I do believe that the carriers will be built, there are pressing industrial and contractual reasons why this will happen. What is worrying is that there appears to be no clear plan as to how they will be made to function as warships. As this would require a trained air group with a substantial fixed wing element and at the moment there is no convincing plan in the public domain as to how this will be provided.

A lot has been written about a small number of RN pilots on exchange with the USN but I think those contracts were let with the US prior to SDSR when the RN still manned a Harrier squadron. What will they do on return? Sadly I assume that they will face the same choice as the other RN Harrier pilots – rotary, general service or redundancy.

The F35 is now the replacement for the Tornado, so logic predicts that it is the RAF Tornado pilots that will transfer to the F35 in the second half of the decade. I know there was a statement that the F35 will be flown by RAF and RN pilots, but I fear this was just a form of words to placate the RN and prevent any embarrassing resignations. My reasoning is that if they were serious we would see the substance to allow for this, and this surely would be the standing up of a RN Tornado Squadron. This would provide a core capability from which exchanges with the USN could be drawn to add the deck skills that would be needed on conversion to the F35. I can’t imagine the MOD paying for most of a squadron of RN pilots to stay in the US for the next 5-10 years as well as paying for pilots for the Typhoon and Tornado. So that option seems a financial non starter.

I assume that the RAF reassured the government that they would provide the aircrew and that some RN personnel could be allowed into the fast jet training pipeline to serve on RAF squadrons in the future. Just how this could work regarding a functional air group I am not sure. All well and good on a summers day in a calm North Sea for a bit of training, but combat tempo day/night opps in all weather off a foreign coastline? The RAF will surely argue that for safety reasons they would need to fly from land with tanker support.

All in all the decision to keep Tornado and lose Harrier creates a fixed wing naval disconnect between where we were a few month ago and where we are supposed to be in 2019/20.

Perhaps the solution that will emerge is a Euro duty carrier role with CVF as the other half to Charles de Gaulle. The RN providing the ASW with Merlin and the MN the fixed wing element with Rafale and Hawkeye. The other solution would be technological with the development of a robust hands off auto-land system that removed the premium on skill and experience of at sea operations making CVF to all intents and purposes just a mobile RAF station.

Amen!

I

Why did they destroy the helicopter?
Shouldn’t the Pakistanis have handed it back to them afterwards anyway, or was there too much sensitive equipment on board it?

If they hadnt destroyed the chopper, Pakistan would have got it and would have passed on all sensitive material to China.

I object to the term “buried at sea”. Please substitute the word “dumped” for “buried”.

WTG SEALS!

I spent my Army service on a muddy, cold, loud, cold, wet, cold, heavy, cold M-1A1 in Germany. (late 80s) Grew up in Air Force Bases (Lakenheath, Langley, Davis Monthan) and around NAS Oceana.

I was thinking the Navy needs to really fight to get the RAF out of the equation. Not to put them down,but they dont really like flying off ships anyways. It would seem that an airwing of at least two fixed wing fast jet squadrons (like the Aeronaval) would be needed as a dedicated airwing. CATOBAR operations demand a level of training that would make the recent type of RN/RAF deployment impractical. That being said, the BIG question is will the money be forthcoming?

Im sure Argentina would like to borrow it too.:D