Fed

Anyhow guys still want to do the HMS QE Key Pub forum float out gathering in a few years time with our honorary Brit Lieger invited of course! We can all sink a few beers then and laugh about it all…

…and doubtless still be arguing over the relative merits of the operating technique thats finally on the finished ships…and I will be quite happy to stand up the first round! Is the launch date finalised yet…I’ve lost track of the build schedule to be honest!.

I did not say they would fall out of the sky in large numbers jonesy,but their accident rate is liable to be higher than a ‘real’ a/c.

Your inference did seem to be that crucial bits would drop off in flight!. In my opinion you are vastly underestimating the challenges of CATOBAR!. CATOBAR, compared to STOVL landings, have an unfortunate tendency to bend entire airframes if you happen to get your sink rate a little wrong or if the deck happens to pitch up at an inopportune moment!. As I’ve mentioned before you also have the incidents that occur while aircraft are ‘at max-blast sat on the cat’ and with arresting-wire snaps. USN have lost aircraft and men during both evolutions within the last decade if memory serves.

Their serviceability rate is also liable to be much worse,just because of all the unnecessary extra systems/doors/propshaft/gearbox/clutch etc none of which (say) an F18 has! And we havent even touched on structural weakness (fin)/weight problems and the blowtorch a few inches from the deck,creeping weight on a ctol a/c might put your approach speed up a couple of knots but creeping weight on a stovl brings in other problems and all a/c gain weight as they ‘mature’.

Once again, yes, the plane is more mechanically complex individually. Against that though the ship is less mechanically complex….and considerably cheaper….if you want to minimise your maintenance overheads you reduce the number of aircraft embarked. Harder to reduce the overheads from the ships CATOBAR gear. As to weight increases through-life the aircraft may well do….but then is the thrust output in a current USMC HarrierII+ the same as that installed in an RAF GR.Mk3?. Why would engine thrust not evolve just the same as aircraft weight?.

Okay so Hammond is lying to the Commons and Defence Select Committee?

Sorry but I’m sticking with my adaptable carrier is nonsense theory. I wasn’t initially concerned when the armour and Sampson disappeared from the spec, I was a little more concerned when I read about the steel being cheaper and thinner than that normally used in Warships, now I’m convinced that CVF has been designed on the cheap.

I didnt say lying Kev I’m saying he hasnt the first clue what he’s talking about and is repeating the words written on his little flash cards. He’s not a credible commentator in my view as it is too easy for politicians know they are briefing committee with twaddle and to, apologetically, recant their words at a later date blaming ‘poor facts’ etc!.

CVF has been designed on the cheap….absolutely no doubt about it. the fact remains though that there is nothing extraordinarily difficult or technically challenging about the kind of works Prom listed. that is why I dont believe the figures mentioned for a single ship are genuine or solely for the acquisition/fitting costs. £1.5bn?. That ISNT what it costs to do the kind of work mentioned.

Geoff.

CAP the B with the shorter range and endurance will require more aircraft than the C to maintain coverage.

As I said only on the proviso that we try to use the ‘B’ variant exactly the same as the C variant. The rest of those points we have covered ad nauseum. Strike – If its a high threat environment send in a Storm Shadow…BROACH is the best penetrator we have anyway. If its a low threat environment go with external carry. Maintenance…you swap a more maintenance hungry aircraft with STOVL for a more maintenance hungry ship with CATOBAR.

Sorry, my mistake. Yes, he said it’s gone up from £950 mn (i.e. close to what the USN reckons it should cost) to £2 billion for PoW alone.

Something is very, very, wrong. After subtracting the cost of EMALS & AAG, that’s almost as much for redesign & extra building cost as the whole ship was going to cost before Brown stretched out the build. That’s crazy.

Indeed I suspect he’s got that wrong….unless he’s figuring in whole life costs of operating cat/trap on a CVF. Put in logistics, personnel, training and aircraft stresses from CATOBAR ops and it is conceivable you could add an additional £30mn a year in ops costs averaged out over a 30yr lifespan. Noteworthy that the USN figures didnt incorporate any value for this factor.

Geoff,

The whole concept of needing more F-35Bs to do the same work as the F-35C’s is a flawed piece of analysis. Its working on the premise of staging out x distance from the ship and loitering. With the longer endurance fewer F-35C’s would be needed, but, it relies on the fact that we would want to use the F-35B’s in such a fashion. Going forward we will want to do that less and less anyway as such ‘cab-ranking’ is using up expensive airframe hours on manned fastjets when cheap airframe hours on UAV’s can achieve the same effects.

Both carriers will not be deployable together save for in the direst national emergency. Operating both carriers together, routinely, has never been a requirement in the programme. What we have now is a plan for two operational ships able to cycle between duty and refit/extended readiness states to guarantee a deck at all times.

So you see the 12 aircraft of NSW with STOVL is the same as it would have been with the 12 aircraft with NSW as CATOBAR….its just that pilots for the STOVL jets will be much easier to come by and we wont have the up front costs of the CATOBAR gear on the ship or the operational costs of running that kit to keep the NSW lads in the air.

Problem with UCAV is:

a) Bandwidth.

b) Data link can be jammed.

c) A man has to be in the loop as nobody will trust an armed autonomous UCAV.

d) When people say they are finding solutions to “a” my answer is “b”.

The answers here are well known though Fed. Data compression, burst transmission, frequency agility, better lost-comms programming and more robustness in GPS all address a and b simultaneously and all are well mapped on their development paths.

Then you have to point out the jammer itself becomes a high value target and one that, by definition, is difficult to conceal. Conceivably the first targets for Fireshadow or Dellilah style loitering weapons, sent in ahead of UCAVs could be exactly those jammers when they fire up!.

So the Telegraph is backing up my version of events:

To soften the about face, the government line is:

The F35B will allow 2 carriers (with jets a flyin’ from them) sooner than the C would allow one.

Agreed. Can I just point out that here we are seeing an official commitment to full, year-round available, tactical naval-air at a capability level equal to F-18C (with LO and EODAS) and with high sortie generation rate potential. Thats far in excess of anything we’ve ever had before and hardly something to be glum about!.

The only thing that you could consider negative about this, apart from the time and money wasted by the 801 lads playing Top Gun over in the States, is that it means that we aren’t going to get 2 CATOBAR hulls with 3 dedicated naval tacair squadrons and a full revitalisation of the Fleet Air Arm. Seeings we weren’t going to get that with the CATOBAR plan anyway though….its hardly a loss!.

The very worst outcome here is that F-35B falls at the next fence but, by that point, we have two fully built carriers in the fleet or in trials!. If STOVL fails, depending on the finances of the day, we shift over to the by-then more proven EM catapult technology and spend £2bn retrofitting the carriers. Alternately we give SAAB a £billion to get Sea Gripen rolling, give McTaggarts a new DAX-II contract and run on with STOBAR for the forseeable. In the process giving the RAF back its STOL deployable light fighter capability and something able to relieve the QRA pressure on the Typhoon force.

As bad news goes, in UK defence, I’ve read worse.