‘Talk’ of eliminating the Harriers is just that, Talk. Conjured up by disgruntled RAF fanboys (including the outgoing CAS, Glen Torpy) to try and sabotage the Fleet Air Arm and the CVF project. Won’t happen. We’ve already passed the point when any savings could be made by cancelling the new carriers, and contracts for the maintenance of the Harrier force have been signed extending their service life out through the next decade. Otherwise we are extremely overstretched in all areas, and it is a mark of the professional ethos of the RN and RFA that they continue to rise to the Challenges. It is to the Government’s eternal shame that they have squeezed the budgets and stretched the armed forces to breaking point also, and to think that several times in the last couple of years the Labour administration has handed over sums of money equivalent to or far exceding the size of the annual defence budget to greedy and incompetent bankers, who then ‘trousered’ the money to prop up their own pension funds and paid out massive bonuses to staff who had caused much of their losses.:eek::(

Did 50% of the money go on those publicity pictures? Like the subtle use of chinnoks to underline its purple credentials!

Nice all the same, the shot of it coming into Pompey is nice, anyone checked that the scale is correct……?

The scale is correct, and it’s actually leaving Pompey, unless they are going to move the Spinnaker Tower to the Isle of Wight! Also Chinooks already deploy aboard RN carriers as required (Ark Royal/Al Faw) so it’s just a continuation of existing capability. Apaches have been to sea too (for trials) so expect them to turn up in pictures soon. Flexibility is the key to CVF, it’s not just about Lightnings. It will deploy with the CHF as well when required. Plenty of room for a mixed air group, say a sqn of 12 Lightnings for CAS, 4 MASC for AEW, 6 Merlins for ASW defence of the task group, and mixed bag of 12 Sea King HC4s, 6 Chinooks and 8 Apaches. Once the initial phase is over (troops ashore, support helos following with them), more Lightnings can be flown out to the carrier if required.

Also, the hangar on the CVF is a lot wider than an Invincible’s, which is actually quite narrow in the middle section. The CVS’ hangars have a ‘dumbell shape due to the restrictions of the GT downtakes to port and the uptakes to starboard.

Latest CVF pics. Enjoy… They seem to confirm that the new carriers will receive pennant numbers following in sequence from the Invincible class, HMS Queen Elizabeth carrying R 08 and HMS Prince of Wales carrying R 09. Interesting to see the hangar deck as well for a change

I agree that in a crisis all sorts of things can be done much faster than normal (cf my comments (and links) above and elsewhere aboat Sea Harriers stored or at the Culdrose dummy deck*), however, Invincible has been largely cannibalised to keep Illustrious and Ark Royal going.

Unfortunately this is now common across the fleet, with nagative effects on readiness and the ability of suppliers to produce spares and components in a hurry, and yes, it has cost jobs.

Of course Invincible has donated a lot of her components to keep her sisters running, better to do that than have valuable parts left to rot. The Invincibles were designed on the principle of ‘upkeep by replacement’, which means unlike the previous generation of steam powered warships, all the essential ‘moving parts’ can be easily removed and replaced as required. A steam powered warship had her Turbines and Boilers installed during construction, and they would remain in situ for 30 or more years. Similarly any armament and weapons would be expected to remain aboard for the life of the ship unless a mid life refit was required, in which case the ship would be partially demolished and rebuilt to acomodate the new systems. Reconstruction isn’t required with the ‘plug and play’ principle, Invincible is an empty hulk at the moment, no engines, radars, weapons and little else inside other than her infrastructure. That’s all she needs. Everything else can be re installed without great difficulty. She recieved a major overhaul just two years before paying off, so her wiring, plumbing and much else of her basic infrastructure has already been renewed, ie the hull may date back to the 70s but everything required to make her work (electricity supplies to all systems for example) is only a few years old.

The RN was IMHO fairly far sighted in having her overhauled knowing she would be mothballed soon after, and by removing so much equipment from her to return to the ‘pool’ of parts used by not just her sister but a number of other ships in the fleet, keeps those systems ‘in circulation’ for much longer and makes the job of inspecting Invincible’s internal hull a lot easier. The process of ‘parts donation’ is very different from when HMS Eagle was canniballised to provide parts to keep her sister HMS Ark Royal running in the 70s, or when HMS Lion was similarly stripped of parts to keep HMS Tiger in service. Those ‘donor’ ships had their complicated steam pipework ripped out to provide the spares needed for their sisters, systems which were never designed to be easily replaced. The parties of engineers sent to those ships to remove said parts did so on the understanding that the donor ships would not put to sea again so inflicting ‘collateral damage’ when removing whatever they were after was acceptable. Also, donor ships had their dehumidifiers removed before the stripping process began.

Aboard Invincible, the dehumidifiers are still running, and this is the same process that allowed the Americans to retain their Battleships in a viable condition form the 50s to the 80s when they were successfully reactivated. To the best of my knowledge, no one has been removing parts from Invincible with sledgehammers or blow torches, but then because of her design they wouldn’t need to. I’m sure at least part of the reason she has been retained in good condition is the MOD has harboured a hope they can sell her as a going concern, since at the time she paid off there would have been close to zero profit in scrapping her (towing costs to Turkey or India would have wiped out any profit margin). The Indian Navy remains a potential customer given their current problems with the Vikramaditya and the age of the Viraat. A distant possibilty yes, but there nonetheless, and the existence of Invincible as an option for India allows some bargaining leverage for India and helps maintain the relationship between India and Britain. There are other potential customers too…

I agree with Jonesy, a fully equipped carrier (and group) has a deterrent effect other assets cannot reach. Just look at the story told by Pheonix Sqaudron, just a couple of sorties by Ark Royal‘s aircraft was enough to deter Guatemala.

Going back to the issue of coast overuns, has there ever been a Government project that didn’t suffer from cost overuns or delays?

Agree 100%. A carrier and her air group have something no Destroyer, Frigate or SSN can ever have;- Presence. Stopping a war from breaking out is more important than winning it after the shooting starts, and the Aircraft Carrier is possibly the most effective exponent of ‘Gunboat Diplomacy’ ever invented.

The extra cost of the CVF programme is almost entirely down to the Government’s two year delay to the completion dates. Keeping tens of thousands of workers employed for those two years doesn’t come cheap…

Production is very firmly closed now. No more harriers i’m afraid, not without a massive industrial effort, or buying second hand from the spams.

Also there are not enough qualified carrier pilots to put all harriers to fill three invincibles to sea.

Carrier Quals in the Harrier takes a few days. It’s a lot easier than for conventional aircraft (ie cat and trap). Before the ‘Stan started screwing up deployments all the JFH sqns would get their CarQuals over every year in a two week period. Now they are out of the Stan for good I think they’ll quietly slip back into the routine. It would be pretty easy to get every pilot in the three frontline JFH sqns ‘CarQualled’ before the end of the year, depending on their schedule.

As to the Harrier production line, well they might not be making any whole new airframes but BAe retain the capacity to manufacture new components (eg new tails) for existing airframes, in order to extend the airframe life.

Having spoken to some of Illustrious’ officers last year about the F-35B and the Invincible class, here are their conclusions:

1 Lightnings can be operated from the decks of a CVS without difficulty;

2 They fit on the existing lifts although it is a squeeze, in rough weather they would be loaded diagonally to be on the safe side. Aircraft are only struck down to the hangar when unarmed and de fuelled, so only the empty weight matters. Max take off weight is irrelevant. A CVS’ lifts have a max capacity of 18 tonnes, more than a Clemenceau class CVA’s lifts (15 tonnes).

3 The total number of F-35Bs that could be operated is the same as the number of Harriers, their ‘spot factors’ aren’t that different (0.82 for the Harrier, 1.09 for the F-35B). An Invincible can operate a maximum of 22 aircraft, in practice the RN found 14 Harriers and eight helos (five Merlins and three Sea King ASaC7s) was the most efficient balance. Unless an aircraft is due for maintenance, they stay on deck until the next sortie. Hangar and flight deck combined mean an air group of this size is easily achievable even with the F-35B.

4 Falklands damage to Invincible. To be taken with a pinch of salt. If it had happened, SOMEONE would have talked about it by now. A bomb (most of those dropped by the AAF were 1,000 lbers) going off inside Invincible would have caused massive structural damage and large numbers of casualties, as there is nowhere on a carrier that doesn’t have significant numbers of crewmen in the vicinity. The ship would have had to withdraw back to the UK for repairs. Too big to be kept secret. I have seen Invincible recently in Portsmouth dockyard up close (standing 20 ft away on the quayside!). although she looks somewhat forlorn, the hull looks solid and the dehumidifiers crammed into the hull openings on the starboard side appear to be in working order. I see no reason why she couldn’t be returned to service, she had a major overhaul less than two years before being paid off for one thing. Her decommissioning was purely financial in motivation.

Warship hulls tend to last a lot longer than the equipment within them, and the Invincibles were designed on the principle of ‘upkeep by replacement’, meaning when something wears out you simply unplug it and fit a new one, engines included!

Out of curiosity anyone have any ideas of the numbers of aircraft actually being referred to here?

RAF Pumas
RM Sea kings

And what split between Merlin/AW149/AnOther would likely make up the replacements. As much as I’d like to see 1:1 financially I can’t see it happening even though the need is very clear.

The MOD suggests a total of 62 FLynx/Wildcat/AW159 split between Army and Navy.

Should that number be increased as a part measure to the medium lift requirement as well?

The wildcat split is currently on the order of 34 Army and 28 Navy, and I think there will be inevitable pressure for the Navy to operate just two helo types in the long term for economy, one being the Lynx Wildcat for smaller ships and Merlin for all larger helo requirements. So the Sea King mk4/mk6c replacement will for this reason alone end up being a Merlin ‘HC mk4’. Basically a hybrid of the Navy’s HMA1 (folding rotors and tail) and the RAF’s HC3 (tail ramp etc). I think MASC will end up as a Merlin variant too, probably ASaC mk5, though I would prefer a V22 with palletised radar system. I don’t think there is any likelihood of a whole new helo type being introduced alongside the existing types simply because of the cost of adding another logistics tail, so I don’t see NH90, Blackhawk variants or AW139 joining the UK armed forces in the forseeable future in any numbers.