Jonesy:

I wasn’t calling for a Royal Navy CVN. Furthermore, the Cold War ended circa 1990, so there should have been plenty of time for the Royal Navy to have been planning for a new role. If the Navy had stuck to ASW in the North Atlantic it really would be out of a job.

Your description of Royal Navy carrier doctrine may well be right, and it is the doctrine of a service lacking in any sort of self-confidence. This is understandable given the knocks the Navy has suffered since the cancellation of CVA-01, but regrettable nontheless. You are right that the “tailored air group” approach is unique to the RN, and is again a symbol of failure. It led to the end of the Sea Harrier, then the Harrier, and thus the carriers, as the RN gave up control of its air assets in some sort of naive belief that the RAF would play fair on “jointery”. The RAF dealt with the RN much as the USSR did with Czechoslovakia, and must have to pinch themselves that the Navy falls for it every time. As for the idea that STOVL is necessary so that the air group can decamp from the carrier on to an “austere” air strip ashore, again, that smacks of the sort of RAF-centric thinking which views a carrier as merely a device to move land based aviation from one place to another. We should not be thinking of spending money to build an aircraft ferry for land based air, the carrier is the basis of the most flexible way of deplying air assets ever devised, but only when operating its own air group composed of dedicated naval air assets, not just a convenient way of giving the RAF a lift. I stand by my opinion, the Royal Navy has lost its confidence, and is unable to make a proper argument for its air arm, problems which have never troubled the RAF. The end of naval aviation has been a long time coming, but it came about due to the failures of the Navy’s top brass over many years to plan properly for the future and to realise that the RAF would never be happy until everything that flies is theirs.

But there was no call for a naval Eurofighter. The naval requirement only comes into it if France is involved as they were the ones with the naval requirement. If the French didn’t get what they wanted, they would have (and did) leave the programme.

My point is that there should have been. The Royal Navy should have had the confidence to look to the future and plan for a new aircraft after the Harrier/Invincible combination retired. There was no need to stay with STOVL, and the Eurofighter would have been the ideal project to have navalised. The RAF were committed to it, and the French wanted a naval fighter too. They would be in service by now, and we would not be waiting for the “jam tomorrow”, or rather in 10 years, of F35Cs which may or may not actually be bought. My point is that the French had the self-confidence and foresight to say that they were sticking with conventional carrier air power and wanted a new fighter. In Britain, as usual, we muddled along and ended up with the worst outcome possible: no carriers and no aircraft. Compared to that, Charles de Gaulle and the Rafale M don’t seem so shabby do they?

I think the point of that post was that the French were demanding a huge and disproportionate work share and design authority to stay in the Eurofighter programme which would have essentially killed off the British aerospace industry.

So even in hindsight we may have ended up with a carrier capable aircraft (but we would have had no carriers). Although we would also have lost a generation of aircraft design and manufacture skills. Which simply would not have been acceptable?

Besides within ten years we will have an aircraft carrier capability that will outstrip anything the French could field anyway. So in hindsight we made the right choices.

I also cannot imagine that the British fast jet fleet will be allowed to deteriorate down to a fleet of just 140. I fully expect there to be at least 100 F-35C/A purchased. After all the con dems won’t be in power for more than five years. If we end up with a fleet of 140 fast jet we truly will a global middleweight.

The French might have been demanding all sorts, it doesn’t mean they would have got all they wanted. At the end of the day it may not have been possible to have kept them in the Eurofighter consortium, I’m saying it would have been good if it had been possible, and if a naval Eurofighter had been built from the start.

I wish I could be as optimistic as you about the future. All we know for a fact is that here and now we have no carrier capacity, and the fixed wing Fleet Air Arm is dead. In future we might have one carrier equipped to operate F35Cs, and occasionally the RAF might even let some of them operate from it, assuming we even end up buying the F35C when all is said and done. But seriously, this coalition government has done more damage to the Royal Navy than any other in history. They have no strategic interest in the Navy, and just seem to see it as a cost to be cut. If we really do end up with a fleet of 140 fast jets I will be amazed!

What limitations, caused by stovl, would have restricted CVF for its designed mission?. Certainly not payload range and if you think so you dont understand what CVF was and, worryingly, still is!.

The french had the foresight to build a single CVN that would leave them gapping the capability during refit, workups and any mechanical malady that happens along?. That delivered at the expense of stretching out dated escorts and SSN’s and filling gaps with light, cheap, patrol frigates. Thats not foresight – that is called gambling. They won their bet that they wouldn’t have to pit Lafayette’s and F70’s against Udaloy’s, Sov’s and Akula’s!.

Limitations of STOVL? Let me think, low speed, low payload, mechanical complication etc etc. We all know the problems the F35B is facing.

The fact is that Britain got lucky, inasmuch as the Sea Harrier enabled the Invincible ASW cruisers to function as small aircraft carriers for some 30 years. But in planning for a replacement carrier force for the 2000s it made little sense to me to keep on with STOVL. The only reason I can see for it was that Joint Force Harrier was STOVL, and for a short time the combination of Sea Harriers and Harriers enabled the Invincibles to operate as quite useful strike carriers. But the RAF made sure that first the Sea Harriers, and then the Harriers, bit the dust, proving once and for all that they simply cannot be trusted to have any control over the Navy’s aircraft. If we could have kept the French in the Eurofighter consortium, and developed a naval Eurofighter from the start, we could have our own carriers flying naval Typhoons now, instead of hoping that some time ten years in the future the RAF may or may not grudgingly allow a few F35Cs which may or may not be bought to fly off carriers which may or may not be mothballed as soon as they are built.

A carrier that has big problems running air ops in anything but calm seas it would appear.

But at least the French have a carrier, and we do not. My point is that if we had had the foresight, Eurofighter should have been made carrier compatible from the start. By now we should be looking at Sea Typhoons flying off our own carriers, instead of the possibilty that some time around 2020 we may or may not see a handful of F35s flying off a carrier. The French at least showed a capacity for a bit of long term planning, something we seem incapable of.

One decent aspect of the Rafale is that it has two engines. I don’t like the idea of too many £100 million F35s being lost to engine failure. In retrospect it would have been so much better if France had stayed in the Eurofighter consortium, and the Eurofighter had been configured for carrier ops from the start. I believe that was one of the reasons the French decided to go their own way.

Since we both agree about Dannatt let’s leave it at that!

Come on Swerve, Dannatt was head of the army, do you think if he’d asked for Blackhawks as an UOR the politicians would have turned him down? I can assure you they would not. But the Blackhawks would have been RAF, not AAC. Why do you think he didn’t want them, but wanted to preserve funding for the useless Wildcat?

Politicians get a bad press, often deservedly so. But they rely on their military advisers. Look at Green Dave, who evidently believed what Sir Jock Strap told him in a private briefing the week before the SDSR was published, and fell hook line and sinker for the bull from the Tornado Mafia, with the result that we now have no carrier. It’s all political, but if the Royal Navy doesn’t play the game, they deserve to end up with 6 destroyers, 13 frigates and no carrier.