STOVL came about because the RAF did not think their Airfields would last very long in the face of a Soviet attack. The RN only got into STOVL, after the CVA Carriers were cancelled -with the help of the RAF ‘moving’ Australia.

Irrelevent when its the performance of the STOVL type that you are lionising isnt it?.

My point about the Roc was that the FAA had it because, as is always the case, the RAF does not care at all about aircraft at sea. The RAF had ‘owned all the RN’s aircraft in the 1920’s to late 30’s.

You can talk about the 20’s and 30’s all you like. I’ll talk about the financial realities of today. The F-35B deal is win-win for both the dark blue and light blue. The RAF get expeditionary strike capability they would lose almost completely with Jaguar and Harrier, they get it half funded by the navy and they get the ‘jointness’ credentials to shield it behind. The RN get carte blanche to progress with the carriers without light blue interference and only have to pay a percentage for the airwing. They get to leverage light blue assets if the need for a surge capacity occurs and get away with lean ops costs during peacetime.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/09/01/346888/f-35b-delays-lead-to-rephased-flight-test-schedule.html

You sure you wanted to quote that article?

By the end of July, Lockheed’s four STOVL flight-test aircraft had completed 74 out of 95 scheduled flights. Stevens had attributed the flight-test delays to poor reliability on key components, such as thermal cooling fans, door actuators and power system switches. The F-35B’s reliability problems do not require “fundamental engineering” changes and the aircraft “has a good flying character”, Stevens says

74 test flights doesnt seem to indicate the thing is not airworthy does it?. No fundamental engineering changes required?. Not quite the picture of doom and gloom being hinted at is it?.

I am absolutely sure that the poor sods who had to fly Rocs and Barracudas in WW2 would recognise that attitude 😉

Yet the task force was very glad of SHAR in 82. Funny how times change isn’t it?

Edit: nocuts you are right on the mark with the meteor comment.

Errr…please sir…what happens if you bolt those same external tanks to a F35c…cor fork me it goes even further 🙂

So what Baz?. Everyone is saying that the F-35C’s range is critical – well F-35B is doing the same with tanks!.

except when it does of course !!

When is that then?. When we have to oppose regimental strength Backfire strikes….oh er no thats right they dont exist anymore. How about when we face off against the mighty Chinese blue-water fleet…….oh yeah thats right….thats 20 years away and we arent likely to be doing that alone. Er how about…..hmmm. See the point?.

This is what I’m saying Baz….we need the capability to do Carrier Strike ONLY right now. We have a window before other players come in to contest blue-water transit that will DEMAND we have a Fleet Carrier capability. We also have a funding crunch because of objective financial realities.

YOU are talking about nice to have contingency capabilities – just in case they are needed. We cant afford them. We get the carriers and they can be modified later as we need them to be – when the threat environment develops. For now you are asking for luxuries when we will be doing well to get the basics.

Haven’t we covered all this nonsense of payload/range, support aircraft and costs multiple times?.

Why are some of you persisting with the idea that any of this matters?.

Payload range is a tactical issue only. More important is aircraft availability in the first place. After all the superior payload/range figures of F/A-18E over F-35B dont mean a thing if the Hornet is sat on its base in Scotland while its pilot is doing CATOBAR workups in the US!.

As stated, ad nauseum, the difference in range between the 35C and 35B models is about 150nm on the radius. Big deal!. We get that back by giving the 35B external tanks to be jettisoned after launch….or by having it carry Storm Shadow. There is your 150nm back.

As for Support aircraft unuseable because of STOVL. Who cares?. STOVL doesnt need the kind of support tanking undertaken organically in the fleet anyway. STOVL doesnt need twenty minutes to form up strike packages and doesnt often see bolters on landing.

I dont know how many times people have to be told this but CVF isnt a fleet carrier and isnt meant to be a fleet carrier, despite its size, so it doesnt NEED a blue water relevant AEW platform like Hawkeye. The Charles de Gaulle could have undertaken every mission that its steamed on, in its operational history, without E-2’s aboard….I see no reason why our deployments would be any different. There is no blue-water threat and none on the horizon that SSN’s cant deal with as well.

Lastly costs. Its simple, simple logic. STOVL loads the costs of deployment on the aircraft and CATOBAR loads it on the ship. This means that with STOVL reducing the aircraft buy reduces the wholelife costs of the programme. CATOBAR forces you to pay for the deployment costs whether you buy ten planes or a hundred – its a fixed cost and is recurring.

Immediate land/sea deployment options for STOVL are a MASSIVE force multiplier. As I’ve said running the numbers for this is instructive. To maintain the Joint Force Harrier capability of concurrent expeditionary land and sea deployment, with F-35B, takes 56 airframes:

Naval Strike Wing – 14 airframes
1 sqdn – 12 airframes
4 sqdn – 12 airframes
20sqdn – 12 airframes
Attr/Res – 6 airframes

This allows the deployment option of NSW to the duty carrier. One of the frontline RAF sqdns to a shore duty and the second to be on standdown. NSW would need to keep maybe as much as a 2-1 ratio of pilots to airframes and would need to periodically cycle airframes through the OCU and attrition reserve to maintain peak efficiency.

To generate this combat power with F/A-18 or Rafale takes 72 aircraft in 6 small (9a/c) squadrons as far as I can work it out. At least I cant do it with less while still leaving a meaningful detachment on the carrier at any one time.

Essentially you would have to cycle sqdns between Land duties, carrier workups/sea duty and a surge reserve/standdown state at 3 month cycle times. 2 squadrons being tasked to each at any one time to allow one to rotate off and leave a ‘worked-up’ capability in place. To clarify:

800 – 9 airframes
801 – 9 airframes
802 – 9 airframes
1sq – 9 airframes
4sq – 9 airframes
617 – 9 airframes
899 – 12 airframes
Attr/Res – 6 airframes

Cycle1: Sea task – 800/801; Shore task 802/1sqdn; standdown/training 4sqdn/617sqdn
Cycle2: Sea task – 617/800; Shore task 801/802; standdown/training 1sqdn/4sqdn
Cycle3: Sea task – 4sq/617; shore task 800/801; standdown/training 802/1sqdn
etc

This allows us to have 18 aircraft immediately available on the carrier deck, with 9 guaranteed to be fully worked-up at all times, plus another 9 deployable from the standdown pool that had just rotated off – for a ‘surge’ capability of up to 27 airframes aboard ship. Additional airframes coming from the OCU/alternate squadrons as and when pilots could be deck-qualified to deploy them.

The only alternate I can see to this is to recreate permanent naval squadrons. Perhaps 800, 801 and 899 all formed with 14 airframes. With the same attrition reserve that means 48 aircraft, but, with the fun aspect that the RN get to pay for them all. Plus the small detail that we lose a sqdn level expeditionary capability from UK strength.

Using ‘flyaway’ unit costs is moronic, but, seems popular in the ‘top trumps’ culture on these boards these days. Using objective values of 100mn for a F35B and 75mn for an F/A-18 or Rafale means that the F-35B buy would be £5.6bn of which the RN may have to find 2.8bn. The joint force hornet buy would be £5.4bn of which the RN pays £2.7bn but then has to go and buy 4 EMALS cats at £20mn a piece for starters!. Or the 48 Hornet Fleet Air Arm renaissance plan that costs the Navy £3.6bn and all those lovely recurring CATOBAR expenses.

So, rough rule of thumb, the CATOBAR FAA-only solution is an easy £billion more expensive. Thats either Astute-8, T45’s 7&8, maybe as many as 3 T26’s or perhaps a scratch developed Sea Mantis UAV i.e things a whole LOT more useful than an aircraft who principle advantage is a mere 150nm in range.

Actually you have it backwards. Its a CATOBAR design that’s been adapted to STOVL. There is room specifically for the catapults, arresting rear, an extra gas turbine for extra power production, and a steam generation boiler. They decided it it was a lot easier to bolt a ski-jump onto a CATOBAR carrier than end up screwed with a pure STOVL design if something went wrong with the F-35B.

Nope. There is margin for catapults and arresting gear – I did state as much myself (Note: that was margin left for steam cats and conventional arresting gear as the requirements for EMALS are, still, something of a variable). They did not design a catobar carrier and remove the catobar bits as you assert though.

CVF-FR took the baseline STOVL design and ADDED two C13’s, auxilliary boilers and arresting gear, plus other changes, and added about 9000tons to the deep load displacement to make it all fit together. Voila Porte Avions 2.

Nocuts I disagree. There’s no reason why converting from STOBAR to CATOBAR would cause that much disruption. The design is sufficiently flexible to allow either option at either build time or when either ship is in refit. BAE via the aircraft carrier alliance is building large parts of the ship, and it also submitted a design to those specifications. BAE design, meet BAE manufacturing. Ok so it’s Thales design that’s been built but the principle remains the same. Manufacturing and Design departments knew at the point of submitting the proposal that it could be one or the other.

So you simply activate the alternative plan the second you know about it and have it signed in blood in triplicate by the UK government. You then re-forecast your purchasing requirements. If you’ve not yet authorized a supplier to start a particular phase or work, and for critical parts it should be micro managed to ensure quality, then you don’t have a problem as you simply don’t authorize any continuation of STOBAR specific parts for the CATOBAR ship. If the supplier knows they won’t be paid for any new work beyond what has been already approved, contracted for, and underway or too far down range to call off then you can guarantee they won’t work on something they’re not being paid for.

Long lead time items will sit around whatever you do. They’re long lead time for a reason such as complex manufacturing process or complex design process so you can’t change them at the drop of a hat, nor would you want to. Schedules can be adjusted and you’re assuming that switching to CATOBAR affects long lead time items to begin with. We’re talking about conversion work that could be done during a re-fit (yes it’s better to not change your mind and do it all during initial construction) but however you do it, those parts will spend some time in someone’s warehouse during the build.

I’m highly doubtful there will be workers sitting around with nothing to do during the build if the switch is made and components delivered to time and to quality. You simply activate your alternative project plan and re-forecast resource where necessary.

We aren’t talking about lego here gents!. Nocuts is exactly right here!.

Margin has been left in the design for the instalation of catapult and arresting gear, but, the carrier is designed as a STOVL ship. That was the point of the FJCA downselect!.

Adapting the design to cat ops will require new plans to be drawn up and modification far below the flight deck. Spaces would be needed for additional personnel, additional engineering workshops and stores and thats before we get to the power and control systems to run whichever type of cat we go for.

Remember the cat decision is far from an easy one as well. Stories abounded just last year that EMALS wasn’t going to scale up at all. Its a long way from guaranteed that it will enter service. Steam cats are not a real option for us as we haven’t had high pressure steam in the surface fleet since the Fearless was decommissioned. Dont underestimate the difficulties involved with your ‘simple’ switch!

Why do we want access to the code without access to the development team? To ensure that the UK can produce upgrades and add-ons for a competitive price. If LM decide to charge a 10 billion for access to the team and code, its impossible to compete. Having access to the 8 million doesn’t mean we have to use it all.

Can we produce upgrades that sit neatly inside the 8mn lines of code happy in the knowledge that one of our new upgrade lines doesnt break something else later on?. Happens all the time in civvy coding….lost track of the number of serious faults I’ve seen introduced in code by seemingly innocuous bug-fixes. If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard ‘THAT shouldnt have happened!!!’ I’d be typing this from a much happier mental state!.

Do we need access to flight control? Well depends how the flight control works really. If we hang a missile on the side, will the flight control compensate? Or does it need the dynamics of that missile integrating to the FCS? Weapons and systems integration are the most important and useful to us though.

No intent to sound sarky but I would expect part of the agreement for weapons/systems upgrades to include the airframe interface!. Bit of a swizz if we dont have that included isnt it?!.