My solution to fleet ISTAR coverage, in lieu of Hawkeye, would be a hi/lo mix of carrier borne ‘BAE Sea Mantis’ MALE UAV’s plus escort based radar-equipped Boeing MQ-18’s netted into a Merlin ASaC as offboard discrete C3 node. You get the persistance, you get the flexibility, you get the operational discretion and, if you lose a platform, you get to VERTREP a few crates over from your fleet logistics area and assemble the replacement in the hangar with minimal impact to operations.

I do not have your RN background Jonesy – but it struck me that if the carriers were CATOBAR then given the investment in Cerberus and Searchwater 2000 the MoD would simply choose a twin turbo-prop for its COD design and then buy a few extra to convert to AWACS aircraft fitted with Cerberus and Searchwater 2000. So I think the whole go CATOBAR to get Hawkeye is a bit of unlikely outcome.

I think most people accept, that at least to begin with you are only going to have one operational Aircraft Carrier. The second ship is most likely going to be used mainly in a helicopter role, at least for some time.

In the situation you name I want F-35B even more, as you will only have both carriers around 200 days per year, which means when QE is unavailable you would be without any air defence if you buy F-35C. I think the whole lets have one as a helicopter carrier is code for lets buy less fighters.

While there is a worry by some that F-35B allows the RAF too much control and that F-35C would make it less easy for the RAF to wrest control of the NSW from the FAA I think with a dramatically reduced buy the only thing that will prevent the RAF using their superior “political position” to block the purchase of fast jets is if they get something out of it. Maybe the trick would be for the FAA to choose a cheaper plane with minimal capabilities, unable to penetrate layered modern air defences so that RAF does not feel threatened.

Just to clarify OldandBold a) I have an inherent preference to CATOBAR over STOL, b) I wanted my forum name to be nocutstoRAF&RN but it was to long.

Having clarified this, I think that if the RN had insisted on the going CATOBAR it would be a disaster and the carriers would be cancelled. Not because the RAF is out to get them (which may be true) but because as far as I can tell a STOL carrier is the most flexible and useful carrier type you could build and anything that is not flexible and can only fill a single mission will be cut during the SDSR – this is something Liam Fox has said several times (I have high hopes therefore that the Type 45’s will get equipped with all their fitted for but not fitted weapons and systems).

So the UK will operate aircraft with a shorter range than the US or France, but if you look at likely sea based adversaries the range of F-35B seems pretty good as a Su-33 is estimated to have a typical combat radius of 700 km (hard to find as most of the figures I found were maximum ranges rather than combat radius), which I assume will also apply to Chinese version of it, the F-35B has a combat radius of 830 km. Pushing potential foes further you have Sky Hawks with combat radius of 900 km and Mig-29K with a range of 850 km, making the F-35B pretty much on par with the Mig-29K and better than the most likely threats at sea. Obviously it is nice to have more range on a strike aircraft but the F-35B is not completely useless when compared to its peers.

Obviously the Mig-29K and Su-33 are limited in take off weight by STOBAR but can be topped off after take off and it does show the limitation of the F-35B that it cannot buddy refuel.

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?144822-Large-aircraft-carriers-compared

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan_MiG-29K

Finally I wonder if there would be as much resistance if Boeing and BAE had worked together to produce a supersonic Harrier III

i can’t imagine that at any point in the gr4 replacement study that anyone mentioned replacing the gr4 with an inferior american design (f18).

The GR4 replacement was not envisaged until 2024/5 if they bin the GR4’s now then what ever they will buy will be a stop gap– however I would put money down that the RAF would rather accept a capacity gap than buy an aircraft now as stop gap and miss out on what they want in the future.

we all know that the gr4 replacement is a separate aircraft to what will eventually fly on the carriers (and the F35C isn’t even close to what the RAF want to replace the GR4 with

I figure the F-35C is a lot closer to what the RAF want than the F/A-18 and the RAF getting the F-35C has been raised before see this article from 2006:

http://www.defencemanagement.com/article.asp?id=192&content_name=Modernising%20Defence&article=4749

i think the talk of f18s helping ease the pain of the gr4 loss for the RAF is just another way to try and justify them.

While I am sure the MoD and senior RAF personnel do not care, trawling around on E Goat, ARRSE and PPRUNE convinced me that a lot of other people in the RAF do care – not sure it will make iota of difference but who knows?

i am also not convinced that the F35b is so far away from FAA/MOD/RAF performance parameters as some would have us believe. i would however like to know how meteor is to fit into the F35B. is it really the case that no planned version can do it? Meteor for me would be a deal breaker, because not having it undermines the utility of the JCA.

I know it was overweight in 2004/5 and it is fixed, I also know one of the changes was a slightly smaller bays, to quote Navy Matters:

In August 2004 JSF program officials said that they had identified 2,700 lb.(1,225 kilograms) in weight or weight equivalent reductions for the STOVL aircraft using strategies that include:

• Reducing the distance between interior structural elements in the wing so the aircraft’s exterior skin can be thinner.
• Reducing the size of the weapons bays by 14 in. as well as the size of the vertical tails.
• Rounding the shape, the loft line, of the fuselage behind the cockpit to hold more fuel. That was one of several changes that decreased drag.
• Redesigning the electrical system to decrease the battery size and the amount of wiring.
• Redesigning the wing-mate joint.
• Rerouting some thrust from the roll post outlets to the main engine thrust.
Additional equivalent weight reductions will result from changing carrier operations requirements from those demanded for the Harrier including instrument flight patterns and vertical hover rate ratios.

The original empty weight of F-35B was 13,600 kg, and after the weight-reduction plan, it is about 12,420 kg now.
The weapons bay reduction will eliminate certain weapons from the STOVL configuration, including the Joint Standoff Weapon and 2,000-lb. bombs. However, L-M doesn’t see that as an impediment to the proposed USAF buying the STOVL variant aircraft. Since USAF F-35B’s will be dedicated to close air support it won’t need large weapons, instead, it would likely carry 250-lb.-class small-diameter bombs. Reportedly the UK, which in 2002 was delighted when L-M declared that the F-25B could have the same large weapons bay as the F-35A/C, is now less than happy about the change back – UK JSF aircraft will have to fulfil a far broader range of missions than USMC or USAF STOVL F-35’s

http://navy-matters.beedall.com/jsf.htm

What happens with Meteor is anyone’s guess as currently there is no plan it integrate it on the F-35B as it was removed as one of the cost savings made previously (though the story is old)

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2006/02/24/205102/jsf-model-highlights-programme-problems.html

I also don’t think the MOD is in a hurry to buy loads of US weaponry to compensate for smaller bays (is there a link to prove this is actually true?)

I do not think the UK is in a hurry to buy any new weapons, Paveway IV is proving useful as is Brimstone in Afghanistan, what more do we need! Seriously though it would be nice if F-35B could carry Brimstone externally, will carry ALARM internally, had an internally carried precision strike missile with a range between Brimstone and Storm Shadow (would this be SPEAR phase 3?) and also could carry a super-sonic sea skimming anti-shipping missile.

Nocuts I disagree. There’s no reason why converting from STOBAR to CATOBAR would cause that much disruption.

Manufacturing and Design departments knew at the point of submitting the proposal that it could be one or the other.

So you simply activate the alternative plan the second you know about it and have it signed in blood in triplicate by the UK government. You then re-forecast your purchasing requirements.

You simply activate your alternative project plan and re-forecast resource where necessary.

Surely as soon as you make a change, even if you have the plans for the work needed to be done you need to re-forecast and it is quite likely things you have already done will need to be re-done to accommodate CATOBAR, that there will be delays in the programme and it will cost more – this is not my idea of easy. As far as I can tell engineering a carrier is about five orders of magnitude more complex than things I have worked on (mainly crack and seat of jointed concrete roads and taxi ways, followed by asphalt surfacing) where I have seen last minutes changes cause highly paid specialists to turn up and sit around drinking tea as we where not ready for them.

To be honest if they do decide to go with F/A-18 or F-35C I think it is likely they will do it in to steps – build the QE as STOBAR with arrestor gear and then refit EMCAT in a major refit in the next decade after PoW is accepted into service, once EMCAT is mature and the US have a 4 – 5 year track record in similar technology. This presumes that the news stories I read that said Boeing and LM had both offered the F/A-18 and F-35C to the Indian’s was correct and that if they can operate off an Indian carrier set up for STOBAR they could do the same of QE.

Whilst the MoD didn’t drop the F-35B as preffered choice for JCA when the weight issue arose it did however keep its options open nas defered comiting to the F-35B until LM could prove in flight testing that it could meet the mark.

The CVF build program won’t need confirmation of flight format for a while yet, but the CATOBAR kit would need to be ordered and aircraft finally ordered by that point.

If it was a straight up economic choice, based on a cost/benefit analysis then I think a CATOBAR choice would be viable given the combination of F-35B being behind schedule and the contraction of defence budgets. However politics plays its part and I think this will make it hard for the UK to abandon F-35B even if turned into a lame duck (and it is not there yet).

As they are installing the diesel generators now and I understood they need to fit two more if they are going to fit EMCAT I was expecting them to make a decision now rather than next year, but I suppose they could be planning to go STOBAR for a while before fitting EMCAT the next time QE is in for a refit.

Thanks Jonesy – that kinda reinforced my point – if the UK did not bail back when the F-35B was overweight they are hardly going to bail now over a few dodgy actuators. It would be nice if Liam Fox does declare soon what is happening with UK’s choice for JSA to give the poor journo’s a break from speculating over moves to CATOBAR or F/A-18 purchases.