Again though dj the RN doesn’t work the same way the USN does. We dont have the fixed CSG structure they employ. Op Palliser off Sierra Leone we had a single Type23 as consort. No need for any more than that and we had other tasks for the escorts to do. Our force structure and training is much more aimed at flexibility than the USN’s.

And risk getting sunk by a torp? lol

Nah that carrier will never get into the deep water side of the island where there is no land based air support to be called upon.

Any Chinese carrier group will very DEFINITELY risk getting sunk by a torpedo. The carrier is a primary battlespace control asset. It doesnt work where dominance is already assured…..its whole reason to exist is to push that dominated battlespace out farther. Any idea to the contrary is utter nonsense.

The choice, and arrangement, of the Chinese carrier (if the current carrier is to serve as an operational unit and not just a training platform) suggests a continuation of the Gorshkov doctrine of forward deployed ‘strongpoint’ battlespace dominance. No Chinese carrier group will be a match for the USN equivalent for decades to come, but, left unregarded PLAN naval Flankers could provide the hardened ISTAR required to cue in long range antiship systems. Also the damage that a carrier group could do to the USN fleet train supporting their deployment doesn’t require a naval genius to work out.

The PLAN know, full well, then that a US carrier force couldn’t leave a highly mobile, robust, high-persistence, Chinese naval group in existence if it planned to intervene in a Taiwan context. With a powerful shipboard air search set plus a high persistence naval interceptor like Flanker the USN would be forced to commit serious resources, and time, to reducing or chasing off that carrier group before any approach to the oparea could be considered. If the PLAN can keep their group mobile, and hard to pin down, they’ll give the USN the same ISTAR challenges they’ve always faced playing cat and mouse across the South China Sea….which, from the Chinese side, would be a useful outcome in itself.

That carrier group will be far too useful out in blue water to be kept bottled up inshore.

Sad, delusional man.

The proposal (never an actual plan, much less an agreement or contract) to build part of the RN’s CVF in France was shot down many years ago… and yet he still thinks that part of the ships are being built in France.

He is so out of touch and misinformed that what he says cannot be taken seriously.

Its a deliberate anti-Europe agenda the actual facts, or lack thereof, are incidental. The transmission of objective and unbiased news and current events disappeared with BBC English in this country.

The big problem is that there is very little incentive for the light blue to be willing participants. Their light blue officerships have quite a nice lifestyle on their bases. 9-5 working week when no-ones scheduled for night flying and all the social niceties that come with being ‘one of the few’. Life aboard ship is very much more demanding and there aren’t as many skirts to chase!. Consequently the RAF dont like putting their people on the ships as morale drops and retention figures reflect that. Plus there is the chance that the at-sea lifestyle of hard work/hard play might appeal to a percentage of their people and they’ll lose them to the dark blue uniform.

Not the sort of thing to make the light blue brass terribly keen to be ‘joint’ in any way. Plus there is the general antagonism of the RN operating fastjets which has stuck in their institutional craw for decades.

If having to admit, some years down the track, that keeping a pool of CATOBAR deck qualified pilots at readiness is nearly impossible without virtually dedicated squadrons they may get admonished. They will also get the fighters they want and go a long way to undermine the carrier strike mission. It is nearly pretty much the exact scenario sketched out by the STOVL advocates prior to this whole catapult nonsense. Guess we’ll all get to see how far the idiocy goes this time!.

NoCuts

the fact that Scavenger will not be able to fill all our maritime patrol requirements

I’m curious as to which Scavenger/Solomon air vehicle you are referring to here and which roles it would not be capable of achieving?.

Fed,

Secondly that brings us to the ASW we do now (yes we do it now!), that is protecting the bombers as they leave Faslane for deterrent patrol. Thats brown water ASW and can be done perfectly well with a twin engine turboprop type like the C295 MPA or ATR 72 ASW (as we already know the former would be my choice).

No absolute need for MPA’s in de-lousing the Faslane approaches. We can, and do, do that with other assets far more suited to the task of high-persistence detection of discrete acoustic targets anyway. The Nimrods were great for chasing down contacts identified by others, but, all they were were platforms to keep the opposition ‘heads down’ and to rattle the occaisional cage.

Merlin, ideally a hunting pair, is quite up to the task of rattling unfriendly sub skippers and de-lousing is about as good as ASW training, against fleet boats, gets these days. Too good a chance to pass up for the Merlin lads.

Blue water ASW is likewise. The MPA was always the prosecute-to-shoot platform not the search asset. If you have the wide area search asset in the first place its not hard to cue in an alternate shooter. There is no real disparity between the threat level and currently arrayed ASW capacity in the Atlantic anyway so the loss of land-based airborne ASW is of little consequence. Certainly £1bn’s worth of twin-turboprop ‘Nimrod-when-I-grow-up’ platforms would only be a token addition to that capacity at best.

Given that ASW is a diminished capability set in our MPA requirement it is very difficult to see what mission roles would be beyond even current gen MALE UAV’s. BAE had in its, somewhat nebulous, spiral 2 development of Mantis conceptual MR capability with appropriate radar and sensor fits and there is obvious interest in the MALE UAV as an MR platform in Dabinett/Solomon and its not hard to see why.

Just 18 Searchwater-equipped Mantis/Reaper sized air vehicles split between, say, Lossie, Waddo and Gib would guarantee seamless, redundant, 24hr barrier detection and identification of every surface vessel in the northern and eastern approaches to the UK plus anything coming north from the Med or Biscay – with the simultaneous ability to put a permanent track a limited number of contacts-of-interest. Thats the capability we want to have….not some attempt to do the Nimrod job on a shoestring with a few cheap t/props.

All the best Kev. Have a good one.

No slight on you or Wan intended there Swerve.

The article above struck me as a bit vague – mentions ‘less advanced’ and ‘older’ screws. Didn’t strike me as the clearest description of the engineering issues involved!