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CVF and Carrier Strike thread

The Royal Navy appears to have a new officer's rank according to the Defence experts of the Press Association:

Wing Lt Adam Hogg.jpg


Pilot tells of ‘hugely prideful moment’ as new F-35 jets touch down on UK soil
 
Well, the flight deck looks fairly flush apart from the stern where it's cut out for the well deck. But then again, the flight deck is 200 metres long and 35 metres wide, so a little bigger than the old Invincibles. And it has a 'ski jump'.

But yes, visual appearances mean little when it comes to whether or not they can handle V/STOL operations. As you say, hanger size, lift size and a myriad other details are what would determine that.

Still, given the Aussie's requirements to police a substantial amount of coastline and defend their own sea lanes, putting F35b capabilities on their Canberras would give them some more options than they currently have. Or, so it would seem to a casual observer like me.


HMAS Canberra (III) | Royal Australian Navy

Does the RAN have any aspirations of being a carrier Navy again? I recently learnt that when my old geezer father was serving in the Far East, they acted as crash destroyer for Melbourne. Their part of the World is getting interesting again.
 
Does the RAN have any aspirations of being a carrier Navy again?...

I’m not sure they’re interested in being a fixed wing carrier navy again. But it was an RAAF mate who told me that!

617 Sqn will have a Royal Navy XO - interesting...

I believe that the OC and XO posts are rotational. Therefore, idc you should see a RN OC 617 and an RAF OC 809. The XO would then normally be from the opposite service with overall manpower mix 56:44 RAF/RN.

Regards,
MM
 
Why does the RAF use OC and not CO?

Anyway - @Not a Boffin continues to struggle over on PPRuNe, trying to convince the doubting Thomas' that a carrier's sortie rate is a better metric of her capability than the theoretical number of aircraft she could carry, that manpower limits need to be considered when considering things, and through life costs need to be considered when thinking about powerplants.

PN: Some years ago the Captain of Ark Royal reckoned that the capacity of a modern CV was one aircraft per 1,000 tons. On that basis he said the QE could have 65 aircraft. Clearly we have compromised - big carrier, smaller air group.

Nab: There are caveats to that. If we really wanted to - and bought enough aircraft - you could fit 60-ish on the deck and hangar. But operating them would require extensive deck manoeuvres, which means lots more bodies, which means lots more accommodation. You could reduce the accommodation standard and cram more people aboard, but it's people that cost, hence the big ship to allow a relatively small number of people to operate up to 40 cabs.

The old Ark (IV) managed around 36 cabs on 56000 te - so quite a bit more than 1000te/cab - and required 2500 crew.


Given manpower is the Navy's key limit, is personnel per aircraft a better measure of effectiveness than ship tonnage per aircraft?

The whole thread is dominated by the thought that because the QEC design is different from a US design, and we a doing things differently (like STOVL) we have it wrong. See this post from KenV:

No tankers: But you only really need then for refuelling aircraft struggling to land on, so not such a problem for us then. During missions you still need land based tankers for AAR - no?

No COD: Discussed at great length, but the QEC can still take any sort of VERTREP or HDS, RAS, or put into port. A larger ship means you can carry more spares too.

No AWACS(sic): I assume he means the E-2 Hawkeye. A great aircraft, but it cannot fly as fast or as high as the E-3 Sentry, and is limited by a small crew. You might argue to most important part of naval AEW is to have a radar at a few thousand feet above sea level to detect low fliers. The F-35 will

No jammers: Has anyone other than the US had dedicated ECM aircraft - standfast the German Tornado ECR? I though the thinking had always been that the jets carry their own ECM? Also I thought the F-35 has real Electronic Warfare capability?

The whole discussion about carriers has been characterised by daft assumptions, a failure to appreciate that technology changes, and the lazy argument that because carrier operations often have land based tankers and AWACS support - you can use land bases. Nevermind that AWACS/AAR/transport aircraft are larger than the jets, with more range and endurance.

Spleen venting to be continued.....
 
Spleen venting continues....

@jim30 posted this comment from the Daily Mail website on the F-35 - Money Well Spent thread.

"Actually it is not that good an aircraft. The Harrier suitably stealthed airframed and new engines would have been better, cheaper and British. Wow a whole 4 aircraft. This has increased the RAF flying club by 10%. A joke of an airforce now. "

"Do remember that our new aircraft carriers are +diesel+ powered, so can barely cross the AtIantic. The Labour party refused to used nucIear, to placate the C N D supporters in their party. So the en.emy do not need to target the well defended carrier, all they need to do is sink the refuelers. The whole thing is a white elephant. What we needed was four smaller carriers, all nucIear powered, and carrying newbuild Harriers. And all of this could have been achieved for half the cost in half the time. "

What it shows is educational standards are shocking - and we let these people vote?

Paragraph one: So a completely different aircraft to Harrier then? New airframe - new aircraft, and Harrier/Sea Harrier was built around the RR Pegasus. By the way - what about the Navy? Can we have some aircraft?

Paragraph two: WTF! Has he looked at the published figures for range for the QEC? Putting a nuclear reactor into any vessel involves real pain and grief. Why do people have this obsession with smaller carriers - a ship half the size is not half the cost, needs roughly the same number of people, for less capability. I am sure some clever person has a formula or graph, or mathematical model showing the relationship between carrier and hanger size and sortie rate, and manpower required, and differences between CTOL and STOVL.

To my mind this shows the curse of people not understanding things, and assuming something they do not know about must be easy. Is it because of of the mains things taught in secondary school level maths is the straight line graph : y = mx + c. The problem is the world is frequently non linear. Speeding motorists often fail to appreciate than the relationship between speed and stopping distance is quadratic. Nor is braking a linear process. I imagine there are some sophisticated controls in the brakes of the F-35B, which will be involved in SRVL.

Once again I think of my fish tank analogy:

Years ago I was chatting to the guy in the pet shop, and he said that many people seem to think that smaller tanks must be easier. However, this means a smaller volume of water, so it becomes more sensitive to changes in pH, salinity, and so on. Add to that plants which consume Carbon Dioxide during the day but not at night, and fish which consume Oxygen, fresh water, food, and produce urine and excrement.

Keeping your fish healthy depends on them having enough room to swim, breathe, urinate, etc without interfering with each other. It also depends on the filters and Oxygenation, and diligent cleaning. So for the same number of fish (take the hardy Goldfish as an example), a smaller tank may be smaller to buy, the cost of each fish or plant will be the same, but the cost of the pump/filters/etc will be similar whatever size of tank you select. Therefore the smaller tank is only a small saving when everything is considered.

Adding more fish later may be an issue, as each fish needs a certain amount of space for health. The more fish per volume of water the greater the problems, the more critical things like filtering, Oxygenation and cleaning become. The larger the tank, the less sensitivity there is to small changes.

Instead of a glass/plastic tank, think of a steel hull/superstructure (typically about 10% of a warships' cost). Instead of filtering/Oxygenation think of things like the three phase electricity supply, chilled water supplies, etc (not to mention accommodation for people), instead of fish think of systems (or aircraft) that transmit and receive electromagnetic energy, demand physical space, need to be fed with electricity, chilled water, hydraulic oil, etc, as well as being operated and maintained by people.

If only I had been able to do what that nice ex RM Major had suggested, ideally working with someone else, and set up a some sort of technical writing/consultancy type business.
 
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(...) No COD: Discussed at great length, but the QEC can still take any sort of VERTREP or HDS, RAS, or put into port. (...)
A STOL plane like a Twin Otter or equivalent could probably land on and take off from the QE. Whether or not there's enough demand for that to make it worth having one on board full time is another question of course.

It should be noted however that while Twin Otters are very cheap, having appropriate spares and suitably qualified pilots and mechanics on hand full time may be less so. On the other hand, planes like that are used by many militaries as general utility planes and there may be no need to have them "owned" by the carrier and based there full time.

I'm not recommending this as a solution, as there hasn't been any demonstration yet that there is a problem that needs solving. I am pointing out however that there may be other avenues that can be pursued if there is a genuine demand for it.
 
A STOL plane like a Twin Otter or equivalent could probably land on and take off from the QE. Whether or not there's enough demand for that to make it worth having one on board full time is another question of course.

It should be noted however that while Twin Otters are very cheap, having appropriate spares and suitably qualified pilots and mechanics on hand full time may be less so. On the other hand, planes like that are used by many militaries as general utility planes and there may be no need to have them "owned" by the carrier and based there full time.

I'm not recommending this as a solution, as there hasn't been any demonstration yet that there is a problem that needs solving. I am pointing out however that there may be other avenues that can be pursued if there is a genuine demand for it.

You wouldn't need much deck space tbh

2:50 onwards



There's astonishingly fewer places than you think you can get a Twin Otter in and out of. They are simply awesome aircraft.
 
General characteristics

Type: afterburning turbofan
Length: 220 in (559 cm)
Diameter: 46 in (117 cm) max., 43 in (109 cm) at the fan inlet
Dry weight: 3,750 lb (1,701 kg)

No i am not missing the importance of moving loads of supplies in the shortest time possible, merely pointing out RASing engines is not the only way of getting them onto the carriers.
Didn’t we manage to fly out a gearbox to one of the carriers during the falklands in 82
 
A STOL plane like a Twin Otter or equivalent could probably land on and take off from the QE. Whether or not there's enough demand for that to make it worth having one on board full time is another question of course.

It should be noted however that while Twin Otters are very cheap, having appropriate spares and suitably qualified pilots and mechanics on hand full time may be less so. On the other hand, planes like that are used by many militaries as general utility planes and there may be no need to have them "owned" by the carrier and based there full time.

I'm not recommending this as a solution, as there hasn't been any demonstration yet that there is a problem that needs solving. I am pointing out however that there may be other avenues that can be pursued if there is a genuine demand for it.
Chinook?
 
Didn’t we manage to fly out a gearbox to one of the carriers during the falklands in 82

Invincible managed to get all the way from Portsmouth to Ascension Island with one of her shafts locked due to a faulty gearbox. A replacement gearbox part was flown out to Ascension Island, and transferred to Invincible by helicopter, and then fitted by her Marine Engineers.

Points to note:

1. Even on just one shaft, a ship can make reasonable speed.

2. The Marine Engineering department onboard can fix things, and are very much part of the 'whole ship' that makes flying happen.

3. No COD, but we still managed to win the war.

Invincible spent 166 continuous days at sea, including the fighting period with her Sea Harrier and Sea King expending Sidewinders, 1000lb bombs, rockets, 30mm ammunition, flares, torpedoes, and depth charges. She was carrying an enlarged air group (twelve Sea Harriers and nine Sea Kings?), and the CVS design was much less long ranged than the QEC.

Slower, half the range, six times the purchase price & an eckofalot more servicing man hours & costs.

Not that I'm saying Twin Otters are the way to go.

The UK already has the World's largest fleet of Chinooks - apart from the US Army. They will fit the lifts and hangar.
 
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The UK already has the World's largest fleet of Chinooks - apart from the US Army. They will fit the lifts and hangar.

Indeed but allocate some to COD & they're not available for their normal tasking & I doubt very much there's any appreciable slack in the system these days & as I said; half the range & 60% of the speed.
Like the NHS, our armed forces are in need of rather more wonga than currently available & unfortunately, political expediency (AKA not openly raising taxes) on the part of one Party & an extreme left wing mob on the other means another can gets kicked down the road.

Shades of the 1930's & all that...:-(
 
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