These are questions for which the answers are already developed and fielded though surely?

The authors of the first piece allude to the lack of situational awareness by the J-TAC on the ground and the need for synchronicity between the airborne strike effector and the manoeuver forces on the ground.

Both key issues are solved by putting the battlespace view direct to the ground J-TAC – where it needs to be in the first place!. You dont WANT the intelligence driving ground force tactical decisions stooging above the battlefield in a poorly protected t/prop were he can be taken out by any lucky insurgent with an Igla!. You cant replace experienced skilled people quickly….you can replace machines quickly…..so risk the machines!. Anything else is lunacy!!!.

You want the brains of the outfit looking at a screen with a ‘gods-eye’ view of, not only, the immediate battlespace, but, what he cant see through the cockpit transparencies over the rise of hills a few miles downrange!. He needs the ability to have persistent visibility over the wider oparea with a near-realtime/realtime ability to dial in a high zoom on a point target of interest.

The answer to all of this is the MQ-9 type UAV – in numbers.

Alternatives to the ‘one big carrier’ option come to mind:

1. Leave air defence to the Type 45s, so you won’t need AEW or CAP aircraft? (Similar situation to USN LHA/LHDs.) Yes, a layered defence starting with a CAP or multiple CAPs is the gold-plated textbook solution, but that isn’t always possible in the real world.

….and hostile airborne ISTAR sits just outside of the SAM envelope sending continual updates back on your groups position, course and rate of advance. Great for them….not so good for you. If the opposition has access to MALD type systems we shoot off lots of expensive Asters at decoys just before the primary antiship strikes start. This option amounts to a deletion of expeditionary warfare capability….unless we ride on someone elses coat-tails.

2. OR, What’s wrong with a carrier that is focussed on providing air defence for the task group?

Apart from the fact that, if we are talking about the UK specifically, that our actual requirement was/is called ‘Carrier Strike’ and that Fleet Air Defence is a supplementary consideration?.

3. OR, if you have two or more smaller carriers, which can operate separately for the 99.999% of the time when you’re not launching a strike against a peer enemy in a high intensity conflict, you can have have an air group of 30 or more aircraft, spread across the two carriers.

As several posters have answered for you several times a smaller carrier isn’t necessarily all that much cheaper to build or own.

If the carrier is too small to embark an airgroup capable of the missions we require of it then your proposal is simply that we have two inadequate carriers deployed where they are of marginal value apart from those occaisions where we team them up. Then they differ from the full size carrier only in the fact that they need two crews and double the logistic support than the single full-sized deck would need. Where is the sense in that?.

In WWII, the main US carrier displaced approx. 35,000 tons and carried 90 to 100 aircraft; the main British carrier was less than 30,000 tons and carried 40-70 aircraft.

Aircraft became heavier, which is why carriers have become bigger since then and/or carry less aircraft.

…but aircraft have become,individually, many times more effective. There is a minimum limit caused, as shown, by the need to maintain a flying programme, but, an airgroup of 30 modern swingrole strikefighters are, today, capable of putting effects on target that in 1975 needed a full alpha strike and in 1945 would have required a fleet!.

You need the carrier selection right in the first place to ensure that a sufficient sized airgroup can be embarked, supported logistically and operationally to deliver the design capability. If you want to venture into sea space covered by someone elses striking power you need, IMHO, two 14 plane squadrons a 3 plane AEW det (on exisiting technology) and some plane guard/liaison rotaries for, perhaps, 6 airframes as an airgroup at absolute minimum. Two 14 plane squadrons able to be struck below means a big hangar even for a compact design like Gripen – see Buitreaux’s earlier work. That instantly rules out anything below about mid-40k tons.

If you cant build that then change your foreign policy goals to match your capability!. If you want to hold some measure of punitive threat buy some SSN’s and TLAM them….they’ll do pretty much everything that your 25k ton CV will achieve and the beauty of SSN’s is that they can be in more than one place at a time!.

Buitreax,

Nice work. My background is engineering so I look at graphics like that you have for the Gripen group and naturally think ‘ok how am I going to swap an engine out on one of those choppers in this hangar’ or ‘am I going to have space to jack up a Gripen and get around it to work on a landing gear fault’?. The Hornet group doesn’t look so bad, but, in both cases I’d need to be shifting airframes ‘upstairs’ to get any work done. If the deck parks were already full, and the flying programme on the light side, I’d not like to be the one reporting back to the air boss about when his broke planes would be fixed!.

I’d personally not be too keen to have more than a couple more fastjets embarked on either group for any length of time. I’d agree that those groups you’ve shown in the hangars would be supportable over the length of a deployment though.

Do you need a pair if the target is just a single MPA?

60 mins on station seems conservative? 2 hours more reasonable?

Flying as a pair is safer overwater. If you are designing the capability you would design for the smallest unit as a pair.

60 mins on station plus 30 on transit there and back with enough spare to miss the wire and go round a few times before sounds reasonable as a baseline for scheduling the flying programme. You always want some spare capacity in the system in case a CAP pair does have to spend a few mins in afterburner chasing down an MPA etc. If you programme for maximum endurance use your CAP may not be able to react when required…especially if you’ve not been able to husband an airframe or two for buddy stores to recover tank.

Basically you are suggesting that corners be cut to try fudge a capability when the answer is to build the ship to the appropriate size, with the appropriate airgroup, in the first place.

I disagree with that Jonesy, MPA (patrol bombers) or any other kind of bombers for that matter, need not bother vs a sea control ship fitted with a few fighters. The bombers will be lambs up for the slaughter.

Without those handful of fighters, patrol bombers will no doubt have a merry ole time watching panicked commanders on a SAG contemplating the poor choice of profession, the stick is entirely on the other hand.

I also expect 10 fighters armed with 2 HARM each to pierce said SAG defense.

This sea control ship also creates a bubble of safe zone that bombers can launch cruise missiles from.

Thing is though that 12 or so fighters barely give you the kind of capability you are talking about.

You can do the calculations yourself. Say a CAP pair has 15 min transit to station 60 mins on and then 15 back with recovery margin. You have a DLI pair spotted on alert 5 to back up the CAP (as you aren’t going to run two CAP slots!). There is a third of your airgroup assigned immediately.

After the first CAP comes off station another pair has to already be up covering or you gap the slot. So now you have one pair up, one returning and the DLI pair. So now youre less than 2hr’s into your flying programme and half your airgroup is tasked. If you cant regenerate the first CAP pair by the time the second is returning you are launching airframes 7 & 8 and probably replacing the DLI pair with 9 & 10.

So now its 4hrs into the programme and you have 6 airframes in the hanger being regenerated, 2 on station and 2 at alert 5. 10 cabs used to keep one cap slot filled, with deck alert backup, and precious little left over for recovery/buddy tanking or anything else!. That also assumes zero attrition and 100% mission available rates!.

Are you going to be certain that your single CAP slot is always going to be on the right threat axis to catch the hostile mpa?. Or do you bet that your DLI will always win the footrace before the MPA can get itself out of the dli intercept radius.

Hi Buitreaux,

Yep the contention was made earlier that the aircraft defined the size of a carrier. Your post indicated that this was not the case and I wished to underline my point.

I wasn’t saying that Brazils Navy was likely to fly a Flanker variant. I was saying that the optimal aircraft to fill that requirement was naval Flanker, but, the carrier specs would preclude such an aircraft in the required numbers. Extreme illustration of the same point.

Seems to me there are two fundamental issues in this debate:

1. Quantity versus size – one super-carrier in operation or two or three medium-size vessels? If Britain’s single carrier is operating e.g. off the coast of Libya, then it can’t be in the Gulf or off the Falklands or in the North Atlantic at the same time. Of course bigger can sometimes be better, but how many times in recent history has an air wing of 40-50 aircraft – as opposed to, say, 20-25 – made such a big difference?

2. Naval fighter aircraft – the carrier debate usually comes down to the type of aircraft available and their requirements and capabilities, rather than the carrier itself. Admirals and Air Marshalls will always look for the best, with all the technological bells and whistles, but does ‘stealth’ justify the enormous cost of the F-35?

Both points are invalid as questions unfortunately. There have certainly been operations where carrier’s with 40+ aircraft have been instrumental. The only deployments of carriers with less than that number have been either as an adjunct to a second deck or in a low intensity operation. There has never been a situation where a small airgroup carrier has, alone, tried to do the job of a big one.

On point b your assumption couldn’t be more inaccurate. The size and configuration of the carrier dictates everything. The type of operations, sortie rate, logistic support etc all dictate what kind of aircraft you can embark and in what numbers.

If you have a 40k ton carrier and no access to catapult technology are you going to try to get Rafale or Super Hornet?. No. If you can build to 60k tons and want a wide area sea control capability but aren’t concerned about strike are you going to look at Fulcrum or Gripen?. When you have space for Flanker why would you?. If you have a requirement for high sortie rate strike and are infrastructure limited to 40k is Flanker, however advanced the variant, likely to be a good choice? Nope.

Is F35 with stealth worth the price tag. If you plan to fly in air space that may be defended by advanced surface to air almost certainly yes. If you think you can get away with standoff munitions and MALD lobbing from range probably no!. LO is certainly nice insurance to have with a modest sized airgroup and pool of naval drivers though.