The technology which makes it easy to use the FBW control system to land F-35B on the flight deck is the same technology which allows the F-35C to catch the #3 wire almost every time. For both the ‘B’ and ‘C’, the amount of pilot/naval aviator training required is significantly less than what was required for 4th and 3rd generation jets. So the excuse of “It costs too much to train CATOBBAR” is no longer true. Of late, the JPO and CNAF seem to agree that the number of FCLPs required to qualify a naval aviator can be dramatically reduced. Reduced FCLPs also helps reduce cat/trap related airframe fatigue…

There is more to training for operations from a ship than launch and recovery. The training syllabus also includes unique shipboard handling – startup/shutdown, following the directors’ hand signals, operations in the marshal stack, EMCON procedures in proximity to the ship and others. This training is common for ‘B’ and ‘C’ alike, but different from ‘A’.

My point is the FBW architecture used by all variants of F-35 makes the pilot’s job …
…computer does the rest. The need for hours of training/practice to hone fine motor skills simply doesn’t exist anymore.

Let the computer do the hard stuff and allow the pilot to work on the strategy and tactics needed to effectively manage a weapons system.

Djcross asumption:
F-35B/C FBW => Less training time => No difference in CATOBAR & STOVL training

Your assumption is wrong. Reduced training doesn’t mean eliminated cost. Yes you are still gonna need to train your pilots wether its a F-35B or F-35C. And yes FBW makes it all easier than previously but CATOBAR still requires a lot more investment than STOVL. Your are still going to need the same infrastructure. Not only for pilot training but also for day to day operations. CATOBAR requires more infrastructure not only onboard your ships but also on land. An airfield with atleast one CAT and Trap for example. CATOBAR are maintenance heavy. CATOBAR requires maintenance qualified presonell onboard. CATOBAR requires training facilities on land for said maintenance personell. Say maybe 15% less pilot training hours. Whatever say 30%! The point with STOVL operations is that it is considerably cheaper OVERAL compared with CATOBAR inspite of the advent of EMALS. Think of it this way: USN isn’t exactly head over heels for the F-35C.

…
as for all fighters, i recall a pilot saying he challenged anyone to replicate a landing on an icy strip of road
in any fighter beside gripen

Viggen! 🙂

Israel and Turkey has as much role as long as Gulf countries have extra funds for them. Turkey and Israel are incompetent fools as long economics, science and military are concerned. They always need external help from skill labor, spare parts to tourism to foreign fund flow. both has leaders that are embarrassment due to there loud mouth.

[Insert random insult of county A and County B] + [Insert something vague to supposedly strengthen your previous statement]

[Insert Link one to news story concerning countries C+D and/or E +F, preferably neighbors to A and B]

[Insert Link two to news story concerning countries C/D/E/F preferably with some vaguely derogatory innuendo]

Go wild!:very_drunk:

The QE style ski-jump can be removed without rebuilding any of the hull.

Yes but why would you?. If you have that kind of money to switch to catobar (ALL THE ASSOCIATED EQUIPMENT like training jets, land based infrastructure, training etc) you should build new instead. If only for helo ops is it realy money well spent for an extra landing spot on the big deck ship? 12 (?) instead of eleven?

\Dan

Say Boeing wanted to add an F414 engine, single seat/more fuel, and full avionics suite to their baby, making it a direct competitor to the Gripen, what do you think would be SAAB’s reaction ?

Boeing T-X is structurally weak to be a fighter comparable to Gripen. The whole idea of developing a new design (instead of offering two seat gripens) was to make it tailored for training. That means lighter structure than a similar sized fighter since its supposedly not going to carry ordnance. Well every trainer design in the last decades actually develop armed versions it’s more a light attack variant. Still never close to Gripen. They wouldn’t compete in the same segment market. Although they could complement eachother…

\Dan

…
they don’t escort on the heels of a strike package. It would be stupid to.

I don’t belive that is what he meant.
AEW escort is how you describe it: “They will set up on a track safely off the coast with escorts, tankers out of SAM range and still be able to direct the fight from safe distance.”

\Dan

Finance sets your constrains. But TIMING is EVERYTHING!

As I was reading through the thread I thought it was best to sum it up in this way and fill in some of the ‘essential’ blanks. Trying to keep it short and concise.

HARRIER IN UK SERVIC and STOVL operations:

…
Harrier in RAF service was modest success at best, as evidenced by the way it was dumped so I’m not sure that is much of an endorsement for STOVL operations.
…

…
Sea Harrier was culled as soon as a Light Blue CO got his hands on Joint Force Harrier.
…
GR9 had a lot of useful life left in it when it went.
…

Harrier II just was not a very capable aircraft by 2010s standards. Obviously much of that (lack of radar etc) does not carry over to F-35B but it is still less capable than A or C variants.
I mean, if the common STOVL aircraft is such a successful concept, why they were gunning for CATOBAR and only changed their minds when it turned out switch wasn’t practical at that stage anymire?
…

The Harrier (VTOL) was conceived in the early 60’s as a means for a LAND bases aircraft to circumvent the presumed Soviet bombing of all available runways. The Harrier wasn’t meant to operate from bases “normal” aircraft could not be based, but rather from runway-bombed airbases where conventional aircraft could not operate. Forward deployment was an just added bonus. With the technology at hand the GR1 was produced (High wing-loading, modest range, satisfactory payload). During development testing STOVL operations was the preferred method due to better range and payload performance versus VTOL. In the 60’s RN still had catobar carriers and didn’t think much about the Harrier. But in the 70’s they were gone. The SHAR FRS1 was a natural and minimal change development of the GR3. Naturally it inherited the shortcomings of 60’s technology. The SHAR FA2 was a natural and minimal change development of the FRS1. Again it naturally inherited the shortcomings of 60’s technology. The Harrier II was optimized for the USMC, as such it was more of a bomb-truck compared with the SHAR. Probably that is a contributing factor for the reasons RN decided to stick with the Harrier 1.5 generation. In hindsight RN should have developed a Vixen radar equipped AV-8B+ rebuild from RAF donated GR7/9’s. But again there was not enough money (or policital will/intra service rivalry) for that.

Even though the 2nd generation Harrier benefited greatly from new technology (basically double payload for same range), it had inherited the basic layout from the previous generation based in 60’s technology. Conversely it inherited the same deficiencies. The Harrier demanded a lot of skill and experience from the pilot. The tandem gears have an inherent safety deficiency in that it requires a four point landing otherwise it can stand on its nose (during RL). Could a new STOVL design have been done better in the 80’s? Yes but the 70’s tech Harrier II was already an investment implemented, in production and deemed sufficient for the time. Could a better STOVL design be made today? Yes’ it’s called F-35B. But let’s not get into how the JSF became the F-35 concurrency f**k up debate here.

In the late 90’s UK defense finances were dwindling and Joint Force Harrier was conceived as a means to sustain a capability with less money, and at the same time improve inter-service operational efficiency. But the inherent differences of the SHAR and GR7/9’s didn’t bring any real economical and inter-operational efficiency other than minor. To much of the subsystems were different. Defense spending was still short in 2006 when more cracks were found in SHAR empenages than anticipated. The fix to the problem was rebuilding the whole empenage, which was deemed uneconomical. The low risk of that in the then foreseeable future untill CVF was operational, no potential enemy sufficiently advanced enough that would require RN organic airdefence would emerge. Besides if it did appear UK (RN) would still need assistance from a friendly navy. Hence the SHAR was retired in favor of the GR’s. In the SDR of 2010 the choice was to either keep the Tornado or the Harrier. So even though prematurely axing the Harrier would create a undesirable capability gap untill F-35B arrived the Tornado had the advantage. In short compared with the Harrier, the Tornado had more to offer the UK defence on a whole (Interdiction/range/payload/nuclear etc). There simply wasn’t enough money to keep the STOVL capable aircrafts + ageing Invincible carriers AND Tornados.

STOVL is not realy a capability that you prefer over conventional aircraft performance. For a given maximum takeoff weight conventional aircrafts will always carry a larger payload over longer distances. STOVL ENABLES you airoperations where conventional aircraft can NOT operate. On land it’s damaged runways, on the sea it’s non catobar carrier operations. The alternative to STOVL is most likely NO airops. RAF flight 1417 in Belize (mostly overlooked operation that lasted almost 20 years) and Operation corporate are examples of these. The Harrier provided RAF with 2nd day of WWIII operational capability + CAS and it excelled in RN carrier/USMC amphibious operations. JFH was already in effect in 1982’s operation corporate. 🙂 IMHO Harrier UK service was NOT “modest success at best”.

They needed a particular size for a particular reason and that was as per Jonesy, sortie generation. The difference between B and C would have meant a CAT equipped carrier which would again bring into consideration the economic argument cited by him in favor of the UK’s decision to stick with the current setup.

If I recall correctly the size of the QE class was a bit of hedge as it was not fully decided to go with STOVL or CATOBAR. Needed a carrier large enough that could truly operate modern CATOBAR aircraft at full up weights= a largish carrier.
…
IF it was certain from the start that the ships would have been fully STOVL, then yes, a smaller carrier could have worked (but larger than the Invincibles)
…

the main argument for catapult is the fighter can take off with much more payload,
and consume less fuel while doing it

Modern lightweight, cheap, PGMs would make nearly anything deadly in the CAS/BAI framework. GR9 would still be viable now just as the Italian 8B+’s were over Libya.

The original downselect for CVF was STOVL. CATOBAR was rejected. The change to CATOBAR was political not service led. The lack of maturity of EMALS, the costs of adapting to a CATOBAR layout and the operational challenges caused, primarily for the RN, by throwing away the Joint Force structure were ignored at first. As soon as the Govt realised the extra spend that would be required they backed out and sanity returned. Quite apart from ‘gunning for CATOBAR’ we actually rejected it twice!.
…
Please note that I’m saying that STOVL is the optimum solution for RN Carrier Strike only. I’m not saying that necessarily extends to other countries requirements.

The RN and the RAF couldnt. The US Navy and the US Marine corps might.

CVF STOVL or CATOBAR configuration:
Although CATOBAR capable aircraft offer better range/payload performance, CATOBAR as a whole system is much more costly than compared with STOVL. Lifetime cost of operational maintenance for the cat and traps, associated training equipment (you need training aircraft like T-45, and many more flight hours), deployed sailors manning the mentioned equipment etc.
CVF the early development:
In 2002 MoD was supposed to select the JSF type for their CVF as per agreement with US. At that time EMALS technology maturity was deemed insufficient. The alternative was to acquire steam catapults but that was undesirable for many reasons: Maintenance heavy, cumbersome, steam generating engine technology incomparable with the selected gas turbine powerplants. Hence “The original downselect for CVF was STOVL” as Jonesy puts it. Mind you that the contract for CVF was NOT finalized yet. But development continued, plans were made for STOVL operations and schematics finalized as such the space reserved for cat and traps were utilized in other ways. The contract was signed in July 2008. In December 2008 the financial crisis revised the delivery of QE to 2016 and PoW is now scheduled for delivery in 2019.
The F-35C selection:
While still not compleatly recovered from the financial crisis the MoD produced the SDR 2010. There it stated that in order to save money they basically wanted to sell of one carrier or keep it mothballed and keep the other. EMALS technology was mature enough, and apparently now they could fund CATOBAR ops. So since the CVF was “future proof” designed, MoD in their infinite wisdom decided that since a switch to the longer legged more payload capable CATOBAR configuration. The F-35C was to be acquired instead of the B. QE was to far in the design development process to rebuild, which was already optimized for STOVL ops. Also the added cost of or redesigning the PoW was way to expencive. Twice the original. In 2012 the secretary of defense announced that he would revert to the B and both carriers would be completed in STOVL configuration. Although PoW’s fate remained officially undecided untill SDR 2015. Then it was confirmed that both carriers would be completed and would work in shifts so to speak: One on, the other off.

Back on Topic
Queen Elizabeth Class: was it right to go for F-35B over the C?

if it had went catapult, i think only 1 carrier would be built, the other serving as amphibious assault ship,
and RN could wield a grand total of 24 fighters, on occasion.
instead RAF can shim in and RN can wield over 60 fighters short term, or 30 continuously,
which the single catapult wouldnt be able to do.
…

Obligatory pretty much sums it up. The choice was having a couple of squadrons of more capable aircraft available ONLY SOMETIMES or have less capable aircraft available CONTINUOUSLY. The 2002 decision was fatefull. EMALS was not ready to be considered an option at the time. UK didn’t have the money to bet on the development of EMALS either. The SDR 2010 seems to be an exercise in stupidity. Perhaps they were trying to sell CVF to another country etc(Speculating). STOVL the provides more flexibility for less cost. IMHO the B was/is the right choice.