Holy Position Reversal Batman!
Sharkey Ward (famed fighter pilot) has written a paper in which he has gone from being a supporter of the F-35 and is now wanting F/A-18's instead.
The dynamics of the power struggle between the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy are hard to make out on this side of the Atlantic but if Sharkey is even half right in his accusations against the RAF then the UK military is in a world of trouble.
While on the surface this might not seem like a big deal, trust me it is. Ward is a trusted voice in British military affairs and although some would like to dismiss him, 3 kills in the Falklands War and a reputation as being a maverick marks him as a force to be reckoned with.
If Sharkey has turned on the F-35 then its not a good day for the program. My problem is that his reasoning seems to be based purely on politics and not the performance of the airplane.
Read it for yourself...
120320 - The Multi-Role Fighter for Britain's Future Naval Air Force
Hello Solomon,
ReplyDeletethe important thing to understand is that if the Royal Navy have a catapult equipped aircraft carrier with long range fighters and Hawkeyes,there is no longer any need for the Royal Air Force's Sentry Airborne Early Warning aircraft or much of the £12,000 Million Voyager aerial refuelling fleet.
There would also be less need for many other Royal Air Force assets such as transport aircraft,motor transport units,air field support assets and force protection units.
The potential savings are huge but those savings mean many Royal Air Force (R.A.F.) officers will lose their jobs.
Think of the R.A.F. as a labor union fighting corporate restructuring.
GrandLogistics.
A carrier by nature is an expeditionary capability, it's hardly a cost effective homeland defence asset.
ReplyDeleteWhilst an advanced Hawkeye (E-2D or better) would provide an excellent AEW&C capability for a carrier, I don't see it being adopted with overwhelming enthusiasm for homeland defence operations. It's small size (dictated by the carrier size) and limited system console operator numbers means it's capability is massively over-shadowed by land-based AEW&C and AWACS aircraft. The E-3D already in-service for one.
Whilst not a perfect solution, "the perfect is the enemy of the good" as Voltaire pointed out and it seems that the RN is unlikely to have more capability as a result of MASC, than that which the Merlin AEW&C aircraft could provide, so it matters little which mode of takeoff and landing the carrier aircraft uses. In fact the RN may even be lucky to have a carrier based AEW&C capability at all. There is no real funding set aside for it...
Personally I think all this will come down purely to cost. A force of 28-36 F-35B's (enough for a training unit, a development unit and a single deployed carrier squadron of 12-16 aircraft) will be cheaper than a similar force of Super Hornets, fully equipped to a USN equivalent standard plus the necessary catapults, arresting systems and extensive training needed to operate them.
As to his other arguments, 1000lbs bombs? Why is that an issue? A GR7/9 Harrier couldn't carry 2000lbs bombs either. A Super Hornet has no capability to carry any ordnance internally, which is a point these supposed "firepower" questions always overlook.
I respect Sharky, but it seems as if he is attempting to influence those down the "easiest" path and I can understand it, I'd prefer to see RN Super Hornet's than no RN carrier aircraft, but I don't agree they'd be cheaper or provide better capability than the JSF, in Shark's proposal.
Hello Aussie Digger,
ReplyDeleteHarrier could carry 2,000lb bombs and has been using such bombs in combat for many years.
If you click on the link below you will see a picture of a 2,000lb laser guided bomb on the wing of a Harrier at Gioia Del Colle,in 1999,from where they were flying combat missions over Kosovo:
http://www.arcair.com/awa01/401-500/awa405-Harrier/images_Peter_Morgan/5.jpg
You are quite right to point out that the Sentry was bought for homeland security.
It was meant to detect Soviet bombers over the North Sea and Norwegian Sea during the Cold War.
But the Cold War ended 20 years ago and the Soviet Union is long gone.
Being surrounded by other friendly European countries,there is no direct military threat to the United Kingdom.
That is British government policy.
Today the Sentrys are used for expeditionary operations,which they are poorly suited to.
With their huge fuel consumption and long runway requirements they often require both host nation support and expensive tanker support.
A good example is the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
To keep a single Sentry over Afhanistan for 8 hours a day the Royal Air Force needed 2 Sentrys with 3 crews and 60,000 pounds of aerial refuelling from a tanker aircraft on each sortie.
Each flight took about 12 hours,4 hours in transit and 8 hours on station.
They would need 3 times that to keep an aircraft on station for 24 hours a day.
In addition they needed a airbase in Oman and a fleet of transport aircraft to get the ground crews and their support equipment to that base.
Luckily the Omanis were able to supply force protection and fuel or that would have had to have been brought in as well.
An E2D Hawkeye can transit from the Arabian Sea to Afghanistan in 1 hour,spend 10 hours on station and 1 hour transiting back to the carrier.
That requires about 6,000 pounds of fuel,a single refuelling from an F35C with a buddy pack.
A tenth of what the Sentry needed.
The Hawkeye option eliminated the need for that £12,000 Million fleet of Voyager tanker aircraft and the transport aircraft and the foreign air base.
Buying Hawkeyes is far cheaper than replacing the Sentry fleet in 2025,their Out Of Service Date.
Replacing the Sentry will cost thousands of millions of pouns.
I understand your Australian Wedgetails cost about (Aus)$4,000 MIllion for 6 aircraft?
Hawkeyes also have much lower operating costs than the Sentry.
THe Hawkeye has Ballistic Missile Defence capabilities and Co-operative Engagement Capability,the ancient radar on the Sentry has neither.
It has fewer operators but we no longer need a lot of operators.
There are fewer aircraft in the battlespace these days and increasingly they are unmanned.
In Libya there were more operators on the Royal Air Force Sentrys than there were Royal Air Force aircraft in the battlespace!
GrandLogistics.