nocutstoRAFSo your answer to everything now is sending “someone” with “helicopters”.
My questions are: from where these choppes will take off? From a 2 billions aircraft carrier coming well close to the shore, practically asking to be attacked with anti-ship missiles that by now almost everyone possess? When an already available, 2001 launched, NEW and immensely cheaper Albion could do it better? SERIOUSLY? This i want to see. Say it is demented is still generous.
Assuming there is no anti-ship missiles… The choppers are going to face, say, Iranian air defences or even just man-portable SAMs and anti-aircraft guns, flying it at night loaded with soldiers…? Because not everytime it will be West Side Boys. Losing a Chinook and 55 soldiers in one go would be a MAJOR disaster. And a 14.5 russian machine gun mounted on the back of a Toyota truck could do the work, with a bit of luck.
With the militias in the world drowning in cheap SA7 Strela and Stinger and chinese-built SAMs, optimism should be accompanied by serious prudence.Chinooks. Even assuming they truly become 70 (the order for 22 is not safe. Best case, they may buy 10-12 from Boeing, handed over in 2013, and the rest never come. Worst case, the SDSR chops them as well. A firm contract is not yet in place, never forget that), how many will be eventually available for operation…?
The Merlin HC3…? Will a Commando Helicopter Force survive at all?CVF is no LPH, no LHD. To embark soldiers, the air group must be reduced. You’ll only be able to embark a few hundred men, most likely, 500 if you are lucky. You’ll miss the command and control facilities of the Albion class (the CVF has NO C4I fit, so at least a Daring ship would be needed, since every Type 45 has extensive C2 communications outfit and could act as a bit of a command post) and you’ll have a ship un-optimized for amphibious ops replacing Ocean. It would take double the time for the Marines to move to the deck and embark on a CVF than on Ocean, that has been designed for that role specifically.
Vehicles: the CVF could embark some in the Hangar, but it will have to be all helicopter-compatible load, or it will never be able to disembark unless a port is conquered, with extensive craneage and facilities.
Overall amphibious capability: in the best scenario, a CVF and 2 Bay would be available. Which means merely 2 LCU MK10 and… how many? 30 Chinooks? Probably a lot less, to disembark everything.
It is simply a mess. And good luck in hoping to have the french borrowing Mistral and Tonnere to you for an operation.
No my answer is that the RN and the MoD think the answer for small and medium scale interventions is helicopter assault from the carriers and thought that before the SDSR otherwise they would never have plumbed for STOL carrier which would rarely leave home without embarked helicopters – I rather replace ocean with new platform and not sell off the Albion but if that does happen I do not see the RN crippled by the decision but I do see the RN becoming irrelevant if it looses the carriers to keep amphibious assault. I agree with you the RN will get the sh*tty end of the stick when it comes to having enough helicopters to make a heli assault.
For your objections to be truly valid however you have to envisage a situation where the UK will be going it alone and personally I doubt beyond the Falklands in the event some grows a giant pair and is willing to overrun an infantry company with air support that their will be a situation where Chinnocks or Merlin’s given top cover by F-35B or an Apache with-in the air defence cover of the Type 45 with its Aster / Sampson combo are not good enough.
With regard to anti-ship missiles, quite frankly the carrier is a lot more survivable than Albion and if the other side has anti-ship missiles you are much more likely to loose Albion with all hands than the carrier and RN must have been ready to accept increased risk when they accepted a STOL carrier.
Also I understood the CVF did have C4I as per Navy Matters is this not correct?
http://navy-matters.beedall.com/cvf1-15.htm
Finally any resource sharing arrangement with the French will be for coalition operations and it will have to work if the French want to operate of our carriers and refuel from our tankers and is there any reason why you think the French would refuse to honour their side of any such agreement?
nocutstoRAFPersonally, no. I think it makes no sense.
Are you going to send carrier strike to bomb a nation down, but have no intervention capability ashore? This NEVER worked in history, unless with Japan, but the amphibious landing was avoided (not really, it just happened AFTER the war was over, but it still was needed) just because nukes were used.
What if:
1) You have to retake the Falklands
2) You have to enter with force in an area and bring british citizens out and evacuate them
3) You have to raid enemy installations
4) You have to bring aid and establish security and control over the crowd to an Haiti-style area, where the only way in is from the sea because there’s no airports in conditions to be used. It is no wonder USA sent in the Marines, and the UK sent a Bay class ship.
And so along.
Playing devil’s advocate but I think that the combination of carrier strike and the Bays will deal with most of the problems the RN only need large amphibious assault to for a major conventional campaign which it will do with it’s allies for the rest I think the answers are:
1) We are not going to be taking back the Falklands as we will be making sure that it is too costly to take in the first place – hence the permanent army base and the flight of Typhoon’s. Once carrier strike is up and running there is little chance of the Argentina moving in it’s forces to take the island by surprise and between the Typhoon’s and a couple of squadrons of JSA (of whatever flavour that gets picked) the Argentine Navy and Air force will be in a bad situation. What I like to see now (assuming they can Nimrod MR4 – a frequent rumour) is the UK to buy some C-295 MPA’s and base 1 or 2 on the Falkland’s for continuous maritime surveillance.
2) Giving the flexible nature of the carriers, you would deploy your marine’s with heli lift to accomplish this, in conjunction with your Bays
3) As the mostly likely scenario for this is hitting a training camp you would obviously send in marines or SAS deployed from the carrier’s
4) Again can be done with helicopters from the carriers and Bays if you need to ship in supplies and equipment
Plus if you take some of recent stories seriously like the France and UK to share carriers then it also stands to reason that France and UK are going to cooperate on amphibious assault.
Still I rather the replace Ocean but if the choice is carrier strike or reduced amphibious assault I rather the reduce the amphibious capabilities than the carriers
nocutstoRAFThe Harriers the Marines will retire first will be the ones with most airframe hours… which are the non-radar night-attack versions.
All the radar-equipped ones got new fuselages in the upgrade, their wings were zero-timed, and their engines were upgraded for more power, so they will be held until last.
So what will be available will be very similar to your GR.7/9s.
Do you know over what sort of timescale the Marines will stand down their Hornet and Harrier squadrons and stand up their F-35B squadrons? I assume the plan is to have at least one squadron up and running by 2012?
nocutstoRAFYou are likely right Graeme65 that this is the weakest yet of the speculative stories. I concede that if the UK wants to operate carrier jointly with France (which they might want to do as they are considering plans to share tanker’s) and if they plan to operate a UAV’s and UCAV’s off the carriers in the next decade then CATOBAR makes sense though I would prefer for political reasons they go with the Super-Bug or Dave C over Rafale-M’s.
This is the Daily Defence Update’s take on the story:
Future configuration of the Armed Forces
Articles in the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail today state that the Royal Navy’s Harrier jump jets are being retired early and therefore the new Queen Elizabeth carriers will not have any aircraft when they come into service. It claims that, as a result, Britain will have to lease aircraft from the Americans.
The future configuration of our Armed Forces will be based on the conclusions of the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), which is underway. Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox has made clear that tough decisions will need to be made but the complex process of the SDSR will only be concluded in the autumn and speculation at this stage about its outcome is entirely unfounded.
nocutstoRAFI thought this story might be more appropriate here than the SDSR thread:
Reads like a hash up of several others stories but suggests that the UK might share one of the carriers with the French (which pushes things towards CATOBAR), that they will retire the Harriers and borrow the aircraft from the US Marines
Likely the story should be ignored but if you are like me in the habit of extrapolating from weak sources and speculating wildly it suggests that the UK might go CATOBAR, try to borrow of the Marines any Hornets which have not reached the end of their maximum cat and trap cycles (as it would be illogical to bin the Harriers and borrow more Harriers), share one of the carriers with the French and then buy F-35C as our JSA platform 😀
EDIT: Read the same story in several other papers and it looks like the suggestion is to bin Harrier then lease Harrier’s from the US Marines – that seems crazy!
nocutstoRAFHawkeye do you mean if they buy a used aircraft? Surely the only difference in the whole life cost between a newly built F/A-18 and F-35 (assuming both go through periodic software upgrades, weapon integration, and new system integration) would be if you have to depreciate your capital costs of your F/A-18 over a shorter life as it would reach obsolescence quicker than the F-35B.
To be honest if you are flying the F/A-18 catobar instead of STOL F-35B you would likely have an inherently shorter lifespan anyway due to the aircraft needing to fly more often to keep the pilot current on cat and trap and the aircraft reaching is maximum number of cat and trap cycles and unless I have misunderstood points made by others this would also hold true of a comparison of the F-35B and F-35C.
nocutstoRAFJust to clarify Jonesy – you do not envisage that one or more services might get cut by more than the savings needed to allow another service to get more money – to take a random example (that I am neither advocating or suggesting will happen) they cut PoW to purchase an additional squadron of medium lift helicopters for the Army.
Finally are you suggesting that the USN is rather rash in trying to get EMALS in service by 2015?
nocutstoRAFThe crazy thing is most of the kit to build this already exists, VAAC (fly by wire), RB.578 (three nozzle afterburning mixed flow pegasus engine) etc etc , all it woud take is for somebody to grow a pair and put together a prototype.
While I am not sure if MacDonnell Douglas brought a licence from BAE or later Harrier developments were part of joint venture, but according to the Boeing presentation at Farnborough (who brought MacDonnell Douglas) Boeing have a propriety aircraft in production – it would be a kicker if they have self-funded a new harrier demonstrator to wheel out if F-35B looks like it might flounder.
nocutstoRAFJonesy – how would you see things if the tabloid speculation is correct and that the GR4’s are canned by 2015, would F-35B be gone and the FAA left to flounder while the RAF looks to buy F-35A?
Also am I right in thinking that there are two premises to your analysis – 1) that the SDSR will not divert funds from the RAF into the RN and 2) that EMCAT is further behind than the US EMALS therefore while the US might get EMALS up and running by 2015 as they plan it’s not possilbe to meet the same target with EMCAT.
nocutstoRAFLooks like RUSI are thinking similar things to you LordJim:
http://www.rusi.org/news/ref:N4C71A814B1C65/
Some highlights:
The paper outlines that the Royal Navy urgently require at least ten new cheaper and lower capability oceangoing frigates – to complement existing Type 45 and Type 26 vessels – be built in the next decade to preserve the ‘silent deterrent’ of a ‘lower-intensity daily constabulary’ force patrolling the major sea routes.
Acknowledging the dire state of the public finances, but arguing national security is not a discretionary expenditure, the paper suggests the strategic need for more surface combatants must be met through reassessing the choice of ‘seriously cost constrained’ new ships, looking closely at examples from Denmark and the Netherlands that offer a modular, adaptable design at a quarter of the price of currently planned purchases.
nocutstoRAF….a limited buy of betwenn 50 and 60 F-18s for operation form the CVFs with the RAF purchasing T3B Eurofighters and waiting to see how the F-35 matures and how UCAVs continue to develope. By 2020 hopefully the Defence budget will have started to grow again and more options will be available, but until then fleets of 3-4 F-18 and 5-6 Typhoon squadrons should meet operational requirements at a push and if we actually operate within our means.
I suspect despite all the logic of the F-35B being the best choice, that something very similar to you describe is going to happen, a force of just Typhoons and F/A-18’s with UVAC strike platforms being the increasing focus post 2020.
nocutstoRAFCould RN next ditch Super for the LCA Tejas naval (ski-jump operable)?
Enter quid pro: EF Typhoon selected for MMRCA in exchange for LCA ‘naval’ Tejas bought for RN? 😎
Powered by EJ2000 ‘Thrust Vectoring’, thus enabling an obvious UK-fleet logisitical cost-benefit as bonus.
Potential for Spanish and Italian ski-jumper fleet too?? 😮
Just my 2 Rupees :diablo:
I could see a political and economic benefit for this exchange, especially if the other Typhoon partners let UK modify future Typhoon orders to compensate but I am not sure that it is a low risk solution or the right technical solution – the UK would have to integrate EJ200 engine and pay for the thrust vectoring technology to end up with (in comparison to other options) a rather short range aircraft with only 2 of 3 thousand tonnes of ordnance as I imagine the payloads would be in the same region as the STOBAR Gripen NG. If the UK was planning to operate it carriers just for air defence it might make sense but I cannot see the LCA (N) RN having the legs or payload for a serious strike capability.
It might make more sense if BAE could build it under licence and develop it further to make it CATOBAR, but the costs and risks involved with be too high IMHO to be considered unless they cancel both the F-35B and C, and Boeing decided not to keep the F/A-18 line open (i.e not ever likely to happen ).
Plus you can bet if the UK teams up with India and does not purchase any F-35’s that the political fallout in the US would be immense. That is why I think that if the F-35 is not brought or if the RAF is going to get the F-35A instead of B that the only other sensible option is F/A-18 as Boeing keeps a lot people in work in a number of States and this means that any order gets the backing of those State’s senators and congressmen.
nocutstoRAFKarrar does not seem particularly advance it looks like someone transported it from the 1940’s.
nocutstoRAFAs an aside does the RAF really want the F-35B or was this particular variant dictated by the need to operate jointly with the FAA – if the RAF is giving up their Tornado’s would they really be happy with the F-35B or would they actually be wanting F-35A instead? To keep it on topic to the thread, could the plan be that F/A-18 would be used to replace the Tornado GR4 and Harrier (seems stupid to scrap GR4 because it needs a life extension at £10 million a plane, to then replace them with something only marginally better at £50 – £60 million a plane but it would be in keeping with the way the world works)?
Also, according to Navy Matters they are not integrating Storm Shadow or Brimstone until 2025ish on the F-35B, they will not be clearing ASRAAM for external carriage and very unlikely to integrate Meteor is it fair to suggest that the F-35 will therefore not be all that useful (in UK service) until 2025 (and again to keep it on topic) how likely it is if they buy F/A-18’s that they would integrate Storm Shadow and Brimstone earlier than currently planned with the F-35B?
nocutstoRAFI think there were some design studies kicked about, likely more than 10 years ago – I guess the problem is bang for bucks – you are unlikely to save much money building a new version of the harrier as you still need a test programme for the engines and airframe and to hire a load of engineers to create the FBW system, and integrate the AESA radar, new flight controls and the fancy glass cockpit at that point you have an aircraft that costs maybe 80% of the F-35B but with maybe 70% of its capabilities.
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