JonesyAlso wrt ships reduction in acoustic signature is a main criteria and those specific measures are not visible externally.
Exactly right!. Stealth in the naval arena is about a lot more than just angled bulkheads.
JonesyEven at full power, it won’t rip the hook from the airframe?
No, Bager will likely be able to add detail, but its part of the Landing Signal Officers job to ensure the aircraft type and fuel weight is passed to the arresting engine crew so the correct tension is applied to the wires.
I believe the LSO does calls a trap and, obviously, a call goes out for a bolter…but I’ve never heard of a visual ‘trap indication’ in the cockpit.
JonesyFed
As an aside comment, I must admit Jonesy’s last comment on the matter in 2001 gave me a chuckle! Looks how things change, JSF is now the spiritual successor to FOAS and the shorter ranged F-35B at that!
I think that FOAS being scrapped for F35B was the about the only possibility I didnt hedge against there!. Though I did start out with the question as to whether a manned deep interdictor was a necessity!?.
Got to admit a degree of surprise that the conformal-tanked Typhoon never got more traction than it did.. back then I was spending a bit of time with BAE and EDS and Interdictor Typhoon did seem to be being talked about!!.
JonesyI dont think there can be any doubt that a pair of CATOBAR CVN’s, with dedicated naval squadrons embarked, plus a pair of 40,000ton LHD’s would represent a more powerful force mix than the QE class. The problem, for us, would be that buying and crewing them would leave them as the only operational ships in the Royal Navy!.
The QE’s are only, objectively, ‘better’ in terms of the way they meet our very specific, unique, requirements. We get a ship thats 75% of a CVN and 75% of a US style LHD rolled into one lean-manned and efficient hull. Importantly its one that allows us to deploy 130+ sortie naval tacair, where required, without all the operational costs of having permanent naval squadrons on dedicated Fleet Air Arm basing. So, on top of the above capabilities, we still get to afford to recapitalise the frigate fleet, reshape our MCMW and patrol capability and field a minimum nuclear deterrence.
If you compare it to the impact that the Charles de Gaulle had on the Marine Nationale equipment programmes, no disrespect intended, where they’ve had to soldier on with 1st-2nd gen SSN’s, 70’s era FFG’s, modest area AAW capabilities and all that for a single deck aviation capability…you see how much bang-for-the-buck the QE’s represent.
QE, to paraphrase the erudite Thaddeus, may be the poor mans way of doing things….but in my view he’s quite a smart poor man!.
JonesySmall matter of a $2bn+ 8 year long refit to get the Indian ship to somewhere approaching a service entry condition.
Clearly all they had to do was get the Chinese to set it up as an amusement park and it wouldve been just as good…how daft are the Indians not to have seen that!! :rolleyes:
JonesyThats exactly what she’s intended for Kilo. A QE would be useful to a USN CVSG more than in a CVSG. Essentially the QE would detach and cover the beach-head…allowing the CVN to operate without being tied to the fixed position.
The QE stands closer-in flying off high sortie rate strike ops while the CVN uses her superior mobility, wide area search platforms and longer-reach strike platforms to effect sea control and strike at high-value interdiction targets. Complimentary capability sets.
Thats not to say that CVF wont have any sea control capability…clearly a frigate/LPH navy opposing us would have serious troubles courtesy of a QE… similarly a CVN would not be unable to undertake high-intensity CAS ops. Maximising potentials it works as above though.
JonesyYes, how much that extra speed costs.
Exactly!. Marine propulsion obeys the law of diminishing returns with a vengeance. Adding that last 10% of performance can cost 50% or more on the installed power…which also means your plant size/bunkerage requirements increase….adding displacement and, possibly, beam….reducing performance!!!
Many naval architects have a masochistic streak and painkiller addictions.
JonesyEr…
That part says its a tourist attraction?.
JonesyI would have been happy if the CVF’s just had Catapults and Arresting Gear.
Sure others would agree with you. Operational reality though dictates otherwise. To go cats and traps would have demanded at least three frontline Fleet Air Arm squadrons and an OCU. That was never going to happen and its doubtful the RN could afford to stand up the squadrons, basing etc, etc alone.
Which, is why the Ford Class is cutting the number of crew. Even the US has its limits.
Some 20% as I understand it…does still leave a crew requirement of about 4000 though. This being equivalent to more than the combined crew of the next two largest serving foreign carriers….or a QE plus CdeG….or both QE’s fully manned!.
Lastly, all large carriers are designed as flexible platforms to project airpower. So, while the CVF’s aren’t as capable in a Blue Water Strike Role as say a Nimtiz Class Carrier. Doesn’t mean they’re not capable of such missions or will never perform them.
Yeah it really does Scooter. You want to explain how, perhaps, a 27knt carrier group closes the range on a 33knt group?. 6knts isnt much but over a 4 day chase thats nearly a 600nm distance advantage that the fast group has. Big difference.
Thaddeus,
Ford class can do 220. That’s an even better number.
No it really isnt when, to get it, a requirement exists to develop viciously expensive shore-side nuclear support infrastructure and berthing, train up 4000 personnel for crew and stand up four or more dedicated naval fighter squadrons plus basing. As you’ve been spoonfed several times…guess why a ludicrously massive spend like that is not going to happen?!.
….dude.
JonesyRealisticly the air group will be more like 20…….maybe.
Routinely the airgroup will be around that….in fastjet terms. You add rotaries to that which may be Chinook, Apache etc, etc and an augmented EMF…perhaps company sized…so what you get is a one-stop-shop capability for low-intensity intervention/sub-warfighting roles.
When it needs to warfight it is configured to deliver 136 sorties per day and that is a good number. Even cutting out CAP and support rotary sorties you have enough there, in an ’82 Falklands conflict scenario, to hit selected airport/infrastructure targets to close the air-bridge and target virtually every armoured vehicle, air defence system and significant artillery/AAA piece on the islands in one day…and do it from 300nm offshore!.
Jonesygents, not in a position to watch the video at the moment, but are they suggestiing they will got for the new LM kit? That is exciting if so…
Absolutely. There is no mention of LM kit specifically just, as Swerve says, that the Merlins will offer both ASW and ASAC.
The manner in which he states it though, to me…and I’ll have to watch it again, strongly suggested a swingrole capability between ASW and ASAC on the same airframes. To my mind that favours Vigilance.
JonesyNot necessarily, if this from graem65’s older link is correct-
Agreed, but, the whole Searchwater sliding rail setup looks a lot less ‘swingrole’ than Vigilance…especially given the comments made about the HM2’s standard console fit being designed to integrate with Vigilance ‘straight out the box’. Of the two it sounded very much like he was describing the LM product to me.
JonesyIf the figures are correct, then more than 290 compartments required major modification and a further 250 needed more modest modification. For a ship with 1200 compartments, that means 45% of the ship would have needed some level of alteration!!
I’m not sure the raw numbers tell the whole story though Graeme?. We arent talking about cutting the hull and inserting a plug, we arent talking about having to gut the ship out down to the engineering spaces. Predominantly the spaces that require modification would be those on 1 deck and just below, so, more fiddly than really difficult.
I think that brings home how invasive and substantial the machinery required for launching and recovering fast jets is.
That was a large part of the reason for STOVL in the first place…you get a very much cheaper ship upfront and, most importantly, whole life. You pay the price in the more expensive planes of course, but, if you can get by with fewer planes……!
It would seem that a ship not designed for this kit is effectively beyond economic conversion, even if its 65,000 tons.
That depends upon the justification for the spend surely?. If, berserk example, India was taken over by a nationalistic dictator who accelerated their carrier programme and announced a threat to the Persian Gulf would a few billion spent converting carriers suddenly be an economically sound investment?. Yep!.
With the adaptable design that remains a possibility….had we gone for a non-adaptable design, like the America class LHA type vessel many seem to favour, that would not be an option and we would be back to square one having to build a new CATOBAR carrier from scratch. An endeavour that would surely carry a bigger price tag than the cost of conversion all-in.
Fed,
Interesting. First confirmation I’ve seen of the 136 sorties full stretch!. Sounds a lot like Vigilance is it for Crowsnest with the comments made about a swingrole ASAC/ASW capability for the Merlin HM2’s. Thats exciting, if its not inferring too much, given the potential for Vigilance to interface with Sea Viper and FLAADS.
JonesyDont recall the gun turrets especially…though it was at Birkenhead bout 93ish?. I was a beardless boy of about 18 at the time and, being from that neck of the woods, was getting a serious amount of banter from a gang of civvy mates about having to come home on leave to get near a Russian ship!.
The abiding memory was that the 7 or so of us, being former grammar school rugby team types and fairly large units to a man, were considerably bigger than many of the rather pale and lightweight ‘visiting team’. We were viewed with considerable disdain during our tour as a consequence!. I’d just started on trade training and was getting to grips with GWS30, so, to have a look at an SA-N-7 launcher at the time was a big deal…which brought me to the red colouring on the weather deck and the aforementioned pithy epithet!.
Growing up around there I’d spent quite a bit of time at Cammell Lairds so I’d seen a fair few vessels in their red lead and the Russian practice seemed obvious. After all there would only, really, be one practical reason to put a red surface coat over red lead….and the ramifications of that, I think, would be worse!!!.
Yeah sounds like the experience you had was considerably different!. A Kresta though???. When?
JonesyI was fortunate enough to go aboard the Gremyashchy (also some years back) and she had a darker surface coat on the maindeck level which appeared more antiskid than anything else. A lot of the Northern Fleet destroyers seemed to have the same thing.
When asking about the red surfaces on the upper weather decks I mentioned ‘anti rust’ and got a grin and the word ‘simple’ back!. Maybe he wasnt quite as lyrical as the bloke you spoke to!!!.
I never got the sense it was slapdash at all, quite the opposite, and to be honest, after the stories of uncovered asbestos paint on interior surfaces, it didnt strike me as all that strange?.
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