Well I have never made my any bones about my agenda – I want the CVF’s and I want them to have a full complement of fighters and be as effective as possible, I worry that a penny pinching approach post the SDSR by the MoD (i.e they have a fixed budget and they will only buy as many F-35 as their fixed budget will buy) will result in too few carrier fighters and the one draw back about the F-35 B is that the costs have all be going in the wrong direction. Plus the carriers are something the general public have little sympathy for.

I don’t think its little sympathy, I would guess its complete ignorance. “We asked a 100 people to describe an aircraft carrier and the survey said….eah eah! (or rasberry noise..).

While I appreciate that you almost certainly disagree but I rather that they buy say 80 Gen 4.5 fighters than 40 F-35B’s as I am still not convinced that they will spend all that much time on the carriers and will spend far too much time operating from austere airfields and I think the UK needs to be able to do both (fight on land and operate 1 -2 squadrons as a bare minimum from the carriers).

But 40 F35s gen will be better than 80 F18s as a for instance. (BTW i don’t have much truck with gen descriptions and think ‘4.5’ is just an invention of BAE and Dasault because their new planes aren’t as good as Raptor). It’s also a matter of the case at the time, there is nothing wrong with operating from land, it is in fact cheaper than using a carrier so if a land base is available then it probably should be used. We would be daft to use a carrier (if we had one) in Afghan at the moment, total waste of time and money. In another instance a carrier might be the best option.

Also I would point out that by the time QE is fully active in around the early 2020s then going to sea with “4th gen” aircraft would mean she had a very dated airgroup. Super Hornet first flew in 1995, thats 15 years ago now, it would be a very old design in the 20s, especially when you consider its really a design based on a 70s product, itself based on initial designs from 1965. Yes I know thats stretching it a bit, but it does underline how much more modern a design and concept F35 is.

I really really hope I am proved wrong and we are not short changed on the carrier fighter front and left with two new carriers at sea for months or years on end with just helicopters embarked.

Why is that a problem? it would be a waste of time (and money) to always have F35s deployed on carriers, I hope they do only carry helicopters for much of the time, as I said before in a much earlier post the Merlin is the RNs primary air platform, its the fleets “flying frigate”.

In a low air threat (or non existent air threat) what would be the point of deploying F35s on ship at great expense? If the deployment is one of a humanitarian nature, or low threat peacekeeping, then a hanger full of Merlins (HM2 and HC3), wildcats and Apaches will be a lot more useful than F35s. Even on a normal peacetime deployment when you decided you want F35s, a single squadron of 9-12 would be adequate for training and immediate crisis deployments.

That would be intelligent use of resources. Constantly deploying 2 squadrons at sea would be a massive waste of money and also tie up valuable aircraft that could be doing other things. And by having VSTOL its easy to reinforce, as RAF pilots who had never flown from carriers proved in the Falklands when they performed their first deck landings in the south atlantic.

I can’t help but wonder just how valuable to the RAF/RN the F-35 is going to be.

er…very?

In the sixties it was clear enough that there was virtue in the Harrier in Germany because it required little or no runway and there seemed to be a requirement for such an aeroplane. Now I’m by no means sure.

Well theres only a couple of ways of landing on a ship and Typhoon doesn’t do them. As for austere ops on land, there is always the need, look at the runways in Afghan, for the longest time the Harrier and helicopters were the only things that could operate without tanker support. An aircraft that can get into ANY airfield in the world is a useful tool in your bag. Harriers can operate from tiny grass strips usually the preserve of a Cessna 150. Means the troops will always have air support and your enemy cannot predict where you will put airpower.

In the 90s the Germans rewrote the spec for the Typhoon and turned a very fine interceptor into an excellent ‘swing-role’ fighter bomber along the lines of the F/A-18. In its ‘swing-role’ guise the Typhoon seems to me to duplicate the F-35 in most respects excepting the STOVL capabilities of the latter.

Thats making a big except! The STOVL is crucial, thats like saying a Jaguar is vey like a Harrier except! Also the F35 will be a gen ahead in electronics and networking over typhoon and lets not forget the stealth.

It is axiomatic that the UK will not go to war excepting where it supports the US. The USAF however demands that warfare is conducted off runways, but, and this is crucial to my mind, a STOVL aeroplane still requires a runway, so why can’t the UK use the same runways and ditch the expensive STOVL F-35?

STOVL doesn’t require “runways”, thats the point! When you’ve seen a Harrier operate out of RAF Henlow (tiny grass strip used by the ATC for gliding), you realise what a bl**dy useful trick it is.

As for the assertion that the UK will never go to war without the US???? Whats the evidence? Back this up. Its a foundless assertion that I will happily agree with if there is evidence.

The US Marines can put forward a perfectly respectable case for the F-35 because they go to war without the USAF, but I’m by no means as sure that the RAF/RN can do the same. The RAF – and the RN when it is land based – can use the perfectly adequate runways the USAF demands, and the RN need for carriers seems to me to be questionable particularly such large ships when the French get by with very much smaller ones and use a ship based variant of the Rafale on these smaller carriers.

So the RN doesn’t need a carrier capable aircraft? or are you saying the RN should be carrier less? France has one carrier and it is over twice the size of a current UK invincible and they desperately want a second BIGGER carrier. The RN without carriers would a be toothless coast guard.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that when the Defence Review is concluded that the F-35 and the CVF go by the board. I think that both these projects are just symptoms of the ‘throw money at everything’ behaviour of New Labour which, as a life long Labour voter, I can do no more than regret.

AH! your not over the election result are you? Explains the depression.

The QEs will not go by the board, that would be a waste of money, have you seen how advanced their construction is? If anything the slight rumours and hints slipping out of whitehall suggest the QEs are more secure than ever and that a strike carrier capability (ie with F35) is very much in vogue.

I would imagine that this view will be most controversal … sorry.

Regards

Its not controversal, just ill informed.

I have been criticised for always wanting the last word (and the first word, and every other word in between) so I was trying to be clear that I was not just arguing for the sake of it.

Robust debate mate, robust debate….:D

I may be gullible but Liam Fox strikes me as the first Defence Secretary for a while that looks like they know what they are talking about and think the first one to be brave enough to do something radical. My only hope is that we are not (UK and globally) heading to repeat of the 1930’s and going to be caught with our pants down wanting to fight the last war!

They come and go and always have the answer, many of us thought the little fat scots one who went off to NATO was pretty nifty but he turned out to be tw*t.

– There I fixed your comment 😀

:rolleyes: best we can get our hands on? So what else and if you say SU33 i’m going to come down there and…..

Did I read correct that the America Class will have no well dock?

Okay – firstly just to say I am not trying to be argumentative – honest!

Why not? 😀

With regard to partners – I think you can view the different parts of the US government and armed services as partners in the F-35 Programme. They may all be American but they clearly have different agenda’s – this has to be the explanation of why different official sources have such wide slants on the progress of the F-35. I get the impression for example parts of the US Navy want to minimise the purchase of or even cancel F-35C so that they can get funds for the proposed 6th Gen fighter programme they want from 2025ish.

I can accept that and actually the USN maybe being smart about it, I think they actually have their eye on UCAVs, the USN tends to be more “european” in its views, probably having something to do with being the poor relation.

There are IMO snippets throughout Liam Fox’s speech which make it clear that the shape of the armed forces and the role they will play and what capabilities they will have will not be the same after the SDSR.

Well of course, he is hardly going to say “nah, its all fine, what I said in the election was a load of horse waste, nothing will change.” It is the nature of politicians to change things, it justifies their existence, it would be the brave minister (in any field) who said they were going to let things just run for a while because it looks fine.

I was playing devil’s advocate a little with the suggestion that the carriers might be tasked with a different role but that does not make it any less true that when Liam Fox says “But we must be clear that this does not mean we must be able to do all things at all times. We will need to be smarter about when and how we deploy power, which tasks we can do in alliance with others, and what capabilities we will need as a result.” or “…after 12 years without a defence review, over a period where our Armed Forces have been at times overstretched, with some current equipment overused and out of date, with legacy programmes from the Cold War that are of less relevance today, and in a terrible economic and financial circumstances, we cannot afford to delay.” that wholesale changes are more likely than not even if what he is saying is bleeding obvious.

“But we must be clear that this does mean we must be able to do all things at all times. We will need to be thicker about when and how we deploy power, which tasks we can’t do in alliance with others, and what capabilities we can ditch as a result.”

I urge you to do this with all political speeches, I get A-level students to do it all the time, you quickly realise that politicians rarely say anything.

As for his comment about “cold war legacy” when will they drop that term, it is so meaningless now, complete political cliche.

Finally just to mention that by inclination I am a pessimist but one grounded in what I think is realistic assessment of what might happen, that makes it hard for me to be universally enthusiastic about anything including the F-35, the reason I do not post in the F-35 news thread is that if you post in it you seem to be sucked into one of two camps, either the F-35 is the best thing since sliced bread or the F-35 is rubbish camp, and one is too sunny and optimistic for me and the other is not realistic enough.

Realistically the F35 is not the best thing since hovis picked up a knife BUT it is going to be the best thing around, anything else will be second best and given the size of our armed forces we can’t afford to by second rate.

I think I did not explain my point clearly – if I want a custom super car that is a one off I will get exactly what I want, if I decide that I cannot afford this then I ask all my millionaire friends to chip in we will get a compromise that is not exactly what everyone wants, worse Lotus (or whoever) has a whole bunch of different people to keep happy and the whole project gets more risky and less clear and likely costs more than it would have if I had been able to cover the whole cost of my super car. The F-35 IMHO is in the same position

Ok I see what you are saying but I think you are putting too much stock by the influence most of the partners in the programme have. It is very much an American programme, with some UK input, mainly in our specialist areas, while others have chipped in with more in the way of perspective and have gained the right to bid for work share, but its almost entirely a US progamme.

I see the situation slightly different, the last SDR 12 years ago identified a need for power projection and the carriers were built in response to this. In a sense they are a legacy of the old SDR. The costs have virtually been paid for so we are not going to sell them. However, the SDSR will decide the shape of defence in the future, and to quote Liam Fox:
“The Foreign Secretary has set out the new Government’s distinctive British foreign policy that has at its heart the pursuit and defence of UK interests, recognising that our prosperity and security is bound up with those of others.

This will require the enhancement of diplomatic relations with key partners, using Britain’s unique network of friendships, bonds and alliances, working bilaterally as well as multilaterally.

Britain should shape the world, not just be shaped by it.

But we must be clear that this does not mean we must be able to do all things at all times.

We will need to be smarter about when and how we deploy power, which tasks we can do in alliance with others, and what capabilities we will need as a result. “

As you can see we are not necessarily going to be possessing all the capabilities we have now post-SDSR
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDefence/People/Speeches/SofS/20100614StrategicDefenceAndSecurityReview.htm

This means that it is possible that they will use the carriers in a different way to planned and this will be reflected in what they will fly off them. I do not think it is likely but you cannot rule it out if it makes sense in the future defence strategy.

First of all Liam Fox has said nothing in that speech, its all meaningless political phrases and stating the obvious. If you read it inversely –

“This will require the scaling back of diplomatic relations with key partners, ignoring Britain’s unique network of friendships, bonds and alliances, working on our own as well as ignoring every one else.”

– you see what a pointless bit of stating the bleedin’ obvious it is.

So I don’t see how that raises the possibilty that the QEs will be used in a different way?

To use the car metaphor again – if you imagine the RN as a bunch of sales men, and they have been using Vauxhall Astra’s as their company car, and originally someone offered them Vauxhall Insignia’s to replace their Astra’s but then they change the plans to decide to buy Audi A6’s then the are going to prefer the A6 but lets be honest the Insignia would have done the job!

Its more like the RN having some great 60/70s Jaguars (Buc and Phantom) being given Ford Fiestas (harrier) as their replacements and then being offered the latest Aston (f35) instead. The Hornet would probably fit the the Vauxhall comparison. Yeah they all do the same job, but not quite as well, the fiesta has been ok, but why settle for second (or even third, fourth…) best?

I think we can take the analogy too far….

In the past 2 days there has been an aircraft flying around at night which has an engine sound a bit like a quiet Hawker Hunter (you know- the whine rather than roar that its engine generates).

Does anyone have any thoughts or expertise that might help me?:o:confused:

A Hunter? But really far away…. 😀