JonesyHowever saying all that I think it certainly worth looking at who is deterred by the nuclear deterrent and what their capabilities will likely be over the next 20 years to decide what is the best system. .
The nuclear deterrent question is the easiest one to address of all. The cost of the missiles themselves is actually quite limited compared to the design, build and ops costs of the submarines. So we let the govt declare that we will be scrapping the subs and installing the missiles in landbase sites at the bottom of deepwater sea lochs in Scotland.
Realistically, in concert with a tactical nuclear option to provide a mobile capability that we’d obviously lose with ‘Fixed Trident’, we would need relatively few missiles actually deployed – perhaps as few as a dozen with full-MIRV – so the costs would be fractions of sub-deployment. If we wanted to keep a covert nuclear delivery option perhaps we pay the French to develop sub-ASMP for us and we get Aldermaston to knock up some tactical-range warheads to fit the weapons out of the old 177 physics packages!.
The absolute furore of the ‘cheap option’ of landbasing and the political ramifications of distributing tactical nuclear weapons across our conventional platforms should be enough to steer the Trident replacement back out of the defence budget to where it belongs!.
JonesyThe Royal Navy would be better off, IMHO, aiming for a fleet of 3 to 6 ~30,000 ton capital ships that are multipurpose carrier/LHA/LHD type ships, along the lines of the BPE/Canberra class. They may not have the ‘sortie generation rate’ of the CVFs, but (a) they would not be as expensive; (b) there would always be at least two available; and (c) if you really need to invade some serious opponent’s country, then send two or three of these ships to provide the required air power.
Just a thought….
Do we have to go through this again Flanker?.
3 to 6 ships?. Bit of a range there isnt it?. If we accept that we need 3 BPE’s to generate similar effects on target as 1 CVF then you must accept the need for at least 4, more likely, 5 hulls to sustain that capability.
Its simple logic if, to cover the potential of one CVF, we need to deploy 3 BPE’s then we have to send, and escort, not only three ships instead of one, but, 3 full crews instead of one. Why have the duplication in engineering, comms, logistics, sparing of all those LHD’s when it can all be done with one CVF hull that is actually specced to perform the mission required of it?.
Sorry but its just an absurd idea. We know what the sortie generation requirement is to generate the kind of effects on target we need to achieve. Its been studied in great detail. We know how to achieve that sortie generation rate with a hull that has future-proofing built in to eliminate the possibility of obsolscence if STOVL falls flat on its fanbay doors!.
Building the ships is an economic generator all on its own and, with STOVL (on the off chance it does confound all observers and actually work!), allows for the costs of the airgroup to be shared between RN and RAF.
CVF is the right ship at a very attractive price for the capability. STOVL is the right choice for the mission requirements, and the current economic climate, as it gives the widest possible mission capability with the minimum number of airframes and the lowest up-front and operational costs and it lets us leverage the most pull-through from our current resources. CVF was designed, from the outset, to give the absolute maximum return on the investment. It still represents best value…..it really is that simple.
JonesyThe RAF won’t let it function properly.
It already HAS functioned and is functioning properly, Ben, with Joint Force Harrier. Yes FA2 was retired too soon, but, the JFH cabs have given sterling service in precisely the kind of expeditionary role they were always intended to do.
They were needed in Kandahar and not, through the specific time window, on the carriers so they went to Kandahar. This is the Joint Force concept working properly to maximise deployable British combat power.
What is your definition of ‘function properly’ I wonder?.
Old,
Well we will know soon enough, F35C will probably be a better aircraft than STOVL F35B, and might be a little less expensive too.
….and both points are irrelevent. We are talking about the deployment of a flexible capability – not a game of Top Trumps.
FAA has more pilots than aircraft at the moment why 12 FAA pilots are training with the USN on CATOBAR and F18. There is no shortage of people who want to Fly Navy.
The important words there are ‘at the moment’. Its taken us, what, 5 years to get to the point where we could stand up 801 again. Lets not underestimate the difficulties the Fleet Air Arm have in recruitment.
Jonesy“But General Sir Richard Dannatt, the former head of the Army, raised fears over the funding of the 80 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft due to be ordered to fly from the carriers.
He told BBC News: “The big but is what’s going to fly off them – because the Joint Strike Fighter programme is about £10bn, and that’s what really frightens us.“
When did JCA go from an £11bn programme for 130 odd aircraft to a £10bn one for 80?.
JonesyThat would never happen if Jonesy was onboard…
…he would blow off the damn tug:D
Wouldn’t you:confused::)
Biggest thing I ever took onto a berth was a 300ton 146ft schooner!. That was perspiration-inducing enough for me!. I have the highest of respect for the tug lads who take responsibility for cajoling 7000ton destroyers onto their berths.
Maybe there is a question or two about the fendering scheme this individual tug was using, but there does appear to be rubbing marks on Darings hull, so I’d imagine this one will be marked down as an unfortunate incident, the tug owner may be asked to contribute towards a spot of make and mends, but little more than that!.
JonesyThanks for posting that Flanker.
It is proof though that it doesn’t matter who you are – first time you take out your shiny new motor some gormless beggar is always going to go and whack a parking dent in it!.
JonesyAs a cost cutting measure could they either suspend construction for a year or so or string construction out still further to save money and thus delay the inservice dates of both QE and PofW and bring them in line with the perfection and potential instyallation of EMALS?
That doesn’t actually save anything though as the workforce building the vessels still has to be paid….just for the longer build period….and then you add on the additional costs of transport and storage, or cancellation, of the hull elements that would have been ordered to the original schedule. It can let you push payments further into the future (to ‘the right’ in the jargon), but, you will inevitably end up paying more.
The airgroup is the easiest element to push to the right as operational capability can be established with fewer aircraft than the full buy. In truth its a false saving as the original build for 150 JCA’s would have been more than a decade in delivery anyway. It does look good on the bottom line deferring more than half of the £11bn JCA ‘pot’ though.
JonesyDaring’s crew (including Captain & OOW) are in the clear here.
She was being moved with assistance of tugs, and one tug suffered an engineering casualty, causing her to veer into Daring’s side.
Absolutely. The ship was berthing alongside as well so they shouldn’t have been much over steerage and within a few dozen yards of each other so this should be more paint-scrape than anything else!
JonesyWhy is CATOBAR going to be so expensive that it kills CVF? How come the Ark Royal could launch Buccaneers and Phantoms with steam cats and CVF cannot? :confused:
Simple answer is that the Ark Royal was propelled by geared steam turbines fed from 8 boilers. Steam to drive the catapults was therefore plentiful and ‘cheap’. CVF is electric and, therefore that source of cheap steam does not exist.
Okay, are we saying that when CVF was drawn up so that it could incorporate either STOVL or CATOBAR; that steam cats were ruled out completely?
To put this in context the Royal Navy completely phased out high-pressure steam from the surface fleet in 2002 with the decommissioning of HMS Fearless. There is no engineering training programme for steam in the service and, likely, few left in uniform with the necessary skillset to support it seeings the training was wound down some years before. Steam is also very maintenance hungry (which is why the US is trying to get shut of it!) and you don’t mess about with it aboard ship as boiler explosions etc tend to kill wholesale and really mess up ships!.
Margin was left in the CVF design to incorporate steam cats as, in 2002, EMALS was considered far too experimental to incorporate into plans for ships intended, originally, to be completed in 2012 and 2014. As mentioned earlier in this thread though there is a world of difference between ‘margin left’ and design blueprints in a yard foreman’s hands!
So the answer to your question is no steam cats were not ruled out….quite the opposite…they are just not considered to be a good solution for us and are not wanted.
Ben,
Not really. It takes the complexity and puts it in the aircraft instead of the ship. You end up with a system that doesn’t quite live up to the myths regarding safety (statically its less safe) and austere operations, but if you’re willing to pay a penalty in both money and capability, STOVL will let you into the carrier game on a much smaller ship or with very extensive helicopter support let you operate in an emergency from general aviation airports
As you say….not really. STOVL operation margins are far more permissive than CATOBAR for very obvious reasons. US CV’s have operated aircraft in very wild conditions under testing, but, there is a wide gulf between what is acceptable risk in routine ops and in specific test conditions. A STOVL carrier is able to conduct flight ops swinging at anchor and doesn’t need to be steaming into wind like a CATOBAR ship.
You get, as you say, more complicated aircraft, but, you get cheaper ships and cheaper pilots and both of those are big fixed, and recurring, costs. Even the penalty’s are overstated as the performance of a modern F-35B are comparable, allegedly, with an aircraft like F-18C/MiG-29K but with superior signature attenuation and sensor fusion. Hardly a capability-set to be scoffed at.
They decided they liked this design and instead of having STOVL and CATOBAR designs they had Thales/BMT produce both a CATOBAR design
You have said this before. What makes you think CVF-UK was intially one technique or the other?. The CATOBAR CVF is quite dissimilar to what we are building currently.
JonesyThe only threat I foresee is the F-35B being cancelled next year by Gates and the cost of going CATOBAR being so great that it kills the CVF’s
I think thats a solid appraisal. It does underscore the relative stability of the programmes currently though….as opposed to the remarkable media frenzy that is trying to suggest otherwise.
I think that the consequences of a STOVL cancellation would be a lot more politically significant than many on here are realising. Certainly, without STOVL, the Italians may want to answers as to what the billion dollar investment on Cavour was all about, the Spanish may have to answer a few questions as to what they plan to do with the JC1 and how they propose to replace PdA and the USMC may have to answer a few questions on why they spent so much on the America-class ships. In each case those questions will track back to LockMarts’ door. With that looming I cant see Gates cancelling the thing over a few poorly-specced door actuators and a bit of scorched concrete!
CVF has been done to death, but, isnt going to be cancelled on the slips. The recent enquiries as to what the consequences of the cancellation would be are just that…enquiries to inform the debate. Simply put there is too much wrapped up in the ships for cancellation to be worthwhile.
My view is that, should F-35B go, the USN will look to draft us for a spot of risk sharing with EMALS and F-35C and will offer a partnership on training and joint development of a distributed/afloat logistics infrastructure to support both. QE will complete as STOVL as the build will be too advanced to stop while the EMALS backfit is detailed and will run on Harrier for a few years. Lots of Americans will be involved in PoW’s build and she will complete as CATOBAR somewhere around 2019ish. Shortly thereafter QE will come in for her major refit and the Harriers will retire.
JonesyHe said it and, presumably, believes it.
…and he retired 14 months ago.
Like I said the reality is that if we want the pure Dark Blue Fleet Air Arm then the Navy will have to fund the aircraft, the basing, the training, the logistics and the carriers to deploy it. IF we want to go CATOBAR then the carriers will have to be expensively modified for steam cats as, at present there is no mature alternative.
That is the bottom line. Three possibilities exist for us to find the funding for that:
1, The Govt increase the resources allocated to the Navy to cover the expenditure from the Treasury.
2, The Government make serious cuts to the RAF and reallocate funding to the Navy to cover the expenditure.
3, The Navy accepts cuts to its surface and submarine fleets to make up the shortfall.
1, isnt going to happen…period. Anyone who thinks SDSR may suddenly recognise the all conquering good of carrier aviation as the flag bearer of British military power has been reading too many comic books. Money will be leaving the services not being invested in.
2, would cause a riot in Whitehall. Its just about feasible – those GR4’s arent actually doing a lot, but, what would 2 squadrons of F-18’s be doing on a CVF carrier deck 80% of the time?. Providing deterrent effect – of course – but its a bit hard to gin up the efficacy stats for the beancounters on that one!. This runs the risk of kicking off a major interservice battle and, last time, both sides came out heavy losers. This is in no-ones interest.
3, has been the policy for the last 5 or 6 years already and the Navy, to get the carriers, has rolled belly-up for tickling. Continuing this process is the most likely price of CATOBAR FAA squadrons. That price is too high – our core mission is presence and patrol as much as it is Carrier Strike. The carriers are cool and shiny, but, the mundane tasks we perform rely on sufficient numbers of frigates and patrol vessels. The escort fleet has been sacrificed enough for Naval Aviation.
The truth is that we need the RAF on board to pay some of the bills. They have spare airbases, they have a good stock of well trained pilots, they have a good shore-based logistics system. They also have something to gain by playing along with us. Now is a very good time to knuckle down and crack on the best we can retaining as much combat power as we can – jointly.
In the future, when and if the threat exists to justify it, then we can shift over to CATOBAR and see what reaction the light blue have at that time. A return to strategic-range airpower will likely be on the cards at that point so that may occupy them enough that we can go our separate ways amicably….who knows. For the moment the Torpy’s and Sharkey Wards on both sides are not helping either service.
The land-based prototype of Emals at Lakehurst started high-speed “no load” test runs in April, and will start to accelerate with dead loads—ballast—at speeds increasing from 50-180 kt.
….after a three month rebuild of the rig after the thing shot off the wrong way!. The impact of the EM pulse has not and will not be tested on ship systems until the hardware is installed in the carrier so, right up to sea trials, the USN wont know for certain if they have a viable launch technology or something that will EMP out every radar, weapon seeker, weapon fuse and comms array above deck on every firing cycle.
JonesyThe STOVL Myth
http://www.defpro.com/daily/details/397/
What do you think this article tells us?. It actually reinforces the advantages that come with STOVL in expeditionary terms. The only negatives it puts forward are raised costs and degraded performance compared to peer conventional types. Suprisingly asinine comments when the author had already accepted that the STOVL technique is a proven enabler in exped warfare deployed where conventional types could not be i.e Kandahar in the early days. How is the conventional type justifying its cost when it cant be damned well deployed in theatre?!.
“EMALS Program Completes Key Testing Component
San Diego, Calif., September 14, 2009. General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems division (GA-EMS) completed the second phase of high cycle testing (HCT II) July 27 on the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) power generation and power conditioning equipment.
Just a comment on the power generators and conditioning gear…..NOT the full up system. The full-up system ate itself 4 months after that article.
“But the most dangerous threat to the Navy comes from the RAF. Ever since its formation in 1918, the youngest of the Services has sought a monopoly of the nation’s air power. For a time during the inter-war period it controlled naval aviation, and in 1960s managed to sink CVA-01, the Navy’s proposed fleet carrier. The result of the RAF’s bureaucratic victory was the near-defeat of Britain by Argentina in 1982 when the Navy found itself taking on an entire air force with just two under-sized carriers and a handful of jets.
The air marshals tried to strangle the Fleet Air Arm again this year by proposing to scrap the joint RAF-Navy Harrier force as a cost-saving measure. That would have deprived the Navy of fast-jet experience just as it was preparing to introduce the new carriers. The RAF lost the Harrier battle and they will stay in service, but Torpy, who has seen his planned Typhoon force cut from 232 to 123 and the new Nimrod fleet slashed from 22 to nine, has not given up. Last week, he told the Sunday Telegraph that rationalisation of the Armed Forces would inevitably result in the RAF controlling all Britain’s combat jets.
“We have got to kill some sacred cows to make ourselves more efficient,” he said – the sacred cow in question being the Fleet Air Arm, victor of the Falklands War. “
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/5560746/The-Navy-strikes-back.html
OldNot that is simply scaremongering politics and you well know it. We cant afford Torpy’s kind of idiocy anymore and we certainly cannot base procurement decisions on paranoia of what the light blue might try and do 12 months down the line if they get into a fit of taking their ball home.
In case you hadnt noticed NSW has expanded over the last 24 months and enough pilots had been scraped together to, at long last, stand up 801sqdn. As Russell commented these were the lads that are now on secondment with the cousins. Torpy’s reality is as much to do with the current state of play as the 20’s and 30’s links you tried to make do.
Jonesy[QUOTE=matt;1637090]Thanks Jonesy, would you have any details on the failures?
======================================================
Credit: Aviation Week
Challenges Ahead For NLOS-LS
Feb 26, 2010
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The failure of four of six shots from the U.S. Army’s Non Line-of-Sight Launch System (NLOS-LS) during recent testing could spell trouble for the Raytheon-built vertical launcher, which also is supposed to be fielded aboard the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).
Results from a Limited User Test (LUT) of the system, which ran from Jan. 26 to Feb. 5 at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., are currently under evaluation. The NLOS-LS’s surprisingly poor performance — attributed to a combination of operator error and technical failures — will be the primary topic of discussion during an interim Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) meeting in March. The DAB was slated to review Increment 1 capabilities of the Brigade Combat Team Modernization (BCTM) program, of which NLOS-LS is an integral part.
Raytheon issued an official statement, that read in part, “Of the six LUT flights, two were direct hits, two were misses with root cause known and corrective action implemented, and two were misses with root cause currently under investigation.”
The company noted that over the course of the program, the Precision Attack Missile (PAM) has fired 23 missiles with 14 direct hits. “NLOS-LS is in the system design and development phase,” Raytheon said. “We test in order to identify issues and quickly resolve them.”
The Army has three choices, according to BCTM spokesperson Paul Mehney: “Keep [NLOS-LS] going, modify it or cancel it.” The Army’s big concern is that NLOS-LS fills an important capability gap. “We don’t have an easily deployable guided missile system,” Mehney said. “The operational factors of NLOS-LS are still necessary. The Army needs to determine the best path forward to work out any technical solutions that may come out as a result of the LUT.”
====================================================================
On top of the missile/seeker issues the USN encountered launcher problems when test firing from the LCS resulting in at least 2 failed launches. Whether these are included in the above ’14 hits for 23 launches’ figure or whether they are only counting the valid launches I couldn’t say I’m afraid.
JonesyJust to refocus the thread on its original topic. The wider picture on the alternate to STOVL:
http://blog.usni.org/2009/02/20/vadm-kilcline-discusses-emals/
http://blog.usni.org/2010/03/13/despite-happy-rhetoric-emals-commits-sepaku/
JonesyNot sure what you are getting at there Jonesey,I was talking about the lift system as a whole !!
The actual thrust vectoring system was one of the simplest systems on the Harrier
The F35B system is a totally different concept and much more complicated…as I am sure you are aware sir !!
Sorry Baz I dont buy into the ‘much more complex’ side of things. My point was to outline that the ‘comparitively simple’ Harrier was not quite that simple yet we’ve had thirty years of good service out of it.
Will F35B be the most maintainance hungry of the 3 variants – yes. Is that more than wiped out by the increased shipboard maintainance required by the cats etc for the alternate choice?.
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