And just to speculate; recent reports released suggested operational availability for the Typhoon (for the RAF and Italian Air Force at least and) has varied from at least 97% to 100% during various exercises and actual combat. Figures for the Rafale are difficult to come across (unless someone has any idea?), but with several emergency landings in Malta during the Lybian Campaign, and one aircraft not flight worthy and another one that had to cut short it’s flight display during Aero India 11, one might have to question it’s availability and serviceability. However, with limited information available to us it’s probably a moot point, but speculation does no harm.

EELightning, you do have some talent for insinuation, which is why you got Tmor riled up. Good hearted banter is all well and good, but unfortunately repetition becomes tiresome. Remember a few months back we had almost this same exact conversation on this very thread?
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=109699&page=8

So I’ll have to repeat myself. Sigh.

Flying hours per aircraft per month over Libya, up to mid-June

These averages are based on 3,800 flight hours for Rafale and 1,500 flight hours for Typhoon. Both pretty decent sample sizes.

Maintenance costs per flight hour (excluding fuel)

Also, the goal back in 2004 was to bring Rafale’s cost per hour down to €7,000-10,000 by 2012 (i.e. by around the 100,000hr mark, a good proxy for when an aircraft reaches maturity). Not sure if this is on track to be achieved – it is certainly true that the M88 engine has taken more time to reach maturity (100,000 flight hours instead of 50,000 originally planned), leading to engine support cost overruns of 30% over that time period.

All from public sources. IMHO these numbers tell a pretty strong story about Rafale’s availability and serviceability.

Love this pic… so Cold War. The R530 missiles have something Russian about them too. 😎

Never been a big fan of the MIII, but always loved the F1. IMHO for a decade it was the quintessential Cold War fighter. So well rounded as an interceptor, dogfighter and mud mover.

Not the best at anything, but just good across the board.

Reminds me of the F6F Hellcat versus its contemporaries. Took until the mid 1980s for something really better and versatile than the F1 to appear (F-16C/F/A-18) in the same category. Even then, it was still a cheap, reliable option, sort of like the late war F2M Wildcat.

What are the design factors that determine the major dimensions of a carrier (displacement, length, beam, draught etc.), and of course its cost, both acquisition cost and operating costs?

For example, there was talk a while back that CVF’s size was driven by the sortie rate requirement. Is it the number and size of aircraft to be carried, or the take-off and/or landing distances required, or the deck parking area, or hangar size?

IMHO, a big driver of carrier size today is actually sortie type, not sortie numbers or aircraft size/numbers. A strike carrier has much more demanding specs than a sea control carrier:

– Longer catapults (90m ideal)
– Larger bow deck park to accommodate returning alpha strikes
– Much larger munitions capacity (which is volume intensive because there are only a limited number of spaces where you can safely fit munitions)
– More demands of air group personnel, meaning larger accomodation spaces

The end result is that a strike carrier needs to be much longer and beamier. ~60,000t is pretty much the minimum these days (see the French PA2 Romeo/PADSX design). The fact that you can carry more aircraft on a carrier that size is almost a side benefit, not a primary driver – to be clear, aircraft parking space is NOT the limiting factor.

By contrast, a pure air defense/sea control carrier can make do with 60m catapults and smaller aircraft packages (perhaps no more than 6-8 aircraft airborne, as on HMAS Melbourne), both of which allow for much smaller deck sizes. And much smaller munitions storage, which allows for a smaller hull. Given that the recovery area size is incompressible, that leaves much less deck space for aircraft parking, which is therefore much more likely to be the limiting factor.

Finally, for the strike mission, smaller naval aircraft such as a Sea Gripen can actually be counter-productive in terms of carrier size, because they tend to have less thrust-to-weight/weaker structure, and hence a reduced take-off & bring-back payload. A larger % of that reduced payload then ends up being eaten by basic mission needs (AAMs, reserve fuel, electronics etc), leaving only a fraction of the smaller aircraft’s payload available for A2G needs.

The extreme example of this is on CdG, where one Rafale can carry as much A2G payload as six Super Etendards! I’m willing to bet that a Su-33 vs. Mig-29K comparison would tell a similar story. You could also compare the A-4M vs. A-7E or F/A-18C vs F/A-18E and see a similar pattern. Basically economies of scale are much more significant for carrier aircraft with high landing stresses and low stall speed requirements, than they are for land-based aircraft.

The Sea Gripen would be much better than a Super Etendard obviously, but I still think that you’d probably need ~60 Gripen to match the payload-range of say 30 Rafale/F-35C/Super Hornet (for strike missions at least), and this would end up driving the carrier size.

All the above is my non-technical amateur’s understanding of course.

Well to their credit the French target claims are fairly specific, even if they don’t break out in detail helos versus fast jets. For example:

– 25 Aug-1 Sep: 85 vehicles (technicals, armored vehicles, tanks, trucks, Scud launcher)
– 18-25 Aug: Over 20 vehicles (tanks, technicals, artillery guns, Grad launchers)
– 3-11 Aug: Nearly 100 vehicles (tanks, technicals & troop transports) and 20 artillery guns and Grad launchers

Not sure how they could be making up mystery vehicles?

Not what you had in mind I know, but how’s this for joint operations? 😉

http://www.defense.gouv.fr/operations/autres-operations/operation-harmattan-libye/actualites/libye-un-nouvel-amiral-a-la-tete-des-forces-francaises-embarquees-sur-le-mistral

Edit: I’m being slightly tongue in cheak of course. That’s just a PHOTEX off Libya, French & UK helos have not actually operated in joint formations thus far in the conflict.

Ole, please chill out, no need to trash Pakho.

First, it’s not his data – he gave the link to his source. Second, it’s a compilation of statements released by each country at various times, so obviously none of the time periods or totals match.

That said, the percentages are pretty accurate, I believe. (However, the UK MoD has stated 850 strike sorties, not 700, so that’s more like 12%).

Destroying 2,500 targets in the past five months = Around destroying 500 targets per month = Around destroying 16 to 17 targets per day.

Considering the CAS sortie rates of FAF and French Navy in Lybia is around 100 to 125 sorties per day during the past five months, I think such kind of combat achievement is not awfully high.

Toan, that’s the French sortie rate per week, not per day. Total strike sorties were around 2400 (excluding helos), so that’s roughly one target per strike sortie.