NeptuneAs for the speed of construction of Grigorevich class. First of all, we don’t know what is and what is not done on the inside of these ships. Secondly, we don’t know the exact contract. They may have clauses to delay in there. It might even be a request by the customer (VMF), due to the bases for these ships not being ready etc.
For the yard itself it may be even better and more economic to work with less people and delay the construction (with consequential fine if there is one) than to speed up construction and end up without a job (and firing more people) after.
A lot of unknown factors in there. There are reasons for everything, whether we’ll ever know them, that’s the question.
Will these ships have Kashtan or Palma? The spot is already prepared as well as the spot for the guidance radar. Another difference with the Talwars is that the aft is enclosed rather than open, although I suppose that’s just a weather cover with everything inside being similar to Talwar.
NeptuneI’ve heard this argument before and I’m still on the side that says shooting in a heavy seaway is always going to be problematic to some extent….thats got to be accepted. One warfare officer I know says that the predictable roll is better and you just rely on the mount/fcs to do the work and level it all out. For me the hull that gives the highest stability factor up to the highest sea state wins as it means lesser reliance on the mechanicals….after it crosses the threshold and starts to roll, and you’re in a heavy seaway, its best efforts anyway.
Agree to some extent, yet “rely on the mount” is going to be easier if the ship rolls slower. If it takes a typical 12 seconds to go from 15° SB to 15 port and back (as on a tanker) it’s going to be much more difficult then when it takes you 20s or more to do the same. Roll stabilisers are only efficient to some degree and they mainly catch that initial instability. So in the end at a lower sea state you’ll have an equally stable ship, yet in heavier sea states you’ll have a slower rolling ship. I do agree that an inherently more stable ship is better than one that has it mechanically fixed, roll stabilisers can break… True enough that in any heavy sea way it’s going to be best efforts or no fight at all.
True, but, then its inventing solutions to problems that dont really need to have been created in the first place to my mind!.
Well that’s a question of requirements I guess. Apparently they decided it was necessary. In a positive note for your point, I don’t like the anchoring arrangement. They indeed solved a problem, but how… It’s sited aft of the sonar, but occupies quite a large space since it’s going all the way down through the hull. Starting from above the waterline to keep things watertight where the chain enters, but storing that anchor in the keel is really strange. Not to mention on how they are going to check the direction of the chain etc. Haven’t really seen if they have a back-up anchor either. It does solve any issues regarding hitting the bow sonar with the anchor or chain though.
Of course it’s caused by the tumblehome, just not sure if there wasn’t a better alternative to this.
NeptunePitch behaviour is supposed to be very iffy running before a heavy swell with tumblehome and a corkscrewing effect can result…I’m assuming they have some form of roll stabilisation system fitted for a tall narrow hull with a fairly significant sail area on the superstructure!. For a ship that, presumably, needs to be a stable gun platform its an odd choice to my mind. SWATH and multihulls can exhibit unstable pitch and roll characteristics in quartering seas as well, as wave effect hits the different hulls at different times and intensities, so there definitely are examples where sea conditions impinge on hull performance.
Probably she has active roll stabilisers and from the pictures she has also slightly larger bilge keels than normal, although not uncommon for warships. Pitching is behaviour that every ship has when running in the same direction of a swell, yes the plowing bow will give less buoyancy and she’ll dive deeper, but when running against the swell she’ll have better behaviour due to that. Although becoming more wet on deck.
As for rolling, you’d rather have an unstable ship as a gun platform than a stable one. A stable one will roll at heavier sea conditions, but when they do, they roll extremely quickly and therefore much more difficult to compensate. A tanker with a GM of 9m is really annoying when it starts rolling as the roll period is really short, so you have a much shorter window in which you can take your shot. An unstable ship will roll slowly although she’ll start rolling at a lower sea condition.
Her wind surface is still ok, tumblehome will allow the wind to escape easier upwards and overall her hull doesn’t have much windage compared to a traditional ship. I think the Burke has more windage area than Zumwalt, considering hangar, funnels, superstructure etc. on the former. Zumwalt has a high (although I’m not sure how high compared to Burke) superstructure, but overall it’s not that long. I’m assuming it’s much less than a Tico 😉
Point taken, but, crew facilities generally need to be more lavish these days for recruitment and retention as well as to support the longer deployments escorts tend to undertake now. This may be an RN-centric view, but, USN crews are usually significantly larger than RN ones and they tend to be more oppulently catered for than our ships anyway….stories of ships having to turn round because the ice-cream maker was broken etc, etc!. Bottom line being that point about reducing space, generally, for very limited real gains.
True, although I’m not sure how far they’ll go with that. I’m fairly sure they won’t double each person’s space.
A lot of the empty weather deck space is used for things like vertrep receipt, RAS access or any number of topside routines alongside or underway. Weapons/sensor fit and arcs have to be sited such that these spaces are preserved otherwise even basic operations like storing ship or casevac (with a fouled chopper pad) become hideously difficult and inefficient evolutions. When you reduce that surface area with an arrangement like tumblehome it complicates deconflicting systems, clear arcs and topside handling requirements. If its an absolute necessity to go to tumblehome then maybe you accept that sacrifice, but, I dont see the absolute need to do so here.
Basic operations, like storing etc. can be much more automated and the design can be adapted to that (although I’m not sure if they have done that in this case), considering also the smaller amount of people onboard. The little deck space they do have is quite uncluttered compared to old ships, which also helps when doing such operations.
NeptuneA design that introduces instability in certain sea states and reduces available deck space for combat systems just to get reduced RCS then doesnt fit my view of an advancement in naval design.
Not sure if I follow you in that point. Face it, on any naval ship, there is lots of “unused” space. If you look at the deck space of a Burke, how much of that surface is actually used for weapons systems? On the forward part there’s lots of space available next to the VLS that isn’t used, not to mention the two huge funnels and their footprint.
If you look at loss of internal volume, the reduced crew and hence need for crew accomodation will already take a large part of the “lost” space on Zumwalt. The additional compactness of recent systems will also help with that. The big guns do take a lot of space as well, so they didn’t really lose all deck space and hull volume. In return I’m pretty sure she has a much enhanced survivability.
No matter how you turn it, the depth of the hull remains the same and remains narrow, so whether your hull flares out or in to create a larger or smaller deck space, it doesn’t matter that much (depending on system requirements, if they’d wanted extra stuff, they probably would change the design to accomodate that after all).
Not sure what you mean with “instability in certain sea states”, either a hull is stable or not stable, a hull that is stable in certain sea states doesn’t exist.
For the rest I do agree that it’s pretty useless if you wouldn’t put a radar on it, even if it’s for occasional use.
Neptuneyet aren’t able to meet basic peacetime commitments and during a proper shooting war you have no real capability either.
Aren’t they? As far I know they are doing piracy patrols, even on high seas, where light frigates wouldn’t do too well. As for shooting war, that’s exactly the point, they do have real capability.
As for the small number of airforces… How many of those nations that don’t have air forces, do have submarine arms? Exactly…
Nice example of Belgian AF, they weren’t going to beat the Germans, but do you think that with some crappy cheaper plane, in higher numbers they would have held back the luftwaffe? Nope, they would just have lost more planes and lives without any chance at all. The Hurricanes gave them at least a chance to get a dent in the Luftwaffe.
As for convoys, as mentioned before, it’s not going to happen. So what tasks are left for your light frigates? Minehunting is not an option as that’s way too specific (some navies still have to find that out though), piracy, as said, is just a temporary threat and doesn’t warrant the high running costs of a high number of ships, convoy duties during war, isn’t much of an option either. So which tasks are left that could be better done by these small ships instead of AAW/GP destroyers?
Most of the tasks remaining, like anti-drug patrols can and should be handled by a Coast Guard and that’s pretty much what is being done nowadays.
Navies are by definition a waste of money if you look at it. They have been for a long while, but some day it might prove its worth. How many navies have ships that are just tied up alongside with an availability of maybe 30% at sea, that is to me a very low use of resources as well. There are also too many people onboard these ships, but that’s how it is.
I do agree with your statement that Europe, for what it’s worth, should pool its resources more and create a general US style armed forces structure. That is however completely impractical as they can’t cooperate anyway.
As for that Hezbollah attack on an Eilat class, there you had your light frigate in harm’s way. Do you think the same would have happened if it was a Daring?
NeptuneBecause the bomber is land based (and usually from very specific airfields with right support assets), and easily detectable by radar.
A submarine can be anywhere. This is why SLBMs are so popular.
Yes and what are you going to do about it with your fleet of corvettes/light frigates? Exactly, nothing… You can’t cope with the bombers, eventhough you might know where they come from. If you don’t have your AAW destroyer, you’re also unlikely to have a carrier or air superiority to take care of those bombers before they take care of you.
Nowadays it doesn’t really need a bomber to a real threat to shipping and it’s a lot easier/cheaper for any country to buy a couple of anti-ship capable fighter bombers than to establish or maintain a submarine arm. It only requires a couple of fighters to get a missile in a 300,000t ore or oil carrier or a 12,000 TEU ship, the effect of that is pretty big nowadays.
And high end conventional warfare where something like an Air Warfare Destroyer would be useful has been virtually extinct since 1992.
Yes and that’s why we should all drop the capabilities and go fishing with our corvettes (difference between corvette and light frigate is rather vague nowadays).
Yes, and in WWII convoys often had destroyers in the escort and cruiser squadrons (and later light carriers) hanging around for support.
But the vast majority of escort work was done by corvettes and sloops.
Now I’m not saying build small corvettes. I think the better vessel is the light frigate which usually offers much more capability – basically similar to cold war types in terms of tonnage.
I’d rather 2-3 frigates than a single destroyer.
Nice but as you mentioned, they still needed those destroyers and frigates as a cover. Nowadays there is no money, nor public support to keep both types. As you said, you want to replace ships, not add ships, so who will deliver the escorts’ escort in this case? Count on US “because they already have them”?
The frigates of today deliver more capability on tonnage, but so do their adversaries… All together it comes down to similar capabilities, at a higher price. Tonnage has little to do with usefulnes.
As Jonesy mentioned you won’t be buying 2 or 3 frigates for 1 destroyer. You’ll have to buy 2 or 3 times the amount of engines etc. And these don’t come at half or a third of the price of the destroyer’s engines, same counts for other systems, a navigation radar costs the same for about any ship, so instead of buying 2 you’re going to buy 4 or 6 and not gain much capability.
The question arises, what purpose does your Navy have.
A lot of Western navies seem to be headed for “token large destroyers” which have limited utility in both peace time and WWIII.
Yes, but then we come to the old saying: better to have and not need than to need it, but not have it…
They needed ships for piracy, they had them and sent them (usefulnes or cost not taken in account), yet if you get into a WWIII conflict/threat, and you’re hanging around with your bunch of light frigates, you might find yourself in a difficult position.
As for other points, if you have submarines lurking (remember we’re talking WWIII) then the convoy is still the best system available for ensuring protection of ships.
I’m not so sure about it. I wouldn’t pool 3 12,000TEU container ships along with a couple of 300.000t tankers. I’d preferably spread them, try to load them only half and see how many they can sink. The amount of subs in the world is very limited compared to the amount of merchant ships (and currently there’s a huge overcapacity), putting your merchant ships together makes for a nice big target even with your corvettes protecting it. Subs are forced to lurk since there’s only few SSKs that can make the 23kts+ that is required to catch up with a container ship. If they lurk, that means you can find them by flooding the area where they sank a ship with your assets.
Back in WWII speeds of different merchant ships wasn’t that different either. Nowadays you have slow general cargo ships with speeds of 10 kts, tankers with speeds of 16-20kts and container ships with speeds of 23-27kts. Putting them in convoys, even with different speeds, isn’t going to work.
As mentioned before, I think you’re not getting the real big picture. Economy is nowadays a lot more important, the changes in shipping have been so huge that it’s not even comparable to WWII scenarios anymore. Back then you had two types of ships, a cargo ship, and a tanker. Nowadays you have a billion types of ships, structures etc. at sea that are all very valuable and extremely vulnerable. Ever thought of how vulnerable an oil drilling rig or even a full field is to submarine attack or air attack? How much economic and supply damage it would do when one full oil field was wiped out? Or those ships that carry vital factory parts, cars, etc. etc. back in WWII there was hardly any such trade or activity going on.
In any case nowadays no army/armed forces are going to fight WWII style all-out wars. If a bomb hits a civilian nowadays, that’s a big shame and disaster, I doubt they’ll change their minds in larger scale conflicts.
And last but not least:
The MCM capability is already there, and up till now we’re still mostly cleaning WWI and WII stuff. In the end you could say the same about MCM ships than about your AAW destroyer. We didn’t need them since 1992 so we should not build them anymore?
Your point of going from 18 frigates to 6 destroyers doesn’t seem right either. It just shows the lack of budgets for most armed forces and they’re trying to get the most out of it. Practically (not taking in account the real prices), if they had gone to 18 smaller frigates/corvettes do you think that would have made it any better? I doubt it. As mentioned above, you’re dropping a huge amount of knowledge/capabilities and there might be a time when you need those… And then you paid for 18 propulsion plants, 36 navigation radars…
NeptuneTo be honest I’m wondering what he is looking for as well.
First of all, what kind of convoys do you expect in the future? I’m not sure why a Kilo would pose much more of a threat than a H6K or Tu22? One of these bombers can have devastating effects on any convoy, certainly when you put some corvette with RAM or similar air defence as an escort. It just won’t do. Also don’t forget that today a single merchant ship loss is a lot more than back in WWII, if you look at their tonnages and capacities. Any of these ships/convoys would definately warrant a high level escort in the class of an AAW destroyer etc. In any case our economy nowadays doesn’t really support convoy systems and lots of things will have to change to make it really viable in a conflict. Another factor is that there is much less bi-lateral trade and that ships often carry cargos for several countries at a time. As an enemy it’s better to think twice before attacking any of these ships in order to keep your number of enemies limited.
If you’re looking at Piracy convoys, it will still not work. Currently only a few seperate countries are doing real convoy duties and they use real frigates and destroyers for it. Which is necessary in a way as a helicopter really is necessary. Distances are long between ships and speed at sea is very limited. The moment a pirate boat is close-by and close enough to really identify it as a pirate boat, it’s too late for any warship to interfere, a helicopter can still make it. So any small corvette would at least have to keep a helicopter and landing pad.
Additionally, convoys are too slow at this point, most ships don’t do it, simply because its too slow. If you’re going to do that in wartime, you’ll have to take in account that you can keep up with the speed of merchant ships (opposite to WWII in a way). You’ll need a boat capable of 20-23kts for the whole voyage, that’s higher than most warships’ cruise speed. It also means you need lots of fuel, which will probably create a larger ship (and more expensive one) all together. Better to train your frigate/destroyer crew during these deployments, they need it…
Piracy is just a temporary threat, it goes up and down and is only dangerous enough in some cases. West-Africa is rising, yet it’s not a vital seaway as the Gulf of Aden, so it’s unlikely that there will be a similar military response. Same counts for political sensitive areas, Singapore Strait (before the tsunami) was such an area, the threat itself was also much less than in Somalia since they only stole ship’s properties. So if you add all these specific things together, there’s not so many areas and it requires a specific piracy threat to really warrant military response. Hardly any reason to build ships specifically for that. And like I mentioned, deploying a destroyer to such tasks is equally useful as a training.
Another cost factor is maintenance, some parts have to be replaced after X amount of hours, regardless of its state. On a destroyer you have more systems, but for something as simple as an engine, you’ll be replacing two parts (if you have two smaller ships) instead of 1 part (on your single high-end destroyer) every X-hours. And that for all systems/parts onboard. The point that a destroyer has more systems very likely doesn’t weigh up against this.
Same argument for fuel etc. The running cost of a larger fleet of ships will be much larger than the cost of a couple high-end ships, simply because you’re doing the same things a lot more.
NeptuneThe main problem is, if you have a large number of smaller ships, you need a large number of captains, officers, engineers and crew. Do you think that’s available in the West? Nope, none of the navies have sufficient amounts of crew up till now, some navies even keep ships in port because they can’t find enough crew for them. Logical if you consider the payment compared to the merchant fleet. I don’t know what the current shortage of sea personnel is, but in 2003-2008 or so, there was a shortage of about 20,000 – 40,000 officers, that has driven up prices in the merchant and that has taken its toll in the Navies.
As for the wrong ships, that still largely depends on the definition of “wrong”. It’s a perception. Most of these navies are bound to NATO and European commitments, that also means they should be able to muster a fleet for WWII style fighting, something like the formation of a CVBG etc. Since most Navies can’t really form a strong CVBG on its own in Europe, several nations have to put in several types of ships.
If in any conflict NATO decides to send forces, yet only US can bring in some real fighting power, then you create an imbalance and a situation where the rest “owes US something”, not a healthy environment. It is already partially like that…
As for peacetime operations, obviously nobody ever thought about such operations before. Piracy is only recently a real threat, and even when it emerged it took several years before the actual will to commit forces to that was there. So practically nobody thought about the possibility and nobody even thought of deploying forces for it until it became a threat to the economy of some countries. And since it takes decades to replace warships, no ships with that purpose in mind was under construction or even planned.
Eventually it’s a threat of a passing nature as well. It has now largely disappeared (although slowly rising in the West of Africa), yet imagine you’d have 10 small ships designed for that purpose, what would you do with them now? You’ll be paying 10 captains and crews for sitting on their ass in some port since they can’t be of much more use apart from perhaps anti-drug campaigns (doubtful after al since it’s mostly a coast guard job and costly on your budget).
All together these ships were there for show rather than purpose, the threat of piracy was by no means beaten by the use of Navies but mostly by the use of armed guards on merchant ships.
MCM still is a very specific task, there is no real easy approach to it. A dedicated MCM vessel can’t really be used for any other threat either. I’ve met some French MCM ships in the Red Sea going to fight pirates, a rather stupid approach if you ask me, the gunner is unprotected on an MCM vessel since the gun is only used to detonate mines, and the ship’s hull is mostly made of fibreglass, not exactly blast proof against Kalashnikov fire or RPGs. Point being that I mostly agree with Kev on this, ships for those purposes can’t be the main ships of any Navy fleet (apart from small countries perhaps).
Stanflex ships look attractive etc. yet when they change roles it also takes a different crew or an update/training of the crew onboard to train them again in the next job. So perhaps the ship is easily adaptable, the crew is not.
NeptuneYet, it would cost more than a similar sized Merchant Ship
Odd statement. “Merchant Ship” doesn’t really exist as that. You have container ships, bulk carriers(cheapo), VLCCs (90-100million), LNG carriers (200-300 million), Cruise ships at any price up to 500 million and more etc. and of course RoRos and other types, all at the size of an LPD/LHD and bigger. Depending on construction suitability “cheap” is still relative, above prices are from Chinese and Korean yards, if you’d want to build them in US, they’ll cost considerably more. All in all and it has been mentioned before about LCS, you’re likely to end up with something not nearly as cheap/affordable (affordable is anyway very relative) as you wanted, yet a lot less capable than a decent carrier. As mentioned by Kev as well, USN has plenty of decent carriers, if they are about to do a landing, there will be at least one real carrier around.
NeptuneThe Jeep Carrier would be with the Amphibious Groups and would share the same protection. As for the design it would like something similar to the HMS Ocean. Which, really would a combined Commercial/Military Design.
HMS Ocean cost around 360million USD, hardly cheap and certainly not suited for pre positioning without crew. She was not at all Commercial. The only commercial element is that she was built to Classification Society Rules, but these are not commercial rules, they were specially developped for the military. They chose to involve Classification Societies since that’s where experience is kept, while real warship designing capabilities are generally lost nowadays due to the long survival of existing classes aka shortage of new orders and designs.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Ocean isn’t even capable of operating Harriers. That probably has a reason that her deck isn’t up to that. Which means that if you were to build a ship like her, capable of Harrier/F-35B operation, your looking at a serious extra cost (and perhaps stability issue).
Designing from the ground up is automatically expensive. Buy 1 container ship from the 1 million built in South Korea or China and it’ll be cheap. Buy 1 container ship out of 1 million and ask for a different radar and some additional sensors and it becomes a lot more expensive (if allowed at all, sometimes it’s even better to get it delivered with original fit, then immediately put it in the next available dry dock or yard and change it there).
Same counts for US, when in Europe or US you change something it means more man hours in redesigning and as you and me know, these are expensive man hours. So any ship designed from bottom up, will be expensive. It’s not the steel, it’s the design.
As for the Cavour and/or Juan Carlos being better I think your missing the point. As my proposed Jeep Carrier would be far less expensive to own and operate.
Not missing the point, I know they are a lot more expensive, they are also (hopefully 😉 ) more capable. That’s what I meant with my point. If you can afford to own any of these ships, which are truly military, you’d send those as air support in a conflict and you wouldn’t spend additional money, no matter how much, on spare ships for lay-up in some port. I believe that money would be better spent on more aircraft then.
As its loss had more to do with the lack of adequate protect from its escorts. Which, by the way suffered the same fate. Even being designed as Warships! So, that argument is very weak to say the least.
Not really, you have to take in account that your escorts can fail. Following your logic, a CVN is untouchable since it has a bunch of escorts around it. In reality there wouldn’t be so much fuss around it if it was like that. Agree for USN it’s easy, they can beef up the number of escorts if necessary. That still doesn’t guarantee that no missile will get through and if that happens, I’m pretty sure any carrier will have a larger chance of survival/retained operations than the Jeep Carrier. That is what Conveyor proved. If escorts don’t make it, something like the Conveyor is a very vulnerable ship.
As for its escort, a larger ship has more spare buoyancy and if properly compartmentalised it is therefore more survivable than any small escort ship (or vice versa as is the case here)
All in all I’m pretty sure some navies with small or declining budgets (like RN) have gone through this exercise and I’m pretty sure they came to the same conclusion. If HMS Ocean was feasable as a carrier, for the same or a similar price, I’m pretty sure they would have built more of them and canceled the QE class. But they didn’t… And that brings us to Jonesy’s topic I guess.
NeptuneTrue the ship is not very well protected. Yet, in any likely scenario it would have very powerful escorts nearby. Plus, don’t forget the Aircraft it would carry would also provide a far amount of protection. As a matter of fact the HMS Ocean and FNS Mistral aren’t heavily armed. So, I don’t see what the big issue is with my proposed “Jeep Carrier” ???
Ok, you have escorts nearby, but during transfer are you going to stick your escort(s) with the JC? It’s going to take up some escorts which would have better use being with your amphibious group.
The aircraft are giving protection, but that only counts when you have enough of them. In addition, if you want to keep the ship cheap, it won’t have catapults, which means vertical take-off and therefor loss in range. Putting a higher number of planes onboard again brings the question whether you want to risk putting many expensive planes on a weak target.
Ocean and Mistral are lightly armed, yet they have a much higher constructional integrity/compartmentalisation than any commercial design.
The design you are looking for is either a RoRo or a Container ship hull, both of these are cheap, yet empty boxes and very vulnerable to damage and stability issues. Adapting those hulls for aircraft ops will be costly.
So in my opinion, for what it’s worth, is that you better go with something like Ocean/Cavour/Juan Carlos or slightly larger. It’s more costly, but for any Navy engaged in a conflict which necessitates an Amphibious landing on a hostile shore, it will justify and pay-off sending in their main carrier rather than keeping that carrier at home and sending some pre-positioned ship (actually apart from US, almost no navy has a place to pre-position ships).
The unlikeliness of such events (where a smaller, say European, Navy would have to land on a rather strongly defended beach), doesn’t really justify the spending of money into such an idea.
And although I kept it out of the discussion, the Atlantic Conveyor story sort of shows what happens to converted merchant ships when they are hit. Of course I do see your point that your conversion would be much more extensive and have the JC operate more planes than the old Conveyor.
NeptuneFunny, the USN has a whole fleet of very similar ships prepositioned everyday. So, clearly its nor breaking the budget nor of little value. In addition the ship would be highly reliable because of its simple design. Simliar ships sail the seven sea every day.
And which ones would those be? So you mean they have jeep carriers around? Never heard of that…
Anyway, “similar ships sail the seven seas every day”, do you follow the news about merchant ships? Have you seen how many problems they are experiencing, just by looking at the cruiseships that break down you can see they have a serious reliability issue and that is just the tip of the iceberg.
The ship would be very flexible and could operate in a number of roles. Yet, my guess such a ship would be best suited to provide additional air support to Amphibious Action Groups. During which they could provide F-35’s, Ospreys, and Helicopters to supplement such types operating from LHA’s, LHD’s, and LPD’s. The vast size of the ships could also carry a large selection of munitions. Which, would be highly valuable as Amphisious Ships are somewhat limited. As much space in needed for the vast number of troops they carry.
Not entirely sure if I’m following you here. What would be your starting point? USN? Or generic? (not offensively meant, just asking 😉 )
As for USN, once you are involved in an Amphibious landing, that means you have a serious conflict, that means you’ll send or divert a real CVN group to cover your ops. If not, why do they keep all those CVNs around? Once it gets really hot, they are sent in just to be sure.
For Navies that don’t have a CVN, they are most likely to operate something of a carrier, some European Navies come to mind like Spain and Italy, they do have something to cover such an operation and I’m sure they would be involved. Those ships, Cavour or Juan Carlos are military and hence a lot more expensive than a jeep carrier.
True, in the latter scenario a Jeep carrier (although it can only be called like that in a construction related context, not a task-related one), would come in handy to augment forces, under the umbrella of other ships. However these smaller navies are cash-strapped and hence the budget for keeping such ships around would be much more difficult to have than for US. In US a couple of million dollars is not a problem, for many navies it is.
It does still bring the consequence of being a soft target. In any USN operation, the carrier would be the main target, in this case it will be of course the amphibious ships, but also the Jeep carrier and I think a CVN is a lot more up to that task than any Jeep Carrier, if a determined attack is occuring.
‘Cheap’ has never worked in a war and I doubt it’ll work anytime soon. If you look at what happened to some Jeep Carriers in WWII…
NeptuneAnd you think that because it has “commercial” on it, that it’ll be cheap? Perhaps cheap compared to upkeep of military vessels but that’s mainly because military vessels have huge crews. If you’d toss them alongside without any crew onboard, they’d be equally cheap.
Anyway you simply can’t put ships alongside and store them there. No maintenance needed is simply a dream, I don’t think that current merchant ships are required to move their lifeboats from stowed position, test the Emergency generator, alarms and so and so on every week because it’s for fun… No, it’s because it’s necessary in order to see if it’s working and do maintenance when needed. Building a couple of cheap ships and putting them alongside in some port is a dream because there is very little guarantee that they’ll actually work when needed.
And the moment you start testing and maintaining it’ll end up being costly again.
The original Jeep Carriers were an emergency measure, they weren’t meant for long term storage and spare capacity when needed.
This however is not a major point as it’s just money not practical thinking from a military point of view (and I do think that that is your original question).
From a military point of view I stay with my point that they’re not survivable and would become a target. In the past, with some 8 Swordfish and 6 or so Martlets/Wildcats they were expendable, since there were 1,000s of these planes built and in operation. In today’s environment it’s pretty unlikely that there will be 1,000s of F-35s etc. around. Putting them on a soft target (merchant standard means a survivability with the two largest adjacent compartments flooded, anything more is very risky) is not a good plan. Losing even 10 of these planes means a serious dent, certainly for any Navy other than USN.
Mission killing something built to commercial standard will even be easier. Reliability is also low with a single prop and rudder.
Agreed you can make more compartments to make it more survivable, but then again it becomes more expensive and the need for it (when you already operate Nimitz/Ford) is limited. Still the question where you’ll get the crew for them too, they do have to stay trained on these specific ships too.
So I guess in some context the idea could be useful, but I’m pretty sure that the context is that limited that it’s not worth the investment.
NeptuneI doubt they’d be anything useful.
They would be still dedicated to the task, therefore costly to maintain in peacetime while all together not really bringing much use.
Where would you build them? In US they’d be costly animals for their use, while if you’d outsource the quality would be a question as well as your ‘secrecy’.
Crewing will be costly as well as you’ll be doubling a lot of jobs which otherwise are done by just a couple of guys.
As for usefulness, in addition to bringing more aircraft they’d also bring more hazard. Putting F-35s on them would put some really expensive birds on a rather vulnerable platform. So either you’d have to protect them like a real carrier, sucking up valuable escorts, which nowadays support their own helicopters, or you risk losing some expensive and perhaps essential birds.
Making them slow isn’t exactly a good idea either.
Jeep Carriers in WWII were used to escort merchant ships, not really an intensive battlefield, something like that is less likely today. The merchant fleet is varied and much larger nowadays, speeds are very diverse and certain ships just won’t slow down to stay with the others, others simply can’t, arguably the protective umbralla of the new planes is much larger than before as well.
I see the advantages of it, but I doubt they weigh up against the disadvantages.
NeptuneAlthough an interesting initial question and beginning of the topic, it’s a pitty it has divulged into a Jonesy vs. others fixed to a single argument.
The question is whether the CV(N) is still the biggest weapon or not I guess. In that case I do think so, because it focusses potential adversaries into building whole warmachines for the sole purpose of taking out that carrier. In this way it still is a major weapon. It’s not because there are bombers and subs to counter it, that it all of a sudden is useless.
Imagine the total amount of investment it has cost the Soviets to build the whole satellite network, bomber network, submarines, missiles etc. etc. just in order to be able to counter a single type of weapon. All that investment, which would lose most of its sense by the simple disappearance of the carrier.
I’m still convinced it’s a pretty awesome weapon and perhaps the most “easy” answer to it, is another carrier, as it would also force the offensive (in this case US) party, to counter that carrier and build up a countermeasure.
A question related to that would be, in carrier vs carrier strategy would the party with two small carriers have a chance against the party with the single super carrier or vice versa?
Leaving aside of course the whole logistics etc. point of view of operating said carriers.
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