STOVL has proven useful several times – South Atlantic, Desert Storm, Kandahar, Libya. They were being bought as a logical extension of Joint Force Harrier. In the context of the question asked I’m not sure it matters. The model being bought is the F-35B and it works for Carrier Strike.

Uhmm…I would pretty much think everything above is other way around. F-35B is more complicated, spares cost more, has less performance, smaller load etc. As for pilot training and cat/trap qualifications, is it really much different? It’s not like STOVL operations don’t require specialized training.

With hindsight, they should have waited for few years, buy EMALS from USA and build CATOBAR from the start.

CATOBAR has no advantages for our Carrier Strike mission.

STOVL deck qualifications are far easier than for either arrested recovery technique. Even SRL techniques….only essential under specific bringback weight conditions….are greatly simplified compared to a standard trap. Its been proven that STOVL pilots with no deck time whatsoever have been able to land on the smaller CVS deck. It would be considered poor form if a pilot was able to miss the roughly 4 acre deck of a QE whilst hovering over it.

STOVL means that the RN Fleet Air Arm can be kept as a cadre force that can specialise in maritime ops and be augmented by RAF or foreign STOVL squadrons as necessary/required. That means shared basing costs, shared logistics trains, shared training costs and no necessity to keep a large pool of pilots deck rated. The operational savings, wholelife, more than offset a higher unit purchase price and more costly spares.

so do you guys think RN’s choice for the STOVL carrier over the CTOL one was the right choice?

For us, and our specific requirements, yes it was. It needs an understanding of what our requirement is to come to that though and it leverages off Feds commentary on training.

CVF/QE is a response to the UK Carrier Strike requirement. This is essentially for a platform able to stand off a hostile coast a safe distance and generate a specific surge and sustained sortie rate over a range of targets supporting a range of missions from Fleet Air Defence to tactical recon to CAS and Interdiction. Its not a request for a Fleet Carrier in the traditional sense. Its not optimised for strategic maneuver warfare. Its not optimised for Sea Control or ‘fleet-on-fleet’ actions.

So, given these parameters, we see that one of the key, traditional, drawbacks of STOVL ops….the lack of availability of support types like E-2’s or S-3’s….is less of a concern. Payload/range is still a negative factor but with smaller, more precise, standoff munitions becoming prevalent anyway that is much reduced in importance as the weapon is more compact and puts back some of the lost range of the airframe. The tradeoff advantage for this drawback is massive though. In short you dont need a whole separate naval airforce.

The Americans and French fly CATOBAR obviously. Both have seperate distinct services equipped to operate fixed-wing airpower in the naval domain. The US can call on Marine Corps air to backfill decks of course, as they have done for years, but the French, much more on our scale, have to maintain the Aeronavale as a separate entity at a significant scale. This is stood up to keep all their maritime aircraft based and logistically supported and a multi-squadron pool of pilots available at any time their carrier is deployable. Its entirely a cost loading on the Marine Nationale as I understand it. Just as the USN naval air capability is the funding responsibility of the USN.

The RN Fleet Air Arm to stand up to Aeronavale scale, as it would have had to do if we had stayed the course with the CATOBAR shift from a few years ago, would require significant funding to basing, infrastructure, logistics and training to get maritime specialised airframes and deck-qualified crew pools established for deployment. The cost of that could not have been met from the real-world budget allocation, so, something would have had to be dropped or sold…..likely the 2nd carrier or a pushback on T26 or something else unpalatable.

What STOVL gives us, inherently with its ease of deck qualification, is the ability for RAF F-35B aircraft to become carrier deployable. Just as RAF Harrier GR3’s were able to deploy to Hermes in 1982. A ‘surge’ component for UK Carrier Strike can now come from the RAF meaning that the Fleet Air Arm contingent can stay as a smaller, specialist, establishment and costs can be shared between the two services. Essentially we get with 2 carriers arguably a more sustainable sortie rate generation over a longer on station period than the French do from their CVN/CATOBAR force and the RN dont have to pay for an Aeronavale equivalent Fleet Air Arm….meaning more money can go into ships, subs and salaries!.

Edit: Cap tipped to Swerve for accurately translating my post earlier and for distilling it down into a much more concise and sensible format!

With the success of Op Corporate as the baseline I think its fair to say that ‘failed experiment’ could never be applied to the conceptual Harrier-carrier/CVS/Sea Control Ship. The idea of airpower-where-there-would-be-none-otherwise was proven beyond all shadow of doubt. The interesting observation though is the way that one aircraft, and its compactness, has defined the ship and the eventual decline of that aircraft has seen a step change in the way that naval services have moved the concept forward.

The evolution path to F-35B is clear enough for STOVL players and its one that now needs deep pockets and bigger decks than before. So the lighter end of the market, as a fast-jet platform, is gone. No more 15,000ton Chakri’s or Garibaldi’s. Its now best part of 30,000tons before you have long enough pants to sit in on the fastjet game.

What has changed though, and what will blur the picture, is the ESTOL/VTOL/VATOL resurgence. V-22, AW609, V-280, TERN, etc all offer abilities far in excess of what a traditional rotary wing delivers. TERN alone offers the potential for a game-changing distributed capability.

Mating a lightweight AESA panel technology, like Leonardo’s Osprey, to a AW609 or TERN type platform and that platform on to a modest hull like the Algerian BDSL or the TKMS MHD/MRD and you start to see a lot of air and sea control potential for a very modest spend….relative to full CATOBAR or even high sortie-rate F-35B STOVL naval tacair. If TERN actually produces an air vehicle capable of weapons deployment you start to look at small-but-technically-competent navies actually being able to gain a sustainable, albeit limited-threat scenario, naval strike capability off little more than a warmed over LHD and a few drones.

Harrier carrier may be all but gone and F-35B a big boys toy…..but the early Harriers mantle of the cheap, lightweight, naval air capability might soon be more common place than it ever has been.

I’m not quite sure I’m following there Mauro?.

Doenitz’s U-boat campaign had much to admire….even Chester Nimitz, Doenitz claimed, offered his professional respects after the war. I’m not sure you have to introduce any outside context when the topic is purely strategy and doctrine. Likewise its hard to see what Russian, principally coastal, WW2 submarine operations had in common with an Atlantic ‘sea denial’ strategy such as that Gorshkov evolved?.

Those air defense missions were intended not only to protect both the surface and submarine fleets from Soviet Union, but also to protect the AV-MF and VVS ground-based long-range aircraft’s of attack and patrol.

Which AV-MF and DA regiments were these Mauro?. The Kola-based Tu-22Ms were tasked with sea denial over the Barents and in the Norwegian Sea approaches….Backfires ranging over the Atlantic was largely a Tom Clancy fantasy.

The Ul’Yanovsk and her Yak-44’s were never built so cooperative air tactics were never developed to the best of my knowledge. I would be fascinated to hear more about a bomber escort mission planned for a Soviet naval airgroup. By the time that Ul’Yanovsk would have been taking shape as a unit it would have already been clear that the active element of Legenda had been a failure and, as such, the coordination of airborne heavy anti-surface strikes….many hours from bases of operation….would have been massively challenging.

Oceanic anticarrier was always considered, to the best of my knowledge, a submarine tasking…which was why the 650mm TT’s and Pr949’s came about. The Backfires were supposed to clobber CVBG’s trying to take up SIOP stations a fair bit closer to home.

In the case the MiG 29K from India could have been refueled in air the Su 30MKI equipped with the Bhramos missiles as well as to provide escort of these in the final phase of its attack missions, or to escort the P 8 Poseidon in its missions.

MiG-29K has a recovery tanking capacity. It can offload enough to give a fighter a few more goes at getting onto the deck after some misses, but, its not a support refueler as far as I was aware?. Whats the maximum weight it can get off the deck with including the buddy gear?

Therefore for these escort missions the STOLV Yak 141 could have been restricted both in range and air-to-air capabilities to face an adversary equipped with fighters like the former F 14 Tomcat or the current models in use today.

I agree here definitely. If you had a fast launch DLI capability like STOBAR offers and fastjet types that can offer long endurance on light load BARCAP sorties you dont have to have STOVL. YAK-141 did offer a capability no-one else had at the time though. Supersonic, BVR, all-weather off a STOVL deck. All they needed was to come up with their own slant on Principe de Austrias or the US VSS concepts from the late 70’s and they’d have been able to package hull plus, rotary and fastjet, airgroup for enough of a ‘pocket sea control’ capability that a few states would’ve tripped over themselves for a look at. I remember wondering around 2000ish why they’d never done it….still no idea today!.

Still there are at least three simple questions very hard to answer about the former planned Ulyanovsk nuclear powered aircraft carrier ( Project 11437) even today

This ties into doctrine. What the carrier was supposed to actually be there to do.

The Soviet era carrier conops was vastly different to the American one and very much narrower in scope. Sergei Gorshkov was an admirer of the Kreigsmarines Atlantic U-boat campaign. His view was that submarines were going to be the weapon that would sever the US head from the European body in a future European theatre conflict. He took the lesson of the Atlantic campaign to heart as well insofar as MPA’s and roving ‘Johnny Walker’ ASW surface escort groups would be a murderous threat for his submarines.

The job of his surface fleet then was to storm into the Atlantic basin…take up a position in the middle of it astride the NATO sea lanes and beat down on any ASW groups/aircraft that came within range of the long range surface-surface missiles or area SAMs of his group. Wide area surveillance to be provided by the Legenda satellite groups and by the Uspekh system from the MarPat Bears and specialised Kamov choppers in the group. Antiair coverage would be down to the promised highly powerful Mars-Passat phased arrays on the carriers….as the air targets were expected to be high level MPA’s. The Yak-38’s….similar to the FRS1 Sea Harriers….were embarked principally to engage MPA air targets that remained stubbornly out of SAM range. The point being to react to any threats that developed to his submarines and to, defacto, establish a safe zone for them to operate in.

Ul’Yanovsk modified this concept….but only to a point. The doctrine and mission was still the same but the Falklands lesson of the futility of relying on surface radar and the ability, shown by the Argentines, to localise an emitting opponent and make a low level approach undetected forced a shift. Yak then upped the ante on shipborne AEW culminating in the Yak-44 mock ups and the carrier platform needed to provide a way to get these into the air. Hence waist cats.

The mission of the fastjets was still fleet air defence primarily and skijump was still quite sufficient to the task of getting air-air loaded fighters up with sufficient fuel for very long endurance CAPs. Short of a full US CVN opposition its hard to see what NATO surface/air platform would have been able to go up against it from a mid-Atlantic position. With aerial radar support, against HARM and Harpoon missile laden A-7’s and Hornets, they would likely have had a good shot at keeping local air dominance….at least until USN F-14’s could make a telling contribution.

Even then the Ul’Yanovsk group would be tying up a full US CVBG which is stopping it being elsewhere, like on SIOP tasking, and its suddenly then pulled into range of friendly submarines with anticarrier tasking….that also listen on Legenda and Uspekh frequencies.

Fascinating concept anyway.

It is also possible that Kuz CBG was tracking the Dutch sub for long and the information they put up of 20km is just convenient one so as to not revel the exact capability of ASW , Who is to say that Kuz CBG was not aware of many NATO subs up there and its own hidden somewhere

Again entirely possible…..its also entirely possible it wasn’t the Walrus that they detected and it was someone elses boat. Its an odd methodology to stay quiet on their ASW tracks all through transit to, sensibly, deny information on capabilities and then go and make this kind of report that then tips their hand?. If you were going to tip the hand anyway why not prosecute the on-transit tracks hard and prove the point well before approaching station.