FDR Supporting Articles – Carrier Based Fast Air
THINK DEFENCE: As you know we operate an open door policy, this is another post from one of our regular contributors, Jed…
In the previous articles written by myself and the ThinkDefence teams we both independently came to the conclusion that the future of the RAF lay in the cost effective management of a single aircraft type as the ‘fast jet fleet’ and that the single type should be the Typhoon. We both advocated the early retirement of the Harrier GR9 and the cancellation of the UK’s commitment to, and interest in the Lockheed Martin F35 (Joint Combat Aircraft).
However this leads to an immediate problem. The UK Govt. finally ordered the two large deck carriers first promulgated in the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, and open source information seems to suggest the CVF (Future Carrier) programme is now progressed to the point where it will be cheaper to build the two carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth_class_aircraft_carrier).
So, if we are not going to cancel them because of contractual penalities, and we are not going to sell them (India being the latest rumour) because of pride and because the rest of the Royal Navy’s capabilities have been mortgaged to get them in the first place, then we better have something to fly from them !
Just for the record, even though I am ex RN and spent some time in the Fleet Air Arm, I am no ‘religious zealot’ when it comes to these ships, they were a good idea in 1998, but to honest I would be happy to seem them cancelled or sold if we replaced them with something more sensible (like the Italian Cavour class). However for all the reasons above that’s not going to happen, so what will consitute the airgroup of a Queen Elizabeth class carrier ?
1. Keep the Harrier flying – for now
The cheapest, interim option and one which I recommend and support just to keep a cadre of trained naval pilots, is to hand over all remaining Harrier GR9 and T12 to the RN Fleet Air Arm (FAA). However keeping these aircraft and updating them and keeping them in service as the only jets to fly from these carriers is not much of mid-to-long term option, as they are ground attack, close air support aircraft, with no radar. So if we want to fly a couple of squadrons of Harriers from the big deck carriers in support of Royal Marines, perhaps carrying a squadron of Italian or Spanish Av8B Harrier II+ for CAP and fighter sweep on coalition operations, then this truly would be cheap, but would not exactly offer the capability the carriers were designed to provide.
2. Not the JCA – too expensive.
If we are to ditch the LM F35 JCA for the RAF, it does not seem to make sense to buy a small number of the deck melting wonder plane just to equip the carriers. Their ultimate unit cost remains unknown, the deck melting issue is far from being resolved and while the aircraft is obviously a paradigm shift in capabilities for STOVL compared to the Harrier, how useful is it’s “first day of the war” stealth capability going to be for non-peer state ‘war’ against the current, or even project future foes ? Nope, I say ditch the F35 now, before wasting millions on it.
So if we are not going with STOVL, then we need to flex the design of the carriers and get catapults and arresting gear onboard during the build. They have been designed from the outset to take such modification. As I don’t seen the RN flying a small number of Migs or Sukhoi’s that realistically leaves two options for a conventional carrierborne airgroup: The Boeing F/A18E or the Dassault Rafale – I am suggesting we go with the Rafale.
3. Why not the F/A18E Super Hornet
According to open source information the inter-webs, the unit cost for an F/A18E is 55.2 million US Dollars, which converts to 33.49 million GB Pounds each. Similarily the Rafale M is qouted at 70 million Euros which makes it 63 million GB Pounds each – nearly twice the price. This seems a bit odd to me, and you might want to do your own research to confirm it, but I am guessing this is because of the volume of production for the USN, which is driving down the unit cost for the Super Hornet. So if its cheaper, and it is a decent aircraft (bomb truck, not much of a ‘fighter’ apparently……) why not go with is option ? Well because my choice of the Rafale is also tied to the way we run and use the two carriers.
4. The French option
There is no doubt the Rafale is a good aircraft. The Rafale M as used by the French Navy’s Areo-Navale has been in operational use from the FS Charles de Gaul since 2004, and is now available in the ‘full capability’ F3 standard. It is due to get the Meteor, it can carry U.S. Paveway guided bombs as well as French equivalents, it is integrated with SCALP, which is very similar to the Storm Shadow (same family of missilses), true we would have to pay for integration of AIM132 ASRAAM (or just use the IR Mica ?). It can carry IR/EO targeting and recce pods etc. By the time the carriers are accepted into service in 20015/16 the Rafale will be a very mature platform with 12 years of Naval service behind it.
However its not just the aircraft, we have to think of this requirement holistically, in the overall “big picture” of budgets and desired capabilities, and I think we can strike some good deals with the French (yes, I really did just say that……). The French Navy would like a second carrier, and we are buying two so that one will be available for operations at any one time. I think we should strike a deal so that for periods when the Charles de Gaul is in dock and unavailable, then one of the UK carriers is made available. The deal might be that the UK ship can only be used for training cruises, with French crew joining a core of RN crew, and a French airgroup embarked, to ensure they don’t loose their operational edge when the CdG is out of commission. Or we might go further than that and allow the French to use the ship on coalition operations to which both national governments have signed up. Lets face it, based on the last 20 or so years, its very, very improbable that the French will unilaterally decalre war on someone and want to use our carrier to hit someone we quite like ! Now if we were borrowing a French flat top, that might be different, but I digress.
The CVF carriers have a notional airgroup of 40 jets and helo’s, so a “full” airgroup for a major offensive operation might be 3 squadrons of 12 Rafale for a total of 36. The CdG also carries a maximum of 40 aircraft and the French Navy is buying 60. We should also buy 60, and establish a training presence with the French Navy at their main training base (with say 8 aircraft), with ‘normal’ deployment of 2 squadrons on the active carrier and 1 on the UK mainland as the OCU for ‘advanced training’.
Of course we could even extend the cooperation buy purchasing E2 Hawkeye AEWC aircraft for the new carriers, which are also flown by the French.
In summary, lets buy off the shelf, lets buy European, lets put defence cooperation into ‘realpolitik’ mode rather than just hot air, and at the same time provide a useful multi-role aircraft for our big shiny new flatops, because if we don’t we may as well rename them HMS White Elephant and HMS Flying Pig – but at least we would have the biggest helicopter carriers in the world !
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So, does this men we can have a single engined carrier operable typhoon?
Jed that Naval Gripen is indeed extremely interesting I’ve always been a fan of the JAS-39 so seeing a navalised version would indeed be great news. I could see it being an excellent choice for India however I have never really though the Gripen stands a good chance in India as they already have been developing the HAL Tejas light combat aircraft. The Tejas is also supposed to be appearing in a naval variant so I see the Gripen as competing with the Tejas and India would be better to support its own home-grown aircraft.
An OMG moment….
Saab offers Sea Gripen derivative of Gripen NG in response to Indian RFI ! See:
http://defense-studies.blogspot.com/2009/12/saab-offers-sea-gripen.html
A Naval Hawk 200 type aircraft would work as an intermediate capability and would have some decent capabilities for example the Hawk 200 is a reasonable light fighter. http://www.airforceworld.com/others/eng/hawk.htm I suggest my fellow commenter’s read the information available here for information on the aircrafts capabilities. I personally don’t think the idea would be cost efficient as commonality with the majority of the Hawk fleet would be very low due to all the unique systems onboard. The T-45 airframe is highly modified form the basic hawk and it’s a similar story with the Hawk 200 so combine both and commonality would be negligible. It would be more cost efficient to simply just buy either the F/A-18 or Rafale rather than waiting and buying them later. I would argue it would also be riskier as the aircraft would have to be designed and manufactured whereas the F/A-18 or Rafale could be bought off the shelf and both are proven systems especially the super hornet.
Personally I would be quite happy if the UK decided to buy a fleet of Super Hornets off the shelf similar to the USN standard and got on with it. Arguably pretty cheap and effective with commonality with the USN so when the treasury won’t pay for the carrier to sail for training we could always join a US carrier for its deployment. Of course we would need to be nice to the USN but if we operate the same aircraft and could use the same weapons I see very little problem with the idea for training. To take things further RN pilots could be carrier qualified in the T-45 Goshawk and then in the Super Hornet which in theory should massively reduce costs associated with operating a carrier air group. Oh! that’s sensible so it has a 99% certainty of never happening.
This does of course leave the question, so what do the carriers do?
Beyond provide themselves air cover
The Goshawk I’ve assumed we can even build has virtualy no strike capability, a single centre launched 1000lb missile/bomb or half a dozen rocket pods, useful in afghanistan sure, but in a second Falklands, then again, the harriers mostly fought the air war didnt they?
Steve
Nice idea – very out of the box thinking there ! A hybrid of the Goshawk, and the single seat Hawk 200 as flown by Oman and Indonesia. It has an APG66 derivative radar (as in F16) but I am sure we could fit a decent modern Selex unit.
Not exactly armed to the teeth for CAP, but 2 x AIM120C, 2 x AIM132, 2 x drop tanks and the 30mm gun pod – better than nowt as they say where I come from !!
Yeah something like that would work I suppose, I think it would need a fair bit of work, better engine, some sort of radar, but a CATOBAR carrier launchable SeaHawk with a decent radar and modest weapons load, at the very least 1 anti ship or 2 anti radar or 4 Medium/Short ranged air to air missiles, would be an acceptable compromise, I assume.
Hawks still in production too.
And, in a decade, we can always buy a better aircraft to fly off them.
As a lower cost alternate with Harrier type perfomance how about a single seat attack version of the T-45 Goshawk carrier training aircraft. This retains a large commonailty with the RAF training aircraft and gives reasonable good perfomance at a much lower price.
Basically I agree, in the “cold hard world” or realpolitik it probably would not work, as ever it was an attempt at playing “devils advocate” – if we have paid for the damn things we better well equip and use them ! Sell them to India and buy more T45′s would suit me just fine, but only if we can’t cancel them without incurring crippling penalties. If there was any way to stop them being built at this point without harming the budget further, I would go for that option.
Th RN have evidently sacrificed a lot to get CVF in the water knowing full well that once launched it creates an unstoppable funding juggernaut, MARS, JCA, MASC and FSC becomes a necessity to protect and support them.
People often cite the CVF project as the saviour of the RN but I think the opposite, it has and will continue to hoover up scarce resources and consign the RN to being all fur coat and no knickers because the reality is that everything that is needed to make the CVF useful will not be fully funded so they will be a pair of paper tigers that the RN have mortgaged their relevance on.
At this stage though, there are no good options. However much resource sharing makes sense, in the cold hard world of political reality it just won’t work.
Hmmm, I’ll admit, I’m more convinced than I was.
There are still big reservations.
First, I think we would have to use the same weapons loadout as the Typhoon, operating a new family of missiles just for the RN is playing silly buggers again.
The French wouldnt go for a none operational carrier, a sword is useless unless it can be wielded.
Its not so much them using it that bothers me, France can declare war on Russia and deploy tactical nukes from a carrier they lease from us for all I care, its them using it and losing it that bothers me.
What would happen if whilst supporting french operations in Africa, a suicide speed boat sank it, would France buy us a new one?
Or if, in peacetime, a plane landing went wrong, and with a full weapons and fuel load it rammed the tower, would they tow it into Barrow and pay the repair cost?
Or what if the CDG goes in for a 4 month refit, and is still there 14 months later, would they hand our carrier back?
Why 60 aircraft?
72, even if 20+ were mothballed would allow us, at quite short notice, to deploy two full carriers.
I’d be quite happy for a cost effective workable solution that resulted in 3 or 4 joint carriers and 90-120 joint aircraft, owned and maintained as a group by both Governments.
I just dont believe that solution exists, the UK doesnt actualy have a dry dock big enough to handle the carriers yet, but you can be damn sure the government will spend £5billion building one before they let a French yard do the work.
I’d be quite happy for an EU wide equipment pool for all defence equipment, if it bought the best solution, but I know it wouldnt, it would buy the solution that offered politicaly acceptable workshares and maintenaince schedules, and our soldiers would die because of it.
The first ones being built, so we’re stuck with it, the cheapest thing we can fly off it is probably the F/A18, stick a better radar in it, arm it primarily with BVRM’s and hope for the best.
And thanks again… :-)