New RN Carrier confirmed

Fratton Fred

This means a lot to my home town, there was a real feeling this would not go ahead and that the navy would close Portsmouth Dockyard.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6914788.stm

These will be bigger than the French carrier and a bit smaller than the JFK class US carrier.

OS119

thank Christ!

with any luck Dave 'B' will get binned and CVF will get a CATOBAR system for Dave 'C' and E-2 - it'll be cheaper and better.

mike65

Huge undertaking for the MOD given the size of the total military spend in the UK at the moment. They'll make the current carriers look puny.



4 months back

Mike.

OS119

mike65 wrote:

Huge undertaking for the MOD given the size of the total military spend in the UK at the moment. They'll make the current carriers look puny.

Mike.

£3.8 billion looks a lot of money, but given that the UK defence budget in 2007 is £33billion, and the carriers won't be service till 2014 and 2016 respectively, and that the big money will probably be spent over 5 years or so, £3.8b out of maybe 5 x£40b, it suddenly no longer looks like a big sum.

steel is cheap and air is free, big ships only cost more money than small ships because of the cost of crewing them.

the MRV the INS wants to buy is going to cost 90m Euro at about 5,000tons, yet HMS Ocean, a 21,000ton LHD cost just £150m - 185m (?)Euro, four+ times the ship for twice the price.

Steyr

You lucky b***ards! Lovely vessels!:)

Fratton Fred

OS119 wrote:

thank Christ!

with any luck Dave 'B' will get binned and CVF will get a CATOBAR system for Dave 'C' and E-2 - it'll be cheaper and better.

Not sure who Dave is:o but Is there that much difference in the aircraft? I know they are developing a VTOL version of the JSF, would that not be the best solution and therefore not require a catapult?

Fratton Fred

OS119 wrote:

£3.8 billion looks a lot of money, but given that the UK defence budget in 2007 is £33billion, and the carriers won't be service till 2014 and 2016 respectively, and that the big money will probably be spent over 5 years or so, £3.8b out of maybe 5 x£40b, it suddenly no longer looks like a big sum.

but you overlook the fact these are being built by BAe systems, so they will go at least 50% over budget and won't be available until 2018!

OS119

Fratton Fred wrote:

Not sure who Dave is:o but Is there that much difference in the aircraft? I know they are developing a VTOL version of the JSF, would that not be the best solution and therefore not require a catapult?

'Dave' was a piss-take name given to JSF because there was so much faffing around over what to call it, the US eventually settled for 'LightningII' after the P-38 of WW2, but 'Dave' has reached cult status within the British military where we wanted to call the RAF version 'Fury' and the RN version 'Sea Fury'. 'Fury/Sea Fury' fits much better into British aviation than 'LightningII', the Fury's were a multi-role aircraft whereas the English Electric Lightning - which only retired from RAF service in the mid-1980's -was a pure fighter/interceptor.

the V/STOL version, Dave 'B' is much more problematical than either the 'A' version - the standard USAF version, or Dave 'C' the USN Catapult-launched version, it weighs more, its infinately more complicated, its going to be more expensive and its payload/range is going to be significantly less than both the 'A' and 'C' version. the CVF are already going to 'fitted for, but not with' CATOBAR systems, and the process is still at a sufficiently early stage for the relatively small increace in flight deck size required for Dave 'C' to be written into the architecture instead of Dave 'B'. the down side is obviously that you won't be able to operate a 'Joint Force Dave' as the RAF and RN currently do with the Harrier force where either service can provide both land-based and sea-based units, and that a Dave 'B' component within the RAF's order would become unsustainable therefore removing the uber-rough field capability that Harrier and Dave 'B' currently/will provide. on the other hand Typhoon has an incredibly short take off run even with a heavy load and will replace Harrier in Afghan operations in 2008 in the CAS role anyway.

one could therefore suggest that if Typhoon can replicate Harriers rough/short field capability, why go for Dave 'B' in the first place?

most of this is out of the RAF/RN's hands anyway, there is real oposition to Dave'B' within the US Military because of its cost/performance problems and it probably only has a 50/50 chance of making it to production, if they decide not to buy the 'B' version then its finished regardless of what the RAF/RN want.

Fratton Fred

a simple "No, it's crap" would have done:D

That was very informative, thanks for that.