Prom

Where the aircraft is providing close support to ground troops, they need it now, not some time in the future.

Thats again on the proviso that the particular patrol slot covers the area where you need to react second-to-second. If the contact is 100km away the airborne CAP is still going to have to transit and assess…it wont be any more capable of the hair-trigger response you are discussing than if it were sitting on a ship 200nm away. Like I said before a quick draft of a flying programme puts the requirement for 24hrs CAP pair coverage on station at 300nm at 20 aircraft flying give or take 60 sorties. Add in buddy stored recovery tanker sorties and a few top cover slots and your 100 sortie a day surge capability is looking a bit on the light side. Thats not a very smart way to operate.

Lets fact it, the F-35C has more endurance and thus more loiter; more usable weapon load, and more bring back. The only advantage of the F-35B is the ability to operate from rough airfields and small areas etc. But its not VTO so it is not as flexible as the harrier. How often has the harrier used that capability for real? Not much

STO was key in Kandahar as we had no other fastjet that could use that strip to deploy combat capability. The naval deployment short deck option allowed Italian and US Harriers to contribute in Libya. Thats 2 current ones.

CATOBAR always gives us a bigger variety of aircraft we can operate (incl the F35B of course) now and in the future. It also gives us for free a bigger variety of UAVs we can operate.

Fair enough but that is a bit of a nebulous argument when we are talking about affordability right now. In the future, if we NEED to deploy a wider variety of aircraft, we convert to CATOBAR. Right now there is no need for it….certainly no need that obliges us to spend an extra £1.8bn.

So it comes down to cost, can we afford it (the cost of conversion)? We know that the F35-B costs more to buy, costs more to run through life, will cost more in weapons dumped.

…and against that we know that the CATOBAR CVF costs more to buy up front and incurs no small measure of additional costs shipboard in extra ships complement plus further major systems aboard ship to operate/support. We also know that those costs would be fixed. Choosing a smaller airgroup with STOVL reduces deployment costs dramatically. Reducing a CATOBAR airgroup does little but to concentrate launch/trap cycle useage on a small group of airframes. The recurring operational and training costs are little changed.

The leaked paper suggests that we would need to buy more. well to produce the same time over target; or the same weapons dropped on target we would need more because of the endurance and weapons load.

Like I said a very narrow focus. Appears to be a simple division of total ordnance delivery by individual loadout. Far too simplistic a metric to derive any operational conclusion.

If it is a question of not affording it up-front, then I would rather convert and buy the aircraft at a slower rate.

…and thats exactly what you cant do with CATOBAR, but, can do with STOVL. With CATOBAR you have airframe limits on catapult launch and trap cycles. Keeping the airframe pool small accelerates the burn through of those cycles. You end up with follow on batches becoming essential to keep the force level viable. You can mitigate this training on other peoples carrier jets, but thats coming at an additional cost, or, on other types for everything bar carrier specific tranining with the issues of type familiarity. STOVL has no problems in this regard.

I’ll balance the thing then. F-35B.

Actually useable off their new through-decks. Plus, as Comoford says, suddenly lots of short hard surface strips in theatre that become deployment options.

Kev,

Agreed…but again there are options there to keep that range at, near, or even over the 500nm mark. SDB-I and -II should we decide to buy it, SPEAR cap3 intended to provide an internal carry 75nm stand-off capability etc. The options to get even ‘cheap’ precision strike effect are there.

Obligatory,

That’s the catch IMO, but let’s assume you find yourself in an urgent need of proper AEW protection for possible/probable air strikes,
how long would it take to make a quick-fix 2x Osprey + Erieye, like you did with helo + Searchwater ? (and approximate cost)
Quite a while ago, a SAAB 340 AEW was quoted as ~$100 million including support

If you believe Thales and LockMart we could UOR half a dozen Ospreys and have them kitted out with Cerberus or Vigilance a week next Thursday. Assuming, for the Thales offering, that we’d port across the black boxes and antenna’s from the baggie SK’s it could conceivably be quite reasonable on startup costs as well.

Truth is though you need to think about the air strikes CVF will have to face in its conceivable operational scenarios. These bear much more similarity to what was faced in 1982 than the sort of things Clancy wrote about in Red Storm Rising!. Take a ‘threat state’ like Venezuela perhaps….a handful of tactical fighter squadrons…little maritime patrol capability. You could go there with ASaC7 aboard CVF and there’d be no issue. ISTAR is as vital to CVF operations, likely more so, as AEW…especially with T45 goalkeeping on the CVF group. Without ISTAR provision CVF achieves very little.

Baz,

Now come on Jonesy…you know very well that if you have a ‘real’ carrier then you also have Tankers available so your sortie duration can be somewhat longer 😉

Still having to launch more aircraft to extend the on-station pair though arent you? ;). In my view you let the cheap and pilotless do the orbitting and keep the shooters nearby for fast reaction effects!.

And if the target is inland do you want to fit wheels to QEC so that we can base the aircraft closer?

If you only launch when the UAV finds a target, that target will probably have gone by the time the aircraft gets there. If it was a nice fixed static target we could hit it with tomahawk or predator

Think about the loitering needed for Libya for example

Was rather assuming that the UAV would hold the contact through the engagement cycle.. Rafale M was over target 20 mins from launch in the Libya op and had go through the catobar machinations to get up!. How far inland is your ISTAR reaching to pick up emerging targets? How much further than 300nm do you want to cab rank your fighters if you ‘only’ get 80 minutes on station at 300?.

Remember F-35B isn’t Harrier either. With standoff weapons strike radius is allegedly near 500nm. I think some people lose focus on what that means in concentrating on the numbers. Its equivalent to hitting Orlando from a posit just off the Caymans, hitting Paris from a carrier parked in Galway bay or hitting Hong Kong from a short strip just outside of Taipei!. Its still a decent strike reach!

1) if the cost of converting QEC for full CATOBAR really is £1.8bn, your low power E-M catapult will of course be cheaper to buy, so that saves half of the EMALS cost, but presumably installation, training, systems changes will be about as much. Indeed you would need both the CATOBAR systems and the STOVL systems if you only installed it. Also deck layout and training would be more complicated. So I’m struggling to see how this would be affordable given it is going to cost north of £1.5bn

Either way, I can’t see why your option gives good value for money Jonesy

We’re only talking about a low voltage catapult able to launch a 9 tonne UAV Prom. Its not going to be anything like a full EMALS fit. The flight deck width is easily there to set up a shallow-angled landing run and, indeed, if we are going to SRL F-35B’s with any frequency it could be that we go that route anyway. The only thing that you may have to carry over in full from CATOBAR could be the DAX gear IF the UAV would even require that. I imagine a lot would hinge on the UAV approach speed and gust response characteristics.

Operational costs….wire/cat life etc arent going to be anything like a full CATOBAR setup. Seeings your UAV’s have endurances of 24hrs+ your ‘CATOBAR’ flying programme is launch today…..land tomorrow!. Its not going to be difficult to fit a STOVL/rotary flying programme around that. Extra training/support requirements will be there for supporting the cat/trap but, again, this may not even require a full-time manning and could, in theory, be passed to existing engineering teams as a secondary duty….something you definitely could not do for high-tempo systems as in full CATOBAR.

2) If the cost of converting QEC/POW is much less, then why aren’t we doing it?

Honestly I’ve no idea. To me as soon as it became obvious that we had an air vehicle with the payload and power generation to lift a Searchwater sized set, and keep it up for 24hrs+, its prime contender for MASC/Crowsnest/Scavenger and however many other programmes we can adapt it to fit. Optimally this is a variant of BAE’s Mantis….otherwise Guardian/Mariner is a variant on MQ-9 and we know all about that chappy too.

I’m afraid I do not see the logic in that at all!. You’ll have to forgive me if I put words in your mouth Distiller but you seem to be saying ‘build a Fleet carrier or forget it’?. Once again why do we need to build the centrepiece of Europes 1st Fleet? Europe aren’t offering to pay for the catobar conversion or offering to contribute to the costs of establishing permanent naval squadrons to fly off them!. We have no requirement to go after China or India alone, but, we have been involved bombing Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya since the end of Desert Storm!.

If we do have to go in somewhere hotter with STOVL, on the proviso the 35B makes it, there is a simple division of tasking with someone elses carrier and/ or strategic-range air doing battlespace domination and deep strike and we do CAS/BAI at 100 sorties per day while we get beachhead/airhead established. Noteworthy contribution any way you cut it.

We therefore are building ships that let us generate high sortie rates of precision strike effect at 400nm+ from the ship without all of the usual naval tacair cost. Moreso its a capability that can be converted to a more conventional role should it ever be required and that spend justified which it isnt and can’t be today. To me, for what we want to use naval air to do, STOVL CVF and Carrier Strike were real winning ideas and condemning them for not being something they have never been designed to be is unfair comment.

No problem with VTOL if your ambition is set to bomb insurgents in former colonies,
but if you’re going up against one of your own size, or control over sea lines, (used to be UK top priority) you’ll need AWAC & long range recce/strike/CAP,
and that will remain preserved for cats n traps

Not intending to do more than drop bombs on, at most, regional power level states!. Who is there who’s frigate/ssk navy could challenge us in bluewater and precisely what is our brigade-level landing capability going to do against regional superpowers?. You seem to be advocating unrequired capability levels for no better reason than to show ‘ambition’. Shame.

We’ve paid the Carrier Alliance to develop detailed engineering plans for the conversion of STOVL CVF to CATOBAR CVF. Do we expect them to be thrown in the bin now they may not be required?.

If we accept that, at some point, we may see a change in our threat environment, and need a different capability set out of the carriers than they are optimised for as built, then having those plans filed away and ready to be put out to tender is going to be a real bonus if that contingency arises.

It is inefficient but the money isnt necessarily wasted.