Replacing the US Coast Guard’s medium cutters with a ~1,500-2,000 ton OPV makes a lot of sense… so it won’t happen. The USCG is busy right now gold-platting the Offshore Patrol Cutter. They’re shooting for twenty-five 3,500 ton hulls to replace twenty-six 1,100 and 1,800 ton medium endurance cutters. Not going to happen…

Personally, I’d go with a split buy replacing the OPC with additional Legend-class ships replacing the half the Bears and an 20 of these replacing the other half and the Reliance class. But as you said, that makes too much sense.

I’m normally for domestic designs, but this would be a very good replacement for the Reliance class cutters.

Maybe, if we don’t wear them out completely & F-35B isn’t cancelled, we could pass the two F-35Bs on to someone else in a few years. Maybe rent them out to, e.g., Spain for F-35B testing on Juan Carlos.

Development jets typically don’t enter service. They won’t ever leave pax river.

We all have done already, you’re trying to recreate the FAA but as part of the RAF, others have already told you this has been tried before and it doesn’t work, you have also been told that RAF personnel don’t want to go to sea.

Yep. RAF was created by combining the Royal Flying Corps and the original Royal Naval Air Service and included carrier aviation until the later 30s when the Fleet Air Arm was created. Why? Because the RAF was RFC dominated and couldn’t give more crap about carrier aviation. The UK ended up with carriers with obsolete bi-planes. The core belief of the RAF is that they A) must control everything that flies and b) doubt the effectiveness of Naval air power no matter how many times they are proven wrong. If in control of naval air power, the RAF will not put in the effect to maintain carrier or shipboard firefighting skills (even when ground deployed, USN and USMC practice field landings constantly) in favor of ground deployments.

You’re training the pilots, but not the support personnel. Use the Argie model. Single squadron to do CARQUALS and FLPs to keep the skills up. You’ll have a generation of squadron ready when people QE arrives and not have to waste half a decade.

It hurt the UK badly. Take away the nuclear subs and it drops behind Italy and Spain. The Post SDSR UK military is a large self defense force.

BTW While it’s not official the second Ford Class CVN. Will likely be named the USS Enterprise.

Nope. CVN-79 John F. Kennedy. The Politicians followed the unfortunate trend of naming them after their own.

The problem is of course the Eurofighter. The French are holding their bellies from laughter. But what is done is done …

Sea Gripen would aim at the ex-Skyhawk light-ish strikefighter market, good for sea control ships that don’t have more than a squadron of fastmovers aboard.

Yes, the Harrier/Skyhawk market. It makes that market a great deal more capable than it ever was before.

Don’t think the Royal Navy is there yet. The F-35C will work for them just fine, if that plane actually makes it to the frontline. In case not, I think we’ll be too far right already for a Rafale solution. Then it will be purely UAV.

Thats the problem. Will the F-35B/C make it in the current environment. I personally don’t think so.

For everyone thinking the Rafale is the best option, the super hornet is an almost exact fit for the Eurojet Engines and the CEASAR radar and BAE has a much better relationship with Boeing than it does Dassault. Airframe production and final assembly along with the possibility of UK systems and engines might be worth something.