Think Defence hopes to start sensible conversations about UK defence issues, no agenda or no campaign but there might be one or two posts on containers, bridges and mexeflotes!
323 thoughts on “Open Thread – Rumble in the CVF Jungle I”
Topman
@Mark
‘The diamond/Uav issue needs more though’
I’d agree with you there, there are cheaper options to do what we do with UAVs. With the way we operate them now and other options instead.
Mark
Don’t really like x-47b I have to say. It’s already been pushed back 2 years by the navy and the ucav designation disappeared to be replaced with deep and persistence Istar asset. Putting this type of a/c on a carrier limits it’s capability far too much and will cost to much. Anyone still remember the cheap and cheerful Uav hope? At a projected 200m plus they are no longer that. If we do finally head down this route for strike a/c then they need to be Vulcan/Canberra esq in range and payload.
Hannay
@Simon
Apache is ruinously expensive to fly for protracted missions and has much poorer ISTAR capability than MALE UAS.
At the end of the day, we can probably do 80-90% of scenarios acceptably by spending less than 10% of the budget of a big F-35 buy. and that means more money to spend on other things.
Topman
@ Mark
‘I would agree with topman on the conformals on typhoon the big tanks come with big performance impacts. ‘
Yes there are knock ons using them, but still I wouldn’t dismiss the idea totally. In some cases larger fuel tanks may be a cheap way of getting what we need. They aren’t ideal particularly with SS but I still think that a slightly larger option should be something that we should have.
How likely is CFTs? I’m not in anything to do with typhoon at the moment but aren’t there hyd systems on either side of the fin? I haven’t seen any costs has a likely cost been mooted?
Topman
‘Apache is ruinously expensive to fly ‘
Isn’t it near Typhoon hourly cost?
Simon
Hannay,
“…Apache is ruinously expensive to fly for protracted missions…”
Is it? Then ditch it! I’m not surprised it’s not great at ISTAR, just thought it made a better CAS asset.
I must say that although I love the UAV MALE type thing I have reservations about it’s ability to operate in theatre. i.e. it has to carry a tonne of expensive sensors and still manage long endurance. In addition this needs to operate from a carrier.
Maybe a rocket boosted UAV launch with a net for recovery?
Mark
Topman
Hard to say on the conformals. Will greatly depend on the tranche 3 configuration current under discussion. Bae a/c side have precious little on the books design wise so they may push for it, a number of designers are getting out as the civil side is somewhat booming. Tranche 3 will be fully wired to accept conformals, tranche 2 is structural only final fuel system connections would need a retro fit farnbourgh might been interesting one to watch. Tranche 1 jet isnt an option for them.
ArmChairCivvy
Hi Simon,
Not only that “based on my assumption that stealth isn’t really that fancy a technology – just shaping” but materials, all the way to paint
- guess what; it peels!
- I wonder if there was any connection between the Chinese buying bits of F-117 off Serb farmers, and their embassy getting a bomb through its roof?
Topman
@ Mark I didn’t know it had been wired in on latest version and partly on some others. Knowing that and looking at the past and the money issues I would say the usual will happen; fleets within fleets.
The jets have made 546 flights so far this year, compared to 401 planned, plus the jets continue to stay ahead of their scheduled test points….The Marine Corps’ F-35B is not quite as far along as the A, Lockheed says, since it’s the middle sibling, but it too has demonstrated much of its performance envelope. It has flown up to Mach 1.5, around 49,000 feet, and pulled up to 7 Gs. It has marked off more than half of its clean wing envelope test points….
The F-35 has begun “weapons separation tests,” with the goal of building up to an actual, no-kidding weapons release later this year…
87 percent of the software the F-35 needs is flying on airplanes today, including test versions of the next major block due out this summer. He said 94 percent of it has been developed in the lab…Lockheed and the program are “recovering schedule” on the software, and he laid down a marker for when we’ll be able to see how it’s going.
“The test of that will be when we release the complete Block 2A software to flight test – that’s where I’d be able to give you a metric to demonstrate that,” O’Bryan said. It should appear “this summer. I’d ask you to measure us to that.”…
we’ve redesigned [the F-35C hook] to make it a sharper hook point. And that allows us to pick up the wire. And we’ve already done testing on that. We’ve done it at 80, 90 and 100 knots and we’ve got a good design for the hook point now….The whole thing is a remove-and-replace assembly so any modifications we make to it is an easy fix.”
the plan is [for the F-35C] to go to the boat in early 2014, well in time to make the US Navy [initial operational capability]….we’re not scheduled finish Block 3F testing until after 2016. So going to the boat in 2014 – [the USN have] said IOC is post-Block 3F, so there’s some margin there.”
El Sid
Interesting that the CNO has put down a bit of a marker in respect of Tomahawks versus stealth jets, in the course of an article which is mostly about “trucks” versus “Ferraris” :
Yes, looks like stand-off weapons and non-kinetic weapons will be the next priority. From the Navy’s point of view they have already paid for the F-35 and from here on getting any other airframe in the numbers they need would cost the same, or more “Those developments do not herald the end of stealth, but they do show the limits of stealth design in getting platforms close enough to use short-range weapons. Maintaining stealth in the face of new and diverse counterdetection methods *would require significantly higher fiscal investments in our next generation* [as if they didn't stretch the budget already with this generation] of platforms. It is time to consider shifting our focus from platforms that rely solely on stealth to also include concepts for operating farther from adversaries using standoff weapons and unmanned systems—or employing electronic-warfare payloads to confuse or jam threat sensors rather than trying to hide from them.
Standardisation, to drive costs down and allow for the “next thing” to be rolled out quickly: almost eight and a half thousand VLSs in use… I wonder what the RN total would be
Chris.B.
It’s a good concept. Interesting to note how the US has allowed core roles to atrophy, something we’ve tried hard to avoid.
El Sid
I suspect Greenert has been thinking hard about the relative merits of stealth vs missiles in the context of an attack on Iran – the other big advantage is that missiles don’t need refueling which is a major factor when attacking central Iran. Supposedly both the US and Israel would now prefer to delay an attack until next year, waiting until JASSM-ER and MALD-J are in service.
Both show what might be done with Storm Shadow – in our terms JASSM-ER is a Storm Shadow that squeezes a new engine and more fuel into the same airframe to extend the range to 500nm, whereas MALD-J is like a Storm Shadow whose warhead has been replaced with an EA payload for jamming/spoofing.
LRASM-A is also interesting in this context, effectively it will be a JASSM-ER upgraded with anti-ship capability and the airframe adapted to fit in a ship VLS as well as on planes. In other words it’s pretty much the Storm Shadow A50 I’ve been wanting for the Darings. I guess it should fit in SYLVER A50 without needing any structural changes, but it may well be cheaper to fit Mk41 rather than change the SYLVER software.
Going back on topic, here’s some blogs from the ACA Engineering Director, with some nice pics of eg bows for 2x CVF, and some bits of QE that are starting to look recognisably ship-like, soon there will be over half of her in one piece and they’re eg starting to use her own lighting circuits rather than external lights.
“There’s a reason Adm. Jonathan Greenert didn’t call for the Navy to back out of F-35, his spokesman said Tuesday — he doesn’t think it should. The chief of naval operations continues to support F-35C”
Interestingly he doesn’t go on to talk about MALD-J, but highlights JSOW-C, anti-shipping TacTom (things seem to have gone a bit quiet there) and LRASM as examples of what Greenert meant to say.
Mark
We are now the owners of a F35 a/c plus ordered another along with a few more bits of info
Bloody hell! Norfolk looks like it was hosting more naval power than the rest of the world put together.
The Mintcake Maker
@ all
I was wondering if somebody can answer this question for me? What happens if an F-35b is doing a SRVL and it goes wrong? For example, the F-35 has just glided down and touched down 30m from the stern, doing the 60-70 knots (70/80 mph) that SRVL requires and the pilot starts to apply the brakes. Warning light pings on in the cockpit and the breaks don’t appear to work. What happens?
If the ramp is about 50m long, that then leaves the plane 200m to stop in. 70mph is about 31 ms-1, therefore the plane would cover 200m in about 6.5s. This means that for the plane to stop before the ramp it would need to decelerate at a constant rate of 5ms-1 or 11mph (My maths might be wrong I am not a physicist). Now I don’t know if the F-35b by itself will be able to generate enough resistive forces to pull that off? Apparently a twin otter can’t roll to a stop in less than 200m, so a much heavier F-35b with more momentum surely cannot either?
So then what does the pilot do? Will there be a mark on the deck that if the aircraft passes and hasn’t stopped, the pilot will have to suddenly give it the beans and do a bolter and go up the ramp again (this means that it will have to land with a higher fuel fraction remaining , impacting on range?)? Or will there be some sort of barricade system in operation? Or will the pilot just have to ditch it over the side of the carrier and eject? Or has nobody consider the possibility because it won’t happen and this is a silly question?
I suppose it comes down to how often we intend to use SRVL and ways of mittingate problems like I mentioned above
P.S. sorry if somebody has already answer this question
mmoomin
Pretty sure it’s 60 odd knots air speed but with the carrier doing 20 to 25 knots it’s actually 40 to 35 knots when the aircraft lands. The ship isn’t going to be stationary. If it is I’d imagine you ditch the munitions and land vertically.
ArmChairCivvy
Aviationweek report seems to contrast markedly with what was just recently said about SVRL in evidence to Defence Committee
“The ships will also make use of a Bedford Array, which is a lighting system that includes a series of flashing units down the centerline of the ship at the landing point that are stabilized for the vessel’s heave and pitch. On the pilot’s head-up display is a new ship-reference velocity vector. By maneuvering the aircraft and the vector onto the Bedford Array, the pilot can comfortably make a 6-deg. glideslope landing using the Shipborne Rolling Vertical Landing (SRVL) method.”
- how do the degrees play into the maths introduced a bit further above?
Not a Boffin
Generally for a CTOL landing you approach the ship with a glideslope of between 3-4 degrees, which is a trade-off between the vertical distance between the round-down and the aircraft, the aircrafts stall speed, the load on the undercarriage, likelihood of successful arrestment and the distance along the deck it touches down. Unlike a shore landing, you’re limited in AoA which might allow you to lower approach speed, but would result in you being unable to see the deck – or the DLPS. One reason Typhoon struggled in early studies.
The vertical distance at stern is fixed to ensure that you don’t hit the ship as it pitches and heaves. The shallower you come in, the further down the deck you’ll touch down and the longer your angled deck needs to be, depending on your stall speed, margin to allow a bolter and acceptable load from the arrester pendant. The steeper you come in, the closer to the stern you can touch down, but the higher the load on the landing gear (and deck) and the higher the likelihood of skipping a wire.
I suspect the Bedford array is set around the allowable touchdown point based on braking distance. Because airspeed is limited to allow the aircraft to stop on the deck, the sink rate will be higher. The steeper approach also reduces the longitudinal scatter in landing which increases your available stopping distance for a given deck length. Because the approach speed here is lower, load on gear should be less onerous than if you did it at CTOL speed (sink rate will still be high though) and you’re not worried about hook skip. On the other hand, you’re going to put more load on the tyres which will potentially increase the probability of a burst, which increases the likelihood of slewing off to one side and hitting something.
@Mark
‘The diamond/Uav issue needs more though’
I’d agree with you there, there are cheaper options to do what we do with UAVs. With the way we operate them now and other options instead.
Don’t really like x-47b I have to say. It’s already been pushed back 2 years by the navy and the ucav designation disappeared to be replaced with deep and persistence Istar asset. Putting this type of a/c on a carrier limits it’s capability far too much and will cost to much. Anyone still remember the cheap and cheerful Uav hope? At a projected 200m plus they are no longer that. If we do finally head down this route for strike a/c then they need to be Vulcan/Canberra esq in range and payload.
@Simon
Apache is ruinously expensive to fly for protracted missions and has much poorer ISTAR capability than MALE UAS.
At the end of the day, we can probably do 80-90% of scenarios acceptably by spending less than 10% of the budget of a big F-35 buy. and that means more money to spend on other things.
@ Mark
‘I would agree with topman on the conformals on typhoon the big tanks come with big performance impacts. ‘
Yes there are knock ons using them, but still I wouldn’t dismiss the idea totally. In some cases larger fuel tanks may be a cheap way of getting what we need. They aren’t ideal particularly with SS but I still think that a slightly larger option should be something that we should have.
How likely is CFTs? I’m not in anything to do with typhoon at the moment but aren’t there hyd systems on either side of the fin? I haven’t seen any costs has a likely cost been mooted?
‘Apache is ruinously expensive to fly ‘
Isn’t it near Typhoon hourly cost?
Hannay,
“…Apache is ruinously expensive to fly for protracted missions…”
Is it? Then ditch it! I’m not surprised it’s not great at ISTAR, just thought it made a better CAS asset.
I must say that although I love the UAV MALE type thing I have reservations about it’s ability to operate in theatre. i.e. it has to carry a tonne of expensive sensors and still manage long endurance. In addition this needs to operate from a carrier.
Maybe a rocket boosted UAV launch with a net for recovery?
Topman
Hard to say on the conformals. Will greatly depend on the tranche 3 configuration current under discussion. Bae a/c side have precious little on the books design wise so they may push for it, a number of designers are getting out as the civil side is somewhat booming. Tranche 3 will be fully wired to accept conformals, tranche 2 is structural only final fuel system connections would need a retro fit farnbourgh might been interesting one to watch. Tranche 1 jet isnt an option for them.
Hi Simon,
Not only that “based on my assumption that stealth isn’t really that fancy a technology – just shaping” but materials, all the way to paint
- guess what; it peels!
- I wonder if there was any connection between the Chinese buying bits of F-117 off Serb farmers, and their embassy getting a bomb through its roof?
@ Mark I didn’t know it had been wired in on latest version and partly on some others. Knowing that and looking at the past and the money issues I would say the usual will happen; fleets within fleets.
Some non-critical delays for the Advanced Arresting Gear :
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20120618/DEFREG02/306180003
LM’s F-35 Q&A :
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2012/06/19/lockheeds-comprehensive-qa-on-the-f-35/
The jets have made 546 flights so far this year, compared to 401 planned, plus the jets continue to stay ahead of their scheduled test points….The Marine Corps’ F-35B is not quite as far along as the A, Lockheed says, since it’s the middle sibling, but it too has demonstrated much of its performance envelope. It has flown up to Mach 1.5, around 49,000 feet, and pulled up to 7 Gs. It has marked off more than half of its clean wing envelope test points….
The F-35 has begun “weapons separation tests,” with the goal of building up to an actual, no-kidding weapons release later this year…
87 percent of the software the F-35 needs is flying on airplanes today, including test versions of the next major block due out this summer. He said 94 percent of it has been developed in the lab…Lockheed and the program are “recovering schedule” on the software, and he laid down a marker for when we’ll be able to see how it’s going.
“The test of that will be when we release the complete Block 2A software to flight test – that’s where I’d be able to give you a metric to demonstrate that,” O’Bryan said. It should appear “this summer. I’d ask you to measure us to that.”…
we’ve redesigned [the F-35C hook] to make it a sharper hook point. And that allows us to pick up the wire. And we’ve already done testing on that. We’ve done it at 80, 90 and 100 knots and we’ve got a good design for the hook point now….The whole thing is a remove-and-replace assembly so any modifications we make to it is an easy fix.”
the plan is [for the F-35C] to go to the boat in early 2014, well in time to make the US Navy [initial operational capability]….we’re not scheduled finish Block 3F testing until after 2016. So going to the boat in 2014 – [the USN have] said IOC is post-Block 3F, so there’s some margin there.”
Interesting that the CNO has put down a bit of a marker in respect of Tomahawks versus stealth jets, in the course of an article which is mostly about “trucks” versus “Ferraris” :
http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2012-07/payloads-over-platforms-charting-new-course
Yes, looks like stand-off weapons and non-kinetic weapons will be the next priority. From the Navy’s point of view they have already paid for the F-35 and from here on getting any other airframe in the numbers they need would cost the same, or more “Those developments do not herald the end of stealth, but they do show the limits of stealth design in getting platforms close enough to use short-range weapons. Maintaining stealth in the face of new and diverse counterdetection methods *would require significantly higher fiscal investments in our next generation* [as if they didn't stretch the budget already with this generation] of platforms. It is time to consider shifting our focus from platforms that rely solely on stealth to also include concepts for operating farther from adversaries using standoff weapons and unmanned systems—or employing electronic-warfare payloads to confuse or jam threat sensors rather than trying to hide from them.
Standardisation, to drive costs down and allow for the “next thing” to be rolled out quickly: almost eight and a half thousand VLSs in use… I wonder what the RN total would be
It’s a good concept. Interesting to note how the US has allowed core roles to atrophy, something we’ve tried hard to avoid.
I suspect Greenert has been thinking hard about the relative merits of stealth vs missiles in the context of an attack on Iran – the other big advantage is that missiles don’t need refueling which is a major factor when attacking central Iran. Supposedly both the US and Israel would now prefer to delay an attack until next year, waiting until JASSM-ER and MALD-J are in service.
Both show what might be done with Storm Shadow – in our terms JASSM-ER is a Storm Shadow that squeezes a new engine and more fuel into the same airframe to extend the range to 500nm, whereas MALD-J is like a Storm Shadow whose warhead has been replaced with an EA payload for jamming/spoofing.
LRASM-A is also interesting in this context, effectively it will be a JASSM-ER upgraded with anti-ship capability and the airframe adapted to fit in a ship VLS as well as on planes. In other words it’s pretty much the Storm Shadow A50 I’ve been wanting for the Darings. I guess it should fit in SYLVER A50 without needing any structural changes, but it may well be cheaper to fit Mk41 rather than change the SYLVER software.
Going back on topic, here’s some blogs from the ACA Engineering Director, with some nice pics of eg bows for 2x CVF, and some bits of QE that are starting to look recognisably ship-like, soon there will be over half of her in one piece and they’re eg starting to use her own lighting circuits rather than external lights.
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/home/blog/flight-deck/1011396.article
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/home/blog/assembly-phase-reveals-queen-elizabeth-scale/1011893.article
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/home/blog/turning-steel-into-ships/1012383.article
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/home/blog/guest-blog/pace-quickens-on-carrier-assembly/1013049.article
Greenert’s underling has responded with a “clarification” – presumably Greenert has been sent away for reindoctrination.
“There’s a reason Adm. Jonathan Greenert didn’t call for the Navy to back out of F-35, his spokesman said Tuesday — he doesn’t think it should. The chief of naval operations continues to support F-35C”
Interestingly he doesn’t go on to talk about MALD-J, but highlights JSOW-C, anti-shipping TacTom (things seem to have gone a bit quiet there) and LRASM as examples of what Greenert meant to say.
We are now the owners of a F35 a/c plus ordered another along with a few more bits of info
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20120719/DEFREG01/307190001/U-K-Order-First-Production-F-35-Training?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUzJW71m6pw&list=UUJWcF0ex7_doPdIQGbVpDsQ&index=1&feature=plcp
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lockheedmartin/sets/72157630654429496/
Just doing a post on it Mark
Not CVF, but here’s some carrier porn from Chris Cavas, via Galrahn :
http://blogs.defensenews.com/intercepts/2012/12/home-for-christmas-9-flattops-at-norfolk-dec-20-2012/
@El Sid
Bloody hell! Norfolk looks like it was hosting more naval power than the rest of the world put together.
@ all
I was wondering if somebody can answer this question for me? What happens if an F-35b is doing a SRVL and it goes wrong? For example, the F-35 has just glided down and touched down 30m from the stern, doing the 60-70 knots (70/80 mph) that SRVL requires and the pilot starts to apply the brakes. Warning light pings on in the cockpit and the breaks don’t appear to work. What happens?
If the ramp is about 50m long, that then leaves the plane 200m to stop in. 70mph is about 31 ms-1, therefore the plane would cover 200m in about 6.5s. This means that for the plane to stop before the ramp it would need to decelerate at a constant rate of 5ms-1 or 11mph (My maths might be wrong I am not a physicist). Now I don’t know if the F-35b by itself will be able to generate enough resistive forces to pull that off? Apparently a twin otter can’t roll to a stop in less than 200m, so a much heavier F-35b with more momentum surely cannot either?
So then what does the pilot do? Will there be a mark on the deck that if the aircraft passes and hasn’t stopped, the pilot will have to suddenly give it the beans and do a bolter and go up the ramp again (this means that it will have to land with a higher fuel fraction remaining , impacting on range?)? Or will there be some sort of barricade system in operation? Or will the pilot just have to ditch it over the side of the carrier and eject? Or has nobody consider the possibility because it won’t happen and this is a silly question?
I suppose it comes down to how often we intend to use SRVL and ways of mittingate problems like I mentioned above
P.S. sorry if somebody has already answer this question
Pretty sure it’s 60 odd knots air speed but with the carrier doing 20 to 25 knots it’s actually 40 to 35 knots when the aircraft lands. The ship isn’t going to be stationary. If it is I’d imagine you ditch the munitions and land vertically.
Aviationweek report seems to contrast markedly with what was just recently said about SVRL in evidence to Defence Committee
“The ships will also make use of a Bedford Array, which is a lighting system that includes a series of flashing units down the centerline of the ship at the landing point that are stabilized for the vessel’s heave and pitch. On the pilot’s head-up display is a new ship-reference velocity vector. By maneuvering the aircraft and the vector onto the Bedford Array, the pilot can comfortably make a 6-deg. glideslope landing using the Shipborne Rolling Vertical Landing (SRVL) method.”
- how do the degrees play into the maths introduced a bit further above?
Generally for a CTOL landing you approach the ship with a glideslope of between 3-4 degrees, which is a trade-off between the vertical distance between the round-down and the aircraft, the aircrafts stall speed, the load on the undercarriage, likelihood of successful arrestment and the distance along the deck it touches down. Unlike a shore landing, you’re limited in AoA which might allow you to lower approach speed, but would result in you being unable to see the deck – or the DLPS. One reason Typhoon struggled in early studies.
The vertical distance at stern is fixed to ensure that you don’t hit the ship as it pitches and heaves. The shallower you come in, the further down the deck you’ll touch down and the longer your angled deck needs to be, depending on your stall speed, margin to allow a bolter and acceptable load from the arrester pendant. The steeper you come in, the closer to the stern you can touch down, but the higher the load on the landing gear (and deck) and the higher the likelihood of skipping a wire.
I suspect the Bedford array is set around the allowable touchdown point based on braking distance. Because airspeed is limited to allow the aircraft to stop on the deck, the sink rate will be higher. The steeper approach also reduces the longitudinal scatter in landing which increases your available stopping distance for a given deck length. Because the approach speed here is lower, load on gear should be less onerous than if you did it at CTOL speed (sink rate will still be high though) and you’re not worried about hook skip. On the other hand, you’re going to put more load on the tyres which will potentially increase the probability of a burst, which increases the likelihood of slewing off to one side and hitting something.
Still, you pays your money and takes your choice.