nocutstoRAFIt’s a common mistake for people to look at CVF and think it’s a US super carrier-lite as far as I know it’s not and was never really intended to be, the idea from the start was more or less to be a floating airbase with an airgroup to be tailored to the task at hand.
Does anyone know if the Maritime Airborne Surveillance and Control (MASC) plane has been selected for QE? Is it going to be the Merlin, a UAV or has the Osprey still got a chance?
nocutstoRAFYes that is incorrect, have a look on Navy matters there is quite a bit of info on there about various air wings that would be embarked in different situations, remember these where never meant to be US style super carrier-lites.
Thanks for the info. Ironically I looked at the site for information on the QE but not for information on the Air Wing.
nocutstoRAFSTOL stands for Short Take Off and Landing. The aircraft is not assisted in getting upstairs.
STOBAR is short take off but arrested recovery on a wire which is to my non-expert mind how the Russians get their aircraft airborne and back on deck.
CATOBAR is a Rafale, F18, F35C. It traps to recover on deck and uses a steam catapult (we’ll have to wait for EMALS) to get airborne.
Thanks! I was really trying to find out if the advantage of not having to use a catapult plus arrestor wire was outweighed by the wider range of different aircraft you can use on a CATOBAR carrier
nocutstoRAFThe House voted to oppose the amendment to kill the F136. The voice vote was challenged, and further action is postponed until later today.
I have tried searching threads to double check this – but I read that one of the two conditions for Britian to buy the F-35B (when it was expected we would have one of the largest export orders) was that the F136 get funded.
Does anyone still know if this is a condition of buying the F-35B?
nocutstoRAFYou would have to build every inch of it to ensure parts supply, so full licence production in the UK for a short run of a unique model that has had a major redesign to be “westernised”- essentially you would be building a new aircraft and one with cr*p RCS. Just buy F35, its going to be a great piece of kit, honest it is….
About the only part of the F-35 programme which I am 100% convinced will be delivered is the F-35A as I think there is more chance of me marrying a super model than there is of the US restarting the F-22 production line and using the F-22 to fill the projected short fall in USAF fighters.
I dreamed up the idea of westernised S-33 as a contingency if the F-35B is cancelled as turning the QE STOBAR is lot easier than going CATOBAR (plus low RCS or not, I do find the flankers rather fetching)
nocutstoRAFF/A18E has tons of peer rivals, always has done. The USN had to pursue the cheap option with the Shornet, they got nothing like the aircraft they would have actually liked.
-The UK cannot afford to add two new types and probably doesn’t actually need to as F35 and F18E would do broadly the same thing in different ways -IMHO the F35 will be superior by far.
-Only one carrier is likely to be at sea in a strike role and will probably only need to carry a sqn of F35 for day to day peacetime training with an ability to reinforce in a crisis, so 100 is both unlikely and actually an expensive luxury, the RN does not need to “fill its decks” everyday.
-This divide between “land ops and naval ops” is a false one. With a proper strike carrier on station a “land op” can be given air support – the navy’s main role will be supporting such ops NOT blue water sea superiority ops. It also ignores the other weapons in the RAF armoury like Typhoon, Reaper and future UCAVs which will all be used in “land ops” as well as the AACs apache which are now the CAS platform of choice.
-QEs are not just platforms for F35 et al so filling them with fast jets is not actually healthy. While FJs are flash and exciting the primary air platform of the Navy is Merlin. The F35s will be there to protect them, in the same way that Swordfish was the main platform of the FAA in WW2 and the various exciting (and not so exciting -fulmar) fighters were there to let them do their job properly.
-Remember the advantages STOVL brought the UK in the Falklands. For instance Phantoms could not have landed on the back of HMS Fearless in an emergency to refuel like the SHAR did. The RN is married to STOVL for a very good set of reasons.
– Just goes show you can never trust a politician to tell you a straight story 🙂
– I rather have the F-35 over the Super Hornet, but I also rather have enough aircraft to do the job.
– I thought the RAF was all hot an heavy for the F-35 as they see it replacing the Jaguar, GR 4, and the Harrier. Though in theory they do not need to replace the GR 4 until 2025 as that is the proposed out of service date. Hence the original proposal by RAF for 150 (I think this was the number proposed) which just keeps getting smaller and smaller. Do you really think 50 F-35’s is enough to cover all the roles envisaged for the F-35?
– Understood (from various articles on the internet) the standard complement on the QE would be a full air wing of F-35 and 4 helicopters, is this incorrect?
– The main draw back of STOL carriers is that you can only operate your STOL fighters, the Osprey and Helo’s and there are a range of other aircraft you can be operating if you have CATOBAR carrier (like the Hawkeye). As I am a civvie I have no idea if the advantages of CATOBAR out weighs the advantage of STOL or not.
nocutstoRAFBut then if RN didn’t get aircraft carriers what are those destroyers and frigates going to escort? You’ve just made them pointless as you can do patrol missions with far cheaper OPVs, not to mention ripped the RNs teeth out.
To do what you are suggesting here would require the RAF to be constantly working on doing carrier quals, it would make more sense for a CATOBAR carrier fleet for the FAA to get the aircraft, the RAF aren’t really interested in constant deck qualifications and operating a small fully carrier capable airwing. The whole point of the ‘Joint force’ structure is to get a small force capable of doing both with less requirement for constant carrier qualifications.
I going be candid I am greedy, I think that the RN and the RAF are to small so ideally I want three CVF’s, three helicopter carriers, lots of escorts, a large number of fighters, bombers, helicopters, transports and ISR platforms, plus UAV’s.
What I do not want is unbalanced forces with gaping holes in there force structures (which with all the horse trading that has supposedly gone on i.e. the stories that have come out that the heads of armed services have agreed various cuts ahead of SDSR) .
In addition the way that the stories have come out in the press, it would seem from those stories that the budget for the F-35’s is going to come from the RAF and they are going to be the F-35 owners, if does not go down that way great.
nocutstoRAFGiven the clear budget cuts that european national budget will suffer in the nexts years after the mortgage/financial and then the greek crisis I doubt that the Typhoon tranche 3b will become a reality or not with all the promised improvements. French and british deficit are around 10% of the GDP this year ! (like most countries this year).
Well us Brits will get a clear idea by September when the SDR (or as it is now called SDSR) reports in time for the October budget meeting to plan the MoD’s 2011-12 budget.
nocutstoRAFThe RN probably like the F35 because it gives them control of fast jet operations (maybe i missed something there- so feel free to jump on me if the RAF are the only potential F35 operators in the uk).
Unless things change the RAF will operate the carrier fighters on behalf of the RN, so they will be RAF assets and purchased out of the RAF budget.
I thought that the argument (by Gates when he was cancelling more F-22) was that there were unlikely that the F/A-18E would be facing a peer rival until 2024 and is the basis of why the USN is not procuring a direct replacement for the F/A-18E until ~ 2025 (possibly the Boeing F/A-XX fighter).
I have no idea the average service life of a CATOBAR fighter is but I think it is less than the 20 year projected life of F-35B in RAF service.
nocutstoRAFI don’t believe the T50 is as groundbreaking as it could have been (holds breath), but it certainly is far more of a threat than Typhoon etc were originally designed for. So in the next 10 years, what will Europe produce?
I think that Trache 3B of Eurofighter is being held off to allow for further development of the airframe to reduce RCS. I guess they will change the intake layouts, add more RAM to the airframe and add thrust vectoring, plus RR & EuroJet think they can add between 20-30% more thrust from further engine development.
Beyond that I cannot see a pan European fighter project starting until at least 2020 to allow for the eurozone (and the British economy) to strengthen.
nocutstoRAFAre you suggesting the RN should be binning CVF so it can get more Destroyers?
I suggesting that if CVF end up with the fighters the RAF want rather than what makes sense for a CVF – i.e. a very small number of F-35B’s (40 – 50) as RAF need them to provide CAS from austere airfields and strike missions, and then spend most of there time in land based operations, for the cost of 2 carriers the RN could have 5 more destroyers or 5 more frigates and the RN would get more use out of them.
I would rather see the carriers switched to CATOBAR and operate F-35C, or if they are out of the price range the F/A-18E or Rafales. If they are going with F-35B then I think they need at least 100 to fill the carrier decks and fulfil the land based operations. As I have said earlier while it will never happen I would be happy seeing the RAF buying 80 F/A-18E for the CVF’s and another 40 F-35B’s for land based operations.
nocutstoRAFThe RAF needs to look at more immediate needs rather than getting into a bun fight over what aircraft the CAVs will use.
The bun fights over what each service gets in the press is exactly why I hope that Liam Fox and his advisers are able to make high level decisions with enough understanding of what is going on. If the RAF choices are bad for the RN then the RN has two carriers at the cost of say 5 more T-45 destroyers (or the equivalent number of C1 Frigates) without suitable or too few aircraft and someone above the head of the respective heads of service needs to bang heads and kick butts until they get them to see sense.
nocutstoRAFThe idea of an off the shelf light MPA to supplement the Nimrods makes sense, though. … we could get something cheaper off the shelf, e.g. the CN-235 MPA.
If they got the CN-235 MPA would also be worth buying CN-235 200/300’s to supplement A400M’s?
nocutstoRAFWell, there was a proposal for a Tiffy with larger wing and TVC….I doubt a STOBAR Tiffy will carry a significant weapons load.
What do you think the minimum payload would be to make a STOBAR naval typhoon worth deploying? If it could carry 4,000 – 4,500 KG of ordance would this be enough?
nocutstoRAFnot how I would westernize an Su-33.. but the process of how an Su-33 would be westernized.
1. China acquires a Su-33 prototype from Ukraine
2. China reverse engineers and makes copies of this Su-33, calls it J-15
3. Pakistan shows interest and acquires the J-15 in order to match Indian Su-30MKI
4. Pakistan eventually grows dissatisfied with the Chinese avionics and demands French or Italian radars, HUDS, etc on the J-15.
5. Su-33 clone becomes westernized
And to fit into my original pipedream – Pakistan asks for BAE help with the westernization programme. A few years later the MoD publishes an RfI for naval fighters when the US decide to postpone F-35b until 2025 to concentrate on A and C, and BAE come up with a plane design that looks an awful lot like the Su-33 which wins the contest over the F/A-18E or Rafale
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