I wonder if we will see a large Cruise to Europe from the Indian navy either with Viraat before she is taken out of service or with the new Vikramaditya when she comes into service.
I’m not sure when Viraat is going to be taken out of service? some reports say she will when Vikramaditya comes in and some say she may stay until 2019.
I would like to see both come for big multi-national exercises maybe with european and US navies. Lots of air assests maybe 2 CVN’s, assualt ships, HMS Lusty, Ark Royal or HMS Ocean, Juan Carlos, INS Viraat and Cavour. Then all the the other ships as well would be some site. Maybe the gulf or the Indian Ocean would be a good place. Then we could see India put both it’s carriers out to play.

well if its 2015 I think is the official decommission date for Viraat. Which will be rather close to QE commissioning date It would be nice for a big multi-national exercise with lots of carriers

For the partrol ship, depending on what the RAN’s experiance are with the ANZAC class Meko 200’s I would go for the K-130 due to its larger size and multirole nature.

For the fleet heavy lift and support ship I would also say the TKMS Berlin class or go take a chance and go with with the General Dynamics/NASSCO T-AKE/LSS.

Also and Jonesy should like this it would place new mainline combatants and baseships with Navinata, the Patrol and support ships with TKMS giving two diffrent suppliers for the fleet. The only wild card is who will design the FF-X and SS-X.

for replenshiment their are many good options the Agire class looks good and is part of neither navantia or TKMS. Navantia could easily supply everything for the RAN. I would have thought the T-AKE would be a bit big and expencive.

for the OPV would BVT Ventnor work or would it be a bit small

“problem with the jags were that they were out of hours even the youngest planes had 30,000 odd hours on them jags were too old for another deployment”

That’s complete and utter invention, Harry.

The in service Jags had plenty of fatigue left on them (most were at around 4-6,000 hours, and the fatigue life was at 7,500, with further extension possible), and there was a reserve of very low hour (less than 2,000 hours in many cases) GR1/1A aircraft that could have been converted to GR3A standard at £450,000 per jet, plus the cost of a major.

The Jaguar force could have been kept going (with a running cost that would still have been far below the cost of an equivalent number of Tornado or Harrier squadrons) until 2012-2013 without any drama at all.

hardly I reamber on this very forum some one who said that most of the GR3 he was working with were 40,000+ hours. Their readiness rates were lower at the time and that was the justification of the withdrawal. This is were I got that
JagRigger
’21st July 2006, 23:23
Some were pushing the limit hours wise, others could have had quite a few years left if the money to support them was there. Bear in mind that all Jaguar operations are now at first line – no deep maintenance at all.’
and another post
‘The aircraft have little flying time left as there is no depth maintenance support and most airframes are extended by the maximum to the latest possible date of October. All the kites will go to Cosford to become training airframes that are more relevant to modern combat aircraft!!’
http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=69764
4300 hrs????

Not an AMF task really?????

XZ392 is a beautiful aeroplane.
Fleet average was getting to 6000……….

Yes they could have soldered on for a bit longer but as you said they need more money spent on them.
All im getting at is their were old when they were retied

No, Ark Royal. She was modified in refit to make her perform better in the LPH role. Illustrious & Invincible haven’t had those changes, AFAIK. Also, the Ark is the newest, & could carry on as an LPH for a while after the QEs enter service.

Ah well. Missed opportunities, eh?

not quite ark still can be re-roled again possibly when the first CVF enters servise. the main problem i have with Ark an LPH sister to Ocean is how much more man power Ark requires compared with Ocean. You couldn’t run it with less 750 ships crew compared with 285 of Ocean. If you slim down the company of Ark as an LPH it would make an excellent sister

The scale is correct, and it’s actually leaving Pompey, unless they are going to move the Spinnaker Tower to the Isle of Wight! Also Chinooks already deploy aboard RN carriers as required (Ark Royal/Al Faw) so it’s just a continuation of existing capability. Apaches have been to sea too (for trials) so expect them to turn up in pictures soon. Flexibility is the key to CVF, it’s not just about Lightnings. It will deploy with the CHF as well when required. Plenty of room for a mixed air group, say a sqn of 12 Lightnings for CAS, 4 MASC for AEW, 6 Merlins for ASW defence of the task group, and mixed bag of 12 Sea King HC4s, 6 Chinooks and 8 Apaches. Once the initial phase is over (troops ashore, support helos following with them), more Lightnings can be flown out to the carrier if required.

Also, the hangar on the CVF is a lot wider than an Invincible’s, which is actually quite narrow in the middle section. The CVS’ hangars have a ‘dumbell shape due to the restrictions of the GT downtakes to port and the uptakes to starboard.

quick question obi wan dose Ocean have the same hanger deck space as the Invincible i.e the dumbell shape. I would have thought its being Diesel powered the uptakes and down takes wouldn’t make such a difference compared with the GT’s

If the UK was to lease or purchase another 6 C130J’s would they be the KC130J? Is only the KC-130 able to be turned into a gun ship with the Harvest Hawk Kit. I thought i read it that the Optical equipment would be housed in the front of the Wing tank.

The UK used to have Air to Air Refueling for the Hercules after what happened in the Falklands. But i think they gave up that ability a while ago. (i never understood why) Then the hercules would be able to do all the missions that the KC-130 can do. The Merlin’s are plumbed for AAR i’m not sure about the Apaches or Chinooks though. Could be really useful in theatre. Also could be used for Tornado’s or other planes to keep them on station longer. There is a video here of AAR from an RAF C-130. Also it has Jim Davidson in the Cockpit! What a treat for all!!

http://www.patricksaviation.com/videos/Contrail_25/2956/

Anyone know anything more on the topic?

From the discription of the system you could bolt it on any C-130 obviously the USMC are using KC-130s (thats because i don’t think they have any regular C-130s) but bolting it to one of the special forces C-130s would be useful

Sorta related question how come the C17 picking up export orders but the the C-5 and C-141 never picked up exports.
Is it geopoltical or the product

Every major warship has to have the ability to terminal defend itself, to rule its bubble. Using only defensive escorts against modern threats will soon not work anymore, maybe doesn’t work already, and at the going rate for the average escort it’s becoming unfinanceable. Those companion ships will have to switch to a more offensive/pro-active mission.

For a carrier that means a defensive complex consisting of an anti-air suite like Mica or CAMM plus Millennium, maybe 57mm as anti-surface weapon, full underwater awareness and anti-mine/anti-torpedo effectors, and a full softkill suite.
The offensive mission weapon system are the aircraft, but should be offensively tasked as much as possible.

I don’t disagree about terminal defense but should it be at the expense of it air wing. That is the problem of the Aster VLS mounted on the CdG and Cavor is that its at the experience of the air wing which is more useful