CVF and Carrier Strike thread

[sunnoficarus]

Are you on glue?

I've said it before on here but I seriously don't understand what we're finding so difficult about building these ships?

We know that the 'runway' has to be a certain length (based on 'future proofing' that we may want to use CTOL aircraft in the future and not the VTOL originally envisaged) so we know roughly how big the overall ship needs to be. Once we know that surely it's just a case of working out how many men it takes to make a ship of that size work, fit their accommodation and the area you need for the aircraft, stores, engines etc into the ship and then sort out the wiring for comms, power etc around it? Alright that's an over simplification but it's not as if this is all white man's magic that no-one's ever considered before. It might not be the 1930s anymore but we do still have a fair amount of ship building industry in this country and, like I say, it's not as if this is some leap into the dark designing some brand new type of ship that no-one's ever seen before.

We've been building aircraft carriers for nigh on 100 years, how on earth can it take over ten years just to design one of the things?

Politics dear boy, politics.

CVF was never designed to meet military needs, it was designed to meet political vanity needs. Blair wanted to go playing 'Regime Change' with his new best bezzer Jorge Bush, so CVF started off with the basic design goals of 'How big do they need to be to duff up a decent sized nation state', not, 'What do the RN actually need'?, and the most important question of all, 'Can we afford them'?

Of course, the answer to how big they needed to be to go duffing up countries comes out as 'BFO Nimitz size'… but we couldn't afford a Nimitz, and so, we've been busy little bunnies trying to invent a way of getting a Nimitz sized carrier for Invincible sized money.
And here we are, over a decade later, and when you add in the extra costs of a half dozen major redesigns, the extra costs of building them in dribs and drabs across the length and labour heartland drabs of the land, and HMS Big but fitted with Nothing', and her sister ship are going to cost us a truly eye watering £15 Billion according to some estimates, more than a pair of Nimitz Class CVN's cost the USN.

[Roadster280]

Also worth pointing out that:
a) UK has not built an aircraft carrier for 30 years.
b) Swan Hunter built two of the last ones, and they are now just a design house.
c) Barrow built the other one, and it can now only build submarines.
d) Prior to that, it was another 30 years previously that Ark Royal rolled off the Cammell Laird slip.

JBM & I well know the state of Cammell Laird these days.

So short of either building the whole thing in Rosyth, or resurrecting Cammell Laird or H&W, it ain't gonna happen overnight.

[tekirdag]

You ARE FUCKING KIDDING, right?

If this is a serious proposition, why does the USN not have any issues at all with large numbers of F/A18s on it's flat tops? Why doesn't the UK just send a PO to Mr Boeing for a shitload of them?

FUCKING BANANAS.

Did I just bite?

I think you may have done, hook, line and sinker fashion ....

Seriously though, the USA does not have the same problems as us. US carriers sail in carrier groups, so if you lose your trap capability, you land on the other carrier and have a cup of tea (sorry, coffee) until repairs are made. The UK will not have that luxury, and and if the UK carrier's trap is totalled, you end up with your whole squardon ditching. Some bright spark did suggest you put the nets up, but 12 jets parked into the nets at 120 knots is frankly worse than ditching - because you have now added a motorway pile-up to the chaos on deck.

With a STOVL carrier, however, you can park your precious jets anywhere on the reamaining serviceable bits of deck. You can even park them on a container vessel, as a temporary measure until the carrier is serviceable again - saving some £70 million a time, plus saving the campaign by getting the birds back in the air the following day. You know, as far as waging a naval battle goes, 18 jets at the bottom of the South Atlantic are hardly a great military asset.


Likewise, as I said previously - a cat and trap carrier with a bomb crater placed squarely on the cat, becomes one very large and very expensive cruise liner, for 1,000 very bored crabs and a few assorted Biggles types. Where next, chaps, the Bahamas or the Florida keys??

Meanwhile, a STOVL carrier will still be operating nearly as usual. Ok, so the payload range of the aircraft will be compromised (to get around the crater), but they will still be operating and providing a defence/threat to the opposition.


The only real problem here, is it took several years of battering the fantasy day-dreamers, before they realised that we are not simply USA-lite. We cannot have their capability, however hard we try, and so we need to cut our cloth to fit our budget - IN THE MOST PRACTICAL WAYS POSSIBLE.

This, is why we have gone back to the more sensible VSTOL carrier option. It may not be the best, when you compare like for like with a NImmitz class and a swarm of Tomcats, but when you are operating one lone carrier way down in the S Atlantic, its a whole lot better than a flat-top cruise liner.




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[tekirdag]

Politics dear boy, politics.

CVF was never designed to meet military needs, it was designed to meet political vanity needs. Blair wanted to go playing 'Regime Change' with his new best bezzer Jorge Bush, so CVF started off with the basic design goals of 'How big do they need to be to duff up a decent sized nation state', not, 'What do the RN actually need'?, and the most important question of all, 'Can we afford them'?

Wrong again, Sunno.


Blair was a traitor from the very beginning, who wanted nothing less than the destruction of the UK as a cohesive nation (he is a One Worlder - look it up).

But his grand design was being threatened by some very agitated military types, who were threatening a coup, or something similar. Solution? Simple - just offer these starry-eyed and very naive top-brass types everying they ever wanted. How about 4 Nimitz class carriers, and the latest wizzbang jets?? No problem, the sky is the limit....

Oldest trick in the book. The real problem, is that the Navy brass fell for it. Blair's intention was to offer everything, but never deliver. Keep the top-brass happy dreaming of a wonder-navy for the next 20 years, while the plans for the carriers get changed year by year. Blair only needed another 15-20 years to destroy the UK, so he did not care what happened after that - the navy would not have a nation to support it by then anyway, so it mattered not if the carriers worked or not.


This, unfortunately is the goal of the One Worlder. I did have one New Labour organiser openly declare that he would sacrifice his children, in order to see the UK destroyed as a nation. And he thought this was a high ideal, for the greater good and all that - "so we can all live together in harrmoneeee," as he liked to say. Mad as a hatter and as naive as they come, but since he had some of the levers of power, he was probably the most dangerous man in the UK.


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[Subsunk]

They lost me with the point that a full air group capability might not be available till 2030 - a full generation away. Nothing, nothing at all can take that long. Except Bowman. And ASTOR. And a functional SA80-based weapons system.

CVF's main role is and always has been to keep BAe in the lifestyle to which it is accustomed - whether or not we get any carrier capability at all to safeguard UK interests comes a long way behind that.

Half of Portsmouth Dockyard was handed over to BAe for this whole pot mess and they have already fired warning shots about future orders - if we don't keep them employed, they will start laying people off. Civvies in support of the defence sector are far more valuable than service personnel, who are in fact the defence sector.

RN hierarchy is a microcosm of the wider MOD hierarchy, and sucking up to their future employers is entirely ops normal - they write letters of outrage to the Telegraph from time to time to distance themselves from the damage they've done to their service.

On a more positive note, we've got a new uniform. Actually, it's made the Telegraph's monocle fall out in outrage, so there is a gen positive note.

[sunnoficarus]

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Translated from Rantinese into English

[sunnoficarus]

On a more positive note, we've got a new uniform. Actually, it's made the Telegraph's monocle fall out in outrage, so there is a gen positive note.

'Do you want fries with that'?

"…and the introduction of new uniforms that wouldn’t look out of place in a fast food outlet.…"


Britain has to decide upon the Royal Navy's role - Telegraph

[Charm_City]

I think you may have done, hook, line and sinker fashion ....

Seriously though, the USA does not have the same problems as us. US carriers sail in carrier groups, so if you lose your trap capability, you land on the other carrier and have a cup of tea (sorry, coffee) until repairs are made. The UK will not have that luxury, and and if the UK carrier's trap is totalled, you end up with your whole squardon ditching. Some bright spark did suggest you put the nets up, but 12 jets parked into the nets at 120 knots is frankly worse than ditching - because you have now added a motorway pile-up to the chaos on deck.

Errrrrr .... I always thought a 'carrier group' was a group of ships centred on a single CVN, When did the USN begin operating groups of more than one CVN?

[tekirdag]

Errrrrr .... I always thought a 'carrier group' was a group of ships centred on a single CVN, When did the USN begin operating groups of more than one CVN?

Errr ..... Ever since Midway, I think. Three carriers, if memory serves me right - and if they had had only one carrier, as you seem to think is appropriate, the Yanks would be speaking Japanese by now.


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[Shup]

I think you may have done, hook, line and sinker fashion ....

Seriously though, the USA does not have the same problems as us. US carriers sail in carrier groups, so if you lose your trap capability,

The USN normally has one carrier per Carrier Strike Group. With there being 10 Carrier Strike Groups and only 11 Carriers it seems pretty difficult for them to have more than one in any group.