penny wrote:I might be wrong, but I think it is implied in text. IINM that the Shark is supposed to carry the g-torp but that its delivery system wasn't complete???
By implication, the Ghost class is for reconnaissance missions, thus needs no weapons. But the Shark class - if only implied by its namesake, 'Shark' - is slated to be a warship, thus, with weapons. If so, there would be no refit needed since it was originally designed with g-torps in mind.
It might not have to be gutted. There is no reason the launch system can't be built completely on the hull operated by a sliding door like that of a boat bay. The bulk of the torpedo(s) can sit on the outside of the hull.
P.S. G-torps do not need to impart sufficient velocity to clear a ship's wedge and the ship before bringing up the drive. So the launch mechanism might have less problems and a simpler design.
The entirety of the relevant text seems to be:
Mission of Honor wrote:The torpedo’s size made fitting it into magazines and actually firing it awkward, to say the least, and the Sharks had never been intended to deploy it operationally. For that matter, the Sharks themselves had never been supposed to be deployed “operationally.” The Leonard Detweiler class, which had been intended to carry out this operation, had been designed with magazines and launch tubes which would make it possible to stow and fire torpedoes internally, but none of the Detweilers were even close to completion, and it had required the development of an ingenious external rack system to allow the Sharks to use it for Oyster Bay.
Then there's also the statement from SftS that the Sharks "were still essentially prototype units in many ways".
My presumption from that is that Shark design (and likely their start of construction) predated the MAlign designing the graser torp. That's why (in addition to their smaller size; only partway between a BB and DN) Sharks had no ability to carry them internally. That there'd never been any such allowance because when designed the MAlign hadn't foreseen wanting to use such a large and unusually shaped weapon. Instead we know the Sharks were designed as podlayers, carrying pods of Cataphracts. (They likely also have energy mounts; but I don't recall explicit statements to that effect; and may or may not have broadside mounted missile tubes)
However, as the gtorp was being designed and finalized the MAlign probably did modify at least one Shark to carry and deploy at least one gtorp externally for testing purposes (firing tests, weapons integration/targeting tests, etc.). So, I'd thing that that would have been the non-operational use they'd previously deployed them for. (After all, there'd be no need to include the qualification "operationally" if no Shark had ever previously been intended to deploy one).
Then when Oyster Bay came up before the LDs were ready the MAlign likely took whatever external pylon weapons testing and certification mount they'd come up with and jammed as many as practical onto each Shark. (I'm assuming the gtorp testing happened even before they started seriously looking at OB; rather than having to run a crash weapons test program in addition to hurriedly modifying Sharks for operational use)
But I didn't interpret anything in that quote as the MAlign having a roadmap for giving their existing Sharks an internal magazine and/or launch system for gtorps.
As for your suggestion, what would be the benefit of a torpedo sitting mostly outside the hull vs the current ingenious external rack system; where it's entirely outside the hull?
You still wouldn't have a magazine, so wouldn't seem to be carrying more torpedoes. But now you have to relocate whatever used to sit on, or for several meters behind, that long stretch of hull (assuming it's like a conformal, semi-recessed, air-to-air missile and so its long axis pointed the same way as the ship's; rather than like a sub-launched ballistic missile were it's mounted perpendicular to the ship). That's still quite a bit of work over the existing fully external rack and I'm not seeing the benefit.
Though you're likely right that you don't need the high velocity grav drivers of a missile launcher just to launch a gtorp; but you still need some unknown safety clearance around each spider emitter's path (they're not going to be as destructive as a wedge, but anything described as almost able to be an ad-hoc very short ranged weapon isn't going to good things it if clips the mothership's hull.) I don't know if the torp can use the emitters of the 1 or 2 drive skegs not pointed towards the ship to crab itself sideways far enough to clear their mutual drive exclusion zones (however big those might be), or if it needs to be launched with enough momentum to coast clear while the ship drifts (or accelerate) away, but either would allow fairly low performance launch mechanisms. (And you're not likely to need to tightly salvo gtorp launches, even once the LDs with their internal launch tubes come on line -- so you also don't need to quickly get one clear before the next is ready to launch)