redreidyBTW On the CVF CATOBAR artwork we have seen its noticibk that the first image has exactly 12 F-35C ranged on deck whilst the later one with the port stern quarter shows 13 !
Whilst the initial airgroup is likely to be small, we do at least have the capacity to expand it and no doubt in the later half of the decade we may see some decisions about AEW and possibly refuelling take shape once the airgroup starts to assemble as the first aircraft ae delivered and enter service.
Speaking of which there were rumblings in Washington over their oncoming budget crisis from some pressure groups to drop the B & C F-35 variants leaving just the A for the USAF whilst the USN & USMC take on more Super Hornets. Unlikely to happen but a remote possibility which could force a switch by the UK to he Super Hornet and like the USN sit back and await the next generation naval aircraft due towards the end of the next decade !.
It would be interesting to see what stance the British Gov. would take if this was to happen. After all the money they have invested in the F-35 project so far. If Washington basically said we are cutting out any end product that you would be interested in, would the UK demand their money back? Or would they expect to receive an alternative product? Or would they be forced to buy the A models which they don’t really need?
redreidyShe is what the Brits want her to be. I dont see what ur problem is here. The design would never fly in the US Navy because we basically use single purpose ships, so a CVN is a CVN and thats pretty much all it does, an LHA is used as an LHA etc…… for now, we can afford to do that. CVF will be/is able to, and be expected to, accomplish multiple tasks, as she has been designed to do. Thus her design is a compromise of differing requirements that the USN would not accept because they dont have to.
so not a compromise at all then!? :diablo: what you mean is shes not going to be a CVN which is correct, and was never designed to be such so cannot be ccompromised by not being able to do something she was never intended to do.
redreidyreally?
redreidyBut if the need were to arise would it really stop the RN from using a CVF as a fleet carrier? Granted it may not be able to move about quite as quickly but it would certainly be able to offer everything else depending on the aircraft. Could this lack of speed while manoeuvring not is countered with cleaver tactics?
redreidynobody wants the RAF shorn of all fighters, Typhoon should stay, 6 frontline squadrons (2 for QRA, 4 for deployments) plus OE, OCU and Falklands flight, but when Tornado goes it should be replaced by an unmanned penetrating strike platform NOT a 2nd manned platform. A semi autonomous ucav which can be tasked by satellite, from the ground or from another aircraft would be cheaper, safer and just as flexible. The fast jet mafia is going to have to realise that the days of men in cockpits flashing around at mach 2 are coming to an end.
Yes but unfortunately i doubt these ucavs will be available until around 2030, I’m sure there’s an interview with the air marshal saying just that as well.
bear in mind as well that 5 squadrons is what was deemed the absolute minimum to maintain QRA, and 4 deployable sq. would leave u only able to deploy to one trouble spot at a time. And recent history has proven this inadequate.
John, i don’t know where you get this idea that the RAF is a strategic air force it hasn’t been such since the V bombers were retired. In fact they are very much focused tactical strikes and close air support. With weaponry like brimstone and pave way. The only weapon they have which could be marginally called “strategic” would be the stormshadow. The UK hasn’t had a strategic capability like the USA and Russia for a long time.
redreidyJohn you seem to want every fighter the RAF scrapped!! I suppose if you had your way there would be no typhoon not tornado and only harriers. Which would be the navy’s not the air forces.
I really do think that is another thing u have to consider the RAF had to make choice of which of its 3 types of fast air to scrap. Losing its harriers was a hard decision for them to make, after all it is a good asset for any air force to lose.
redreidyRed:
I don’t think the RAF is really focused on providing strike aircraft to support the army. If they were, they’d have kept the Harriers. The first and last dedicated ground support aircraft the RAF fielded was the Sopwith Snipe in 1918.
The RAF has always been dedicated to strategic bombing. That is why Stirrup was so determined to keep Tornados at the expense of Harriers. Using Tornados in Afghanistan is much like using Lancasters would have been in WWII, when the army needed Typhoons for CAS.
hum i think we would disagree with this as well I’m afraid there really isn’t anything the harrier could do that the tornado cant other than the obvious STOVL qualities but I’m going to stop now because i just look like I’m arguing for the sake of arguing.
Even your outrage at the suggestion that the RAF would become the Royal Air Defence Force speaks volumes. What is so bad about using the 100+ Typhoon fighters to provide air defence? What the RAF never was and never will be is a globally mobile force. It can only operate where it has air bases, and since we no longer have a global network of colonies to hand, it means the RAF can only ever operate when a local country allows it to. If Italy decides to pull out of the Libya operation, that’s it for the RAF, end of story. That’s why, if you want to be able to operate globally, you need carriers, and, as everybody has pointed out to you, but you refuse to accept, all history and experience, from every country which has ever operated a carrier, shows that the only way to do it is with a dedicated naval air force. You can argue against it as much as you like, but insisting the earth is flat doesn’t make it so.
Well i have a certain loyalty to the RAF (several members of my family including my father and grandfather having served with the service, I failed to enter due to medical reasons.) and i don’t want to see it turn into a token force the.
Again I’m not against a fleet air arm i just don’t think in these hard times we can afford to have one and still maintain a potent air force, which i believe to be more important. People can say that it’s not as important as the navy or the army, and i respectfully disagree. Airpower is a huge card to play in almost every war look at the role it has played in both gulf wars, Libya, Balkans and Afghanistan. If you can gain air superiority and strike at will then it makes everything easier. I suppose that’s why in my opinion it is important to have a service that specialises in the arena. I certainly don’t see it as a support service. And believe they have justified there equal seat at the table. But as I said if you disagree with me that you’re right and I perfectly respect your opposing opinion.
redreidyPerhaps it is not SO wrong.
I’ll ignore this bit the air force has as much right to exist as the navy.
I honestly don’t see where the problem is. 800 NAS did it for years in Afghanistan with the Harrier GR9.
Indeed, it is easier for carrier-trained pilots to work ashore than it is for land pilots to operate on the carrier.
Move from a 270 meters runway to a 3 miles one is obviously a whole different world from the opposite.
Yep 800 did do that under joint force harrier. This was under control of the RAF not the FAA. Proof if anything of my argument.
If the RAF can’t justify its existence just because the FAA does its job, there’s evidently a problem within the RAF.
They can the problem is that you are putting the Navy’s needs above there’s. I have several friends in the army you asked them where they feel new strike aircraft should go and i can promise you they will not say the navy. They will say we need more air support. Which i say again is the RAF specialty not the navies.
I don’t see it as a tragedy to have the FAA do her work while the RAF flies the Typhoon, the AWACS, air tankers, cargo and stuff.
The fear of being sidelined because the carrier and its airwing arrive and operate first in a crisis is understandable, but not a good reason at all to argue for the RAF taking it all over. It is, indeed, a lesson: next time, follow the example of the Apache AH1, a land/naval asset that can work from bases and ships alike.
Why should the FAA be doing all of her work though? Ok the FAA might be better at using planes aboard a ship, although they won’t have touched a fixed wing plane in 10 years by the time the f-35 comes in so even that could be questionable. But they certainly won’t be better at air ops. Also the apache isn’t part of the navy. Again that only proves my point.
it doesn’t really matter anyway it would seem for the moment that it’s going to happen the way i described rather than a resurrection on a fixed wing FAA although it is a sad thing that both cannot be provisioned for. But to diminish your air force that will try to provide for everybody to have a specialised and dedicated naval air power at the detriment to overall coverage seems counter intuitive to me.
redreidyI am sorry but I can’t buy this argument.
correct me if I’m wrong, FAA had 4 SHar sqdns and a total of 50-60 airframes. this ‘small’ number didn’t prevent the FAA from being a viable fighter operator.
UK is expected to buy roughly twice that number of F-35, even by a conservative estimate, around 120 at least.
even if this is split down the middle for FAA and RAF, both will still have viable sized forces. spares inventory and major maintenance work can always be handled jointly at a shore-based facility.stationing air force only fighter force atop a navy carrier is a recipe for disaster, that basically means giving 2 pieces of a puzzle to two competing forces, in a crunch situation their interests and objectives could well be widely different. the turf wars would take precedence over the real wars.
Not at all what I am saying is that you give the FAA the 60-80 aircraft we are likely to acquire; you would leave the RAF dangerously short in the long term with only 120 typhoons. I’m not saying that with that number the FAA would be ineffective I’m saying if the FAA get that number and the RAF none then the RAF would be ineffective. And whether you love them or hate them it’s just as important to have a capable sized air force.
No my solution is to cover all needs with limited resources with a large pool of aircraft to cover all needs as and when they arrive. And in my opinion you would have to put that force under the RAF otherwise you would undermine the whole point of the service and make it a token air defence force. Unfortunately if you had a FAA they would still have to spend a large amount of time preforming task that the RAF currently does with its fleet simply because the numbers will not be there for the RAF to do it themselves. If you have FAA aircraft doing coin in Afghan people would question why we need air force at all and in my opinion that is wrong! Again i don’t think we can afford a suitable FAA and a viable RAF.
I’m not saying it’s perfect and that there are no benefits to the FAA but we will have an issue in the near future and i haven’t heard any one make a suggestion as to how they would resolve this issue just people pointing out the issues of the past as a reason why the issue should be ignored and the navy should get them.
Kev – not at all I think the RAF is the best place to ensure that the aircraft usesage is spread between all 3 forces.
redreidyplease read what im saying!
im not saying that we dont need a FAA, in a ideal world a FAA is perfect. what i am saying is that with the small amount of airframes we cannot afford to have a large proportion of them soley dedicated to the navy. they need to be pooled together to try to cover the whole spectrum of needs. and the place to do this is the RAF.
unfortunatly we are not in a position to have everything we want.
redreidyYes i understand they are all fantastic points which is why i said there should be dedicated SQ within the RAF who (would get the extra training these things require like joint force harrier). essentially a fleet air arm within the RAF, and yes if we had the money and planes then the naval air arm should be reinstated. At this time if we give the F-35 to the navy and reform the FAA, You may as well rename the RAF the royal air defence force because that’s all they will be able to accomplish with the airframes they will have. Maybe I’m preaching to the wrong crowd who are only interested in what the navy needs.
In my opinion it is perfectly acceptable to have both service personal working together on a ship rather than essentially making two small air forces which would constantly be at loggerheads. God knows there must be some merit to my argument because that’s what they’re going with. And the people making the decisions will certainly be a lot more informed than me for sure and more than likely be more informed than everybody else in this forum.
i essentially am not disagreeing with your points of view what I’m trying to get across (probably poorly) is that if there is only small amounts of airframes they should be with the RAF because a lot of their time will have to be spent preforming task that fall under the RAF’s remit. I mean how often is a CVF going to embark with even half its compliment of jets? what are the rest of the jets going to be doing while this small airgroup is embarked? And if the FAA was to get these planes how are you going to replace the Tornado?
redreidyEssentially yes but under the air forces control because otherwise they will not have enough aircraft to cope? What i am arguing against is people saying that the navy should get all of the F-35 and the RAF no replacement for the tornado which is ridiculous! There will be no ucavs to replace them in the next 15 years, in fact I remember reading somewhere an article posted on this forum that a Taranis derivative would not be possible in service before 2030. If you think its correct that the navy should get 60-130 F-35 while the air force loses its harriers, both types of tornados and jags with just 160 typhoons as replacement (50 odd of which are rumoured to be scrapped due to upgrade costs). Then I really don’t know what to say.
How you cannot see that it is easier to teach aircraft mechanics to fix a plane on a ship rather than a sailor to fix a plane, or to teach a mission planner to plan on a ship rather than a sailor to plan air missions. Is beyond me and frankly it doesn’t matter! They all work together it isn’t them and us. As I said if there is squadrons that regularly practice and embark but also spend time doing other duties, what’s the difference. The difference is they will have to preforms other duties because otherwise there will not be enough aircraft, and that is why they should be under the air forces control because CAS in Afghanistan (or whichever country we are in at the time) has nothing to do with the navy.
In a world where we can afford to have aircraft solely focused on naval matters great I agree with you a dedicated FAA is the way to go in time when they get the skills built up again there will be nobody better at defending a fleet or striking targets of the coast. But unfortunately that will not happen they will have to pick up the other task and that is what the RAF specialises in.
redreidyI’m… like… speechless. No comment…
Ok well in that case there an equal argument for both CVF to be put under the RAF control. You are obviously a naval fan, nothing anybody will say will change your opinion. The fact of the matter is the air force has had far more experience dealing with aircraft. As i said before the air force should have all of the aircraft and there should be dedicated carrier wings, meaning that these wings will regularly train and embark on the carriers. Tell me how that is different other than your favourite service doesnt get all of the best toys….
But then again the RAF is so evil! I guess it should just be disbanded and its assets should be split up between the army and navy
redreidyWhy on earth should they all go to the RAF?
Because it’s an aeroplane.
Unless the air force has some ships stowed away some were it makes sense. I think some people forget that each service isn’t an individual organisation but a branch of the armed forces. They work together to reach the best outcome. What difference does it make if the air force have planes which are dedicated to carrier ops rather than a FAA. None! Fact is the most efficient system we can afford is to keep sailors dealing with ships and aviators with planes.
In fact if the navy gets such a number of fast air we may as well give them the typhoon and the rest of the infantry and just have one massive military branch. Suggestions that the navy has some how been hard done by because they don’t have aircraft anymore are in my opinion ridiculous. Fact is nobody does aircraft better than the RAF in the British military but it doesn’t matter because they all work together under orders anyway! They will do what they are told to do.
redreidyKeeping the tornado was the right thing to do, yes getting rid of the Harrier leaves us without a fixed wing carrier asset, but looking at capability packages, would you rather troops on the ground have Apache and Tornado or Apache and Harrier? Given that the apache can do almost everything the GR9 was being called upon to do (save dropping 500lb paveways) I know which one I’d go for.
As for the F-35, the C model was always the better choice for the RN, especially as it allows the arguement to be made for FAA only squadrons (which we now have 10 years to build up), given that as an absolute maximum we are only going to have 4 frontline squadrons of F35s (if the figure of 138 total airframes actually comes to pass, which I doubt), I think the RN is going to make some big noises, especially if they can insert their Pilots into the USN stream and bypass the need for an operational conversion unit. Beyond that a CATOBAR UCAV would be nice, but hey, getting the 2nd carrier in service would be nicer.
The RAF should never see a single F35, Tornado should be run until bingo airframe hours and then replaced with an unmanned platform, not the F35.
The last claim lets you down there!! I imagine that if we buy 130 odd airframes there will be more than enough for the navy and air force to share. There certainly isn’t a need for an air arm the size comparable to that of the air force if it only gets typhoons. Personally i think we will get close to 130 in time and i believe that they should all be RAF but segments to be dedicated to the FAA for long rotation periods. 40 aircraft which would be more than enough because we will never have to fill two decks at once. Leave another 90 to pick up the tornados role. Easy just need to find 13 billion now!
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