This is a repost of something I posted ages ago, thought it might be worthwhile to dust it off again
In a number of posts the comments have stimulated a vigorous debate about the relative merits of naval and commercial shipbuilding techniques.
HMS Ocean is the poster child of those that say commercial shipbuilding rules are wholly unsuitable for naval vessels but I think the problems with Ocean were more to do with poor design and construction, rather than any inherent fault with commercial ship building standards.
We tend to think that commercial standards create weak ships, lacking in durability but this is simply not the case. Offshore platform supply vessels operate in some of the worst weather anywhere in the world, commercial ships are driven by commercial reality, generally spend a much greater proportion of their lives actually at sea and safety standards for large crude carriers or cruise ships are such that a knock or two is not going to sink them, flimsy they are not.
But there is much more to naval shipbuilding than sturdiness and the paper below should provide some background reading.
[scribd id=42621845 key=key-1c0v5s5l65ieu3snrt1q mode=list]
Challenger,
I’d guess that CVF could physically operate more than 40 jets, certainly the F35B. However, the more aircraft you embark (and operate) the more fuel you burn and the more regularly you have to resupply. Generally conventional carriers work on a 5-day resupply cycle.
If you then do the maths: fuel = aircraft (40) x fuel_per_sortie (6t) x sorties_per_day (3) x 5 = 3600t AVCAT for CVF, which is how much she embarks.
If you assume CVF can squeeze 50 x F35B you’ll drop your supply cycle to four days (3.33 days for 60 jets), each of which would have to fit into the operations of those you are possibily protecting (land forces), which would be a problem.
You could then ask how many Merlin can it operate. Well, Merlin eats about 40t of AVCAT every 5-days, but although this means CVF could feed 90 of them it simply doesn’t have enough deck space to operate them. In fact I think she’ll just about operate 12, which usually means 36 copters (three per flight) or possibly 48 of ’em if you have flights of 4 (high maintenance copters like Apache or projected on-station ops like ASW).
So you end up with CVF being able to operate in the region of 40-50 aircraft efficiently. This is before you consider the path optimisations that need to happen to service, fuel and arm the aircraft and the space allocations needed to store and service them.
@Wiseape
’40 (36 F35s and 4 helos) is the surge figure. The day we actually see 36 fast jets on CVF, which aren’t covered in stars and stripes, is the day I eat fish.’
Apologies it took me a few days to reply!
Oh of course I totally agree that seeing 36 purely British Lightning’s crammed onto CVF is about as likely as me taking a holiday on Mars!
I was just musing on the vague possibilities really. I know the official figure is 40 aircraft total, but is that not similar to the 12-14 aircraft (5 SHAR + 7-9 Helo’s) that an Invincible was designed to carry when in reality they ended up carrying about 20?
I was wondering how many aircraft a CVF could theoretically carry in an extreme/ridiculous scenario?
@ tsz52
Thank you. May your cotton socks be equally blessed. :)
Peter Elliot: Re my hairbrained scheme: Totally agree with your crewing doubts, but what it does is also adds a political buffer – a symbolic step removed – where the use of force is required.
It allows all of the nations who would actually like to get involved, and pull their effin weight for once, but are hamstrung by their right on! chattering classes, to do so via the EU/NATO/whatever core force. They’d never be able to send ships, politically, but they could send crews to man the NATO (say) ships, and still show their clean hands to their voting f*ckwit-drones.
If we were to restructure things around more pragmatic lines, then rather than now where we have the countries who are adamant that ‘Yeah, we’ll get involved honest!’ who never do, we can just let them throw surplus kit and (preferably) money into the pot and never ask or expect anything further of them – this is their membership fee, come rain or shine. That money and kit can then be used by the folks who don’t mind getting their hands dirty (like us, and France when they feel like it), but are potless.
I guess that some of the more eastern European (EU) countries would be happy to contribute but have no money or kit – but they do have spare good men, with few domestic opportunities, who could be trained up in the force I’m on about (some would say ‘rather than coming over here’, though that’s not a major beef of mine).
It allows a redistribution of surplus (money, kit, men, political will and ability to act), as well as being something like a pawn brokers or something, so that national militaries/industries don’t have to keep booming then gutting themselves according to the capricious economic strength/weakness of the day. Evens things out a bit more, and provides handy buffers.
I’m thinking more NATO, since if it increased the chances that we could adequately take care of our own back yard for once, then an increasingly reluctant US (whose attention is now very much elsewhere) would be happy to support the force (what would be a ‘small, cheap at twice the price’ contribution to them, would be an enormous help to us lot over here).
It’s mostly a daft fantasy idea that might be of interest to someone – I haven’t researched or developed it particularly. It’s just when reading the constant bad news of good ships, including carriers FFS, being very prematurely scrapped rather than deep-maintained/refit (particularly Italian and Spanish ones – and what’s happening to their crews? Laid off?), it upsets me [I’m very sentimental about ships, though not much else].
I know that Western Civilisation’s seen better days, but surely we still have enough ingenuity that we can avoid turning useful and needed, expensive to build warships into razors, and lay off good men just because the economy’s gone a bit crap for the moment? It’s just so wasteful, if nothing else.
We could have new amphibs before 2030, Peter. If there were economic or political reasons to knock out a couple of big ships, then it wouldn’t be too hard to sell off the remaining Bays – they’d be a manageable type for many navies. Then nudge Albion and Bulwark over to the RFA to make room for two new LPH. That would be one way of doing it.
Simon, the carriers should manage 28knt, but only on the downhill stretch.
@Simon
Its not the cost of building the ships. Its the cost of training and sustaining a crew for them over a long period. Thats why a swing role asset like QEC becomes so valuable.
As long as the kit we are buying works like it is supposed to then our QECs promise to be more flexible cost effective ships than Nimitz, CdeG, Cavour, Wasp or America.
Able to act as a commando carrier, sustaining large groups of big rotary assets such as Chinook or Osprey. Plenty of space for a large EMF and designed for them to offload fast.
Also able to operate F35B with a decent weapons loadout due to the ski jump and SRVL. Deep magazines to sustain a long campaign. Good sortie generation rates.
On that basis the ability to swing between the two roles, or combine them against lower tier opposition, looks really quite unique and an excellent value asset for the RN to have.
Peter Elliott,
Perhaps if 1982 didn’t happen I wouldn’t be so concerned.
We certainly have a full “box of tricks” when partnered with our alies.
I admire your confidence that we’ll get both CVF in the water when there’s a real emergency. We only just managed to field two of three carriers in 1982.
It’s all very half-cocked for the sake of a £600m LPH (Ocean II).
@Simon
In 90% of the scenarios we will face we will be allied with either the Americans or the French, either of whom can send either a FJ carrier or an LPH. In this siutation it is most unlikely that we would ask our high readfiness QEC to undertake both roles. It would do one or the other depending on what assets our allies were bringing.
In the remainder of the scenarios it is quite possible that we would be dealing with a third rate power and would be prepared to take the risk of combining the roles and sending the ship in close, with AD from an escorting destroyer.
In the unlikely event of a sovereign emergency requiring us to offer both FJ strike and Rotary Assets in large numbers against a peer adversary we would have to send both QECs. One to do strike and the other LPH. This would be a once-in-50-years event. We have previous history of ‘send everything that floats’ when the sh1t really hits the fan.
Thats why I say we appear to have the bases covered.
Peter Elliott,
“…there appear to be enough tools in the box to tackle the jobs we are likely to face…”
I really don’t agree.
What you have is one mole-grip (CVF) and a nut-n-bolt that requires a spanner (close in copters) and a pair of pliers (jets at range) to stop the other end rotating.
It’s like the Americans putting Nimitz 40nm offshore to support an assault from their San-Antonios. They simply wouldn’t do it.
@Simon
Fluid resistance is more about lengths, ratios and the drag effect of waves than hull area.
Have a look for Speed Length Ratio and Froude’s Law.
APATS,
I would put the second Cavour in range of ASHM (without £2b worth of jets).
Cavour was built in Italy – the greatest nation of bureaucracy and corruption. It was slow to build and costly. I take your point though that the Mighty Blighty would manage to make it more expensive.
“Ocean was 40Nm from the Libyan coast for her Apache ops. That was without the ability to supply her own CAP.”
She was under the air cover of over 140 jets from various nations though.
CVF can only put 80MW of power into the water. I can’t see her passing 25 knots. Cavour puts out 88MW with about 60% of the wetted area. Don’t understand the physics that will get CVF up to 28 knots.
Any idea what the “difficulties” were/are? I thought she was in the process of being made F35B-able?
@Simon
The answer to your question is that the QEC on LPH duty will indeed come in ‘close’ to shore, and the escorting T45 will need to be on its game to knock down any missiles that come its way. Happily T45 looks good enough to do just that.
If the mission requires the landing of vehicles an Albion or a Bay will need to be in the party. If its a straight forward shoot-em up job they won’t.
I agree that a fully flexible LHD would be nice to have next time we’re buying amphibs. But until that time comes (after 2030) there appear to be enough tools in the box to tackle the jobs we are likely to face.
I do agree however that an HVU like the QEC should be fitted with either SeaCeptor or SeaRAM to give it an organic air defence layer in case the T45 is missing when trouble comes along.
Simon, So you would put your Cavour in range of ASHM but not a CVF. Whats the difference?
Also there are no metaled contractual costs for any Cavour delays, if 1.5 billion euro is a base cost then with our known contractual delays they would have cost us close to 1.8 billion pounds a pop.
Ocean was 40Nm from the Libyan coast for her Apache ops. That was without the ability to supply her own CAP.
Cavour has spent less than 45 days at sea in the last 18 months due to difficulties, was unavailable for Libya and at the moment needs modifications before it can accept F35 onboard.
As for CVF not managing 25kts, I will place a serious bet we will see 28kts plus out of her.
As for SAM, yes I would like to see a SAM system onboard CVF but ASTER is not the answer as the powerful FC radar will interfere with flight ops.
x,
Wasn’t Cavour about 1.5b Euro with political delays?
Isn’t CVF about 3.0b Quid with political delays?
CVF is about twice the price adjusted for inflation.
I seem to remember also that Cavour has 32 x Aster15 whereas CVF has no SAMs. I also remember a picture of Cavour with two gaping big drive on, drive off holes in the rear and side. These would be pretty useful too.
Also, doesn’t Cavour do 29 knots, whereas CVF won’t even manage 25?
Two Cavour (ahem, cough, plus a little more AVCAT ;-)) would put air defence at 200nm with 30 copters sitting next to the amphibs. How will we do that with one 65,000 tonne ship? Inefficient long-range copter ops from 200nm (it takes 12 Apache to deliver CAS from 200nm each with three tanks of fuel and only 4 hellfire)? 4 acres of real-estate just over the horizon in harms way of nearly all anti-ship missiles? I’d really love an answer from anyone because I really can’t see how it’s a workable solution without Ocean or LHDs.
@tsz52
The killer cost isn’t owning the ships. Its not even maintaining them. Its paying the crews. The main reason why ships get withdrawn for service early is to save the crews’ wages.
We could afford to keep plenty of ships alongside in reserve. I expect both Ocean and Lusty to spend a couple of years in reserve before they go for scrap [or museum use], just in case one of the new carriers hits a mine before the other is fully proven and ready to cover for it.
That works becuase we assume we could rustle up a crew if we had to, either borrowed from the crippled ship or by cancelling leave and raiding shore establishments.
What wouldn’t work would be an EU or NATO ship reserve, becuase there are no EU or NATO naval personnel to draft on board in an emergency. In a true emergency any slack in the national navies would be taken up in re-manning their own reserve ships.
F35 is common across main systems, training sims ect. The a/c structure isn’t as common as we would like but it’s still pretty high between a and b. http://www.jsf.mil/f35/f35_technology.htm
The a version has a probe attachment as an option so no problem there I’m very much of the opinion that the a version should only be purchased as a typhoon replacement.
x: I don’t tend to trouble everyone by constantly posting ‘Yeah, I agree with x!’ but FWIW I do tend to sit here quietly waving my pom poms as I read your posts.
I had a whacky idea a while ago about all of the perfectly good ships being scrapped or cut, due to the current austerity, going into an EU (maybe NATO, maybe both) common pool (semi-temporarily held in common trust, as a buffer between their potless parent Navy and the razor blade factory) – it’d be a tidy little core of a very balanced Navy. Nobody went for it though… details, details.
Buuut ‘kts per hour’ – gasp! I think I might need to go and lie down for a bit…. :P
Potential stupid question ahoy: if the RAF gets its hands on some F35As, how are they going to AAR them. Aren’t the F35As specced for probe refueling, but the new Voyager tankers are drogue refuelers? Is it an easy/cheap conversion?
NAB
“Given that we know the aircraft is not as “common” across the variants as one would like. I’d love to see the ILS arguments for a two-fleet solution”
I thought that there was 80% plus commonality between variants and indeed remember that being posted several times on these threads.
I have always said that the most likely decision will be a 1.5 aircraft type fleet of F35B and F35A. Though I would like to see up to 60 B variants purchased.
I take your point about being paranoid but the day we have to buy an aircraft that is not the optimal variant for the service that wants it in order to protect something from future Political interference is the day we should give up.
Alos the Political backlash of scrapping fast Carrier air having built 2 relatively bew 65k Carriers would be subtly different from that of scrapping GR9 from small flat tops.
Topman
“The current gov (as stated publically) would have chopped both if they could have.”
Bless the last Govt, the contract for the Carriers must have been the best thing they ever signed:)
NaB
‘It’s based on a Jane’s article…’
Thanks nice to put a source to it.
‘I’d love to see the ILS arguments for a two-fleet solution.’
My thoughts at the time were simply lack of need for B or C in a carrier role. The current gov (as stated publically) would have chopped both if they could have. Now they would love to get rid of the other one, meaning less demand for carrier varients.
That’s just my thoughts I really don’t have any preferences to it either way, more what I think will happen.
‘Just because one is paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!’
Depends who ‘they’ are, and the paranoid aren’t the best to ask. ;)
@Not a Boffin: actually, I think a 48 aircraft F35B buy would be very good, *provided* the aircraft were manned and commanded by the FAA. JFH was easy to bin because the RAF always had administrative command, even at the beginning when opcon was with the RN. We have plenty of time to train up naval F35 pilots.
Topman
It’s based on a Jane’s article following Hammonds visit to the States to accept BK1 in July. Although Hammond is not directly quoted, the article alludes to a buy of 48 F35B to equip the carriers, with a later buy of F35A to replace tranche 1 Typhoon and Tornado.
If true, it will lead to a repeat of the “small fleet, easy to cut” debacle of the SHAR / GR7/9 for the F35B, which will co-incidentally be “competing” for survival against a larger fleet of aircraft that cannot go to sea (the A).
Given that we know the aircraft is not as “common” across the variants as one would like. I’d love to see the ILS arguments for a two-fleet solution.
I’m sure any case for the “A” will be perfectly staffed with plenty of good words about larger weapons bays delivering more effect, slightly longer range and hence reduction in tanker demand (only in the paper scenarios!) and presumably standardising with other European operators. It is unlikley to mention additional logistic support, training and airworthiness costs, or the ability to ensure adequate attrition frames for peacetime ops, never mind wartime.
Just because one is paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!
NaB said “It’s always easier to get more aircraft to fill up a big deck than it is to get a big deck built to carry more aircraft”
Considering the obsession here with modules and UAVs more here would be happy with a large empty ship that can carry lots of ASW modules (helicopters) and ASaC/AEW/ISTAR modules (helicopters and UAV).
@ TOC said “X speaks sense when he discusses logistics so often.”
Bless your little cotton socks. :)
TOC also said “CVF compared to a Wasp/America/Cavour”
Exactly. What many here do also is group all flat tops together because they look the same when they are different beasts. Even though we won’t be able to operate full time CVF as a fleet carrier that is what it is. A big fast ship ideally suited to engaging other big fast ships. Manoeuvre (and speed and endurance) are as much weapons missiles, guns, and aircraft. Ships like Wasp, Ocean, and Mistral transit seas cleared and secured by the CBG to mount amphibious operations. They are beamy trucks that don’t need speed as much or as many weapons. Saying that USN amphibs can cruise at 20kts an hour so that can cover 500miles a day. If you are there quick you may not even have to fight. European vessels are slower and though a few knots per hour don’t sound much over a week they mount. As for Cavour the costs of that ship and CVF (if you take out political delay that cost so much) aren’t that different. It is the military systems that cost most not the hull. But you gain so much by going bigger. Cavour’s amphibious features are just intelligent design. But since I discovered that CVF has been designed with passageways designed for assaults it seems “we” (the MoD(N) and Thales perhaps) are capable of joined up thinking too.
There is always talk here of never going to war by ourselves always with somebody else. And there was a lot of back and forth of cats and traps verses STOVL; all this rhubarb about not being able to land French or USN/USMC jets. Even even we can’t afford cats and traps it doesn’t make CVF a lesser asset. Flight deck real estate is a premium and the UK is going to be able to bring a lot of flight deck real estate to ventures. And there will be a tall hanger capable of dealing with the largest helicopters. I think of CVF being used thus….
a) Helping to screen USN fleet operations just as Invincible was intended to do. ASW helicopters, ASaC/AEW, and F35b providing CAP.
b) Supporting USMC operations. A base for allied F35b. Helicopter assault. Support of Chinook (ours) and MV22.
c) Operations with the French. It doesn’t matter that their jets can’t land. If CVF wasn’t “there” they couldn’t land on either! CVF and CdeG working together would bring the best part of 80 aircraft to the fight. Of course it would be better if the ships and aircraft were “compatible” but against most of the world’s air forces it wouldn’t matter because of the numbers.
d) Operations to support Australia and New Zealand. Lots of helicopters. Imagine CVF carrying 12 Chinook, a bushel of commando Merlin, and some Apache and Wildcats. That is enough lift for one whole commando in one go. Woosh!!!!!
e) Domestic operations.
Now I would like 3 CVF carrier groups (and fleet train) but it isn’t going happen. Another £5billion and we could do it. CVF would make more sense perhaps if the European half of NATO lived up to its part of the bargain. If the UK, France, and Germany all fielded 3 carrier groups a piece we would be a lot further to living up to our security responsibilities. But for all sorts of reasons that isn’t going to happen either. We mustn’t forget that both Spain and Italy field two carriers a piece. OK JC is an LHD, lets imagine they bought Cavour instead. In my European fantasy fleet scenario above Europe would be fielding 9 fleet carriers and 4 CVS. Coupled with the American fleet it would be more than Chinese could manage.
Sorry that is a bit rushed. And I get can’t my words out today.
Strangely enough I predicted that just after SDSR. Funny how these things turn out. NaB have you a link for the rumour, I wouldn’t mind comparing.
It’s always easier to get more aircraft to fill up a big deck than it is to get a big deck built to carry more aircraft………
What is less understandable (from a UK defence PoV) is the apparent desire of the RAF to acquire the A-model F35 (as opposed to an all-B buy) which would limit the numbers of aircraft able to go to sea (entirely understandable from an RAF PoV).
Having a larger vessel in CVF compared to a Wasp/America/Cavour isn’t a bad thing.
Remember that one of the Falkland lessons learned by the Americans[1] was that larger maintenance areas and more stores was viewed as beneficial for sustained operations. The reduced stores and restricted hangar space on Hermes and Invincible posed significant risks.
X speaks sense when he discusses logistics so often.
Also remember that the Americans were impressed at the high sea state operations performed by the carriers enabled by STOVL, it was one of the few areas over the Falklands fleet that they didn’t claim an advantage in. (The other area was quietly noting how difficult it was, to paraphrase, “even for the UK”, to spot a sub despite our perceived expertise).
[1] Think Defence: Falkland Islands Lesson Learned Through US Navy Eyes, September 2012
Wiseape,
Casino, yes, a casino – much better idea… Stupid, shopping arcade would just get in the way :-)
Heads not toilets…….