It will be good to see the upper units uploaded and start to be fitted to the lower block, although the CGI assembly video appear to have fogotten to account for the shipyard clutter which the photo’s show. Perhaps its not quite as easy to drive them off and park them up ready to the lifted and fitted ;).

Whilst all this talk about the size of LB-03 its worth remebering that even when LB-02 and LB-01 are all fitted together with it, this will still only be half the ships length !

Forgive me for being confused as well,where in the above statement does it actually state this EMALS order is for the POW or am I missing something.
Given that General Atomics have already delivered parts of EMALS to the builders of the Gerald R Ford,then is it beyond the bounds of possibility that a second set would be available for the QE. I am quite sure the US builders would be able to provide these cats in time,if not then it seems an inordinatley long build time to build a second set for a vessel which has only just had first steel cut.
All this talk of getting QE to sea and conducting trials so that POW will reap the benefits is to me just spin. You cannot work up an aircraft carrier without aircraft,ship handling/engine room trials they all have to be done by every individual ship.
This is just a smoke and mirrors scheme to delay the outlay of funds by having to pay out for EMALS.
At the end of the day we will end up with a 65,000 ton LPH,pathetic.

UK carrier to receive second EMALS production shipset, Fox confirms
By Peter Felstead
9/12/2011

The second production shipset of the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) being developed by General Atomics for the US Navy’s upcoming Gerald R Ford-class aircraft carriers will be fitted to Prince of Wales , the British Queen Elizabeth (QE)-class carrier that will be configured for the F-35C carrier variant (CV) Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), the UK Defence Secretary has confirmed.

It’s in the first paragraph

Plane without an Engine nice ! Surely then the 65 million can’t be ‘fly away’ price. :diablo:

Note what else they don’t include in the price which is pretty stupid as most of those avionics items are an intergral part of the aircraft and not a bolt on option as they are with the older generation aircraft. You can’t have an F-35 without them so might as well be honest with the price and highlight what you get for the money as it will hurt them more when people have been quoting one price to their voters and than have to admit later the real price was much higher.

So its probably nearer to $85 million than $65 miilion, and that if the production run is uneffected by the US DoD budget cutbacks or technical issues which delay the aircraft getting into full production.

Nice spot CockneyJock, as you started windering when they were supposed to be transported they turn up under your nose. Assuming they will be unloaded this week, i wonder when they will start to be fitted to LB03. Will be nice to start to see it comming together over these next 18 months as the other blocks are delivered & fitted.

Been scouring the net for any info on CB03 in terms of, is the barge at A&P yet?are the units leaving on the 12th as planned(not likely now imo) what’s the name of the barge that’s bringing the rings up so I can track it on shipAIS.

Result sweet FA!!

Anybody else had anymore luck than me and incidentally AMT Trader is still in Rosyth not that I think it will be her that’s bringing up the units, just useless info really. 🙂

What brought up the LB-01 blocks ?

AMT Trader may be being held ready to transport LB-02 from Portsmouth BTW

http://www.f-16.net/news_article4416.html

F-35 defeated in air combat simulation

No valid source and to be honest pure speculation as nobody as yet knows the true performance and systems capabilities of either the F-35 or the Pak-fa. We’re not going to get real answers till the end of the decade and i wonder if the timing has anything to do with the last F-22 in production at the moment ?

Face it they did a major FUBAR with original design, did a quick fix to reduce weight across the board and didn’t do enough analysis on what the impact of those changes would be so failed to update the performance specifications to component suppliers resulting in parts not meeting performance expectations becuase the design process was flawed.

They also pushed for production using an unproven design in the vain hope that nothing major would trip them up and if it did it woiuld be caught early enougth to be rectified before production ramps up.

To be honest they haven’t had anything too major thats caused a prolonged grounding and expect software to be the biggest bugbear with the ongoing flight testing, the trouble is their track record with this program is not that great and only the most gullible have complete faith in LM that there won’t be any more of these issues as the testing continues and the flight envelope expands.

To be honest the DoD should have probably forced LM to stop production and focus on getting the design correct than allowing them to fix things on the fly but too much political shenanigans to ever let that happen until the they started getting honest replies ion progress & costs last year that led to direct action to get things back under control.

Well i doubt we will see any confirmation of actions till early next year when more data is known; such as the F-35B sea trials, the depth and scope of the DoD budget cuts and the price/delivery dates of the operational F-35 B/C.

Then we’ll see the politics come into play as respective senators battle to protect their own.