Uncomfirmed, but second carrier cancelled, according to an RAF magazine…

[...] plans to build her first large deck carrier wings since World War 2. More excellent commentary from Think Defence: As soon as anyone questions the utility or cost of CVF and JCA it is as if that person has just [...]

Hi Ashley, Fair points, I’ll try and answer them,. but I think I might have to take a crack at another post to explain the concept I’m trying to explain.
Anyway.

With a mix of UAV’s, GPS, IN and some sort of network netween them cruise missiles, should be able to discover the target, even if you need a mix of shepherd and sheep missiles, shepherds lacking warheads but having much more capable navigation and target spotting.

There is of course still a problem with your missiles deciding to engage a container ship convoy as you point out, unfortunate, but, I cant think of a way to overcome that really.
Could a computer on a missile be smart enough to cross 2000km, identify a target, and attack it?
Probably not, but could one missile lead a group in, a second acquire and assign targets and the others destroy them?

They’ve cut it to 80?
So they have
Bugger, serves me right for not checking.
I’ve also suggested something the size of Ocean used in the same role.
Even so, the Zumwalt is still a full spectrum ship, not simply a missile carrier.

I’m not suggesting we try and match the USN, just pinch their better ideas.

Although the cost of the missiles may seem high, when you look at a full cost, its not that bad.
Individual missiles cost around £600,000 which is quite a lot, however, a Typhoon costs £66,000,000, which off the block is 110 missiles, a CATOBAR F35 is likely to be the same price if not more.
If you want to fly your Aircraft, well, it costs about £75,000 an hour in fuel, maintenance and the like.
Your pilots all need training, what is it, five hours a week?
Thats £15,000,000 a year just on keeping pilots combat ready, or 25 missiles.

Of course, the current Afghan war blows by numbers out of the water, but thats an aberration, and a waste a scarce flying hours or guided missiles

On navigation, inertial navigation would prove pretty inaccurate over 2000km, if the wind were any different to the launch site at any point in the line of travel the missile will be blown of course and won’t know it, cruise missiles usually use terrain following radar to know where they’re going. Remote control would require either a satellite uplink (technology that with UAVs operated from the other side of the world probably now exists) and GPS is used on the latest Tomahawks.

The issue is in terminal guidance and identification, without an ability to update in flight (probably requiring a satellite link, something not available to to many country’s) you don’t know what you’ve fired your missile at. You may have an idea where a fleet will be and you may have fired it at them, but if you leave target choice up to the missile you don’t know what it’s going to hit.

It’s probably technologically possible, though no one has yet built it. The moral issue of giving a robot the free will to choose who it kills without any way to tell friend from foe from civilian is probably part of that.

On the Zumwalt, the DD21 was originally going to have 117-128 missiles which has been reduced to about 80. Remember thought that this is all of the missile capacity, including air defence missiles even if the Zumwalt will have a particularly large number of tomahawks. Also note that at 14,500 tons, the Zumwalt is twice the tonnage of the T45.

Lastly, we’re discussing the US navy, we can’t hope to equal them let alone win against any navy funded as much as that. With the strategic raiding concept we’re talking about our navy winning a fight against another nations entire armed forces on their home turf. We’re not about to fight a war against an equal.

On the idea of a long range cruise missile based war, it’s theoretically possible. The main constraint is the huge cost of the missiles, Britain only has about 64 tomahawks for good reason.

An anti ship missile with a speed of mach several has a range of 300km
A cruise missile has a range of up to 2000km.

If you ram a ship iwth enough cruise missiles, eventualy you will sink it.
I hope.
Exorcets had what, 70kg warheads?

I may be wildly out of my depth here, but I dont see why a cruise missile couldnt follow inertial navigation, gps, or even be controlled remotley some of the way.

The Zumwalt class destroyers were supposed to carry 256 VLMS long range missiles, eventualy cut to 128, the others replaced with a gun.
A T45 hull with everything removed except engines, living quarters and CIWS should have no problem carrying 256 cruise missiles.
Should it?

All it takes then is your fleet to be sighted by my submarine, my submarine to call you in, a destroyer to work out what your max speed is and where you could possibly be in four hours and then launch missiles to cover that area.
If the submarine can stay on station, that possible location will get smaller and the missiles can concentrate on a smaller area, once they find your fleet, they can sink it.
Some missiles might miss, we only need some to get through.
A carrier might be be able to push 25 mph?
if you’ve not been sighted for 4 fours, you can only have ran 100miles.
One missile could climb to a few thousand feet and probably spot you, direct the rest on to you

By Earthquake bombs I just mean hardened penetrators now, although am a firm believer failing to build grand slam cost many lives, anyway, long range cruise missiles, fired at target, find their way there via inertial navigation, google maps and terrain following, before impact shoot upwards, then down as fast as possible, penetrate runway and explode causing as big a crater as possible.
Of course, if we know where aircraft hangers, ammo and fuel supplies are hit them too.
But worst case, we could put a hole in every runway, every 10 metres.
No aircraft are destroyed, but it will be days untill they are operating again, which is days to destroy them by other means, or ignore them.

If you’d have asked me in 1998 if the carriers were a good idea I’d have agreed. The budget wasn’t weighed down by expensive ongoing wars, we’d come to the conclusion the Royal navy was no longer going to fight a cold war and we wanted to be an expeditionary naval force again.

If we’d never ordered the carriers and you asked me today if we should buy some carriers, I’d say no. Even if we pulled out of Afghanistan and there was more money in the pot I think the public has lost it’s appetite for using the armed forces to solve anyone else’s problems. For a future politician to have any backing for a war it’s going to need to start with British Citizens being attacked.

But what should we do now? Frankly we’ve spent the money. Not just on the CVF, but on the T45, the LPD and the Bay class landing ships. We’ve got ocean and we want a new one. We’ve built the “strategic raiding” fleet except the carriers, and they’re almost certainly to far gone down the contract line to change anything or cancel.

Not only that but to try and cancel the carriers would be political suicide, not just the carriers but the jobs they create. It’s not many for the money but as long as it’s got three digits it’ll make headlines.

So, we’re going to get the carriers, kicking and screaming maybe but we’re going to get them, what do we do now? Something the thatcher government realized with invincible round 1982ish was that selling the pride of the royal navy isn’t going to look good at home, especially when the carriers you spent 4 billion on will only sell for 1-2 billion. British public won’t like that.

They’re probably going to spend most of their life “in refit/undergoing works/etc etc” or some other excuse for why the royal navy isn’t burning money sailing a few white elephants around the world for no apparent reason, if they’re ever needed they’ll be there. I doubt they will be, but the world over the next 30-50 years might change, the next Afghanistan may be coastal, so the may get used for close air support to free up land airstrips and to look useful. The world may also fall apart and we may have a sudden need for air power on the other side of the planet. I doubt it, but if we want to or not, we’re going to be prepared.

JCA on the other hand needs to not be the F-35. Yanks have already gone back on their word to let us operate it independently and we should take the option to go with something cheaper and better. Naval Typhoon if possible, Rafale otherwise.

I think we are all carrier supporters but differ in our opinions of their relative worth i.e. in a world of finite budgets is the CVF/JCA worth the money

Just a point I wanted to make you don’t fight an enemy air force head on in the air, you must approach the problem asymmetrically, you hit the bases where the aircraft are stationed a few TLAM hits to taxiways would bring a base grinding to a halt. It may take hours to fill in the holes in theory but the last time I checked airbases did not have earthmoving equipment manpower nor materials to affect runway repairs. Therefore it possibly take many hours before equipment arrived and many more before the runway was repaired and ready to use. Hitting the fuel storage facilities would be another excellent way of putting a spanner in the works no fuel no flying not to mention the effort to try and extinguish the fire.

One point I would like to make to both the carrier supporters and non-carrier supporters is that the United Kingdom needs better strategic intelligence assets including satellites and photo reconnaissance aircraft. I think the UK has almost zero capability in this area and would like to see something done about it whether it is an off the shelf purchase or some super expensive and late UK project. For cruise missile targeting strategic intelligence assets are especially important it’s easy to hit static targets such as runways etc but if you want to go after aircraft in aircraft shelters or SAM sites you need better reconnaissance. Battle damage assessment is also extremely important as cruise missiles cannot watch themselves hit a target and make a decision on whether a target was sufficiently destroyed. UAV’s would seem the obvious choice and they probably are although current UAV’s are not survivable to operate in airspace that is even in the slightest bit contested, although something like Global Hawk could fly above the ceiling of some fighters.

From the top down Dominic, Sea Dart holds the only known interception of an anti-ship missile (1991 gulf war), the silkworm may not be the hardest of missiles to hit, but it’s probably harder to hit than an aircraft, at close range yes, sea dart proved very useless, much like the standard missile, Aster 30 and other long range missiles. Sea wolf also had great success and would probably have done better if more than two ships had been present. Neither may seem like very good missiles now, but they were good at the time and were shooting at ancient aircraft. Iraq in 1991 had something in the region of 700 launchers and 16,000 missiles, some were older than ten years but so were the aircraft we blew them all up with and yes, it was done with land based fighters, much like the fighters the royal navy can expect to face.

Egypt may have 200 F-16′s, the RAF has 60 F3′s and 60 Typhoons, with another 100 planned? The entire RAF would be pulled apart by that, in fact to match that would take three US carrier battle groups, if the yanks wanted to be sure of winning they’d probably need a few more and by now we’re discussing deploying half the US navy. We’re not going to match that so lets not pretend to.

thirdly, an anti-ship missile has a range of 2-300km, 2000km is cruise missile territory, by which time you need terrain for the missile to follow thus negating their use over sea, F-35 has a combat range of 900km to 1150km, Typhoon is closer to 1300km, if you want to sink ships then you can add another 2-300km on to that and if it’s aircraft you want to kill then add another 100km plus for max range. So even an F35 has a maximum kill range about ten times longer than a T45 and 4-6 times greater than the range of an anti-ship missile.

To kill 400 cruse missiles you would need more than the entire missile compliment of 8 type 45 destroyers, not to mention that to launch that many missiles at once you would need around 400 aircraft flying at once, or perhaps 30-40 strategic bombers, or the entire missile compliment of perhaps 25-50 warships. At once.

Lastly Earthquake bombs are a mostly hypothetical concept in the 40,000lb range of bombs designed to be dropped from large strategic bombers, they were made obsolete by nuclear weapons. Although if you want to knock out an enemy’s land based fighters then you need to kill the fighters, not the airfields. Modern construction equipment can build a new airstrip in days, repairing a bomb crater takes hours.

Don’t get the wrong end of the stick, I don’t see the small radar in a fighter ever being able to track a cruse missile, we still need the T45 for that, but with almost all anti-ship missiles in the world out ranging the Aster 30, if you want to hit that slow ponderous bomber carrying the huge anti-ship missile before it’s launched or if you’d prefer to fire your own at an enemy ship while staying completely out of range of retaliation, you need an aircraft. T45 can’t do the job of the CVF, and the CVF can’t do the job of the T45, neither can do the job of the T23 or the LPD/LPH and reverse etc.

My point is that anti-air destroyers can’t gain air-superiority, they can’t provide long range air cover for themselves or their fleet, they can’t provide close air support or any air cover at all for ground forces. At the same carriers can only launch helicopters to attack subs and once a cruise missile is launched they can only wait for their CIWS to kick in at 1500 meters. If we want to send our navy against a hostile air force or navy, especially if we want them to deliver ground forces for a land war, then we need air support and that only comes from carriers. If we don’t want the royal navy to do that, then we don’t need them.

Ashley – generally speaking I agree with what you say, however you oversimplify the arguments somewhat – air defence (including) anti-ship missile defence is about multiple layers, and both carrier based fighters and naval SAM’s have their place, as do ship based radars and airborne radars.

Can you have a force capable of “strategic raiding” without CVF – of course you can, it depends on who you want to raid and what their capabilities are, in other words what threats they present to the our fleet.

As for: “In the constant battle between aircraft and anti-aircraft, the aircraft isn’t just winning, it’s increasing it’s lead.” Well if thats your opinion your entitled to it, but it sounds a little like you have drunk the UASF ‘cool aid’ to me :-) I know some people who have the motto “if it flies, it dies” and they would disagree with you…..

Dominic – also this: “And all it would take is two T45 hulls equipped with a few CIWS and a lot of VLMS.” is rather an oversimplification too ! As part of the layered defence your fighter is required to have a radar missile combination that can “look down / shoot down” sea skiming missiles, so the total range of the F35 is somewhat irrelevant against that of the AShM (although I presume you were thinking about shooting down the launch aircraft prior to separation ?).

Ashley
The introduction of the aircraft carrier 50 years ago is no different than the introduction of the Dreadnaught 100 years ago or the iron clad 150 years ago.

Its just the new thing taking over.

I think you’ve rather over estimated the quality of the UK defence missiles in the Falklands, and wasnt Iraq’s mediocre air defence system pummeled by aircraft based in Saudi Arabia, not on ships?

I’m not saying carriers are rubbish, but we will have 36 aircraft operating, for fighting a fleet on fleet action, thats great, Egypt has 200 F16s based in country, we’d be torn to pieces.

Carriers have just had their day, like big gun battle ships and sail power.

A modern anti ship cruise missile could have a range in excess of 2000km, an F35 is what, 600km?
Your Carrier battle group would detect 400 cruise missiles flying in, show down a few of them, brown their trousers and then explode.
And all it would take is two T45 hulls equipped with a few CIWS and a lot of VLMS.
And thats a Carrier and airgroup gone, escort destroyers gone, escort frigates gone, ect
Against land based aircraft its even easier, just wreck their stationary airfields with earthquake bombs, fired from the mid atlantic, and, although interceptable, not in the numbers we could throw out.

[rant]

The second world war changed navy’s forever. The battle of Taranto and the sinking of the Bismark were the first clues that the day of aircraft were upon us, although it wasn’t until the war in the pacific that carriers proved themselves. Aircraft could engage at a range conventional warships could only dream of and ship mounted defences proved to be perilously bad at shooting down bombers. Outdated torpedo bombers could take on battleships and win, while modern bombers in the pacific could destroy fleets.

By the Falklands campaign things had changed. The royal navy was armed with the modern sea dart and sea wolf (though not in great numbers). The Argentinian air force was using a mix of the 25 year old A4 sky hawk, 15 year old IAI Dagger/Mirage 5 and new Super Etendard. Bombs sank 3 warships and another 5 were damaged along with 5 damaged FRA and merchant ships. 5 fired Exocet missiles sank two ships and damaged another. In return 6 sea dart ships hit 7 aircraft (including a learjet and a puma) and 2 (later 3) sea wolf ships hit 4 aircraft. 2 aircraft carriers, which combined have half the planned aircraft of each CVF, shot down 21 aircraft.

Warships were proven to be vulnerable to old and out dated aircraft, and sitting ducks to new ones. On the other hand Argentinian aircraft were proven correct in their fear of carrier launched aircraft. Surface to air technology may have moved on since then, but unlike in the Falklands, we can probably expect enemy aircraft to have chaff dispensers and radar warning.

Take for example Desert storm, in which a very large and relatively modern Iraqi air defence system was systematically wiped out by western air forces, not without loss, but it proved a point.

In the constant battle between aircraft and anti-aircraft, the aircraft isn’t just winning, it’s increasing it’s lead.

[/rant]

So, back to carriers. My argument in favour of them is simple, if we want the navy to take the strategic raiding option proposed in http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2009/11/defence-futures-ideas-suggestions-and-hair-brained-schemes/ then we need carriers. There are many arguments about if we have enough type 45′s to escort them but frankly history has shown that the only reliable way to shoot down an aircraft is with another aircraft and far from this diminishing, the gap in capability seems to be getting bigger. Type 45 destroyers won’t be defending the carriers from aircraft, the carrier will be defending the type 45 who’ll be throwing up a radar blanket to direct a CAP onto an attack. PAAMS may get to fire against aircraft but it’s main role will be to shoot down anti-ship missiles aimed at any ship in the fleet.

Frankly I would not trust even the much vaunted type 45 destroyers with air defence of the fleet without carrier aircraft to back them up. This becomes especially true close to land where the Falklands war showed land clutter and intervening terrain meant that even warships armed with close range missiles struggled to defend themselves. We don’t know how much Phalnax and Goalkeeper have changed this or the Exocet/harpoon/etc. threat, but all are unproven systems. The Falklands war also showed the complete inability of warships to provide anti air defence to ground forces, and history has a harsh lesson for those willing to rely on ground systems for air defence.

Now to the air group, which for a carrier is pretty important. The primary role of any carrier aircraft needs to be anti-air and dogfighting. Ground attack is nice but the most deadly opponent a fleet can face is other aircraft and defence needs to come first. This, along with cost and it’s small combat radius, are the main reason I advocate cancelling the F-35. There have also been criticisms of it’s air to air performance, probably well grounded considering the low set, non bubble canopy, especially with the VTOL model coming with even less rear view than the other models. Typhoon would be a better option, Rafale if that doesn’t work.

Lastly, cost. Here I quote admin with “If you can’t afford to do something well, it should not be done at all.” Which is why cancelling the CVF would save so much money. If we don’t have carriers then we won’t be able to do any strategic raiding. We can confine our armed forces to either peace keeping missions and peace making operations such as Afghanistan. Or land based wars like Iraq. Thus we probably won’t need all of the amphibious landing capability we have, even if we decide to keep them so we can offer their services to coalition fleets, they won’t be sailing unless we have friends with carriers, and nations with carriers will also have escort ships for air defence and anti-submarine warfare so we won’t be needing any of the type 45 destroyers or the type 23 frigates. C1 can be cancelled and the navy can focus on anti-piracy/smuggling operations and fishery protection, we can use the savings to buy more C2′s which will be useful as a a multi-role ship for transportation, anti-piracy ops, humanitarian aid or evacuating British citizens from a war zone. C3 can offer assistance for this and do MCM.

It’s a different look for the navy, but it’s a realistic one. The CVF’s are going to be expensive, that’s why the navy has lost so many escorts. Twenty years ago the navy was designed to blockade the north Atlantic to stop soviet attack subs from playing with the US army as it moved over to Europe, that called for a fleet of ASW escorts with point defences and some long range air defence destroyers to deal with the soviet air force should the decide to help the subs. But that’s not what we want the navy to do today, that’s why the amphibious warfare capabilities of the fleet have been increased, that’s why we’re building the CVF. Current navy construction plans will give us a fleet that can do strategic raiding, but if we don’t want to do strategic raiding, then we can drop the CVF.

Well as I have said before, in an ideal world we would have two nice carriers with a decent airgroup – not an F35 based one by the way !

However pragmatically this ain’t gonna happen. So I see we have a number of ‘pragmatic’ options, all of which are based on NOT wasting money on an F35 procurement. I believe our original planned JCA purchase of 150 F35 was based on a unit price of about $50 million each. This has grown to an estimate of $83 million each for the cheapest USAF variant (F35A) and it is now pretty much admitted by everyone that they will be over $100 million each, so even a ‘limited’ buy for a single under strength air group is hardly going to be value for money. Plus the future AEW aircraft program is unfunded.

1. Go with innovative CATOBAR / Rafale ‘share with the French’ idea as espoused in my article already published by Admin :-)

2. Admit we can’t afford the aircraft even though we have built the carriers – so change the design NOW during build to make the big LHA – I can’t see it would be that difficult to design in accommodation for a single RM Commando (approx. 850 men of all ranks) – the big U.S. LHD / LHA are only about 40,000 tonnes – air group would be 9 x ASW Merlin, 3 x AEW & C Merlin, 12 – 14 Merlin HCx amphibious support helicopters, maybe 8 x Ah64 and say 12 of the remaining Harrier GR9. Keeping the Harriers in service to provide some close air support would be orders of magnitude cheaper than F35 !

3. Put effort into selling them. 1 to France and 1 to India – again this requires politicians to ‘grow a pair’ be it probably could be done.

4. Turn them into Soviet style helicopter / missile cruisers. Get rid of the ski-jump and forward part of the flight deck, put in a 48 cell Sylver launcher for Aster and a 48 cell MK 41 for Tomahawk. Could probably still carry 36 + helicopters. Would have a long range land attack capability with out jets, and air defence capability that could be upped to an ABM capability in future.

Yes I know option 4 is a bit outrageous, but its probably affordable.

Not buying JCA is the key to savings. If there is no fixed wing air capability, then decide what else you want to do with the ships.

Personally, I would go all out for selling them :-(

[...] on the Royal Navy surface fleet in order to sustain two 65,000 ton aircraft carriers which they in no way can afford. The rise in Piracy and the West’s continued apathy, even as the range of attacks increased [...]

Euan, I must also confess to being a supported (in principle) of the New Carriers. My concerns are, more in the detail and the overall impact they will and are having on the balance of the Navy.

Firstly 2 are not enough, to ensure that you always have one available, you need a least three!!!

Secondly, the numbers and the type of aircraft you intend to embark on them. 36 F35bs and 4 Merlin’s for a ship of that size is pitiful. The F35b can carry such tiny amounts internally that it’s next to useless. To carry any usable payload it has to be carried externally, hence completely nullifying its alleged “Stealthy” characteristics! The carriers should be built as conventional CATOBAR type and operate a mixed fleet of fixed wing multi-role fighters (the type is up for discussion F18/Rafale etc) and at least 48 of them, plus an aircraft capable of providing airborne early warning (something like the Hawkeye, although I would have thought it would be possible to build a multi-role aircraft, based on, say the Bombardier Global Express, that could be configured with something like the Erieye radar. The aircraft could also be configured to provide other capabilities like in-flight refuelling and Anti-submarine and of course this airframe is already providing the ASTOR/Sentinel R1 role. This multi-role idea based on a business jet has already been proven with the Embraer R-99 family. I really believe, if this could be done, it would provide an enormous force multiplier and would be better the anything currently in existence.

Thirdly, the construction of the new carrier has been severely compromised:

Apparently they have removed the hull and bulk-head armour option to save cost, it will not have PAAMS/Sea Viper as was originally envisaged and is likely to be protected by 4x Phalanx and a few 30mm remote-controlled cannon for littoral defence. This combined with the fact they Navy now will have only 6 T45s (currently the only ship capable of providing defence for the carrier) makes them very vulnerable. If you look at the US carriers they have armoured hulls and a whole range of onboard protection, including Sea Sparrow, SeaRAM and Phalanx, not to mention they are protected by at least: two guided missile cruisers, two destroyers, a frigate, two attack submarines, a supply ship and an oiler or fuel ship.

Finally, the ships should have been nuclear, the cost of fuel over the life-time of the ships will more than compensate for the initial higher cost of the nuclear option, not to mention the enhanced operating effectives ness of not having to be refuelled every 3-5 days (just to keep the carrier moving).

As we the whole CVF programme has been so heavily compromised and has all but destroyed the Navy I am no longer in favour of what we will actually be getting, it is too little at too high a cost and certainly in the current financial climate cannot be justified. They should have built the bloody things years ago, to the Alpha standard and built the 12+ T45s that we need as a minimum, with or without the carriers. Whilst I am ranting, stop buggering about with this MARS programme and just by a load more of the WAVE class RFA…. Job done and British jobs at that.

Happy New Year!!!

This subject is indeed a massive can of worms.

I’m a carrier supporter and I do accept that there is bugger all reason for CVF right now that’s fair enough and nor is there a need in the foreseeable future. I would say however that it’s due in service for 2016 and will be in service for at least 40 years I do think 50 years is a bit long to be honest. The point is that nobody can see 40 odd years into the future nobody can see next year although they can plan for what they think might happen and hope that they planned well a carrier is not something you can pull out of thin air. Getting a carrier takes years to design and build and years more to become proficient at using it who knows if the UK will have any shipyards in a few years. Who though in the year 2000 that less than a few years later the UK and USA would be heavily committed fighting 2 wars far from home? Of course you can disagree about the current wars but they are still wars. What I’m saying is if you want peace prepare for war the world is an unpredictable place.

People can draw their own conclusions but my opinion is set on this subject.