nocutstoRAFI wouldn’t say that….it was mentioned a few times about delay’s and problems.
I got the impression that the main problems were that there had been to many skills lost and that they need a long time to train people up to be able to handle working on a submarine.
I almost felt at times that it was plea to invest in more submarines so that the skills are not lost along with the jobs
nocutstoRAFCVF has room for a 300ft C13 or EMALS catapult and there is room in the sponsons for the required boilers or Gas Turbine and energy storage subsystems.
Beyond making sure you can use your chosen fighter with the lifts and fit a catapult is their any other requirements? I understood from Navy Matters that a CATOBAR or STOBAR carrier that you need in effect two “strips” one to launch the fighters and one to land them, and that one of the advantages of STOL carrier is the ability to operate with one “strip” and have higher rate of sorties – did I understand this correctly?
nocutstoRAFToo big for 65000 ton carriers?
The F-4 operated off much smaller carriers. It’s longer than, & about the same weight as, the F-18E. The A-3 Skywarrior was a fair bit bigger & heavier, & operated off smaller carriers.
It’s supposed to replace Seawolf on Type 23s at the same time as they get Artisan, from about 2018 IIRC.
I was going by previous comments from others that suggested that the carrier’s hangar space and lift’s were optimised for a F-35 sized plane and that it would not be able to accommodate F-18E’s – could they redesign the lift’s? – I was passing on someone else’s pearl’s of wisdom and I apologise if it is was misleading.
BTW in the current financial circumstances I am all for keeping all the options open for the carrier, even if I think that they will plan for the F-35B and if it all goes wrong worry about it just before the Harrier’s go out of service rather than plan to do something different with the carrier’s now.
nocutstoRAFWould getting a catapualt and getting F-18E/Fs instead of F-35s make more economic sense?
I think the F-18E/Fs are too large to operate with the CVF’s even with a catapult – this is certainly the message I got when I suggested the same as all I was looking at was the current US multi-year buy and how the planes are coming in at about ~$50 million a plane, and F-35B’s price seem to vary according to who you believe from ~$60 million to about ~$130 million.
The Rafale could do the job but I would imagine that its price tag is to high, unless we could get some sort of offset from France with them buying a couple of billion pounds worth of British stuff (a carrier for example) if we buy 50 Rafale-M’s. Plus it would prove to the French that we can operate a carrier of the size and design that they need with the Rafale-M which is more likely to persuade them to commission a carrier in the UK.
Obviously at the higher risk end is the UK committing to either a CATOBAR or STOBAR Sea Gripen – I quite like the idea of a CATOBAR Sea Gripen but I would imagine that once you factor development costs in it would cost as nearly as much as a F-35B – I think personally the decision to build the carriers has come 5 years too late to pursue any option other than F-35.
nocutstoRAF2018 I think is the ISD. It might be different times for the different launch platforms though. They need to be ready for C1 in 2020-ish. Not sure when the Rapier needs replacing.
Not sure what stage it is at tbh, they seem fairly tight lipped on the subject, but it is based on an in service missile so it may not take as long to progress.
I had seen OSD for Rapier of 2015 and 2018, from older articles on defence websites, but now according to the latest sources I have looked at it is 2020(Wikipedia which I normally ignore) – I guess it is not all that relevant for the next five years or so.
nocutstoRAFNocuts:
The Rapier replacement has been at least partly funded, in the form of CAAM. Not sure if a dedicated ground launcher has been fully funded or if they’re just sticking with the box on a truck idea.
Really – I am a bit surprised as I thought CAAM was not due to come into service until 2020ish, is it still at an early stage?
nocutstoRAFNot having F-35s would not be too detrimental to UK security. It would leave us with the problem of having no planes foe the carriers….
While I think that a CATOBAR re-design of the CVF’s would be good plan -I think we are tied to F-35B as the SDSR will agree that we need the carriers (and getting rid of them after building them would be just plain stupid 🙂 ), but I get the sense that most people think adding steam catapults is to expensive and EMALS to high risk, so it is STOL carrier or nothing (or I guess STOBAR but that is risky in itself).
I hope F-35B is not a casualty of cost and time overruns in the F-35 programme as I cannot see any low risk alternatives
nocutstoRAFA400M contract was signed years ago, & more recently the customers agreed not to enforce the penalties/cancellation clauses which the delay allowed them to. Difficult to reverse that agreement now.
Airtanker contract was signed long ago, & production of the aircraft is well under way. First one flew almost a year ago. We might be able to renegotiate, but we can’t cancel without paying huge penalties.
Only 3 F-35s have been ordered. We have no contractual obligation to buy any more, & no commitment to buy according to any schedule.
Thanks – I read something about a re-negotiation – my bad for thinking that this meant that they had not signed a contract.
With regard to AirTankers why is everyone from Sir Richard Dannett to the editor for Airforces Monthly (in his May editorial) pushing to cancel AirTankers contract if it is done deal? I would imagine the cost of cancelling would be astronomical due to penalty clauses.
I was discounting the three F-35’s for evaluation and as far as I can tell there are no plans to even order long lead items in the next five years for F-35 – but as I am often proven wrong I wait to be corrected 🙂
My ignorance is what happens when you stop paying any attention to defence matters from around 1992 and only start to wonder what is happening in the last 4 – 5 months.
nocutstoRAFOver 4 years, that would be a cut of maybe 10% in real terms.
RUSI (yes I know I keep banging on about them 😮 ) seem to be predicting between 10 – 15% reduction in real terms so that does sound realistic.
I guess it would not play to well to cut back the size of the armed forces too much while UK is still in Afghanistan, and most of the really large Capital programmes are already underway or in the future (such as F-35 purchase)
Over the period of the cuts I think that this is a fairly comprehensive list of capital programmes (but please tell me what I have missed) where the Government has not inked contracts and started to spend money: the MARS programme for the Navy, procurement of LPPV and FRES, the replacement of Rapier and I assume the PFI contracts for the SAR and AirTankers deals. Even the long lead items for the F-35 seem to occur after 2015, and I think that LPPV is safe as it is UOR, and if they do not go with PFI contracts they are still are going to have to replace the SAR helicopters and the tankers in the next five years or so- does anyone have a gut feeling what will be cut? Have they signed a contract yet for A400M?
Everything else I have found seems to have already had funds committed – the remaining Type 45’s and Asute’s, the carriers, the procurement of new Chinnocks, upgrades of existing Lynx, Chinnock and Puma’s, multi-year support contracts for the support of Harriers and GR4’s, purchase of Wildcat Helicopter’s and the Nimrod MR4 programme.
I know Sir Richard Dannatt prefers cuts to the capital budget over personnel cuts (especially to the Army) but I found a number of other stories which suggest that MoD’s equipment programme will be difficult to cut by all that much and it will have to be personnel (or their pensions) which get cut.
nocutstoRAFIn the media goes about even that the entire German Navy (now 18.000 Sailors and 90 Surface Vessels) should even be abolished in the next 10 years.
The priorities are to focus on the army and the air force and wedren the tasks taken on the allied marine.
When and in what period the transfer of the navy is to be performed is not known.
Surely this cannot happen (completely abolish the Deutsche Marine)? Even if Deutsche Marine is scaled back to a coastal defence force their still will be a need to operate their Corvettes, Fast Attack Craft and Minesweepers, plus they would likely keep some of their Frigates – such as the Brandenburg’s for ASuW. Or have I misunderstood your meaning?
I am tempted to assume that the Germany media is no different to British media, and there is a sector of it that is hostile to the military and wishes we would turn all our weapons in to plows and all get along.
nocutstoRAF– I am hoping that the transfer of the Merlins to the Navy is cancelled and additional Merlins (18 to 24) are ordered for the Navy which have been modified for shipboard use.
The Army’s main shortfalls are in specialist and support manpower not overall numbers, in fact they cannnot deploy much more front line assets than they are doing at the moment because of these shortages.
The Army’s remaining Infantry Brigades would evolve to contain a higher proportion of TA and Reservists, with these making up ap to a 3rd of each battalion and the majority of specialist and support units.
I am starting to think that the Navy may actually come out the winner in the SDR. It should finally dawn on the powers that be that the Navy has srunck too much over the past decade and to meet its global commitments an expansion in capacity as well as capability is needed.
I have tried searching for information on this – but surely they will have to refurb the transferred Merlin’s – to naval standards otherwise the RN will not be able to use them.
I understood the one complaints of the Army currently is that there is a lack of engineering support and that the Royal Engineers to be expanded, and not have to rely so much on reservists and the TA to provide specialist support –sadly I cannot find the link to the specific speech where this stated.
Again I cannot find the link to the speech – but Liam Fox (I think while in opposition) has stated the Royal Navy is to small.
nocutstoRAFVarious sunday papers reporting that defence could get off with only a freeze in cash terms over the next 4 years, which would mean smallish cuts in real terms.
Can’t see it myself.
How likely it is will depend on the papers – if it is the Telegraph then you can expect that they are hearing unofficial whispers straight from the Government!
nocutstoRAFSo ignoring the F3 as they are nearly gone, phasing out GR4 and Harrier and adopting a full Typhoon buy and F35 buy gives you 382 aircraft.
Considering the UK will probably split the F35 purchase, with about sixty aircraft in the first round and 72 Tranche 2 airframes to Saudi Arabia and possibly a further few airframes to Oman you end up with an initial streamlined fast jet force of just over 200 getting closer to 300 with the Full F35 buy.
But if they do split the F35 buy then by the time that purchase is forfilled Tranche 1 and some Tranche 2 Typhoon will probably be at the end of their lives.
I think what you outline is likely correct – phase out Harrier on schedule, and the GR4 early, operate Typhoons and an initial tranche of F-35, buy more F-35 (and 3B Typhoons) to replace airframes as they retire and drop the size of the fast jet force to around 200 phased over the next 4 years. The only good news is that what ever happens in the future the UK will likely be looking to increase it’s total number of helicopters it operates by a significant margin – I just hope that the MoD does not concentrate to much on buying helicopters for field operations it forgets to increase the size of the training squadrons.
nocutstoRAFI would certainly lean towards option two, but the army and its fan brigade have been making lots of noise for option one.
Well Liam Fox favours the Navy who would be the biggest losers under option one, and if he is canny he will plumb for a Chief of Defence Staff who has a special forces background!
It is just a shame that we have got into this mess due to the dire mishandling of Afghanistan under the pervious Government combined with a recession. It seems criminal that due to the continuous delays on purchasing 400 LPPV’s for the Army when it identified it needed them back 2008, that lots of soldiers have been killed and the MoD has used UOR’s to buy interim solutions which will likely be left as inadequate legacy equipment or retired early!
However, given that operations in Afghanistan will start to scale back from next year, however under equipped the forces are now in Afghanistan it would be just as criminal to assume that all wars in the future will be in impoverished, land locked countries with mountainous terrain against irregular forces whose weapons date from the 70’s.
nocutstoRAFThe Army and its fan club will happily say that they need to be expanded whilst fighter jets and carriers should be cut and we shall be see A-stan style warfare for the next twenty years despite our government saying we will be out by 2015!
Surely this is what the SDSR will decide. The UK on its own is never going to need to fight an a counter-insurgency war and it seems to me (who is not an expert) and a lot of expert opinion the UK can decide to fulfil its moral obligations to NATO in one of two ways –
1) Either enlarge the army so it can be deployed for long term deployments like it has in Afghanistan and Iraq (which the Army does not seem currently designed for) which is what the Army wants but means expanding the Army which will force a cut on the Navy and parts of the RAF (possible to extent they cannot fulfil other core defence duties);
2) Or we move to deploying agile commando/special forces units in the opening days of a conflict and we then are replaced by those NATO countries with forces to hold the gains made by the UK – this is what a IMHO is what Liam Fox will push for, it requires a smaller army, but more highly trained and better paid, a lot of air and sea lift, a lot more helicopters than current have, fast jets able to provide first day of way strike capabilities (F-35), air craft carriers and generally fits into the equipment UK intend to purchase and builds on our current strengths and from the previous SDR.
I personally prefer 2.
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