Do you remember the Royal Navy's issue with deciding between having cats on their ships or not?
I do.
I pounded the Royal Navy like a piece of cold meat over the decision to go to cats and then back to STOVL.
Hindsight is twenty twenty and I can definitely say they made the wrong choice. They bought into the utility of STOVL despite watching what the US Navy was going to be doing with UCAVs.
No matter what you think of the F-35, it can be assumed by almost everyone that UCAVs at sea...especially those large enough to be launched by carrier...are going to dominate in a few short years.
The Royal Navy instead chose a legacy capability instead of embracing future opportunities.
Instead of joining with the USN to launch UCAVs at a target they'll instead have to team up with the USMC to provide support against targets that are closer, and lightly defended.
For devastating critiques of how the B won't work for the UK on its carriers go here, here and here.
ReplyDeleteThey will make very nice (large) helicopter carriers.
ReplyDelete"Hindsight is twenty twenty and I can definitely say they made the wrong choice. They bought into the utility of STOVL despite watching what the US Navy was going to be doing with UCAVs."
ReplyDeleteBut why stay subsonic?
Meet the SR-72
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/features/2013/sr-72.html
‘speed is the new stealth’
the Navy is looking at a truly multi-mission platform. they're expecting it to linger over an area for a long time, do deep strike, post damage assessment, aerial refueling, serve as a missile truck in the fleet defense role etc....
Deletehypersonic speed would be good for maybe fleet defense, deep strike and recon but not the rest of the missions they're hoping for.
agree -- you answered the why
DeleteYou do know the SR-72 is unmanned right?
Deletenews report #1: Britain flip-flopped between versions of the Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter after learning the cost of converting one of the Royal Navy's partly built aircraft carriers to include catapults and arrestor gear rose from an estimated £800 million (US $1.24 billion) in 2010 when the initial switch in aircraft type was ordered to about £2 billion (US $3.2B).
ReplyDeletenews report #2: Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said the F35-C had hit development problems and it would be cheaper in the long term to order F35-B jump jets, as originally planned by Labour. The cost of the U-turn is likely to be about £100m ($160m), he told BBC News.
Like the 32,000 lb F-35B doesn't have development problems. I put the QE at about $5B and its useless 45 STOVL planes at about $9B.
Well, the Queen Elizabeth class's fate was sealed as a STOVL-only carrier when it was ordered to a UK shipyard instead of a Korean shipyard as initially planned, as Koreans would have been able to make the conversion for only a few hundred millions + the cost of catapult and arresting gear supplied by the UK government.
Deletepart of national security is maintaining an industrial base. building the ship at home was probably the smartest part of this whole deal.
DeleteSolomon
DeleteThen the British outsourced the next naval ship orders(tankers) to Korean shipyards after having burned by British shipyards. Not only would building QE class ships in Korea cost only half as it would in the UK, its cost might have gone down even further as the Korean government was likely to have added its own orders to the British order to bring up the order total to four. Korea's own cost estimation for a CATOBAR carrier of QE class size is $2.5 billion, or $5 billion for two. Two CATOBOR QE carriers for the price of single British built STOVL QE carrier is what the UK could have had.
if you want to play a pure price game then it would be cheaper to build the ships in Poland or China than even S. Korea, but national security isn't just about the lowest bid. its also about maintaining industrial bases. thats why i think the Brits choosing to build their own carriers at home was such a good decision. they came close to losing their aviation base so why risk it with ship building?
DeleteSolomon
DeletePoland does not have a lower cost than Korea does. This is why Korea ran out of lands to build new shipyards and had to go to China and Philppines to build new shipyards, while Poland struggles to book orders for its shipyards.
The decision to build QE class carriers means a longer turnaround time, double the cost, and less capability. Preserving UK shipbuilding industry skillset could have been achieved by building new nuclear submarines alone.
Well Poland have the lower cost then Korea does, much lower. But first we never build anything of carrier size, we don't have the infrastructure to do that or know-how. Second, moving ships big as QE from or in Baltic is probably impossible. In terms of other ships, well Polish shipyards are not at the same level of marketing as Korean behemoths. They build only couple of ships a year, Koreans build couple in a week...
DeleteKorea is cradle of modern shipbuilding, they have all the know-how and they build them fast, really fast. They build them also in the best quality there is.
QE is not only a ship, it's also a national symbol, build in UK by UK ( and all other people that live in UK ) for UK. Key word "National Pride". The problem that this ship was build for F-35 is other... well problem.
If you think about it, an STOVL configuration isn't all that bad for British needs; it's not like the UK would go to a territorial war against a major military power like China; all they need to be concerned by is Argentina. So it's not that bad.
ReplyDeleteThis is not the case with Japan and to a lessor degree the US, both of which could go to war against China tomorrow.
that's not true.
ReplyDeleteif the US has to go to war against China then you can bet your last dollar that Europe will be pulled into the conflict....and if not Europe then surely the UK, Australia and Canada.
Does NATO cover conflicts in Asia Pacific, especially when the US territory of Guam is not hit? Of course not.
DeleteThe UK and NATO member states will stay out of a US-China conflict unless China for some reason strikes Guam.
the NATO treaty was modified and no longer has an area "rule". if one nation's national interests are attacked by treaty the other nations are obliged to assist. you ever wonder how Afghanistan became a NATO mission? how fighting pirates off the coasts of Africa became a NATO mission?
Deletethe UK will fight with us and we will win.
Well, Japan is not a NATO member and the NATO mutual defense could not be invoked even if Kadena or Futenma bases are bombed, because they are technically on Japanese soil.
Deletefirst time i've seen you do this internet argument game. anyway i'll play. US bases by nature of our status of forces agreements means that US bases are US soil. full stop.
Deleteadditionally if the US goes to war against China---while assisting Japan----it will still be NATO members responding to a US request for assistance.
the fact remains. if the US and China ever mix it up then it will be with NATO assistance.
Even if NATO don't have any businesses in Asia, even if NATO action in any part of world that is not near Europe is controversial, even if action under NATO flag in Afghanistan was under heavy critic if US will be attacked ( not attacking, but attacked ) by foreign power, NATO will respond.
DeleteWhy ?
Because article 5 of North Atlantic Treaty say that.
BUT!
Article 5 or 6 will go in to action if, let's say China, attack US mainland or US bases in Europe, Mediterranean or North Atlantic. If not, and they attack bases on Pacific, NATO had no rights to intervene.
But of course as past show, US can create coalition from NATO members without fighting under the NATO flag. In other words, members can still respond for US plea for help but NATO as whole organization can refuse without any problem in the light of Treaty.
Solomon
DeleteLet us revisit NATO Article 5 & 6.
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm
Article 5
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security .
Article 6 (1)
For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack:
on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France (2), on the territory of or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer;
on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.
It is very clear from the wording of document that the NATO charter covers only Europe and North America, and does not cover US territories in Asia. And indeed UK, France, and Germany would not want to participate in a war against China for their own reasons.
I still firmly believe that although the wrong choice was made when the carriers were first ordered, the main cause of our current carrier cockup is BAE Systems. It was BAE who first told UK Gov that a cat and trap conversion was designed in and low cost only to bump up the price to £2 Billion!
ReplyDeleteUltimately I think both UK and US interests are being screwed over by two of the world's largest defence contractors BAE and Lockheed.
So what they hell happens now, well there's only really two options to maintain a fixed wing aviation capability. The UK goes with the B model and keeps pouring the money in hoping that eventually it will work. This is the most likely. The only other option from a cost point of view is a partial modification of the carriers, fitting Traps and some additional steel work to angle the deck and some strengthening. Followed by ski jump certification of one the few remaining carrier born aircraft. F18 or possible Gripen anyone?
the Sea Gripen is nothing more than a CGI model.
DeleteIt would cost billions to develop.
What I was hoping for with CVF was that the admirals had sold the politicians on the idea of carriers on the strike capability (wannabe mini_CBG like the USN) but all the time knowing their true utility would come from them being large flexible floating sovereign bases like the US America class (or even the Italian Cavour) on steroids. It seems the admirals were only and are only concerned about strike. Any further utility is alluded to by lots of graphics of RAF Chinooks operating off their decks. How this dovetails into the cock-up that is Merlin Jungly I don't know.
ReplyDeleteFixed wing strike is something that should be left to the RAF. For the UK outside of Europe that should be a follow on capability. The first responder outside of Europe when it comes to strike should be the RN firing cruise missiles (whether TLAM or SCALP-N or both or whatever) fired from destroyers and SSNs. Yet T45 goes to sea without strike length cells. Astute, though bigger than current build USN SSN, goes to sea without the latter's VLS. For the ticket price of 6 F35 the UK could have bought enough cruise missiles to fill every sea going hull's VLS silo. Instead we are scheduled to buy 48 F35 to fire short range cruise missiles (Storm Shadow) from carriers that will have cost as much as 6 Astutes.
I will confess when CVF was announced I was excited. i was hoping they would build on the work done by the Invincibles and would be a real asset. Now I think the project is just a farce. I would now prefer 36 escorts (1:2 destroyer:frigate ratio) and 12 SSNs (I think sometimes 16, sometimes 8 SSK and 12 SSN.) (As long as they were equipped with VLS as I said above.)
Given that this blog and many of its commenters seem to think that USN is desperate to ditch the F35C, and also that the C variant has major issues that the other variants don't have, aren't you all forgetting the risk element attaching to the air wing here? Fact is, if the USN delays or abandons the C variant, that variant won't happen. (Admittedly, if the B variant doesn't happen, then the UK is totally up the creek as there is no alternative STOVL fighter but at least the dreaded Amos is fully behind the B variant for USMC.) You need to look at what QEC are replacing and the capability we will gain from F35B and helo equipped carriers of this size, by far the largest we have ever operated. They will be superb.
ReplyDeleteTthe Super Hornet can take off with extra gas, boms and missiles in les of 1000 Ft. With 20% more powerfull EPE engines could do it in less. No problem to jump from that Ski ramp.
Deletethose EPE engines aren't on an airplane, as are most of the ASH's capabilities.
DeleteThe Rafale is STOBAR too...Ok with less than his 13 tons of load, but, with a combination of one rafale in refueler mod and the others low in fuel but full in bombs, you could almost reach the load of the CATOBAR I think... Same business for F-18 but, please, forget the photoshop Sea Gripen... If LM has problems, with his budget, a land based aircraft to Carriers, How do you think Saab will do that with NO EXPERIENCE ?
ReplyDeleteMost Saab fans assume that anything Saab does will be perfect and assume that the "Sea Gripen" will be fully funded and flying off a carrier in 2020.
DeleteFor the Rafale Fans (not me)... look what I found...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NaC6zREymY
The decision to build in the UK was made as not doing so would of resulted in numerous shipyard closures in areas with already high unemployment, it's cheaper to spend more on the project and keep people in a job than build it abroad and support those workers and their families out of work.
ReplyDeleteyou got it.
DeleteThe UK is desperate to protect the last remaining shipyards in the UK.