a) helicopters. these can be deployed even closer from the action, reducing response times

Mogadishu. Karbala March ’03. Kosovo 99. Choppers are trashfire fodder anywhere there are buildings or mountains that cant be adequately suppressed prior to ingress by REAL tacair. Fulda Gap or over open desert in a near-zero threat environment they are ok though!!!.

helicopter UAVs like the A160 and Fire Scout are currently being tested extensively, and are expected to be armed in the future. they are fast, cheap, expendable, and give front line troops a bird’s eye view, as well as the ability to control their own tacair directly

….so hideously vulnerable AND still need development money poured in to get them into service. Good job they will be ‘cheap’ really isnt it?.

b) larger UAVs, like the Reaper and the more advanced X-45C and X-47B. these things have loiter ability of minimum a day, also providing invaluable video feeds to ground units and acting as communication relays. the only thing better than having tacair at an airfield short by is having it overhead 24/7

No it isnt. What happens when they expend their ordnance and the replacement drone is still 4hrs away…or what happens if you need to crack a bunker and your drones are only carrying SDB’s and Viper Strikes?. You scramble a drone with appropriate ordnance and wait 4hrs for it to arrive onscene do you?. Alternately I guess you could have half a dozen armed up UAV’s pootling around just in case….but how expensive does that get?. Its idiocy you’d end up with half a dozen drones circling uselessly just in case one’s needed?. The solution is already developed put surviveable and flexible tacair close to the troops and stop trying to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of doing it!.

Put the cameras on the drones and let them pootle about carrying fuel, not weapons, providing the invaluable ISTAR that they do already. Put the ordnance on a, proper, strike platform close enough to the action to respond to calls for fire with appropriate weapons when, and only when, necessary.

c) gps mortars and rail guns. these will be operational at around the same time as the F-35 and can provide similar cover, only at a fraction of the price

RAIL GUNS???. Land arty is needed in conjunction with CAS not in place of it. Do not confuse the effects of a 3lb mortar shell or 6″ artillery shell with the effects deliverable from an aircraft. You are talking completely different leagues here. Land arty is limited in range and by the laws of ballistics…it is not flexible or capable enough on its own to replace tacair.

d) the F-35 sucks at tacair: it can fly high and drop its bombs, like other aircraft, except is costs A LOT MORE to do so, with much higher operating costs. but it has lousy loiter time, and it’s biggest advantage, a human eye, is useless because its much too fragile and expensive to operate at low altitude

Its biggest advantage is the human brain behind the human eye and the situational awareness of that brain when it comes to the selection and placing of ordnance. Why does the F-35B need to loiter if there is an ISTAR drone doing the loitering already?. By forward basing the F-35B can be in theatre very much more persistently than anything alse….sitting on the ground or on a ‘small deck’ inshore. Deploying close to the FEBA means it doesnt need to be airborne!. Its running costs are therefore mitigated by the fact that it doesnt need to be flying hours-long missions achieving nothing but boring the pants off a highly skilled pilot and clicking through airframe fatigue hours.

“no service”? go ask the Air Force and the Army how many UAVs they operate, and how many they plan on buying in the comming years, compared to the number of manned aircraft.

You are suggesting that the USMC adopt all-UCAV tacair. The USAF is not about to dispense with manned tacair strike is it – that is the point I was making.

the truth is the F-35 has already lost to the UAVs, it just doesn’t know it yet.

So the USAF is cancelling its F-35A purchase in favour of UCAV’s is it?. When did that happen again?.

I still think they should cut their losses and drop the whole thing, rather than do another F-111: great plane, but simply not cost-effective, especially when there are so many alternatives out there

There is an alternative solution to the issue of how to deliver tacair in support of Marine forces that meets the USMC’s requirement for deployability from short-field/austere sites and thru-deck amphibious vessels?.

One that is within a few years of squadron service and wouldn’t involve profligate wasteage of the money sunk into F-35B to be then compounded by the need to pour yet MORE development money in?.

No service is, as yet, ready to go all-UCAV for its combat air for very good reason. They aren’t mature systems yet and have to fly a LOT of MISSION hours before they could be considered so. The surface has been scratched with MQ-9 and the RQ-170, but, we are still a VERY long way off a manned platform, like F-35B, losing out to a drone.

If you are able to support even a small detachment of fixed wing attack A/C by C-130 flights, it does mean you have near zero, or even more likely exactly zero air opposition.

Or that your operational field is beyond the oppositions reach with surviveable strike assets!. HMS Sheathbill Falklands 1982. Supplied by chopper and landing craft.

This fact means you have little or no requirement for a STOVL top notch combat aircraft in such scenario

Twaddle. The opposition fields a battery of Tors…you going to fly A-10’s, Apache’s and your ‘conventional’ CAS fodder through the Tor engagement envelope are you?. No?. Maybe you could try with the Reapers then….hope to trade one air vehicle for one launch vehicle perhaps?.

By the way, wich scenario depict aircraft carriers being on theatre but 400 NM away?

Any scenario where the tasks placed on the CSG flag exceed the number of flight decks in the group. This is all about flexibility of operation. Not tying Marine tacair unnecessarily to the carriers and the carriers to the Marine beach-head.

Please don’t tell us Afghanistan, 400 NM is the longest line between western border to Iran and eastern border to Pakistan, even having just Kabul airport able to operate fast jets, they will be hardly more than 300 NM away from any troublesome spot in the Country.

How long, at economical cruise throttle settings, does it take to transit 300nm Ben?. What impact does a 600nm round trip transit have on on-station figures?. Why do you think the USMC requested a STOVL F-18C?.

I see, the difference seems to be between being just one service within U.S. armed forces and being the U.S. armed forces.

Of course….why would you want a force multiplier that allows the USN’s carrier fleet independence of operation from the ground force oparea under modest threat conditions. Just how selfish are these Jarheads!!!.

Where has it been done? Some people spread out their jets to highways. That is not austere basing. Austere basing is living with the tank crews on their march to Moscow. Austere basing is Rudel and his group on a muddy field in a dirty tent, seeing the muzzle flash of the Russian artillery on the horizon. 😀

‘Austere….you dont know you’re born…..in my day you strained the petrol through your socks and had to wear them back to barracks afterward!.’ 🙂

My definition of austere, today, is any strip that a ‘conventional’ type cannot operate out of that a STOVL/STOL type can. If we want to get nitpicky perhaps ‘short-field’ is a better term because it has to be accepted that ancilliary services could be present at a Kandahar/Port Stanley type strip.

In a real war 6 CAS aircraft on the first day are 4 on the second and none on the third.

Sounds like the logistics issue resolves itself in short order then doesnt it?! :p

Kandahar is a freakin’ giant airbase and an international airport! Austere. :rolleyes:

That was described by an RAF squadron CO as being fully unsuitable to the operation of aircraft and open, to fastjets, solely because of the STOVL virtues of Harrier.

Supporting an air group via the air is a night-mare.

Agreed. Not doing so, where there is significant military value to be had, on the basis that ‘its a nightmare’ is scarcely a reason not to do it though.

The Marines are stroking their egos and want to be a full spectrum force. In fact they probably couldn’t even enter the theatre in the face of a serious threat since their amphibs don’t have any escorts! The idea that any force can enter a contested theatre “alone” (MC’s wet dream) these days is rediculous.

The difference is between asking the USN for a couple of Burkes, a few LCS’s and an SSN against asking the USN to provide a full carrier strike group!. That is a BIG difference. It means that, in a modest threat scenario, the USMC CAN operate independent of the big flat-tops even if they have to send an extra LHA to do it….against not having the F-35B where they have no ability whatsoever to operate without the presence of a USN carrier.

Trashfire, btw is a good indicator where the enemy is. The Marines shouldn’t fly interdiction in the hinterland, they should never wander outside their artillery range. Trashfire is good! That’s where the rockets and grenades should go. Avoiding trashfire is for the Army! LOL

It is indeed. Doesnt mean you fly through it though…the Rangers paid the price for that lesson in Somalia. Why fly through trashfire when you can stooge around above it and drop SDB’s on the things that are doing the firing.

Problem with the ‘smart indirect fire can replace CAS’ idea is that it cant. Guided mortars are effective over a few thousand yards at most, guided 6″ tube and rocket fire at a few tens of miles. There is no engagement depth and, therefore, you are open to counterfires from the kickoff.

The severe limitations of conventional choppers in any environment, other than the Fulda Gap, have been shown over Somalia and Iraq. Their usefulness is too limited for practical future consideration as a general CAS platform. New developments on the helicopter may change this, but, they are all still pipe-dreams.

If you want to support troops on the ground you need the ability to call down fire before they are exposed to threat systems. You need selectivity, precision and appropriate target effects. The way to do that is still with tactical air power. That air power, irrelevent of any other consideration, needs to be on-task with the minimum delay feasible. STOVL is the way to enhance the deployability of combat air power. F-35B ticks more boxes than any other CAS platform.

Imagine for a moment that Italy & Spain both decide to fund CTOL carriers. It would doubtless be only one each, but they could mitigate the drawbacks of that by co-operation, e.g. cross-decking, & making sure that only one is in refit at a time. Fincantieri would love the job: I’d expect something very like the Indian IAC plus an angled deck.

Actually the implications of that are fascinating. Neither the Spanish or the Italians have the money for it of course, but a development of the IAC with Spain putting in a percentage of the development costs with one hull going to Fincantieri and the other built by Navantia could be a winner for both parties. Common parts order across both countries with two assembly sites could be good for both countries manufacturing sectors. Maybe an interesting export prospect too?.

Its the air group that really lights the fuse though. Italy is buying -35A and -35B. If they were going to go CATOBAR would it make much more sense to switch that to a straight F-35C buy across the board. Spain could easily tack on an airwings worth of -35C’s to the Italian buy to get the price down.

As a further knock on though what would that mean for the UK F-35C buy?. With 4 euro nations operating CATOBAR and 4-6 decks (should PoW and PA2 to come to fruition) does a European CATOBAR training programme, possibly Med-based, become a feasibility?. Is that itself then a service we could ‘sell’ to India, Brazil etc?.

All very pie-in-the-sky but fascinating to consider.

Propulsion would seem to be the most obvious target for an upfront cost reduction, but, it may not stand scrutiny if the Treasury take whole-life costs into the picture as they should. IEP is very economical in maintenance terms as it does away with so many of the intensive service items in the power train.

I’m told it also simplifies the design and build of the main machinery spaces owing to the dispensation of precisely aligned shafts through multiple compartments etc with the knock on reduction in hull build cost.

I think the figure of £500mn upfront, for a vessel who’s principle weapons and sensors will be hand-me-downs from the T23’s, is a very early doors number and unlikely to be representative of what would be delivered anyway. This possibly is about setting expectations on specialised UUV and USV mission equipment etc. ie that we are back to looking at a more traditional frigate hull than a real multimission wonder-hull. If this sees the ditching of the big-dog/little-dog hangar approach in favour of a simple conventional twin-spot hangar so much the better.

I’ve still no idea why we’re wasting money on designing a new ship in the first place. Start at T45 – shortened mainmast, ARTISAN in place of SAMSON, delete the VSR, lengthen the hangar forward and adapt the stern for SONAR2087. Replace the existing Sylver A50’s with 4 A70 modules for whatever LACM we propose and a pair of A43 modules or whatever is finally chosen to quadpack CAMM into for 48-64 missiles and lo you have all the capability necessary plus growth.

Is the hull beamier than it needs be without the SAMSON mast and with more propulsion than a narrower hull would need. Yes – but we’ve just saved better part of £130mn on design so who cares?. The Darings have shown themselves delightfully frugal on the dieso…lets have some more of that!. Never understood the need of officialdom to continuously try and see if the wheel could be made just that bit more round?!.