Jonesy:

I am quite surprised that you do indeed think that shuttling RAF planes from one air base to another is a good use of an aircraft carrier. I see it as a complete negation of the inherent flexibility of naval air power. Likewise, I find your distinction between a strike carrier and a fleet carrier a bit artificial. A carrier with, say, 36 F35s on board, whether B or C type, could oerform either role. It’s all about flexibility.

I’m afraid to say that I am not surprised at all by your lack of comprehension of naval planning or the important distinctions between carrier types.

As already explained to you a ship is commissioned to deploy a specific capability against a quantified threat level. To deliver Carrier Strike it has been determined that we need two 65k ton carriers so those are being built. Carrier Strike’s key mission deliverable is tacair in support of forces ashore. The thing you need to understand is that the primary concern is the provision of the air power not the carrier platform itself – basic military planning demands some form of redundancy to ensure that provision.

With a single ‘duty’ deck it is impossible to build in any redundancy into Carrier Strike with seagoing assets. We have no alternative then other than to look at shore basing options for that redundancy. Developing the Carrier Strike concept to enhance the options for forward deployment ashore, if simply to take advantage of a favourable strategic situation as a force multiplier, is only sensible contingency planning. Naturally the ship will remain the preferred operating platform in theatre as it organically offers logistics support and a defended position.

Strike Carrier or Fleet Carrier requires an understanding of the difference between the two types of vessel. A Fleet carrier, put simply, is one designed for Fleet actions i.e high speed deployment for rapid transit inter- and intra-theatre and for manouevre warfare. A Fleet Carrier is characterised by possessing the performance to centre a destroyer/cruiser and FF group and use its speed and battlespace awareness to engage in fleet-on-fleet actions.

A Strike Carrier does not possess the performance of a Fleet unit so it will not be part of a fast carrier group as, on the cruise, it may be closer to the amphib groups rate of advance than an escort group. Not having the performance to adequately undertake fleet ops the airwing need not be optimised for such.

So you have proper ‘fleet operations capable’ aircraft carriers like the US CVNs capable of sustained cruising 28knts+ pushing up a fair bit again when answering the flank bell – as opposed to CVF hopefully in the 20knts region on the cruise. Thats your difference and there is nothing ‘artificial’ about it.

My argument is that this should never have happened, and would not if only the Royal Navy had shown the sort of commitment to its carrier force that the French Navy did.

John have a look at when the French started contemplating what they wanted to replace the Clemenceau’s with. Have a look at when CdeG was laid down. We had real operational issues to deal with then and CATOBAR CV’s had NO VALUE in the operations we were dealing with.

After the Cold War we had a Govt. implementing “Options for Change” for chrissakes talking about cashing in on the ‘Peace Dividend’ . I remember it clearly as it stunted my naval career quite comprehensively!. We were not encouraged to be looking for ways to spend huge amounts on defence for most of the early to mid 90’s and after that is when CVF started to appear on the scope.

Castigate the titular ‘silent service’ for not being so adept at political infighting all you like, but, dont criticise the RN for prioritising the systems we needed….escorts and SSN’s over a fastjet naval air that, at the time the French were contemplating their new CVN, we just didnt have good justification for.

Saying that the royal navy should have its own aircraft to me is as nonsensical as saying the RAF should own its own CVF.

I’m afraid Red thats a typical light blue mistake and it clearly indicates the problem we face. Operating aircraft from ships is a very different discipline than doing so off a shore base. Just the routine shipboard operations of stores stowage, access and resupply or the length of the working day changes the nature of the duty. I know as many crabs who really couldn’t take to life at sea as those who thoroughly loved it. Dedicated naval aircraft, tended by dedicated naval support personnel and practised in the art of operations from a carrier deck is the optimal solution there is no debating that. To do the wider job of naval aviation employment there is no way the RAF could keep hold of ‘everything that flies’ because they dont know enough about the job.

CVF and Carrier Strike offered the best alternate solution – seeing that we were never even close to getting that optimal solution. A core of naval aircraft looked after by naval personnel, but, able to be rapidly augmented by RAF squadrons in times of need had a lot going for it and STOVL enabled that seamlessly. CATOBAR places the Deck Quals limitation in the way of that. Follow it up with RAF stupidity in axeing Harrier, a rapid deployable precision strike aircraft perfectly tailored to the kind of threats we will be looking at over the next decade (witness Libya) undermining STOVL, and a Treasury looking to rid itself of a billions worth of Deep Persistant Strike programme have conspired to make CVF Carrier Strike more unworkable than it ever has been though.

Now with regards to blue water threats, you cannot know who’s going to be your friend in 20 years’ time within that time new aircraft carriers will be coming online around the world. China and Russia are both committed to new programs. And of course France already has one!! :diablo:

You can know who will have the tools and skillset to present a threat in bluewater though. Russia has an entire escort fleet to recapitalise and then get up to speed using. It needs to rebuild its SSN fleet with the latest quality gear they have needing to filter through. China is too low on the learning curve and simple chucking of money doesnt buy experience they have to learn the lessons of how to employ the systems they are now building. In 20 years time I’m sure they could both be there or thereabouts….but not much before that.

With regards to the B versus C argument I agree with jonesy the versatility of the STOVL outweighs a few extra miles and pounds! Just a quick question does anybody know if the F-35b is capable of catapult launch?

F-35B would never need to be catapult launched so it would never be fitted out for such. The extra weight of structural stiffening would be completely at odds with the need to lighten the airframe for STOVL. Interesting that you see the versatility of STOVL, but, dont see that the Harrier was a more relevent capability set to keep than Tornado?.

John,

You seem to be putting a lot of focus into getting the cart before the horse here. The carrier is the end of the process in acquisition not the start. We don’t build them to keep up with the French, to impress the Americans or so that internet warriors can play today’s equivalent of Top Trumps on august fora such as this!.

A carrier is the net result of a defined military requirement. In our case the requirement that has led to CVF is Carrier Strike which is a capability set intended to provide force projection capability in low-middle intensity conflicts alone and, in coalition, in major conflicts. That requirement builds us two 65k ton carriers that will last between two and three generations ok?. Once we have the ships built we can adapt them to the prevailing threat level of the day with the budget availability of the day. We must have the ships first though.

Your way, that Fleet Carriers with dedicated FAA airwings should have been built, leads to a fall at the first hurdle as no-one can justify the spend with a real military requirement. I notice you dodged the question of where the bluewater military threat was….the team trying to get that pushed through would have similar difficulty just without the luxury of ignorance as a defence. So, far from a better end result, we end up with no aircraft carriers at all….in 10 years or otherwise.

I, genuinely, would love to know where you get the concept from that Fleet CVF with permanent FAA CATOBAR squadrons was ever something that was available for the RN to accept less than?.

I have no doubt that the RAF will see it, as you give the impression of doing, as a means os moving RAF aircarft from one air base to another.

Absolutely. That is the price of CATOBAR and the additionalpayload/range you seemed to find so important. With STOVL the aircraft would have been as easily operable from ship or shore so the light blue would have had a vested interest in CVF. The thing we dont have so readily now is the ability to push the airgroup ashore so, now, we will have to be that much more defensive of the single deck. You may pour scorn on the concept of forward deploying the aircraft, but, simply it could be the difference, one day, of keeping in a fight or having to make a distastefully hasty exit from theatre. Professionals always talk of capability before platform.

My point is that there should have been. The Royal Navy should have had the confidence to look to the future and plan for a new aircraft after the Harrier/Invincible combination retired. There was no need to stay with STOVL, and the Eurofighter would have been the ideal project to have navalised. The RAF were committed to it, and the French wanted a naval fighter too. They would be in service by now, and we would not be waiting for the “jam tomorrow”, or rather in 10 years, of F35Cs which may or may not actually be bought. My point is that the French had the self-confidence and foresight to say that they were sticking with conventional carrier air power and wanted a new fighter. In Britain, as usual, we muddled along and ended up with the worst outcome possible: no carriers and no aircraft. Compared to that, Charles de Gaulle and the Rafale M don’t seem so shabby do they?

John will you appreciate that in the context of the Royal Navy’s role in any conceived Cold War WW3 scenario 3 CVS’s with heavily weighted rotary-wing airgroups would have been far more useful an asset to have than a single CVN. The RN’s task was not to steam around to the Kola peninsular and start sending off WE177’d Bucc strikes….it was to win the “Battle of the Atlantic part 2” primarily against Soviet Northern Fleet submarine and surface units. Hunter-killer ASW surface taskgroups built around a CVS and its rotary airwing backed by a flotilla of first-class SSN’s with SSK’s gatekeeping on the GIUK were the systems to do this. A CVN, designed to follow on from the CVS’s, would have drawn money away from the T23’s and T-class SSN’s that formed the backbone of our fleet ASW capability just as the deGaulle drew that money from the French fleet.

You do realise that you are condemning the RN for not having the “foresight” to take money away from the platforms we operationally needed at the time and putting it into a platform that we didn’t!.

As far as I can tell, the reason was that Joint Force Harrier kept the RAF on board, and the RAF wanted to keep a STOVL capability after the Harriers retired, so the Navy was happy to go along with STOVL

STOVL had other benefits for the type of operations we wanted from CVF. The requirement for the ‘golf bag’ approach to carrier airwing deployment is, as far as I know, unique to us. CVF has never been intended to be a normal fleet carrier in the US or French model despite its size. Too many people cannot cope with this idea, but, it is the truth.

RN planning incorporates the knowledge that if we only have one deck in a task group our operations we will always be vulnerable to the loss of that deck either permanently through enemy action or temporarily through mechanical failure or accident etc. Knowing that we wouldn’t be deploying two big decks together short of the direst national emergency UK MoD planning has always been to minimise the risk to an operation caused by the loss of that single deck. Our planning therefore called for the deliberate deployment of the fastjet airgroup ashore to an austere operating location at the earliest opportunity should it be available and necessary. STOVL enabled that approach.

STOVL also brought operational advantages in terms outlined above in deployability, cross-training with the RAF, adverse weather operation and, importantly for the RN, it allowed for a cheaper and mechanically simpler carrier design to be built. Some in the RN wanted CATOBAR all the way through, but, STOVL always had its champions for very good reason.

My issues with the F35B are inter alia It cannot land back on fully loaded with weapons so some may have to be dumped in the sea.

That was an issue projected to be resolved with the short rolling landing (SRL) technique in the, anticipated, odd circumstance it was required. It being worth noting that reserve fuel limits for a STOVL jet could be much lower than for a CATOBAR one owing to the difficulty of a STOVL bolter so whole airframe return weight could be at a much different payload/fuel ratio than for a CATOBAR jet!. SRL onto a 65000ton carrier being an entirely different proposition than trying the same manoever on a 20k ton CVS of course.

No contention here that F-35B is having a difficult time of it. STOVL is, naturally, only an option if there is a viable STOVL jet to select. My point here isnt that F-35B is viable at this time…..patently it has some way still to go and, if, the UK CVF decision to go CATOBAR was predicated on a lack of confidence in F-35B there is obvious justification for that.

My point was to respond to John’s assertion that there never was any sense in CVF being STOVL. Hopefully I’ve now been able to illustrate why STOVL was the right choice, for our very specific requirements with CVF, and why CATOBAR now carries attendant, significant, dangers for operations the way UK MoD currently envisage them.

If it does, compared to a conventional F35 it will be more expensive, more complicated, and carry less ordnance with less range.

Once again John what possible importance do you think those factors have?. Mission capability is the key metric. A fighter with less complexity, more range, more payload and cheaper is not a better answer if it isnt in theatre!.

Let me use the current Libya situation to illustrate in the simplest terms I can imagine. CVF is optimised, under routine deployment conditions, for precisely this kind of ‘hotspot’ crisis intervention. The ‘golf bag’ approach sees the vessel sailing with a squadron of F-35B’s, a few Chinny’s, a det of Apaches and the usual naval choppers. The order to commence air ops against specific point targets is given and, in conjunction with RN TLAM, F-35B’s with Storm Shadow start knocking out coastal installations and airfield targets with the CVF standing off 600nm in the Med.

Fresh orders for an intensive air campaign are generated from Northwood and a deployment order goes out to the ready F-35B squadron in the UK or, for that matter, anywhere else. The squadron air ops team stages the squadron to Goia de Colle and, from there, they fly out straight to the carrier, regardless of whether the pilots have operated from a ship before, land on and start finding their bunks while their aircraft are turned around. UNREP is tasked to meet up with CVF to offload stores commensurate with the larger fastjet group. After the newly arrived squadrons aircraft are regenerated the pilots attend their first strike briefing and the ship starts flying off strikes with a full readiness two squadron airgroup.

Compare this to CATOBAR where the action happens the same right up until we need to deploy additional fastjets to the ship – save for the fact that the CVF is now able to stand off 700nm in the Med!!!. Then we have to find pilots with current deck quals in the general community and get them reassigned to a readiness squadron. If there are none available locally then any pilots with deck experience will have to have a few quick runs through the simulator then stage out to the ship – then spend a day or two getting their CATOBAR deck quals and only after that start on the business of operations. All the while thats going on the group has to attempt to do its best with the original 12 or 14 planes from the ships own squadron.

On paper your payload/range/cost issues have merit. In the real world its the systems you can use, that offer flexibility and deployability that are king though. IF we had the political will for full time naval aviation and two or three permanent FAA fastjet squadrons with a dedicated pool of CATOBAR rated pilots sure then CATOBAR makes sense. We dont have that though. So it doesnt.

Which sounds great in theory……much like the Cyclone class patrol boats that were to be so heavily utilised by SF that three ended up with the coastguard and one donated to the Philipines!.

The reality is that Special Ops are, generally, more about intel gathering with the precision use of highly focused and tailored weapon effects only when use of force is cleared. An MQ-9 orbitting at medium altitude, above easy visual recognition from the ground, conducting continuous surveillance ops, with a handful of Viper Strikes aboard waiting to pick out pinpoint targets called in by the SF troops, will be far more useful than a couple of t/props sat just over the border/down country ready to race in and blaze away with wing guns and rockets on the strafe.

USSOCOM may like to have their own armed COIN t/props to play with – same as they liked the idea of having deployable coastal firepower in the shape of the Cyclones. I have a feeling they may baulk a bit if the bill for operating several dozen AT-6’s, that have very limited operational usefulness, lands at their door though!.

What limitations, caused by stovl, would have restricted CVF for its designed mission?. Certainly not payload range and if you think so you dont understand what CVF was and, worryingly, still is!.

The french had the foresight to build a single CVN that would leave them gapping the capability during refit, workups and any mechanical malady that happens along?. That delivered at the expense of stretching out dated escorts and SSN’s and filling gaps with light, cheap, patrol frigates. Thats not foresight – that is called gambling. They won their bet that they wouldn’t have to pit Lafayette’s and F70’s against Udaloy’s, Sov’s and Akula’s!.