QuantumFX, if you’re referring to the skid marks on the deck, denoting possible flight ops, yep I noticed ;).
Also notice how the politician visiting the ship (isn’t that their president?) is dressed like a Bond villain :diablo:.

I just saw the news on the BBC website. Its really put a damper on my whole evening, I’m gutted. My thoughts go out to his family. RIP

A question.

Is the high cost of CATOBAR conversion certain to knock the second carrier on the head? Its logical that the extra billion (s) puts the whole thing under much more pressure, but we have no definitive statement yet.

Equally, does going for the B definitely make 2 operational carriers more likely? Or is that just theoretical?

Correct me if I’m wrong but I intepreted mrmalaya’s query as being whether both CVFs would be more likely to be equipped to operate the F-35 is we reverted to STOVL or whether HMS Queen Elizabeth would not receive a ski jump and either remain in mothballs or be used for helo-only ops as opposed to whether both ships would be operational at sea simultaneously if we went STOVL instead of CATOBAR.

I think this debate about the carriers and what jet type should fly from them is simply indicative of a wider problem, Britain wants to have its cake and eat it. What I mean is that we like being a major player in the world, its almost a drug that six or seven decades on from the end of the Empire we still have a craving for, but we’re not prepared to pay for it. Instead we continually squeaze the defence budget in favour of tax cuts or spending on other Government departments.

Whilst the USA and France have predominantly indigenous kit that is wholly owned by them, we do not. Typhoon is a fourway collaboration with Germany, Italy and Spain and the Lightning II regardless of which version(s) we end up with is American. France’s SSBNs have French missiles in their tubes whilst we have US Tridents, and apparently they’re not even bought outright from Uncle Sam as Polaris was but part of some jointly maintained pool of missiles. The missiles in whichever Vanguard class sub is currently on patrol, this time last year as I understand it were loaded on a US Ohio class boat. And all the time the politicians pat themselves on the back and say this is good value for money.

I would argue that if we’re truly a player in the world we should have our own kit, if France can do it, then why shouldn’t we? But then that comes back to the whole willingness to spend. At the rate we’re going divesting ourselves of military kit and the commitments that they were intended to maintain in order to balance the books and pay for Trident and its proposed like-for-like replacement it won’t even be worth us maintaining a nuclear deterrent in the first place.

I know what I suggest next will never happen, if only because its too emotive for many politicians but thanks to this current economic crisis, my country, which I care about greatly, has reached a fork in the road vis a vis its status in the world. It was going to happen one day, but the deficit problems have simply accelerated things. We need to have a two stage review, in fact the mother of all reviews to be undertaken, Stage One by the FCO and Stage Two by the MoD with the choice being between (1) accepting a reduced role in the world including giving up such status simbols as our Security Council seat, our nuclear weapons and reducing our conventional forces including scrapping our flat tops (2) rolling up our sleaves and saying if we wish to continue as a major player on the world stage we need to increase greatly our defence spending in real terms, as part of GDP and funding such expensive things as a pair of new aircraft carriers for the Navy, with catapults and arrestor wires which can be used as either strike or fleet carriers. In essence becoming a minature US.

But I am certain that the current course, a sort of third way of make do and mend which we’ve practiced arguably since the end of World war II is unsustainable and indeed undignified in the eyes of the world. And it also leads to damaging and petty interservice rivalries as well as unnecessarily endanging the lives of our brave men and women in uniform by trying to do things on the cheap violating the much vaunted ‘Military Covenant’.

Apologies to all of you for my rant, I just had to get it off my chest. Please feel free to return to bickering about which sucks the least, the F-35B or the F-35C.

I think I posted this some time ago on another thread so apologies, but if I’d been responsible for reorganising the Royal Navy after 1945 I would have scrapped all the Battleships including HMS Vanguard straight away, none of this training ship or ‘Flagship of the Home Fleet’ nonsense, the then incomplete cruisers Lion, Tiger and Blake, all eight Hermes class and three Audacious class Carriers and abandoned any plans to modernise the Illustrious and Implacable class Carriers either. Instead I would have proceeded with the construction of the four Malta class Carriers, to be completed to a new design within the confines of their hulls by the late 1950s.
This revised design would have seen them emerge as giant versions of HMS Victorious post 1958 with a pair of steam catapults, JBDs, eight-and-a-half degree angled decks, Type 984 radars etc. Until the first of these was ready those Colossus and Majestic class Light Carriers not sold abroad could have carried on in the interim and then two or three could be converted into Commando Carriers.

The RN and MN have never possessed CTOL carriers capable of simltaneous launch and recovery, and it has never caused a problem.

Actually Obi Wan, looking at pictures and flight-deck plans of Hermes and Victorious it seems to me that simultaneous take-offs and landings were possible, at least if the starboard catapult was employed (and possibly using both cats on Victorious).

I notice you dodged the question of where the bluewater military threat was….the team trying to get that pushed through would have similar difficulty just without the luxury of ignorance as a defence.

The blue water military threat is fitting out right now behind a branch of Ikea in a dockyard in Dalian China.

Inicdentally the National Audit Office as decided to put its two-peneth in. And the BBC has yet to update its CVF graphics. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14057337

Actually I seem to recall reading that Ark Royal‘s COD Gannet Mk 4 was retired midway through her first post-Phantomisation commission circa 1972 and that an extra Sea King was embarked as part of 824 RNAS to help fulfill the COD role. I also clearly saw on an episode of the ‘Sailor’ documentary TV series mail bags being unloaded from the bomb bay of a Buccaneer.