Granit was a low flier, not a sea-skimmer, as well. Making a missile that big – Bazalt, Vulkan or Granit – run in at a dozen ft or so would be quite challenging and a fair achievement to pull off. Hence the question…is that definitely a Vulkan shaped hole?.

I have no reason to doubt Russian report that Vulcan and Moskit were fired during that exercise.

Me either. I have reason to doubt that one of those impact holes was caused by Vulkan though. The weapon, according to all information I’ve seen regarding the Bazalt airframe is that its either a diver or a low profile flier. Low profile being in the hundreds of ft….not sea skimming. Seeing that Vulkan is developed off the earlier missile it begs the question of how it hit target at the same height as Moskit?.

….so there might just be mileage in getting some defence journalists over to see a real, cutting edge, AAW destroyer for comparison to what is entering service in the IN?.

Journalists who might then go back home and ask why there is no scope for an AAW destroyer for the next decade when BAE could likely put four in the water for the IN by the middle of the decade perhaps even building in Indian yards?.

See where this is going?

Trident

The CVF project really came at the wrong time for immediately going CATOBAR on a ship that was going to come online early in the second decade of the 21st century and then stay in service for 50 years. With the writing already on the wall regarding EM catapults you certainly wouldn’t want to be saddled with a conventional catapult and a dedicated steam plant for the entire operational life of the carrier.

Quite. Though it has to be observed that the respectve delays in all programmes have conspired to close the gap in the timelines somewhat!.

That’s why I suggested the two stage approach earlier (all of my posts on this topic should really be considered against that background).

Agreed. Certainly the one I’d advocate and, at face value, it appears to be Liam Fox’s preferred option. That can only be good news if it turns out to be the case.

Maybe the French, having delayed their acquisition sufficiently due to budget constraints of their own, would come round to order two (the second actually replacing CdG) CVFs fitted with EMALS?. Europe with 4 large conventional carriers in near-identical configuration, an interesting scenario, I think At that point pooling of training and spares resources (maybe even Hawkeyes) could really make CATOBAR viable financially.

It would stll be more capability that absolutely required by Carrier Strike. Sort of like having a requirement to patrol ones fishing grounds and deciding on a Hyuga class DDH to accomplish it!. It, likely, would have delivered full Fleet Carrier capability to both parties for the smallest whole-life cost conceivably possible though!. I think the French-inspired Horizon fiasco may well have prejudiced many views on the development of a project that big, but, as a theoretical concept its unbeatable!.

I only mentioned Avenger because AFAIK it is the only UAV of this type where the manufacturer has made any sort of tangible commitment to navalisation, not because it would necessarily be a preferable solution. Or has BAe got a serious proposal for a carrier-capable Mantis?

In a word….no!. I, unfortunately, dont have the contacts I once did at Filton and Warton so I cannot be certain but, apart from a general interest in Naval UAV’s that BAE are engaged in, there is no direct evidence of a naval variant of Mantis….yet. Like I said though General Atomics advertised a carrier capable Mariner so there is an acknowledgement of what a MALE UAV can accomplish, in a carrier airwing, in the marketplace.

Does a large EM catapult really have that much more of an overhead compared to a smaller (custom-developed) one? I frequently get the feeling that with such half-measures you risk being penny-wise, pound-foolish.

I think so yes it does make a big difference. Its the difference between a primary and a secondary shipboard system. A short 30m hydraulic or EM cat on the angle of a STOVL/STOBAR carrier, used only a handful of times through the daily flying programme, is a very different proposition from a full power pair of cats used as the princple airgroup movers. The power feed requirements would be very different, the maintenance requirements different and the basic ship impact vastly different.

It’s the same reason why I always found the Soviet Ulyanovsk CVN design so weird – if you develop and install waist catapults anyway, why wouldn’t you get rid of the bow ramp completely? I sincerely doubt the Su-33 is so good operating of a ski jump that launching it with a catapult would offer no worthwhile improvement. Either stay with STOBAR (which the planned Yak-44 AEW could most probably have handled, at a certain performance penalty) or go CATOBAR completely.

Its a good example to select really. The Ul’Yanovsk was a dedicated airdefence ship with a secondary antiship function. Its airgroup could operate perfectly adequately from the STOBAR ramp and didnt need to be redeveloped for catapults even if it would have added 20% or so to their performance. The Soviets determined that, in operational terms, the 20% wasn’t worth the effort of the redesign. They did, theorise, that they were going to need catapult assistance for Yak-44 so the systems were notionally designed in to support that. Its all a simple balance of operational requirement against best-available capability.

i think it’s not true that sampson can act as a long range vsr and as a mfr at the same time. sampson is able to do both, thats no question but if for example it is used in a long range volume search mode the performance of all the mfr tasks is greatly reduced.

I think you may be taking this too literally Radar. I think the point is that, as an s-band rotator, Samson is more able to act in a volume search mode than a fixed x-band array. In much the same way as the x-band is more suited to the task of CWI for a semi-active missile than the s-band set!.

btw. from my understanding x-band is preferable in terms of horizon search. sampson can gain some extra height but s-band is not the best choice for doing a horizon scan.

That would depend on what you term ‘better’. The x-band is likely giving a higher datarate and fewer false alarms owing to its superior resolution. Against that the s-band is seeing further over the horizon and providing earlier warning!. Personally i’ll take the range edge every time. Other people’s opinions differ though!.

Fair enough, although spending, say, 10% more money to get 20% (I’m making these numbers up, don’t fret) more capability sounds like worth considering. If it was 20% more to gain 10% I’d leave it of course, but with CVF being so big in the first place it seems going the extra mile might not be unduly expensive.

To be honest I’d not expect your ratio to be far off achievable. I think it could certainly be argued that the, perhaps, 15-20% front end cost uplift introducing CATOBAR would give on the order of 40% more capability from the carriers. I’d doubt anyone would take issue with that as a generalised comment. My point is that the driver here is not to get the most capability for the least money. The project target is to get the necessary capability for the smallest possible spend and, just at the moment, its the upfront spend that has the disproportionate focus.

perhaps it could reach the point where reduced aircraft maintenance burden pays for this overhead

With all of the aspects involved in CATOBAR ops I just cant see that. It really is an expensive business even down to arresting cables that have to be thrown overboard after 100-or-so traps….there are just a lot of parts to the operation. Compared to that the at sea aircraft maintenance costs, with STOVL, are directly proportional to the size of the embarked airgroup. If you have a routine peacetime complement of 14-18 aircraft your routine deployment costs are that much reduced. With CATOBAR you pay the same running costs for the cats/arrestor whether you have 3 aircraft embarked or 30.

I guess my issue is not with the premise itself, but that the more probable contenders among those which are being put forward to fill that requirement leave a lot to be desired. How is a Merlin or Osprey ASAC going to be better at this than a Hawkeye?

I can certainly see your point. Traditional wisdom compares rotary AEW with fixed-wing and the choppers come off badly. They miss context to a degree, I feel, because the chopper has one key advantage that Hawkeye doesn’t. It doesnt need an aircraft carrier of any description to deploy it.

Even with the Mantis-based radar platform I went on about earlier I would want to retain a Merlin or Sea King based radar surveillance platform in the fleet. Not necessarily all in the carrier airgroup though. To my mind its the perfect master node to tie the UAV radar feed into. Operationally there is no need to feed the choppers collated battlespace plot back into the carrier. It could be fed to a Fleet AAWCS (likely a T45) and then LINK’d out to the rest of the fleet just as easily and be providing added protection for the carrier in the process.

If you can base the chopper on the T45 as well then it divorces the carrier from the need to be in immediate proximity of the rest of the fleet. The carrier could detach from, say, an amphib group and relocate 300-400 miles away to accomplish other tasks leaving a couple of T45’s covering the assembly area and sending back a loitering radar-Mantis and a second configured for armed force protection. The UAV’s feeding back to the command T45 through the destroyers embarked Merlin ASaC chopper allowing the amphib group to stay virtually emissions silent and with ‘organic’ air cover at extended range from the carrier deck. That would be worth having!.

EDIT: Well, it turns out General Atomics is designing its jet-powered Predator successor (the Avenger) with carrier ops in mind, but predictably it is catapult-launched which kind of proves the point I’m making in the paragraph below.

Same sort of point really. Predator-C may be very nice and gucci, but, would Mantis do the job perfectly adequately?. Would their be sufficient required capability advantage on the, superior, platform to justify choosing it over the simply ‘sufficient’ alternate?.

I would note that I’m not advocating any kind of STOVL UAV here. I believe that even Mantis would need some kind of catapult assistance to get off, but, I’d see this as a light-moderate rated hydraulic or low-power EM catapult on the angle rather than a full 90m cat requirement. I’d doubt that a Mariner/Mantis type airframe would produce approach speeds requiring arrested recovery.

Potentially an excellent solution, but making it happen will need considerable development money, for the reasons noted above.

Agreed it would take some investment to navalise Mantis and clear it for a medium weight surveillance set like Searchwater, but, I can see a commercial market for it that might make the development worthwhile for BAE. India would seem to be a prime customer and I have seen comments in print that the Kamov’s they are using aren’t setting any records. Brazil possibly another potential, maybe also Italy, S.Korea, perhaps even Japan. Some non-carrier operating users could be good fits as well….again India, Malaysia, Oman..states that have extensive maritime responsibilities that could benefit from a persistent and mobile wide-area surveillance platform.

Even failing BAE investing its own resources we have ‘saved’ as stated earlier 15-20% on CVF by dodging CATOBAR….that adds up to a few £hundred million in savings. Money that, if it could be tagged to come back into the defence budget at a later date, could be used to progress the development of capabilities, like this, that let us leverage the most performance out of the STOVL platform.

other participants from the nfr-90 decided to develop apar. so there were other paths out than only aegis for naaws.

Indeed. The question was why not aegis though not APAR. Presumably like the approach the Spanish took.