Gioia del Colle is still 400 miles away from Libya’s cost, i can say as italian. And 400 miles is a conservative estimate.
Again, to put things into prospective, the combat radius of the F35C (the longest-legged of the fighters) is 730 some miles with max internal fuel and internal weapons load.
Even Trapani-Birgi, which is much closer, in Sicily, still is a good 200 and more miles away from even the closest targets.

No surprise that even Italy itself has sent the carrier Garibaldi and has been using its harriers.

As to crews: the CVF’s ship core crew is planned at 682 men, less than those required to man an Invincible.
A figure for a CVF with full airwing is 1450 men. 1650 are the total accomodations provided onboard at build, and allow for embarkation of full airwing, 120 members of a Joint HQ structure and others.
In 2005 over 1800 accomodations were planned, but many were sacrificed as a cost-saving measure: it is likely that there will be plenty of rooms available but not kitted with beds, which could always be loaded later.

1450 – 682 = 768

738 / 36 F35C and 4 MASC = 18,45 men for each embarked aircraft.

More than realistic if you think that a seven-planes Sea Harrier FA2 squadron had around 135 men, for 19,28 men for plane. The F35C is newer and expected to need far less mainteinance.
Overall, it fits.

As to air tankers, it is more like that they MUST land. The RAF Voyager won’t be capable to refuel in flight, but still its standard mission profile is clear: take off, get to the “rendevouz area” and loiter there to refuel all the aircrafts possible.

Two standard mission profiles for the FSTA KC330 Voyager:

4 hours and 30 minutes loitering, with 50 tons of transferable fuel, at 1850 km from the air base.

or

5 hours with 60 tons at 925 km from the airbase.

So, yes. Air tankers definitely do “stay around all the time (they can)”

The only point which makes sense is that, in several situations, it could be nice to extend the mission endurance of embarked jets with air refueling if this was available and required.
It does happen, sure. But i fear that it has no value at all as anti-carrier argument.

Used this way, the air refueling is in its nature of force-multiplier.
Used for Libya as it is now, it takes two AARs just to get the planes to the targets and back to base.

@The escorts don’t run on plutonium, neither do Rafale

You talk like warships weren’t off Libya anyway. Might i remind Cumberland, York, Westminster and now Liverpool and Brocklesberry? The escorts are not tied with chains to the carrier anyway: look at the amphibious force of Cougar 2011: nearly the whole fleet of amphibs, 800 soldiers, RFA Fort Rosalie and RFA Wave Knight, and the only escort is HMS Sutherland.
If there’s no realistic threat, the escort reflects the situation.

As to Rafale, it sure does not eat plutonium. But taking off from Toulon it would eat more fuel, stay in the target area for less time, and waste more airframe hours.
By the way, are we sure that french planes are still coming in from Toulon…? From when the CdG deployed to the area, possibly the airstrikes have all come from her.

Thanks Stan. I know we probably agree on many points in terms of strategy, having read some of your own posts.

And anyway, on aircraft carriers everyone normally agrees worldwide. Save for Stirrup and Dannatt, of course, they have an unique vision of the world somehow. XD

Nick Harvey in a recent parliamentary answer reported that the Carrier will have a crew of 720.

The Aircraft Carrier Alliance reports 679. http://www.aircraftcarrieralliance.co.uk/the-ships/the-queen-elizabeth-class.aspx

I know the RN calculated its crew figure on a quite pessimistic base, adopting in some areas assumptions less permissive than those used by the ACA, yet their figures are very similar.

The 720 figure puzzles me. I dunno where Harvey pulled it from. Gods know that 720 is not a realistic figure for the carrier + standard peacetime TAG of 12 F35C, after all. Lean manning is a great thing, but there’s no way in hell you can man a squadron with 38 people, after all. It could be just some “abundance” to ensure the crew slots are all fulfilled in all circumstances…

Or it could be an updated figure, an early re-calculation of the total crew needed after the conversion to Cats and Traps.
The figures of the ACA and RN are (almost surely) calculated for STOVL configured carriers, since none of the two have updated their data and websites in a long time.
Cats are likely to require some additional crew, and that might be the source of the difference.

Anyway, the operations in Libya provide a scale on which we can reason to put things into prospective about the airwing. Many have called the 12 F35C figure ridiculous, but that 12 planes already would beat, on their own, the current RAF contribution to Libya, considering the limits the Typhoon still has in ground attack and considering that Gioia del Colle is at the very least 400 miles away from the targets, which probably means that the Tornados and Typhoons more often than not refuel in flight twice, once on the way to the targets and once on the way back home, depending on the time spent “on station”, eventual “sprints” with afterburner if there’s a SAM alert and other factors.

They swallow fuel and money and consume flying hours much faster, just to get to the targets, and inexorably have longer respense times than a carrier wing would have from 50 miles away from the coast.

I’ve written a huge page on CVF and F35 and stuff in my blog, too, for whoever’s interested enough in the subject to get additional info. http://ukarmedforcescommentary.blogspot.com/p/future-force-2020-carrier-vessel-future.html

Their drive system was influenced a lot more by the QM2 than the invincibles. They might have gas turbines, but they’re shaft powered, not electric.

They ARE shaft-powered, but also ARE electric.

The two shafts are connected to massive 20 MW electric engines, powered by electricity generated by 2 MT30 Gas turbines (36 MW each) and 4 Wartisila diesel generators.
Electricity has this awesome ease of movement that allow you to place the generators pretty much anywhere you want.
The placement of the gas turbines under the islands, into sponsons, will make mainteinance and replacement and all that kind of work immensely easier.

@Anixtu

Actually, the PRECISE composition of the airwing was not know. In 2000, the RN was planning for up to 50 between airplanes and helicopters.
So the 44 millions figure might be actually higher than a realistic assesment based on an airwing of max 40 (36 F35 + 4 MASC)

As to inflation, ok. But that’s obvious and valid for EVERYTHING. We can’t go and blame even the inflaction on the CVF or on the MOD, either. You can’t excape inflation.
Hasn’t running cost increased over the years for everything else too…? This is not a valid point.

As to “someone else’s budget”, that is kind of correct: RAF budget, to be precise. Since the RAF has wanted to get its greedy hands on the F35, and the squadrons of F35 are to be formed all the same, carrier or not, so that the airwing kind of exists indipendently from the carrier itself, it kind of is true: it is not RN’s budget anymore.
Save for the MASC, eventually.

Too easy for the RAF to take the planes and still claim the RN has to pay for them.

A lot has changed since 2006, & no speculation from then is valid now. The SDSR last year has rendered all previous plans null.

QE won’t be complete by 2014. Nor can PoW be ready in a CTOL configuration by 2016. It’s all up in the air.

QE can be complete by 2016 in STOVL/LPH configuration, though.
And PoW can be then complete as Carrier in 2020.

To try and complete QE as carrier would inexorably require earlier spending (and thinking of finding money in the next two to three years for anything extra is impossible with how much the budget is tight) and slow down the work on the carriers, meaning delays on PoW and further cost overruns.
So, yeah. Things changed, yet are still kind of the same.

Current IEP system:

Thanks to Navy Matters.

And the position of its main parts:

The idea is that a third (maybe even a fourth, if it was ever needed, but i doubt it) MT30 gas turbine could be fitted to easily power up the EMALS or EMCAT depending on which is chosen.

The configuration on 2 x 36 MW MT30 gas turbine alternators, 2 x 11MW diesel generators and 2 x 9 MW diesel generators. Total generating capacity was to be about 110MW at 11kVA, some 80MW of which will be consumed by the four 20MW electric, two driving each shaft.
80 MW are for propulsion, the rest for all the other power needs of the carrier.
Max speed will be in the region of 25 to 26 knots.

A third MT30 gas turbine could provide up to 36 additional MW for the arresting gear and catapults and to provide additional power to all other systems as required.

Reading in that immense source of data that Navy Matters is, i also found this 2006-dated interesting passage:

In the event that the STOVL F-35B variant of the JSF is cancelled by the Americans, a contingency plan has been developed to complete HMS Queen Elizabeth in 2014 in a STOVL configuration to operate Harrier’s. HMS Prince of Wales would then be completed two years later in a CTOL configuration with catapults and arresting gear, probably to operate the F35C variant. HMS Queen Elizabeth would also be converted to a CTOL configuration at the end of the decade, after the Harrier had left service.

Now the Harrier factor has been killed, but it is yet another indication that, most likely, PoW will get the cats. Queen Elizabeth will most likely be retained as LPH to replace Ocean: the Mighty O was once planned to bow out in 2018, then it was delayed to 2022. Now, for budgetary reasons, it is not improbable a scenario in which the Navy retires Ocean as soon as QE is ready, to ensure that the humiliating “we build it and we throw it away” option is cancelled for good.
Besides, it has been said more than once that the commercial specifications that made Ocean so cheap are not as durable and fairly-aging as more restrictive military-standard builts are, and she might not age so easily as other ships before her.
It might even be that she goes earlier still, around 2016 or anyway as soon as QE ends her trials and is fit for service, instead of keeping Ocean but mothballing QE. It makes more sense to retire early an old ship than wasting a new one in mothball or even sell it.

Especially if the CVF respects her planned running cost of 40 millions a year, which is quite damn cheap. (and QE will probably actually be cheaper, because the 40 millions a year figure is based upon a carrier with full airwing, with all this implies, included a crew of 1500.)
As a LPH, QE’s crew will be 976 (the core CVF crew) plus probably around 200 personnel of crew for the Commando helicopters, and 500 Royal Marines when embarked.

Anyone does have an idea of the cost of running Ocean for a year?

Prince of Wales will get the Cats, almost certainly.

Queenie apparently will be built with the Sky Jump even though the jump jet has been dropped and now she’ll be a replacement for HMS Ocean more than a carrier.

This coming from the following article, at least: http://www.meretmarine.com/article.cfm?id=115509

I’m hoping that we can at least avoid building and installing a Sky Jump that would effectively only waste the space for one helicopter landing spot, and that would be undoubtedly dismantled during the first refit.
Unless there are contracts obligations so powerful that even the sky jump can’t be removed…!

I’m saying Prince of Wales gets the traps because this would allow for expenditure on buying and fitting the cats and traps in 2014/15 or even 2016: back-loading expenditure makes more sense than front-loading it, especially with the 2011 budget being so challenging already as it is and 2012 and 2013 Planning Rounds still officially expected to be “difficult”.

Besides, this way there’s all the time to do the redesign work, see how the EMCAT works (by 2015 the US will already be using it on their new Gerard Ford supercarrier) without slowing down the QE timeline at all.
Thus avoiding cost increases that no one wants.

I’d be really surprised if things were done the opposite way.
And anyway, the F35C to fly off the carrier won’t be available before 2018 at the earlier.