you might as well design a new ship since you wont fit a 155mm gun on the mounting for a 76mm gun.

The BAe modified Mk8 with the 155mm as planned has about the same space/weight constraints as an Oto-Melara 127mm/64 LW. And Italy was planning to put just that on their land-attack/general-purpose FREMMs.

Yes – but that requires helicopters with the right weapons (Sea Skua, Marte, etc), something near enough to fly off, & the freedom to operate for both the helicopters & their platforms.

It also requires the aerial platforms in the first place. It’s often overlooked, but in most “traditional” FAC-using countries, aerial platforms will be far between either being needed for other purposes, or not being available in the necessary numbers.

What is being argued here is that FACs are not worth the money, and do not live up to their promise. Remember, FACs were touted as being able to go up against larger vessels.

And they are well capable of that when used in the right numbers, and with the right support. Neither NATO nor WarPac relied on only FACs in the Baltic Sea, but each side still fielded in up to 100 small surface combatants – supported by a similar number of naval strike aircraft, in excess of 50 mine warfare craft, about 20 submarines and a dozen tenders on either side.

The Baltic Sea is only 50% bigger than the Persian Gulf. And the Aegean isn’t much smaller either. The above are the numbers we’d be talking about needed when fighting against major surface units in such areas.

Look awesome together.

Would look more awesome if the full score of eight had been built :p

You think they are still around, not sold for scrap?

By rumours Thales bought at least half the remaining units as they still had 100,000+ flight hours left in their frames – for possible resale as modernized dedicated AShM carriers.

I disagree.

PH-75 was a planned replacement for the third French carrier, with perhaps a second unit taking over JdA’s wartime role as a helo carrier (probably unlikely).
CdG would have been built in the 90s anyway, as replacement for the “real” carriers; either that, or a similar system for the same purpose. Only then with some experience in nuclear propulsion on large-scale ships, likely preventing those certain problems occuring in that field with CdG, and perhaps opening the path to a second CdG. PH-75 would definitely have prevented the Mistral class though, which has pretty much the same delivery layout with somewhat less troops, and dock facilities instead.

“Government officials indicate it is unlikely that Germany would reduce its A400M order in favor of other models, such as the C-130J or the C-17 that are being evaluated by the U.K., but mainly for political reasons.”

Note 1: A400M, for the Luftwaffe at least, is procured as the principal tactical transport aircraft – hence C-17 are not an alternative, merely a possible strategic supplement to either A400M or an alternative solution.

Note 2: C-130J ? The basic design is 50 years old, even if the C-130J airframes are new for the most part. Not an alternative to a new design, at most an intermediate solution – the stuff we’re buying now is supposed to be up-to-date in 20 years still after all, and should still work in 40 years. That would be like putting up a new production run of the good ole C-160 Transall with new avionics, new engines and a modified cargo deck.

Note 3: The stated strategic solution for Germany at the moment is SALIS, which Germany just signed into for another 2 years last month. Germany afaik has a contingent of 750 SALIS flight hours on An-124, almost four times what the UK has. And SALIS is damn cheap for what it offers, at something like 250 Euro per ton per flight hour overall average cost for Germany.

Not mentioned yet: Fiat G.91.

The Sud-East SE 5000 (cancelled after LRIP) was also intended for operation from ploughed fields. Both were 50s of course, not 70s.