Al.Of course I’m only suggesting ASROC if you are particularly wedded to a common launcher. If instead you’d rather have the best weapon then just deal with having a separate Ikara system.
Dan
My logic for a common launcher as follows
1. T82 is going to defend its charge against saturation attacks, thus being double-ended provides significant advantage, not just in terms of number of missiles one can get into the air but also being able to engage threats from multiple directions (hence why big US ‘Frigates’, nuke cruisers and Aegis were double-ended)
2. Missile Leanders were forced to become several sub-classes as the choice was between a launcher for Ikara or Exocet. As well as being an expensive way of doing things what if you happen to have the wrong Frigate on station and really need the other weapon system? Also
3. Mk41 has worked as a very successful lauch system because it can launch a range of missiles. Thus it can go on lots of platforms andd offer flexibility for all of them. Also because it goes on a range of platforms the cost of development is spread over a larger buy.
4. I am sure that I have seen (nebulous) proposals for a common launcher for Ikara and Sea Dart including http://middle-watch.com/outtakes.htm
Now I’m fully aware that an interesting idea of dubious provenance is not the same as a fully working GWS but that’s what I’d choose for my fantasy fleet
Al.No Phantom?!
No, this being hindsight, revisionism and fantasy their lordships saw the problem of buying big, new future proof launch platforms at the same time as funding big, new, loud air assets and also avoided pouring money down the ‘upgrade current flat tops for a huge sum for a short period‘ trap
Al.That’ll come in handy if the balloon goes up and the RN are on the job hunting 100s of submarines all waving a red flag.
When CVA01 and co were planned RN used flat tops for power projection. ASW was more a case of defending big assets. Hence Fleet Carrier + Escort (ASW) Cruiser model. Presumably if the Soviet threat in Alworld had developed along the same model as in realand then there may have been a change with the Escort Cruiser becoming the primary as it hunted Soviet Boomers with CVAs providing top cover to hold off those horrible Blinders and Backfires.
Course if it were up to me we’d have hugely more SSNs (again funded by magic) and leave ASW to the experts :diablo:
Al.Damn that’s a nice fleet, but presumably the RAF and Army are getting disbanded to pay for all that 😮
Or not 🙂
[Aside: since this Fantasy revisionist history this fleet is funded by a combination of handwaving, not wasting money on cancelled programmes, signing fixed price contracts and not meddling with them and social and economic policy not wasting money either]
Al.Once an F35B runs up to full power prior to take off how are they going to stop it skidding down the deck especially if its wet?
How do the FAA deal with problem with SHARs and GR9s?
Al.if it doesnt get approved. ge/rr will want a large share of the manufacturing of the f135 engine
but either way, i cant see the UK spitting the dummy and canceling, they have no other real option
The problem (for UK and JSF) is that we are in cascade error territory
1 or several From the following will probably be bearable, but all together might be too much
Increase in purchase cost
Failure to keep cost/flight hour down
Delays
Performance
Access to source code
Manufacturing share
non-European programme
The whole programme is expensive at a time when politically cancelling a big programme might be advantageous, niggly little nibbles at the promised benefits of partnership make it harder to defend that cost.
There ARE alternatives. It is perfectly sensible to see them as sub-optimal or even just not as good (with or without hard data to back up that analysis), but they do exist
Al.I dont understand why the intakes need to be moved though? aren’t they one area the RCS good on?
The Chinese mod on J10 removes the discontinuity between ventral intake and lower fuselage, that preumably would be an important area for rework on phoon. Conformal vs internal weapon stowage is a big area for thought (and would lead to big redesign and rework if the decision is taken to go internal) the other BIG area IMMOO is the large vertical stabiliser (‘tail’) with TVC it might be possible to remove that.
IF one makes three or four decisions like that the plane is almost a new one. Then do we go for two seater? AESA? Certainly as much difference between early Flankers and current.
Al.but that’s my own personal paranoid conspiracy theory)
Really? Mine is that A.N.O.ther third party torpedoes the SK ship, NK feel agrrived at accusations, SK at death of its saiors and NK refusal to admit responsibility and cycle continues.
My only problem is working out who would ACTUALLY gain from this strategy. The usual suspects in ‘historically we hate Korea’ or ‘we want to be regional superpower’ all have far too much to lose economically. I really hope that their leaders realise that as well.
Al.As an aside from the discussion on carrier aircraft – I read an excellent article in Combat Aircraft Monthly about the B-1B lancer and it made it clear how useful the bomber is for close support, when it can loiter over the battle space (is that the new trendy word for battle field?) for 10 -15 hours and carry 24 JDAM and drop them with pin point accurary using a SNIPER pop. It seems to me that a good use of resouces would be to push for RAF to get bombers again for CAS (rather than as suggested by recent blogs lobbying the US and RAF to get turboprop COIN aircraft).
What does everyone else think?
I read the self same article and aside from the hourly flying costs thought much the same as you. I have a vague recollection of a US document looking at how to plug the capability gap with fifth gens and making the point that B1bs have dropped a large proprtion of ordnance used in all recent US campaigns and thus having more bombers might be cheaper than more fighters.
I also thought that Japan should look to a B1b as its new F4 replacement in the anti-maritime role. Endurance, payload and range seem perfect. I suspect that politics and fear might put the kybosh on that though….. 🙂
Al
Al.Fully agreed.
Additionally we have Trident and Trident warheads, we don’t have a Stealthy, Long range, Supersonic cruise missile. Even if one of those 3 adjectives is deleted that’s a new programme to be funded. Which costs money and which might fail. If it fails we either have no deterrent or go back to Trident having spent money and got nowt for the cruise missile programme.
Al.I think it makes sense depending on how one looks at it.
If USN is wedded to the idea of fielding JSF and believe the summary given of the differences between F-135 and F-136 then they would be bonkers to cancel it.
If USN wants a divorce from JSF then killing the better engine and then saying that JSF with the worse engine is not up to the job makes sense.
Al.When I started to think about this I read some posts where it was suggested that you could replace Russian engines on the Su-27 with the engines of the F-16 of course all you had to do was re-position the gear box (just a minor job then!) – As the Su-33 is based on Su-27 I extrapolated from there.
So to extend my thread – could Royals Royce build the Russian engines under licence and leave the rest to BAE to sort (the avionics)?
Or am I just taking this idea to silly extremes?
As a thought experiment its no more daft than others floated about.
My concern over ‘just’ re-engining was that UK Phantoms were ‘just’ re-engined with Speys and that was a pig of a job (which didn’t actually provide the benefits evisioned. Fast forward and Nimrod’s were ‘just’ re-engined and that was an expensive pig of a job (although performance upgrade seems to have been achieved)
Al.This will allow Obama to install a hard-core leftist who
How many hardcore leftists are there in US politics?
Although I fully agree with the second part. The worst thing that USGov can do is preside (sp) over a long drawn out end of programme which costs much money and provides no actual airframes at the end. (a la A12,F111K,TSR2, P1154 and to lesser extent T45, Seawolf, SSN and F22)
If F35 is not what is required or contractor is in breach of contract. Bin it. Learn the lessons and write a proper requirement and programme to replace it. Don’t slowly starve a programme of funds and pay lots of money to get nothing
Al.The payload carried by the Harrier would be small due to it launching in hover mode.
I don’t disagree that skyhook system had disadvantages (almost a case of an application in search of a problem) but the plan wasn’t to lauch in hover mode. There was (in the piccies I’ve seen at least) a set of skijump rails running amidships and launching the SHARs off above the bridge. That set of rails is what made me think of the scheme when madrat proposed his(?) monorail scheme.
Al.In my view the key differences will be:
scale of deployment
ease of maintenance
plasma sheath technology
SU historically produced airframes which were a little less advanced than their western contemporaries but churned them out like gangbusters. Post fall of empire they did something similar with Flanker and Flaker mods. Its already looking like Russian and Indian AFs will have far more of these than the US will have F22s. So whilst it may not be breaking new ground with Soviet (later Russian) scales of deployment it does add something new to its broad contemporaries.
Again historically Soviet tech was designed to be pretty soldier proof, I’d expect the T50 to follow in this fine tradition
It seems to my (semi-trained at best) eye that the T50 is not as advanced structurally as the mighty Raptor but if plasma sheath can be made to work then T50 does not NEED to be engineering to such ludicrous precision all over and so design for manufacture and design for maintenance can be given higher priority.
We all know that any engineering decision is based on choosing the least-worst option in addressing a range of criteria.
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