CVF Construction

[benroethig]

Turboprops from the 50s???

Most of which are still around. Materials may be different and the computers are radically different, but design of transport aircraft peaked in the 60s.

[Jonesy]

Dunno about that all I've seen from the RAF for the past decade is something along the lines of: "Don't want carrier, don't want to be involved in carrier, they're taking our funding". You've also stated yourself in the past that RAF personnel have been very opposed to deploying on carriers, I just can't see them really getting involved with any enthusiasm and I'm sure they will argue that Reapers could be continued to be operateed from Creech because it will be lower cost, even if it can't be deployed from Sea.

Especially after the Libya ops the RAF contention that reach and AAR offsets naval air has been proven to be a lot less solid than advertised. The very clear gap in the French contribution and ours has been noticed and the light blue are aware of that. They have a gain to make from playing and 35B certainly replaces the short field deployment ability they lost with GR9. Easier sell than the alternate.

I still think you're over-egging the size difference of EMKIT to EMALS, it still looks like taking up a fairly big chunk of the deck for me.

The plan view attached shows why thats not the case. The emkit is mounted where the 'waist' cat would be on the catobar hull. Using a double length run, compared to the test article, for illustration but, to be honest, you could triple or quadruple the length with little consequence. The only thing that emkit will disrupt will be rotary ops...possibly...for the short window once a day when you are firing off uav's.

[obligatory]

Carrier Strike IS about strike aircraft though. EMALS is, literally, an extra £2bn to do something that the requirement doesnt call for. Thats every description of mission creep that there is and that is a time honoured way to kill programmes.

If F-35B is canned we ask for the £2bn investment we've put in to the aircraft back and use that to put EMALS in to the first hull available at an immediate refit period. EMALS can be put in at any time. There will be refit costs at that point...little different to now...and a time lag, but, we'll need that time to get an initial cadre of deck qualified pilots and RN crews up to speed anyway and it means we are not spending money until we need to.

It could be that in 20 years the threat situation has changed and we will have a need for the Fleet Carrier you are describing to contest blue water. Even if STOVL has performed well to that point it may be we do suddenly need the extra few hundred miles STOVL denies. So, at that time, perhaps STOVL gives way to EMALS. With a higher threat environment budgets are more likely to be permissive. Until then where is the need?.

The list you put in is telling. The only real differences are in COD and AEW. COD we are not going to have to worry too much about as our single carrier battle group will be a prime focus for the RFA and we've managed fairly adequately without Greyhound for a long time. Even in the heady days of the Cold War FAA the COD Gannets weren't really on a par and we got by ok.

As for AEW Hawkeye is a monolithic, legacy, solution. Nice to have perhaps, but, no reason to spend £2bn on catapults then another billion on planes. Spend a fraction on high endurance UAVs and you have not only AEW, but, distributed persistent multi-sensor platforms covering the full range of ISTAR taskings at sea and ashore as we've already covered on the thread. The kind of support that Carrier Strike actually requires....not coverage against Clancy's fantasy Backfires!.

I disagree with you here Jonesy.
If we take the Falklands as the example, the primary objective of the fighters wasn't strike, it was sea/air control, more specifically to defend the troop carriers against air strikes.
Backfires or not those air strikes was the primary concern, and it wasnt even Clancy that came up with it.
But also in strikes it makes a world of difference if you can provide AEW coverage, something Hawkeye can but a helo can't.
I'm convinced a simulation would prove a carrier with a couple of Hawkeyes is more than twice as effective as one without, on an average

[Jonesy]

Only if you fight the war in the half-assed way we fought CORPORATE!. Remember we had a fleet principally configured for blue-water ASW and had a submariner in overall command...its a widely appreciated view that the war was won only because we had the people who knew how to misuse their equipment in the most beneficial fashion!.

Fought again, properly equipped and with a bit more of a clue about exped warfare, we TLAM the airbases that those airstrikes and, more importantly, Argentine maritime patrol capability were/is generated from. Political considerations go out the window we have the tools to reduce the threat to the fleet so we bloody well use them.

We then stand off 500nm and CASOM hit every C3I node, radar site, ordnance/POL depot we can identify on the islands and systematically reduce the airbase. Then, and only then when the access denial systems are attrited, we close to a couple of hundred miles and put in high intensity ops to finish off the mobile systems and any collaterol-sensitive targets with EPW and Brimstone such that every SAM, artillery piece, AFV, bunker and truck that is exposed is hit. After THAT we close again and let the WAH-64's go in and mop up with 3Cdo and light infantry.

Simply put we dont HAVE troop carriers sat in San Carlos water requiring the kind of Fleet Air Defence you describe as, fought properly, the presence of Op forces on the islands is made untenable almost before the landing force is in range of the islands. There is just no need to sit the carrier there fat, dumb and happy with an E-2 up inviting the whole Argentine airforce to come out and try it on!. We can fight smarter than that now.

[swerve]

How many TLAMs do we get in a rush order before this all starts? And how many submarines can we deploy to fire them? What targets on those air bases do we hit? What about the civilian airfields used for dispersal?

The possession of a class of weapon does not necessarily mean that we're capable of destroying every target that class of weapon is usable against. We must count the number of targets, the number of weapons, & the number of launch platforms.

You're also assuming that at the hypothetical future date (2020s?) when we have the ability to do what you describe, we still have the same technological lead we have now.

[Prom]

Questions on the parliamentary order book to be answered today (by written or oral answers) include:

Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what recent examination he has made of the comparative cost of (a) fitting catapults and arrestor gear to one of the future carriers and (b) acquiring instead short take-off and vertical landing aircraft for use on either of the carriers; whether both carriers would be used in the fixed-wing strike aircraft role if VSTOL aircraft were acquired for the Fleet Air Arm; what assessment he has made of the potential effects this would have on the availability of a continuous fixed-wing carrier-strike capability; and if he will make a statement.
(100397)
114
N Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many (a) pilots, (b) service personnel and (c) civilian personnel have been trained to operate the catapult and arrestor gear as part of the conversion of the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier announced in the Strategic Defence and Security Review.
(101842)
115
N Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many RAF pilots have learnt foreign languages as part of the carrier programme.
(101843)
116
N Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the payload is of the (a) F35B and (b) F35C aircraft.
(101844)
117
N Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how much his Department has spent on training individuals to handle and fly CATOBAR aircraft.
(101845)
118
N Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with which other nations' aircraft carriers the F35B fighter jet would be interoperable with a full weapon load.

Jim Murphy is further the steroetype of ignorant Labour defence spokesmen. In particular:

how many (a) pilots, (b) service personnel and (c) civilian personnel have been trained to operate the catapult and arrestor gear

So how many people have been trained to use a system that has not yet been delivered and is not yet in service in any other navy. Anyone guess?

[Jonesy]

How many TLAMs do we get in a rush order before this all starts? And how many submarines can we deploy to fire them? What targets on those air bases do we hit? What about the civilian airfields used for dispersal?

There are a goodly number of auxilliary fields around Ushuaia and Rio Grande with the logistics infrastructure to support high tempo combat air ops???. Rio Gallegos and Comodoro Rivadavia maybe they could disperse, but, that just means knocking back their own optempo and thinning out already scarce GBAD doesnt it. If you use a civillian airstrip for combat ops its not a civillian strip anymore is it?. Besides we are not needing to wipe those facilities off the face of the earth....we need them disrupted for the few days while we pick off threat systems on the islands...no more. Targetting base ops facilities and personnel does that.

The possession of a class of weapon does not necessarily mean that we're capable of destroying every target that class of weapon is usable against. We must count the number of targets, the number of weapons, & the number of launch platforms.

Yes it does...the operative word being 'capable'...it is unlikely that we would be able to find every one we'd wish to strike but a weapon hidden every time a plane is overhead is not an effective weapon if we keep the planes going overhead! Plain old passive attrition that one. That is a function of sortie rates...something that is a key driver for how CVF is designed.

You're also assuming that at the hypothetical future date (2020s?) when we have the ability to do what you describe, we still have the same technological lead we have now.

I'm assuming current force structures. If Argentina suddenly turns round and dumps several tens of billions into a comprehensive IADS with seamless aerial radar coverage, hardened comms links and multilayer SAM belts plus a naval rebuilding programme of cutting edge escorts, SSNs and a couple of medium weight CVA's then, yes, I accept that my suggestion would be wholly inadequate. That said though I'd make the contention that we might notice such rampant militarisation and funding for CATOBAR, UAV's, more Astutes, more escorts etc, etc might suddenly be viewed differently by the incumbent government of the day!.

As there is no suggestion that Argentina is about to go for regional superpower status, despite the disgruntled rhetoric regarding the Islands, it would seem prudent to actually let them start building up their threat before we spend billions to counter it!.

[kev 99]

Especially after the Libya ops the RAF contention that reach and AAR offsets naval air has been proven to be a lot less solid than advertised. The very clear gap in the French contribution and ours has been noticed and the light blue are aware of that. They have a gain to make from playing and 35B certainly replaces the short field deployment ability they lost with GR9. Easier sell than the alternate.

Common sense doesn't belong in any discussion about forces rivalry, the arguments about using carriers to improve the RAF's reach have been around since 82! I don't see Libya changing anything at all in this regard other than making a handful of interested people nodding their head and saying "told you so". If you took a vote amongst RAF personnel about whether the UK should have a carrier strike capability I would expect the majority would say "No".

The plan view attached shows why thats not the case. The emkit is mounted where the 'waist' cat would be on the catobar hull. Using a double length run, compared to the test article, for illustration but, to be honest, you could triple or quadruple the length with little consequence. The only thing that emkit will disrupt will be rotary ops...possibly...for the short window once a day when you are firing off uav's.

I prefer this photo showing a head on STOVL CVF:



CVF has a 70m wide deck, and Mantis (since we've been talking about it) has a 20m+ wingspan, so it's fairly obvious that a aircraft with wings down is compeletely obscuring use of the ramp for F35b. This is okay if things go to plan constantly but then quite often they don't.

Also since you've been talking about converting the CVF to CATOBAR in the future I'd like to point out you're talking about adding EMKIT where the waist catapuilt would replace it. It seems a little risking to me to cut big holes in the deck for new kit, then ripping it out again making a bigger one for bigger kit in the future.

Jim Murphy is further the steroetype of ignorant Labour defence spokesmen. In particular:

I'll be honest the more I hear from him the lower my opinion gets.

[Geoff_B]

N Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with which other nations' aircraft carriers the F35B fighter jet would be interoperable with a full weapon load.

Easy - NONE the the F-35B cant land on any carrier with a full weapon load, unless its in token stealth mode with the minimal internal weapons.

I'm not sure he should be going down the full load question route as that does highlight the weakness of the F-35B compared with the CATOBAR aircraft.

[obligatory]

I've been wondering about this for at least 10 years now:

-What got into the Argentinians when they didn't deploy every last a/c they intended to use on the Falklands and fortify the air base there ?

[Prom]

I'm not sure he should be going down the full load question route as that does highlight the weakness of the F-35B compared with the CATOBAR aircraft.

I thought that too. Don't mind him asking. If the answer throws up lots of possibilities then I apologise to him. Otherwise I will assume he is asking because he is a bear of little brain

[RN Phantom]

I've been wondering about this for at least 10 years now:

-What got into the Argentinians when they didn't deploy every last a/c they intended to use on the Falklands and fortify the air base there ?

Quite simply they didn't think Britain would try to recapture the islands so they hadn't considered how they would defend them. They thought the international community would accept the invasion as a fait accomplait as it had with the Indian takeover in Goa.

[obligatory]

Ok, so it wasn't the brightest commander,
-but IIRC it took the Brits around 2 months of preparations,
i saw it on TV so even a mediocre intelligence would have got a whiff and report back ?

[Jonesy]

Kev

CVF has a 70m wide deck, and Mantis (since we've been talking about it) has a 20m+ wingspan, so it's fairly obvious that a aircraft with wings down is compeletely obscuring use of the ramp for F35b. This is okay if things go to plan constantly but then quite often they don't.

Again though you are talking about aircraft with endurances of 20-odd hours. Even if one gets itself all depressed halfway through its patrol and plunges into the ocean you are talking about a single launch event for the replacement 10hrs or so after the last EMKIT evolution and 10hrs until you have to spot the next patrol series. It really should not be that problematic to manage the shuffle at that low a frequency of launch/land cycles.

Also since you've been talking about converting the CVF to CATOBAR in the future I'd like to point out you're talking about adding EMKIT where the waist catapuilt would replace it. It seems a little risking to me to cut big holes in the deck for new kit, then ripping it out again making a bigger one for bigger kit in the future.

I would have thought it almost convenient to have established EMP shielding, cable runs and a pre-existing deck opening to expand on to prepare the waist position for the 'new' EMCAT installation to be honest.

The whole point here though, and cap is doffed to Liger with his observation that this is currently not on the cards in any confirmed public space, is to make the observation that lack of the full EMALS suite doesnt mean that rotaries are the only option for Electronic support for a STOVL CVF.

That not only has a comparable MALE UAV flown operationally with a representative theatre surveillance radar in the shape of Guardian, but, that Mantis offers all that Guardian does with the added benefit of two engines. All that and the fact that a proven, lightweight, launcher system exists to allow for the deployment of the MALE type UAV discussed from a fair sized flight deck.

This requires little further imagination to connect the dots and see the potential capabilities that even current tech could deliver, on a STOVL hull, without recourse to heavy spend on CATOBAR upfront and whole-life.

[Liger30]

I admit that i might not be entirely up to date, but last i heard EMKIT was sized for a 500 kg drone and could throw perhaps a Predator MQ-1A, the old Predator that started the species.

"Lengthening" the rail, "cutting the deck" and increasing the performances envelope sounds very straightforward and easy, but other "straightforward" and "inexpensive" ideas include putting new wings on Nimrod MR2 and preparing a british EMALS with two rails instead of 4 and converting CVF.

Both have turned out being not that straightforward at all in reality.
In the extreme case of Nimrod, well... facepalm.
Sure, Nimrod is a special case, but you get the point. I'm always more than a tad skeptical about such great plans that step away so much from what is being done or even envisioned, in the UK and abroad.

Let's face it, as of now, the UK and France are very late in the drone race, and are at ground zero in terms of navalized drone airplanes other than for the 2001 trial of Scan Eagle on a Type 23 and the current joint program of France and US to develop and test a rotary wing drone converting an helo in an unmanned machine. Both are ages away from what is being suggested now.

This is what the US Navy is doing to get an UCAV in its carrier air wings by 2020 (new timeframe, 2018 proved financially too ambitious in times of cuts), to give an idea: http://www.defensenews.com/article/2...=mod|nextstory
To get a Mantis drone as a MASC solution will require similar steps to be moved, and unless the US help the UK sharing their magic, the UK has to start from zero, and at the moment there is no plan, no study, no funding for doing it. Sadly.

It is a fascinating idea for the future, perhaps, but it has no realistic relevance at the moment in shaping what is done with the carriers.


CVF and JCA problem these days really does come down to, essentially:

Money - F35C costs a minimum of 10 million dollars less than an F35B, in all DoD and LM data. Possibly more than that.
F35B has a maintenance penalty potentially implying as much as 25% more through life cost.
F35B, however, comes with the cheapest ship configuration and avoids sizeable short term expense. According to some, it will be easier and cheaper to train personnel for the B and keep them carrier current than doing so with the C. So much so to balance the higher acquisition and mainteinance costs, when the savings are summed to the money saved on catapults, according to a current of thought.
Personally, i think that technology is rapidly closing much of the gap, and every day that passes the training penalty for CATOBAR ops is reducing. Things have changed a lot from 2001, and are bound to change even more.
Swallowing a bit of pride and doing like France and Italy, having naval pilots trained in the UK not just for the first few years of the F35 service life but forever is also likely to remove lots of cost and issues.

Which one makes for the best choice?
Really hard to answer.

- Politics. Here the F35C/CATOBAR combination is a clear winner. It matters to the US, to France, and a further rethink would be embarrassing like hell for the government to announce and defend. Politically, it is the most effective choice.

Ever since 2005 it also been widely reported and rumored and even said by LM spokesmen that the RAF wanted F35C for Tornado replacement. At one point a mixed buy of 80 B and up to 58 C was expected.
If they still want it just as badly, it is going to have a weight in the decision.


The F35C is a political winner. History teaches that this means a lot.

[Prom]

According to some, it will be easier and cheaper to train personnel for the B and keep them carrier current than doing so with the C. So much so to balance the higher acquisition and mainteinance costs, when the savings are summed to the money saved on catapults, according to a current of thought.
Personally, i think that technology is rapidly closing much of the gap, and every day that passes the training penalty for CATOBAR ops is reducing. Things have changed a lot from 2001, and are bound to change even more.
Swallowing a bit of pride and doing like France and Italy, having naval pilots trained in the UK not just for the first few years of the F35 service life but forever is also likely to remove lots of cost and issues.

Be under no illusions it will cost more to train for CATOBAR. personally i don't think it will outweigh the other savings you correctly identify, but it should not be underestimated.
It has not and is not reducing in cost much. The cost by the way is more related to deck personnel than pilots. And we cannot just follow the US way of doing things. Our deck, systems, procedures and very importantly health and safety laws/rules are quite different. We can learn but not copy

[Prom]

p.s. it appears that despite the order book, the question was fudged again today. Same place, same time 16th April

[Liger30]

Of course i meant naval pilots trained in the US, not in the UK... Correction of my earlier post. Only saw the mistake now.

Anyway, this seems the direction we are heading: the NAO Major Projects report 2011 contained the mention that the constitution of a british-based F35C for the "first few years" won't happen.
Might well never come.

A force of 6 UK F35B was planned at Eglin AFB alongside the USMC F35B training squadron. With the C, a similar sized force will probably be based at the other end of the same hangar, with the USN F35C training squadron instead.
http://ukarmedforcescommentary.blogs...ntegrated.html

[snafu352]

I've been wondering about this for at least 10 years now:

-What got into the Argentinians when they didn't deploy every last a/c they intended to use on the Falklands and fortify the air base there ?

There was no "air base" on the Falklands in 1982.

Port Stanley had and has an air strip that light coin aircraft can operate from.

Pucaras, MB339's.

That strip was extended post '82 to allow Brit air defence to operate from it, F4 Phantoms, but was reduced once Mount Pleasent air base was operational.

F35B instead of C is stupid btw

More cost for a less capable platform, dumb de dumb dumb dumb!

Nobody ever got in trouble by having more kit than they necessarily needed, given that the kit actually worked () and that they could afford it ()!

[kev 99]

I would have thought it almost convenient to have established EMP shielding, cable runs and a pre-existing deck opening to expand on to prepare the waist position for the 'new' EMCAT installation to be honest.

That only works though if the stuff you're taking out is a similar size to the stuff you're putting back, EMP shielding is sufficient for the replacement, cables are in the right place etc, none of us know if that is the case, but I think it prodent to expect EMALS to take up more space (width as well as length) then EMKIT.

[mrmalaya]

2 points to clarify:

I meant Hawkeye and Greyhound and if I was a couple of years out on the design date I think the point is still valid. These carriers must be seen as ships that will operate in 2030-50 time frame and are we genuinely going to use 90 year old aircraft on them by that time?

The UAV question has to be addressed and we must look beyond the induction of the F35. Lets face it, we will start with the Merlin system and move on from there.

As to the UK/France being behind on the UAV front, I think that only stands when compared to the US. There is no reason why they can't come up with their own naval UCAV/UAV in the coming years.

Optimism is long dead on this thread, but I will continue to carry the torch.

[Liger30]

I meant Hawkeye and Greyhound and if I was a couple of years out on the design date I think the point is still valid. These carriers must be seen as ships that will operate in 2030-50 time frame and are we genuinely going to use 90 year old aircraft on them by that time?

As a matter of fact, regardless of how old the airframe design might be, there is simply no competitor on par to what Hawkeye 2D and Greyhound offer. And there likely won't be serious competition for many years still, so, wasn't for the cost, the "old" E2D would still be, unquestionably, the best solution of all.

The Hawkeye 2D is better than the E3 Sentry under a sensors and avionics point of view (from CEC to air to ground radar modes), and there's still a long time to wait and a lot of money to spend before a drone can match Hawkeye.
As a matter of fact, there is not a single UAV at the moment carrying a big, powerful AEW radar such as that of Hawkeye. Indeed, there's not a drone flying with even just a Searchwater 2000/Cerberus equivalent system. They are not even on the drawing boards, nor on the horizon.

The Lynx radar of a Reaper sees ground targets, and at just around 65 km of range at that.
The Global Hawk BAMS has much still to prove, and is not an AEW, but a surface search asset anyway. It also is unsuited to carrier ops.

It is not lack of optimism. It is lack of funding, at least for the moment, and realism, that shape my remarks.

We do agree on the UAVs being probably the future, though. Even if we could argue a long time about how far that future might still be.

But the UAV future really kind of goes in favor of EMALS, cables and F35C.
Once you've go a catapult that can regulate the power it launches with, and potentially fire in the air up to 45 tons of mass, you are more that reasonably covered for 50 or more years of development in aerospace technology.
Also because you can piggy-back on the USN money and development efforts by adopting their systems and solutions.

[swerve]

There are a goodly number of auxilliary fields around Ushuaia and Rio Grande with the logistics infrastructure to support high tempo combat air ops???. Rio Gallegos and Comodoro Rivadavia maybe they could disperse, but, that just means knocking back their own optempo and thinning out already scarce GBAD doesnt it. If you use a civillian airstrip for combat ops its not a civillian strip anymore is it?. Besides we are not needing to wipe those facilities off the face of the earth....we need them disrupted for the few days while we pick off threat systems on the islands...no more. Targetting base ops facilities and personnel does that.

How many targets, how many missiles? We have a small stock. We have few deployable launchers.

Yes it does...the operative word being 'capable'...it is unlikely that we would be able to find every one we'd wish to strike but a weapon hidden every time a plane is overhead is not an effective weapon if we keep the planes going overhead! Plain old passive attrition that one. That is a function of sortie rates...something that is a key driver for how CVF is designed.

You missed my point. If we have n weapons of class x, we can hit up to n targets. If there are more than n targets, we can't hit them all.

I'm assuming current force structures.

No you aren't. You're assuming a projected post-2020 British force structure that requires us to complete at least one carrier, equip it & operate it. While I hope that comes to pass, it's not our current force structure.

If Argentina suddenly turns round and dumps several tens of billions into a comprehensive IADS with seamless aerial radar coverage, hardened comms links and multilayer SAM belts plus a naval rebuilding programme of cutting edge escorts, SSNs and a couple of medium weight CVA's then, yes, I accept that my suggestion would be wholly inadequate. That said though I'd make the contention that we might notice such rampant militarisation and funding for CATOBAR, UAV's, more Astutes, more escorts etc, etc might suddenly be viewed differently by the incumbent government of the day!.

As there is no suggestion that Argentina is about to go for regional superpower status, despite the disgruntled rhetoric regarding the Islands, it would seem prudent to actually let them start building up their threat before we spend billions to counter it!.

Now you're being silly. They don't need that lot to be able to find & attack our carrier(s). SSNs? When we'll be operating in the South Atlantic, within fighter range of the Falklands? CVAs? What for? Ditto the escorts.

Nor do they need that lot to be able to survive (albeit severely weakened) the biggest TLAM strike we could launch with our currently projected SSN force.

You sensibly suggested that we could use carrier-launched UAVs. Two can play at the UAV game. So, one gets close enough to our carrier group for us to shoot it down. That gives them useful information. And so on.

You posited an almost loss-free (on our side) turkey shoot, in which the hapless & entirely passive Argentineans would participate solely as targets. That, to me, is asking for trouble. One must always try to imagine how one would counter oneself, if in the other bloke's shoes. Trying to build a copy of the RN combined with a copy of the Russian AD system is probably not the best way. After all, the aim is not necessarily to win outright, but to prevent us from being assured of victory.

BTW, I'm not at all sure that we'll have a government in the next decade or so that would see an Argentinean effort to revive its moribund military as a reason to increase our military strength.

BTW, there isn't a goodly number of auxiliary strips in Patagonia with the logistics infrastructure to support high tempo combat air ops, but there are some with the ability to host combat aircraft. Dispersal doesn't mean moving a large force from base A to base B, it means dispersing it. Start with the following list, then add a few more smaller, shorter (down to 1500 metres or so) ones which could be used for partial dispersal.

Gobernador Edgardo Castello
Almirante Marcos A. Zar
Ushuaia
Santa Cruz
Capitano Jose Daniel Vazquez
El Tehuelche
General Enrique Mosconi
Piloto Civil Norberto Fernández
Gobernador Gregores
El Calafate

Reducing optempo is good from our point of view, but it isn't the same as destroying their capacity to operate, which is what you implied we could do with a volley of Tomahawks. If they're expecting it (& if they aren't they're pretty stupid: remember, this is supposed to be our reaction to an operation they have planned & initiated, so they can prepare for our response), they could move personnel into nearby civilian housing, or plant a load of mobile homes around the place, containers for equipment, & light weather shelters for aircraft. Most could be empty - but how do we know which ones, when we blast them with missiles?

One thing none of those airfields is short of is space. Dummy housing & stores are cheap & quick & easy to erect.

And so on.

[Jonesy]

. And there likely won't be serious competition for many years still, so, wasn't for the cost, the "old" E2D would still be, unquestionably, the best solution of all.

Again thats just not the case. E-2 does not address any ISTAR mission requirement of UK Carrier Strike. You arent going to send out a Hawkeye to put persistent surveillance over a pre-surveyed TBM launch site ashore, a key road junction that an opposing ground force would have to transit or any kind of target that isnt a blue water surface group or an air threat. The point of Hawkeye is AWACS...a job its very good at....its not enough to support Carrier Strike though. Why you would want two distinct platforms to do full-spectrum ISTAR in a carrier air wing, especially when one obliges you to spend £2bn on catapults that you dont need for any other reason, I have no idea?!.

As a matter of fact, there is not a single UAV at the moment carrying a big, powerful AEW radar such as that of Hawkeye. Indeed, there's not a drone flying with even just a Searchwater 2000/Cerberus equivalent system. They are not even on the drawing boards, nor on the horizon.

Guardian is flying operationally with Raytheons SeaVue XMC right now. SV, as an I band search set with a claimed 200nm range against a destroyer sized surface contact against clutter, is an analagous set to Searchwater MR. Searchwater MR being essentially the same set as the AEW variant on ASaC7 in the system backend just with a different antenna.

The Global Hawk BAMS has much still to prove, and is not an AEW, but a surface search asset anyway. It also is unsuited to carrier ops.

Guardian being a variation on the GA Mariner BAMS competitor platform....a UAV that GA did do the concept workup for as a carrier capable platform.

But the UAV future really kind of goes in favor of EMALS, cables and F35C. Once you've go a catapult that can regulate the power it launches with, and potentially fire in the air up to 45 tons of mass, you are more that reasonably covered for 50 or more years of development in aerospace technology.

Wide ranges of UAVs will be aided by EMALS, but, that isnt the issue at hand is it?. The question is can you get credible, better-than-rotary, organic airborne electronic support without having to have a fully paid-up CATOBAR capability on your flat-top. According to General Atomics claims for Mariner and Converteams claims for EMKIT the answer is yes.

Also because you can piggy-back on the USN money and development efforts by adopting their systems and solutions.

The USN have no need to deploy a MALE-lite solution like Mariner or a navalised Mantis from a non-CATOBAR deck. Most of their targetting support is generated from strategic platforms or 'national technical means'. There are nations out there without the CATOBAR decks and satellites though who could see a paradigm shift in their theatre ISTAR generation capability converting their smaller decks to operate this kind of slow-mover, persistent, air vehicle. Piggy backs can be great, but, you rarely get all the way to were you are going being carried by someone else!.

[Jonesy]

How many targets, how many missiles? We have a small stock. We have few deployable launchers.

We have a modest stock and a small target set. The opposing fighter force is modest and the number of bases they could launch from, with any sense of maintaining a significant strike tempo, are similarly limited. As are the operational goals, like I said, we need to attrite and disrupt for a specific time period. We will have the force mix to accomplish that.

You missed my point. If we have n weapons of class x, we can hit up to n targets. If there are more than n targets, we can't hit them all.

Again I think you are massively overestimating the target set. AFV's, trucks, towed weapons, etc all carry a logistics burden there is a finite number of units that will be supportable by the logistics bridge into the islands. That number will not be large owing to the constraints that exist in that regard. Sudden increases in logistics capability will be an immediate red flag to the UK....it will be no secret to anyone that we would keep an interested eye on developments in that regard. PGM inventories should be the very least of our issues.

No you aren't. You're assuming a projected post-2020 British force structure that requires us to complete at least one carrier, equip it & operate it. While I hope that comes to pass, it's not our current force structure.

Seeing the whole point of the thread is CVF I thought the assumption that CVF is involved would be a fairly safe one.

Now you're being silly. They don't need that lot to be able to find & attack our carrier(s). SSNs? When we'll be operating in the South Atlantic, within fighter range of the Falklands? CVAs? What for? Ditto the escorts.

I'm not though...we will be in fighter range of the Falklands but able to strike from sufficient range, even with the poor hobbled F-35B, to give the opposition a huge swath of sea space to have to search to find us. The advantages are all with us UNLESS they create a force which poses an unsustainable threat and jeopardises our theatre entry and theatre manoeuvre capability. That would be a CVA group of their own. Simply put if they stage a CVA group out, and we ignore it, we risk it destroying our fleet train or it using its mobility to negate ours. SSNs/Escorts are simply as they have no answer to our Fleet boats.

Nor do they need that lot to be able to survive (albeit severely weakened) the biggest TLAM strike we could launch with our currently projected SSN force.

Again there is no question they will survive a dozen missiles or so coming in on 3 or 4 airbases simultaneously. That would disrupt air ops at those facilities though which is all we need to do.

You sensibly suggested that we could use carrier-launched UAVs. Two can play at the UAV game. So, one gets close enough to our carrier group for us to shoot it down. That gives them useful information. And so on.

Absolutely but an opfor UAV force will have to catch us at standoff ranges before we can get the CASOM F-35B's in range. To stage them out that far is going to require a fair bit of satellite bandwidth or a hell of a signal relay platform. Again maritime recon capable UAV's and new satellite bandwidth would be something noteworthy.

You posited an almost loss-free (on our side) turkey shoot, in which the hapless & entirely passive Argentineans would participate solely as targets. That, to me, is asking for trouble. One must always try to imagine how one would counter oneself, if in the other bloke's shoes. Trying to build a copy of the RN combined with a copy of the Russian AD system is probably not the best way.

I outlined, in a few sentences, the differences in how we fought one war and how it would be fought with proper kit!. It wasnt a full OpPlan Swerve!. The purpose of planning and introducing systems into your military is to give your forces exactly that turkey shoot you mention though. Its not a matter of under-estimating the opposition its a matter of putting the combat elements in play that allow the oppositions response to be reduced as a threat. Hard to see how a dozen A-4AR's or Mirage 2000's based on the islands without AEW for example could get in the way of a determined F-35B/CASOM strike serial.

[Liger30]

I simply entirely disagree. E2C Hawkeye might have been "just an AWACS", E2D is another story entirely, and drone dreams are not yet a challenge for the old E2.

"Wide ranges of UAVs will be aided by EMALS, but, that isnt the issue at hand is it?. The question is can you get credible, better-than-rotary, organic airborne electronic support without having to have a fully paid-up CATOBAR capability on your flat-top. According to General Atomics claims for Mariner and Converteams claims for EMKIT the answer is yes."

No, as the MOD at the moment has no plan nor ambition for such a system or concept. It is an idea you came up with and that you clearly like very much, with good reasons perhaps, but that is about as far as it goes.

A more realistic question is: what gives the carrier the most "future-proofing", allowing us to put on it pretty much anything we could eventually think of in the next 50 years?

The answer is not STOVL even if, of course, short termism and financial difficulties can still bring STOVL forwards despite all other considerations bringing towards the other choice.

[Jonesy]

A more realistic question is: what gives the carrier the most "future-proofing", allowing us to put on it pretty much anything we could eventually think of in the next 50 years?

The answer is not STOVL even if, of course, short termism and financial difficulties can still bring STOVL forwards despite all other considerations bringing towards the other choice.

Sorry Liger but this is absolutely the clearest example of the problem we face I've seen. You are talking of future proofing when its not established that we'll even get two operational hulls in the fleet. What possible value is there in considering the configuration of the carrier in 50yrs when it may be confirmed within the next 50 months that the EMALS cost has pushed the project to a tipping point.

The whole problem IS short term...if we do not solve it there will be NO long term to worry about!. If STOVL addresses the short term problems isnt it, by your own words above, the clear solution?. The 'other considerations' are utterly, wholly and totally meaningless and irrelevent if the carriers get cancelled or one sold off as the price of CATOBAR.

STOVL need not be the be-all and end-all of RN Carrier Strike development, but, it should be an important waypoint on that development path. The only issue with it are the remaining questions regarding the viability of the airframe...if those get bottomed out it is, simply, the optimal near-mid term choice. The support-type issues mentioned on this thread are spurious and soluable, with existing technology - according to the OEMs, without recourse to CATOBAR and that is about the only realistic operational handicap between STOVL and CATOBAR.

Long term, with the future-proofing in its proper context, CATOBAR may be required to support larger and more capable UAV's etc. The price for that only needs paying when we need it and when we can afford it though. That is not right now.

[mrmalaya]

yay +1.

as to my points about UAVs, I just think the platforms offer more than many give them credit for, they are a clear area for the UK to develop and like the F35B would still give us plenty of capability.

[Liger30]

The whole problem IS short term

Not really. We ideally have to try and plan as well as possible for the long term as well.

In 2008 the "whole problem" was a due short term due payment of 450 million pounds. 2 years of delay solved that... And caused a 1.56 billion cost increase.

Short termism is a problem and a sentence that might be impossible to avoid, and the MOD might have no alternative but to be short-termist once more, but by no means can it ever be pictured as the right solution and way to proceed.

[RN Phantom]

In 2008 the "whole problem" was a due short term due payment of 450 million pounds. 2 years of delay solved that... And caused a 1.56 billion cost increase.

Short termism is a problem and a sentence that might be impossible to avoid, and the MOD might have no alternative but to be short-termist once more, but by no means can it ever be pictured as the right solution and way to proceed.

A cynic would say that the 2 year delay was more to do with the Labour Government wanting to leave a time bomb for the Tories. That's a major reason why so many Tory MP's want to cancel CVF, they see them as pork barrel politics by Brown and were left as a poison chalice for them. I totally agree with the rest of your post.