Shiplover,

Lovely drawings! I felt inspired and took the liberty of designing an “Improved” CTOL VSS based on your drawings. 😎

The objective of my mods is to speed up air operations and enlarge the airgroup while sticking to the same overall dimensions. The resulting notional airgroup would be ~20 fixed wing aircraft + 4-6 helos. Pretty damn impressive for such a small platform (30,000t, 717ft). :diablo: A perfect Colossus/Majestic class replacement as well, and similar in capability to the larger Clemenceau class.

Here’s what I changed:

– I enlarged both lifts to carry 2 Hornets. Benefits: faster flow to/from hangar, 2 additional deck parking spots
– I moved the stern deck edge lift to the starboard deck edge. Benefits: lift no longer interferes with recovery operations, and better flow within the hangar.
– I enlarged the deck all the way to the stern. Benefits: More deck space and longer landing area, allowing for easier recoveries in bad seas

Comments?

3 full-size, full-spec LHDs is almost certainly unrealistic for a country like South Africa. However, I think 2 smaller, downgraded derivatives of an existing LHD design would be much cheaper, and probably achievable.

The key is that the SAN needs to be realistic about the LHDs’ intended mission. South Africa needs regional power projection ships tailored for humanitarian and logistical operations in low-threat waters. That’s very different from a 20,000+ ton BPE/Mistral-style design capable of global power projection and amphibious combat operations in medium-to-high threat waters. Specs that the SAN could easily downgrade include the combat system, weapons, HQ facilities, helicopter facilities, endurance etc.

The ideal starting point IMHO would be the BPC 160 design, a smaller variant of the French Mistral class proposed by DCN, for cost and technical reasons. Here’s what I think the SAN’s “Modified BPC 160” should look like:

Modified BPC 160

Displacement: 17,000t
Troops : 500, in higher density accommodation
Helos: 8-10 helos, 5 landing spots, 1 lift
Vehicles : 100
Landing Craft : 4 LCMs, no LCAC capability
HQ: Small 50 man HQ
Hospital: 70 beds
Combat system: Downgraded Senit, ~500 tracks
Communications: Inmarsat, Fleetsatcom
Weapons: 2x 30mm gun (rely on portable SAMs or escort in case of real air threat)
Regional endurance

Compare to Mistral:

Displacement: 21,000t (25% larger)
Troops : 450
Helos: 16 helos, 6 landing spots, 2 lifts
Vehicles : same
Landing Craft : same # of LCMs, but also LCAC-compatible (requires high-powered ventilation equipment)
HQ: Large 150 man, NATO compatible HQ
Hospital: same
Combat system: Senit 9 (~2000 tracks?)
Communications: Syracuse (French satellite comms), Fleetsatcom & Inmarsat
Weapons: 2x 30mm, 2x Simbad SAM
Global endurance

Basically, it would be as capable as the Mistral class for humanitarian & logistic operations (for which you need troops, vehicles and hospitals), but less capable for combat operations (for which you need a large HQ, powerful combat system & communications, more helos and self-defense weapons). By leveraging an existing design, reducing the specs and displacement, and building more blocks in Polish shipyards (as was already partially done with Mistral), I’m sure you could cut the ships’ cost by another 40%.

The Mistrals were already cheap at 650MM euros for 2 ships, so the SAN could get 2 17,000t LHDs for ~400MM euros (US$500MM). That would be excellent value for money. 😎

other good sources give 10,300 kg as the empty weight

AdlA sources have also given empty weights in line with the 10,300 kg figure for Rafale C (10,650 for the B, for example)

Jackonicko,
What are your sources? I have never seen those figures on paper, or on the internet.

Unwittingly, Pilot THX gave some credence to this kind of weight figure when he posted that:

“There was a nice report from a french journalist flying in the backseat of Rafale B302. He claimed the takeoffweight was 16,4t with a 1250 l tank and 4 MICAs.
So let’s subtract 16,4 t minus 1,4 t (should be the weight of tank and for MICAs). So you have 15 t.
Oh it’s becoming interesting let’s subtract 4,3 t of internal fuel and we have at least 10,7 t empty weight for a Rafale B.”

His numbers are slightly off: the 1250l tank, 4 MICAs and 2 pilots (which he forgot) will weigh in closer to 1700kg. And internal fuel will be 4500kg. So by that math empty weight is closer to 10,1t.

Also, unfortunately this kind of math doesn’t work well… with any aircraft. Trust me, I’ve tried it. For example, take the Typhoon IPA3 two-seater, which flew with with 4xPaveway IIs, 3x1000l fuel tanks, 4x AMRAAM, 2 IRIS-T and 2 pilots at a maximum take-off weight of “almost 24 metric tons”.

MTO (24,000kg) – internal fuel (4840 kg) – 4x Paveway II (4x520kg) – 3x 1000l tanks (3x800kg fuel + 3x~100kg empty weight) – 4x AMRAAM (4x 160kg) – 2 IRIS-T (2x 90kg) – 2 pilots (2x 100kg) = 13,350kg!!!

Being generous, even with a MTO of 23,5 tons the internal weight would come out to be 12,850kg empty. Of course, it’s an instrumented aircraft, but that’s still over 1,100 kg above what you’d expect.

Basically, there are a lot of things that go into the maximum take-off weight than aren’t counted in the empty weight (pylons, for example). Since you surely know this and purport to be objective, it’s disappointing to see you misuse Pilot THX’s numbers… 🙁

@ TMor,

Oops, my mistake. The article mentioned “an enhanced variant of the Rafale” with AESA, improved OSF, and MAWS for 2012. I assumed this meant Rafale F4 because the last F3 deliveries are in early 2012, but the article didn’t explicitely use the word “Rafale F4”. So you may be right and these improvements might be rolled out on the last Rafale F3s. 😉

I still like the idea of the F-14D. At what point does the F/A-18F actually become cheaper/better than the F-14D? I don’t think the Super Hornet will come in cheaper, or more capable. Here’s why:

Assuming that newer F-14Ds require 4x as much maintenance hours per flight hour as the F/A-18E/F (40 hours instead of 10 hours), and that they will fly 2500 hours (a third of their service life) over the next 10 years before they are eventually replaced by the F-35, they will need an extra 75,000 maintenance hours per plane. At US$100 per hour, that’s US$7.5M. At US$1000 per hour, that’s still only US75M.

Another way to look at it is that a mechanic can work 40 hours a week or about 1800-2000 hours a year, for maybe US$100000 a year in fully loaded costs. So you need an extra 40 or so mechanics-years, or an extra 4 mechanics per plane. That’s US$4M over 10 years.

To summarize:

F-14D:
Upfront costs – zilch. Uncle Sam should be able to give these out for free.
Maintenance: 40-60 hours per flight hour in USN service. My best guess is 40 hours or better in RAAF service (no carrier ops, so less corrosion, which is an issue for old designs like the F-14; don’t need to maintain certain systems – IRST, tailhook).
Capability advantages: Twice the payload/range of the Super Hornet.

F/A-18E/F:
Upfront costs: US$90M
Maintenance: 10-20 hours per flight hour in USN service. Would be similar in RAAF service.
Capability advantages: superior air defense (AMRAAM, AIM-9X capable), more survivable (stealthier, advanced electronics)

I don’t have any data on the 2000’s payload/range, but I would assume it to be very similar or even slightly better than the F-16’s (excluding CFTs), both clean and with many typical payloads.

The 2000 has the advantage in terms of lower drag, lower weight, and a smaller engine, all while having an identical internal fuel capacity and slightly larger external tanks. The F-16 has the advantage in terms of having a more efficient engine with lower specific fuel consumption, and in some very specific payload configurations where the 2000 can only carry one external tank.

I think the 2000 earned its poor reputation for payload/range due to the fact that the 2000C versions were short legged because they could only carry one tank with 2 BVR missiles and the 2000D/N typically only used one pylon for A/G payloads. Both issues were fixed in the 2000-5, since the 4 underfuselage pylons were wired for BVR missiles and LGBs. IIRC, these underfuselage pylons are also being wired for GPS guided bombs on the 2000D.

So in terms of air-to-ground payload the 2000-5 has the advantage in close air support (up to 6 LGBs with 2x2000L tanks, or 4 LGBs with 3x2000L tanks) while the F-16 has the advantage with heavy weapons (2 heavy pylons with 2 tanks vs. only 1 heavy pylon with 2 tanks).

In terms of air-to-air payloads, the 2000-5 again has the advantage because it carries more BVR missiles (all 6 Mica are BVR capable) than the F-16 (max 4 AMRAAM?) while still being able to carry 6000L in 3 drop tanks.

I’ll confirm what phaze2black said. Same thing happened to me: had to login in order to see the Military forums.