JonesyJust to add a little background to this – it wasn’t, as far as I’ve been able to uncover, anything to do with the age of the props from the earlier ships that caused the speed reduction.
Propellors….more properly ‘screws’…are tailored to fit the propulsion machinery they are attached to. The screw will be profiled to fit the revs range, power throughput (torque) and the desired speed range for a given powertrain and hull.
You cant just take a screw from one ship and bolt it onto another, with a different powertrain, and expect equivalent performance even if the ships are roughly similar in dimension and displacement
It may be that the second ships’ machinery delivers more torque at a specific point in the rev range than the original….so you get slippage at the screw at those revs. Slippage obviously meaning that some of the powertrains propulsive force is being lost in unproductive rotation and, correspondingly, the ship will suffer some performance loss etc, etc.
Not being designed to fit the Charles de Gaulle the screws from the earlier French CV’s were only roughly compatible with the newer ship. Only losing 3knts off the top end was actually quite fortunate!.
JonesyAzorean,
You were the one who suggested that chinas ships are crap, citing ships built 20 years ago.
At any point are you going to read what I’m writing and not what you think I’m writing?. Nowhere have I said China’s ships are crap. I said that China has exported some crappy warships. They have which is an indisputable fact. The assumption is that things will have improved from then, but, the 25T’s seem to indicate that there was room for further improvement.
Once again I am ASKING if there is an objective source that can demonstrate that this improvement HAS happened. In context of tphuangs original statement lauding the ability of Chinese industry to churn out hulls for very attractive prices it makes a significant difference obviously.
Thailand bought two 1,300 ton Pattani-class OPV from China a few years ago. One went on anti-piracy patrol in the Gulf of Aden a few months ago. No complaints made public, and I guess reputation wasn’t an issue when they decided to make the $US 100 mil purchase.
The design of those ships wasn’t Chinese was it though?. As I understand it the Chinese yard was selected to build a Thai design?. Still useful to know how the vessels have fared in service though obviously….have any reports of the vessels operational performance been released?
Jonesy…and once again the 25T’s have a poor rep. By all means check it.
I’m asking a question here, in case you’d missed it, as to whether an objective source reference exists to prove that the existing reputation had been dispensed with?. From your comment it appears you haven’t a clue. Lets hope someone better informed can contribute.
Jonesycare to explain that?
Simply put the quality of the escorts that China has exported has been poor according to their owners. The earlier frigates exported to Egypt and Thailand represented the lowest ebb of Chinese naval production and, so the statement goes, the criticisms that came back of poor build quality, poor basic design provisions for maintenance and DC etc caused a major shake-up of the naval industry and significant improvements. I have also heard though that the follow-on Thai Type25 frigates are also considered to be poor units and, as one example, the Thai’s have found they have to limit firing of the Mk45 forward as recoil stress from prolonged firing buckles the deck plates on the foredeck.
Just because its cost is low, doesnt mean its junk. it may be cheap for USA standarts, but not chinese standarts
Absolutely. I was very careful to qualify what I was saying there. My point is that cheap isn’t necessarily good. Cheap and high quality is marvellous and, if that is the case with the new escorts, the Chinese have pulled off a real accomplishement. Cheap and poor quality, as has been reported with Chinese warships from objective sources, is no achievement at all.
JonesyWasn’t having no AEW a major issue during the Falkland’s, resulting in the loss of several ships? To combat this they hashed together a helicopter version because there was no viable fixed winged aircraft capable of operating off illustrious class, my point being that the illustrious class were not fleet carriers either. Surely we should not forget lessons that have been learnt in the past? Granted the CVF will probably get a helicopter AEW but when it will be capable of operating a more capable platform surely this should be done?
The CVS’s did have a big, honking, 1022 air search radar though. The principle design role of the CVS was Atlantic multi-chopper ASW operations. The air targets anticipated were high altitude Tupolevs and sub-launched, big, diving antiship missiles which would have been detectable on 1022 many hundreds of kilometres off. Etendard/AM39-type threats never entered into the concept as CVS was never intended to do the job it did down south.
I dont think you are trying to denigrate the ship at all, but, the point is its not the fault of the ship design if it doesn’t do a job it was never intended to do in the first place. Applied to the situation we are in now we have a requirement for a Strike Carrier. Its optimised peacetime airgroup will be suitable for punitive actions and ‘firefighting’/raiding interventions ashore in low intensity situations as opposed to an airgroup designed for Sea Control and high intensity Fleet Ops.
In the context of the ships design requirement, and the capability of the tailored airgroup routinely embarked, the Hawkeye’s capability set is hardly necessary. Its like putting a telescopic sight on a pistol. For the operations that the Whitehall mandarins tell us we will be doing, and equip us for, chopper AEW is enough in terms of local coverage. What is more important is that we can support the strike element of Carrier Strike and that means ISTAR. If we cant find, discriminate and identify the targets we need to hit, in realtime, we cant employ fastjet strike capability to proper effect. ISTAR is the key enabler to meeting the requirement that has spawned the ship.
In an ideal world we operate fleet AEW&C capability like Hawkeye AND an ISTAR solution to support strike ashore. Doubtful we’ll get both though and ISTAR has to take priority or the whole point of building the ship is gone.
Ben
If the Argies had set the fuses on their bombs properly a lot of those ships that were damaged would have been sunk
No. If the bombs had been set to fuse properly they would have blown themselves (the delivering aircraft) to bits in the attack. They were dropping the bombs out of profile because of the RN defensive fires envelope. If they had used retard kits on their bombs and had pilots practised in laying down retard ordnance on antiship profiles then they would have killed more ships.
JonesyAnd AEW is a fundamental requirement as well, late model Hawkeye is pretty much the best at it.
Not so Fed. ISTAR is a requirement for strike ops not AEW. If all we want to do is put look-down radar coverage around the fleet assembly area rotary air can do that adequately enough.
I would also say the control element and the ability to peer into the airspace that you are launching strikes into makes it an important capability for strike missions.
Ingressing and egressing strikers with the limited number of aircraft that even a full CVF airwing will deploy shouldn’t need the presence of an E-2 to control. LINK the air picture back to the ship and its better done from there anyway.
With 2 or, perhaps, 3 Hawkeyes in the CAW they will not be pushed very far forwards to overwatch the strike regardless. Added to that they do little for the real, crucial, role of realtime target indication and surveillance presence.
As I said its pretty much wishful thinking unless something can be sorted with the French, certainly not something to be dismissed and lets just say I disagree that it doesn’t fit into the platform requirement.
Fair enough on both scores. Hawkeye is a fantastic capability package….for a Fleet Carrier. If we were going to deploy Fleet Carriers this is a no brainer. We arent going to use CVF in that function though, according to the MoD requirement, hard to see what requirement, for the defined mission, that E-2 supports?. Without that clear justification its going to be hard to build a case for the aircraft.
JonesyIts a fundamental one Fed, irrespective of what the navy wants, we will get the equipment that the requirement supports. E-2 is not a platform that fits the requirement that Carrier Strike presents.
JonesyHas any decision been made on the AEWC platform yet? Now that it’s CATOBAR a pair of Hawkeyes would only be logical.
There is still no change in the defined requirement for CVF since the shift to CATOBAR. Its still Carrier Strike and, as such, there is still scant justification for Hawkeye’s capability set!.
I’d imagine that part of the push to be interoperable with the french and US is to get their support assets deployed to our deck so we dont have to shell out for them.
JonesyHopefully no-one from the MoD read your post Badger, otherwise they might get a crazy idea to give them “popular names” in order to make sure that the public backs the carriers. I shudder at the thought of HMS Simon Cowell and HMS Katie Price :eek::eek::eek:
Small problem there NoCuts…..anything named after Cowell will automatically attract any hostile capability around directly towards it…if the number of people who want to smack the original is anything to go by. I think I’d agree with the Katie Price on psyops grounds though….certainly where I told that Katie Price had appeared on the horizon heading towards me I would be off in the opposite direction….terribly fast!.
JonesyI got pretty good idea of what goes on in Chinese shipyard, believe it or not.
I’ve been on record in many places stating the amount of testing required for 052C and what that means for its air defense ships.Outside of AB and Virginia class, I can’t think of another warship class where US cost can be comparable to Chinese costs. And if you look at the new batch of AB on order, it’s getting expensive too. I typically use 054A vs LCS comparison to give people an idea of the lower cost of Chinese ships. In fact, can you imagine any other country in the world that can build something like 054A at $200 million a pop? Same with the low cost of Type 022 FAC. And with the number of Yuan that’s getting produced these days, I’m pretty sure they are getting built pretty cheaply too.
The problem there tphuang is that Chinese shipbuilding, military in particular, hasn’t earned the best of reputations for quality. Its easy to build a ship on the cheap, even a warship, its hard to build a quality warship on the cheap!.
I’ve not seen any objective review of the 054A in terms of ship handling, damage control provision, maintainability and all those sorts of issues that define a quality unit. Until we see that isn’t it, objectively, true that the ‘economical unit cost’ which appears so laudable could just mean ‘cheap junk’?.
JonesyA second CdG wouldnt have the unfortunate power plant of the 1st would it? As I understand it, pretty much all her problems stem from it.
If they stayed with the nuclear option yes…..its the only reactor they would have had.
Had they decided to go conventional, with the original design, they have to find some bunkerage for ship propulsion plus, probably, step up their UNREP capacity. This would, of course, be in addition to the shore-side nuclear handling facilities they had to build up to support CDG-01.
Heads you lose, tails you don’t win on that one.
JonesyAnd just why shouldn’t civilians be welcomed aboard? It is their taxes that have paid for HMS Astute.
Why exactly wouldn’t the civil police be involved? A murder has been committed.
Planemike
The concern was OPSEC…..Operational Security. That a civillian may come aboard with an agenda other than sightseeing. Its a legitimate concern, but, one we have been dealing with for a while. Who’s paid their taxes is irrelevent. Britains nuclear weapons were paid for by the taxpayer…..we dont let classes of primary school kids play with them.
A crime that happens on a naval vessel involving solely naval personnel is, generally, a matter for the RNP and SIB. On a naval base the MoD police would be involved. It actually seems that it was MoD Police, not the civvies, who were involved here. Thats a bit of a surprise as I’d, normally, have expected the civvy police to have been the fastest responders. Perhaps MoD had officers nearby because the vessel was open to visitors?. Routinely civvy police would have no jurisdiction over a crime on a naval vessel.
JonesyBesides the shooting I’m actually surprised that they already allow civil visitors onto that brand new and I’d say sensitive boat. “… eleven children … due to board the submarine”. I’m really not using that word a lot on the internet, but what about OPSEC?? Also the involvement on civil police is kinda strange.
Not really something thats ever been a big issue for us. I remember S-class boats being opened up to the general public on port visits in the mid-80’s. You put certain spaces off limits, let the civvies shin up and down the tower ladder, look through the search scope and jobs a good ‘un without compromising anything that you wont find in public source material anyway.
MoD police would have jurisdiction on a naval base. This incident occured tied alongside at a civillian facility though so the initial call would, properly, go to the civillian authorities as I understand it. Would put a sizeable bet on the fact that SIB were involved pretty quick though.
JonesyLeadships do seem to take more than their fair share. HMS Swiftsure’s early life was marked by some real near-tragedies.
On this one you cant stop Jack getting into the odd ruck, but, involvement of fireams is very unusual and will lead to a serious inquest if the weapon in question was from the boats smallarms inventory.
JonesyGiven the pacific scenario (since thats where two 1164s will be deployed), I would feel uncomfortable indeed in most of the the regional assets against lets say 12-24 Vulkans aimed at me.
Thats where I disagree. If I’m a warfare officer in the Japanese, Korean, Indian, Australian or even Singaporean navies I know, roughly, what Vulkan offers as a threat and I know that my defensive systems envelope is capable of covering that threat. I know that my systems have capability to deal with streaming missile attacks and that if the Slava fires its full Vulkan load at one of my AAW ships, even if it does overwhelm and destroy that vessel, its taken itself off the field as an offensive unit until it can get back to port, rearm and get back into the fight.
I’m going to be much happier facing 16 Vulkans than two or three times that number of Yakhonts. Especially as I’m no more able to counterstrike a surface target 300km away than I am one 700km away…thats obviously on the somewhat unrealistic premise that ISTAR is in place to allow for such shots in the first place.
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