EdLawGet in quick & buy up several ex-USN S-3s (supposed to be quite a few with lots of airframe hours left), plus some more for spare airframes, & all the spare engines etc. you can get your hands on. Oh, & some refuelling kits . . . just in case they come in handy. Make sure they come with full approval to do what we want to ’em. Purchase price trivial, though refurbishing, refitting with the radar, etc., would cost a bit. Should get 20 years service from ’em. 😉
I love the idea in theory, the problem is the number of carrier landing cycles left on the airframes. I had read a while back that they had many years of land based life left in them, but not many years of carrier life left on them. Otherwise, I agree wholeheartedly, they would be great for the RN, with the potential for multiple ‘versions’, simply by means of bolting new pods on the pylons, and in the bays. It could carry air refuelling pods, recon pods, jammer pods, AEW radars, weapons etc…
EdLawHmm, you’re probably right, but I still have my doubts, given the sheer weight, so I would probably have to look up the take-off thrust. Easier just to take your word for it! :diablo:
EdLawI agree its far from easy, but I would say it is worthwhile. I am not anything like as sure as you that the F-35B will perform like a Harrier for ‘no-wind’ takeoffs, without immense fuel burn. I had got the feeling that it still really needed at least some WOD. Please don’t get me wrong, I do like the F-35B, I just like the -C version more! As for getting Super Hornets, I’m not sure it would really be any problem – there are two reasons why the UK might not buy JSF, one is ITAR (which seems mostly settled now), and the other is cost. I doubt there would be any real ITAR issues with the Hornet, with the only possible exceptions being things like radar etc… In the unlikely event of JSF going belly-up, it might be possible to get ‘store credit’, i.e. the US will not give the UK a full refund, but might give credit towards buying some Super Hornets. The Rafale is probably the better option, but I wouldn’t scoff at the Super Hornet’s capabilities, especially the later Block IIs and Block IIIs.
On the UAV issue, I agree that the Mariner has strong potential as a radar picket, but I would say that a fixed wing manned AEW would be pretty desirable. If necessary, copy the S-3 Viking basic design, and bolt on a Searchwater radar! :diablo:
EdLawI guess the big question that could be asked is – what would you have in place of Osprey? Now I am not defending Osprey at all, I am just asking, what could have been bought instead. Personally, I suspect you could probably have bought quite a few UH-1Ys or even a couple of CH-53s for the price of one Osprey. This might have been more militarily effective too…
EdLawEd,
I think you may be woefully underestimating the ship impact installing EMALS will demand of the CVF design. Yes the design is being completed as ‘adaptable’ and, as such, space, weight and power generation margins should be provided for a catapult system but actually implementing that installation is going to require a great deal of work on the ships power systems. Thinking about firing a high tension pulse through the cat motors, in terms of the possible impact on the rest of the vessels electronic systems, you shudder to think of the consequences if the isolation measures have even the slightest breach. I think 7 years for an operational system is probably optimistic by a good couple of years.
Steam cat is not a stopgap measure that is viable for CVF – if it were to come to the cancellation of F35B then C13’s would be the system of choice for, probably, the same duration as the French use them…it making sense for us to try and pool resources with them for catapult support. There would be compensation sought for the cancellation of STOVL JSF to mitigate these costs also!
I agree that it is a major engineering issue, but I wasn’t suggesting completing them as STOVL, then trying to bolt on EMALS to turn them into CTOL. I was really only suggesting trying to bring EMALS forward a bit, and integrate it during the actual building process – like building your new kitchen around a space for a cooker, you add it as soon as it arrives. My problem with the F-35B is not based on safety or deck launch rates, which do favour the -B of course, but more for actual effectiveness. Part of my point was that with the cancellation of FOAS, the F-35s need to be replacing much of the Tornado GR-4 capability set.
Overall, the new carriers are a great thing, and a major boost for the RN, who have pretty much given everything they had to get them. As for the lack of ISTAR though, it should be noted that in CTOL configuration, they should be able to embark UAVs, e.g. the Mariner. This would help a lot, and if Searchwater is used instead of Hawkeye, then you already get a pretty decent synthetic aperture radar, as was shown in Iraq, where the ASaC-7s were used in overland surveillance.
In terms of my lighthearted comment about Obama scrapping the military in the US, anyone who cannot tell that I wasn’t being serious needs a humour transplant! My point was more the fact that Obama has made some worrying comments on foreign policy, and in order to bolster his anti-war stance, may well make swingeing cuts to the military budget. I do not suggest he would even deliberately cancel the JSF, but any big cuts to procurement do have knock-on effects on other countries.
EdLawAre we perhaps forgetting the most important fact of all, i.e. that there wouldn’t be suitable numbers of F-35s ready for full ops by 2015 anyway! EMALS probably makes the most sense, and could possibly be sped up a bit if the need presented itself. It would probably be cheaper to pay a little more to speed up EMALS (as has been done before with many other technologies when needed), than to go down the steam-cat route as a stop-gap. Even if you can only speed up EMALS deliveries to 2014, i.e. one year, that would be enough to have it ready for integration from the start.
The other major factor is that having the carriers cat-equipped gives us a Plan B (and C, D and so on). If for any reason anything stupid happens with JSF, e.g. Obama winning in ’08, and deciding he no longer wants a military… If JSF were canned, or trimmed back much further, i.e. sub-1000 USAF and sub-500 for Navy/Marines, then it could go into freefall, with costs escalating, and orders falling. That is a very big ‘if’, but frankly, stranger things have happened!
EdLawThere is plenty of hard information, compared to the F-35C the F-35B has less range and smaller internal weapons bays.
Exactly! The whole reasoning behind going for the F-35B was more than a little questionable, and is now pretty clearly wrong. The F-35C would be a much more useful option, and arguably would make for a pretty good Tornado GR-4 replacement. I just wonder if you could either add another hardpoint on the larger wing, or possibly add a couple of the stealthy external bomb carriages.
As for the costs, the plan had been to buy the 150 F-35Bs (probably down to 135 or less now), the 232 Typhoons, and have the FOAS project to replace the Tornado GR-4. Now, the plan is to buy the Typhoons and F-35s, but FOAS was cancelled, so the GR-4 lives on… The money must be found to actually buy enough aircraft to do the job – it is all very well and good saying “where’s the money going to come from”, but if it needs doing, it needs doing!
As for the MARS ships, I strongly agree with the idea of them being built elsewhere – pretty much anywhere within reason. The cheaper they are, the better! Though I would certainly want to give them some decent self defence kit, e.g. SeaRAM or similar? The Falklands proved that every ship that goes near the danger zone must be able to defend itself, at least in an emergency.
EdLawCan somebody explain that the UK is already deployed in two wars requiring major use of equipment and resources, I’d say that having the ability to mobilise for a third deployment if really needed is a hell of a capability for a European defence force. The logic here seems to be that the RN needs 4 CVF’s so that if two are needed in war the RN will still have two to go on jollies with NATO, or maybe they need 6 just in case the other two have to be deployed on operations too…….
The problem is not a lack of CVFs, as Sealord said, it is the prospect of not being able to actually properly use the two that are being bought! If insufficient support ships are bought, then they will be difficult to support on operations. If insufficient aircraft are bought, then they will not be readily deployable, since there will not be enough aircraft to actually put on them!
What is needed is to switch the CVFs to CTOL, and actually buy enough aircraft to give the Navy its air arm back. The whole ‘Joint Force’ was basically creative accounting, with the result of reducing the actual force to just three current squadrons, each with just nine aircraft. If the JSF order were increased by one third, to 200, and split 50/50 down the middle, so the RN and RAF each get a hundred, then it would work out much better. You can still get many of the benefits of a joint force, since most work can be pooled etc… Each carrier needs, ideally, a normal airwing of 24 F-35Cs, along with support types, being reinforced with UCAVs when needed. If given the choice between two STOVL CVFs and 150 shared JSFs, or two CTOL CVFs and 200 Rafales, I would choose the latter!
EdLawHammer: The Draken did go to Denmark, which was in NATO, so not all neutral! 😉
MP703: He didn’t claim to be an expert on Swedish law, and I have never seen any problems with his posts. The same cannot be said of your post.
And by the way, the Thais were planning to pay with frozen chickens, which I believe was laergely due to having a sizeable excess of them available. As they say, you sell what you have! Indonesia and Malaysia use palm oil, other countries use other products – there is nothing unusual about it, since not everyone wants to use hard currency for everything.
As Arthur says, play nice!
EdLawIt could also be argued that buying a hull built by, say, DCN in France, and just finishing it in India would have been a better bet. The design could have been a lead ship for the IAC, and give the yards an opportunity to work out what they are doing, without risks of botching the first ship! It would have been a much better deal, and avoided a lot of the problems that are being experienced now, not just with the Vik, but with the IAC project. With a CdG derived IAC design, the first Indian built hull could well have been almost finished by now.
The big question is going to be how much damage this does to Indo-Russian relations. Perhaps the best thing would have been to buy a semi off the shelf design from Europe to fly off them. Perhaps even tie in the IAF’s MRCA project with it, and increase the order by a bit, to get the Indian Navy a couple of dozen Rafales.
EdLawFrankly, the most significant boost for Thailand will not be from a few Gripens, but rather from any Saab AEW planes. The combination of some Saab 340 AEWs and the F-16s and Gripens will be a massive boost. Add in a suitable radar upgrade for their P-3s, then you can have air- and ground-surveillance, all datalinked.
Information is the greatest weapon in the world… (Though admittedly only works if you have the assets to actually use the info to your advantage! :diablo: )
EdLawMea culpa! If you look further up the thread, you will see that Tinwing actually identified it correctly, unlike me! 🙁
It is indeed the SS X-1, which is sitting in the US Navy Submarine Force Museum, Groton Connecticut.
EdLawOops! 😮
It did remind me of the North Korean Sang-o types though! :diablo:
EdLawIt looks like one of the North Korean or Yugoslav mini-subs, especially the former. If memory serves, the displacement was quite high for a mini-sub, i.e. 50% of the displacement of a small coastal sub like a Type 206 (300 tons or so…). This sort of thing is typically used for either infiltration (NKs moving spies in and out of SK), or mining, with the ability to carry a couple of torpedos, or the equivalent load of mines. Quite effective against the right enemy, and potentially a threat, despite limited capabilities!
EdLawThe problem with that is that the longer range standoff missiles had sufficient range to be launched from relative safety. It is very likely of course that the SSBNs would still have been bought, but a Skybolt or similar missile might have allowed the RAF to share the deterrent role.
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