PromThe Falklands War was almost 30 years ago; I hope the RN isn’t making the basic military mistake of planning for the next war on the basis of how they fought the last one!
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I thought it was fairly clear that I meant that the lessons were those of fleet survival in the missile age, not those specific to the Falklands. Evidently not.
in IMHO, Britain would be far better served in the modern world with larger numbers of smaller, simpler ships.
Fair enough. Though what would do you think the role of the RN should be such that the fleet composition you suggest would be most appropriate?
Prom@Flanker. Strange then that BAES say elsewhere
the European type would receive several new features to support its proposed life at sea. These include a new, stronger landing gear, a modified arrestor hook and thrust-vectoring control nozzles for its two Eurojet EJ200 turbofan engines…; strengthening would be required on some fuselage sections near the landing gear, and to the EJ200 ; adapted flight control software
And that’s just what they admit to in their marketing spiel
PromThe largest part of a fighter’s lifetime cost (including R&D and procurement) is sustainment. Having 3 different kinds of aircraft would have drove up sustainment costs significantly.
Maybe in the USA with a less educated work-force. All fighters share the basic infrastructure and the related personal. Just a few unique spare-parts and the storage of that will cause a small rise in flight-hour cost utmost.
Don’t know where you are from Sens, but Spudman is right for pretty much all of the Western/NATO forces so it is not only condescending but wrong to say it is due to lack of education.
It is true that the west does put a higher per centage of effort into sustainment than many other countries. However the benefits of this can be seen in many conflicts over the last 30 years when the nominal capability of enemy forces has proved illusory. Libya for example in theory had about the same numbers of combat aircraft as the UK when the recent conflict started, but most were unserviceable and thus were never used.
Training & logistics are greatly complicated and become hugely more expensive with greater variety of airframes.
Prom@Flanker. No problem at all, yet the russians who you cited as an example of how easy it was took 10 years to get from concept just to first flight.
Back to the OP.
I gather the 2nd factory acceptance of the combat management system recently happened successfully, and so systems integration is beginning in earnest
PromSo the Russians managed to get 2 completely different aircraft to take off and land on a carrier. We can do this. Was it a quick and easy conversion?
The MiG-29K was drastically modified from the Mikoyan MiG-29M for naval operations. The airframe and undercarriage were reinforced to withstand the stress experienced upon landing. Folding wings, an arrestor hook, and catapult attachments were added for carrier operations; the aircraft’s undercarriage was also widened.
That will be a no then.
And we have no information on the impact on longeveity etc.
So we could have spent lots and lots of money to get an existing aircraft that didn’t do all that we wanted to land and take off with compromised performance. And would take at least as long as JSF (Mig-29K was initiated in the late 70s and first flight was in 1988) Or we could have a new aircraft that did what we wanted and was designed with carrier operations in mind. And overall it be better to UK PLC finances (see my post on earlier regarding tax-take).
Lots of opportunity to criticise MoD procurement. I don’t think this decision is one of them
PromI cannot speak for the US, but in the UK, we would have to consider:
Installation reqts (e.g. space, power, fastenings, heat, ventilation)
Performance (of the system for that role which may be different)
Safety (including shock loadings, fire etc)
Electro-magnetic compatability
Support solution (e.g. reliability, maintainability, spares, manuals, training)
And many other factors
As well as potentially running a competition, obtaining funding, agreeing a business case, letting a contract).
Then the lucky supplier has to manufacture
Then we would need testing which would feed into embodiment approvals.
Then testing on aircraft
Then approcal to embody on other aircraft
etc
This list is far from exhaustive. If you want a more complete list try
looking at Chapter 3 of
http://www.jap100a-01.mod.uk/Jap(d)/jap100a02titlepage.htm
That isn’t the only route to get things like this changed, but similar issues have to be covered whatever
PromSTOBAR, same as Su-33s on Kuznetsov:
You are aware that this was investigated in the very early stages of the QEC concept work and it was firmly concluded as impracticable? The amount of weight you would have to add to prevent the aircraft falling apart would have meant it could barely take off, let alone do anything useful.
Sure BAES kept pushing it because it would effectively have been a blank cheque for them to investigate. So did some in the RAF but they wanted to kill CVF anyway.
PromI am not aware of that report Jock, and I can’t find it googling, could you post a link.
Flanker, I know that this has been done to death here, but how exactly do you propose to get the Sea Typhoons back on deck?
PromWith Nimitz the ability to refuel and re-arm would limit sortie generation rate before the number of cats did. Thus on Nimitz the extra 2 are primarily there to allow for a back-up because steam catapults don’t have a great availability rate. There is also the possibility (rarely more than that for the reasons that Obi quotes) that they can be used to keep short readiness aircraft whilst still launching others.
CDG has a much lower sortie generation rate than QEC or Nimitz, so 2 is adequate. QEC will be using EMALS which should (insert your own cynical comment here) have a higher availability rate and so QEC should be close to Nimitz in capability
PromVector Aerospace as a screen company?
Rather than the Vector Aerospace that services helicopters and the like (including a fair amount of the UK military helicopters)?
I doubt Vector would take kindly to having their name sullied by any implication that they were a screen for corruption.
PromBack on topic…
LB03 is in Rosyth
LB01 is in Rosyth I think
LB04 is due to move this month I believe?
When is LB02 due to move up. Looking that the Portsmouth timelapse camera that looks to be largely built as well.
Put those 4 together in the dry dock and it will start to look like something
PromThe Dutch are so damned good at what they do. For a patrol vessel that is a nice bit of kit. Good radar, good C2, good IRST, weapons commensurate with the vessel, I bet the signature is low etc
I’m glad we don’t fight them anymore
PromThanks for that guys. But..
Enhanced self defenc(s)e: The picture just shows ESSM, what about ECM; Phalanx, SC Guns etc? I would hope they aren’t just relying on escorts for defense against asymmetric threats in this day and age
Sensors – which radars have been selected? What about EO/IR sensors?
Any improvement to the command & control/ATC/aircraft direction because they had a pretty ageing architecture
Anything on damage control? IR fire detection; automated fire suppression or the like
What about close range EO/CCTV for covering the area around the ship, improved awareness of deck ops etc?
PromSome of the loudest critics of the carriers have been ex senior brown jobs!
Ex-army, I would agree with. Too many retired officers (of all services but I think I would probably agree that the army have been the worst) have commented in the media on things about which they are no more expert than I am on spanish philosophy in the 13th century.
The fact is each service is perfectly happy putting the boot into the major procurement projects of the other two services!
Indeed, but in my experience, whilst the uninformed articles in the media can do damage, the greater damage has been done by counter-briefs within MoD, and there the RAF have been far more to blame (again, in my experience).
Also as far as I am concerned the Pongo’s have been getting away with some truly horrendous procurement mistakes Lots of Pongo officers kept in work behind a desk doing fascinating army of the future concept studies for Gucci kit that doesn’t work in the end, of no use and over budget when there was something perfectly suitable off the shelf!
Again, I wouldn’t disagree with you, but the same is true of both flavours of blue-suiters.
Could also debate some of the projects you picked, but that is not for this thread, or indeed forum
PromInteresting article Mike. Would be nice to see that circulated in wider media
Geoff. I disagree with some of what you said.
Firstly I don’t think that the army are critics of CVF in the way that the RAF have been. It is a threat to the latter, whereas as someone said earlier, the pongos want air cover, and don’t care who provides it. Carrier borne cover would arrive quicker, ipso facto, better for the brown-jobs.
I also disagree that the army will return to barracks and go to sleep. History shows that the politicians will commit them/us somewhere else pretty soon.
One reason that the media have belittled CVF was that the ACA and MOD were constrained from promoting the programme (e.g. success etc) whilst the ‘austerity’ programme was being pushed through. By contrast the RAF have been very dligent in promoting their successes lately. I gather that political restriction has been removed, so once Libya is out of the limelight, I would expect a bit more PR from the ACA. It is sad that we need PR but a fact of life, and so far the ACA have not been that good.
Based on media reporting, and some outrageous comments from some politicians (e.g. on the Today programme yesterday, Labour defence spokesman claiming QEC would be without FW aircraft for 10 years) a lot of people believe that JSF and QEC are “mythical” (and that is the exact word I heard used in another context yesterday). Whereas a few more general media pictures of the former flying and the latter floating into dry dock would help. Then I think national pride in the programme will start to take root.
Of course such publicity will also attract the protesters, but that is also a fact of life
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