verbatimThere isn’t much to see. Externally they look the same. And there are no pics available of the new onboard equipment. It’s just processor cabinets anyway.
Yes, it’s inferior to the A-50I, but it’s adequate for the RuAF’s needs for now, just like the USAF is happy with the E-3 Sentry. The Russian’s certainly don’t seem to be targeting export sales with it.
Here’s a link btw. As I said it still looks the same.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOyd2a57MEY
Is it the perspective, or is the radome of the alleged A-50M slighty larger in diameter than that of standard A-50?
In frontal views of A-50, the radome seem to be well shorter than the distance between the two innermost engines, in the video it seems to be almost as large as the spacing between the engines.
verbatimOf course seizing Karachi doesn’t mean actually entering the place, it would near impossible to anyone to take control of such a mess like a twelve million inhabitants developing world’s town.
The key is to have the capabilities to cut off the logistic routes to the town, and it won’t mean actually doing it, just to have the capabilities forcing this way the opponent to build up the proper countermeasures, depleting resources.
An actual landing would result anyway in bloodshed, at least until Pakistan is ready to counter the landing.
Pakistan being ready is the strategical target, it would require land, air and naval assets to be locked down, even built from scratch, just because India purchased an half century old amphibious ship for almost nothing and is going to build three more for little expense.
Then the ships will see assigned to them far more foreign aid and foreign policy’s tasks than war tasks, it is quite logic and straightforward, nonetheless they will be a real asset in the indo-pakistan confrontation without even sailing.
verbatimThey could provide air cover through their carrier, but they cannot provide enough vertical lift, that is meaning they can perform only short range operatins near the shoreline, and at the same very time they cannot perform special forces insertions on strategic targets.
The kind of amphibious warfare a small fleet of LPDs can perform is quite straightforward: landing troops on a shoreline that is itself a target, providing good manpower and good logistical support.
The only conceivable rationale is to cut or to endanger the northern road to Karachi, causing havoc between some twelve millions pakistani living there.
It should be enough a menace to force Pakistan to devote huge resouces only to defend the whole shoreline west of Karachi and to keep many of its SSKs almost idle waiting for the indian amphibious fleet approching the shores.
About Austin class, they were designed in the sixty’s, they are quite outdated under any parameter, aren’t they.
Still, with little or near no expense, India is building through them a worrysome problem that Pakistan will have to deal with.
verbatimFirst and foremost it should be addressed what the missions are.
Without a clue about type, scale and context of the missions to be accomplished by the indian amphibious force it makes little sense to argue about wich type of amphibious ships it deserves or it needs.
Having the indians opted for an old kind of LPD, I would argue that they are envisaging a real short legged scope of amphibious warfare, within the range of their own land based combat aircrafts in a pure tactical meaning.
It would be quite in line with the existence of one single meaningful objective for an indian amphibious force, i.e. the seizure of Karachi.
verbatimWhat about to build nuclear power plant in higly contested and vulnerable locations right in front of main turkish coastal towns?
Some form of a static nuclear deterrent…
verbatimLink please.
The plan is for Ark Royal to be decommissioned but Lusty and Ocean haven’t been mentioned at all today. One of the CVF’s has been mentioned as going into extended readiness though.
It’s reported on the MoD site, just follow the link to the releasing of SDSR.
verbatimActually pressure at -6000 meters should be 601 bar/Atm.
The real problem is not the hull anyway, it is the tightness of the propulsion axis and its endurance.
While it is quite simple to build a small hull capable to withstand pressure related with such deeps, designing and manufacturing of a suitable propulsion axis would be a real achievement.
verbatimMarina Militare (Italian Navy) would like it very much, but it’s all about funds and politics, and IMHO there is no immedate need for Italy to purchase Scalp Naval missiles.
It would spark more and more rivlaries with Aeronautica Militare (Italian Air Force), having the latter 200 Storm Shadow on order and being obviously eager to be the main italia strike tool.
Anyway it does not intermingle with a prospective contract to provide FREMM frigates to foreigner customers, because all you need actually is the right type of Sylver VLS, and to add some consolle in the CIC and COC to perform mission planning for each missile with the related wiring.
verbatimI think you are making the same assumption that Verbatim is here – that the USN’s position is the only one that is important. The USMC has a role for its tactical airpower that doesnt include backfilling modestly occupied USN flight decks. The point of USMC tacair is to provide the required level of supporting firepower to the deployed rifleman within a specific timeframe.
It cannot be doing this if the carrier it is sat on has to, for example, respond to a report of an opposition surface action group going after the groups UNREP/logistics vessels 600 miles away!. If that happens the USMC fighters either cant fly in support of the forces ashore or have an hour transit back to provide support. This is the issue for the USMC – they want their airpower on call to their troops where they can respond in timely fashion. Placing them on a CVN takes away the control they have on the availability of those assets.
Sorry, it’s non sense.
USMC, until now, has embarked most of its aviation on CVNs because it’s the only way to deploy a meaningful number of combat aircrafts.
Right now, while most of USMC’s twelfe squadrons equipped with F/A-18 are actually deployed through CVNs, only a token amount of the six squadron equipped with AV-8B is actually deployed, this being even a 2:1 ratio between F/A-18 and AV-8B in the USMC’s inventory.
Fact is the are no capabilities available to deploy huge numbers of USMC’s STOVL aircrafts, regardless they are AV-8B or F-35B.
About the alleged switch in the UK to the C version, I would bet during the last talks between british and american Defence officials somebody was said the U.S. could soon or later change their mind about the USMC Aviation future’s.
Dropping the B version for C, provided there is some ground in the rumors, would be just a preemptive move to avoid a huge waste of money in the near future, because if the U.S. would just halve their own orders ofr the B, costs will grown while, on the same very time, the C version would enjoy some economy of scale.
verbatimShould we suppose, other than lots of failing apart old F/A-18A/B and some F/A-18C/D, the U.S. Navy have plenty of legacy Navy’s pilots laying around?
It’s a little entangling that the very same criteria used to stress the relevance of a real naval power projection capabilities, centered around CVs and their wings, are no longer relevant when applied to the U.S. Navy.
Maybe nine CVNs sailing around the world with less than 40 combat aircrafts left on them are a smaller blow to power projection than a couple of CVF sailing around with less than two combat aircraft squadrons?
Anyway, aircrafts as any other hardware are not property of the Navy or Marine Corps, it happen to be they are property of the U.S. Goverment, and it is upon U.S. Senate and Congress, amongst other institutions, to choose what has to be the best for the USA.
Maybe everybody will still be in love with the Marine Corps as happened in the last decades.
Maybe somebody will start questioning the rationale behind some sluggish, overexpensive and sometimes not so relevant programs, as already have been questioned DDG-1000, FCS and so on.
verbatimVerbatim
This is best explained by Col Robert D Loynd, USMC paraphrasing his full article credited below
(credit: USN Proceedings – http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2008-07/dont-cherry-pick-magtf)
[i]“Transition to the F-35B
The F-35B will not only contribute to lethality and precision with its low-observable, penetrating strike capabilities, but more important, to the commander’s overall situational awareness on the battlefields of the future. Whether providing dedicated support to the MAGTF or supporting the joint force air component commander per the Omnibus Agreement of 1986 (a joint agreement that affirmed the use and apportionment of organic Marine aviation assets between the MAGTF commander and the joint force air component commander), the Marine Corps’ F-35B will also be capable of maintaining and distributing a single, integrated air-ground operational picture. This information will supply immediate, real-time intelligence and target discrimination in the MAGTF and joint battlespace, providing invaluable input to a commander’s decision cycle. This information will be distributed from multi-functional command and control centers, across cockpits, and down to our distributed ground maneuver forces, providing for a level of awareness and decision-making never before achieved and facilitating MAGTF and joint force integration, coordination, and employment.By 2014, the Marine Corps F-35B will be the only fifth-generation TACAIR platform capable of STOVL operations from either an expeditionary sea-based platform or austere forward operating base, complete with a forward-deployed aviation logistics package.
Etc. Etc.
I would believe you are well aware that all sayd by that article, but the alleged austere basing capability, it’s related to any 5th generation fighter bomber and more specifically to any F-35’s version.
Nothing said there is specific to the B version.
I’m still wondering who was the first that allowed USMC to go to a “pure fleet” concept built around F-35B.
It doesn’t make sense, if they are not going to get either a green light to actually dry up USAF’s ARF capabilities with long transfer flights or to get something more capable even than America class LHAs.
And it’s not time for wet dreams, hardly they will save MV-22, even harder they will save EFV, no way to get new vessels more capable (i.e. fixed wing oriented) than the America class itself.
Uh, America class is endangered as well: it does seem somebody discovered being quite futile embarking around or more than one thousand marines, half wing of F-35Bs, the same of MV-22s, an handful of helicopters and zero landing crafts, so from the fourth keel on, future LHAs will got back a dock, scratching the jet fuel tanks and reducing the overall amount of sorties they can generate before refuelling at sea.
And at the same very time, every single CVN will lost at least one wing.
It’s going to be a real logistic and economic mess, IMHO.
verbatimI think you are misunderstanding what a buy of 400 airframes actually means. There is never actually going to be 400 airframes available to the USMC. The 400 would be spread over time to put together, and maintain, a specific number of operational squadrons, conversion units and reserves. 400 would not be an arbitrary figure off the top of someones head.
Yes they could do, but, why would they?. For extra payload/range….unimportant for the tasking. The USMC asked, essentially, for a STOVL F/A-18C and thats what they have with F-35B. If they then switch to F-35C for 50% of their air strength they lose the ability to deploy a percentage of their tacair to their LHA’s and to short-field forward bases, whack the price of their remaining F-35B’s up and continue their dependancy on the big deck USN carriers that they, originally, wanted a STOVL F/A-18C to minimise in the first place!. It would be a stunning own-goal!.
Ehm, no, the U.S. Marine Corps is deliberately loosing any chance to deploy a meaningful amount of combat aircrafts anywhere in the world but CONUS itself.
What you call dependancy, has be the only way both to deploy wing size detachments and to justify the whole size of the U.S. Marine Corps’s combat aircrafts force.
There is no reason to bin the support provided by the CVN, because there is no chance to get a way to send even a wing of F-35Bs anywhere.
At the same very time, no medium or large scale deployment would be performed without at least one carrier strike group supporting it.
It would be really funny to see the U.S. Navy carriers providing air support to the Marine, without the Marine’s F-18s usually permanently onboard until now, while hundreds of Marine’s F-35Bs would be resting at home without a lift to send them on mission.
The rationale, until now behind the Marine’s combat aircraft structure was that the most of their aircrafts were to be CV capable and actually CV deployed 365 days a year, while a smaller amount of AV-8B were to provide close air support moving on the operating theater lifted by the LHD, but it was a token force anyway against the combined force made available even by one lonely CVN.
verbatimWhich version of the Merlin is that landing on the Cavour. It looks like the version we need for the RM aka a marinised troop transport
It’s an AW101 Mk.410, alias a naval TTH (utility helicopter).
As specific avionic package, it has a navigation/weather radar, FLIR and a basic ESM/ECM suite.
It does seem they (4 airframes) could or would be later upgraded to the Mk.413 standard, alias ASH (amphibious support helicopter) with new radar, full NVG compatible cockpit, full integrated self defence suite, new GPS receiver, additional CSAR avionic suite (mainly beacon localization aids), air refueling probe and three guns stations, two 7.62 caliber, one 12.7 caliber.
IIRC, no original Mk413 is yet in service, only the Mk410s are already in service, and as interim role they act in training events as ASH ones too.
verbatimSave for the one small detail you are missing. To get your E-2 you need a dirty great catapult equipped carrier….now add in the costs from running that and see where the scales tip!.
OK, I’m not arguing that going the so called CATOBAR would be practical or usefull pfr the UK, I would only suggest that all assumptions, from an economical point of view, are based on one simple hypothesis: i.e. the B version will cost around what the C version is going to cost.
If we assume, first, that the UK is going to halve its order down to around 80 aircrafts, isn’t it going to reverberate to the single aircraft cost?
We are talking about an around 70 airframes reduction on a total foreseen production of around 600 airframes, it would hurt a little, even on the production costs’ side.
Then the main factor I personally see as overlooked: the U.S. Marine Corps requirement for around 400 airframes in the B version is plain insanity, they won’t never be able to exploit them, nor to send them onboard any available or conceivable vessel.
Putting it simple and rude, it doesn’t exist, nor is planned, the naval capability to embark and deploy a meaningful fraction of that number.
The U.S. Marine Corps could easily and painlessly halve their own requirement for the B version, switching the other halve to the C version, at least spending almost the same and retaining the optio to embark the C aircrafts onboard the U.S. Navy CVNs.
It would be a serious blow for the B version, in terms of costs at least, but it would be at least a better force structure, and it could result in some money savings for the U.S. DoD as well.
Real troubles will come for other partners interested with the B version.
So, if the B version would come to cost, let’s say, 20 million pounds more than the C version (because UK and USA change or cut back their orders for the B version and maybe the US boosts C version’s orders) would it still more affordable and economical to purchase around 80 B aircrafts, to be anyway devoted to operate from QEII and/or PoW, or could be more cost/effective, maybe less expensive at all, switching the order to around C version, install catapult and arrestor gear, and force, if required, RAF to follow a permanent CV training path for its lasting and only 80 “C” JCA?
About UAV employed as AEW, I believe it’s great to provide overhead cover to a naval task group, but to be highly diufficult to provide any meaningful cover to an air strike package.
The main task assigned to an AEW aircraft, related with other air assets, is not to just track enemies, it is to analyze, prioritize and synthetize a tactical scenario, providing aircrews with just and only the amount of information and situational awareness they actually need and even giving them plain and mandatory orders, i.e. it needs human operators onboard.
Nothing an UAV could do, and nothing that could be performed from the deck of a naval asset, at least because problems and threats related to any datalink between a naval asset and an air strike package flying fast, far and away from it.
verbatimIIRC, FAA aircrafts cross decked on U.S. navy CVNs, the other way around was unfeasible because the british launching system was not suitable for U.S. Navy’s aircrafts.
But about usefulness of cross decking, I think a good argument could be the ability both to recover aircrafts running short of fuel, either U.S. ones on british decks or british ones on U.S. decks, or to perform strikes beyond range, avoiding to have to turn back to owns carrier, and landing instead over another CV located closer to targets, enabling combined broader and more persistent cover of the air space.
The same as when WWI bombers took off from England, bombed east or southern Germany, landed either in Soviet Union or Italy, refueled and rearmed and then performed another raid coming back to their home base in England.
And I think even just a couple aircrafts on troubles, recovered by a closer allied CV instead to going to ditch in the sea through a 30 years span, will pay back at least catapults and arrestor gear costs.
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