JonesyThey’re building 2 carriers Spit.
That means one will be duty and the other in refit/workup/extended readiness state. Only one carrier out so only one routinely active air wing required.
JonesyConcur with Fedaykin. The Ark is gone and Lusty is under threat. Hard to justify a carrier air group when there isn’t going to be a carrier available permanently if at all!.
The irony here is extraordinary though. Ward campaigns for a carrier capability half a billion more expensive than it needed be and his son pays part of the bill!. Would be funny if it wasn’t so pitiful!.
JonesyTo my mind there is a very worrying level of naivete in that article and several others on that website.
The dangers of CATOBAR were starkly obvious before the SDSR decision was taken. The issue of deck qualification, continuation training and the need for the carrier air group to be flexibly deployable from land and sea also were all very clear.
The fact that the MoD didn’t want a Fleet Carrier and hadn’t specified one in its requirement for CVF was also very clear to anyone willing to read it.
Yet the august personalities in the Phoenix group, in willful ignorance of these very simple facts, continued to demand CATOBAR. Now CATOBAR is a stated aim, but, the requirement is unchanged. The operational concept is still Carrier Strike and the expectation is still set that the carrier will be the offshore mobile airbase with its ‘golfbag’ pick-up airgroup. Nothing more.
The shift to F-35C has NOT been followed by a shift from Strike Carrier to Fleet Carrier in any requirement laid down officially….because, surprising to no one with half a brain, there is STILL no need for Fleet Carrier capability as there are STILL no threats to an RN CSG on bluewater transit….or at least none that cannot be handled, perfectly adequately, by the RN SSN force.
The very LAST thing we need now is an article like this stating that CATOBAR Carrier Strike wont work because we need permanent squadrons embarked. What it amounts to is prime, ‘credible’ advocates of CATOBAR naval aviation telling the government that CATOBAR carriers wont work!. We have the RAF, that has seen the RN quite happy to deal them out of involvement in the UK’s principle means of expeditionary tatical airpower projection, setting up against the capability. So, at the moment, no-one is actually telling Whitehall that this is going to work and its a good idea.
The Treasury must just be loving this!. Pass on big thanks to Nigel Ward Oldnotbold…here’s hoping the carriers survive his groups efforts to get them sold off before we can use them!.
JonesyWe haven’t needed a patrol submarine since we stopped routinely patrolling the GIUK. An SSK/SSG does nothing that we need so we wouldn’t look at one period.
If you want to know who’s conventional designs would be best matched to UK needs it would be the Japanese boats. Big shame for the Aussies that the Japanese dont share!
Jonesymore like a bias towards the export market.
JonesyI thought MRA4 was supposed to be multi-role, not dedicated ASW.
Absolutely. Still a heavy ASW component though and one incorporated at significant expense to go with an airframe designed for routine operation at a couple of hundred feet over-water on the hunt – something that P-8, for example, does not appear to have been especially optimised for.
JonesyNot much interest in new build ASW heavy patrollers these days Nocuts. The US P8 is more multirole than ASW and the Russian A40 has been in the pipeline for a decade or more. Mostly operators are going for the ATR42 class surveillance optimised platforms for new build capability.
JonesyLiger,
Even just 4 Akula and a single Oscar fully operation would be a major pain in the ass to say the bare minimum.
Stop looking at the inventory and look at the big-picture capability. The capability reflects the force doctrine. With half a dozen boats deployable at any one time the strategic aim of the fleet is not Atlantic surge/sea lane interdiction. Simply put they aren’t interested in that any more. The Atlantic is too big an ocean for a handful of boats to actually achieve anything meaningful….and a planner would figure in attrition from the starting number. Why should we spend precious resources defending something no one is planning to attack?.
This is fundamental stuff that you need to understand here Liger. This isnt some nebulous case of ‘well you never know where you will have to fight next’. Thats idiotic. You plan for the widest scope of action likely and attempt to bring in systems that have as much additional capability as your budget allows for in the hopes that you have enough for whatever suprises come along. Trying to make out that if we dont prepare to fight Tom Clancy’s wars then we are, somehow, defenceless is a pretty long way divorced from reality.
Nocuts,
how easy would it be to create large UVAC’s able to operate from shore bases and the CVF’s designed for ASW?
Again as earlier described the problem here is in the target set. Its not there to warrant the development of the capability. If there was a big ASW threat then MRA4 probably wouldnt be cancelled in the first place.
Fixed wing for ASW has been overtaken by rotary with the shift to the littoral. FLASH dipping sonar has given even top drawer SSN’s nightmares under NATO testing at AUTEC. Multistatic LFA sonobuoy capability is out there now, but, it is no substitute for the tactical flexibility of a hunting pair of pinger choppers.
JonesyIt is gone in peacetime, but that’s all. Unless you believe the fables of the russians SSNs being unable to wreck havoc to merchant shipping in a war, and i’m hoping you are not so hopelessly optimist…
Is this a joke?. Even if we ignore the fact that the Russians have no more than a handful of competent fleet subs left you must see that there is no context left for a military confrontation with Russia that would require them to disrupt the atlantic sea lanes?. Reforger was shelved a long time ago!.
When the UK will deploy helos in Scotland to hunt subs, we’ll value that. Until they are in Culdrose, they are as relevant as they didn’t even existed,
Once again you are clearly not being serious?. You are suggesting we keep a permanent Merlin det covering Fas just for delousing?. You do know the frequency of bomber deployments you are talking about here?.
The smart way to do it would be to pick up a few aircraft from whatever was around a day or so before the boat sorties. That way there is no ops tempo to watch in the mostly inactive Merlin detachment to give warning of an imminent departure!.
JonesyLiger,
Bit of an aimless ramble that one wasn’t it!
Shore based Merlins can provide delousing support for the bombers. Along with the home waters towed array ship (which isn’t going to be gapped for very obvious reasons!) and SSN coverage that is plenty. Nimrod missing wont effect the deterrent in any meaningful sense.
Your point about Russian SSBN’s evaded me completely. They haven’t deployed their missile boats into the atlantic for more than a decade so what relevance they have to Nimrod I dont know?.
As to the Russian SSN fleet the game seems to have changed recently. Twice in a few months stories have run in the media of submarine tracks. IF they are genuine stories we are giving away intel on our capabilities very cheaply. Unless there is a purpose to it. The only obvious one being to let the other team know not to bother anymore!.
Seeing as the threat to shipping lanes in the Atlantic basin has gone in political and physical terms it could well be someone’s saying enough is enough!
JonesyNocuts,
do you know why the US decided to operate two P-3 from Kinloss after a recent exercise ended for at three days and possibly as much as week after the exercise ended.
Its either going to fall under routine and boring or sneaky-beaky and OPSEC. I’d not expect to find out anything if its the latter and the former wont be very interesting anyway!.
Also I am interested in your take on how well the UK will cope without a dedicated MPA.
May be just for pleasure these days but I am still a sailor and them removing the best SAR command and control platform for a thousand miles in any direction is never going to be a good thing to me. In ten years time I hope someone looks back and adds up the number of sailors who could have been saved, if Nimrods excellent sea search capabilities had been present, but weren’t and gives that to the Whitehall mandarins as the real price of their savings. I hope after hope that some alternate system is worked up to put that capability back in some measure.
Thats probably not what you are looking for though is it Nocuts!. In LR ASW terms Jim hit the nail on the head below – there isnt much bluewater ASW left to do. Russia no longer has the inclination or, consequently, the capability to close the Atlantic with a massed sub surge. MPA’s with sonobuoys against cutting edge SSN’s are a hit and miss proposition now. Big choppers with advanced pinger arrays are FAR more capable, useable in the littoral as well as deepwater and deployable from anything with a helideck. For ASW then I dont think we’ll miss Nimrod.
My understanding was that MRA4 was much more multirole than just an MPA though. We will miss having a moderately high endurance sensor platform with an ability to detect, identify and track surface targets-of-interest for extended periods. The problem is to provide seamless coverage of surface shipping requires relays of aircraft and the few MRA4’s that would have remained would, in my view, been insufficient to guarantee coverage. Maybe, when funds are available, BAE can do something with Mantis along the lines of the US BAMS system. Perhaps a Searchwater Mantis could even carry airdrop liferaft packs on the wing stations and do something to put back the long range SAR capability we will lose.
The SOSUS network as almost totally been dismantled and the SURTASS has been discontinued to the best of my knowledge thougn I am not infallible as is my spelling. Tracking Russian submarines is no longer the big issue it once was, as the rarely conduct long range patrols into the Atlantic or Pacific any more and their numbers are far fewer.
Nope. SURTASS is very operational….cast your mind back a year or so to the Chinese incident with a SURTASS boat off their prime sub base!.
SOSUS is still quite operational as well although now tasked principally, through the lack of real targets of interest, to civillian oceanography (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics.html). The simple fact is though that the IUSS still has the arrays to use if they require it. The dismantling that happened with SOSUS were the ground monitoring stations that were running the arrays. Comms technology moved forward so stations like St Mawgan and Keflavik would have been redundant anyway as all functions could be monitored from the US.
JonesyTwo misconceptions to dispell here
1) “we have had to rely on US P-3’s to track a Russian sub for us”
Russian subs arent tracked by anyones aircraft. They are localised and prosecuted by aircraft…they are tracked by SURTASS, SOSUS and SSN’s. In the endurance game the aircraft always loses out against a competent sub. NATO can track subs in deep water just fine without any kind of MPA. If they want to do something about them quickly then you need the aircraft.
2) “There are missiles widely available today that make helicopter AEW near pointless”
Nope there aren’t. There are antiship missiles with 200-300km maximum ranges. These tend, at the moment, to be big, uncomplicated and fast and there aren’t all that many sensors that can give a positive target identification at those ranges without alerting the target as to what is coming. Chopper AEW needs to be used differently than fixed-wing AEW but they are a very, very long way from ‘pointless’.
JonesySince we officially have 5 1/2 years until commissioning under the old timetable, that seems optimistic. Indeed, it sounds faster than the old, pre-SDSR schedule. I thought she was due to float out in 2014 before it was decided to delay her again.
The float out in 2014 is the consequence of the build being underway. All there is at the moment is rhetoric saying that the builds will be delayed. Doing so, in practice. with a modular build that depends absolutely on modules being delivered in a specific sequence is going to be bloody horrific!.
The redesign itself is by no means straight forward or even advisable right now. To date the number of workable EM catapults trialled in the maritime environment is zero. If they, the government, wanted to do catobar properly they pay converteam to install their EM test rig on Ark Royal before she decomms and launch off some UAV’s to see what ship impact firing it has.
That’ll hold her up for a while. Not enough to delay her commissioning 4 years, but I can see her being floated out at least a year late, then taking an inordinately long time to do the minor finishing work & trials.
The redesign will plug in a delay, not least as the French position will have to be examined – seeings they thought that the base CVF-UK hull needed expansion for CATOBAR ops, but that cant be a big delay or the costs of parked workforce will start to appear on the bottom line. I agree 2015 float out is likely to be about the maximum this could be pushed to. 3 years in fit out and 2 years on manufacturers and operational sea trials though???.
JonesyLiger
You cant really compare the fitting out of a ship’s full fixtures with that left over in the T45 build: HVAC, network comms, electrical switchgear and runs, condensor’s, reverse osmosis plants, generators, etc, etc as well as all the kit topside and sensor’s aloft its a completely different scale of task.
QE will be finished, as a hull, by 2014 – that means she’ll be, what, another 4yrs alongside the fitting out pier?. Thats an absurd amount of time to mount flight deck fitments and aloft sensors. Converteam will love having the deck to play with of course, but, a lot will have to be spent on upkeep alongside!.
Swerve,
Problem with that mate is that the build is already under way. Even stretched out its hard to see how there is more than about 3 years worth of build there.
JonesyWe don’t have to. We could launch QE a bit later than planned, & fit her out more slowly than planned, while PoW is assembled in the dock. Then we float out PoW to free the dock & fit her out.
She’s being built pre-fitted out though, in the same fashion as the T45’s, with completed modules welded together. There shouldn’t be all that much fitting out in traditional terms. If we launch QE later then we push back PoW as she needs the dock to be assembled in.
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