Does anyone know the ball park figure for a new double hulled tanker to military spec?

Have a look at the cost of the Wave class and adjust for inflation would be a good place to start, but then there’s a good chance that whatever eventually surfaces from the wreckage of the MARS programme would be built abroad, so unfortunately may not be relevant.

A lot of you seem to be falling into the trap of thinking of the C3 as a Frigate,it was never intended to be and the programme has since been renamed as something very long and dull sounding to better reflect that*.

* Don’t ask me what it is, it’s far to boring to remember.

Decent analysis of the 22DDH, by the way. It looks like an LPH with F-35 capability.

Yes, basically it’s what a lot of people were saying the Hyuga was, except of course they were ignoring a few rather important details, 22DDh appears to have those details removed.

As usual Swerve is talking the most sense in this thread, changing plans costs money, spending money on short term interim solutions costs more money now at a time when we it is short.

A long awaited news finally confirmed:
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/09/17/347416/picture-mbda-reveals-clipped-fin-meteor-for-f-35.html
The Meteor will fit inside the F35B bays.

There’s also confirmation that for now no one has funded integration of the missile with the plane, but MBDA is going to propose it again for Block 5 production F35s, and we can expect that at some point the RAF/RN and Italy as well will fund (hopefully collaboratively) the work of integration since both aim to replace fully the AMRAAM in their arsenals with the Meteor missile.

There’s also indication that the F35 in air to air fighter role could be fitted with 6 AMRAAM/Meteors.

While MBDA was reported in the past to be considering exploiting the Meteor airframe and performances to develop an air-to-ground anti-radar derivative missile.
Was this idea to be confirmed and pursued, it may be the best choice for the RAF to replace the ALARM missile.

An anti-radar missile is still and always a vital capability, and an anti-radar missile that fits INSIDE the weapon bay of your stealth fighter makes twice as much sense.

Not much point in designing a stealth fighter, with the costs of this capability, if you are forced to fly it with HARM hanging from the wings and ruining your low RCS, after all.

I guess the future RAF choise will be either AARGM88 or this possible Meteor derivative.
France (and ideally Germany too) should hopefully take part in the development work for the second, ideally.

Any news on whether it will fit in the F35B though? I’ve seen speculation on a few forums that this new version won’t fit the B variant.

£1.25 billion – roughly what I thought it was previous to reading that.

HMS Queen Elizabeth II won’t be cancelled. The question is what will happen to PoW, assuming it could contractually be cancelled without massive penalties. I think it’s more likely it would be built but, if the Treasury wanted its pound of flesh, mothballed or otherwise kept off full duties for some time.

Bair in mind that a hefty chunk of that £1.25b in contracts will be for PoW as well, all contracts for have been placed for 2 ships.

I think I recall Lewis Page arguing somewhere else that you could replace frigates in many cases by a simple vessel – possibly based on a merchant ship design – that primarily provided a base/platform with sensors and comms from which RHIBS and helicopters and various UAVs, USVs etc. could operate, a ‘mother-ship’ I suppose, rather than a combatant in its own right.

He basically stated that they could be replaced with merchantmen converted into helicopter carriers that had a vls and were armed with Tomahawks because they’d be cheaper. Trouble is that once you include all the necessary electronics, fuel and weapons for the helicopters it wouldn’t be very cheap and the only thing you’d save money on is the actual hull itself.