TurbiniaBasically because I’m an engine anorak, and the WR21 is pretty much the state of the art at the moment with it’s high efficiency design. That said the Marine Trent is an excellent more conventional engine, indeed the WR21 cose is essentially based on the Trent anyway. On distributed power, that’s an interesting debate, there are obvious advantages of distributing smaller generators around the ship, there are also disadvantages in weight, efficiency, maintenance and fuel/oil/coolant/air/exhaust distribution etc many of which actually negate the advantages which may at first appear to make a compelling argument against a more traditional layout. The combination of diesels and MT30’s offers power and reasonable economy, the Wartsila Vasa/W engines are superb engines with a superb track record in the commercial sector and the Trent is up there with the best, so I have no worries on the prime mover side of things.
TurbiniaLet’s talk about the platform design, the twin island layout is as innotive as it is quirky looking, and kudos to the MoD for having the balls to go with BMT’s original thinking rather than BAe’s design. The engines, GT’s and diesels whilst having their critics are an awful lot cheaper than nuclear, especially given that the UK would need to design a new nuclear reactor for just two ships with virtually no prospect of further sales of the reactor, or try and make a submarine plant work in an aircraft carrier in the way France tried, which isn’t the way ahead IMO. The MT30 engines, superb machines, although in a way I’d have liked to see the WR21, the engine installation looks worthy of discussion too. IEP looks like it’ll be used, again a very forward looking decision, one of the great innovations of T45 was IEP despite it being sadly ignored on this board. The C&C and self defence provision, these seem up in the air still, with estimates ranging from them having nohing beyond CIWS and relying on T45’s for C&C facilities, to full fleet flagship outfit with Sampson etc. and high capability self defence. Personally, my view is once the ships are built they can do what they want to improve that side of things later, get the ships past the treasury now and take care of stuff like that later, and IMO the weapons of an aircraft carrier are it’s aircraft, anything more than bolt on CIWS and final inner layer point defence is a waste of space and resources that should be going into air ops IMO.
TurbiniaGuys,
What we are getting is probably fixed, so lets not get too carried away.
Rightly or wrongly the MOD/GOV prediction of the future threats is in line with what Swerve is suggesting and thus they feel the CVF/F35B mix is the way to go. Let us be thankful that they are actually making sure there is some iinsurance policy if this wrong or the threat changes.
I see the advantages to both – given the choice I’d go with the CTOL, but I’m thankful we’re getting a CV capability at all. We could always have something better, but the financial line has to be drawn somewhere – again rightly or wrongly – this is where the government have drawn it. In an ideal world* I expect we’d have people on here bemoaning that we need both CTOl and STOVL types. 😮
* – in a truly ideal world of course we’d all be messing with flowers; making ploughshares and CVF world probably be some nice relaxing drug…. but hey!
A fair post, reasonably put. Personally I think the RN have got it right with CVF, hopefully time won’t tell.
TurbiniaGentlemen, please, this thread has shown that we all have views on the subject of the CVF and have already decided why we hold them. Continuing to go around in circles over and over again repeating the same arguments in the hope that eventually everybody else will accept them brings nothing to the forum and just becomes tiresome and pointless. Unless somebody brings something new to the debate (i.e. not endless posting on why CTOL os better than STOVL or vice versa) can I suggest we all just move on?
TurbiniaThe problem with nuclear is cost, but with this vessel cost may be so high they may as well go nuclear anyway if anything like it is officially planned. In which case the USN had better start getting a low end GP frigate ready or end up with a future surface combatant fleet barely into double figures….
TurbiniaThat’s the thing, if the ship yard has prepared a contract without knowing what is involved and without having drawings to work from it is probably a greater sign of incompetence than just admitting they’ve screwed up the re-build through lacking the skills and management expertise to do the job. This is pretty basic stuff, OK the shipyard may not play ball, what about the set of drawings Soviet fleet command would have had somewhere and the ships own set? If all three went missing fair enough, in that case how did the contract progress so far on these cost estimates? Sorry, but this looks to me like an attempt to wriggle out of a failure which is actually making the ineptitude of the whole mess look even worse if it is true.
TurbiniaThe only time I’ve seen a bid for a complex engineering task being prepared – some 30 years ago – I was amazed at how little detailed technical analysis was put into the project. Perhaps present-day Russian contract preparation is equally slipshod. I recall reading in the mid-1990s that the Russian aerospace industry had virtually no skills at calculating costs.
The Jane’s story cites “Senior IN officers associated with Vikramaditya’s refit at the Sevmashpredpriyatiye shipyard” including a “three-star IN officer” as its source. I suppose you must ask what their motives might be in rationalising a Russian failure.
Was this the practice in the Soviet Union? If it was, this may not equate to sending the drawings to Russia. Perhaps the drawings were filed away by the Black Sea fleet, only to be scrapped or mislaid when the Ukraine achieved its independence.
Since my experience in matters naval is largely confined to having once eaten lunch in the wardroom of a warship that was conducting a series of sharp manoeuvres at full speed, I’ve no qualification to judge such issues. I just passed on the Jane’s info in the hope it might add to the debate.
Mercurius Cantabrigiensis
(whose lunch stayed down despite the worst that HMS Ubiquitous could do)
I’m not questioning your link/story and I’m sure this could well be the latest excuse, I’m questioning the actual truth of it behind the Janes article. I could possibly accept that the Russians made a sloppy and amateurish contract proposal without looking at what they were doing (although that actually implies much greater incompetence on the Russian side than just accepting the shipyard took on more than they were capable of) but India has a reputation for pretty thorough and in depht examination of contract details and can be very pedantic on details, which would infer that if the story is true they’ve been trying to exploit an opportunity with a loose contract and been bitten. I don’t accept either, no matter how desperate for work and $$$$’s at some point somebody in Russia has to have done at least a quick study into what this conversion would mean, which would mean a full technical survey, and on the Indian side I can’t believe nobody would have done some sort of check that the Russian bid wasn’t just 5 minutes of guessing written on the back of an old fag packet. At the start of work the Russians would have needed the new drawings available, to prepare those drawings they’d need material specs, shell expansion drawings, wiring diagrams etc. from the existing ship, now we’re expected to believe they didn’t have those drawings, it is possible but as I say in which case it looks even worse than just accepting the shipyard has made a pigs ear of the program management.
On the Indian side, their motivation in accepting this story may be PR damage limitation at a project from hell which has became a major embarrassment to them and looks like it may be a financial albatross for them. A nice and tidy explanation which can be presented to the world to justify the whole mess without blaming either India or Russia may be just what the doctor ordered, and the Ukrainians will do as the fall guy I’m guessing.
On the drawings, the shipyard should have a full set, fleet hq or technical office should have a full set and the ship itself should have a more basic set which would probably be enough for the conversion. If all three sets have gone then again it raises more questions than it answers on the ineptitude of this whole sorry mess.
TurbiniaGiven the relative difference in price and the difference in growth potential and operational capability you’re better off just building big even if you’re planning a reasonably modest air group in the begining. Even the UK treasury, one of the most tight fisted bodies on the planet finally accepted that truth when approving two large carriers for the CVF role in the late 90’s over a Invincible SLEP or building two ~ three new vessels of a similar size to the Invincibles.
TurbiniaIn that case, how did the Russians manage to prepare a contract for the re-build in the dark? Sorry, but this sounds like trying to rationalise failure, and it is worth remembering this is not a new construction, it’s a re-build/conversion so preparation of new P+ID’s would have been required anyway, and surely when starting that process somebody would have noticed the absence of drawings? Also, it is standard practice to provide the client with a complete set of drawings in duplicate, so the story of the drawings going up in smoke again would raise more questions than answers it it were true.
Turbinia!Pedantic moment!
A difference of £200M was [one of the] excuse[s] used to justify the delays in ordering the damn things – Carrier Alliance wanted £3.9bn, Govt. wanted to pay £3.7bn.
Fair point, but that was at the treasury stage, not the RN phase of design and selection, and this had more to do with the dire state of UK finances and defence funding than anything else. I often wondered what’d happen if carrier alliance called the UK treasury’s bluff and said, “OK, 3.7bn it is, jobs a good’un” just to see the treasury idiots sh*t their pants in terror at having their objection called and having to find a new reason to delay. This isn’t just CVF, the RN has a huge pipeline of programs waiting to pass main gate for lack of funding (including T45’s 7&8, MARS or whatever it is now called, FSC, more Astutes), and it’s the same story in the Army and RAF.
TurbiniaFreeboard is no indicator of stability, if anything it increases stability by raising the freeboard deck if indeed the freeboard deck is higher. Ro-Ro’s to me are still deeply compromised in terms of safety and still have opt outs from standards applied to other commercial vessels, which considering many Ro-Ro’s carry passengers seems more than a little odd.
TurbiniaThe determining factor in the STOVL ~ CTOL argument was not cost of the actual vessels or aircraft, something that is worth bearing in mind, in fact most estimates in the public domain are pretty similar on cost for both options, a difference of a couple of hundred million quid either way on a project this big isn’t the deciding factor. Which does then ask of the critics what information they have access to to second guess the navy and defence staff? Jonesy is putting the arguments in greater detail than I could, but I agree with almost everything he has said here on the CVF program.
TurbiniaThe second Galahad was a bit of a lemon, not the best advert for British ship building:(
TurbiniaWhat do you think made the west rich?
Was it really just being right and christian… or was it all the gold and stuff pillaged from the rest of the world during your imperialist youth.
Morals had very little to do with it.What am I defending? Russian Imperial gains were made at a time when Imperialism was NORMAL. Calling the modern Russia Imperialist is like calling modern Britain Imperialist, or modern France or Belgium etc etc.
And regarding airliners the shootdown of KAL 007 was a cruel and callous murder, while the shooting down of an airbus in Iranian airspace was geniune self defence… the world is already twisted and morally bankrupt… Americas blindness is an example, not an exception… they will let the Israelis attack a US ship and retain blind loyalty in every way. USS liberty? Ha! They officially declared war on North Korea for what would have been the same act had it actually been real. (ie Gulf of Tonkin Incident).
Not the industrial revolution or scientific progress then, that had nothing to do with the rise of Europe:rolleyes:
All you can do to defend the indifensible is dig up stuff that nobody here is attempting to defend, as if that justifies murder. Where are all the posts here defending the shooting down of the Iranian Airbus? That’s because others here won’t try and make excuses for the inexcusable, although even here most people would recognise a difference between the actions of a ship taking evasive action from Iranian revolutionary guard boats in a high threat zone and just shooting down an airliner knowing full well it posed no risk. Funny too, even though I have no interest in defending the British Empire it remains your only excuse for modern Imperialism.
PS. What has the Tonkin Gulf incident got to do with North Korea? Was there a second Korean war going on at the same time as the Vietnam war?:confused:
TurbiniaThat’s just it, I’m not defending the British empire, England, Churchill etc etc, I’d hate to end up as morally bankrupt and twisted as somebody who ends up defending the shooting down of civilian airliners through blind and stupid loyalty.
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