I think if anything the best use we can get from EMCAT is to leverage a reasonable price for EMALS from the septics. In the sense of ‘Sell us EMALS at cost price or we use our own Cats’, or variations thereof. Shades of BAe REPLICA/JSF… or indeed our nuclear weapons programme.

In my ideal world of mutual trade and buying on technical merit

US Army bought Lynx as Scout and British Army bought (W)UH60
USAF bought Tornado IDS and RAF got F15
MN bought CVF as PA2 and FAA got Rafale N
USN bought Spearfish and RN Subroc
NATO standardises on Harrier for light attack and A10 (sorry OA10) for CAS (admittedly there is a reconcilliation to be made here).

Oh and:
USN bought Seawolf (GWS25 not SSN) and in order to sell it BAC sorted an autoloader which the RN gets as well
MN continued with its small calibre CIWS programme
US marinised its Apaches
Gators got skijumps

Pretty much happy to go along with all that, but the French can have CVF-03 not -02, we need that one. We’ll be happy to build the third ship for them as PA-2, then we’ll achieve the original planned force level of two carriers each for the RN and MN, Which means we can keep one carrier forward deployed at all times and have a training carrier in home waters (all on a rotation cycle).

I apoligize for that remark its just I know someone who was badly wounded in 1982…..(leg blown off)

I think we should have go for 3/4 30,000-40,000 tonne carriers instead as it would have been more flexable 🙂

Nick

Only more flexible in the sense that 3-4 ships can be in more places at once than 2 ships can. In every other way the larger ships are more flexible. The smaller carriers can operate either as CVs or LPHs, whereas the large ship can do both tasks at once. Carriers improve their efficiency and capability exponentially with their size, spce being the chirf limitation. Given the raltively low cost of steel compared to the cost of all the other parts of a modern warship, the easiest way to improve a carrier or any other warship for that matter is to make it bigger. Accomodation improves (no more packing in like sardines, eg the fourth Ark Royal with 2700 crew in a 43,000tonne hull was a very unpleasant ship to live on), and that includes provision for carrying Commandos and their kit. Even as far back as 1970, the Type 42 DDGs had their length reduced by over 50ft to save money (not restored until the batch III ships) yet the saving was trivial; the loss of seakeeping performance was not though. If you build a 30,000 tonne carrier instead of a 65,000 tonne CVF it will still need the same number of people to man it, the same radars and defensive systems yet the air group will be halved with no room for ‘surge’ increases. The fact is the RN agreed with the government back as far as the late 90s that the three Invincibles would be replaced by two larger and more capable carriers, thereafter all effort was directed to getting the most ‘bang for their bucks’ out of the two hulls. That rulles out smaller ships, and most definately rules out LHDs.

I don’t know where everyone is getting this figure of 32 jets on a CVF, the stated figure for sustained operations has always been 36 (ie 3 sqns of 12) F-35s in addition to 4 AEW(MASC) and 6 Merlin ASW/SAR Helos. This is sustained ops, not overload, more can be carried if necessary.;)

Yeah, but the point is that the F35 JCA is not the Harrier/Sea Harrier replacement anymore.
When in 2005 FOAS was cancelled, the RAF suddenly became supportive of the switch to the more powerful F35C variant, and effectively turned JCA into Tornado’s replacement.

So long at the carrier isn’t left with the hangar empty, i can accept it.
But yes. I totally, utterly agree that the F35 should be a FAA thing, end of the story.

Sadly, that can’t be. As long as it is joint, the government can say to have replaced both Sea Harrier and Tornado.

Otherwise, the RAF will whine and complain and make a terrible fuss. Understandably, to a point… But this does not make a stupid decision a smart one. It remains stupid.

The sensible move at this point would be to allocate ALL F-35Cs to the FAA for carrier ops (that is what they are for anyway, and the RAF can then make the transition to a single FJ fleet of Typhoons, replacing the Tornados with Tranche 1 Tyffies which are currently bought, paid for, modified for ground attack and scheduled to be thrown away in the next few years. The T2 and T3 Tyffies can cover the AD role with secondary strike capability and the logisitics and training pipeline for the RAF can be streamlined producing massive savings. The FAA can concentrate on the carrier strike/fleet air defence role and there is then a situation of neither service straying onto the other’s turf. Plan for this now and the big savings can be made, persist with the nonsense of ‘jointery’ for the carrier air groups (an idea NOT being copied anywhere else in the world, because it won’t work and hasn’t worked in the past) and we all lose out.

The RAF and their fanboys are obsessed with the idea of turning the clock back to the 1920s, a model which did not work and /or copying Hermann Goerring’s Luftwaffe (Everything that flies belongs to me!). Remind me agin how that worked out for him?;):cool:

If this happens and the story about the Harriers U-turn is also correct, then thats three bits of good news today, the other of course being Osama Bin Laden’s death. Though I did notice in the Telegraph article that a Senior Naval Officer was quoted as saying it was virtually unheard of to change the name of a ship that was already being built. HMS Eagle was originally styled HMS Audacious and HMS Ark Royal IV was to have been called Irresistible, both of these name changes I believe following commencement of construction. Hey and the Sun is shining on May Day Bank holiday, whoopie.

Strictly speaking, the name Irresistible was never officially allocated to Ark Royal IV, since she was ordered two years after the third ship of the name was sunk and she was paid for with £9million raised by the people of Leeds who had adopted the previous Ark Royal, the name was attached to the ship before her keel was laid. Audacious had her name changed to Eagle in 1946 after the third ship of the class, to be named Eagle, was cancelled before her keel was laid. The fifth Ark Royal was to have been named Indomitable, and as ordered as such in 1978, but in december of that year within days of the previous ark returning home for the last time Indomitable was renamed to placate public opinion. Renaming Prince of Wales at this stage before work equivalent to keel laying has started would be quite in line with RN traditions therefore.

What is your reasoning behind this?

Tbh the whole thing makes me chuckle really – If things had turned out differently in the 60’s we wouldnt be debating these carriers fittings. same for the F35

We would have had these carriers for 30 years and have had supersonic vtol on them for 30 years in the form of P.1121

For some reason I just makes me smile that here we are 50 years later waiting for the same capabilities…

Think you mean P1154RN, P1121 was a land based supersonic interceptor. Non VTOL/STOVL, and never intended to get it’s feet wet.

CVA-01 was to have commissioned 1972-74 replaceing Victorious, CVA-02 was to commission in 1978-80 replaceing Ark Royal and CVA-03 was to commission in 1984 to replace Eagle. Add 30+ years to those dates and you can extrapolate the replacement programme, though SLEPping the ships to wring another 15 -20 years out of the huls is also a possibility.

The most expensive part of the ship is certainly not their hull, but their combat systems, weapons electronics, the authentication etc. The price for the quality of the ships is very high – and this reduces quantity. No navy could afford today the numbers they had e.g. 100 or 50 years ago.

+1.

48% of the cost of the Type 45 DDG is PAAMS (SAMSON, Sea Viper missiles, Sylver silo etc) before you’ve even got to the cost of anything else. Makeing the ship’s hulls smaller means something has to give, and this will invariably mean crew accomodation. If you try to pack them in like sardines as in WW2 and earlier, you won’t have anyone signing up for a second tour. Retention will be non existent. So warships will be getting bigger to provide better crew quarters and facilities, even though the crew sizes are going down.