Yeah whilst at face value fitting Searchwater2000 and Cerberus might appear to be the cheapest quickest solution it might not actually be the case. At first they offered a palletised solution running off the back of a Merlin converted with a ramp, they are now offering a side mounted trapeze solution. Now when it was the idea that the spare HM1 not being converted to HM2 would be used it was not a bad solution but it appears the RN wants to use the HM2 with any airframe being used. Mounting the trapeze, pulling out the consoles to push in the Cerberus fit is a pain. On the other hand Vigilance hangs the radar pods off the HM2 torpedo rails and uses the already installed consoles with updated mission software. That offers significant cost savings and training advantages, it allows any airframe to be adapted to role quickly and a few extra training modules for those personnel who will man them rather then an entirely separate training stream for a unique AEW solution. It is also significantly more exportable albeit the Americans will mainly benefit from that.

You can delete for sure the “it seems”, from your last sentence.
I repost here part of an older message of mine in: http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?108418-Global-list-of-all-flat-tops-in-service/page3

These shots were taken at a recent exercise of last January:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]220442[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]220443[/ATTACH]

Obviously this was well after the Cavour was cleared for fixed wing operations, and was not the latest or the last deployment of this ship, busy in a number of exercises since 2011.
The Cavour was designed keeping in mind requirements for the F-35B. Further works to accommodate the transition between AV8B and F-35B will be carried out by 2016.

I could not post any significant contribution about the Izumo, but that my view the Japan Navy will probably have to face still for long the same number of difficulties faced by the Navy of my country – we both lost WWII – before putting in service a naval fixed wing component.

For Italy the Garibaldi (a carrier involved with the embarked jets in Kosovo war, Operation Enduring Freedom and that gave a significant contribution also to the Libyan operations, although many still believe that the only carrier involved was the French CDG) was the way to carry out this process, after having been suffering opposition both external and internal (i.e., the antimilitarist italian political parties and the Italian Air Force which for a long time strongly opposed any try by the navy of re-establishing a naval fixed wing aviation: the AMI even succeeded to seize a batch of Curtiss SB2C Helldiver just delivered to the Italian Navy in September 1950).

I think that the Japan Navy will have to undergo a similiar process wich will take more then a few years.

Just an observation really but didn’t Japan enter WWII with the largest most formidable and experienced carrier force in the world at that time. Or was Pearl Harbour just a myth 😉

Got a name for that test pilot? If not what you have there is an unsubstantiated statement rather then a fact.

Regarding the procedures China is copying aboard the Lioaning including flight deck procedures and even the Ouija board aircraft handling system raises the question of do the Chinese even know what they are copying?

Or is it some sort of pantomime? In many cases being shown in videos taken onboard the Chinese carrier it appears that the deck crew is behaving as actors seen in the movie “Top Gun” and doing things that have no connection with the reality that is happening on the deck

A case in point is the running up to a J-15 which has just trapped onboard the carrier. In the case of a US Navy carrier, green shirt personnel called “hook runners” run up to the recently landed aircraft and using a long pole type device, help disengage the hook from the arresting gear and allows the aircraft to taxi clear of the landing zone. This ensures that the landing of the next aircraft proceeds smoothly and efficiently.

In the case of the Chinese greenshirts they just run up to the aircraft and appear to be standing around confused until the aircraft is directed to taxi out of the landing zone. If the Chinese are actually using the example of the American navy greenshirts how did they miss this important step? If China is trying to build a skilled deck crew they are building procedures today that will be difficult to un-learn at a later date. Some of these examples that have been observed are actually dangerous for deck operations.

I would think the Chinese do know what they are copying or why bother doing it? To say it is some kind of pantomime based on top gun footage is a bit demeaning really, US deck landing procedure is public domain and available in hard copy if you look hard enough on-line. You can see that not only in the procedures but in the design of equipment used by the Chinese, the deck landing sight is clearly a very close copy of the American Mk 6 Mod 3 FLOLS. No doubt they have spent a long time looking at those procedures to get themselves where they are now and lets not forget they paid Brazil to send officers and personnel to observe flight operations on the Sao Paulo. I find it hard to believe that none of those personnel asked the Brazilians the worth of each procedure they were performing.

It is also unwise to draw direct conclusions of what the Chinese green shirts are doing, the Chinese by their own admission have already started to adjust procedures to suit their needs, it is a bit presumptuous to assume that they are just standing around confused just to get that “Top Gun” look on news bulletins.

It appears AVIC has not tweaked the airframe of J-11 / J-15, at least not significantly. AVIC has DSI technology and has not applied such intakes to J-11 / J-15 as it did to J-10 and FC-1.

I struggle to see how it is possible to incorporate DSI to the Su-27 derived J-11/J-15, Sukhoi adopted the same solution Grumman did for the F-14 in trying to allow a configuration that minimises the risk of compressor stall by avoiding S-ducts. The widely spaced underslung straight through design rather dictates the choice of inlet which in this case is a box supersonic variable inlet. Variable inlets allow a wider flight regime and Mach 2+ performance, a fixed inlet like DSI restricts that to a large degree.

The Gripen TIDLS system connect 4 a/c tightly, the C/D adds L-16 for less detailed but wider audience,
the 3rd link would be a nation-specific datalink.
Do you got a link ?

You and Thobbes guessed right, one was using TIDLS another Link16 and the country specific one was South Africa.

And so the saga continues, as Jackster combs the Interwebz in search of something that isn’t there, Hopsalot asserts that not saying that “cats cannot fly” means that you are saying “cats can fly”, and Fedaykin sulks in his tent rather than admit to making an assertion that was false and technically defamatory.

No I am not sulking in my tent, I have had a busy afternoon including a three hour drive. I was magnanimous and sent a reasonable pm as a peace offering, we can be grown up about this. It looks like I am the one who is going to have to draw a line under this as I see the anonymous LowObservable is determined to defend the honour of the journalist Bill Sweetman. I almost feel inclined to make those pm public just to show how absurd and childish this has become, so to keep LowObservable happy I make this statement:

“I retract my statement that Bill Sweetman said that F-35B would burn through the deck of aircraft carrier and unreservedly apologise for the distress this might of caused the well known aerospace journalist and the anonymous member of the Key Publishing forums LowObservable”

There happy now, nice and public so should serve the lawyer types well, I lose a bit of face but hey such is life. Put it this way those who dislike me on this forum will get a chuckle and those who respect my opinion will shake their head and move on.

What I will say is this, personally I will go to bed tonight happy in the knowledge about who has acted in the most reasonable and grown up manor. I suggest the other party re-reads second pm I sent them and consider this…before you go to bed tonight have a look in the mirror and consider “was that worth it? have I reached the point in my life as a grown man that I am picking fights in internet forums floating the veiled threat of legal action because another anonymous member of the internet said something I don’t like”…

I would ponder that

Personally

I refer you to my recent PM, I think that is all I need to say further on the matter.