It is USN focussed but Navy Matters has an interesting post on cost increases on the Ford Class and the potential of smaller carriers.
http://navy-matters.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/small-carriers-or-no-carriers.html
Might be interesting to throw the QE design into the mix
What is fascinating about this is`the US even having the discussion.
Really is sign of the times.
I think a CVF style PA2 type carrier would be ideal for US requirements. They could afford to operate a fleet of 30 of them on the current carrier budget.
USA defence procurement is a prime example of the budget never being enough even when its the same as the rest of the world combined. What’s needed is a little better thought from the military and moving away from gold plating everything. Maybe the $400 million dollar speed boats will be next for the chop :-)
If the USN can only afford six CVN then, six CVN it is… or not, maybe, just maybe, they think it’s important to have numbers so that they can sustain these things “on task”. What an interesting idea. Shame the Royal Navy didn’t think about that one ;-)
Anyway, six CVN, six America and six Wasp to go with their 6 MEUs and 9 CVWs doesn’t sound too bad. Why build 10-12 CNV if you don’t even have the aircraft to go on them?
The US have this exact discussion every 15-20 years or so. After a 3-4 year period of soul searching and studies, the answer tends to pop up again, CVN is the way to go.
What people are forgetting with the price tag is that it is the first “new” design in forty years and that a considerable amount of money is going into the R&D that supports it. Not least the significant reduction in crew numbers (over 2000 less bodies aboard?) which requires some serious thought about the ship systems.
There is also the inflation effect. If you assume that “defence” inflation (because it’s not subject to the price depression that Chinese imports have brought to the wider economy) is something like 5 or 6 percent, then CVN76 cost $4.5Bn, CVN77 cost $6.2 Bn six years later and CVN78 would cost ~$9Bn seven years after that. Except that it’s a new design and therefore you get risk and NRE everywhere – not least as it has a new reactor design as well. Our friends aren’t the most efficient shipbuilders either. You only have to look at the levels of outfit in QEC compared to that on their CVN to get a flavour of that. Hence $13Bn or whatever.
The question is whether it’s worth spending that amount to get your 200 sorties a day for three days or whether you buy smaller ships and accept less. The implicit assumption in that is that the smaller ship would be significantly cheaper and I suspect the answer is “not”. You’d still probably spend $2bn designing one from scratch with another $8Bn to build and you’d end up with a ship that was less capable, required more log support and would not be able to expand capability if required.
Not A Boffin is correct that the USN has had this discussion periodically and the conclusion is always the same. What’s different this time is that cost effectiveness (and sortie rate, aircraft capacity, bunkerage, etc..) is no longer the main criteria. It’s now simple purchase price. A single carrier consumes essentially an entire year’s shipbuilding budget. The fleet is steadily declining in numbers because of this. Carriers have become too expensive to build. Also, the cost figures in the article are for procurement only – R&D is excluded. So these are actual construction costs. The USN hopes to build the follow on carriers of the class for less but they always hope that and it never happens. The USN had 15 carriers just a couple of decades ago and we’re down to 10 (9 operational) now. The Navy has announced that due to annual construction costs, the construction cycles will be stretched out to 7 years from the current 5 which, long term, puts the carrier force level at 7. So, you can see that carriers are quite literally pricing themselves out of existence!
By R&D, I mean the first of class costs and similar NRE. That’s almost certainly in what you’re describing as construction costs. It won’t include things like EMALS/EARS development or the new radars.
It is true that the fleet is declining in numbers. However, that is actually due to your overall shipbuilding costs, rather than carriers per se (although they are the most visible example). It is unfortunately endemic to the way western militaries currently specify, design and build their ships – or more accurately how infrequently they do it. You need only look at LPD17, DDG1000 and the Flight III Burkes to see that something will have to change – it isn’t just carriers. The only USN programme that has run anywhere near a sensible budget is the Lewis & Clark, largely because NASSCO went and imported a lot of productivity techniques from Korea.
Interestingly, we have been here before. The whole CVV debate in the mid-70s was based on the premise that CVN were not affordable and would lead to a huge drop in carrier numbers post-Vietnam. That didn’t happen because the Reagan administration did some relatively sensible things like multi-year purchases, SLEPed the CV59s and kept a 3-4 year interval between deliveries, so the numbers kept up. That kept you with 13 carriers in 1980, building to 15 in 1990. Trouble was, the required Peace dividend let to a slow-down in order rate coupled with an increase in optempo that means ships are wearing out faster than they are replaced, which partly explains what you’re seeing now – a vicious circle, exactly like that of the late 70s. Funny old thing, that was at the @rse-end of a long drawn out asian land war as well. Back then we were slightly luckier in that there was a highly visible existential threat, which publicly stated as such.
Getting out of the current pickle is not going to be solved by building smaller ships, because you’ll find that you can’t afford to crew more of them to deliver the same effect, or you’ll end up paying 75% of the cost of a CVN to get 50% of the capability and losing out in overall capability. You are correct that stretching out the construction cycle won’t fix it though. What is needed is a very hard-headed look at where that money is actually going in the programme and working out how to reduce it. That applies equally to the other force elements. AB Flight III is going to be a lot more than $2.5Bn a copy, working on an existing hull and systems design (which incidentally should be a warning shot for those wanting various T26 and T45 variants!).
The problem with DoN (as with the UK MoD) is that they really have no idea where the money is going and how to control it. That’s the issue that needs addressing (not by GAO or similar, but by a real technical authority with a remit to dig deep) and soon.
NaB: yes!
Now, how do I vote you in as Minister for Defence?
You don’t. It’s Maximum Leader for Life that I’m after!
In the US we have a situation where the inflation in the shipbuilding industry is higher than the cost to borrow money so it would be cheaper for the US to borrow the money now and start construction as soon as possible and pay it off over the long term ,
“Lewis & Clark”
Gosh yes please, 6 of, soon as. Ta.
Two things about US ship building. It shows that you can have problems even with an old design such as the AB’s. And it shows money just isn’t the answer if you don’t know the question, see the Little Crappy Ships.
I am going off to think of some names for my new class of L&C stores ships for the RFA. I thinking of a Spanish theme; San Carlos, Gibraltar………….
Browsing through Flight International, there was an article saying the US Marines are looking at increasing the combat radius of the F-35B by using V-22s as tankers. The refuelling gear would be on a pallet slid in & out when needed. Ideal for the FAA, I would have thought. V-22 are expensive, but a few off-the-shelf that can do COD & air refuelling, would be useful.
“Ideal for the FAA, I would have thought.” – Podded AEW would be nice too but what with the rising price of ministerial limos I can’t see it happening.
@ V-22 Tanker kit layout.
From F-16.net
http://www.f-16.net/attachments/screenshot_2012_11_28_08_38_42_525.png
Boeing’s V-22 Guidebook
http://www.boeing.com/ospreynews/2011/issue_02/final_2011_2012_guidebook.pdf
http://seapowermagazine.org/stories/20130627-v22-tanker.html
http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/512277-v-22-osprey-air-refuel-f-35bs-cvfs-other-stuff.html
http://www.scribd.com/doc/89698817/v22-brief#download
http://s98.photobucket.com/user/SpazSinbad/media/NewerAlbum/V-22newApplicationsCOD.gif.html
Not that I’m a fan of the Osprey!
Some more rumours on the F35B SRVL trials and speculation on initial orders and basing:
http://ainonline.com/aviation-news/ain-defense-perspective/2013-07-05/uk-will-try-boost-f-35b-landing-weight
Sounds probable though…
Not sure if this has been posted already, but a recent video on the CVF:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jft1okB3WjU
If you believe the Assembly Director the CVF can do 32kts (1:30 mins in) – probably empty.
Thanks everyone for all the carrier-related loveliness. I note it’s the marines and SF expressing an interest in aar Ospreys not the USN – have the latter even taken up their option yet?
In the CVF video Assembly Director Stuart Leonard stated the ship will do 32 knots. He is either mistaken or has since been shot for revealing classified information. As might I now. Perhaps he was getting ahead of himself and referring to batch two – Ark Royal.
The three initial F35s on CVF seems very improbable to me – they have only basic flight software; block 2 software requires hardware upgrades. I suspect these airframes are destined to become museum displays.
If it still has only 80MW going to the props (4 x 20MW converteam drives) then I really don’t see 32 knots.
Apparently the same guy says 67,000 tonnes.
I think people are missing the point.
The question was small carriers or no carriers.
Big carriers are £ for lb much cheaper than small ones. But if we /US can only afford small ones……
The unit cost of even elephants is much less than a Ford class. If Elephants are deplored as originally planned: – 30 odd F35 C, they can do 90% of the real job of a Ford then you can have 10-15 for the cost of operating the Fords. Even if you take in the manning issues. The bigger is best, leads to the 6-9 big carriers the us will end up with. If that’s enough fine.
In our case we have hugely overpaid for 12 fighters at sea on one carrier, (forget all the CGI bollocks of 2 UK carriers sailing in a united taskforce with 30 planes on each.) If we had started with that position we would have saved a lot of time and trouble: – And ‘walloping great loads of cash’……
So biggest is best. But what if you can’t afford biggest?
He’ll be talking about trials speed at start of life, I suspect. Service speed will be less, depending on how heavy she gets.
” If Elephants are deplored” – Dodgy spellchecker or a freudian slip? :-)
NaB,
Come on? No way is that ship going to do anything like 30 knots with only 4 x 20MW drives even if she starts out at 50,000 tonnes?
It takes 80MW to get a 27000t Cavour to 28-29 knots and 72MW to get a 20000t Vince to a similar speed. It also takes near on 200MW to get a Nimitz to 30-32 knots.
Unless someone is being very sneaky and putting 6 x 20MW drives in (which is what she really needs)?
I doubt you can “either confirm or deny this” ;-)
Wiseape
Freudian ship :)
Both the Iowa Class battleships and the Midway class Carriers required 212,000 HP (158MW) to reach 33 knots. Half that should be good for 29. Maybe they have managed to up the HP of the motors. There is, I believe, 150MW of generators on board.
Simon
Look up Mr Froude…….
I can confirm that there will not be six motors and she’ll be plenty north of 50k when she does trials. Whether she gets to 32 is debatable, but yer man there should have a reasonable idea.
NaB,
With all due respect (and I do mean that), I have read up on Mr Froude. His law is about the wave front that’s pushed before the ship, the propagation of which, turns out proportional to the square root of the hull length. But doesn’t the main drag come from the dynamic pressure (1/2 . roe . V2 . Swet) and skin friction which rise with the square of the velocity. The power is unfortunately proportional to the cube of the velocity. Unless physics changed recently.
So, is there something very, very clever going on with the antifoul you put on these new ships?
Or… is there something seriously draggy at low speeds that goes away at higher speeds?
I’ve been concerned about this for a while now because CVF is the only ship that I’ve ever come across that does not fit the mould. I didn’t study ship science (that chap who lived opposite me did though and we shared a lot of lectures). I see no mention of Froude in this MAN Diesel and Turbo – Basic Principles of Ship Propulsion. I do however see an interesting “Admiralty coefficient” which seems more in keeping with my understanding of drag and energy conservation.
I studied fluid dynamics for a few years and get irritated by these things – most notibly my own memory ;-)
Chuck, did the Iowa or Midways have a bulbous hull form?
“Observer July 6, 2013 at 10:06 pm, Chuck, did the Iowa or Midways have a bulbous hull form?”
No, but my understanding is that the gains of a different hull form are important over the life of the ship, but relatively small in absolute terms.
The other part of my comment was that the ship has enough hoursepower to make 32 knots, it is only the drive motors that are a limitation and this is an area that is advancing rapidly so perhaps they will actually be able to deliver more than 20MW each.
The relative importance of frictional resistance decreases above a certain Froude number, after which, it’s all about residuary resistance (principal component digging a large hole in the oggin and towing it behind you).
I know what she’s supposed to do at end of life, deep and dirty. Given the displacement growth margin in the ship, I can see how she might get above 30 on trials at start of life.
Iowa and Midway had a Taylor bulb, which is nothing like the bulb on QEC.
Speaking of small carriers, as I’m sure we were at some point, there’s not much margin for error here:
http://globalmilitaryreview.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/moving-j-15-flying-shark-naval-fighter.html
@Ixion – I see what you did there, very good.
What are the military plans for Britain’s two aircraft carriers currently under construction?
Will both of them be operational? And how many fighter aircraft are they expected to have on board?
If there will be only one carrier with 12 F35 then does this justify spending billions building and maintaining these ships and their aircraft?
Will the aircraft carrier be useful for anything other than bombing defenceless 3rd world countries? And even then the number of sorties per day will be extremely low.
Wouldn’t the estimated £10 billion plus budget be better spent in other capabilities such as increasing the Astute submarine fleet and properly equiping them with long range cruise missiles?
In a war against a major power this carrier will be a sitting duck which will be sunk within a few days. I doubt it would even be deployed in such a scenario.
Sgt pep
Stop it. If you’re going to come to this site. Asking reasonable questions and stating the blindingly obvious to those of us who can count…
The square jawed sons of Nelson and the carrier junkies will get you…
The carriers arn’t for fighting wars. They are for sailing arround in, shouting to ‘lesser nations’ ‘look at the size of my flight deck’…
@Sgt Pep: present plans are to buy 48 F35B. That would allow 12 to go to sea on whatever carrier is deployed, given that 2 carriers won’t sustain one up front all the time. It will also allow for emergencies the ability to deploy both carriers and say 30 F35B for something like the Falklands, since for those just one carrier would carry large risks.
The aircraft would be maintained whether the carriers exist or not, so their costs are largely irrelevant to the debate. The carrier manning ex the airwing is 750, which is about a quarter of the same requirement for the Nimitz, and so the running costs are low.
Submarines can destroy and deter, but cannot escort or power project. We cannot go up against China directly, but we would never assume we could. We need the capability to protect a suface task group at sea more than a couple of hundred miles from an airbase, and be able to move a battalion sized marine unit in one lift. For those requirements, a couple of CVF are just fine and dandy, and would have come in on budget if the government didn’t keep changing the requirements or extending the schedule :-(
@sgt pep – some scenarios for you
+ Peacetime/Low intensity Ops – 1 Carrier +12 F-35Bs + supporting helos
+ Low-level intervention ala Serria Leone – 1 Carrier + 12 F-35Bs + Apaches + Wildcat + Merlin/Chinook
+ Coalition Op ala Libya – 1 Carrier + 30 F-35Bs (from the UK and possibly other nations) + supporting helos
+ Major War Scenario ala Falklands or Gulf War – 2 Carriers, 1 in Carrier mode, 1 in LPH mode
2 Carriers allow to maintain one at a deployed or ready to be deployed state.
Have they cost more than they should of done – yes. But at this stage its a choice between them or nothing.
Ref: 48 F-35B Order
I was under the impression that this is just the initial order? Once the initial Squadron’s are established, then we should see, small orders being placed regularly over the coming years.
Better to do that, than placing a one off huge order that you can’t get out of. At least this way you could easily increase orders if their was a cause to do so.
General consensus is thst the UK will order between 70 and 100 F35Bs eventually. Enough to equip a 3rd CVF also :)
Repulse
If we got 3 (with all the supporting infrastructure, underway support ships. air and sea protection), then I would love to have 3 with 24 + fighter bombers on each (which is about the max 100 fighters could achieve). But we aren’t, nor anything like it so they’re white Elephants.
Tom
‘Have they cost more than they should of done – yes. But at this stage its a choice between them or nothing.’
Never a truer word spoken on these pages unfortunately.
‘
Considering there were only 12 or so Tornado (ramp space a limitation but they weren’t there for the fun of it) in Afghanistan and FJ numbers on Op Ellamy ran to 24-ish deployed to Italy then CVF setting off to sea with 12 doesn’t seem so bad. And if all goes to plan there will be 24 if needed. And even more perhaps in the future not just ours but probably USMC aircraft too. Let’s not forget 36 odd FJ is more than most nations can field anyway. And if they can field that many they won’t be state of the art aircraft like F35b.
And this phrase “supporting helicopters” infers to me a secondary role. Believe me there is nothing secondary about a Merlin ASW. It’s biggest flaw at the moment is no AShM. The Italians have equipped theirs with Marte/Sea Killer. (There is a picture on the web somewhere.) So equipped Merlin would be a good match against most smaller navies’ ships; in numbers it would be a battle winner.
What you all have to do is stop thinking in terms of mini-CVN and carrier strike. For a site that bangs on about naval modules I find it odd that the most modular of all ships is being dismissed as a waste.
EDIT: The reason why CVF is being procured is because the Navy found the Invincibles to be useful. More of the same will just multiply that usefulness and allows us to be better ally to the US.
EDIT: Of course saying that more ships of all kinds are needed to…….. :)
Simon if it takes 200MW to get a Nimitz to 30-32 what does she use for the next 6-8kts. Max speed is a weird combo to so with hull, length form etc. Better paint and a trick transom saw T23 got from 28 to 32 kts, yet have served at sea on an older one that could not top 24kts just before her refit.
Sgt Pep/Ixion
The fact is that a 65k tonne floating piece of territory is useful and flexible, deployable and supplyable over its life time of many years. This is a platform that could sail in 2022 as a single unit with 12 F35B and a couple of SAR Cabs but in 2040 after a period of building tensions sail in 2040 as a pair or 2 CBGs with a mixed bag of F35B and maybe even UCAVs and Merlin ASW replacements.
You are paying for that flexibility. As for sitting duck in a major conflict, who exactly are we going to fight on our own and if you do not think even a single CVF with 24 F35B and a squadron of Merlin onboard along with state of the art T26 and T45 escorts is a serious addition to a force even for the USN then i give up.
x – re ‘supporting helos’ – a convenient (but inaccurate) shorthand for those a/c on the CVF that aren’t pointy war planes.
“with all the supporting infrastructure, underway support ships. air and sea protection), then I would love to have 3 with 24 + fighter bombers on each (which is about the max 100 fighters could achieve). But we aren’t, nor anything like it so they’re white Elephants.”
Which bits are missing then?
Infrastructure? Portsmouth dredged and NB power grid enhanced to cope with both ships. Happening.
Underway support ships? MARS tankers on contract, Solid Stores ships in service, new ones currently with NDP and projected ISD mid-20s.
Air & Sea protection? T45 in-service, Astute in service. Merlin CSP in progress, Crowsnest in Core programme – FOC2023, T26 in Core. 48 F35B expected to be ordered this year. More to come.
There are a number of things that we’d all like to be improved. More ships in total, a more capable AEW platform, T26 to be definite rather than pre-MG and most of all, no more nonsense about F35A. They’re not going to happen right now, but so what?
However, by 2025, the RN will be able to put a carrier group together that has 4-6 high-end escorts with very good ASMD and ASW capabilities, a direct support SSN, an UNREP group for both POL & solids, ASW dippers, an AEW cab and somewhere north of 24 f/w.
If we buy more F35B as opposed to going down the A/C route, then by the end of that decade, we’d be able to field two groups like that sequentially, or even as a short duration one-off. Quite frankly, that’s the only major risk and it’s absolutely nothing to do with the ships. That one lies squarely in the hands of the Defence Board and if they are daft enough to go with the A, then we deserve everything we get. One thing is for certain, smaller ships would have cost broadly the same, but would never have the potential to be further developed if needed.
@ Tom
Well save your fingers and drop the word supporting…………. :)
NAB
We have (roughly) at the moment and planned, the ability to support One carrier on a long term deployment with a full air/ asw protection and maybe just 30 aircraft, at a maximum effort Falklands type situation. for say 6- 8 weeks.
As far as 2 concerned we would strain every rivet of every ship we had to get both to sea, with perhaps one as LPH.
In order to send one in harms way. and keep it there for more than a few weeks we need 3; and triple of everything that goes with them.
T45
AND T26
AND Mars
AND SSN
AND the crews
AND the fuel
AND the ammo filling their silos, (we can’t even fill the silos on the ones we have) ,
AND the spares,
AND AND AND ……etc etc.
I see no sign of a logistical/ support/ defence tail that size. And I mean really that size, not floating ‘on paper’. Not ‘proposed’ not ‘fitted for not with’, not ‘we could have for a bit more money in due course’ etc.
To use the 2 elephants as anything else than Invincibles’ on steroids. (In effect powerful ASW , but limited self protection, limited strike capable platforms, (perfectly ok idea:- useful in itself, but boy did we over speck the things and get screwed on the price for that)); is to court disaster, and would be outside of the scope of our logistical/defence capability.
Not even the most smacked up carrier junky on this sight has suggested we could support more than 2 short time maximum effort.. If you are suggesting for just a bit more cash etc we could….
That is a big statement. and at first sight fully in the fantasy fleet category.
BTW spot on about f35a buying, that would be a stupid decision. but its the RAF so hey ho.
APATS
In effect Elephants are for beating up people who are not ‘too hard’ and for hiding behind the skits of a CVN when it comes to real fight. In effect then Invincibles on steroids… In which case the hulls are massively overspec’ed.
Ixion,
I stopped taking you seriously when you suggested you needed 3 SSN to support a single CVF deployment, oh and 3 crews for more than a few weeks for every vessel you listed. i have done a few 7 and 8 month deployments, you? You do realise that tankers and ships do not obtain stores from the “motherland” and ship them out anymore. The simple fact is that by the mid 20s we will be able to deploy a CVF with a 5th generation fighter world class escorts, a good AEW and slogs facility. Giving us an incredible asset. If the political situation changed we could by spending more money make it even better.
You love to make a list of worse case requirements and then pretend if it was really worst case we would not actually commit those requirements. A CVF with 24-30 F35B 4-6 AEW cabs 2 SAR cabs escorted by 2-3 T45 and 4 -5T26 is a massive effort especially when supported by 2 Astute 2 MARS and 1 solid stores ship but it is also a massively powerful strike group in its own right. Not hiding behind anyones skirts simply dividing enemy strike power!
@ IXION
Has been said lots of times now the expensive bits in CVF would still cost the same if we had bought something Cavour size. The point is CVF gives us space. Have you seen the size of Merlin? SHAR was a tiny plane and the Invincibles were small carriers; I wouldn’t attempt to land on. The UK made good use of the Invincibles and all that is happening is we are building on that success. It isn’t new. It is unproven. It is fulfilling a defence need we already have. The money problems are due to politicians. Any problems with the F35b force structure will be purely down to the need to keep lots of light blue uniforms (outside pilots which are a different matter) involved in expeditionary warfare; we are all purple don’y you know?
I can’t remember have you have drawn up a general UK orbat for us?
I don’t think anyone has ever suggested that QEC was aimed at sustaining a carrier group on ops 24/7/365. We can’t (nor do we plan to) do that with a Bde sized land deployment or an equivalent EAW, so why should we plan to do that with a carrier group? So the “rule of 3” can go in the bin – works fine for permanent tasks, but not for “contingent tasking” which is what the carriers are actually for.
What we are getting is the ability to put a carrier on a long-term deployment – there’s no reason why that couldn’t be north of three months, with a recovery period on return – and do so relatively frequently, as in at least once per year per ship on average. That ship will be able to do far more than a CVS simply because it is large enough to do so from the off. Something that no-one else can actually do other than the USN. That buys real presence and also real influence with the US, NATO, the EU, the UN and others.
I’d be interested to know which bits of it you think are “over-specced” and how that contributed to the actual cost. Remembering of course that one of the reasons that the flightdeck is so large is to allow it to conduct air ops with a significantly reduced number of chockheads. The principles are lifted straight from what the USN is doing with their new ships and will give real savings in op costs.
CVF may be a good starting point, but I do agree with IXION about the over-specc’ed part.
– All-electric propulsion (adds lots of $, volume & weight)
– Design (over?) emphasis on maintenance & survivability leads to lots of unusable volumes (3 meter high decks, side galleries, large underwater protective boxes…)
– Margins for future growth (e.g. CTOL) that turned out to be a waste of time & money
– Modular construction (for political reasons) which led to increased size & cost
End result: lots of added structural weight and a very large and rather expensive hull, with a poor payload-to-displacement ratio compared to the 1970s CVV or the French PA2 Romeo designs. Not sure the lower operating costs (if they actually pan out) will make up for all the extra upfront investment (steel may be cheap, but design & fit-out costs for all those extra tons do add up).
“Has been said lots of times now the expensive bits in CVF would still cost the same if we had bought something Cavour size.” – Must admit it took me awhile to get my head around that. For a time I would drift off to sleep mumbling:”Steel is cheap…refits are expensive…” Sank in eventually; but then I have a mind which is open, you see.
@Simon257 – “I was under the impression that this is just the initial order?” – That is indeed the impression that HMG wanted everyone to get. ;-)
BTW, these Joint Strike Fighters which are going to be operated jointly by a joint force – what will their livery look like? I imagine a Tommy Cooper-like paint job, RAF down one side, FAA down the other.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5effaImHsU
H_K said “All-electric propulsion (adds lots of $, volume & weight)”
How so? Once you start to move 10,000t through the ogin weight and volume for various the propulsion systems come in about the same. Just it is distributed through the hull differently.
Edit: Er, perhaps not just like that!
H_K
It is actually an IEP system.
Care to demonstrate by offering a viable alternative how it either takes up more space or weight than an alternative?
CTOL conversion costs were considered long before a viable non steam/nuclear system was available so actually added little to construction costs but massively added to any future conversion costs.
where would you have built it in 1 place and (ignoring the cost increase caused by a delay which had nothing to do with modular construction) carried over from T45, how much would you have saved.
Bearing in mind the delayed construction in 1 site would have far larger impact on the local economy.
As for lower operating costs.
1. IEP is extremely fuel efficient.
2. SOC has been approved so manning saves massively.
3. 3M high passageways and extra space, flight deck space add flexibility. Look at the size difference in modern aircraft. space is worth a fortune in a ship with a 40 year life design. Ever been in the 2087 suite or computer room on a T23 and imagined what they looked like when first built?
APATS
Now your being obtuse and I suspect deliberately so. No I am not suggesting 3ssn etc nor anything like it!
If you need say 2 T45 and 2 t26 and 1SSN and 1-2 MARS and stores for a single carrier group: – Then for 3 you need the same again twice! Because if your Elephant is in dock /refit/ leave /training etc; then so is its ‘covering force’. Ok the supply ships may stay on station a lot longer.
‘A CVF with 24-30 F35B 4-6 AEW cabs 2 SAR cabs escorted by 2-3 T45 and 4 -5T26 is a massive effort especially when supported by 2 Astute 2 MARS and 1 solid stores ship but it is also a massively powerful strike group in its own right’.
I wouldn’t disagree with the ‘effort’ point. As for ‘massively powerful’, certainly a big handful for most first rank powers and dominate any 2nd rank so job done… But …..
‘You love to make a list of worse case requirements and then pretend if it was really worst case we would not actually commit those requirements’.
Actually what really gets me going is the Amazing Wampom like nature, (look up Flanders and Swann), of the Elephants according to their proponents.
You for example challenge me because I propose Maximum effort scenarios, but when I point out that in effect we are getting 12 F35b on a super Invincible, out goes the cry:- ‘But we’re getting so much more than that’. I refer to posts on this very topic about how were going to get 3 with 30 planes etc……..
When I attack the pie in the sky ideas of that, up goes the cry
‘Well that’s a crock we won’t be manning and ‘planeing’ them at that level’.
Its a bit like when I rubbished the idea of using them against China and in the Indian Ocean:-
‘Your setting up your own straw men’ went the cry.
Followed by post after post by carrier junkies inc, about how we needed CVF to ‘take up the white mans burden’ of doing our bit against china’. AND then the carrier junkies pointing out that it would be as part of a ‘coalition’:- that is hiding behind CVNs then isn’t it.
AND then we get into the whole are the whole ‘fur coat and no knickers’ nature of not putting Sonars on all our frigates and missiles in all out T45’s because even the proposed single, super invincible stretches our real resources. So where is the money for all these extra fighters for the 2 elephants ???
I know it will all come when the British people come to love defence spending and we will order x squillion F35b…
‘X
If we had started out wanting a super invincible 12- 18 f35 b type then we could have had it for a lot less and poss 3 of them.
It was our ‘little boy in a sweet shop, who wants everything’ Navy and MOD. who had start talking about Catapults, F35c, 30 odd planes etc . (And All the published stuff about the Elephants when they were proposed talked about 30 odd planes etc etc). And then we get into the buggering about with the spec that went on afterwards.
I would love to see the ‘Orbat’ for some of the proposed uses of Elephants.
NAB
First things first ‘Over specced’.
The angled flight deck totally unnecessary for 12 to 18 vertical take off jets. Operating that number of jets off the nameless isles,plus helicopters of the Invincibles we wrote the book on STOVL operations with limited crews.
45,000 – 50,000 tons would have done: – say America size. (Yes I Know the Americas are very expensive, but the principle is sound). Hell if we were not to fussy we might have got it onto a common Hull with a MARS!
The catapult cock ups.
A lot of money was wasted on designing in and then out Armour etc . Despite the Invincibles experience that CIWS were all that was necessary.
All of that came from trying to get MinI Nimitz capability.
So you are quite happy to have pretty much the entire ‘capital ship’ program of the RN Built around the ability to occasionally deploy an Elephant?
Personally I am waiting for the next ‘leaps tall buildings at a single bound’ post about the Elephants. Followed by the post about how ‘we wont want it to leap tall buildings’………….
‘@Ixion
“APATS
Firstly as NAB pointed out the QE class is not designed to operate a 365/24/7 presence and ships refit programmes vary not all at once as you suggest? Unless you have been a Fleet planner and I have missed multiple refits over the last 20 years?
You do not make another point beyond some sort of Guardian readers opinion in the rest of your post.
No back ups, no costings, no examples, not experience!
“I would love to see the ‘Orbat’ for some of the proposed uses of Elephants”
You hopefully mean the TAG/BG? I am not in charge but can probably write them for you.
“The angled flight deck totally unnecessary for 12 to 18 vertical take off jets. Operating that number of jets off the nameless isles,plus helicopters of the Invincibles we wrote the book on STOVL operations with limited crew”
Well consider we are going to be able to operate 2 to 3 times as many much bigger more capable jets.
“45,000 – 50,000 tons would have done: – say America size. (Yes I Know the Americas are very expensive, but the principle is sound). Hell if we were not to fussy we might have got it onto a common Hull with a MAR”
So we should buy more expensive less capable hulls because you agree with the principle?
“The catapult cock ups”
See my previous post ref no suitable non steam system at design time. NAB knows more about it than me.
“A lot of money was wasted on designing in and then out Armour etc . Despite the Invincibles experience that CIWS were all that was necessary2
the loss of armour and missile systems was hotly debated but we should have just asked you, because on one hand they are sitting ducks but on the other CIWS is all that is required.
“All of that came from trying to get MinI Nimitz capability.
So you are quite happy to have pretty much the entire ‘capital ship’ program of the RN Built around the ability to occasionally deploy an Elephant?”
Define occasional and what other capital ship programmes outside SSBNS do we have?
“Personally I am waiting for the next ‘leaps tall buildings at a single bound’ post about the Elephants. Followed by the post about how ‘we wont want it to leap tall buildings”
Or what you mean is a post by someone who actually understands threats, capabilities, deployment cycles, is cleared for intel, has written manning requirements and doesn’t think we should be Belgium? Any time mate.
APATS,
“Simon if it takes 200MW to get a Nimitz to 30-32 what does she use for the next 6-8kts. Max speed is a weird combo to so with hull, length form etc. Better paint and a trick transom saw T23 got from 28 to 32 kts, yet have served at sea on an older one that could not top 24kts just before her refit.”
According to my references Nimitz is designed for 31.5. Enterprise did 33.6 but then she’s lighter and has more power. However, I think I’ll have to add Enterprise into my bucket of ships that don’t fit the mould either ;-)
I get your point regarding the hull state. Interested in the “trick transom”?
NaB,
Does a ship sort of get pushed along if it’s Froude number is below 1? In other words, does the ship actually want to get to a “critical” flow? Is it a lowest energy state situation – assuming there’s enough power to accelerate in a reasonable time frame?
APATS
Sorry
I recant. The Elephants are brilliant example of procurement, wisely purchased by our efficient MOD on advice by RN professionals, in simple program of ……….. Sorry can’t keep it up. ‘still it turns’ old boy ‘still it turns’….
We are stuck with two huge ships designed to carry 30 odd aircraft we now can’t afford, one of which we can only use occasionally, which started off with a luxury spec, and has been cut back and cut back to 1 ship with 12 aircraft… After much mind changing it is costing many times what it they could/ would have cost if we had been less ambitious in the first place. Those are facts and playing the ‘I’m a professional don’t yer know old boy’ card cuts zero ice and draws less water, with me.
If you want to compare professional qualifications/ experience…. I have been listening to con men, crooks, otherwise decent people who really did not think through their actions, and dishonest coppers, trying to ex poste facto justify the unjustifiable, for decades.
I know Bullshit (or indeed elephant shit) when I hear it,and I have been hearing it for the last 5 years from the carrier junkies.
BTW the Chinese are very honest about their carrier program. World powers have carriers, we are a world power therefore we will have carriers.
As for your imperious dismissal of my arguments, we ain’t going to see eye to eye its all been gone thru before, in the carrier flame wars.
To me we are Belgium (personally I would rather use Germany as a model).
To you WASAWPYK
@Simon,
Iron Duke had a transom flap fitted.
They basically all look similar to this,
http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd68/Navy2000-1/Naval%20Ships/CG63-2010_zps26ca846d.jpg
Sometimes they are on hydraulic rams so they can be raised and lowered.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6745715-0-large.jpg
According to Purnell’s Warships of the Second World War, the Japanese carrier Shokaku, launched in 1939, had a bulbous bow & could do 34 knots.
Ixion, lovely we are back to WASAWPYK, you have just lost the argument. Just accept it and move on…
Simon
Your metric Froude number is speed ( in m/s)/ sqrt(length x g). Now, tell me how many ships you think operate anywhere near a Fn of 1. You’re missing the point re “residuary resistance” and what that means.
Ixion
I’d love to know where QE’s armour was designed in and then designed out again, or how Invincible operated 18 jets plus helos on Corporate. However, the requirement for QEC as designed was to run a flypro pushing 100 sorties per day, which is actually why the deck looks as it does. Nothing to do with 12-18 cabs, which is a recent planning assumption rather than holy writ, so speaking of “facts” is somewhat disingenuous, methinks. Your professional experience appears to be in a court room and reminds me of one or two other people on here who pronounce with authority, but when asked whether they’ve ever set foot aboard HMs grey War Canoes, change the subject rapidly. In a courtroom, whose evidence carries more weight – the expert witness or the bloke who read about something in the press?
HK
APATS has asked the right questions, fire away with your answers. I’m also pretty sure that your 3m deck heights apply only in a couple of places and for very specific reasons. Side galleries and underwater protective boxes would also bear some further explanation please.
I am fascinated by many of these discussions but still disappointed that ‘opinionated ignorance’, even downright bigotry, remains rife despite the best efforts of some excellent subject matter experts.
@IXION
“The carriers arn’t for fighting wars. They are for sailing arround in, shouting to ‘lesser nations’ ‘look at the size of my flight deck’…”
– Well, they do say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure so don’t knock it. The most our air stations routinely contribute towards the sustained, flexible projection of global hard/soft power is the weekday deployment of low flying jets – including some not painted red – to impress the natives of Wales and Scotland. ;-)
– Rail as much as you like but land-based aircraft have an appalling record of failing to protect our maritime forces in remote hotspots or suddenly developing scenarios, even assuming the availability of host nation support/overflight. Unlike their carrier-borne counterparts, they can’t poise indefinitely off some distant coast, watching and listening while immediately available to deter and, if necessary, counter natural and man-made threats to our national interests until (a) the situation is resolved, (b) escalates beyond their capabilities (whereupon the cavalry – including the much maligned RAF – can be called out) or (c) abates of its own accord (whereupon the carrier group can slip away quietly without necessarily resorting to overt military intervention or political embarrassment).
– The QEs and their carrier air groups of 12 gusting 36 or more F-35Bs plus UAVs, helos, etc., should be around to fulfil such ‘nip in the bud’ missions for the next 40+ years. Are you sure these irritating elephants you keep mentioning aren’t pink?
To be honest chaps, there seems to be a bit of margin for error on both sides of the pro and con argument but let’s chill for a bit.
Tell you what does make me smile though, have spent s huge amount of time on the ship to shore logistics series and although it is early days it has not garnered anywhere near this level of debate, educated or professional and yet we do tend to hear a lot about the army being a projectile fired by the navy
I have never been a great fan of cvf etc not because the concept is wrong but because of its potential to knock us out of shape and pull funding from other less prestige projects. I lump the jsf and typhoon in this camp as well, even fres, their ability to pull cash and brain power from stuff we have rather a habit of needing and rather a habit of not having is obvious
This has always been the crux of the argument for me, not that they aren’t very desirable, but what the penalty for owning them is
So what we end up with is a very sharp spear with a weedy shaft that doesn’t stand up to much bending
A more modest and realistic appetite may well have produced a more balanced capability.
Did someone say all fur coat and no knickers?
PS. Ds, read your first paragraph and then read the rest, then return to you first. Think the first applies to the rest
@TD
Well said TD! I think most of the more rational participants on here would agree that the concept and desirability of CVF isn’t the real argument, it’s the broader price that will have to be paid to get the full package of capabilities up and running.
And that’s the problem isn’t it. We can argue from here until eternity about the relative merits and disadvantages, successes and failings of the CVF project to date, but the fact is we are where we are. Hence why I believe the worst thing that could be done now would be to end up with only one carrier in service and not enough escorts, auxiliaries and aircraft to make it a workable concept.
Real investment needs to continue. It’s a direct choice between underfunding which results in all of the effort and cost to date being essentially pointless or making sure we get a workable and useful capability out of what we have already put in.
Their is no perfect solution here I’m afraid. Spend more to get a ‘good enough’ end product or give up and accept the even greater waste in time, money and effort that goes with it.
@John Hartley July 9, 2013 at 9:53 p. “According to Purnell’s Warships of the Second World War, the Japanese carrier Shokaku, launched in 1939, had a bulbous bow & could do 34 knots.”
Yes but she still required 160,000 SHP (about 120MW) and had only an 85’4″ beam.
Essex class (bigger) made 32.7 on 150,000 SHP
Eagle (much bigger) made 32 knots with 152,000 SHP
the bulbous bow makes a difference but not that much.
Just to be clear if we got 2 with 30 odd planes. And all the necessaery support i would be a reluctant supporter. But echo both TD’s point about all fur coat and no knickers.
As I said we went over all this over thr last couple of years.
I do not accept I have lost any ‘arguments’. Coz I have not seen any consistancy from the carrier junkies about what they are for.
BTW someone got bent out of shape by thst term. I just used it coz real junkies. Will talk of their desperate necessity of getting their fix; will use any justification for any action; will sell off all their posessions and steal ftom others to pay for it. Which is really TDs point. And mine.
I am a fan of carrier aviation. But the Elephants are ridiculously expensive for what they are. And distort the RN into a 1 trick pony.
APATS
WASAWPYK is not an insult or intended as such. It is an acronym of others (who hold views like yours) own words quoted at me in the carrier flame wars. It simply describes your position.
Challanger
Hear hear.
Wea
Are stuck with these things. We have to use them for something. But can we please stop pretending we got here thru some masterplan.
@ Admin – “I have never been a great fan of cvf etc not because the concept is wrong but because of its potential to knock us out of shape and pull funding from other less prestige projects.”
As far as I am concerned this was inevitable since at least ~2005 when we chose to ignore the warnings of a Defence think tank telling us that spending would have to rise by 40% to fund the capabilities we said we wanted in SDSR98:
That of broad-spectrum sovereign and strategic power projection. A mini-US if you will.
We failed to go down that route, and since that point we have only had two choices:
1. broad-spectrum non-sovereign and non-strategic power projection. Salami slicing to the max.
2. narrow-spectrum mostly-sovereign and mostly-strategic power projection. Specialisation.
There were at least two suggested routes to specialisation; focusing on the army or focusing on the navy.
We chose the latter. Specialisation to retain real effect within a constrained budget will inevitably lead to a distorted budget, you just have to accept that…
Or, forgo real effect.
I’m very pro carrier, but the more I learn and the more I think, the more I come to the conclusion that we should have either 1 or 3 of the things.
Based simply on the fact that 2 cannot sustain a presence and therefore means in the time that they can remain on station we need to win (or build) an airfield.
This then comes to logistics and S2S.
We seem to have 2 so that we can guarantee that we can “kick the doors in” 365 days a year rather than 250 (or whatever it would be with one). If you look at the relative value the second hull gives us it’s very, very poor.
So TD, there will likely be some heated debate nearer the end of your S2S series ;-)
@TD: “Tell you what does make me smile though, have spent s huge amount of time on the ship to shore logistics series and although it is early days it has not garnered anywhere near this level of debate, educated or professional and yet we do tend to hear a lot about the army being a projectile fired by the navy”
I’m still waiting for some feedback on my hair brained idea I commented on the second S2S post :)
Too late now, but the original decision should have been between 3 Super Invincible 30,000-35,000 ton STOVL carriers or 2 CTOL 65,000 ton carriers. Two 65,000 ton STOVL carriers are neither fish nor fowl, to my mind. However, we are where we are & I am cheered up by the news that the USMC may air refuel theirs F-35B using V-22. If it happens & if the RN buys it off the shelf, then QE/PoW may gain the reach they need.
Chuck , Shokaku was 844ft long on a 85 ft beam. Invincible was 677 ft long on a 90 ft beam. Gives a clue to what a Super Invincible could have been, say 844 ft long on whatever beam still gets through the Panama Canal locks (93-97 ft?).
@ Think Defence
Oh yes the cost. How much of a saving is there operating CVF than keeping a good chunk of the Army and RAF in Germany 20 years after Ivan went home? And deduct the cost of the Invincibles? Putting aside who flies what from where for the moment the next time fast air is needed it may not be needed in Europe. Or we need trooping helicopters in large numbers. Or sea control assets. Equipment and troops are expensive but having a a large moving base to look after those assets and facilitate their deployment thus rendering value from them expensive is it? We apparently live in an information age but having a facility that can move worldwide and process large amounts of data is expensive is it? We are shifting to a multipolar would where the influence of main ally is waning slightly and the influence of others gaining strength. In less sophisticated times we had bases worldwide and could afford to give local command latitude in lazy wars controlled from Whitehall by telegram and despatch. Now we have bases and the world is a lot quicker paced. The information world may be traversed at light speed by photons and electrons of negligible mass but unfortunately man lives at a larger scale and has to move thousands of tons to wage war. The most efficient way to that is by sea. This is no longer our main defence concern,
http://www.pbs.org/behindcloseddoors/tmp_assets/maps-germany-divided.png
this is,
http://geology.com/world/world-map.gif
I am beginning to see where the brake on UK defence thinking is really. It isn’t the sailors who cover vast oceans or the aeronauts who ply the vast skies in their jets and their argument over capital. It is the soldier caught in some time warp between 1914 and 1945 sitting in Europe looking no further than the range of his biggest gun. Isn’t it they who really have held sway in Establishment defence thinking for most of the modern era? Yes it isn’t us pro-Navy bods who are sentimental living in bygone age but the “Army”. Even though concentrated industrial force was supplanted by the nuclear bomb and rocket even before the guns fell silent in WW2. “There will always be bases (as there were back in the days of Empire)!” “We don’t need the sea (as long as you can delivered our beans, bullets, and bandages)!” It may sound romantic and exciting to think that the bayonet charge is the answer to all our security problems, but really what keep us safe and what the Empire was built was trade, diplomacy, and sea power.
PS: :) ;)
@ x
Sorry but even nuclear powers with the mightiest navies must have credible armies that can be deployed in a variety of scenarios that cannot be met by a nuclear response or by navies.
X
I actually agree with much of what you said in your last post!!!!!!!:) (Remember I am in favor of proper carrier aviation).
But don’t let your dreams blind you to reality
‘ but having a facility that can move worldwide and process large amounts of data is expensive is it?
Can it move world wide? I thought it was not going to operate ‘East of Suez’ in a hot war.
Is it mobile as opposed to a satellite? is it cheap in relation to a satellite!
To the elephants multiple shape shifting talents we have to add ‘mobile computer server farm’ :)
I am waiting for someone to point out that if you put a piece of wood between the doc and the ship it can be used to knock nails in, as another reason to buy it.
@x – A touch hyperbolic, but there are some serious questions in there for the more army/less navy tendency, especially in respect of long-term strategy in the light of the US “Pivot to the Pacific”…ask yourselves seriously what you would choose if two out of three of the Armed Forces had to be abolished? For me the answer is very obviously the Royal Navy…which with the FAA and the Royals can do anything that we alone might need to do, and could add serious global muscle to those ample numbers of European tanks and infantry… you might make an argument for the RAF (if you subscribe to Aviation Weekly),,,but the only argument for the Army alone is a strong and active desire to actually become the 51st State or the (Fifteenth Century) Swiss of a largely demilitarised Europe…
That said I recognise the genuine distress of Soldiers or ex-Soldiers who have seen the Army committed to campaign after campaign in insufficient numbers and not adequately equipped and fear -rightly – more of the same; but the answer is for our politicians to stop doing it, not to organise our Defence Budget around the need to participate more effectively in US wars.
In the end I would prefer a balanced force – which in my view would include Carriers with full Air Wings – but if expenditure is now so low that the overall force has to be unbalanced I can see no reason why a small Island with no immediate land threat needs it’s Army more than it needs an effective expeditionary Navy, including the FAA and Marines.
GNB
PS @ Sergeant Pep – You need a large Army if you have a lot of territory to defend – like the US, Russia or China – we don’t…we could maintain our territorial integrity on the basis of a Crown Militia with very few regular troops, and do anything we actually needed to do on land (FI, Sierra Leone) with a Division as opposed to a Brigade of Marines
@Sgt Pep
“… even nuclear powers with the mightiest navies must have credible armies that can be deployed in a variety of scenarios that cannot be met by a nuclear response or by navies.”
Sir Humphrey has a rather good piece over on his site ( http://thinpinstripedline.blogspot.co.uk/ ) in which he cogently argues that the current plans for the UK army will actually produce an army that is credible, affordable and matches the foreseeable needs of this country. I do recommend reading it.
He makes the point in passing that perhaps the toughest argument when considering the army plan is justifying it should be as large as 82,000 troops, which is interesting. The more In think about the plan for the reserves the more I think that the powers that be do not expect it to work and have thought it up to keep the Mail and Telegraph reading public quiet, As has been mentioned elsewhere here the additional funding announced for the army reserves will be quietly whittled away over time and the reserve combat units gently allowed to wither on the vine.
Quote “Too late now, but the original decision should have been between 3 Super Invincible 30,000-35,000 ton STOVL carriers or 2 CTOL 65,000 ton carriers.” Unquote
The UK cannot afford 2 CTOL 65,000 ton carriers and their aircraft without further compromising the rest of the Navy i.e. further reduce numbers of air defence frigates, subs, etc.
At the rate the costs of the F35 are going who knows how many you will end up with, maybe even less than 48.
A Juan Carlos/WASP type LHD capable of carrying STOVL F35 B’s and/or attack/transport/ASW helicopters would have cost somewhere between £ 500M and £ 1B. For the cost of ONE QE aircraft carrier (£ 3.5B plus) you could have bought a whole fleet of 3 or 4 highly capable LHD’s which would give way more flexibility in terms of availability and deployment. Instead of building the 2nd QE aircraft carrier (£ 3.5B plus) you could have increased the number of air defence frigates or subs which would give you a more balanced force.
I got shot down for saying this last time but I still believe that it is true…
We could not bank on the viability of F35B when CVF was designed, therefore we had to build something that could ultimately be a CTOL/CATOBAR carrier if necessary.
Either that or stick to helicopter carrying assault ships and a reliance on others to provide our own organic air defence. In which case we may as well simply pay the USN for carrier insurance.
I’m not making any comment on the planned structure of the British army and whether or not it is credible. Nor am I advocating the need for the UK to maintain a large standing army. Just saying that at the end of the day nuclear weapons cannot replace boots on the ground, for obvious reasons.
The UK is part of NATO and therefore committed to the defence and territorial integrity of the 28 member states. That’s a whole lot of territory. As an important member of the alliance it needs at a minimum to be able to send a full spectrum Division sized force.
@John Hartley and Sgt Pep
3x super Invincible’s or a fleet of Juan Carlos type ships would have been good solutions to the carrier question, but unfortunately we are where we are and have to make the best of the situation as it stands. That means having both CVF in service so that most of the time 1 is available, with at least 12 F35 and a whole host of helicopters providing a tailored and balanced air-group, and enough frigates, destroyers and auxiliaries to furnish a workable and effective task-group (current force levels or more, certainly not less).
@HurstLlama
Sir H’s article on the Army makes some good points about it’s future. I agree with him that the current plan is a sensible one and it may even be hard hard to justify those force levels. It’s long overdue, the Army has been too large and heavy ever since the Cold War and needs to catch up with the reality of the 21st century and Britain’s place in the world.
@X
I also think your wording was a touch hyperbolic, but I broadly agree with what you are saying. The RN can provide the ability to loiter, be flexible, gather intelligence and offer that mix of soft and hard power on sea, land and air that makes it best suited to be the focus of Britain’s future defence posture.
The Army and RAF most certainly have a place in a naval-centric structure, but the Army in particularly was way overdue a reduction in size and overhaul of force structure. Lets hope it works!
Still not seeing how making the ship shorter makes F-35 cheaper.
“The UK is part of NATO and therefore committed to the defence and territorial integrity of the 28 member states.”
Very true. It is, of course, a nonsense. The UK , let alone some of the other members, is not going to go to war, and certainly not a ground war, to protect, say, Poland or Bulgaria from, say, a Russian invasion. However, on the letter of the treaties we might be called on to do just that. Discussion on this issue just shows how hollow NATO now is.
“it [the UK] needs at a minimum to be able to send a full spectrum Division sized force.”
Nope, that is a personal judgement and not a requirement. We could send a full armoured corps or a platoon’s worth of pioneers or indeed no one at all and still comply with Article 5. The idea that we need to be able to send a division, which, by the way, the current plans say we could post 2020, is an opinion not a verifiable planning assumption.
The UK does not need a large or, indeed, larger army to meet its international, let alone state defence, obligations.
Those 28 countries (excluding the US, UK and Canada) nominally maintain standing armies totalling 1.2 million men. Add UKUSCAN into the mix and you’re over 2 million.
Why does the UK have to send a full spectrum division again? Now who’s willy-waving?
Somewhat astonishingly, the Boxheads have receded to just shy of 70000 troops. We can start taking NATO commitments to land forces seriously again, when the principal land power on the continent does. Lots and lots of “someone else will do it” going on here.
The UK does not need a large or, indeed, larger navy to meet its international, let alone state defence, obligations. One could also say.
The raf are always critisied for no interest in anything out side fastjets particularly from the internet naval supporters. Yet whenever navy matters raise there head we end up at cvf and why it’s a crime to have a few or no fastjet on them almost everything else naval should be sideline to make it so. It would also be nice to hear the naval guys complete the arguments with something other than its all the airforce and army’s fault (as that suggests to me the argument is lost and no rational exists) as soon as there challenged. Also we seem to have operated at significant scale in Europe, Africa, med, Mid East, near east, Far East and south Atlantic these past 20 odd years without much if any uk naval fast air from ships and granted use of it was an requirement in Falklands but funnily enough we went and build a massive airbase down there to cover that area unless building these ships means we can scrap all the assets down there. Perhaps future anti access threat and how the ships may help there in a realistic uk operation maybe a better place to go for justification.
Chally said “I also think your wording was a touch hyperbolic”
hence the PS.
All this bleating from Green persons here about needing an RN battle fleet for the Army to do its work completely and utterly misses what is meant the term SEA POWER. It all gets a bit boring after a bit. Rather like that ball-ache of debate about ships for presence vds ships for fighting debate that stumbles on here. We can only afford a few ships, a ship unlike an infantry battalion is more or less self-deploying, and if there is need for it to be off Murmansk next week it can stop playing coastguard in the Windies and go to Murmansk. Global power delivered at gobal distances. Hasn’t Iraq and Afghanistan taught them nothing? It is useful to have some guys with sharp bayonets. But unless you are the size of Cold War Red Army they aren’t going to win you much. They are the brittle point of a very big machine. Isn’t it said the idea isn’t to die for your country but to make the other fellow die for his? Better we let other scrabble in the dirt. Let’s fight smart and persevere our brightest and best. Fighting from the sea and air is smart. Fighting and dieing in some dust foreign shit hole ifor ill defined reasons isn’t smart. It is stupid. And fundamentally that is what this debates about. Fighting when we need to fight for real reasons of security not political ideals or to curry favour so post government some grinning trickster can build a fortune. To fight smart you need platforms like CVF to carry and act as enablers for modern FJ, modern helicopters, and emergent tech’ like UAVS. If CASD is what underpins our seat on UNSC CVF is the conduit through which that influence will be wielded.
Actually, that’s not the criticism at all, Mark. The criticism tends to be that the RAF do not see a need for maritime air and refuse to even countenance the idea that land basing may be vulnerable to attack, vulnerable to political denial or subject to logistical limits – all criticisms cast at carriers. Nor do the RAF seem to believe that fast jets of any stripe should be based aboard ships.
Neither will you find the navy arguing that “almost everything else naval should be sideline to make it so”. The only reason that FCBA became JCA is because the navy sacrified “its” budget line to ensure that the fleet remained balanced. That the RAF have subsequently begun a campaign to ensure that later tranches of JCA are F35A because they’ve spunked their budget on Typhoon and Tonka GR4 upgrades only demonstrates why there is so little trust in the light blue. If JCA is supposed to cover DPOC, perhaps someone could explain why DPOC cannot be delivered from ships and therefore should not be F35B? Quoting range differentials is unlikely to be a satisfactory argument, nor are “training requirements”. The USN prove daily that carrier based tacair is every bit as capable as land based tacair.
The criticism (or question if you like) is this. Why is the inherent flexibility of being able to operate from a ship or shore base so readily dismissed by the proponents of land-basing only?
Spiffing post Mr. X, a truly spiffing post.
“Better we let other scrabble in the dirt. Let’s fight smart and persevere our brightest and best.”
Ought to be nailed up in big letters on the wall in front of every seniors’ desk at the MoD and the PM’s desk.
Yes a massive airbase with 1100 bods to service what 8 aircraft? 1100 bods but no RAF Regiment. An airbase stuck in one place. The 4 principle aircraft of which have had for most of the time negligible surface attack capability, that is the capability which is really needed, but luckily an overmatching air-to-air capability to meet a really non-existent air-to-air threat, and all the time the big security threat to the FI is fish poaching that costs them millions. And lets not forget that without SEAPOWER the islands wouldn’t have been won back. It is was the threatened removal of an RN asset that gave the Argentines the signal to invade not we might send a flapping slow Vulcan to drop a few bombs at the cost of a few million pounds of AVTURD. Lastly let’s not forget it was organic naval FJ that underpinned the whole operation. The RAF couldn’t tow Australia close to prove top cover. It shouldn’t be called RAF Mount Pleasant but RAF Thank-God-some-else-has-done-all-the-fighting.
EDIT: Tell me do ACME sell inflatable instant air bases? Or did all the concrete, steel, bricks, and generators just appear there by magic?
“Why does the UK have to send a full spectrum division again?”
Next time your Prime Minister wants to stand tall next to the POTUS in some ill advised foreign adventure a la Iraq.
If Britain has no international commitments and is to be just one giant Switzerland focused solely on its own defence than
– why do you need two 65,000t aircraft carriers and 12/20 F35 B’s at a cost of over £ 10 BILLION which are only usefull for bombing ‘insurgents’ or dictators hiding in some African craphole not too far way from shore, and absolutely useless at anything else?!
when with this money you could increase your fleet of subs and frigates and actually equip them with weapons(fitted for but not with anyone?) which can actually protect your shores and shipping from potential adversaries and act as a deterrent?
If a fellow NATO member were attacked which invoked article 5 I think in most situations their will be far more useful things the UK can contribute to a coalition action than a conventional division.
Yes the SDSR and FAS 2020 will still enable us to deploy a division (albeit after several months of build up) and that’s a good thing to retain, but in all likelihood the most valuable assets the UK could contribute to NATO or most other coalition actions for that matter are going to be the high-end stuff that other countries can’t bring to the table. Be it carrier air-power, amphibious shipping and marines, heavy transport aircraft, special forces and ISTAR/MPA platforms (if we ever rejuvenate the latter).
As NaB said the rest of NATO can field millions of troops and the majority of them are continental land powers that most suit and require such forces, so it should be up-to them to provide the bulk of the land forces in any joint action, leaving us to provide the support ‘enablers’ that will be desperately needed and in short supply.
Also X is quite right that unless you want/can field an army of Cold War Red Army, or at least current Chinese and American proportions (all clearly out of reach of the UK without us sacrificing all other capabilities and still presumably bankrupting ourselves in the process) then having a larger Army than the UK currently plans is pointless.
It’s not like every extra thousand or ten thousand bodies is going to make much of a difference, You would still only have enough personnel to do a Herrick all over again, and look how well that has gone! You really need hundreds of thousands of extra bodies to really make any kind of difference, and even then look how the American’s have struggled.
“The UK does not need a large or, indeed, larger navy to meet its international, let alone state defence, obligations. One could also say.”
As regards international obligations, you are spot on, as regards the defence of the UK definitely not. Our maritime security is equivalent to a virgin sans knickers lying legs akimbo in front of a serial r@pist and depending on his honour for hers.
@ Hurst Llama
I like to have the occasional tongue in cheek rant. :)
Over the last ten years I think I have seen too many coffins coming back from sandy places for no good reason. We have all seen too many coffins coming back. Bright young lads like Phil who put their backsides on the line should only be asked to do so if there is a genuine need. We need to get our land forces in and out as quickly as possible. And make sure that before going and while on the ground they are backed up by not only huge amounts of firepower but also the less glamorous but just as essential logistical and medical services. CVF sitting at the centre of a task group allows us to do those things. Possessing a high end naval capability is a lever. It allows us to operate sophisticated aircraft. It allows us to take up ships from trade in an emergency because it will protect them and bring CCC. The wars we should be planning to fight should extend to being in the field for a few weeks at most. soldiers knowing there is something carrying a PGM not far away, and at the end a square, a shower, and a pit. Not wars that mean young lads sitting in mud brick shit holes for six months controlling the ground out to the range of 5.56.
Queen’s grandson multiple tours in Afghanistan.
Kids from British council estates, multiple tours in Afghanistan.
The son of the guy who takes us to war runs away to Washington.
Sgt Pep
“The UK is part of NATO and therefore committed to the defence and territorial integrity of the 28 member states. That’s a whole lot of territory. As an important member of the alliance it needs at a minimum to be able to send a full spectrum Division sized force.”
or
“Why does the UK have to send a full spectrum division again? – Next time your Prime Minister wants to stand tall next to the POTUS in some ill advised foreign adventure a la Iraq. ”
Both direct quotes mate. Please make your mind up, which is it?
in your own time.
@ Sgt Pep
Because the majority of our energy and food comes across the sea. And just because there is no threat now it doesn’t mean there won’t be one in the future.
There is a saying in the US pro-gun community, an armed society is a polite society. And if the anarchy international community is take responsibility for the seas, which are a Global Common, it is needs a navies to do so. It needs to be armed. Lots of frigates would be nice. But you mustn’t underestimate prestige or the flexibility which a carrier brings to such mundane operations as trade protection. The synergy of ship and helicopter is powerful. This isn’t just about fast jets and dropping bombs on Third Worlders. Plus there is a lot valuable real estate in the world that is under water. And so on.
Not a Boffin ,
What does the Second Gulf War or Iraq war whatever you want to call it have anything to do with NATO commitments and the territorial integrity of its member states?!
I think Britain should retain the capability to generate a full sized armoured division as part of a NATO/EU coalition but to be used in wars of necessity which we cannot afford to lose, not ill advised foreign adventures which have cost unspeakable amounts in both treasure and blood.
Whilst we are talking about who said what, just curious where I have said we need a large land army (looking at you here x)
The answer is, I never have
Equally, I have never said we need a large air force or navy either.
What I am absolutely adamant though is retaining a balance both in width and depth, NOT at any particular scale.
This is because retaining a balance force provides a hedge against strategic shock, provides a seedcorn upon which force levels can be expanded and keeps a range of skills at a high enough level to be useful for UK only operations.
You can break out of this balanced core with a range of elective capabilities that become overdeveloped, if you like, ten fingers with three or four that are bigger than they need to be.
These over developed fingers allow you to slot into a wider coalition and provide capabilities that provide influence and sensible load sharing with partners that don’t need support from our big brother over the water.
Our existing over developed fingers might be seen as SF, ISTAR, SSN, AT, MCM and Armour etc etc but they are not sacrosanct, you could equally argue that the fat fingers should be carrier strike, fast jets or boots on the ground
But trying to justify raping one budget for your favourite set of kit on the back of concern for coffins or the fact that we are an island or the battle of britain or any other spurious justification is just complete and utter nonsense
In reality, the UK NEEDS, Trident, a handful of ASW to protect the SSBN’s, coastal MCM, some specialist land forces and some fast jets plus whatever we think is a sensible broad spectrum of ‘stuff’ to provide the strategic hedge I mentioned above (but this could be at a very modest scale)
Everything else is open to discussion
x, by the way, the majority of our energy does come by sea, but underneath it using pipelines and if our food does come by sea, not the majority in any case, it comes over the Irish Sea, the North Sea and the English Channel. We are vulnerable to a lack of supply diversity with a range of refined fuel products but if I had a pound to sort that out the last place I would spend that is with the MoD. The problem with all these ‘we are an island’, fuel, gas, oil etc etc arguments as a justification for more ships is they simply do not hold up to any kind of scrutiny, they do sound good though
Just sayin
As X is saying it’s that leverage, the flexibility and balance of having a a strong navy as the centrepiece of a military stance that’s what the UK needs.
A decent mix of soft and hard power, all at arms length as opposed to men sitting and dying in some dusty, muddy crap-hole that no one really cares about.
Carrot….humanitarian aid and disaster relief, cooperative training, intelligence networks, patrolling and presence where needed.
Stick…. persistent drone and carrier aviation patrols/strikes, clandestine special forces operations, coastal control with the ability to project power inland through missile strikes and strategic raiding.
And when the sh*t really hits the fan the ability to deploy anything from a battle-group to a brigade or (given a big enough threat and a bit of a build up) a division into a high intensity scenario for several months, being supplied and supported from both sea and air.
I can’t see how anyone wouldn’t want to adopt the above kind of arms length, light footprint style of operations as opposed to what we have seen over the last 10 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor can I see any service other than the RN being as best place and capable of leading such a framework and future stance.
Your initial statement implied that defence of NATO territorial integrity somehow required the UK to field a “full-spectrum” armoured division. Then you changed that to supporting the US in ill-advised foreign adventures. Now it’s some sort of war of necessity that we can’t afford to lose.
None of the above necessarily require a UK division – you just think they do. But you need to explain why the major land powers in NATO or the EU (many of who have minimal naval capability) should not be higher on the list for providing that ground capability than the UK.
Not that I disagree with the idea of a full division, which is actually part of FF2020. I’m just at a loss to understand how QEC and F35 are somehow responsible for threatening that capability.
Yep a couple of post there that illustrate perfectly what I was saying.
No answers to the questions raised though eh, Mark?
@x bit harsh on the lad. For the sins of the father?
Sgt Pep, one man’s “war of necessity” may be another man’s “ill-advised foreign adventure”. The difference can be very slight, and the 2 may sometimes even be the same!
Carriers for trade protection? Isn’t that a bit of costly overkill? The F/A-18 runs at about 3,000 dollars per hour of flight. That is 144,000 USD for 24 hour coverage by a single wingpair. Now run it for a month. How much is that? My maths says 4.3 million and some lose change. And that is for the planes only, not the carrier itself or the support staff.
On a more sympathatic note, the QE carriers really came in at a bad time, the economic crisis took many people by surprise and caused a lot of cascade problems, not to mention the F-35B is still a bit of an unknown quality. If I had a say in the matter, I would have recommended a delay at least until the aircraft became more of a known entity before making a decision. If it doesn’t work out, you can at least copy the US and use the F-18E/F +CATOBAR. As it is, you are taking on faith the F-35B will work as planned. Or to be precise, work as “advertised”. Hope it does or there is going to be one hell of a headache.
Sick and tired of the same load off nonsense that gets trouted out to even bother.
@ Topman
I thought everybody had realized by now as well as making some very important and valid point I was taking the pee out of the debate and also myself………? :)
Quote “Not that I disagree with the idea of a full division, which is actually part of FF2020. I’m just at a loss to understand how QEC and F35 are somehow responsible for threatening that capability.” Unquote
When did I ever make such a statement?
If your maximum budgetary capacity is to field some 12/20 F35 B’s plus helo’s please explain to me why there is a need for two 65,000t aircraft carriers at a cost of £ 3.5 billion+ EACH, which will be ‘too big to lose’ in any real shooting war with a competent opponent, one of which will be put at ‘extended readiness’ read at port most of the time, when for a fraction of the cost you could actually have a whole fleet of smaller JC type carriers that would be way more useful than the two expensive and over budget beasts currently being built?
Are there any reasons other than “prestige”? !
At the moment you have the most modern and advanced air defence frigates who do not even carry anti-ship missiles! Out of approx. 112 Tomahawk missiles used in Libya the Royal Navy fired a grand total of 3! and Uk/France had to call in the Americans to bail them out.
How many T26 frigates will there be? Wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up with half of what is envisioned now. How many other naval capabilities have been cut to the bone to pay for QE?
Sgt Pep. re Tomahawks, perfectly illustrates my point about very sharp but very brittle spears or put another way, fur coat and no knickers
The fact that we bought a handful recently even qualified as ‘news’
@ TD
We need a lot more more than 80,000 that is a certainty. :)
The debate is always framed by most here in terms of a choice between the 3 services. It is always Trident costs so much, the carriers cost so much, and the inference is that the money should be spent elsewhere not on energy or aid, but on one or both of the other services. As I said about your attempts to broaden the strategy debate beyond fighty stuff it won’t work here in this format. Security Studies at uni’ is already a farce because in many institutions they try to encompass everything from nuclear bombs to gender issues. So here if somebody proposed not spending on the RN I automatically assume they mean spending the money on the Army or RAF or occasion an LNG tank.
Sgt Pep,
The point in two 65,000t carriers is so that we can provide air cover/support for 3Cdo to “kick the doors in” prior to an army division turning up on cruise liners and the RAF flying in “on mass” to a won or built airstrip ;-)
In my mind there were two reasonable options: 2 x 65,000 tonne carriers or 3 x 30-40,000 tonners.
I doubt one option is cheaper than the other and one of them can deal with a non-F35B/non-Harrier world.
A quick divert left then;
What do people think about a possible alternative history type approach, more but smaller carriers (say, an enlarged Invincible class, still aviation focussed x3) plus instead of the LPD/LHA/LPD(A) combo we went for a single class of ship that were less specialised but benefited from a high degree of commonality with the son of Invincible , i.e. an Invincible/Ocean combo with a well dock??
Put together they would probably offer less than the CVF/LPD/LHA/LPD(A) combination but politically more acceptable perhaps, what about the cost, more or less, would that have been more useful in ‘can’t be in more than one place at a time’ context?
i.e., the smaller operations where being there with a good capability trumps not being there with a super duper capability
Dunno, just throwing a few alternative ideas out there for discussion
@ Simon
No. Despite there being 3 Invincible class hulls for a long while in reality the UK has only operated 2 carriers. I don’t mean the one in refit, one in working up/returned/ deployed cycle I mean turn and turnabout. Don’t forget the need to crew them.
The expensive bits in carriers the sensors and combat systems, engines etc for three ships would outweigh the cost of procuring buying 2 large carriers. The big clue to what an aircraft carrier does is in the name. It is the wrong way to approach this is to say we can only afford 12 FJ so we build a ship can only carry 12 FJ. Invincibles are very small for what we asked of them in the latter stages of their career. Remember those ships started as ASW screening assets for the North Atlantic that the RN got more out of them points to the flexibility of the ship. Bigger ships are more economical and flexibility.
TD,
I tried to cover that on my “Sea Control” and “CVF or LHD” post.
The problem I came up with was that you’d need 3 x Cavour (eg) + 3 x Rotterdam (eg) because you simply don’t have enough space on a smaller carrier to do the heli assault/support ops.
So in that case you end up with 6 aviation ships.
Might as well have 4 x Wasp. 2 available, 1 for sea control, 1 for assault. Dock down tanks in former used for extra AVCAT. Vehicle deck in former used as magasine. etc, etc, etc.
Someone would have to have guaranteed that F35B was going to be a go-er for it to be pursued though.
x,
If CVF had cost the initial £2b each then I’d accept what you are saying :-(
Vince was designed for Sea Harrier and Sea King, not Harrier II and Merlin. So the 2.5 tonnes per sortie drifted up to about 3.5 and the space taken on deck increased too. Harrier II barely fitted alongside the superstructure which totally changes the way you can use the deck. Yet another reason why we should still</i> be operating SHAR.
Also, it's worth pointing out we never really used our fleet in anger when we only had Vince/Ocean. It was capable of a lot more. Basically not much less than the fleet we are proposing with CVF now except now all our eggs in the one CVF basket with a nice load of rotors vying for space rather than being on totally separate decks.
Sgt Pep
Mark
etc
We had all the arguments before over carriers.
I stand on the side of people like TD* Chris B and others who think that the whole thing was fucked up from the start.
From my perspective by desire for ‘prestige’ (Freudian slip by one of the CJs); by an RN who still envisage
‘A BRITISH CARRIER BATTLEGROUP……’ headlines and see themselves on the bridge of a mighty ship surveying ranks of 5th gen fighters, in formation with a Nimitz class smiting HM’s enemies.
And you only have to look at the early published material to see that is what exactly was planned. BTW the last CGI I saw was exactly in that vein. And you know what, if we could have had that EVER. I would be there rooting for it. Perhaps I am a ‘recovering’ Carrier junky??? I never saw even in the ‘boom years’ how we were going to pay for that, AND all the support.
In reality,we haven’t got that or anything like it. I have said this before, but rather like Homer Simpson:-
Carrier junkies hear the words ‘Carrier Aviation’ and a little thought bubble appears next to their heads. In it, mighty multi ship British carrier battle groups sweep the seas whilst swarms of f35 stream over head.
The reality is of 12 F35 in a ship deployable only 200 odd days of the year, which will only have available 2-3 t45 and 2-3 t26 at best, and can’t be deployed east of Suez in shooting war. But that’s not what the Carrier junky sees.
Somehow or other this is supposed to protect mythical ‘British’ trade roots, and our foreign interests, keeping ‘the British end up’. Never had it explained why or how.
What first drew me to this blog was the day TD Came out as a ‘naval aviation atheist’. I was staggered that a ‘Defence site’ operator could hold a view against carriers. It truly is THINK defence rather than Knee jerk reaction against (what was the insult hurled at me above ), ‘Guardian readers’ Defence crap like PPT.
I know TD and I do not agree about many things, or even the exact reasons why we should shoot Nellie and Dumbo and sell of the Ivory, but us ‘Carrier aviation atheists’, are few in number, not united, openly derided…but right.
‘If everyone is thinking the same thing then no one is thinking’
George Patton
Sorry about the italics.
Sgt P
No statement, just constant implication.
As for the rest –
Latest Major Project Report (2012) puts forecast costs of QEC programme at £5.4Bn, so unsure where your £3.5bn each comes from. Much of that is attributable to indecision and delay by MoD/HMG, not least influenced by constant carping that “they’re too big” without any justification to back that up, except that their predecessors were smallish helicopter carriers that managed to deliver a limited f/w capability.
The 12-20 F35 figure is a (current) planning assumption, not the requirement. The requirement is what the ships were designed to deliver, which is part of the reason they are so big. The other reasons were that larger ships did not significantly add to the design and build cost but offered risk proofing against the STOVL aircraft being canned and more importantly allowed the adoption of pit-stop aircraft operations to reduce the manpower.
Your “fraction of the cost” is somewhat misleading as you’re not comparing like with like. The CAG on Juan Carlos is 172 bodies. That’s right 172, to support lets say 6-8 helos and half a dozen harriers. That ship will be utterly incapable of generating anything like the sorties required for the RN requirement on a daily, let alone sustained basis. The crew (at 240-odd) is also unlikely to be able to provide the onboard engineering and logistics to sustain that ship on operations for long. It also means that damage control capability is likely to be inferior to QE, so your “competent opponent” gets a better chance.
The America LHA is obviously much bigger, but will still only manage 20 f/w and maybe a couple of r/w and nowhere near the sortie rate. For which she requires a crew of 1000 just for the ship. In US standard accommodation. Which would need to be changed to meet the RN standard. Which would mean space and money beyond the $3.4Bn dollars she already costs. More to the point she would cost a fortune to operate for less capability. Multiple JC or Americas look superficially attractive, but either don’t deliver the requirement or would cost just as much to build and more to operate.
So yes, there are plenty of reasons that are nothing to do with “prestige” and all to do with the requirement. A requirement which does not say take a handful of jets to sea and operate largely like a CVS. It says take a significant number of jets to sea and provide a meaningful contribution to joint and combined operations for a sustained period.
That is what people fundamentally struggle to grasp – the requirement (which was approved by a joint committee by the way) is for much more than do what we did with CVS.
Now speaking of requirements, the reason why T45 doesn’t have an SSGW is that the Capability managers have not suggested that there is a requirement, or if there is, it can be met with Lynx and Sea Skua, or in a group situation T23 and Harpoon. Don’t agree with that myself, but the point is that until the capability managers decide there is a requirement (and they have to prove that in a joint / civilian environment) there is no reason to fit the kit to the ships. It has nothing to do with QEC per se.
Your TLAM example is interesting. In a force structure where UK TLAM is exclusively submarine-based and with an extremely limited stockpile – largely because “other” assets, some light blue, some coalition are supposed to provide the rest of that capability – the use of that weapon ought to be at “strategic” (not in the nuclear sense) targets. Other sources suggest the RN fired more than three (say a dozen in total) but it matters not.
What is important is that instead of Ellamy being a no-fly zone enforced by f/w CAP and therefore able to be selective about what to engage, lack of ability to provide a sustained CAP over Benghazi meant that the coalition had to go for a fully kinetic OCA/SEAD campaign with TLAM, Storm Shadow and all the bells and whistles. This entailed flattening large chunks of Libyan infrastructure along the entire coastline and into the hinterland – almost guaranteeing wider involvement (which may or may not have been the intention anyway). Point being that a carrier (which the US were unable/unwilling to provide) ought to have been able to supply CAP over Benghazi and meet the original objective. Charles de Gaulle only had ten f/w aboard (analogous to a CVS or your LHD), which was not enough to provide that sort of capability (which points to the logic behind the QEC requirement).
Not saying the Ellamy approach was wrong, just that a less invasive option might have been handy and that’s what big deck carriers with useful numbers of aircraft / sorties per day can provide.
Dont doubt for one minute that CVF = REQUIREMENTS
My point is this;
What if those requirements are wrong, what if they are too ambitious and what of meeting those requirements bends everything else out of shape, my sharp but brittle spear analogy
We can argue the toss about the programme, or what the delays were (short term MoD budget balancing v long term cost increases) but my point remains
We tend to have a bad habit of champagne tastes (or requirements) and brown ale budgets and that mismatch leads us to paying in limbs and lives
Whilst the MoD was planning for a FJ fleet of over 400, a surface fleet of shedloads and multiple armoured divisions with physics defying vehicles we were unable to bring into service a decent assets tracking application, result, no NBC detector spares for our trips to the Middle East in 1991 and 2003.
Something is amiss, concentrating on prestige major projects suck the life out of everything else
You might think we would have learned by now, oh, hang on…
Still, if you think we are good at wasting money, have a read at this
http://www.sigar.mil/pdf/alerts/SIGAR%20SP-13-7.pdf
TD,
What are the requirements?
I tried to short-cut that debate in my post and suggested sustained sea-control and sustained battalion or “surged” brigade level aviation support was required.
Without a specific set of requirements it’s very difficult to analyse.
One could suggest we need no more than 12 jets. One could suggest we can get away with just 8. If we only want reactive CAS then probably 6.
One could suggest we need no more than a half-dozen utility Merlin to service a Commando.
Perhaps covertly inserted SAS from Astute, with TLAM for SEAD, and 200 x Aster30 linked to an ASaC platform along with half-a-dozen Apache escorting some LCU/LCVP/LCAC?
Someone needs to set a “size” or “capability” requirement.
I suspect the requirements weren’t wrong. Contrary to myth and legend, they were set in both joint and combined environments against credible threats and in scenarios that are still very relevant.
What we didn’t plan on, was fighting two sustained land wars, vastly beyond the assumptions around which the forces were funded in both scope and duration, without the Treasury making up the full difference.
It’s at this point that two of your points become extremely relevant, specifically :
“short term MoD budget balancing v long term cost increases” and “Brown ale budgets” (my capitals).
There are some spectacular bloopers on the MoD side – Astute, Nimrod MRA4 and Bowman are probably the most prominent on the project side. The botched implementation of RAB being another on the general organisation piece. However, I’d bet good money that had cost growth not been incurred consistently for ten years by reshuffling budgets to keep within Gordon’s (non-warfighting) spending profiles, then the Black Hole would not have been anything like as painful.
The truth is we can and could afford the SDR98 requirement. That someone wasted the money elsewhere is the reason people feel the pain today.
If trade protection is such a critical concern can someone tell me why the carriers, nuclear subs, frigates, destroyers and amphibious assault ships have not been flogged off in favour of AIP subs and a fleet of smaller vessels, ranging from the fast missile boat to the offshore patrol/corvette size? I say this because – as TD pointed out – the bulk of our critical trade (food and fuel) travels no further by sea than the width of the North Sea. A sqaudron in the middle east and maybe one out of Gibraltar would complete the coverage for probably 99% of the vital elements.
As for letting the rest of Europe provide the land power on our behalf, why not follow the logic of that argument and let the US and Europe provide the naval and air power for us as well? They have plenty of planes and ships. They’re invested in a lot of the same areas we are, so why do we need two carriers when the US has ten? We could scrap the bulk of the navy and the air force, turn the army into a home guard, right? No? Why? Because… because… because… because… because… because………. because that line of argument is complete bollocks, that’s why.
Onto this idea of dodging ground wars, do you really think that idiot Blair went into Afghanistan and Iraq with the thinking that they would descend into a counter-insurgency war? All this talk of sitting offshore and not getting involved smells strongly of wishful thinking. Yet somehow people think playing pat-a-cake on the sidelines is going to convert into a magic well of “influence”. We’ve been spending blood and treasure like nobodys business over the last few years, and we can’t even get Barmy Barry and his administration to back us openly over “those Islands”. Why? Because in geopolitics, money talks, as does keeping your backyard sweet. Carriers? Tanks? Planes? Find me a world leader who could really give a f**k and is influenced about such “prestige” things and I’ll show you a man who is leading his country down the garden path. Clue; there aren’t many of them.
If you want carriers, tanks, planes etc, then fine buy them. But do it for the right reasons, not because you think the King of Jordan is going to pat you on the back and shout “good form” in Arabic. Because chances are he’ll be more interested in your suit and your car.
Dont forget Chris, carrier can poise indefinately, menacing those on shore and forcing them to stop being naughty boys :)
NaB, not sure if you missed my point, I don’t doubt the staff work that drove the requirements was immaculate but at some point a judgement call has to be made about how high we set the bar. My point remains, CVF/JCA (like so many other things) set that bar too high to be sensible and this has consequences
@NaB: Hear hear!
Hindsight is a great thing, but actually the more time moves on the more I think the current CVF design is spot on for our needs. It will provide the core of the RN’s multi-functional task force for the next 50 years and will pay back numerous times over when compared to a limited (and misguided in my view) LHD design.
@x I always thought the Genuine knocking of his career choice was about out of order. I felt a bit sorry for him.
” chances are he’ll be more interested in your suit and your car.”
Not if you don’t drive a Porche or Mercedes :P
TD, I think “wrong” isn’t the right term for the requirements, the requirements are pretty much well a trodden over path. What might be a better description would be an “overreach of objectives or purpose that the budget could not support”. Honestly, If the QE-class was filled to capacity with 3 squadrons, it would provide a fairly decent force. The problem was not with the 3 squadron capacity, it was with the fact that the 3 squadrons were cut down to one because of money issues.
Look on the bright side, at least the economic crisis came before the carriers were constructed. If it had come after, the MoD might have been forced to sell one to reduce maintenance costs, which would have been a waste. Same thing happened to Thailand, they got a carrier, then the Asian 1997 Financial Crisis hit. On a normal budget they could have operated it, but once they went into recession, it became a white elephant.
We’re ordering 48 F35B and reading betwen the lines in the cost forcast that was posted recently it equated to exactly another 24 down the road.
CVF can still operate 36 jets with ASW offdecked to escorts and tankers.
Simon, I know they can operate 3 squadrons. My point was that the other 2 squadrons might be late or never in coming, which makes the entire system not ready for immediate use unless you can scrape up another 24 F-35Bs from somewhere.
And you don’t need to offdeck, think there is enough space for an ASW component with the 36+4 FJs too.
Way I see it, there are 2 possible bottlenecks for a serious, rapid deployment.
1) Cost of the F-35Bs. An immediate bulk buy of F-35s would give the Treasury fits. The UOR to end all UORs :)
2) Production rate of F-35Bs. Even if by some miracle, the Treasury decided to throw money at the problem, there may not even be planes to buy, considering that the F-35 is not in mass production yet.
Oh well. Time will sort it out I suppose. Or bin it in the trashcan of history. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
@ Topman
Oh. I didn’t see it in that way. I trotted out the Falklands stuff because it is all the stuff that pro-dark blue nutjobs like me supposedly trot out are always supposed to trot out. As I said I was being extreme for the sake of it.
I will say though as somebody who doesn’t have a professional axe to grind that I do find as unbiased observer that land launched air power bods to tend present it as a panacea and sort of sweep all the necessary logistics and other factors like the sovereignty of airspace under the mat.
@x most people have got a rider in this race. I wasn’t too concerned about your comments r the fi. It is interesting the last part of your post. Options are to me what it’s about. i’m sure there’s plenty that would change a few words of your statement and point the finger. Funny isn’t it, type one thing and people read it in another way.
@ TD – “What do people think about a possible alternative history type approach, more but smaller carriers (say, an enlarged Invincible class, still aviation focussed x3) plus instead of the LPD/LHA/LHD(A) combo we went for a single class of ship that were less specialised but benefited from a high degree of commonality with the son of Invincible , i.e. an Invincible/Ocean combo with a well dock??”
Often thought similar; the very early drawings released of the CVF resembled a Hermes sized Invincible. Three modern Hermes plus ? number of well decked half sisters sounds good…
http://navy-matters.beedall.com/cvfimages/cvf11.jpg
@ X – RE: Security Studies:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23197565
Perhaps the problem, and partial cause of the arguments above, is the lack of a Grand Strategy and a clear idea what our armed forces are for?
TD said “Dont forget Chris, carrier can poise indefinately, menacing those on shore and forcing them to stop being naughty boys :)”
Let’s not forget Op Ellamy required 8,500 tons of stores to be moved to airfields in a host nation supposedly a major NATO that was a bit dithery of taking any action. Let’s not forget that moving those 8,500 tons of stores, let’s face in ship cargo terms not much, was banged on about like the RAF had completed a task of Hercules. How far is Italy about two day’s careful driving. There are HGV drivers who similar and longer runs every week. Let’s not forget how awesome the initial raids from Norfolk were. 8 pilots who are trained to the tune of millions sat in planes there are trained to fly filled with all the latest navigation in equipment, fly through air space that belonged to the conflict’s other major combatants and so safe, backed up by more expensive aeroplanes just to refuel them on trip just to the other side of the continent, expensive aeroplanes whose replacements under PFI are going to cost enough to buy one ship tanker each year for 27 years and cover it’s life time’s operating costs, an operation that probably needed upwards of 750 bods probably to complete, and all to 16 missiles from 250nm out that missiles of similar to could have been carried in a VLS of frigate, crewed by a crew of 160, whose cost would be less than 12 F35a, that could do other things, and do those things of the coast of South America or in the Gulf in about week if there was a need. But we don’t have the latter capability because the MoD is too concerned with perpetuating Cold War and even WW2 fiefdoms instead of going for value for money for the UK taxpayer.
Observer,
So the problem is with F35 ;-)
@ Simon,
Correction. The “plan” is to order 48 jets. The end result could yet prove different.
Amidst all the sound and fury of fighting over what decisions the MoD should have made in 1998 I note that the Septics have today made the first autonomous landing of a UAV on an under-way carrier. The future of carrier aviation just changed, folks.
TD
and you’re missing my point, that it’s not just “immaculate staff” work. An entire organisation (mil, civ and political) agreed on a requirement based on what the UK decided was worthwhile doing. They then allocated a budget for it as a core part of SDR98, which pretty much everyone, even in hindsight agrees was a sensible scale of effort and capabilities.
The country then elected to prosecute two wars in quick succession outside the scope of its agreed and funded defence capability. That’s the part that has been set too high to be sensible and yet the debate always appears to be centred around a ship. The only thing that people mention about the ship is its size (relative to its predecessor) and distorted cost , yet cannot demonstrate (as opposed to opining) that a smaller ship would provide a useful capability or be substantially cheaper.
Where we set our bar too high to be sensible is the idea that we can prosecute concurrent sustained land wars at medium scale or larger without adjusting the budget. There’s your judgement call and that didn’t even require hindsight.
Chris B,
So the problem is with F35 ;-)
@ x,
Though I agree that we could do with a bigger stockpile of TLAM, you have to realise that you really are talking shit in many other regards. You have a knack for dodging important points because they undermine your argument, like the fact that if you wanted 12 aircraft on the carrier, they’re going to need a similar tonnage of equipment and stores, probably more because you can’t fly that much more onto them (and then the crew and ship fuel tonnage requirements on top of that).
We get it. You’re bitter because you’re always harping on about how the other services can’t self deploy, and yet they managed to demonstrate self deployment in this example, which has completely fucked your normal argument about the army.
We get it. You’re bitter because the RAF did something of note (heaven forbid), e.g. reached out over 1500 miles to strike at a target in a matter of hours.
We get it. You’re bitter because we always hear about over flight rights and permissions etc, yet once again this group of people we like to call “allies” came up good for us.
We get it. You’re bitter because this was the war that people like yourself had dreamed of, because you thought it was going to be the argument to end all arguments that would prove carrier superiority, yet instead it not only showed that air forces could conduct such operations quite adequately if need be, but at the same time the weather and endurance problems suffered by Charles De Gaulle actually f**ked many of the arguments that people like yourself normally lean back on to demonstrate the superiority of the carrier (as demonstrated by your comments earlier about off shore persistence).
So you called the wah-mbulance.
Most of the technical delays on CVF were related to the planes. A decision to go with F18 back at main gate, and CVF would have proceeded very smoothly. Conversely, if we hadn’t dumped the Harrier, we would have had more time to sort out the F35. The ships are the minority of the costs and risks….
@ Topman
It isn’t funny if I have upset somebody. I hope everything I say here is taken with a big pinch of salt; especially my pantomime rants. I have no riders in this race. I think it is easy to point the finger at CVF and most of that is due to just not understanding naval matters or dare I say not wanting to understand. Rather like on ARRSE when they trot out the Daily Wail and the “outrage bus”; idle thinking passing trying to pass as intellectual discernment. I think it easy for some to forget just how dependent we are on the Americans to do stuff, especially getting us into places.
“like the fact that if you wanted 12 aircraft on the carrier, they’re going to need a similar tonnage of equipment and stores, probably more because you can’t fly that much more onto them (and then the crew and ship fuel tonnage requirements on top of that). ”
Just as a point of order, I think what X was was trying to point out (and the point you’re avoiding) is that Mr Archimedes is free and persistent, whereas Mr Bernouilli is neither. Ships carry large amounts of stores as a matter of course by their nature and it’s not actually a drama to do so. Aircraft don’t, because Mr Bernouilli demands his pound of flesh for every minute every pound spends airborne.
Doesn’t mean air power is wrong, it just means horses for courses.
Mr Bernouilli is applicable as much to water as to air ;-)
In addition, we can float in the fluid called “air” too…
Where’s RT when you need him to mention the airships?
Another thing I will throw into the mix when people dream of 3 Cavours rather than 2 CVFs – as an result of the SDSR 2010, the outcome would have been 2 Cavours and we’d all be bitching about the lack of space / capacity. The fact that the government couldn’t get out of the contract and there was only 2 was probably their savour – you could say that that meant deeper cuts needed to be made elsewhere; I’d argue however, that the government was desperate to cut where they could and the cuts would have just have been deeper.
@ Chris B
No Chris. It is you who are to wed to the idea that RAF means airpower. As soon as anybody takes a swipe at the RAF you swing out with this purely one dimensional thinking. If 8,500 tons have to be moved they have to be moved. If they are to be moved outside of Europe that means shipping. Same for fuel. Wow 1500 miles. I should hope that with their equipment and training I should hope they could manage to fly across NATO controlled skies with lots of divert fields to launch weapons that can could fly themselves. My uncle comes from Perth WA every year should the QUANTAS crew get a medal for flying even further? As for TLAM I mean any cruise missile. Let’s hope the next war is within 1500 miles eh? Perish the thought we have to fight in the Indian Ocean, the South Atlantic, or Heaven knows where elsewhere because none of those place can be reached by road……..
The USN ratios of HVUs (High value units – CV/LHD/LHA/LPD/LSD) vs Escorts (DD/FF) vs Replenishment Ships (Tankers and Solid) is approx 25:50:25. The RN is very close 20:55:25 – so you could argue that if the RN is not balanced so is the USN.
Projected numbers for major European navies look to be on average 20:65:15 – more escorts but less reach.
Rough figures I know, but makes an interesting point.
@John Hartley July 10, 2013 at 9:02 am, “Chuck , Shokaku was 844ft long on a 85 ft beam. Invincible was 677 ft long on a 90 ft beam. Gives a clue to what a Super Invincible could have been, say 844 ft long on whatever beam still gets through the Panama Canal locks (93-97 ft?).”
Currently maximum beam at waterline to transit the Panama Canal is 108 feet (Beam of Iowa Class) this compares with the QEs’ beam, 39 m (128 ft) (waterline). The Panama Canal is currently being enlarged.
(I would think the ability to transit the Panama Canal would be less important to the RN.)
…as an result of the SDSR 2010, the outcome would have been 2 Cavours…
Too true.
As for the 25:50:25. If you rewind a bit to four Vince hulls it ends up that there is a destroyer/sub pair for each RN ship and a frigate for each RFA. The inbalance now is that we have half as many “carriers” so each one gets two escorts… and rightly so :-)
Seems eminently sensible to me.
NaB said “Doesn’t mean air power is wrong, it just means horses for courses.”
Exactly. The thing is I am pro-airpower. I want those FJ to get to the point of crisis as quickly as hopefully it will stop the need to load up stores in the UK into a ship, divert aviation fuel to some destination, move personnel, food, toilet paper, ordnance, and a million other things so 12 more jets can fly from a strip of concrete perhaps a month or so down the line. Lets be realistic here do useful work not just tokenism. And perhaps to do so with a degree independence, however small, without expending too much political capital. Political capital in a multipolar world will be hard won and not something to be squandered.
Chuck. The whole point of a medium sized STOVL carrier, is its ability to go where a Nimitz sized CTOL cannot. So yes, through the existing Panama Canal. Plus, I am not as nautical as you, but I understand some ports are geared to Panamax sized vessels.
This can carry 6,675t of dry cargo, 3,242t of fuel which is enough to refuel a F35b 480 times or a 12 ship F35b air group 40 times each, and has a range of 14,000nm at 20kts. That’s like the FI in 16 days.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FVeEhhTjSXI/TSFYqSAWuII/AAAAAAAAA9s/P-VdUHInrfo/s1600/100125-N-4971L-117-USNS%2BSacagawea%2B%2528T-AKE%2B2%2529.jpg
I can fully understand why this is so much betterer,
http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafcms/mediafiles/8935C8E7_5056_A318_A860D8D35B3CA504.jpg
;)
@ NaB,
I can partly see where you’re coming from, except that most of the stores were moved by road.
Just specifically referring back to x’s point, if you look at what he talks about over a prolonged period of time he always comes back to tout this idea that somehow when the RAF or the army deploy somewhere, they require y amount of stores or z amount of personnel in order to sustain their operations as if that was something the Royal Navy didn’t need to do. He seems to refuse to accept the fact that ships require a lot of support as well. It nearly always descends into some petty rant that he makes where he goes off trying to shit on the individual quality and character of the personnel involved, as if the army or RAF needs 10,000 men to support one helicopter whereas the Navy could keep a squadron of the things flying with two blokes and a ready supply of sticky back plastic. That’s what annoys me. He talks about the other services like they’re full of brain dead school drop outs who are a drain on national resources, while he’s so far up Nelsons arse that you’d think the crew of a ship could build HS2 in half the time and a quarter of the cost.
@ x,
I respond so virulently to you because you spout some of the most inane, close minded bollocks I’ve ever known. Once again we see you crapping on other service personnel for no other reason than they don’t belong to your pet service. You’re bitter because someone else did something of military value, something that was a reasonably remarkable feat, to project a certain degree of power 1500 miles out from these Islands in a matter of hours from lift off.
It’s one of the things aircraft can do very well. You’re always banging on about global deployments, and I think it winds you up that aircraft can be flown to other side of the world in less than 48 hours, without needing a boat to transport them. That’s global reach for you my friend.
You talk about things like persistence and claim that neither the army nor the air force can achieve it, and yet both of those services are part of a persistent force deployed to “those islands”. They’re also part of a persistent force that currently resides several thousand miles away from here in Afghanistan. The navy contributes to those as well. So why do you find it so hard to give other people their credit?
Instead you just ramble like a madmen. You’re talk all this rubbish about toilet rolls, as if bog roll is only sold in the UK. You talk how bad it is that RAF aircraft might need refuelling in the air, but when someone asks you for your thoughts about tankers or replen ships needed to follow carrier groups, you suddenly go all quiet. You bang on and on about carriers being these floating storehouses without seeming to understand that that storehouse needs restocking as well.
You bitch and whine about the army, yet you fail to realise that ground forces are the fundamental factor that goes in and closes the deal. You seem to be stuck in this la la land where you can just sail up and down the enemy shore and all of a sudden the bad guys throw down their weapons and surrender.
You’re major problem? You can’t understand that we have three services that all contribute to an end goal in different ways. You think you can remove the green and light blue elements and somehow the whole defence picture will be fixed and everything will be all rosy. It’s madness. You’re a mad hatter. Get out of your bath tub fella. Have a walk around. Realise that we have service personnel from other branches that contribute just as much to defence outputs as the Navy does.
Been a while since I’ve poked my oar / canard / pace stick in (speaking of which – Jesus Christ: http://www.army.mod.uk/news/25625.aspx).
I am relatively relaxed about the size of our armed forces in absolute terms and I am relatively relaxed about the scale of some of our capabilities as long as they are broadly retained.
The scale of a capability can be changed relatively fast (yes by bearing great risk and the dilution of individual units capabilities, but this is largely irrelevant in a large war) but what cannot be remedied fast is the creation from scratch of even some very simple capabilities let alone the ability to build and operate a fast jet carrier. I was 15 when I read we were buying some and now I’m 30 and they’re still on the blocks and I’m going to be or should be near middle age before they are doing what they should be doing. If we’d ordered them in 1937 we’d have got them in 1957.
As anybody who listens to my screeds know I think a major, if not THE theme of the next half century is going to be unpredictability and uncertainty. We might not fight anything more major than Afghanistan, but we might – it seems to take about 5-10 years for a regional threat to develop from the starting blocks. So I support the aquisition of the carriers because they are a capability that might be needed in the next 50 years and by having them well, we have them!
That said you have to balance the costs – do you reduce the risk of some unforseen future conflict and increase the risk to what we’re doing today? In other words, frigates and OPVs for carriers and fighters. A difficult question. Personally I think yes. I think yes because if we need the carriers, we’ll need them. I think yes because if we really needed more surface vessels we could build more of the designs we have – if we needed a carrier we’d be starting from scratch. I think yes because whilst I certainly would not say we engage in wars of “choice” we certainly have “more choice” about how we fight them and more slack in terms of time and means. If a regional threat did develop we’d be stripped of options very fast, we’d be stripped of time very fast and we’d still have to deliver a new high end warfighting capability.
That’s my rationale for supporting CVF. Other than the SSN force it is probably the hardest capability to regenerate from scratch by far and away.
“…it’s not just “immaculate staff” work. An entire organisation (mil, civ and political) agreed on a requirement based on what the UK decided was worthwhile doing.”
…and then went and did something completely different anyway.
You seem to be arguing against yourself there, NaB. When you say that the country elected to prosecute two wars outside the scope of its capability, what you mean is that the very same mil, civ and political machine (that previously drew up the requirements for what was worthwhile doing) elected to prosecute those wars.
That’s the flaw in your argument, that the carriers are the right solution to a problem because they satisfy a requirement based on “credible threats” and “relevant scenarios”, whilst rubbishing the credibility of those who wrote the requirement.
If what actually transpired was outside of the agreed and funded defence capabilities, then those credible threats and relevant scenarios upon which the agreements were made and funding was allocated were clearly entirely subjective propositions that didn’t stand the test of time.
So perhaps those CVF requirements are wrong, are too ambitious, and are bending everything else out of shape.
BB, I think what he meant was that the “equipment requirement” met the purpose it was ordered for, the problem was that the starting point, the purpose itself, was too ambitious. Honestly, most of the equipment has decent specifications and should be able to do a fair job. Problem was that at the strategic level, funding was suddenly constricted but job scope was not, so it ended up as the age old problem of doing the same or more with less.
And Chris, relax, x was just trying to be a troll and ended up looking like a raving loony. He forgets that it is hard to parse emotion on the web.
x, try harder :) .. or maybe don’t try so hard :P
I’m reasonably sure I’m not “rubbishing the credibility” of those who wrote the requirement. Nor was “the purpose” too ambitious, far from it.
SDR98 clearly set out what UK forces were expected to do and for how long with the budget assumed. Nowhere in the defence planning assumptions underpinning that work, did it say that the UK would involve itself in two enduring large to medium scale land wars concurrently, within the constraints of that budget. All entirely sensible and interestingly, no-one is currently suggesting we plan on that scale of effort now either and that isn’t just because of the TELIC/HERRICK experience.
In 2001, we had Afghanistan Pt1, which actually fell within the scope of the SDR assumptions. A non-enduring medium-scale intervention. No problems there. Then HMG decided to get involved in Iraq and TELIC began – a large scale intervention, still within the scope of SDR (just) if a little hard on the heels of the last. Problem was it became enduring and at that point, passed beyond the assumptions and should have attracted more funding from HMT to the core budget. When Herrick kicked off properly three years later, that funding had not been provided and yet once again HMG decided to go outside the assumptions in SDR and prosecute two (very large) medium scale enduring operations concurrently.
It doesn’t mean the planning assumptions were wrong. What it means was that HMG knowingly and deliberately underfunded the Defence budget, mortgaging the long-term future of defence for the short-term feud between the smiling menace and Cyclops. Incidentally the Chiefs of Staff are also culpable for going along with this for such a sustained period of time.
No-one has ever suggested that SDR98 was not a sensible prism through which to view the UK defence interests. The equipment requirements (including QEC) fell out of that (not the other way round).
Correct, I think the CVF was right based on the technical requirements. Was the underlying strategic need underpinning the requirements wrong, maybe given the type of recent wars we’ve just fought, but I’d argue that unless the UK wants to fight these wars in the same way going fowards then the CVF will be (luckily) what is needed for the next 50 years.
The thing I do question is the need for small LHD type carriers given the significantly superior air lift capabilities of the CVF. More hanger space on other platforms maybe. Perhaps a fundamental question is what is the requirements for projecting land power from the sea?
In a new Purple world are the RMs just there to perform maritime security (stop and search etc), limited coastal raiding and to secure a gateway long enough for the Army to arrive? I’ve always dreamed of the RMs being a mini USMC, the more I think about it and understand the more I realise I was wrong.
Therefore, a question should be what RM size / structure is required to do this? What kit (LPD/LPH/LHD/LSD/LST/etc) is required to support this in the context of the CVF (which is as much about sea control as amphibious assault)? What is the best way to get the Army to this gateway as quickly as possible and keep it realiably supplied thereafter?
The French will have a CVF and 3 LHDs, this is not bad to get a small force to a beach quickly, but what next? They do not have the RFA / point capacity to do that at distance or keep it supplied. I completely get TDs sharp point but thin shaft analogy.
It’s the same now with SDSR2010. It actually makes quite a bit of sense given the likley threats.
Note how I said “likely”.
The trouble is an identifiable, but “unlikely” threat, should be planned for in much the same way except you generally plan for it by muddling through.
I agree with NaB in that if you plan for one thing and then undertake two entirely different things you’re likely to end up with egg on your face. I don’t blame anyone for the planning (yes, I know it suits my carrier fantasies). What I do blame people for is not adapting our forces to meet the threats that actually do transpire. So if we rewind a few years that would be infantry protection vehicles and more copters rather than fast jets and ships.
Having said this I appreciate that some things cannot be generated/adapted quickly enough. In which case they should be the “reserve stock” items.
Agreed that SDR98 was the last time we had a full spectrum at minimum cost credible plan. It needed 2.5% to 2.7% of GDP to fund it though. Cheap compared to the 6% of GDP spent on defence in the 60s or 4% in the 80s. Mind you we only spent 0.35% on aid in the 80s not the 0.7% the coalition is obsessed with.
Back to carriers. My take on the minimum credible number of fast jets. 1982 revealed we need 8 for a constant 2 aircraft CAP, plus same again for strike. So carrier needs a minimum of 16 fast jets. Plus 6 ASW, 4 AEW, 4 COD/Tanker, making an air group of 30. You could probably have got that on a Super Invincible (840 ft x 95).
82 did not reveal we needed 8 cabs for a 2-ship CAP. What it actually revelaed was that we needed AEW to make the most of a larger CAP and deck launched back up. The “minimum” requirement is not a 2-ship CAP 24/7, it’s different, as is the minimum requirement for strike, The requirement tends to drive safe parking area, which requires significantly more beam than 95ft (or 108 for that matter). Panama is an irrelevance. To my knowledge CVS has transitted the canal less than five times in 35 years of class service.
As for the protected vehicle bit, we had lots of protected vehicles (Warrior & FV432). We just didn’t want to deploy them because of cost and more importantly size and logs footprint. They would have been perfectly adequate to withstand the initial generation of IED, but would eventually have been defeated by larger devices (as has Mastiff recently). So we sent snatch and Viking, largely because of size. In fairness, not many people were thinking that EFP and blast IEDs could be fabricated and emplaced on the scale that they were.
The “shortage” of rotary-wing lift is actually a two-part issue. The first part is that we took on an AOR that was too large for the force funded to deploy. That meant long unmonitored supply routes to the FOBs which were easy to mine / ambush at which point threat becomes too high for land transport and commanders scream for r/w lift.
Trouble was, initially too little r/w lift was provided as part of the deployed force (too few cabs and too few flying hours) both of which were gradually increased over time. However, you’ll note that it is very difficult to get any public source reference to the numbers of cabs actually on Herrick. The only clues tend to be in things like Sweating the Metal, Apache etc. From those it doesn’t take much to figure out that JHC has had a maximum of around 20 SH cabs deployed (Wokka, Merlin and SK4) from a total SH force of over 100. So it’s not a shortage of actual cabs, it’s more a shortage of deployable cabs that can operate usefully on Herrick, which means good hot n high performance and a DAS. Unfortunately, neither Puma or SK4 could meet those requirements until relatively recently (only for SK4), so HALF your SH force was essentially precluded from ops. Don’t know off the top of my head what the Carson blade mod cost to put on HC4 (and ASaC), but it’s liable to be chump change in the great scheme of things and that would have put another 10+ cabs potentially available to provide log support (although probably not MERT) on Herrick. That is “one of the little things” TD refers to, but then again that budget is (I believe) held by Land, who preferred to spend it on FRES and upgrades to FV432.
“…we had lots of protected vehicles (Warrior & FV432). We just didn’t want to deploy them because of cost and more importantly size and logs footprint…”
Fair enough, but it proves that we didn’t have the kind of expeditionary focussed vehicle that we needed. If Warrior was supposed to be fit for the job then it should have been shipped and supported. If we can’t afford to do that then there’s something wrong… although I rather like Warrior.
Back to TD’s “bar too high” thing…
Been thinking… sorry!
CVL with 6 F35B, 3 AEW, 3 AH, 6 TTT (Tactical Troop Transport) and 2 ASW (hangar maintenance only)
Bay with 2 Chinook and temporary hangar
T45 + 2 T23/26 each with an ASW Merlin
MARS or Wave again with an ASW Merlin or two
About 400 RM on CVL delivered by 4 TTT and 4 LCVP
About 400 RM on Bay delivered by 2 Chinook and 1 LCU
Three of these task groups (one per Commando). Surge two for war (one CVL with jets, the other with assault copters). Job done.
Picture of CVL deck here for ripping to bits!
PS: F35 used for first day CAP over the initial assault (4 sorties per day) and then DLI and call-in CAS. Could just squeeze 6 AH.
@ NaB
‘As for the protected vehicle bit…’
To use a (large) amount of understatement, not really the MoD’s finest hour.
Observer said “x, try harder :) .. or maybe don’t try so hard :P”
I am not going to try at all anymore.
A quick question for anyone who know’s and/or cares to chip in…..
Without going back through the SDSR and all of it’s problems I have been thinking over the last couple of days that I’m curious to know whether instead of axing the entire Harrier fleet and keeping the Tornado’s it would have been possible to keep a minimal force of around 40 Harrier’s largely to keep carrier training going off of Illustrious (but also remaining as a CAS aircraft) and reduce the Tornado fleet down to around 80 airframes and still make the same savings?
I’m aware that it would of course have been physically possible, but would still scrapping Ark Royal but only axing half of the Harriers and about a third of the Tornado’s have yielded the same savings as deleting an entire fast jet fleet? I suspect probably not but I’m curious to know.
Challenger,
I was told last time I suggested something similar that there were essentially no more hours left in the Harrier airframes. Hence 72 being sold for just £100m for spares.
I’d suggest the FA2’s/GR3’s at Culdrose/Predannack stand more chance of flying ;-)
_The problem with using the minimum number of F35 to provide basic air cover, Simon, is that it relies on nice and tidy exercise conditions to pull it off. You can write up a 24 hour flight schedule with few aircraft; but if there is no give in that schedule, then what happens when a Lightning has spent its load in the first 15 minutes of its sortie, or an unexpected threat presents itself, or an aircraft is lost.
Embarking a small number of F35 in a USMC style is fine for many circumstances, but in the high end scenarios you would need land based aircraft or a friendly carrier to watch over you. Whether that is a reasonable compromise depends on what your independent ambitions are.
The tornado force was reduced by 1/3rd at the same time as harrier was withdrawn.
Harrier had plenty of life left reason it was sold at the price it was because who else was gonna buy it other than the scrap merchant. The marines intend to fly harrier until 2030. Perhaps in hind sight in 98 we should have went down the upgrade harrier gr’s to usmc standard and added a couple of extra frames from the still open us production line we may have been in a better position now.
@Simon
How could their be no more hours left in the Harrier airframes? They had only just finished upgrading them from GR7 to GR9.
How many Harriers/Sea Harriers are still at Culdrose?
How many Harriers/Sea Harriers are still at Culdrose?
The GR’s (all plus some spares) went westwards, I believe that there around 10 Sea Harriers left for training purposes for ground crew within the FAA.
BB,
Agreed. Shove another couple in then. Fortunately the little picture fits 4 around the rear lift ;-)
I’d rather leave the jets off altogether and rely on missiles however you still end up wanting a couple to “chase the baddie” on a DLI posture, in which case you tend to drift up to 6 because once you’re got a couple on baord you might as well try and do it (semi)properly.
Topman,
Did the GR3’s go too? Even the ones at Predannack?
Challenger,
I agree, about 10 in total. All “runners” too :-)
Mark,
Harrier had plenty of life left
Honestly? It just totally disagrees with my previously adopted truth.
@Mark
Yeah in hindsight we either should have gone for a USMC style compromised airframe instead of separate FA2/GR3-5 variants in the late 80s and early 90s or as you say gone for a mix of new builds and upgraded RAF airframes to have the same sort of thing along USMC lines about 10 years later.
@Brian Black
I think the idea that a ship the size of CVF shouldn’t and doesn’t always need to be chock full of 36 F35 for every deployment is something a lot of casual onlookers and politicians struggle to get their head around.
A lot of people don’t get that in 95% of situations 12 or 16 or 18 embarked fast jets will do the job just fine, but that you want a large ship and enough airframes available so that once in a blue moon you can pack a carrier full of aircraft and not worry about where the aircraft are coming from, how they are all going to fit on-board and then operate effectively.
CVF can spend most of it’s life emulating a USMC balance and mix of aviation capabilities but turn into a serious ‘thoroughbred’ carrier with relative speed and ease. That’s why it gets my vote!
@Simon + Topman
Thanks!
So why aren’t the 10 Sea Harriers left at Culdrose used for real carrier deck training on Illustrious? I presume they still can? Their is no real substitute for actual carrier take-offs and landings, surely the more pilots that know this sort of thing in preparation for the F35 entering service the better.
Topman. That’s putting it mildly. Still, the “expectation” was to go home with no shots fired according to that nice Mr Reid. See earlier point re Chiefs of Staff.
Challenger. the short answer is no. To get the savings you need to lose the entire fleet, otherwise you still have all the DLoD costs, irrespective of how many frames are retained. Engineering support contracts, spares holdings, aircrew training, engineers training, weapon qualification, publications maintenance etc etc etc.
The Harrier went because the number of frames funded had been allowed to drop to a level where it could not support both Herrick and maritime operations, whereas GR4 had sufficient funded frames to do Herrick and “something else”. It’s capabilities (standfast the crucial one with regard to this debate) were superior to Harrier GR7/9.
The savings in chopping the Tonka fleet would have been higher (not least because you could go all single seat and lose the Nav/WSO stream), but the capability loss was judged too great.
On that basis, with the force structure at the time, you can’t argue with the decision, much as I dislike what happened.
I find it very hard to believe that the GR7/GR9 frames were out of hours. The Harrier frames were delivered between 1988 and 1992, whereas the Tonka frames were delivered between 1982 and 1990. On pre-SDSR plans the GR9 was due to stay in service till 2018.
Challenger,
I was a bit sneaky really. They’re “runners” in that the engines work. That’s what they’re used for. Real noise and real danger on the dummy deck at Culdrose.
Whether they can fly is another matter… certainly one I don’t know about :-(
I’d very much hope that they actually constitute a contingency along with a few chaps sitting in armchairs being paid to fly on a simulator each day.
@ Simon
I wasn’t aware they were kept apart from Museum pieces. So they would have stayed if for no other reason they were of no use to the Americans and they weren’t part of the sale.
@ They aren’t in a flyable condition. Just kept serviceable at a level for ground training.
You can see whcih frames are where here..
http://www.demobbed.org.uk/aircraft.php?type=963
The reason the FA2 don’t fly is that they are not airworthy. The reason they are not airworthy is that there is no support organisation for them. So there is no-one certified to maintain them in airworthy condition, no engine support (other than enough to provide thrust on the dummy deck), no funding to procure safety-critical spares, no aircrew certified to fly the cab, no design authority support etc, etc, etc. And has not been for the best part of eight years now.
So no, they don’t constitute any sort of contingency and there are most certainly no chaps being paid to fly a sim, which wouldn’t constitute any sort of training programme in any case.
Simon
Yep plenty of life left. There were experiencing some fatigue issues which may have been magnified by the more powerful engines being fitted but replacing the aft fuse I think had already taken place on some aircraft and could have been extended if necessary nothing particularly out of the ordinary for older aircraft. Could have done with a full cockpit upgrade which the marines are looking at now f35 is slowed. Would have remained relavent for all but the higher end of requirements
@ NaB
‘Still, the “expectation” was to go home with no shots fired according to that nice Mr Reid.’
My thoughts were more Telic than Herrick, but the point stands. He did strike me as a pleasant enough chap when I spent some time around him. Hard to get an proper impression in a short time.
‘I find it very hard to believe that the GR7/GR9 frames were out of hours.’
They weren’t no, I’m not 100% on their LE, but many had 3000-3500, I’m not sure what the fleet leader was. They were used (fairly) sparingly in comparsion to say the GR4s.
@Simon
You’ve got 2 hopes there…
@Simon
Oh OK! So I guess using those Sea Harrier’s isn’t really an option! It just strengths my conviction that a handful of RAF airframes should have been retained if only for basic flight-deck training to act as a link between previous carrier ops and the future rejuvenated capability.
@NaB
Thanks for the detailed reply! I have always known that as a choice between the two Harrier had to go, I was just curious as to whether lopping off bits of both could have worked, but what you say about supply, maintenance and training support makes sense.
Although as I said to Simon above I think a small handful could have been kept for a joint unit to keep basic carrier training going in the interim. By this I mean around a dozen unarmed airframes that could have been run into the ground. Although the SDSR decision to switch to CATOBAR probably made it look a bit pointless at the time.
All,
Thanks for the “air hours” confirmations. Shame. Real shame. The rationale for their demise/sale was sound, just a shame the rationale for the whole war wasn’t.
NaB,
…no chaps being paid to fly a sim, which wouldn’t constitute any sort of training programme…
I was careful not to say “training”. I said “contingency”. Have you not watched Independence Day where that trailer junkie and the President fly jets? I’m joking of course :-)
@Mark
I’m sure the Harriers had plenty of life left in them and could have remained perfectly effective with certain upgrades until at least 2018.
Although as NaB explained rather well the problem was that the fleet was too small by 2010 to be retained over the Tornado’s. The demise of the Harrier was arguably assured well before the SDSR. Whether you want to call it an RAF conspiracy by protecting it’s ‘strike’ fleet over the shared Harrier’s is another matter!
Wow! So 16 at Culdrose!!!
…and you’re telling me that’s all so that they can learn to move aircraft around a deck that no longer operates jets?
I can dream ;-)
The Pres and the crop duster only got to fly because the airworthiness organisation in the Pentagon and at Wright-Patt had been zapped. Otherwise the people at area 51 would have been reminded that they did not have the right training and maintenance records, in-date spares or arming procedures to launch combat sorties……..and their weapon effort planning was p1ss-poor too!
The hangars at the Siskin are a bit of a treasure trove when you get to poke around them.
We can all learn from ID.
We just have to invest in covert sabotage specialists that can key in the phase “send spike”.
Wasn’t that a Bond girl? The very lovely Isabella Scorupca IIRC….
My mistake… wasn’t it the chap who said “I am inwincible” in Goldeneye?
And, yes, Isabella is very lovelly.
It’s Boris the computer programmer in who says that in GoldenEye, played by Alan Cumming.
Just a minor point, don’t know why it bugs me so much (the fact that it means standing up for one of Blairs cabinet is probably the cause), but John Reid never promised that we wouldn’t fire a shot in Helmand. He said he’d be happy if we could leave without firing one, which is a very different turn of phrase, and one that suggets the speaker is resigned to the fact that shots will likely be fired.
Re: “The savings in chopping the Tonka fleet would have been higher (not least because you could go all single seat and lose the Nav/WSO stream), but the capability loss was judged too great.
On that basis, with the force structure at the time, you can’t argue with the decision, much as I dislike what happened.”
Would taking some of the saving from chopping the Tonka fleet and putting it into accelerating Typhoon have both covered the capability drop and allowed Harrier continuation, and was it considered?
Wildly OT, but many here will appreciate Keith Simpson MP’s summer reading list which while inevitably aimed at politicians, still has a good slug of geopolitics and military history, everything from Bosworth through the first Anglo-Afghan War to a biography of Bill Slim :
http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/153158157?access_key=key-omsferdu89wss22ytpu
Particularly relevant might be War From the Ground Up: Twenty-
First Century Combat as Politics by Emile Simpson, who did three tours in the ‘stan as an officer with the Gurkhas and who has been getting some seriously rave reviews.
Thought I’d quote HurstLlama…
Amidst all the sound and fury of fighting over what decisions the MoD should have made in 1998 I note that the Septics have today made the first autonomous landing of a UAV on an under-way carrier. The future of carrier aviation just changed, folks.
…because I’ve just watched what could very easily be CGI. You don’t actually see it launch or stop.
Anyone have a vid of the complete end-to-end launch (inc leaving the carrier) and land (inc coming to rest with a wire attached to it).
If so… shame we’ll not be doing that with our STOVL carrier isn’t it? Bring on the rotary version that has 2000+nm range, oh wait…
PS: On the sauce!
@Simon – Are these CGI – if so, very good CGI:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/23276968
http://news.sky.com/story/1114218/pilotless-drone-makes-first-landing-at-sea
Edit: Sorry, nearly forgot this one:
http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post:f19a6dea-c12f-4643-96a7-1fb28026941b
Also (like the F-35B tests) how smooth and kind the sea and weather was… of course early days and testing, changed? Only for one player, and even then, its baby steps at the moment. Will be interesting to see where they go from there, as that marks the end of the test contract it was built for.
NaB. What is the minimum number of FJ on a carrier to provide air defence & strike at the same time? I frankly cannot see how you would do it in under 16. Perhaps 14 for a short while, but it gives no slack to absorb losses.
Also I think it a shame we do not have a couple of Sea Harrier FA2 flying to keep UK carrier fast jet skills going on a bare minimum basis. Doubtless I will get the usual public sector can’t do answer, but a private American has his own Sea Harrier that he flies to US airshows. If he can do it, why is it beyond the might of the MoD? The last new Sea Harrier was delivered in 1996, so it is not as if they all date from the early 80s.
@Simon
This is probably as good as you’ll get : http://youtu.be/3Q4deCcKuVA
Edit: BBC has some better angles : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23268285
Given that it’s been landing on land and taking off from carriers, I wouldn’t be too sceptical. Note also the fact that there’s lots of planes on deck and people around, how scared do you think they were that it would go horribly wrong?
Here may help Simon
http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3af19a6dea-c12f-4643-96a7-1fb28026941b
US navy may need these for the pacific we have no such requirement for a carrier based system.
We used to wander the oceans with 7 x FA2 at times for air defence.
Add a single GR7 and you’re “doing strike”.
I’d suggest 12 on a 6+6 split where you “spare” your air-defence attrition/faults into the strike pool.
Simon. Would be wary of defending the fleet or covering troops in a landing with only 6 FJ. Many third world countries have Mirage 2000/F-16/Mig-29 armed with Exocet/Harpoon or similar. Would a single attack F-35B be tokenism?
John,
You’re not defending the fleet with 6 jets. You have up to 12 to call on. The air defence takes priority over strike as long as the aircraft are multi-role… well that’s what I’m proposing here :-)
A single F35B would indeed be “token” but it really depends on what you want to do. Could be better to look at 4 triplets (2 air defence/escort and 1 deep strike) or 3 quads. You’ll quickly run out of air hours if you try and sustain four sorties per day, but should manage to keep a couple in the air for about a month.
12 x F35 in not a bad minimum for a flexible squadron.
“Naval aviation is currently facing one of the worst crises in its long history…naval aviation cannot take many more defeats such as it has suffered during the past two years and remain an effective and integral part of the defense structure.”
http://www.aviationweek.com/Portals/AWeek/100_years/1949_naval_aviation.PDF
@John Hartley July 11, 2013 at 7:47 pm, “Simon. Would be wary of defending the fleet or covering troops in a landing with only 6 FJ. Many third world countries have Mirage 2000/F-16/Mig-29 armed with Exocet/Harpoon or similar. Would a single attack F-35B be tokenism?”
Of course the question is what is the target(s).
We are hearing now with smart munitions instead of multiple aircraft and many more weapons to attack a single target, it is now a single plane to attack multiple targets using one weapon for each.
Argentinians attacked in pairs and considering they only had five air launch Exocet we pretty successful. One F-35 would probably do as well as two Super Etandards.
Had me worried for a bit there, El Sid. Keep calm and carrier on.
I have set myself an alarm to check TD monthly to see if we are discussing anything else apart from the ruddy floaty little boats and rip-roaringly expensive but inadequate manned planes that might one day fly off the front of them. It’s becoming a proper little CVF love in. I feel moved to ask a question about Mexes or ISOs simply to break the monotony of “Last Ten” being about the damned carriers, for several days on the trot. There is life beyond the Nellies, you know.
In the 17 billion comments on TD about CVF since TD was set up, is there anything at all left unsaid?
Feeling quite GCB (C for Cambridgeshire, not N for Northern)
:(
John
I never said that below 16 was advisable. What I said was that a 2-ship CAP wasn’t the minimum to meet the threat. As Simon has pointed out, we used to have a CAG with seven SHAR. That wasn’t necessarily what was required to counter the threat, that was simply the number of cabs that would fit aboard a CVS when you’d embarked the dippers and the baggers. More reasons why trying to recreate a CVS or it’s CAG isn’t sensible.
Art Nalls does indeed fly a SHAR. What regulatory regime does it meet? What does that allow it to do? What systems are operational? Can it do IFR? Does the water injection work? Does the Pegasus in the cab have any thrust limitations? Should it? Does he know? The age of the cab is irrelevant – in fact the more recent they are, the more complex they are and harder to prove airworthiness. Not knocking Art by the way, just pinting out there’s world of difference between rocking up at airshows in VFR and rendezvousing with a ship at sea to launch and recover.
Like it or not, the UK mil operate under airworthiness regs and frankly, we’re not always too good at complying with them as it is. It’s not a public sector thing, it’s a very real outcome of those who died in XV230, over the Mull of Kintyre, in various Tonka losses and the ASaC7s that collided on TELIC to name but a few. You either provide proper engineering, training and logistic support or you don’t. There is no halfway house. Imagine a landing accident aboard Lusty where people died. Standing in front of the coroner (or the naval flight safety bods) and saying “they got the support we had the cash left over to do” is not going to end well. Blame Direct would have a feeding frenzy – and rightly so.
@RT – The shelling has died down considerably, and I think people are digging in…it won’t be over by Christmas, but there might be enough good cheer to allow a football match in no man’s land…
GNB
Simon, multi-role is ok if you have time to plan, not so ok if you are caught wrong footed. So, you are preparing for a strike and loaded up with bombs and some dastardly enemy decides to pick that time to buzz the carrier. What are you going to do? Fly above him and try to bomb him? Unload and rearm (more likely)? Even parking the fighters “clean” requires loading time to get it armed and up in the air.
12 fighters, I actually see it as less than the minimum needed for air defence, many countries field squadrons as a basic administration unit, as opposed to the old days where people were hard pressed to maintain decent air forces. With the increased proliferation of planes, the safety margin has erroded quite a bit. For example, in comparison to a mid-lower end military power, Thailand, though they could not field their carrier, they could still generate an airforce of up to ~70 planes. It is not inconceivable that the planes could be spun off for a 2 squadron attack or more on a HVU, not that the Thais have anything against you, but more as a resource comparison.
At 12 planes, I’d say it is only operatable in a “permissive environment”. Getting the numbers up to 36 would probably be a high priority. Most of the defence workload would probably end up resting on the destroyers.
@RT: Have to agree, think we’ve done the CVF for a while based on what we know so far. I see pure sense in having 3 to ensure we’ve always got one, but that’s a debate that will keep rumbling.
What I would like to see discussion on (and learn more on) is now we have our RFTG safely across the ocean and stationed “near” to shore, what next? What is the planning scenarios / objectives we are trying to achieve? Namely:
– what is the role / purpose of the RMs?
– what is the Army force being projected and how?
– how will it be supplied? (TDs S2S series is great)
– what funcrions do the RAF need to bring to the table?
– what about complementary / alternate airborne delivery / entrance approaches?
… the list is endless.
The fact is if the UK wants to project power far afield, then CVFs are key enablers, but apart from launching limited air strikes / raids the rest needs to be in place also. Very much a purple affair.
I think if we can move beyond the damaging debates of the 70s and accept that (limited) carrier air capability and tje FAA are needed, we can start having a real and useful debate.
Good point @Repulse. And for me its not just about the light forces.
Looking at our future force levels I can how with a mix of amphib and air mobility we could project a Light Rapid Reaction brigade consisting of elements of 3x and 16x into theatre quite quickly and flexibly.
But I am far from sure what its supposed to do next, how we are supposed to sustain it, and how much fighting power it would actually bring against a half decent enemy.
Fo me we need a clear plan about how the high readiness RF brigade is going to follow on – which means either using our RR troops to capture a port, clear it, secure it, and bring it into use (no small task) or how to bring a fold-up port with us, unpack it, secure it, and bring it into use.
Big questions.
RT, stay calm, I will keep this short. NaB/Simon. 7 SHAR is fine if no one is shooting at you. However, in 1982, we took 28 SHAR + 6 GR3 and still lost 6 ships to enemy bombs/missiles. OK the F-35B is more capable, but so is the likely enemy now. As history likes to repeat, I fear the UK will face a Suez/Falklands style operation (without the Americans) between now & 2030. As for the UK keeping a couple of F/A2 flying. No they are not to go into battle, but they should be able to land on Illustrious to keep pilot & deck crew skills up. Is it dangerous? Yes, but no more so than having this long gap, then trying to recreate it in 2018-20.
John,
I thought you asked for a “minimum”?
If so I would be happy with 12.
You should be able to to manage a CAP and a few strike aircraft for a short period of time. If you want to sustain CAP you’ll probably need 16-18 jets. If you want continuous “on call” CAS on top of that then add another 6 at least. So 24, which is the number I continually tout for CVF. 30 would be better if you needed to cover more troops, 36 better still, and then you’ll manage to deliver loitering CAS.
If you want to project the CAP or CAS points 200nm out then double that again and start building a CVN ;-)
You can also mix the two with the same airframe although with a dinky internal bomb bay to stay stealthy it might not be a great idea for F35. I suppose a couple of AMRAAM and a dozen Brimstone make a bit of sense.
I think all these numbers are bit too much of guess work. It all depends on what you are doing, threat level, how far away the op is, how much AAR is available etc. In some cases 4 a/c might be enough, in others it might be 40. I wouldn’t be getting too bogged down worrying about numbers just yet.
“However, in 1982, we took 28 SHAR + 6 GR3 and still lost 6 ships to enemy bombs/missiles. ”
But no airborne radar, which is what got most of those ships sunk.
@ Repulse and Peter Elliott – At last! Sensible questions!
Been doing some research on rapid reaction forces; air is the only way to be truly rapid but how do you solve the dilemma “too heavy to get there, too light to fight”? By all accounts it will take roughly one month to get heavy forces into theartre and combat – can the light forces deploy and survive for a month? Do they deploy later to attempt to “kick the door in” against a prepared enemy? Will the battle be over before the Heavies arrive?
Repulse brings up the need for three carriers again. But two should ensure one is available 365 days a year.
Three ships suggests a desire to have one parked off someone’s coast indefinitely, but to what end? These ships, along with their Lightning-b and other aircraft, are very much a tactical package that seem ideal for supporting an amphibious landing for example. But do you want to fight an indefinite war, without ever breaking out of your beachhead?
Or you could perhaps employ your three ships in some kind of strategic role, an indefinite deployment to a particular region until peace and love breaks out. But look at how long these hotspots of political and military tension last for. Iran for example. These things can drag on for decades. Build three carriers, enabling the Navy to sail up and down someone’s coast in a phoney war for years on end, and you’d probably need another couple to enable the Navy to do carrier operations anywhere else at the same time. The ships will have a very limited strategic strike role anyway – compared with the Americans and their 1,500nm heavy ordnance carrying carrier drones. Iran as an example again, the Royal Navy would have to drive up the gulf and beach their carrier on Iran’s coast just to conduct patrols over Tehran – two thirds of the vast country would still be out of range.
Two QE ships gives us one available whenever we need it, and provides some reasonable persistence. Like Albion and Bulwark, there’s always one to call on, but we don’t need or want them stuck in some never-ending deployment.
@Brian Black: actually, 3 carriers would guarantee 2 available at any one time. Against robust opposition, sending just one might be seen to be too risky
@Chuck Hill :
We are hearing now with smart munitions instead of multiple aircraft and many more weapons to attack a single target, it is now a single plane to attack multiple targets using one weapon for each.
That’s true for Operation Useless Dirt. But it breaks down once the enemy has a half-decent SAM system, you start needing more and more missiles to overwhelm enemy defences. Just look at the kind of corvette/FFL that the Chinese are selling to developing countries right now – the Zulfiquars have 8 HQ-7A cells plus 2xCIWS, the C28A derivatives under construction for Algeria will have 32 VLS. Russia’s Gremyashchy corvette (Project 2038.5) is smaller, only a bit more than 2000 tonnes but has 16 VLS cells that can be quad packed.
It wasn’t that long ago that you could have taken out pretty much the whole of the Algerian or Pakistan navies with a couple of Lynx and Sea Skua. Smart munitions are nice, but they’re now up against ships with 32+ SAMs on board, you’ll need more than one aircraft’s worth of missiles to get through that even with fancy jamming on the aircraft. Just as the Maxim gun did a century ago, the balance is shifting in favour of defence.
Argentinians attacked in pairs and considering they only had five air launch Exocet we pretty successful.
Against SAM systems designed for high-altitude Soviet missiles, with no anti-seaskimmer capability. They would have had a lot less success following the Sea Dart upgrade of the mid-80s, as demonstrated by Gloucester shooting down a Silkworm heading for USS Missouri in 1991. If NATO could shoot down subsonic cruise missiles 20+ years ago, I think you can assume that the red team have that capability by now.
Still want to send a single F-35?
@wf
You need to look at defence planning assumptions. We are operating in a cost arena whereby the government have decided that we will not take on an operation outside of a coalition whereby one Carrier would be insufficient.
Therefore the extra money for a 3rd is total fantasy. We would with any sort of Intel be unlucky not to have 2 available but for a UK only op 1 is deemed sufficient.
Did you have any opposition in mind that we would possibly engage outside of a coalition that you classify as “robust”?
Having 3 means that when you have one off the coast of Syria you could (if needed) ensure you have one on standby if there was a need to show muscle elsewhere. 2 does not.
As I say, I would like the debate to move on though.
@repulse
You are correct but the likelihood of requiring it vs cost of procuring it and running it leads to only one answer.
From a practical point of view you simply hand Syria over to the RAF with Typhoon and A330 from Cyprus and move your carrier.
@APATS: well, I could be realistic and make the point that most of our “opposition” tend to come as surprises, but here’s some for starters:-
– Syria/Iran acting against Cyprus
– Spain acting against Gibraltar
– Argentina and Venezuela acting against the FI
@wf
Considering we have 2 bases on Cyprus one of which has extensive US assets on it then I guess the lead would be RAF/ 6th fleet. Also any attack on an SBA makes it an article 5 matter.
There is no military response to a Spanish attack on Gib.
If we miss this one and fail to have a battalion plus on the ground a couple of SSNs in the AOR and 18 plus typhoons on the ground we should be shot. We would have completely ignored Argentina rearming and the countries obtaining an amphib capability.
The risks just do not justify the expense imho.
@APATS: The reason why I wish to discuss the other areas beyond the CVF is that I want to explore / understand what is needed for the need / objective we are planning for and how does that equate to structures / equipment.
For example, putting aside the logistics for getting your army pointy end to theatre, which could be best served by Points and the like given a port (permenant or temporary), what should be in the RFTG. What is really needed to secure and hold an undefended beach for 12-24hrs whilst the cavalry arrive?
How many RMs do you need to land? Do you need LCUs, or would a combination of LVCPs, fast craft such as the CB90s helos do it? Do you really need LCUs, could you use upgraded Mexeflotes? Could you move the command functions from the LPDs to the CVFs and remove the need for LPDs or LHDs altogether? Could the RFTG be just centeted around a CVF and a LSD? With the Army STUFTs / Points / etc added as needed?
A 3rd CVF ensures depth of capability, it could be better than spending money on 2 new LHDs in the future and an aviation support ship…
I think all this is very much worth exploring!
“There is no military response to a Spanish attack on Gib.”
Are you sure? If the Spanish launch an attack there is nothing, militarily, would could do about it? I beg to differ. We might not want to launch a counter invasion but there are plenty of other options, a re-run of Drake’s burning of Cadiz for a start.
It’s very simple and easy to say that with one more carrier (or one more brigade, or one more Typhoon squadron), we can go off and do another concurrent mission while the carriers we’re getting are engaged elsewhere.
Without explaining what you want the carriers or the Navy to actually be able to do, then there is no upper limit to that logic – if we had three carriers, then a fourth can show its muscle elsewhere if those three were otherwise engaged or if the enemy were particularly robust. And if we had four carriers, then a fifth…
Having as a reason for three carriers, the ability to conduct separate but concurrent carrier operations, requires that the rest of the Navy and RFA expand to accommodate those operations.
We’re planning a fleet that can support one task group. If you want a third carrier to go off and do something else, then you’re not just paying for the carrier/aircraft/crews, but you also need to pay for the escorts, subs, auxiliaries ( and in the future) MPA that will be needed to support further task groups. It’s runaway costs and not realistic.
And what actually is ‘acting against’ Gibraltar, Cyprus, Falklands? Is that a euphemism for ‘invading’? If it is, that is stretching credibility as a reason for increasing the carrier order.
I’m with Repulse. Can we have a new thread“APART from the ruddy little floaty CVF, what ELSE do we need in an RFTG to put a full Brigade ashore over a beach?”
Negative points for each mention of the sodding Nellies. Just assume there’s one around with 12 of the jets aboard.
;)
If the Syrians attack Cyprus they would have to contend with a lot of pissed off people who had to interrupt their barbies and at, expect carnage :-)
Don’t we already have the ME theater reserve there anyway
Pinched straight from Wik for 3 Cdo Bde:
The subordinate units are:
30 Commando Information Exploitation Group
40 Commando Royal Marines, based at Norton Manor Camp in Taunton, Somerset.
42 Commando Royal Marines, based at Bickleigh Barracks, Plymouth
43 Commando Fleet Protection Group Royal Marines, HM Naval Base Clyde
45 Commando Royal Marines, based at RM Condor, Arbroath
539 Assault Squadron, Royal Marines
Royal Marines Armoured Support Group, RNAS Yeovilton, Somerset
24 Commando Regiment Royal Engineers
29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery, based at Royal Citadel, Plymouth
Commando Logistic Regiment, based at RM Chivenor, Devon
383 Commando Petroleum Troop Royal Logistic Corps(Territorial Army)
1st Battalion The Rifles
Commando Helicopter Force (CHF),of the Fleet Air Arm, based at RNAS Yeovilton provide Helicopter support.
Sad man that I am, I seem to remember from my SOHB something like 4,500 LIMS of wagons, and 300 tonnes a day of supplies. Seems about right: armoured Brigades in Germany were about double that.
What got most of the ships sunk or damaged was first because we did not have control of the air, second because our missile defences (land and sea) were not as good as the brochures’ third, some human failings and finally some bad luck
@Repulse and RT – tried to change subject but comments in moderation for too long. Please scroll up for post.
We didn’t have control of the air because we didn’t have the ability to provide an air picture at sufficient distance from both the carriers and San Carlos to deploy our fighter aircraft optimally. That meant that despite a very high SHAR serviceability rate, we didn’t manage to get a meaningful number of CAP aircraft in a position to intercept inbound raids in time to stop a large number getting through.
The reason we didn’t do that was that although we had raid launch warning (I&W) we didn’t have axis info to mass our CAP in the right place at the right time. Remember what two of the ships sunk were actually doing as well – trying to compensate for the absence of AEW.
The other factors all contribute, but the lack of AEW to allow development of local air superiority over the islands was the major factor.
Or the inability to destroy the air threat at source eg attacking main operating bases or the unwillness to risk carriers closer to extend harrier time on station due to there mission criticality or the time constrains imposed on the task group for political/environmental and logistical reasons. Or having weapons systems not designed to operate near land masses due to the technology of the time ect. Aew certainly beneficial.
My little Brassey’s book says 17,000t for 30 days for UKNL LF.
“Or the inability to destroy the air threat at source eg attacking main operating bases”
Surely the tin triangle was capable of that (!)………..or SF. More likely a political withhold.
“unwillness to risk carriers closer to extend harrier time on station”
Which given the percieved threat was an air threat would possibly have been relaxed had we had better long-range radar coverage.
‘or SF. More likely a political withhold. ‘
Wasn’t there a plan for such a thing? I seem to remember there was a TV show on it.
@ST: Thanks for trying to change the subject :) I think that apart from a limited / short term raid you wouldn’t risk getting your rapid reaction forces in place until the heavy backup was in place. In terms of FI it was well over a month before things were ready.
The good thing with the RFTG is that you can get it in place and launch a ground offensive when ready. In the context of the limited capabilities of the UK you can start air strike / TLAM offensive earlier again like the Black Buck and Harrier raids of the FI conflict.
I wonder if there is any way to reinforce the RFTG by air, using Paras etc as needed…
Another scenario of course is a combined RM and Para assault on an airfield… one launched from the UK and the other via helicopter offshore from the RFTG…
@ NAB: “tin triangle”? a new one on me, or possibly I have led a sheltered life. I can only begin to think of the Vulcans, but they were stretched enough even getting to Stanley, let alone another 500 miles (and back) to Rio Gallegos.
Thanks heavens for TLAM. Honestly, if the Andrew were 90% subs (30 or so Astutes) and 10% surface T45s, it’d be so much better. Let the RFA and STUFT carry the land gubbins, including troops. Ships on the surface are just an invitation to be attacked.
What we appear to need is a couple of LPAEW which would need T45 defence, to cater for whatever form Crowsnest takes. The F35s appear to be completely redundant in the future era of vertically launched loitering munitions and TLAM, and so with that redundancy, the CVFs themselves.
….just musing. The Nellies have a large flat space on top, and a large hangar underneath it. Can’t we sink about 100 VLS through the large flat space, and call them missile ships? They might even be useful, after that sex change operation.
@RT: LPAEW? What does the LP stand for?
Repulse,
a platform for something to land upon, whatever “something” is. Of course, if you go with the RT concept of a towed lighter than air AEW platform, there’s not much need for landing at all, perhaps once a week for a top up of helium or to swap over some kit. But if Crowsnest goes back to the stone age with a heavier than air platform, or worse something that’s got some Kevins in it, then you’ll need a Landing Platform for them to get out and stretch their legs for a bit.
I have seen the results (and publicly stated, no NDAs or anything like that) of some DARPA trials with an AESA radar hoisted 10,000 feet on a lighter than air platform, power and data running through the tether, and the control centre onboard on the towing ship. Quite remarkable.
I haven’t trotted this one yet so……….
The aeroplane CVF should have been built around was the E2. We would have got the one thing we needed (AEW, ASaC) and it wouldn’t have mattered what other aeroplane, FJ, we would have bought as it we would have fitted. Simples.
But surely the RAF strategic air campaign won the war by decisvely closing Stanley?
I’m being facetious of course. Rio G may not have been in range but some of the other bases (Commodoro Rivadavia, San Julian and Santa Cruz would have been. As with the SF options, I suspect overt military attacks on teh mainland would have been seen as war-widening – hence the “withhold”.
Now. What about forgetting all about boots on the ground altogether? Putting people there only makes the natives restless and hostile. If they’re going to get that way anyway, why not just save ourselves the effort of pretending to be nice and test large quantities of high explosive on their country from the off. Not entirely convinced with these TLAM though. Good for some things, but rather expensive to own. What we really need is to reinvest the money we waste on standing armies in some nice battleships. 30 knots, global range, 16″ of armour (tradition really), 18″ guns firing sub-calibre base bleed or RA projectiles (technology development). Lovely.
Back to the amphibious assault question, I can think of 2 ways to go about it strategically. There is also a 3rd option but that one is more of a feint and run as a diversion than an actual assault.
The first way is the normal one that comes to mind when we think amphibious assault. A beachhead and setting up a harbour to unload stores or to land and encircle a port and invest it from the landward side, cutting it off from landward resupply and avoiding any seaward defences.
The other possibility is that heavy forces are already in the field and applying pressure on the enemy FEBA. An amphibious assault in this case is not to seize a port or beachhead for heavy followup forces, but to encircle the enemy and trap him in a pocket so that supplies can’t reach him and he runs out of food, fuel, water and ammo. A waterborne blitzkrieg in other words.
Lighter than air AEW platform? Crumbs I have been reading about that idea for at least 30 years and nobody has done it yet. Lots of small scale trials all showing good results but nobody has ever put anything in service. Could the reason why they haven’t be anything to do with with weather?
I mean its all very nice towing your fancy balloon thingy through calm seas and light airs, but what happens when it starts getting a bit choppy? There must be an effect on the ship that has the tow. I dunno but I suspect amongst the chaps on here someone will know. I mean if they can start talking about “Froude numbers” and “SHP” and, oh, dimensions and things then they probably have more idea than a couple of superannuated soldiers.
The traditional definitions of amphibous op are.
1. Assualt D Day
2. Withdrawal Dunkirk
3. Raid Dieppe
4. Demonstration GW1
5. Spec Ops Various
To that I would add support in terms of resupply to existing ground forces.
@John Hartley July 12, 2013 at 7:54 am – How about parking Lusty off Gibraltar and inviting the Spanish to land their Matadors on? Might as well take a few hundred marines for stop and search training as well ;-)
I have never understood why the RAF didn’t use a nearby friendly airfield to have at the Argies because, as we all know, there is always one available. Whatever happened to iceberg based airfields?
Rather than bleat on about carrier posts (and TD has no excuse as this is one of his) why not pull your fingers out and post something yourselves – all those contributing authors and yet TD is still carrying most of the load. I don’t recall seeing a post about, for instance, artillery or armoured recce, in my year or so of visiting this site. Perhaps a post on the value of lighter than air vehicles….
@ HurstLLama,
There have been some technology (mostly design derived) developments. Weather is not now such a factor. Modern LTA will now actually try to fly higher as wind increases, not get pushed down, which was always the previous problem.
And there’s no discernible effect at all on a ship towing LTA. Think back to your O level physics. Something exerting an upwards force of 50 kgs (ie lift) is exerting 0.05 of the relativistic mass energy of one metric tonne moving forwards through the sea***, and some of these Naval floaty little boats are about 7,000 tonnes. By comparison, a wave coming onto the bow exerts an opposite (to forward motion) force of several tens of that magnitude per metre above the Plimsoll line . We still expect the floaty little boat to make headway, don’t we?
This superannuated soldier has about £13,000 of gradually evolving designs for LTA stored in the garage. My own dosh, freely spent. I might well prove to be a nutter, but so far the low level practical tests on new aero designs are proving the paper theory.
*** And even that is reduced by the angle of exertion. An LTA being towed at precisely 800 mils from horizontal exerts half of the drag of something being towed dead behind.
A floaty little boat of 7,000 metric tonnes will have its’ performance reduced by 0.0000071% if towing a LTA of 50 kgs lift.
If you don’t believe me, try thinking of the much greater forces at work on a towed array sonar being dragged around by a Frigate, in much more viscous conditions.
…just looked up the figures. Unsurprisingly, air is around 54.6 times less resistive than water:
Viscosity of air (20 oC): 1.83*10-5 Pa-s
Viscosity of water (20 oC): 1.0*10-3 Pa-s
(Pa-s = Pascal seconds)
@RT
We do generally tow a TAS at no more than 6 kts, loads of reasons, noise etc.
APATS,
thanks for that info. Presumably, the Chief Engineering Officer isn’t shouting up the brass tubes “Nae faster, Cap’n, or she’ll blow!” i.e. the increase in drag is not the cause of a need to reduce speed. As you say, noise, etc.
@RedTrousers
If you have got a design that will work, and I hope you have , Mr. T., then good luck to you, Sir. Jolly good luck to you.
As for your figures, if you, as a gentlemen, assure me they are valid, I shall of course take your word for the fact. I am sure the engineering problems are far more complex than your note suggests and you have simplified matters to help me understand.
Just out of interest what would you expect to be the weight of the radar and associated gubbins (power and data cables etc. that would be carried by the dirigible?)
@ RT
Then there is temperature and salinity to consider too…..
HurstLlama,
Pretty sure the physics is working out, both on paper, and observed from some scaled down trials, and also confirmed by a maths bod we have at work (a descendant of Isaac Newton, no less). He’s produced for me a 25 page proof of something using MATLAB that confirmed my shortish Excel to within about 0.3%, so I was quite chuffed. But, it’s all a voyage of discovery, and who knows? Actually, your earliest comment about if it was such a good idea, why isn’t it being done everywhere is still the big question I have.
it’s a bit of a “how long is piece of string” question, re radars. How much power do you want to radiate? How efficient is your radar? What range do you wish to look to?
I am certainly not suggesting we could get AWACS type performance off a fancy kite. That would be ridiculous But, if you intelligently put aloft only those parts of a radar that need to be aloft, particularly with AESA which is highly modularisable, you can get a bigger set of panels aloft than typically fit into the nose cone of a fast jet. So if you can feed it enough power, you should expect nominally better performance than a fast jet, at equivalent altitude.
Feeding the power is the biggest issue. DARPA have done it to 10,000 feet. Data comms is much less of an issue – either feed optical up the tether, or have some direct comms if you have the weight budget.
I strongly suspect that where all this is “most likely” to go is to a fast jet type of radar air and surface search capability, at around a useful ceiling of 10,000 feet. That won’t give you fleet wide coverage, but equally it does offer up the possibilities of putting cheapish boats such as minesweeper size units 50-100 miles in front of your RFTG, and collectively gaining the same sort of coverage as an AWACS might flying at 40,000 feet but held back. Do some clever mesh networking using the comms functions of an AESA and you’ve got a decent AEW capability systemically across the RFTG, for way less than the price of a Nellie plus squadron of E-2s, and of course, the LTA stays up for a week without worry.
Did you fine fellows see this
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2013/04/interesting/
Rather relevant to the current thought showering
X,
yes, correct. But pretty damn marginal. You can heat helium more quickly than it loses temperature with ambient heat. Salinity is an envelope longevity problem. But the envelopes are essentially disposable after a few months, and themselves only about £10K for something hoisting 50 kgs.
@RT
Not certain anyone has seen just how fast you can drag a TAS :)
No, major reasons are keeping it stable at required depth, self noise and the effect any turn has multiplied by the speed on that tail. Turns are done gently.
TD,
nice idea, wrong shape. That’s an old fashioned blimp, and will be forced down by weather.
….I am being called to supper…
Well you’ll be hoisting significantly more than 50kg if you want a 360deg scanning radar.
Blimps are draggy thats why they travel slowly. Would you ever consider driving down the road at 30mph towing a kite out the back with a 30kt wind blowing in the opposite direction with the rain pelting down and charged air particles in the air.
@ RT
I was talking about water. :)
Air is only good for breathing. I believe aeroplanes only stay up because those riding in them want them to stay up. As soon as you stop believing down they come. True. ;)
My gran once suggested I fly to the Isle of Man for my holidays instead of taking the Packet. “It would be much quicker….”, she said. Two weeks field punishment and a diet of bread and water made her realise the error of her ways……………. :)
What about having a deployable blimp that can be attached to whatever little bit of ground we have just liberated? Trying to think of another thread for RT. Anyone in green been issued with a gen4 Glock yet? Is that a thread? Clutching at straws here.
@JH
Not been anywhere i would likely need one since they have been introduced but last time I was dusty I liked my SIG, what was wrong with them?
Topman,
I think all these numbers are bit too much of guess work … I wouldn’t be getting too bogged down worrying about numbers just yet.
I think we should. Because we need to know how things fit into the big picture. It’s this “big picture” that TD is wondering about and wondering if the bar was set too high.
By warranting jet numbers we a) continue to annoy RT ;-), and b) learn why CVF is so valuable… even if there is only one or two. We can then point out the problems that appear when CVF is chocker with 30-36 jets and we expect 3Cdo to mount an invasion.
My stance (which is based on things said by your good self and others) is that a jet should be good for 100 air hours and/or up to 50 sorties before it needs taking apart and putting back together again… i.e. BIG maintenance! It depends on which aircraft you pick and how they are “driven” (I use that word to make a comparison with MPG and service figures given for cars) but, one month is about 720 hours, we/I want two in the air minimum so that’s 1440 hours which means 14-15 aircraft plus attrition losses, so 18-20 should be enough >>> Invincible, Cavour, JC (as carrier), Wasp, America, etc.
It also demonstrates that CVF (with 36 jets) can sit around providing a two-ship CAP for about two-months… about the length of time it would take to turn around the other carrier at 10,000 nm reach. Furthermore it indicates that with 1440 x 2hr F35B sorties this would be something like 8000 tonnes of aviation fuel, which also seems reasonable given that both MARS and Wave deliver about double this to support jets, copters, vehicles and ships.
These are the kinds of ballpark/average figures that must be used for sizing and are therefore the figures that determine our”saying power” or “force level”. It is these I think most of us want to try and understand.
I threw my mini-Commando-carrier out there and immediately the 6 jets were not enough for BB, so it went to 8. John then pushed for more (somewhere north of 12). Between us we are essentially validating the need for CVF, which I think it great because it proves that the boffins in charge know what it is they are doing :-)
I’m not ranting, but as a meer mortal I question things, usually to find they are there through totally rational reasons. It’s only when I understand the reasons I can be comfortable that my £billions are being spent wisely. This means I can campaign to get rid of the stupid MoD procurement policing and simply recruit accountants and businessmen that know how to sign a good contract of engagement.
Cheers (hic!)
@ APATS
SIG’s are very much a craftsman tool, too expensive too when compared the Austrian polymer wunderkind.
Glocks hit the cost usability durability nexus bang on. You can always tell when something is just right by the size of the aftermarket accessories catalogue. It is possible to upgrade a Glock to the point where there are no Glock parts. Now that is reliability, still functioning with none of the parts it left factory with…..
If only Glock built a rifle………..
Fascinating stuff, Mr. T., Thank you.
As to why the idea hasn’t been introduced before I suspect that until the miniaturisation of electronics it just wasn’t feasible and since then it didn’t fit any senior decision maker’s agenda. Who would want it? The RAF? Certainly not? The RN? Nope they would want the Hawkeye/big carrier solution. And, of course the army wouldn’t care. Just look at who gets to the top of each tree and the decisions they make about where the money goes and what gets investment. This has been a hobby horse of mine for decades.
Bomber Harris was extremely reluctant to let aircraft go to Coastal Command during WW2 because that was diverting effort away from the essential business of him winning the war by bombing Germany flat. The fact that the country was nearly starved into submission (and, crikey, didn’t it come close) because Coastal Command had insufficient long range aircraft, didn’t matter. Since those days, who has got to the top tiers of the RAF? Fast jet pilots. Where is the successor to Coastal Command now, i.e. MPA , – non existent, its gone. Where was the shortage in aircraft to support operations over the past to or three decades? Transport (both fixed wing and helicopter). When did the RAF last shoot down an enemy aeroplane? 1945
Turning to the army, how many of its top echelon during the run up to modern times were para trained? How many non P company guys from the corps? So the paras get to keep 3 battalions (though only a fraction are qualified to jump these days) and they, plus the SAS, get flown out to Africa do a job a line-infantry group already on the ground should have been capable of doing for itself. When the cuts come its the Cap Badges that get saved and the loggies/engineers/gunners on whom the teeth arms depend that get slashed leading to a somewhat unbalanced force, but na’er mind civvie contractors will step into the breach – just like they have done with the Justice Dept.
The Navy on the face of it are less culpable in this regard because a FAA chap(ess) or a submariner cannot get to the top without reverting to general service. But even in the RN some specialisms are regarded a bit like the leery uncle in the corner at the family christmas party, got to be invited but you wish he would just go away. Until recently mine warfare was one of these. Indeed I would argue that the subject only gets some of the attention it deserves because of a) the Iranians and b) the RN hasn’t got too much else left to talk about/do (and still the Navy does seem to want to embrace the idea of offensive mining).
Apologies for the rant and perhaps I am being over cynical, but for too long service chiefs seem to have fought to protect their own personal areas then services and only lastly worried about overall defence needs. Perhaps the Septics were onto something when, in an attempt to ensure naval aviation wasn’t strangled at birth by the Battleship Admirals, they passed a law making it illegal for anyone other than a qualified naval aviator to command a carrier group.
Simon
It will be way more than 100hrs before a big maintence interval for a fast jet. The requirement issue is more what are we asking these carriers to do and against what level of threat on there own. Considering the size of the harrier force when they were ordered and the signifcant reduction in force structure since they were order it may to some look on the gold plated side. As for you cap more likely to be at 100nm than at 200
“… Not been anywhere i would likely need one since they have been introduced but last time I was dusty I liked my SIG, what was wrong with them?”
Dunno, Mr. APATS, SIGs were after my time but perhaps you could tell me what was wrong with the old Browning 9mm. Seemed to do everything that could reasonably be expected of a handgun (which, in my view, ain’t much).
Simon. Not wanting to start it all off again, but I thought 16 FJ was the minimum for credible air defence & strike, at the same time. However it assumes you have 4 AEW + 4 Tanker/COD in your air group.
Pistols. I have shot Glock 17, 17L, 22, 26. If you rarely shoot pistols, they are natural pointers. You can shoot reasonable groups even if you have not fired a pistol in years. The only Sig I have shot was a 210, a very long time ago, so I cannot comment on the 226.
@ RT – “Can’t we sink about 100 VLS through the large flat space, and call them missile ships?” – I don’t know… sounds a bit Russian…
@ Repulse – I suppose it depends on distance but one month for essentially light forces seems a long time. Para’s could do the same job as on D-day and Suez?
‘It will be way more than 100hrs before a big maintence interval for a fast jet. ‘
I would hope so! That’s not a great deal at all, it all depends on what LM decide is in the maint regime. I wonder how much of that has entered into the the RN/FAA thinking in terms of planning for ‘dead’ jets in primary/minor servicing?
@HL
Have used the browning 9mm in previous horrible land experiences. Nothing wrong with them but I found the Sig felt better in my hands and I was definitely more accurate with it, plus you get more rounds in the mag.
@X
I was not paying the bill! I liked my SIG :)
Mark, Topman,
Typhoon was “frame swapped” every 100 hours in Ellamy.
That’s the level of maintenance I’m talking about – something that cannot be easily done in theatre.
However, I prefer your answers ;-)
@ Simon, can’t say I kept up with the airframe swap cycle. Pretty low though can push that out easy.
‘Typhoon was “frame swapped” every 100 hours in Ellamy.’
Topman
Mind you could be used as a cunning ploy to increase the size of the engineering branch in said airforces? Stealthy carbon repairs should be fun too on a ship.
Simon
Yes so are we. We’re the typhoons swapped that quickly and if they were was it for maintenance reasons?
Topman,
To what… approximately? 1000 hours?
What is the failure distribution?
My 100 hours is based on Ellamy and the USN Nimitz surge which shows the distribution curve for failures. Generally they start at about 20 sorties (I think 1+30 or 1+45 in this example) and then seriously ramp up.
This is all from memory, but it means that the maintenance schedule increases dramatically to such a point that it’s difficult to keep enough jets airworthy. In a carrier you run out of space in the hangar eventually (seems to be 1/2 the airgroup for British and 1/3 airgroup for USN) which means there is a limit to the effectiveness of the airgroup/squadron. It seems (to me) to be around the 50 sorties mark and given that F35B sorties will be about 2 hours I’ve therefore concluded 100 hours.
Furthermore, this seems to match what was seen in 1982 but I have no idea what state the harriers were in at the end of the war (about 1400 sorties over a fleet of between 20 and 24).
Is Typhoon that reliable?
Mark,
Well I suppose it could have been simply to distribute the air hours over the fleet? Seems a waste of time though.
“… I found the Sig felt better in my hands and I was definitely more accurate with it, plus you get more rounds in the mag.”
Fair enough, Mr. APATS. Mind, given the dear old Browning carried 13 rounds, I dread to think what jobs you were involved in such that you felt you needed even more in your side arm.
I went through Gatwick a while back and got into friendly conversation with a couple of the plods that wander around toting H&C carbines. They carried two spare mags PLUS a SIG pistol loaded with a full magazine plus two spares for that. Why on earth they needed that much I couldn’t imagine, and they seemed unable to tell me.
I dunno, everyone seems obsessed with carrying more and more ammunition these days. Aside from a FOB running low on stocks can anyone here vouch for an occasion when in Iraq or Afghanistan a foot patrol ran dangerously low?
@ yes you can do alot longer on det t. han 100 hours. Tonkas were much longer than that in theatre. To to do more than normal, you just need greater than normal support, its fairly normal in the RAF. when on ops i’m sure the the faa will pick up the servicing regime quickly enough. One of the advantages of a joint system.
@RT: I see a few issues with your concept of operations. First up, to set the reality, the radar horizon is 225km for your blimps at 3000m, vs 410km for an E2 at 10000m. Each blimp covers 159000 square km of area at low level, whereas the E2 covers 528000 square km, so you are looking at a minimum of three blimps, preferably four to cover the same area as an E2. US carriers carry 4 E2’s each. The problems then start.
First off, your cheap minesweepers aren’t all that cheap. They cost money to build, as do the blimps. Best guess might be 250m each, and their manning costs will be higher than E2’s plus maintenance crew in a carrier.
Secondly, the additional coverage relies on their being lots of ocean around the task group. True in the Pacific, Atlantic, but not anywhere close to land…unlike the E2.
Thirdly, the minesweepers are alone and unsupported doing their picket duty. War may be dangerous, but this is silly. Even if you make the ships stealthy, a massive radar above will be all that’s required to cue everyone else as to their location. Under the circumstances, I daresay their crews will envy HMS Sheffield’s :-(
Fourthly, they cannot be replaced easily or quickly if they go unserviceable. Several hours would be required for replacements to steam out, whereas an aircraft would take 20 minutes to launch and proceed to altitude.
Fifthly, since the taskforce has no carrier, it will have to relie on ship launched SAM’s for engagement of anything detected. Even assuming we get some 300km range SAM’s, they are very unlikely to be very effective: even the fastest missiles on a lofting trajectory will take 4-5 minutes to arrive, in which time the inbounds will have moved a minimum of 50km.
Come on RT, this is silly. The only decent replacement for an E2 is a fast UAV. A Reaper would do, or a jet. Trouble is, they would need a carrier to launch from!
@ APATS re SIG
They are the better gun. If SIG is a slightly warm Audi the Glock is a vanilla shopping Honda.
Wouldn’t it be nice to own one?
@Simon yeah as fj go they are pretty good.
Simon
As a reference at one point in afghan the 6-8 harriers that were out there were pushing 450hrs per month. At some point though you can only push the air and especially ground crew so far before they need a break or mistakes increase. Easy to increase crews at an airbase ships not so much.
Mark,
450 hours? The same 6-8 harriers? I thought they rotated too? Every couple of months would be about right for my 100 hour figure. Although at such a low utilisation rate (about 1 sortie per day per aircraft) I could accept that they could do more, say three months?
The RAF in Ellamy had about 10 groud crew per jet didn’t they? No wonder they needed swapping at only 20 sorties per cab. Any more and they wouldn’t have been able to turn them round.
This is why I don’t like the 9-10 MMH/FH figure given by the RAF for Typhoon, it discounts the maintenance done behind the scenes.
1. I am now replete with barbecued ribs, salad, ice cream with the children, then proper tear-inducing cheese, and now a large whisky in hand, the little darlings having said their prayers and gone off to the land of nod (well, except Miss RT the teenager, who is Fruit Ninja’ing on her phone but for once being slightly civil). Mrs RT is on the Skype to a friend in San Fran.
2. “… I found the Sig felt better in my hands and I was definitely more accurate with it, plus you get more rounds in the mag.” (quote APATS). It is possible to say exactly the same of Mrs RT when she gets herself dolled up. Ideally, I’d want both close to hand.
3. Everyone is missing the possibility of this: http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/3528/img1751re7.jpg . What on earth is not to like? Handgun, bayonet, and if used imaginatively a knuckleduster all in one.
4. @ Mark: depends upon what you want to achieve. A small AESA can be had for less than 50 kgs for the bits that absolutely have to be airborne. Total all up weight may be 150 kgs, but you can leave 100 kgs on the deck if you do the engineering right. Pico-SARS are already down to about 30 kgs, even without re-engineering. So, job not yet done fully, but only a couple of years away.
5. wf: who the hell said anything about expensive ships? The RT concept of forward deployed pickets is sourcing the floaty little boats from the distressed and in administration former fishing fleets, and probably putting the job out to contract. We are talking tens of millions here, not letting the Andrew in on the act with their inability to contract for anything less than £5 billion. AEW as a Service, £1K an hour per 1,000 nautical mile coverage. And at that money, I’m mooring several 199 miles west of West Falkland in a line with third hand pontoons stuffed full of jerrycans and gennys, a once a week visiting top up service from a rusty old boiler, and asking to be paid in Zurich.
“ice cream with the children”
Sprinkles? Yes. Jelly? Yes. But children? No. More bones than kippers and you don’t know where they have been…….
Simon
Yes the harriers weren’t rotated that often. 450flight hrs per month is quite high for half a dozen jets considering a 6000hr life is the general 25 year life.
RT
A small aesa will not improve on a ship Bourne one. The increase in weight at the front end of typhoon going from the current radar to the aesa is in the order of 100kg and that doesn’t give 360 deg coverage.
“The RT concept of forward deployed pickets is … probably putting the job out to contract. ”
Yay! Let’s and outsource the defence of the realm to the likes of G4S and Serco! It has proved such a spiffing success elsewhere. The defence budget would be thinned out as we paid for AEW over the Aleutian Islands, and Dakar and, probably, Calais.
There again why stop at AEW, that is only electronic recce. Why not out-source land warfare recce, after all the recce job is not to get into a fight just sneak about and observe, so no soldier only skills are required, wouldn’t even need to arm them. That should chop out a few thousand from the remaining 82,000 troop requirement.
Try and take more water with it in the evenings, Mr. T.,
The results of companies like Sandline and Executive Outcomes shouldn’t be overlooked.
Mr. X, the use of mercenary companies has a very long history. When a state has become dependent on them then that history has always, sooner or later, been a very unhappy one.
@ HurstLlama,
there are other defence companies you know, beyond the two you mention. In 20 odd years of military service I was never found wanting in executing military operations, and in the last ten years of working within the defence industry, I have never come in over time or over budget in running cumulatively around £35 million of defence projects. So don’t taint me with the Serco or G4S brush.
I think I am guilty in making some slightly tongue in cheek comments that you may have misinterpreted. My fault. But try to do some critical thinking. The internet delivers live data – often free – that is gathered from a complex network of sensors, often cheaply deployed and working 24/7. If you can make a business model work in challenging conditions by doing things differently, you can sell your data many times over, or sell it exclusively to someone who really really needs it. If that buyer wants 5 years worth of exclusivity, they get a discount.
The challenge is only twofold: to take existing technology and apply it to new areas, to take a new proposition to saturated markets, or a cheap proposition to markets looking to save money. Get any two of those right and the investors will fund you.
LTA AEW is not new: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-class_blimp
@ Simon, now I’ve a little more time, just to clarify 100 hours would far too low. I’m not quite sure Typhoons rotated that quickly although I’ve not got the figures to hand. It wouldn’t have been for maintainance reasons. There’s no great drama flying them beyond that figure. There’s no reason to do it then, you might want to spread the hours across the fleet. You don’t want the fleet too out of shape with regards to fh. Then there’s your second line support. Some tasks can only (realisically) be done back in the UK. You can do some of the scheduled maint out in theatre/on ops, some of which has been done in the past and now, in a sense bringing 2nd line to the Sqn. However a line has to be drawn whether you want to have a jet dead whilst the servicing maintenance is carried out which may well be quite a while. You can defer it but then that causes problems further down the line. You can as you say swap them out, but then at such short time it may not be possible without enough AAR. Which for any distance you need regardless of whether you are landing on a carrier or at a flying station.
You said that USN do it 100 FH, from what I’ve seen they have for example onboard an engine repair facility, that indicates to me a large support system on board. That’s why it seems to low to me and other reasons. With them often being away for 8 months, they would have a lot of swaps quite often far from the US which creates it’s own (not unsurmountable) problems, but you don’t want to do it too often if you can avoid it.
Your problems start 450 FH/month on Herrick sounds about right from my time on Herrick. Quite often it was above that, I think 1 month we did about 600 FH and the jets stay out there for quite a while. Trailing jets out there that often would honestly be too much of a faff.
Another potential non carrier topic for RT. Should we be talking about the technology of the Dreamliner? Many Boeing airliners end up in military use (transport/tanker/AEW/Elint/VIP/laser). Will the 787 be robust enough?
Topman,
Thanks.
Last question though… how many hours could you reasonably put on a jet “in theatre” then, if 100 is too low?
By “jet” I mean Harrier or Typhoon in particular.
Topman,
Do you guys use Organisational, Intermediate and Depot-level maintenance or is that just the USA?
@ Simon it must be an American thing. We use forward and depth maintenance. Although a few places I think use the old 1st/2nd/3rd/4th line set up.
Topman,
And my other question… How many hours could you reasonably put on a jet “in theatre” then?
Cheers.
Interesting read on amphibious warfare concepts: http://www.g2mil.com/amphib-1.htm
Am I alone in thinking we may have the wrong approach in trying to even out the FJ flying hours across the whole fleet?
If we took a ‘scrap and build’ approach it would facilitate keeping the production line open longer, allow a rolling upgrade to capability, smooth the capital investment profile, and reduce the absolute number of airframes needing to be owned at any one time.
Instead of having ‘attrition spares’ in the fleet and rotating you would have only as many airframes as the squadrons require. Instead of rotating you would actively concentrate the hours onto the oldest airdrames to ‘use them up’ and reinvest the saving in say 12 new birds a year. You might even be able to ‘pull through’ some of the more costly items of equipment from the old planes to the new (like is planned on T23 and T26 frigates).
By keeping the production line open for decades you would maximise export orders, industrial skills, and the possibility to re-arm if required (thus negating the other advantage of having a large pool of ‘spare’ airframes in being at all times).
Capital cost of Fast Jets is now a serious problem for all advanced armed forces. Can we or anyone else really afford the luxury of owning spare airframes going forward?
JH – Agreed 787 is showing a few more teething problems than would be expected or welcomed, but I think the question goes a little deeper – we discussed on another topic thread the effects of EMP on the basic green vehicle fleets, now that all modern engines & transmissions need masses of electronics to function. The same issue applies to aircraft in spades. I spent a few years working on full-flight simulators and as part of the lengthy on-site integration and test process I taught myself how to control the 737-300 simulator we were building. I won’t claim I learnt to fly as I didn’t bother with weather effects, nor did I have to concern myself with aviation rules or interaction with the ATC. The 737-300 was an old fashioned servo-assisted flight control system, where hefty steel cables ran directly from the pilot’s control yoke & pedals to the flight surfaces, providing the ultimate back-up of the pilot’s muscles to control the aircraft directly. One of the fun things to do on night shift (sorry boss) was to fly up to 40000ft and kill everything on the aircraft – no engines, no hydraulics, no 400hz AC power, no battery power. Then the task was to glide to an airport and land. The glideslope was a bit steep but the aircraft was fully controllable just by the pilot pulling & pushing at the mechanical linkage to flight surfaces. And all basic flight surfaces remained operable by pilot-power (ailerons, elevator and rudder, but not flaps slats or spoilers). This means, in the event of a major electronics wipe-out (EMP) the airframe and precious human cargo could be brought safely to the ground. If the simulator flight dynamics programming was accurate. Modern fly-by-wire aircraft do not bother with the weight and complexity of under-floor mechanical control cables, preferring the convenience of high speed databus traffic instead. I would be much less confident the aircraft could be brought down safely with all electronics knocked out. On A300 I believe the only mechanically linked back-up is elevator trim and there’s a limit to what you can do with one surface control. The fly-by-wire approach is pretty universal now, 787 is just the latest type.
So for all-out military use I dislike nearly all modern aircraft because of their electronic dependency and vulnerability to EMP or other high power EM interference. But as all the pointy fast jets are flown by their computers maybe the fate of MPA or tanker or transport plane is academic in such circumstances.
Chris, blame it on unstable flight design. Most planes simply can’t be flown purely by humans nowadays. Especially stealth and extremely agile aircraft. Blame the F-16. :P
Repulse ,
Yes. That is an interesting read. The author seems to have forgotten that an enemy might have an attack copter of their own. In which case all nearby LCU’s and corvettes will be Hellfire-ed and sunk?
@Simon: Yep, I don’t agree with all that is said either. The interesting bit for me was the value put on LSTs… which makes me question the current appetite for all ships with a well dock. Not saying they don’t have their place, but would the UK be better off with the Army pitching up in these and STUFTs once the initial wave has gone in by fast craft and helo, than the LHD/LPD/LSD/etc obsession.
John
To late I’m afraid a certain amount of 787 tech and Philosophy is already in another new us military aircraft entering service !! It is somewhat different than what’s gone before.
Do you think military fbw aircraft have not thought about emp both have been round for an awfully long time.
Hurst Llama said “Mr. X, the use of mercenary companies has a very long history. When a state has become dependent on them then that history has always, sooner or later, been a very unhappy one.”
The word mercenary is very loaded and doesn’t really cover what those companies offered. Perhaps I am missing something when I see the relative quick success of their missions in Africa and the bungling bureaucratic expensive inconclusive efforts of say the UN. Not saying they are a panacea or that there isn’t perhaps in some situation what could be described as something not quite right or dodgy. And though money attracts all kinds the PMC gold rush in the Sandbox hasn’t lead to an out all disaster. They are not all cowboys, those companies don’t last as in sphere. Many governments rely on such firms to provide security for government workers abroad including our own. As for states relying on them well you could play that game the other way too. How about,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard
or,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghurka
(Note the second paragraph, “a rose by any……….” )
or indeed,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Foreign_Legion
in fact you could include really any defence work where there is a private finance element. All very interesting.
Hmm.. actually, if you use azimeth thrusters and keep them closer to the front of the ship, there might be a possibility of being able to reverse an LPD/LSD onto shore and just dropping the ramp for Ro-Ro…
Advantages would be that you can still retain some draft in the front of the ship for stability as well as a bulbous bow, only the back needs to be very shallow draft.
Need to think a bit more on that.
@RedTrousers
Mr. Trousers, I had no intention of tarring you with any brush, I had no idea what you do for a living. I sincerely apologise if my remarks caused you offence. I am sure that you run your business with complete honesty and efficiency and, dare I say it, the patriotism one would expect of a gentleman of your class and station in life.
@ Repulse – Often wondered about LST’s making a comeback; the Endurance class are called LST’s but I think in reality they are more RO-RO (they also have a well deck so the two are not mutually exclusive).
I think the major problem would be that once beached they are a sitting duck. Having said that, ships docked in port are just as vulnerable. Everyone was going on about the Chinese guided ballistic missiles against sea borne carriers – what about Para seized airfields or Marine seized ports?
Observer,
Perhaps a rolled pontoon could be unleashed from your reversed LPD a bit like a tongue?
Repulse,
I was surprised on his value of NGS. I knew it had its place, but not to the level he seems to indicate.
@ Obersver – Something like this?
http://www.globalsecurity.org/jhtml/jframe.html#http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/images/fastship-image11.jpg|||
ttp://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/fastship-pics.htm
@X
Mr. X, I would contend that the three examples you cite are not examples of the use of mercenary companies, they are are the use of foreign soldiers owing loyalty to the state which employs them, which is a completely different cauldron of octopus.
There are some mercenary companies that have in recent campaigns provided peripheral services, such as close protection, that have done a decent and honourable job. So I agree that they are not all cowboys. However, a state that relies on the use of mercenary companies for essential warfighting, and that today must include the provision of information, is riding for a fall.
Be that as it may, Mr Trousers, whose remarks started me off down this path has now said his comments were tongue in cheek, so I think we should move on, or perhaps back to the discussion of why the SDR of 1998 has such a feck up.
ST, that was exactly what I was thinking of.
BTW, the Endurance class was called an LST because it was to replace older LSTs and the understating of the capabilities was to reduce the chance of starting a panic and kicking off an arms race. “See? It’s a replacement, not an escalation..”
Simon, you can toss stuff randomly into platforms, that does not give it “added capability”, it is just turning something into a mess and a garage sale. Think it through, what would putting a rolling pontoon on the rear ramp cost you? For one, loading access convenience, for another it cripples the ship’s ability to revert to LCUs.
A 2 piece ramp with the option of opening as a single piece or AVLB style is probably a better option. Open as a single piece for at sea LCU usage, when spanning to land, open it scissors style to cover the gap.
Observer,
True, a two-piece ramp has more utility as I suppose the ship can remain an LPD.
I do like ST’s link and the way the ramp appears to move up and down to offload doubledecker style.
I assume a tank can roll down the internal “shore” ramp and along the well area with the LPD in a non-docked down state? Can an LPD realistically work as the above doubledecker as that looks to be real value?
Newport class LSTs have an interesting 110ft ramp – http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/US_Navy_960329-N-8167A-050_LST_taking_on_U.S._Marines_and_hardware.jpg/800px-US_Navy_960329-N-8167A-050_LST_taking_on_U.S._Marines_and_hardware.jpg
Turkey is also looking at a new LST class: http://export.ssm.gov.tr/ProductImages/LANDINGSHIPTANKLST/LST3.png
Before anyone tries to design LST for the 21st Century, there’s a slightly wider question. Do we need tanks at all?
As far as I’m concerned, western warfare of which the UK aims to become the pre-eminent exponent (bested by the USA on quantity, but not quality) is rapidly boiling down to brainpower, data links, kinetic effects air-delivered, and Intel’s best processor whizzing away at 17 trillion calculations per second***. And finally, human judgement. We probably don’t ever need more tanks, and so no need for LSTs. And this is me, a cavalryman talking.
Apropos of being completely relevant, although it’s a bit of an intellectual stretch, the Queen once thought it worthwhile paying me and my boys to conduct a survey of the price of women’s underwear in post-conflict Bosnia. Ie how much were bras and knickers costing on open sale. A bit odd, but it was part of a NATO “Normalities and Indicators” survey: these are staple items and whether war or peace, women buy them, so the price stability indicates (roughly) tension levels. Now, you won’t get a Kevin at 30,000 feet or a Nellie at 30 miles being able to find out that sort of info, or to have a laugh and joke with the women buying them.
*** or whatever the state of the art is. In discussion with one of our network solutions architects yesterday, he informed me that processors are now getting to the point of non-improvability in electronic terms: they can cycle so quickly that the real bottleneck is now waiting for electrons to jump the gap. Only optical connections can do better.
LST is just a type of ship,
http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1381255.1372111997!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/gallery_635/unloading-normandy-beach.jpg
they carried all sorts of vehicles.
Oddly one of things they were specifically designed to carry in theatre as deck cargo were LCTs which were also used to carry a whole variety of vehicles not just tanks………
http://ww2lct.org/images/lstlct.jpg
I agree, perhaps the LSL designation (Landing Ship Logistics) like the Round Table class is more appropriate. As x says, it’s much more than just tanks.
For example, a 800 man RM Cdo to secure the beachhead could be landed by a combination of helos (from the CVF) and LCVPs, with support from a couple of LSLs bringing in the heavy kit. The LCVPs would be on davits on the LSLs. Additioal, support would be given by MCMs / light frigates and air cover by attack helos / F35Bs from the CVF.
The main brigade would follow in with a temporary harbour landing troops and equipment from Points and a new class of troop ships and STUFTs. Covered by a FF/DD/light frigate escort force.
I should have said………
Oddly one of things Allied wartime LSTs were specifically designed to carry in theatre as deck cargo were LCTs which were also used to carry a whole variety of vehicles not just tanks………
Beaching means a hull inspection. So probably something done only in extremis in a real need and for training probably done infrequently probably before a refit.
How many times a LCU can be beached between inspections I don’t know.
How much beachings ” trouble” other nations I don’t know……
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/A_Republic_of_Korea_Tank_drives_off_a_Korean_Amphibious_Ship.jpg/1280px-A_Republic_of_Korea_Tank_drives_off_a_Korean_Amphibious_Ship.jpg
X,
I’ve a year or so ago suggested on TD that what we could usefully have is the RFA Fergie – a beater of a well-used North Sea ferry, ro-ro design, that we ram onto the beach deliberately. Who cares about the hull inspection post-event? “Crumpled and busted” no doubt would be the verdict, but if she only costs a couple of million, who cares? Tag some Mexes onto her arse end after Royal has poured ashore, and you’ve got a reasonable Mulberry for a couple of weeks. After that, and at ENDEX, drag her backward, sink her properly, and you’ve got a tourist dive centre.
Back in the 1950s in the Gulf the RN would beach LSTs all day long without a thought. Never said I agreed with the need for an inspection. We live in a different age now.
The RN buy second hand – wash your mouth out. They might – in extremis – stoop to OTS. :-)
Oh and, if said ferry leaks oil everywhere, we’d get lumbered with the bill for clean up.
@RT: re ferries. Good point, suggested the option of converting the soin to be retired tankers for Mulberrys…
Does seem that beyond the kit needed to get the assault force ashore, the fancy LHD etc toys are pretty useless thereafter :) Bit like doing a ram raid on a shop in a new 80k Land rover when there are plenty of knackered diggers around.
Wiseape, “in extremis” as in desperate or “in extremis” as in “over my dead body” dead and gone before it happens? :)
Repulse/RT, in that case, what about concrete ships? You need a ship, just put in a steel frame in a mold, pour concrete in and wait for it to set, then fit some rudimentary engines to it and some spall liner for safety. If the design was simple like LCUs writ large, you could probably produce it cheap and fast. It’ll be crap to take to sea in, and range would be frighteningly limited, but if you want suicidal landing craft, that might do the job. It’s not like it is a new idea, WWII had ferocrete ships which worked, for a flexible definition of “worked”.
It might help if we could decide where this beach we are storming actually is, who we are working with and who we are opposed by. Winnow down the options.
Someone should do a post. Someone who knows what they’re talking about. In the meantime, think I’ll have another Old Speckled Hen.
Someone should do a post. Someone who knows what they’re talking about. In the meantime, think I’ll have another Old Speckled Hen.
I’ll drink to that. Cheers!
I’ve asked before but… do we have any Royal Marines here? Could really do with their view on jet support, NGFS, CAS, Apache, Junglie lift, Lynx/Wildcat, LCU/LCVP, etc.
Simon, its a hot Saturday night, so Royal Marines will be dancing naked round a bonfire while drinking beer. Well its what The Sun says, so it must be true.
Re landing ship for beaching. Could we scale up that prototype landing craft/hovercraft cross? You just need to blow enough air under the stern to get it off the beach, not lift the whole ship.
Plus roll mat fighting, singing that odd Zulu warrior song, etc. etc.
EDIT: Not just drinking beer but fighting with it too. Basically this entails slinging it at anything and everything. Sometimes with a glass container acting as a sabot…….
Well I’m glad someone is enjoying themselves. I’ve run out of Hen. :-(
Doesn’t anybody mine beaches nowadays? Isn’t it the case that unless the landing was unopposed, we wouldn’t do it?
“Isn’t it the case that unless the landing was unopposed, we wouldn’t do it?” I read a report awhile back saying as the US hadn’t performed an opposed landing since Inchon the USN/USMC should concentrate on transport rather than assults. I believe we have long praticed “hit them where they aint” when it comes to amphibious landings
Wise, don’t think anyone does that any more. Geneva convention insists that minefields be marked, not that some people actually follow that rule but beyond that, most beaches end up being frequently used by civilians more than the military. And God help you of you had to collect the mines after the war, tides tend to play havoc on the terrain and I won’t be surprised if some mines got washed out to sea.
Still remember how to set up an ad hoc anti-LCU mine though :) AT mine with a thick wooden/steel spike sitting on top of the pressure plate at 45 degrees balanced on an X-frame. Underwater. When the poor unsuspecting LCU hits the spike, it crushes the pressure plate and the mine fires the spike into the LCU and tries to flip the boat upside down.
I think we all now that you’ve got to mark / record minefields in accordance with the GC, but does anyone know the law on putting up dummy minefields? As far as I can recall, it’s legal, but the memory may be failing me.
I also recall a Commander RE in 1st (UK) Armd Div who told his sappers on one particular exercise against the Boxheads to fence off their minefields at a truly massive distance from the actual mines. Seemed entirely legal, but the effect was disingenuous. What seemed to be a large minefield was in fact only about 10 yards across.
Would that have been “Dan” Taunton-Burnett by any chance?
RT, you’re correct, it is entirely legal to mark dummy minefields. And the “big” minefield is not a unique idea. :)
Hate to be the one clearing those things, you have absolutely no idea if it is a dummy, or one with live mines far away from the marked areas. For all you know, you could spend days clearing what you thought was a dummy only to hit just ONE live mine that is enough to kill or maim you.
I do remember one tactic to clear minefields was to call artillery on it, groundbursts to either set off the mines by shock or to blast them out of the ground by making them “jump”. Anyone have any practical experience on how well that works?
The Iraqi minefields in 1991 were not well marked – some had a wire in front, most did not seem to. But you could see where the mines were buried. We also had to be careful when crossing over ground that we had MLRS’d. I don’t know what the proportion of dud bomblets was, but there seemed to be quite a few, and they could in theory take a track off if you drove over them.
(Actually, I don’t know what effect they might have, as no one drove over them. They slowed us down, though.)
So in short, you ended up replacing one minefield with another. Scratch MLRSing a minefield then. 155mm?
And that amount of duds doesn’t sound good.
The Type 45 is a one trick pony and that trick is not very clever or as good as the Dutch and German frigates designed for air defence, but is much, much more expensive.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/ddg-type-45-britains-shrinking-air-defense-fleet-04941/
Sorry, I didn’t know where to put this and, as this thread has already varied from US carrier procurement to clearing land minefields via all points of the compass, I figured that is anyone who might find the article interesting would probably look in here.
Sorry Llama, but could you point out where in the article you linked was there a claim that 1) The Type-45 is a one trick pony and 2) That it isn’t as clever or good as the Dutch or German offerings?
Topman,
Been doing some digging on Typhoon’s maintenance schedule…
Can I assume 400 hours was the number you were hinting at ;-)
Simon
http://www.baesystems.com/article/BAES_158523/reliability-is-the-name-of-the-game?_afrLoop=1721157413554000
Just when you think you’ve done all the “digging” you need…
Thanks Mark.
Any idea what it was for Harrier?
@Simon
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmdfence/557/55706.htm
“The flying time interval for the maintenance cycle of Harrier GR7/GR9 aircraft has recently been extended by 44 per cent from 500 to 720 flying hours for minor maintenance and from 2000 to 2880 flying hours for Major maintenance. The extension was approved in July 2005 following a two year study”
Wildly off-topic, an interesting comment on the relative fitness of the RN and USN, not bad for a bit of Tupperware:
https://navynews.co.uk/archive/news/item/8295
“ Straight after Artemis Trident, Atherstone maintained the quick pace of life in Bahrain with one fifth of the ship’s company volunteering to join the US July 4 Independence Day 3k run at the Americans’ huge support base.
And although Atherstone only had eight runners in a large field, the Hunt-class ship bagged four of the top five places: Sub Lt Matt Brown (first), CPO Al Kennedy (second), Mid Dave Mayes (fourth) and PO Joe Morton (fifth).“
El Sid,
Thanks. Some are better than others at “digging” :-)
Going back to an earlier thread on this post – conceptually I think the Indian Shardul class would be an interesting option for the RMs.
http://www.stratpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/file_photo_1_of_ins_airavat.jpg
Has a landing spot with hanger, plus 4 LCVPs. Could act as both a amphibious ship and also a mothership also…
A couple of these + the CVF could land a RM Cdo in strength in my view… Like also that it is armed with close range weapons and also some SAM capability.
With ref to opposed landings, the USMC really wanted one in gulf 1
The assessment by the US force commanders was it was a hiding to nothing. Landing craft are sitting ducks to antitank missiles, and precision artillery. anyone fancy being in any landing craft when a 120mm guided round lands slap in the middle???
I understood that ‘Halls of Montezuma’ Iwo Jima type stuff was as dead as the mass parachute drop and for largely the same reasons.
So perhaps some LST’s might be a good idea.,…?
@ Simon, not quite it’s an ad hoc number most of the time based on all sorts of things. However as the new servicing cycles have been announced it should give you some idea of the ball park figures between needing second servicings.
The mighty fin drawdown continues apace with 617 going next April.
http://www.raf.mod.uk/news/archive/dambusters-to-be-next-lightning-ii-squadron-18072013
Interesting BBC news story which throws light on the political and social need for improved ‘bringback’ from F35B
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23394233
Two AV8B had to ditch training munitions, which it appears they did in a careful and responsible way which caused no damage. No drama. But the headline still reads “US Jets dropped bombs on Great Barrier Reef”
Hopefully when operating from QEC in SRVL mode the F35B will avoid such comments about our armed forces in the future.