Fox cuts first steel for carrier Prince of Wales

‘Fox cuts first steel for carrier Prince of Wales’ – the first Tory cut Ive approved of! :dev2:

Okay, but I feel its worth pointing out here that it’s Fox that said this and he’s always been very pro-carriers and definitely the most pro-military mp in the coalition Government. He’s also not above sticking his neck out when he wants to make a public statement.

I think you will find this link works. Agree, the bottom image does contain interesting variation over the previous release, and is dated March 2011, so may more accurately reflect current thinking. The scaling of the F35’s is different showing much greater clearance between the bow catapult launching run and the forward starboard deck, suggesting at least eight F35Cs could be ‘parked’ with another five on the stern, four on the lifts and two on the cats. Artistic licence allowing, it still suggests a lot more space on deck. For me however the ‘sales pitch’ is much more interesting:

‘The QE Class will be the center piece of Britain’s military capability and will be able to operate for long periods anywhere around the world at a time and place of the governments choosing’

‘The ships will be versatile enough to be used for operations by all three sectors of the armed forces, ranging from supporting war efforts to providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief’

and for the first time I believe with confirmation that from the start they will be completed with dedicated accommodation for an embarked military force, indeed giving the precise breakdown which suggests that for this aspect at least the detailed planning must now be complete:

Crew size: 629

Embarked forces: 921

http://www.baesystems.com/BAEProd/groups/public/documents/bae_publication/bae_pdf_qec_datasheet.pdf

the link doesnt appear to work :(..nor any search for qec datasheet on their site..could they have removed it? Apart from the one image we’ve all seen before all the other graphics still show the ‘jump’?

Whoops. Excuse my maths. 12 F35 x 2 Storm Shadow = 24. But point still holds. Given even the surge capability of 24 F35, as stated in SDSR = 48, and with the full air group as designed 36 F35 = 72. Not a ‘single service’ point Im making here, am assuming that a lot of the aircrew within the TAG would be light blue, and for those who know me my ‘purple’ credentials are immaculate!:)

Ski jump….

Liger,

I wouldn’t be too concerned about the article from meretmarine.marine.com, they are notoriously renowned for getting it wrong -although well done on finding the article amidst a sparcity of news! I have a neighbor who has worked for the design team at the ACA (initialy for Thales) since its inception and at dinner last Thursday he was adamant that all plans for the ski jump have been terminally binned.They don’t want to be seen to be responsible for the costs of installing an expensive, redundant and ‘useless lump of metal’ anymore than the government. He also insists that both ships will be built to the same ‘base’ configuration, although he says they still don’t know if both vessels will be completed with cats and traps, one option may be the usual British compromise of ‘for – not with’ aka Harpoon/Phalanx on T45? belief is that the first ship ie QE will be fitted with the kit, hence the justification for the delay – again they would look silly if this were not the case. He was also adamant that unlike many other projects in which BAE have had a hand, this one is running on time and budget with only political decisions responsible for delay, and subsequent hike in cost. He was quite up front about this as from a business point of view it will keep quality people in quality jobs for much much longer!

Prince of Wales will get the Cats, almost certainly.

Queenie apparently will be built with the Sky Jump even though the jump jet has been dropped and now she’ll be a replacement for HMS Ocean more than a carrier.

This coming from the following article, at least: http://www.meretmarine.com/article.cfm?id=115509

I’m hoping that we can at least avoid building and installing a Sky Jump that would effectively only waste the space for one helicopter landing spot, and that would be undoubtedly dismantled during the first refit.
Unless there are contracts obligations so powerful that even the sky jump can’t be removed…!

I’m saying Prince of Wales gets the traps because this would allow for expenditure on buying and fitting the cats and traps in 2014/15 or even 2016: back-loading expenditure makes more sense than front-loading it, especially with the 2011 budget being so challenging already as it is and 2012 and 2013 Planning Rounds still officially expected to be “difficult”.

Besides, this way there’s all the time to do the redesign work, see how the EMCAT works (by 2015 the US will already be using it on their new Gerard Ford supercarrier) without slowing down the QE timeline at all.
Thus avoiding cost increases that no one wants.

I’d be really surprised if things were done the opposite way.
And anyway, the F35C to fly off the carrier won’t be available before 2018 at the earlier.