My only issue with that MM is the fact that the props are so big would their be too much interfearence there?

Nick

With radar you can set filters to only allow pulses to be processed that fit certain parameters. One of these filters is known as a ‘rangegate’ this is, very basically, a time filter that looks at the pulse duration, per pulse, that is used to determine range (duration of two way transit of the outbound pulse and return echo). If a proprotor gets in the way of the sweeping beam return pulses will come back to the face with very short round trip times (as naturally they’ve travelled 20ft instead of 200 miles). To remove these ‘bad’ returns then is a relatively simple matter of setting a minimum rangegate in the radar that is longer that the duration of the pulse round-trip from the array to the rotor and back. With an electronic scanning radar able to form multiple beams, and shift in all sorts of scanning patterns, compensating for periodic blade masking shouldnt be a huge issue compromising performance.

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If the pic attach works I’d imagine port and starboard arrays mounted in any of the numbered zones would be most likely. Lateral arrays are going to be preferable as fore/aft arrays would suggest maximum performance flying towards or away from your contact…might be awkward if thats two hostile air superiority types!. Looking at the pic I’d say a ‘cheek’ extension to house the pods somewhere between positions 1 & 2 would likely be optimal and aspect to the proporotor disk would be about as good as you would get.

MM,

We do keep coming back to the tease of that Gen Atomics / Cobham / Selex trial last summer dont we?. UK MoD watching a Guardian UAV lift a Seaspray 7500E and use it for surface and air surveillance has to have lit off a few lightbulbs somewhere in Whitehall. Cobhams presence can only mean that UK Reapers with wide-area multimode radar is something that is being considered which is a facinating thought to say the least.

The leap from there to the fact that Gen Atomics had its BAMS competitor ‘Mariner’ (Sea Reaper by any other name) evaluated and promoted as a carrier-capable platform is not a huge one. Its something I banged on about years ago and actually exchanged a few mails with GA about, but, a navalised Reaper with multimode surveillance set and EMKIT as a ‘UAV launcher’ on the QE is going to offer remarkable persistent AEW/ISTAR capability without CATOBAR. Most attractively the hardware is all pretty much developed already and we even have a training programme and support train for Reaper!.

The only work needed would be to navalise EMKIT and get GA to finish Carrier-Mariner and do the testing with the launcher. The only risk is, as mentioned, with landing potentially but this may be mitigated by the F-35B SRL work as the UAV speed over deck on recovery could be as little as 45 knts. Unarrested landings on an axial deck may well be feasible…especially when you consider mission durations of 18hrs+ for the UAV the flying programme is hardly going to be frantic under routine conditions!.

well, if the timeframe is post 2020, and if the osprey if procured post 2015/17 then the vigilance system should easily be slapped on to an osprey shouldn’t it? or does the position of the rotor/propeller in forward flight not work for the radar?

The proprotor returns should be fairly easy to filter out with an appropriate rangegate…with E-scanning ‘between the blades’ sweeps wouldn’t seem to be problematic. I think the issue may be more with the ‘easy slapped on’ part of what you said there.

Vigilance will work with Merlin as the backend is going to be in place regardless…as a function of the platforms other duties/sensors. The other missions for Osprey, in RN colours, wouldnt need operator stations/consoles in the same fashion though…so they’d have to be a mission-add. Multirole in RN palance may then, perhaps, be a tanker/transport variant and a distinct Electronic Support variant rather than a fast modular swap-about with a single basic empty airframe. Ironically the original TOSS concept with a repackaged Cerberus/Searchwater would likely be better in this scenario as it envisioned the whole mission package in a single roll-in/roll-out module.

You could say then that technically Vigilance would be best fit for Merlin and TOSS/Cerberus for Osprey. The irony of course being, where both systems to be inducted, the optimal operational deployment of Vigilance and Cerberus would be the other way around. With Cerberus on the Merlin and Vigilance on the Osprey owing to the wide area surveillance properties of Cerberus being better suited to the ‘flying masthead’ role and the potential in Vigilance for Electronic Attack and imaging ISTAR support…both capabilities favouring the faster more forward-deployable platform!. Crowsnest would appear to be someones recurring headache!

Dammit, why don’t they just go for fitting the existing ASAC kit (with the upgrades already proposed by Thales) to Merlins. It must be the quickest, cheapest, & lowest-risk option. The radars are relatively new, & the upgrade will keep them up to date for a good few years.

I dont know if that is likely the cheapest option. The HM2 upgrade supposedly sets the choppers combat system up to accept and display the Vigilance pods output. If that is the case deploying the capability is a matter of operator training and buying the pods. It could, theoretically, even be a UOR to deploy the capability should a short notice issue blow up between first stovie squadron deployment afloat and planned Crowsnest IOC.

IMO it cant be done at any reasonable cost unless it is a surprise, so that is with no reinforcements of air/ground/sea,
so i’m counting on a few ships bringing supply within a day of landing.

…so you cant use the hovercraft then?. You lose strategic surprise the minute they are delivered. RN puts a permanent SSN patrol box off W.Falkland the next day!. If your landing force gets ashore and then has its logistics tail cut off behind it guess what happens?!.

You buy a large fleet of those Russian hovercrafts. Ignore the SSNs completely…. not going to win on that front. Settle your hovercraft inland to avoid the SSNs.

Its a very creative idea but not one that would earn you the gratitude of anyone actually participating in the operation!. The weather and sea state in that region do not easily lend themselves to any long range hovercraft travel. I do recommend you try a journey in a hovercraft in ‘inclement’ conditions…its a memorable experience. Zubr class units are listed as ‘seaworthy’ in SS4. I’d suggest that ‘seaworthy’ means something different to ‘operational with a full load’ so SS3 ‘slight’ sea conditions would be a big constraining factor.

The distance from Rio Gallegos to East Falkland is about 400nm. Thats at about the farthest extent of the range of a Zubr hovercraft but, more to the point, thats a 40knt cruise profile to get that range. 10hrs bouncing about in marginal conditions at 40knts in a Zubr is going to have a negative effect on any assault troops contained within!. I’d pity the civvies that follow up…especially if they have kiddies along!.

Then there are the further operational problems. For every assault-laden hovercraft there will have to be another with 110tons of fuel embarked alongside…otherwise they arent getting back home afterwards!. So if you need eight hulls to get a reinforced battn battlegroup ashore with first-day loggy support you’re actually sending 16 as just your ‘first wave’. Unless they can get a start in early advertising a new Armada ‘heavy hovercraft formula 1 racing series’ I think its fairly safe to say that Argentina ordering a couple of dozen Zubrs would be telegraphing their intentions quite distinctly!.

Then we look at what the UK could do to counter. Strategic surprise is obviously a non-starter for the Armada….but they could create tactical surprise easy enough with fairly elementary deceptive measures. It comes back though to that issue of needing max SS3 conditions and low winds for 48hrs+ for the transit, landing, and establishment phases of the operation. There will be fairly easily plotted, seasonal, metoc windows when this could be attempted…summer only for a start off!

The need for the defenders to go to a ‘heightened alert state’ could be quite easily predicted and plotted then. Even the high alert level needn’t be very costly either really. A fairly basic maritime radar recon capability (KingAir etc) would pick out a flotilla of 300ton vessels pulling 40knts easily enough and it would be difficult to ID that as anything other than what it is on the scope…few fishing boats travel in groups of four or more at 40knts!. Even then, fast though the hovercraft are compared to LST’s etc, they arent all that quick in cross-theatre terms. A detect at 100nm from a KingAir 50nm offshore is going to give over 3hrs alert before the first hovercraft hits the beach. More than ample time to get an Army Apache or RN Wildcat fourship det to a forward location, from MPA, and ready to jump off towards whatever point the hovercraft breach the 12 mile limit. A few Hellfire/Brimstone or a couple of Skua will mess up a Zubr pretty reliably before they get ashore. There would be little need to retask fastjets for the job.

Cant see hovercraft being the answer here then….now if the Russians had carried on with those marvellous Ekranoplans perhaps things would be different!

This all requires an aircraft capable of such roles. I think the JF-17 is the only aircraft that can fit the bill here and keep prices reasonable. I would imagine though it will take some time to happen, perhaps in 5-10 years or so.

Since the Sri Lankans are jointly training with the Pakistanis and there is a lot of military exchange, it makes sense to go for the JF-17 as it makes training and support relatively straight forward.

If there is a need for a new type then perhaps that may be true. Lets not forget that inducting a new type will bring a need for a new support train to be built up….for a small number of airframes. That is assuming that the F-7 is a more basic type of course.

The Israeli’s are, presently, pushing their refurbished and heavily upgraded Kfir fleet, at C10 standard, for $20mn a throw. They’ll plug straight in to the existing Kfir support and, save for radar/avionics, be online almost from delivery. Perhaps the JF-17 is newer and shinier, but, is that really important?. Seems to me that all thats required is good performance and a decent radar/missile fit?.

— OT start —
It may be technical and design achievement … can UK use it to its full potential? I guess not, it is build for pride not because of a requirement.

The UK requirement the CVF’s are built to is officially called Carrier Strike. That is the MoD’s requirement to be able to support deployed UK expeditionary forces ashore with tactical air support independant of local base-in constraints.

It is precisely this requirement definition that has allowed for the carriers to be STOVL and deliverable for such a modest build and operational cost. Had we gone down the ‘pride’ route and built full-up Fleet carriers, and not stuck the letter of the actual requirement from MoD, then you may have a point. For now though the CVF’s will be letter perfect for the job we need them to do. They will not be great for the blue water fleet role…but then the last carrier vs carrier fleet battle was 70yrs ago and not in our principle operating area.

Weaponry is not a major concern for the LCS as much as the mission modules are…If its power that you are concerned with you can always opt for bigger guns…But the mission mods need to come up in time and on spec. What would also need to be brought up is UCAV/UW solutions for the LCS..That could be something the USN is counting on…

Point is though b_i_o that the modules will evolve…the UAV’s/UCAV’s will become more capable, more mature and more deployable. At that point the ‘very expensive and under-equipped’ hull becomes a wonderfully valuable enabling platform and one with the handy inbuilt knack of being able to outpace heavyweight torpedoes launched from all but the closest ranges!. My point simply being that, as with the Spru’s, perhaps the best point to evaluate the LCS’s from would be a couple of decades from their early state!.

But they have stacks of space for UAV’s and specialist mission modules which in the years to come is likely to be extremely valuable as those technologies develop.

…that being precisely where I was driving with the comment!