So Leuchars closing?, would that mean all the Typhoons at 1 base (Coningsby?) or have a second base elsewhere?, any thoughts/rumours/news?

The Scotlands bases are all at risk.
If Nimrod goes, it is KInloss.
If Tornado goes, it is Lossiemouth.
Also Leuchars has been pointed at… But i’m hoping it is only a bad-informed rumor. With the russian bombers causing more scrambles in the last months that in any other period from when the Cold War “ended”, i don’t think it is the moment to close the base down and have Typhoons scrambling from further south. It simply wouldn’t work.
Lossiemouth’s closure could be temporary, and the base return to activity when the F35 comes (plans were to base the F35 there) or Leuchars can be expanded and keep Typhoon groups and F35 as well, depending on budget advantages.

Regarding F35 numbers, it is difficult to see what short term savings can be made here.

Of the proposed 138, in the procurement schedule over half of that number are not due to be procured until after 2023. Who is to say what the financial position of the UK will be in 13 years time?

By 2019, I think I saw that only approximately 36x F35 were due to be in service anyway. If you intend to cut that number then you really don’t have enough for your airwing (which will no doubt be shared between the 2 CVF depending on which is operating at any given time)

Hope cannot hurt. It would be very nice to get 138… but i wouldn’t hope too much on that. Money is not going to be abundant at the MOD anytime soon.

RE: Tornado conversion – I thought the Typhoon was difficult to convert due to the placement of the intakes (underneath the fuselage) but imagined Tornado with the side intakes, and the swing wing for good low speed stability that it simply would be a matter of stripping back the fuselage, adding strengthened undercarriage and tail, maybe changing the air intakes to a corrosion resistant material, and then running the planes through several years worth of testing.

I won’t say it is technically unfeasible. It may even be, but it would require too much work and money even if it was possible. Besides, trying to convert old, already used planes soon to be obsolete for such a stressing job would not pay off.
But the Sea Typhoon was a serious option. From Richard Beedall’s Navy Matters (http://navy-matters.beedall.com/jca1-1.htm)

“The only STOBAR aircraft type to be considered by the FCBA/JCA studies was a marinised Eurofighter Typhoon EF2000. Initial pre-feasibility studies were undertaken in early 1996 by British Aerospace’s (now BAE Systems) Military Aircraft and Aerostructures Department to consider a Eurofighter Typhoon (N) (possible service name – Sea Typhoon). These looked promising and in 1997 a further 27 month contract was let to study in more detail both catapult-launched (CTOL) and STOBAR variants, these would have in common a strengthened undercarriage and an arrestor hook, and possibly a larger thicker wing with power folding and more powerful vectored thrust EJ200 engines. Both variants would have required a large conventional carrier design equipped with an angled flight deck and arrested wires for landing.

The UK was not the only potential customer for a navalised Typhoon, Eurofighter GmbH (the consortium which builds and sells Typhoon) is reported to have briefed the Italian Navy during 2000 about a low-cost, reduced weight, arrestor landing/angled deck variant of the Typhoon that could operate from the Italian Navy’s new 25,000 tonnes carrier, Conte di Cavour, which is due to enter service in 2006/7. The company has also offered another customer (probably India) a “more radically modified naval version of the aircraft”, presumably the STOBAR variant studied for the UK.

BAE Systems continued with varying amounts of enthusiasm (apparently depending on its likely JSF workshare at the time!) to push Typhoon (N) as an alternative to JSF, stressing the Typhoon’s higher speed, range and payload, although admitting it would be less stealthy. A Typhoon (N) would also have the advantage of considerable commonality with the 232 Eurofighter Typhoon’s already planned for the RAF.

BAE Systems suggested that costly airframe strengthening and a new undercarriage for Typhoon (N), as traditionally required for aircraft “navalisation” of a land based aircraft, could be avoided by using sophisticated computer controlled precise landing systems and other aids to reduce arrested landing stresses to within existing Typhoon limits – which are far below those currently normal for hard carrier operations. Apparently even giant fans blowing air over the aft flight deck and in to the final landing approach were considered! But these BAE’s idea’s do not seem to have been accepted by the MOD, indeed they would appear to be a rather risky cost reduction measure which have become a source of major problems in the future, e.g. preventing flight operations in heavy seas or leading to costly repairs of prematurely fatigued aircraft.

During 1999-2000 a fully navalised STOBAR Typhoon seemed to be the only real competitor to JSF for the JCA order, but in January 2001 (just prior to the UK signing a MoU for the JSF SDD phase – see below) reports appeared in the UK press that it had been eliminated on cost and safety grounds, e.g. the flight deck clearance of external weapons was considered dangerously low for the robust nature of carrier launch and landing events, and the canards dangerously restricted the pilots view during high angle of attack carrier landings.

In May 2001 Sir Robert Walmsley, Head of the Defence Procurement Agency, when asked about the possibility of a navalised Eurofighter if JSF was cancelled said: “It is not currently designed so that it could use a carrier. We could change the design but we would be faced with a huge piece of work. The materials would probably have to be changed in order to avoid corrosion; the weight of the undercarriage would have to be doubled to support carrier landing which would eat into the payload margin; and the wing roots would have to be strengthened in order to take the full inertia forces on landing. That sounds to me like a very substantial redesign. It is always possible, but it would cost a huge amount of money and it would certainly add very considerably to the cost of the aircraft”.”

As to the whole matter of the F35: it all depends on how much RAF wants STOVL capability, because the navy would reportedly be happy to switch to F35C.
If RAF wants Stealth STOVL, it is F35B, because there’s no alternative at all.
If RAF is content with just Stealth, the F35C may be valued, but always in a budgetary way, and choosen only if a way to save money can be found.

There’s not going to be separate buys. What the RN gets is what the RAF gets. And definitely there will not be a mixed buy of different planes/versions.
And the RAF is not interested in F18 and Rafale, so unless extreme pressure is made on the service for budgetary questions, the F35 is what will be bought. In reduced numbers, perhaps in the C config, more likely in B config, but F35.

A drone would first have to be planned, designed, agreed upon and then, hardest of all, PAID FOR AND ACQUIRED. So, for now, we are far away from that.

Had a crazy SDSR cost saving idea for the carrier’s and no amount of internet searching could get me a straight answer – does anyone know if they could take some of the Tornado’s with a reasonably number of hours left on their airframes and convert them to operate of the carrier’s (i.e. strengthen their undercarriage and make any other changes needed) then the could operate the carrier version of the Tornado along side current Tornado’s until thir projected OSD in 2024 there by avoiding having to buy F-35’s until the early 2020’s rather in the 2016 – 18 time-frame. Would it work and would it be cheap enough to be worth doing?

Huh, no. Sorry, it wouldn’t work.

With Typhoons it would be possible. They apparently would need only arrestor wires, and no catapults. But modifications to the fuselage and undercarriage (not to talk about the software) are far less simple than one can think, and would be lenghty and very expensive, so more than unlikely at this point.
Shame that the “Sea Typhoon” wasn’t pursued from the very start on a “Rafale-like” race for a single-airframe combat fleet.

Unfortunately, the days of easily modifying Spitfires to create Seafires is mostly gone. Only the russians, and only during Cold War, developed a carrier-borne version of a land-based fighter, the Su33 derived from the Su27 Flanker.

Devonport was offered as a base for CVF, but it would need work to be able to take their massive sizes, and this is not going to happen. Portsmouth may be smaller but has facilities for a larger force, and it is already planned to base the CVF in there.

Devonport is home for the amphibious ships and has facilities for refitting and housing nuclear submarines.
The amphibious ships could be relocated pretty easily, i guess. But the nuclear submarines would be left with just Faslane if Devonport was closed.

I don’t get what kind of saving would be generated by giving the Marines to the army, unless they truly mean to pay off Ocean, Albion and Bulwark and destroy all the amphibious capability, which would make of the Marines mere light infantry, destroy centuries of history and leave a bleeding gap in capability that would never be filled.
As to all the roles carried out by Marines at sea? What would change if they moved under army control? That’s the horrifying question.

As to losing 8 minesweepers in one go, it is quite painful, but i guess UK can hide behind the fact that the european side of NATO actually has some of the finest anti-mine capability in the world, and a large combined fleet of minesweepers all of rather excellent design.
Of course, i wonder where officers of the RN will gather up experience with less and less small ships. They’ll end up almost immediately on a frigate or even a destroyer… something that an official with little experience was not allowed to do in the old navy.

Giving up Nimrod would make little to no saving, though. The planes are ready to enter in service, pretty much, the program is over.
Giving them up at this point would mean having wasted several billions only to lose altogether the capability to patrol the waters of the ocean. It would be shameful to say the very very least.

Nothing, there’s not much any country can do militarily if its citizens are getting harrased by China.

The geopolitical reality is that the UK has interests globally, including British territory spread out accross the world. Britain needs to be able to project force as far as the South Atlantic for example. Not for some ‘wannabe superpower’ status but to protect its own interests.

As an aside, there is an interesting letter in the FT. Apparently the press reported on Liam Fox’s speech to industry about cutting costs to protect projects but declined to report what he also said afterwards.

Fancy phrase. And very smart.
But if Fox says smart things then allows the Marines or the Carriers to go, he’d better just shut up.
We’ll have the chance to value how much was smart talking and how much was kidding us all when the cuts are announced.

As to people so willing to give up power projection because “there’s no war with China” i’d like to ask why even Italy has substantial amphibious capability, why France ordered a Third Mistral, why Spain tried to gain capability with the Juan Carlos, why Netherlands need landing ships, and if you’d really like a UK powerless and irrilevant to pay for more welfare or more aid, to allow it to grow double-digit every year.

It is not an ever shrinking defence budget that’s inaffordable, it is an ever growing welfare, education, NHS bill.

If we really want to keep kidding ourselves, let’s do it. But it is not wise. We’ve almost reached the point when the armed forces are cut altogether because they are “unaffordable”.
Surprise: the situation does not improve. It gets worse, actually.

Bye bye british defence industry! By bye tax revenues and defence exports! Bye Bye security and influence of the nation! Welcome thousands of unemployed ex-soldiers, ex-sailors, ex-airmen, ex-civil servants and ex-workers of shipyards, of Bae and of all the rest!

Oh. Bad stuff.

(Shrugs) – if the stories are true that the RAF has both given up getting F-35’s and agreed to cut it total fast jet numbers (which makes the Tornado’s the most realistic target) then you would assume that the pressure would be on the RN and the FAA to drop the F-35 as well and buy a cheaper alternative otherwise it does not makes sense – as the main benefit of the F-35B is it’s ability to be jointly operated with the RAF and move seamlessly from sea to land and back again, which is perfect in a future when resources are constrained and you can only afford a limited number of squadrons. In fact the F-35B meets Liam Fox’s requirement of only buying multi-role equipment and moving away from specialist single purpose equipment.

Edit (I forgot to mention I thought intresting the story is being made public now and Jane’s inferred that the information that the contract had been placed had been kept secret up to now – suggesting that something new is going to be announced)

PS I know you are down on Liam Fox as you think he is bashing the Type 45 but I think he is hinting that they will need to use the Type 45 more flexibly and fit it with the things that it was designed to operate but is not got.

The stories lately talk of a disaster i can’t even start to grasp, if they are anywhere near true. I read indeed that the F35 for the press is not going to be bought. Which would mean stopping work on the CVFs altogheter as well. What the hell do you fly off them? Only helicopters…? Demented.
Otherwise, if it is not F35, then it must be either F18 or Rafale, and both mean going for catapults. And i don’t know this could happen. The RAF would oppose it to the very end, it would never accept the navy to have its own embarked force of fixed wing planes. And the RN has no money.

And then talks of dropping amphibious ships and Marines.
Madness. Complete, total madness that is “strategic” like suicide. I always knew the SDR was a budget-cutting exercise, but so foolish and brutal…? This is going to be immensely worse than even 10 shameful years of labour have been for the armed forces.
If such talks are real, the armed forces will awaken in October beaten up like they had just fought (and lost) the third world war.

As to the Type 45 being fitted with the adequate kit, i certainly hope so.
But where would the money for that come out of…?

This SDR is absurd, so far, like nothing else before, if we have to believe to the press.
And if the carriers/amphibious force are cancelled, the need for Type 45 vanishes as well.
And the army can be downsized all the way down to an internal security force at that point, because seriously. It would be unable to go anywhere anyway, unless it was called in. Because how could it reach a trouble-spot…? By air. Ridiculous. It would take a year to move a brigade in the area, and 3 years to move an armored brigade, assuming that there is a friendly base around where to go.
If there isn’t… well. War lost. There’s not even way to get in there, let’s not even fantasize about setting a foot in if there’s opposition.