Well that is nice but there is no way that Australia will go to Kockums for SEA-1000.

Plus the a26 is way too small for Australia’s needs.

Gripen did exactly was it was designed to here, replace the F-5 with modern capability. Unlike India or Brazil, the Bank…I mean Switzerland has no regional aspirations. Gripen NG’s fine.

Is this official position based on engineering realities, or is it a political official position like “Phantoms can’t work on the Essex class”, despite the fact that the much heavier EKA-3 operated from Essex carriers during Vietnam.

(Not the best example; Essex would need new catapults for the F-4, but you get the point.)

As said below, the flight deck was the factor which is why they operated on the smaller, but steel decked Audacious class. If there would have been a steel deck modification in lieu of SCB-125 the 7 units of the class with C11 steam cats would have been able to launch and recover phantoms fairly easily.

She can take the F-35C aboard. She can launch and recovered empty or lightly loaded F-35Cs just fine.

Has anybody got an overlay of the Mig29K vs the Su33, its just I’m curious how a larger aircraft like the Su33 has a smaller deck footprint then the Mig29K.

Su-33 has wing folds really close to the fuselage and folding horizontal stabilizers. That being said, because of this, the majority of the pylons are restricted air to air missiles.

Not a dumb plan at all, actually.

I agree. Though, it might not be budget permissible and I doubt the RAF would go with the plan.

This has been tried in various degrees 3 times in the last 30 years. The Invincible class, which ended up having its Sea Dart launcher removed for additional aircraft capability. The Kiev class of which 3 were scrapped and the last one is being rebuilt to a STOBAR carrier with no missiles, and the Kuznetsov which is having its flight deck mounted anti-ship missiles removed for extra aviation facilites. Anyone notice a pattern here? The escort/carrier hybrid usually ends up as a ship that’s pretty terrible at both.

The E-2 is a derivative of the C-2 logistic transport aircraft, which the US loaned two to France during the Lybian’s conflict. I guess if it was a viable tanker option, it would have been developed as such. I also often wonder why they are not making a MPA variant, that could provide the carrier group with anti submarine warfare with far better range and time on station than helicopters currently do.

Yep. US looked into converting the C-2s into KC-2s with a fuel tank solution ala a mini KC-130. KA-6D was found to be the better option (which by the way, they should have reassigned to the prowler Squadrons instead of requiring with the Es)

On a side note surprised nobody has mentioned the new Brazillian navy Trader COD/Tanker conversion. I’m really looking forward to see them along with the AEW variant. If they put Searchwater 2000 and Cerberus on the AEW variant I wonder if the RN will take a look.

Skyhawks only carry 5500lbs of internal fuel, so that solution could work for them.