France should pursue their own program independently, that doesn’t exclude using the CVF hull design, but if they go beyond just buying the basic hull design and enter a common program I’m sure they’ll regret it. France has the technical skills to do this on their own (hell, it’s a French company that made the CVF design!) and their builders are more experienced in large ship construction than British yards. Not to mention companies like Alstom have more than enough expertise for the propulsion package etc. To me any advantages to France in a short term gain with initial hull design will be offset later in arguing with the UK about every little detail if co-operation goes any deeper.
This is not me being a nationalist or anything, both the UK and France are good enough to do this on their own and I have no bad feelings at all about France, but both navies have their own ideas and preferences, operational responsibilities etc. and given the importance of this to both navies i think both countries would be better going it alone for the most part. That does not exclude joint efforts in some areas, for instance if both companies bought the Hawkeye they could co-ordinate their efforts to reduce costs and share support etc.

Wouldn’t neccessarily need to fire that many torpedos, and a 6 fish spread should be quite adequate to disable a CVN and almost certainly sink it. Hull damage is a funny thing, hulls can look absord huge punishment and stay afloat needing relatively simple repairs yet at the same time damage the structural rigidity and it’s surprising how seemingly minor damage (at least to the naked eye) can render a vessel dead. A bit like damage to aircraft where visual indicators are often no guide at all to condition. Also, in many situations you don’t actually have to sink it, just damage it enough to remove it from front line ops for a few months to have the same effect.

Thanks for the links. I’ll try and read them later 🙂 The funny thing is, although they were built for the cold war, in recent years many RN people have regretted losing them.

The whole Upholder/T2400 program was a joke and a shocking indictment of UK MoD incompetence. Not the boats themselves, which had real potential, but the way procurement and disposal was handled. First there is the question of why the MoD invested so much in building four boats that they then decided they didn’t want even before they’d properly entered service? Then there is the question of how they were mothballed with no consideration given to protecting them for future activation and/or sale to a new operator. Both questions should be seen as a reflection on failures at a terrible level.
The Canadian pre-purchase inspection, from what I’ve been told, wasn’t a good reflection on Canada either, to anybody who has had to do this sort of inspection (I did it with oil rigs and vetting supply vessels) knows it’s a minefield at the best of times. My own suspicion, and it’s just me so may be total trash, is that Canada thought they were getting a bargain too good to be true (four modern and powerful boats with almost no use from build) and this blinded them to just what they were taking on. Even without the problems from the lay up, Canada must have known they were taking on the post delivery shake down and trials to sort out delivery issues, and that would have been a headache for any navy.

Germany must be pretty happy with the U212, they’ve just ordered two U212A’s for delivery in 2012 and 2013.

I think it’s nice to see Thales and the RN thinking about innovative and fresh solutions to the AEW requirement, but at the same time suspect that whatever the MoD says the Navy would still like the Hawkeye. This is an area that could very well make sense for the UK and France to pursue a joint procurement program as both countries needs the aircraft and requirements will be very similar. Personally, I’d like to see the RN now abandon the STOVL configuration and go CTOL, and pursue a collaborative integration of the catapults and arrestor gear, if you’re going to invest 3 billion GBP+ in carriers why argue over the few millions that’d be needed for CTOL? Now the program is a joint venture with regards to the hull design then it makes sense to risk and cost share things like the cats etc.

Nice graphic Francois, a good family tree.

Its not about being bombed by a foreign power. Its about air policing. Most of the violations come from German airspace anyway.

Which takes us back to the argument that buying a state of the art multi-role fighter designed for operations in the most hostile of threat environments is HUGE overkill for just policing airspace, that could be done by the Hawk, L159, Alphajet, T50 {insert other lightweight fighters}.