On every board I have looked at where the subject of ‘Vince comes up, there is a total refusal to accept reality! Many posters insist on claiming that “India will buy her” (despite the FACT that India has committed their shipbuilding budget to the “Gorshkov” rebuild, and the construction of 2 ADS (carriers larger than either Viraat [ex-Hermes] or ‘Vince), one of which is already under construction.

Others insist that she will be sold to Australia, Canada, Argentina, Taiwan, Chile, or whoever the country-of-the-minute is.

Reality is that the MOD has confirmed that she will NOT be sold to anyone, but will be held “in reserve” until 2010, and will, if needed, provide parts for Lusty and Ark Royal! Therefore, by the time she would be available for sale, she will be a stripped hulk, and not economically refittable.

The real shame would be if the UK sold off all those free spare parts, and then had to either buy new (more expensive) parts for Illustrious & Ark Royal, or take the Illustrious out of service early to provide parts to keep Ark Royal operating!

Get over it!

The Brits really liked their upper and lower hangars. That was the only way they could get a decent number of aircraft on-board with their smaller hulls (than the US CVs designed at the same time), and their practice of wanting to keep all their aircraft in the hangars, not with some in a permanent deck park.

I am sure that they were also divided with fire doors into smaller sections, but their individual size was not all that big.

Almost all of the fleet carriers had the two hangars, starting with the 1937 Ark Royal. Only two of their large WW 2 CVs had one hangar deck, but all of the “light fleet carriers” also had only one.

The San Francisco city Council has voted NOT to allow the Iowa in their pacifist paradise!

They specifically said that it didn’t fit their future vision, and should be put somewhere else.

Many of those involved in the drive to place her in San Fran said that the personal statements and attitudes of the councilpersons (gotta be PC in SF) clearly indicated that a major part of their personal reasons was as a rejection of “militarism” (especially the Iraq situation)!

There was a variant of the Vigilante (A-5B) that filled the bomb tunnel with a fuel tank and DECM, had more powerful J-79-8 engines, had enlarged and blown flaps, and had external pylons for 4-2,000 lb bombs under the inboard wings (the A model only had 2). This variant was only produced in a few test examples, and never entered production (it was the basis for the RA-5C reconnaissance version). This was offered to Australia in in 1962 in competition to the F-111 and TSR-1. Had it been chosen, it would have been in service by 1965 (US variants were produced in 1961-1963), eight years before the first F-111s arrived in Oz in June 1973.

In later upgrades, the payload could have been further increased (especially since Oz would have only flown them from land airfields, not from Carriers like the USN), and if Speys were installed to replace the J-79s then it would have had a much longer range due to their greater efficiency.

Yes, they would not have been as good as the Aardvark, but as noted above, would have been in service 8 years earlier, thus avoiding the need to lease F-4s from the retirement of the Canberras in 1970 until the F-111s finally arrived, and would have allowed the RAAF to buy its F-111s in the early-mid 1980s. By then they had all the bugs worked out and could have been produced in an even better version. They would also now have another 10-15 years more remaining lifespan than their current versions do.

“I wonder if there is any plan at all to curtail the debt.”

That depends on which politician you ask, but one thing is certain: SeaLord Larry has sure developed a plan to gut the US Air Combat capability, and greatly reduce the flexibility and effectiveness of the USMC, USAF, and USN!

Nice job, I’m sure the North Koreans, PRC, and Islamo-terrorists worldwide have just added you to their “best friend” lists!

The F-32 would not look like that! Boeing had already admitted (before they lost the competition) that they would have to redesign the wing and add separate horizontal stabilizers in order to get the maneuverability to where the specs required it to be. Try looking in old copies of Aviation Week & Space Technology for the revised design.

The point that almost everyone seems to be missing with the “mirror defense” theories is that the Laser will not melt its way through the missile body, nor will it heat it to weaken it. In the early tests with the ALL, they found that the target Sidewinders were actually damaged by a physical shockwave!

When they recovered the pieces and re-assembled them, they found a series of cracks running radially from a central point (where the paint was scorched), much like what you get by hitting a sheet of glass with a hammer.

Metallurgical analysis found that the cracks showed the characteristics of an impact fracture, not a thermally caused one. If you had high-school physics, you learned that light photons have a measureable mass, although it is very small! The energy involved in the super-high power lasers is so great that the light actually has a kinetic energy (mass X velocity) similar to a decent sized bullet. the shock-wave caused by the impact of the light on the missile body breaks the casing.

Mirrors were tested and found not to reduce this impact force significantly.

The all-new A-6F Intruder II had been cancelled, along with the A-6G Intruder [A-6E upgrade] in 1986/7 to allow their funds to be spent on the A-12, so Cheney had nothing to do with that (Caspar Wienburg did)!

At the point they (McDonnell/Douglas & General Dynamics) had spent ALL the development money, the A-12 was about 2/3 done with development. The losing bidder (Grumman/Northrop) had bid ~30% more for the development phase…. almost exactly what it would have cost if they had finished the A-12 development….. any of you think something stunk about that winning bid?

The losing bid had a different airframe shape, probably wouldn’t have had all those design and fabrication problems, especially with Northrop’s experience using composites on the B-2 just before then!

The review of the aerodynamics showed a very marginal level of control in the ship-board landing phase, with NO margin for degraded performance due to combat damage…. the best choice if anything was busted would to have flown next to the CV and ejected! This was NOT acceptable!

The Super-Tomcat (with the LEXXs) was the best choice for the F-14 & A-6 replacement, IMHO.

The NATF was a different airframe than the F-22, and looked like a cross between the F-14 & the F-22, with a swing-wing! Considering the two most expensive parts of a modern combat aircraft are the avionics and the engines, and they were to share those, there wouldn’t have been much cost for the Navy to absorb. However, considering all the problems they have had with the F-22 avionics, the Navy probably made a good choice in not buying it.