JonesyFed,
UD DoD allegedly has VLBB at 142lb UNDER target set in KPP currently – which, as earlier described, is 2 x 1000lb JDAM and 2 x AIM-120 for about 3000lb total on top of reserve fuel.
There is not much margin for weight growth, but, were a very, very long way from saying that it cant VL with payload. With a loadout of a couple of 500lb PGMs or Brimstone class weapons and a couple of AAMs – as we’ve seen in Afghan and Libya you arent even close to the weight limits.
Can you provide a link to this issue of fuel carry as it really just does not make a great deal of sense?.
Swerve
Our term is generally between 4 and 4.5 years…I used 4 as shorthand. The issue is still that the gestation period for modern principle weapons systems is 3, 4 or more parliaments.
Is it always the case…no. I dont think you can argue that some projects are more political football than others. Carrier Strike seeming amongst the most evocative.
Other countries definietly do better…Japan for example…how much of that difference is cultural as opposed to functional?. i.e How much do the keiretsu linkages etc ensure that what needs doing gets done irrelevent of the actions of the official ministries?.
JonesyFed
We also have ACTUAL test pilots, of the F-35B’s, saying you can VL qual in a real F-35B in half a day!. We have Qinetiq saying that SRL is tested and eminently do-able…and in fact tested on smaller decks than CVF would have with lower powered jets!. We have Qinetiq saying that an SRL F-35B can brake stop, loaded, in 400ft of deck meaning we have hundreds of feet of margin left on the deck.
You cant have ‘marginal fuel states on return to a carrier’ with STOVL. Didnt Ward state that he tore strips of any man that returned to the ship with more than 500lbs left in the tanks in 82 as they werent trying hard enough in his opinion?. You only NEED significant reserves and recovery tankers with STOBAR and CATOBAR to allow for bolters or the attempt to pass enough gas for a diversion field. How do you bolter on a vertical landing or a 30knt overtake approach?. I’ve heard of cocked up VL sideslip approaches that miss the deck short and one incident were the aircraft translated too far on a duskers and got into the ‘dark side’ to starboard of the island on a CVS…both pilot error. I’ve never heard of one managing to bolter though.
Whether money saved will stay in the Defence budget is debateable. One thing for certain though is if its spent its gone. We have more to spend money on than just the carriers. If we can get some of the Carrier Strike money to come from the RAF we stand a greater chance of getting the rest of the kit we need than if we are paying for Carrier Strike solely from the RN allocation. Simple as that.
How are we trapped into the B variant when the carrier was always being designed to handle CATOBAR and the detailed design work for catapult fitment is actually being done by BAE now?. The original plan was for STOVL with the ability to convert to CATOBAR if STOVL was finished after F-35B. Just because we bounce between the two now makes no difference to the whole design concept.
19K11
In short the answer is yes we do need to be looking at new SSBN’s. To be a deterrent the nuclear explosive must be near-guaranteed to strike target. An interceptable deterrent isnt much of a deterrent is it?. Currently the only delivery system able to put a warhead on target, at range, with high confidence of success, regardless of defensive measure, is a ballistic re-entry vehicle from a submarine or land based launcher. Seeing land basing is out for us…were pretty much down to one option.
There is also the other point to note that, if we wish to retain sovereign nuclear submarine design and fabrication capability in country, we have to build subs. More SSNs would be nice…to stretch things out for the new SSBN but they dont appear forthcoming….and definitely wont be if we are messing around with catapults than for no other reason, at best, than a lack of belief in STOVL.
JonesySwerve,
The ‘current’ situation is not going to change until we abolish 4yr terms of office for the incumbent regime. Its too easy to blurt all the money away and leave a note for the next guy to take the seat saying ‘bad luck all the moneys gone’. That will never change….at least it hasnt since the advent of industrial warfare!.
Sacrificing Carrier Strike in the noble quest to rid ourselves of such partisan party political fart-arsing is simply ludicrous. At very worst reverting to STOVL pushes back the change to CATOBAR until we absolutely need it. That is for a situation where STOVL really has failed…which it demonstrably hasn’t at the moment….or when we NEED the payload/range and the country is willing to pay for full time Fleet Air Arm squadrons to deploy it. Neither of these situations exist now.
At best, if F-35B confounds the masses and actually works, STOVL offers the Royal Navy the chance to operate Carrier Strike with someone else footing a goodly share of the bill. The RN dont have to pay for the basing, dont have to pay for shore logistics, dont have to pay all the training costs and dont have to pay for a good number of aircraft.
This, in turn, means we CAN pay for the Type 26’s, CAN pay for the new SSBN’s etc, etc. It means we get the carriers and a foot in the door of naval aviation again.
It means that, down the line, if we face a developed threat in blue water and that new threat justifies Hawkeye, F-35C and CATOBAR UCAV’s then commensurate expenditure can be found. Having the ships adaptable we get the extra systems fitted and, most importantly, get the FAA fully reconstituted to deploy permanent multi-squadron airgroups. Seriously guys there just is no point in CATOBAR until we get that commitment to permanent squadrons…which deals the RAF out of the game and throws the whole jointness/basing/logistics thing right out of the window.
Fed,
Sorry pal but you are way off here:
Indeed CATOBAR leads to safer, easier and over the long term cheaper operations then the highly compromised F35B
STOVL is far safer operationally when compared to another single engined fastjet type. In maintenance terms current gen Harriers are far more efficient in maintenance than CATOBAR types. Stats will say otherwise but I’ve not seen one that includes the time and effort of the matelots keeping steam cats and arresting gear shiny and squared away in the figures….which they should if its a like-like comparison.
SRVL is a compromised concept and there are just too many risks involved for safe operations. F35B has virtually no bring back without tanker help and even then if something goes wrong the entire strike package will have to dump their very expensive munitions.
Once again SRL is the way Harriers land on airbases now….very few skid off the runway ever because its an inherently controlled landing.
http://www.qinetiq.com/news/pressreleases/Pages/qinetiq-completes-trials-using-vaac.aspx
The article above shows that far from SRL being risky its only been considered difficult in conditions of significant deck motion…little different to CATOBAR…and a solution to the SRL issue has been identified. You have to ask yourself whether a CATOBAR pilot would be comfortable approaching for an arrested landing, in heavy seas, with a heavy bombload still on his airframe. You rather suspect not!. The 240 SRL approaches indicated seems to suggest that the STOVL pilot may have a good fighting change at bringing his ordnance back….and that its going to be a fairly mundane technique if the conditions are more benign.
I’m not sure where the tanker element comes in?. STOVL recovery fuel margins can obviously lower than for CATOBAR. Its very hard to bolter when your approach is only about 30knts over ships rate of advance.
We have to be realistic, the treasury and MOD have made it VERY clear that they can’t afford to run both carriers at the same time
They will nearly never operate both at the same time anyway mate. The concept is duty carrier and readiness/refit carrier in rotating cycles. One carrier was stated as offering 220 days at sea coverage. If the next Libya happens on day 230 thats going to be an issue for our F-35C’s. They will have far superior payload and range than their STOVL counterparts but will, unforunately, not be displaying these superior qualities as they will have no ship to launch from. Unless there is, as the RAF always claim, friendly local base-in in which case why did we build that carrier again!?.
JonesyIsn’t Jonesy ex-RN? I thought he was some sort of missile tech?
Yup….obviously I’m a turncoat traitor 😉
JonesySwerve,
The way I see it we have two options:
a) stay with CATOBAR. Spend initially £900mn outfitting PoW. See QE built and undertake first of class sea trials then go into extended readiness by 2016. Britains biggest ever white elephant….hailed as such in full colour every week in the Guardian etc. A visible indication of the waste on defence and one for which we’ll all become very familiar with the number of hospitals and schools that could have been built with the same spend.
PoW, if it isnt cancelled on the slips in response to the hand-wringing public outcry, starts its operational trials from scratch as we, despite QE’s presence, haven’t been able to start working up deck procedures or operations. Depending on the success of the tailhook fix and the 35C production schedule we have a basic capability declared in, what, 2022 at the earliest?. So 6 years…with two huge carriers….and no operational capability. This is the way we are going to secure the funding for another £900mn for the QE’s cats is it?. More likely the hull is sold cheap to the French for their CdeG replacement after a few years!.
b) Revert to STOVL. Pay BAE their millions for their CATOBAR design work and keep the results on file to save spend in future should we have to go CATOBAR. QE goes into sea trials, completes, then uses the few F-35B’s delivered to start working up operational procedures. The only thing needing to happen from that point forward being the delivery of airframes for full operational capability. Duty/readiness cycles start with PoW’s commissioning.
For my money the type of aircraft is very important. One makes operations hard and costs upfront and one makes operations easy and doesnt.
JonesyWhy do you keep saying it’ll cost £1.2 to £1.8 billion to convert one carrier? What inside knowledge do you have?
We know what the cats & traps will cost: £500 million. I find it hard to believe that it’ll cost £700 million, let alone £1.3 billion extra, to leave off the ski-jump, make the other changes, & fit them. Remember, it isn’t necessary to rip apart a completed ship: we’re talking about a ship most of which hasn’t been built yet. The USN estimates that it should cost about £400 million. And that is the only number that anyone in an official position has put their name to.
If we do accept the £500mn kit plus £400mn for retrofit costing all we get from that is £900mn for one ship though Swerve.
I think there is general appreciation that just one ship offering a viable deployment option is that absolute last thing that any of us would want to see. So, in reality, its either £1.8bn for the two hulls or a very, very poor UK Carrier Strike capability. A capability, in fact, inferior to the 2 STOVL hulls as, no matter how dim your view of STOVL, its clear that any advantages from CATOBAR are worthless if the carrier is in refit and undeployable.
JonesyIndeed lots of “Bench” testing over the years but the aircraft is barely into its trials program. The real test will be down the line when the aircraft has been operated at sea and has plenty of landing cycles on the fan systems.
Entirely possible that issues will crop up. Reliability and performance issues have cropped up with CATOBAR jets enough and there are still loses of airframes from cat and wire related issues five decades after the steam catapult appeared!. Provided that perspective is appreciated and we see balanced comparisons I cant see, based on current performance, that STOVL is going to differ so much in early service to more conventional types.
Actually I agree Jonesy the issue of the engine possibly shredding itself in hover mode has been rather exaggerated. On the other hand the safety case in respect of bring back and SRVL vs hover landing is problematic for me.
Funny, after reading the Qinetiq stuff on the Bedford gear, I have no issues with SRL whatsoever for F-35B. I had no issues with it for Harrier as I must have seen it done 100 times in crosswinds, slick surface and almost every weather condition at Cottesmore over the years. I dont recall a single one as much as slipping off onto the grass!.
JonesyOne post mentioned ” Heath Robinson ” ??
I’m just waiting for the first catastophic breakdown of this differential / gearbox , lash up . ….
You arent alone in that one. In fact people have been saying its been ‘waiting to happen’ since RR first started testing in 2001. 11yrs later and still we havent got the evidence of shredded clutch plates and shot bearings to support the idea. Not much heath robinson about a new design that has not catastrophically failed in 11yrs of testing.
JonesyBen
F-35B puts the cold fan efflux forward and the hot nozzle right aft so hot gas ingestion should be much reduced from Harrier and the whole yaw issue no longer applies as the thrust columns are no longer bifurcated. Total US and UK Harrier loses over the last 20 years, owing to actual or possible mechanical causes, amounts to about 18 aircraft.
Little different to the numbers of Tomcats and Hornets lost over the same period for the same reasons…the differences being instances like the Super Hornet who trapped a wire only for it to break dumping the aircraft over the side or the Hornet who’s engine blew up on the cat…and then there were instances like the RN F-4 incident I mentioned earlier were a landing was a bit on the brutal side and the aircaft ended up being craned off the ship!.
Swings and roundabouts really. Certainly no justification in the loss records, for mechanical reasons, to single out STOVL as particularly bad.
JonesyRick
However any modern AAW missile, even the most sophisticated such as the Aster-30, cannot lock the target with its radar from the beginning.
The flight trajectory and a midcourse update must be performed, and calculated.
This is the case for a full area defence capability with a long range missile and a target that you can track at range i.e an altitude target or something CEC-linked. The midcourse is, naturally, needed to update the outbound SAM as to the correct seeker capture point as it changes through the flight profile. A local area capability realistically need not have this though. The inbounds will be plotted as they cross the horizon and even a Mach2 inbound at 12 miles, with a M3 interceptor, is going to give the system ample time for two salvoes with shoot-look-shoot a real possibility.
Then, of course, I don’t know the CMS capability of the new type 26, but, since this is A VERY COSTLY THING, I really don’t understand why building a local area defence CMS and not using a missile in the Aster-30 class.
As earlier described though FLAADS is being designed expressly to provide local area defence off a shorter range ‘cheap’ missile and a conventional 3D TI capable Medium Range Radar – you have to assume that to meet that requirement the combat system is going to be capable of the number crunching. At the shorter range you dont need frequent updates from pencil beamshifting high-end radars etc anyway as your SAM goes seeker active near enough at tipover anyway!. All you need is the initial steer to align the seeker head to put the target in its field of view. So why bolt on the expensive AESA set?.
Also because up to 8km, the best AAW defense is with guns (and guided ammo) and not with missile.
All well and good, but, we are talking about AAW capabilty out to 12 nautical miles here…over 20km…not point defense under 8km. If the frigate wants to mount a Strales gun for point defence inside the FLAADS envelope I’d say those would be complimentary capabilities.
JonesyRick,
Here two concepts are being discussed both which hinge on whats called ‘cross-range’ ability. You term it ‘beta angle’ but its the same thing. They are area defence and local area defence. You are of course quite right in your definitions of point defence and area defence.
Quite often, especially recently, missiles defined as point defence like ESSM and Shtil have the kinematic cross-range performance to engage a non zero-bearing-rate target. The difficulty in getting this performance is in the shipboard illuminator and seeker head. A SARH missile seeker effectively looks for the the RF return gradient off the target and flies for the highest return. With a crossing target the highest gradient is always going to be tracking along the targets flightplan. The missile seeker therefore has to plug in some angular offset value to lead the target. A zero bearing rate target doesnt require this. So missiles dependent on shipboard fire channels are less able to cope with ‘area’ targets despite the missile itself having the performance to manage it. Long-range area weapons with TVM/SARH etc do not suffer this limitation as, at range, the bearing rate change to lead the target is far smaller…even for a very fast inbound.
With the advent of active seekers on PDMS’s though the guidance limitation disappears and to engage a crossing target all you need is that kinematic performance and the Target Indication radar to provide is the intercept point to allow for the missile seeker to ‘capture’ the target when it activates. You can do that at 50km downrange if you have the OTH ability or an altitude target….or you can do that at horizon range with a fast enough missile.
Sea Ceptor has the advantage of being a fast missile with, apparently, the kinematics of an ESSM type weapon….plus it will be ‘cheap enough’ to be provided on every frigate in the escort group. So suddenly every ship in the escort is capable of overlapping missile engagement zones so that any threat axis in a rough 12nm radius is covered by mutiple intercept vectors. Put 3 or 4 frigates in a 3nm seperated formation round a hvu group and you have a lot of defensive fire options in the local area zone to get the sea ceptor the lead angle to make the crossing intercept.
The point about the AESA array without the VSR is that volume search from this kind of radar often takes a lot of the radars processing power and operational capability. That can degrade its abilities to run concurrent functions. The VSR offloads the MFR and allows it to focus on the high-resolution tasks that its best at.
JonesyDepends on how you read the government statement “routinely embark a squadron of 12 airplanes”.
RAF crews or not, depending on what they intend for routine, with 3 or even 4 squadrons they will effectively be all naval-role squadrons to sustain the presence of one squadron aboard “routinely”.
Not the way I’ve seen it described. The 12 cab minimum is the designated Naval Strike Wing. This will have a pool of airframes and cadre of, I believe, about 18 pilots was mentioned intended to keep the minimum fastjet complement embarked. Pilots will rotate through the OCU and secondment to maintain the cadre. Airframes will similarly be rotated to spread wear over the fleet.
RAF pilots from the joint squadrons will second to NSW to get deck training on type and learn the peculiarities of naval ops and there will be simulator time for all of course. The issue is though that, if we do have short notice requirement to deploy a high sortie rate strike capability, we are going to have to pick through the OCU and RAF squadrons for pilots with recent enough deck experience that they can get out to the ship and requalify in time to be useful. In 82 that was difficult to do with two decks and STOVL. With CATOBAR we’ll have to get up to 20 pilots back up to ops readiness with a single deck. Problem.
JonesyTypical Bill Sweetman article… no mention of the USMC’s operation of over 200 second-generation Harriers… including from ships (the whole focus of the article).
Couldnt agree more. This quote caps it for me from the section lauding Brazils CATOBAR selection:
The Skyhawk is subsonic—but so is any land-based adversary in oceanic operations, unless the pilot feels like walking home. Unlike either Stovl or Stobar ships, the Sao Paulo will have a tanker, literally a life-saver if there are jets in the pattern and the deck is fouled by a malfunctioning aircraft.
I cant even begin to describe how one-eyed this is….to the point I’m stunned it was published!. Skyhawk offers inferior performance to STOVL F-35B but thats fine because any inbound striker will also be subsonic?. Why is it again that F-35B is so hobbled and such a poor solution for fleet air defence needs?.
Sao Paulo has a modest AAR tanker which ‘is an advantage for recovery tanking’. This is despite the fact that India is getting the UPAZ buddy store, for its STOBAR Fulcrums, for exactly the same tasking and doesnt have to have a seperate type, with its logistics footprint, embarked and its hard to foul a deck such that a STOVL type cant set down somewhere along its length….obviating the need for a recovery tanker in the first place!.
Unbelievable!
JonesyJonsey your obviously STOVL biased but the F-35B has along way to go yet to prove its viability and servicability and only the foolish would put all their faith in it before it has done so. Don’t forget the same guys who cocked up on the F-35C Arrestor hook location also designed the F-35B !!!!!
Absolutely Geoff the F-35B does still have to prove itself. All through this I’ve stated and restated that ad nauseum. Thing is though IF it does come good its cheaper upfront and fits the way we are going to fly jets from the ships….which is not having permanently assigned naval squadrons like the way everyone else does it. Those key features alone just are so much more crucial to our force projection capability than this payload/range gash.
JonesyIts a lot simpler to fix the tailhook than the F-35B. JSF should have been about common engines and avionics, not common airframes. Making them fit a STOVL system inside a conventional airframe really limited options and made all three variants somewhat sub-optimal.
Not necessarily Ben. The problem with the hook is the siting of it under the rear fuselage. The wire has no time to sufficient raise up after being flattened by the rear undercarriage to allow the hook point to get under and catch it. If the heath robinson hold down damper fix isnt reliable or leads to deck/hook damage in overcooked landings (how do you get a CATOBAR jet down that has ripped its tailhook off?!!) then there is no other option than an aft fuselage redesign. At this point that would be an issue that dwarves a few ropey door actuators on the 35B!.
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