CFT integration may be “simple”, but that doesn’t make it cheap. You’re talking several tens of millions of dollars for routine flight testing, which will have to be paid for by India. If flight testing was cheap, you’d have seen the CFTs flown by Eurofighter already, and clearly they haven’t had the money to do it yet.

To give you a ballpark estimate, it would have cost 30 million EUROS to integrate just one weapon (AASM) on one store (fuselage) on one aircraft type (Mirage 2000D). Anything that involves sudden changes to the center of gravity (fuel dumping in a CFT’s case) and that can impact airflow requires a lot of testing.

There have been 3 confirmed naval gun engagements against Grad rocket batteries in Libya:

– May 2: French frigate Montcalm off Brega
– May 7 (night engagement): French frigate Courbet off Misrata.
– May 11 (night engagement): UK frigate Liverpool off Misrata.

Pic of Courbet’s night engagement. 100 rounds of 100mm fired. Range ~14,000m? (based on 22 degree gun elevation)

Certainly in a situation where the targets need to be hit hard and fast then a carrier would be far better, but to have a carrier steaming around the med for months on end would uses colossal amounts of fuel.

A carrier pottering around at 15kts uses about as much fuel in a day as an A330 MRTT or C-17 will in a single sortie. Flying big aircraft over long distances has never been very fuel efficient!

Also, keep in mind that a large chunk of a carrier’s crew are in support functions that also exist on an air-base: security, HR, food/laundry, comms, air traffic control, air-defense, fire-fighters etc. Those support functions actually represent most of the ship’s crew, with only a minority actually working in navigation, propulsion and ship’s maintenance. Then subtract the manpower needed for logistics and tanking sorties needed to support the RAF, and I’m not even sure a carrier group requires any more manpower!

Check my prior post. The actual “commissioning” date means nothing because different navies use different milestones for commissioning, and the concept itself doesn’t even always translate to other languages.

For the USN, commissioning happens sometime around the short initial sea trials (usually very shortly after). AFAIK, all it means is that the ship’s engines and safety equipment work and that it is seaworthy and has been “accepted” by the navy to start the rest of its work-up trials.

For the RN, AFAIK commissioning actually means “contractual delivery”. This means that the shipyard has finished its job: ALL trials (including systems & aviation trials) have been completed, defects identified and addressed during the initial docking period (bar some niggles with the combat system, often, as in the case of PAAMS). This usually can take anywhere from 6 months to a year and means that the ship is ready to start the long operational work-up process (exercises, mini-deployments etc) before being declared fully operational.

For the Marine Nationale, “livraison” (delivery) means commissioning in the RN sense of the term. However, an additional level of confusion (especially when translating to English) is often introduced because the MN often cites “admission au service actif” dates, which is the actual FOC date when the ship is ready to deploy. This is often mistakenly translated as the “commissioning” date, or sometimes as “entry in service” which is still rather open to confusion.

For Dixmude, she is now commissioned in the USN sense. She now goes to Toulon to install and work-up her combat systems, weapons and perform docking & helicopter trials. Following this she will be contractually delivered (commissioned in the RN sense) right at the end of 2011 or early 2012. Her operational work-up (including typically a mini-deployment to the South Atlantic or Indian Ocean) will then take-up her to summer 2012, when she will enter active service.

What would going nuclear do to the crew size? I imagine it would increase it substantialy. Thoughts?

Taking CdG as an example, she has 53 atomic crew, split into 10-man shifts for each reactor (so 20 men on watch most of the time). Small in number, but they certainly are well paid and expensive!

The net increase may be slightly less than that though, since a conventional carrier will need machinists to run the gas turbines and diesels, while the nuke carrier needs (fewer, if any?) machinists to run the steam turbines.

There are about 15-20 machinists on a modern frigate for example (Horizon, Cassard) – should be about the same number needed on a conventional carrier, since an engine is an engine whether it’s 5MW or 20MW and Horizon has about 85% of CdG’s propulsion anyway.

The best option IMHO is to lease 6-8 French Atlantique 2s in exchange for a French lease of the RAF’s new A330 tankers. That’s a fair deal that would delay capital expenditures on both sides, while also offering lower hourly costs than other legacy alternatives (S-3 Viking, Nimrod – had it been kept, C-135 etc).

The 6-8 Atlantiques would come out of the 12 Atlantiques that are stored as maintenance spares. The fleet (including all but 4 of the spares) is being incrementally modernized to stay in service until 2030, with improved sonobuoy and radar processing, new FLIR/TV sensor, better self-protection suite etc.

Would anyone please consider my query regarding the radio mast? Why is it a fixture on every modern frigate design including Russian ones?:confused:

a) In war, whoever “sees” the enemy first often wins.

b) Because of the earth’s curvature, putting your sensors as high as possible allows you to extend your “radar horizon”.

c) This applies especially to passive sensors, since they give you an information edge without broadcasting your position.

d) And applies even more so if you plan on keeping radar silence (which you would as a stealth frigate, unless you’re an AA picket, which FREMM ASM won’t be), since without radar you are blind and want more time to detect threats. Gaining an extra 5nm warning on an approaching missile or aircraft could make the difference between survival and sinking.

So… on FREMM the radio mast is much more than a radio mast.
– First, there’s an IRST, which needs to be ~25m high to take full advantage of its detection range up to the horizon (15nm detection range on a ship target).
– Then on top of the IRST you have radar warning receivers, which can pick up signals farther. The horizon will be about 20nm on a surface ship radar, and 40nm on an aircraft radar at 500ft.
– Finally, even higher up (~38m high on FREMM), you have comms intercept devices to pick up radio transmisisons.

Super Etendard over Libya (for PhantomII)

Here are some pics of Super Etendard ops on CdG, specially for Phantom II. 😉 To summarize my post in the Libya air operations thread, the 6 SEMs aboard CdG seem to be used:

a) A lot for buddy laser designation (at least 3 SEMs dedicated to this: S/N 10, 43 & 44)
b) Regularly for bombing (at least 2 SEMs: S/N 33 & 65)
c) Rarely for buddy refueling (1 SEM: S/N 37)
d) Never for recon

a), c) and d) are somewhat surprising. You’d think that SEMs could rely on Rafales for laser designation, and that it’d be better to push most of the refueling and recon missions onto SEMs so as to free Rafales for strike missions.

Now for the pics. Note that most seem to be taken on different days, so each aircraft seems to stick to one role.

Super Etendard strike missions: S/N 33 & 65

– Either 1 GBU-12/GBU-49 balanced by a small 625L tank on inboard wing pylons, with a ventral 600L tank or sometimes (on S/N 65) a Damocles pod for self-designation.
– Or 2 GBU-12/GBU-49 plus a ventral 600L tank.
– Outward pylons usually carry an ECM pod + chaff/flair pod, with rarely (on S/N 33) a Magic 2 AAM in lieu of the chaff/flair pod.

Some of the bombs in the pics have gray nose cones, others green ones. I think that may be the difference between the dual-mode GBU-49 and laser-only GBU-12, but I’m not sure. It’s also possible that some of the pics actually show 250lb “GBU Mk-81s”, since they are used aboard CdG.

S/N 33 in the background with probably two GBU, plus the ventral drop tank.

I believe that this is a 250lb “GBU Mk-81” (archive pic). Compared to the next pic, the Bang-125 body is shorter than the regular Bang-250 body.

“Normal” GBU-12 Bang 250 with longer body. (Note that the GBU-12 Bang 250 is different from a normal GBU-12: the body is shorter, and this is compensated by a longer nose cone section behind the moving fins.

Super Etendard buddy laser designation missions: S/N 10, 43 & 44
Only one configuration: large 1,200L tanks on inboard wing pylons, Damocles ventral laser designator. Interestingly, the outboard pylon ECM + chaff/flare pod combo isn’t used. Instead the two small inboard pylons are used for chaff/flare pods.

Different aircraft (S/N 10), same configuration.

Super Etendard buddy refueling missions: S/N 37
Large 1,200L tanks plus ventral Douglas buddy pod.

S/N 37 in the background with the Douglas buddy pod. Note how to distinguish the Douglas pod in the background with the ventral 600L tank carried by S/N 65 in the foreground (strike configuration).