s or 1930s requires inventions that the scenario simply assumes.