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.
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