flanker30…..
For the record
My personal opinion is AW149 or similar should replace puma, and be operated by the army / RM…..
Agreed, but after losing out in Turkey to the Blackhawk, will AgustaWestland proceed with the 149 at all? They’re offering the AW139M – M for militarised – for a USAF contract at the moment. (http://www.agustawestland.com/product/aw139m)
flanker30…but aircraft have become,individually, many times more effective. There is a minimum limit caused, as shown, by the need to maintain a flying programme, but, an airgroup of 30 modern swingrole strikefighters are, today, capable of putting effects on target that in 1975 needed a full alpha strike and in 1945 would have required a fleet!.
You need the carrier selection right in the first place to ensure that a sufficient sized airgroup can be embarked, supported logistically and operationally to deliver the design capability. If you want to venture into sea space covered by someone elses striking power you need, IMHO, two 14 plane squadrons a 3 plane AEW det (on exisiting technology) and some plane guard/liaison rotaries for, perhaps, 6 airframes as an airgroup at absolute minimum. Two 14 plane squadrons able to be struck below means a big hangar even for a compact design like Gripen – see Buitreaux’s earlier work. That instantly rules out anything below about mid-40k tons….
Alternatives to the ‘one big carrier’ option come to mind:
1. Leave air defence to the Type 45s, so you won’t need AEW or CAP aircraft? (Similar situation to USN LHA/LHDs.) Yes, a layered defence starting with a CAP or multiple CAPs is the gold-plated textbook solution, but that isn’t always possible in the real world.
2. OR, What’s wrong with a carrier that is focussed on providing air defence for the task group?
3. OR, if you have two or more smaller carriers, which can operate separately for the 99.999% of the time when you’re not launching a strike against a peer enemy in a high intensity conflict, you can have have an air group of 30 or more aircraft, spread across the two carriers.
flanker30….
A reasonable schedule, assuming you have a fighter able, without drop tanks, to cruise a little more than two hours, is anyway around 1 hour CAP, plus reserve plus recovery time, this is an undisputable fact….
Why no drop tanks?
flanker30According to SAAB, Gripen NG can supercruise @M1.1 out to 250 nm in 26 min.,
and then stay on CAP 50 min, armed with 2 Meteor + 2 winders.So with this capacity, why not just zoom out only if and when AEW picked up a lumbering MPA ?
Alternatively it can carry 2 BVR + 2 WVR + 4 GBU 49 + DT out to 200 nm and stay 1.5 h on station
http://www.jsfnieuws.nl/wp-content/DutchAirForceAssociation_Gripen_2009.pdf
p33/34
No need to carry GBU-49s on a CAP mission.
flanker30….
On point b your assumption couldn’t be more inaccurate. The size and configuration of the carrier dictates everything. The type of operations, sortie rate, logistic support etc all dictate what kind of aircraft you can embark and in what numbers…..
In WWII, the main US carrier displaced approx. 35,000 tons and carried 90 to 100 aircraft; the main British carrier was less than 30,000 tons and carried 40-70 aircraft.
Aircraft became heavier, which is why carriers have become bigger since then and/or carry less aircraft.
flanker30The way too solve this is to set the defence budget at 3% and set it into law like they intend to with the DFID budeget. well we can live in hope can’t we
Why 3%, when the NATO average is less than 2% (when you exclude the US)?
flanker30Thing is though that 12 or so fighters barely give you the kind of capability you are talking about.
You can do the calculations yourself. Say a CAP pair has 15 min transit to station 60 mins on and then 15 back with recovery margin. You have a DLI pair spotted on alert 5 to back up the CAP (as you aren’t going to run two CAP slots!). There is a third of your airgroup assigned immediately.
After the first CAP comes off station another pair has to already be up covering or you gap the slot. So now you have one pair up, one returning and the DLI pair. So now youre less than 2hr’s into your flying programme and half your airgroup is tasked. If you cant regenerate the first CAP pair by the time the second is returning you are launching airframes 7 & 8 and probably replacing the DLI pair with 9 & 10.
So now its 4hrs into the programme and you have 6 airframes in the hanger being regenerated, 2 on station and 2 at alert 5. 10 cabs used to keep one cap slot filled, with deck alert backup, and precious little left over for recovery/buddy tanking or anything else!. That also assumes zero attrition and 100% mission available rates!.
Are you going to be certain that your single CAP slot is always going to be on the right threat axis to catch the hostile mpa?. Or do you bet that your DLI will always win the footrace before the MPA can get itself out of the dli intercept radius.
Do you need a pair if the target is just a single MPA?
60 mins on station seems conservative? 2 hours more reasonable?
flanker30A Block 30 refurbished by AMARG is only $4.5M. Its really difficult for the Swedes to match that price unless they pay the Romanians to take them.
The Romanians would be stupid to make their decision just on the basis of flyaway price: what counts is the total programme cost, including training, maintenance, spares, and of course operating costs. How much would the Block 30s cost under those headings?
Don’t the Swedes have a number of Gripen As still in storage?
flanker30Your correct I heard it over the weekend. Personally, I didn’t think the selection process was even close. Yet, considering the last three CVN’s were named after Republican Presidents. I guess nobody should be surprised. (still a shock) Nonethless, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the Ford Class will be named USS Enterprise at some point.
It’s also worth noting that they had to go back to John F. Kennedy to find a Democratic President worthy of naming a Aircraft Carrier after.
They named a submarine after Jimmy Carter. He’s a former submariner himself of course, but was it his choice or the Navy’s?
flanker30Seems to me there are two fundamental issues in this debate:
1. Quantity versus size – one super-carrier in operation or two or three medium-size vessels? If Britain’s single carrier is operating e.g. off the coast of Libya, then it can’t be in the Gulf or off the Falklands or in the North Atlantic at the same time. Of course bigger can sometimes be better, but how many times in recent history has an air wing of 40-50 aircraft – as opposed to, say, 20-25 – made such a big difference?
2. Naval fighter aircraft – the carrier debate usually comes down to the type of aircraft available and their requirements and capabilities, rather than the carrier itself. Admirals and Air Marshalls will always look for the best, with all the technological bells and whistles, but does ‘stealth’ justify the enormous cost of the F-35?
flanker30That means either going for Harrier 3 about a decade ago or buying F35B, to be honest it looks like we made the right decision to switch from that, with the USMC switching half of their buy it’s looking like it will be a hugely expensive machine.
Agreed that it was right to bail on the F-35B, but a short-to-medium term alternative would be to upgrade the Harriers to something like the AV-8B+ standard – or acquire such aircraft secondhand – to provide a radar-equipped swing-role air-defence and strike/ground attack aircraft.
That would provide a breathing space of around 10 years, until the BAe/Saab Sea Gripen becomes available. :diablo:
flanker30Ideally Think
– 2 ships
– LHD
– 220-235+ meters
– 26 000-33 000 tons
– Hightly automatised (220-400 “core crew” + up to 1100 troops embarked)
– Extremely versatile ships (amphibious, helico-carrier, command & control, replenishment ship, hospital capabilities)
– Up to 2 dozens of helico + few UAV
– Forget traditional shaft and think 2 pods
– all electrics props
– well deck aft for up to 2 or 3 advanced/fast landing crafts
– vast interior hangars for helico, tanks, armored vehicles and others stuffs
– only defensive weapons (chaff launchers, decoy, RAM missiles, Phalanx CIWS)Forget the F-35:dev2:
I would broadly agree. The nearest equivalent existing ship would be the Spanish/Australian BPE/Canberra class?
A couple of points though:
1. Why only 2 ships? Would 3 not be a better guarantee of availability and sustainability?
2. No provision for Harriers? Maybe the Italian Cavour is a better model to follow: it is more balanced between strike/sea-control and LHD?
3. 1100 troops is a lot; maybe ~500 would be adequate? Don’t forget the personnel of the air wing have to be accommodated too.
flanker30Keeping up with the Joneses, I mean the French…:diablo:
flanker30While the 9X has been around from ~ 2003 (on F 15, F 16 and F 18), the AIM 120 D has just been introduced; in fact is didn’t reach yet the IOC (initial operational capability). So, the F 22 is the first fighter to integrate the D. BTW, the present version — AIM 120 C7 is considered the best operational AA missile.
The F 22 is operational from Dec. 2005. Can you name a combat operation from 2005 onwards that would require the use of a sophisticated air superiority plane? Afganistan? Libya? Get serious…
Why are the Air Force getting AIM-120Ds now if the F-22 can’t handle them until 2017?
Is there a vibration problem with the AIM-120C on the F-22?
Wouldn’t the F-22 be the perfect aircraft to patrol the no-fly zone over Libya?
flanker30Not the latest versions of those missiles. Right now the F-22 uses AIM-9M and AIM-120C.
What’s the point of a cutting-edge aircraft if its weapons are just plain vanilla? Maybe that explains why it’s never been deployed into a combat zone?
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