Better to report on fact than on rumours…

This is at least a year after the National Audit Office savaged the deal.

No Kev…what I was saying is that wastospace have a lucrative workshare in the F35b (not sure if they have a definite workshare in f35c ?) ,the B has been under a lot of very understandable pressure because of its many and varied problems.
They might view converting to emals as weakening the position of the B and therefore (potentially) their profits.
As I said – I am not sure if they have a workshare of F35C or not,but I am sure somebody will know on here.

rgds baz

They have the same workshare in all three varients. It’s Rolls Royce that would lose money if we switched from B to C.

Your conspiracy theory doesn’t hold up.

The trouble is also because wastospace are the primary contractor for the CVF build it is simply not in their interests to convert the carriers to emals/catobar – they are likely safeguarding their workshare in F35b by giving extortionate quotes for conversion.If we had catobar then we would not be in the cul de sac of hobsons choice of a/c,and sanity might have prevailed and seen F35b/c dropped completely in favour of a better a/c.
Wastospace have milked the taxpayer for 30yrs or so and they can be extremely devious.

That’s clearly rubbish, UK’s commitments has always been to F35 the possibility of changing to Rafeal or Hornet has only really existed in the minds of the likes of Lewis Page.

If you believe that. Remember this is brought to you by the same people who said £400mn initially. Costs go way the hell up when you are doing something a bit experimental. This really isnt.

I think theyre (the politicians) even making a fundamental mistake on the ‘inadequate space left’ comment. I believe they are talking about the flight deck installation for the rails themselves…which appear considerably deeper for the EMALS linear motor sections than that necessary for the steam unit. A redesign would be required, but, I dont know how significant it will be if you intrude into the spaces below the deck over two relatively narrow strips forward.

I can not accept that there would be any issues in the engineering spaces, in fitting the power generation kit for the EMALS load, when compared with the space necessary for auxilliary boilers to drive steam cats. For the same reason I do not believe for a second that it will be difficult to cable run up to the flight deck, from those spaces, if ANY kind of consideration was made to run steam pipes up there. Its so much easier to run wiring than steam pipeworkery!.

Okay so Hammond is lying to the Commons and Defence Select Committee?

Sorry but I’m sticking with my adaptable carrier is nonsense theory. I wasn’t initially concerned when the armour and Sampson disappeared from the spec, I was a little more concerned when I read about the steel being cheaper and thinner than that normally used in Warships, now I’m convinced that CVF has been designed on the cheap.

Not really….look at the list Prom generated….nothing on it is especially difficult. Its not the carrier being adaptable to the CATOBAR layout thats the issue. Its the costs of being able to build in CATOBAR and operate it thats the sore point. If it was the only option then we’d have to find the money or do what the French had to do and make the best effort at it with one deck. Luckily we have another option.

Sorry I’m under the impression that the official statement talked only about the costs of conversion, as far I’m aware no mention has been made of operating costs.

If the list Prom generated is not difficult why is it costing approx £2b? We know EMALs doesn’t cost that much and we know from leaked memos that the yanks have questionned the conversion costs that have been appearing in the public domain.

Quoting MSR from warships1:

An additional remark which I found interesting put the lie to the notion of the adaptable design which was trumpeted so loudly at the inception of the programme. EMALS doesn’t fit into the spaces designed/reserved for a steam cat system without significant and expensive redesign. Hammond confirmed that CVF02 could have it, but at increased cost, whereas refitting those parts of CVF01 already constructed would not only cost even more, but be technically risky (reading between the lines, that risk extends to the possibility of failure).

Doh wrote this while Swerve was replying, basically every he said.

I remember long long time ago UK experimenting with skyhook… can that system work for vtol F35 ?

F35 is not VTOL, and in any case we’ll have 2 carriers so no need for it anyway.

I was thinking about this in the context of an emergency situation so I don’t think bring back will matter as any weapons will have been long ditched.

Yeah fair enough, that was fairly obvious and I only thought of that afterwards and couldn’t be bothered to edit 😮

well I’ve looked into this and I think its taking the same hammering as the F35B…

I shall research further. However its utility is clear dontcha think?

It looks good until someone mentions how much it costs, how expensive it is to run and it’s availability, then it stops looking so good…….