06 Mar 2017, 23:19
14 Mar 2017, 22:02
Navy’s new stealth fighters debut at Culdrose
14 Mar 2017 RN Navy News
"The Navy’s first ‘stealth fighter squadron’ is in operation on UK soil. Four life-size models of the F-35 Lightning II – built from fibre glass – are in use on the replica flight deck [mostly called 'dummy deck'] at RNAS Culdrose so aircraft handlers from HMS Queen Elizabeth can get used to the size and weight when they start working with the real thing next year....
...Handlers can also practise extracting injured pilots out of the cockpit thanks to the four models, built by Cornish firm Gateguards (UK).
The replicas are fitted with internal water tanks which allow handlers to cope with weights between 14 and 25 tonnes, simulating the various payloads the new fighter can carry.
“They are really life-like, impressive and above all they give a sense of realism to the training here,” said CPO(AH) Paul Ranson. “It’s good to get people getting used to moving them around the deck, alongside Harriers running with all the noise and the smell. And for the fire-fighters, there’s the challenge of lifting a 16-stone dummy [224 lbs] from the cockpit.”..."Photo: https://navynews.co.uk/assets/upload/fi ... 14ax-2.jpg "Pictures: PO(Phot) Paul A’Barrow, RNAS Culdrose"
Source: https://navynews.co.uk/archive/news/item/16025
15 Mar 2017, 03:39
spazsinbad wrote:AAHHH... THE DUMMY DECK. Do the YANKS (youse know whom I MEAN) have a similar shore based training deck?
15 Mar 2017, 04:48
16 Mar 2017, 17:40
Aircraft carrier delay warning from spending watchdog
16 Mar 2017 Jonathan Beale
"Technical issues and personnel shortages could delay the deployment of the Royal Navy's new aircraft carriers, the spending watchdog has warned. HMS Queen Elizabeth and Prince Of Wales will provide the Navy with a capacity it will have been without for a decade. But the National Audit Office says the project is entering a "critical phase", with many risks to manage.
The Ministry of Defence acknowledged "challenges" but said it was committed to being fully operational by 2026....
...The NAO said technical problems means sea trials for the first carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, will not now take place until the summer - three months later than planned. It added that further technical issues could mean the carrier will not be operational by 2020, as has been promised by the MoD.
Among the other areas mentioned by the NAO were:
◾Personnel issues, in particular a shortage of engineers for both warships. The report says while the number of pilots needed is "just sufficient" there could be problems if personnel left the forces. Pilots for the new F-35B jets need four years fast jet training with an additional nine-month carrier conversion course, meaning they will not be easy to replace...
...In a statement, the Ministry of Defence said it had the personnel needed for HMS Queen Elizabeth and plans for manning HMS Prince of Wales were "advanced".
A spokesman added: "With sea trials expected to start in the summer, we recognise that there are challenges ahead and remain committed to delivering the full range of joint F-35 and carrier operations by 2026.""
NAO Report: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploa ... Strike.pdf (0.4Mb)
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-39286007
page 27 “...Training pilots to fly the Lightning II jets requires eight to nine months of specialist training, in addition to four years of general fast-jet pilot training....” [Comptroller and Auditor General, Military Flying Training, Session 2015-16, HC 81, National Audit Office, June 2015.]
16 Mar 2017, 23:35
RAIN & all - could not have a better DUMMY DECK simulation guv! 
17 Mar 2017, 00:46
17 Mar 2017, 01:06
20 Mar 2017, 09:33
Replacing the Invincibles: inside the Royal Navy's controversial £6.2 billion warships
19 Mar 2017 Andrew Hankinson [THIS IS A VERY LONG ARTICLE - BEST READ AT Source]
"...One of the problems with the F-35B is range. An aircraft carrier has to project and possibly wield power when a conventional runway is unavailable. To do that, the carrier needs to position itself so its aircraft can reach a target. "That can be right up the beach or very close in shore if the threat's been reduced," says Kyd. "Or it could be a hundred miles off the coast, flying jets in over the horizon." BAE Systems says the F-35B can fly 900 nautical miles (1,666km) compared to 1,200 (2,222km) for the F-35C, depending on conditions and payload. The planes need to return to the aircraft carrier, so they can only travel half that distance before turning around. The distance Kyd expects them to reach is "about 300 miles-ish" from the carrier.
"Physics just gets in the way," he says. "If you could design an aircraft to do a thousand-mile strike operation that's fantastic, but one of those does not exist at the moment. And so you have to mitigate that by using air-to-air refuellers or bring the ship in closer. Of course, as an operational commander you always want the maximum flexibility possible, but you have to work within the kit that you're provided with. The aircraft is phenomenal, as is the ship. We can move 500 miles a day, and when you're looking at the radius of action of helicopters and the jets, that's a massive, massive area you're controlling and dominating from the aircraft carrier. There's no other military formation that both effects sea control and power projects against the land. Nothing else does it. A carrier-strike group does." (When asked if he would prefer to operate with cats-and-traps planes, Kyd replies: "That's a really good question, and there are pros and cons both ways..."
Maybe refuelling is the answer to the F-35B's range problems. A couple of other limitations of the F-35B are being solved by David Atkinson, a BAE Systems aerospace engineer. Usually based at BAE's test site in Warton, Lancashire, he is at Rosyth Dockyard the first time WIRED speaks to him, and in Washington DC the second. Atkinson is charged with ensuring the F-35Bs operate seamlessly with the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers, and is in the US to discuss its progress towards flight trials on the carriers.
One key element in increasing the capability of the F-35B is the ski-jump ramp, a project Atkinson has been closely involved with. You've probably seen ski-jump ramps on carriers - they are the lip at the end of the flight deck which rises up. They were conceived by a Royal Navy officer in the 70s to increase the payload capacity of the Harrier when launched (they're unnecessary for cats-and-traps carriers). Various exit angles were trialled - the ramp on HMS Invincible was changed at one point - and after being proven it became a global standard for STOVL aircraft.
"It reduces the risk from a mistimed launch," Atkinson says. "When a ship's pitching, that is when the vessel is pointing slightly downwards towards the sea, which isn't great if you are on a flat deck, whereas with a ski jump you've always got a positive upwards trajectory when you leave the ship. It reduces the pilot's workload and gives them more time to diagnose issues. It's a safer option for launching a STOVL aircraft and, from a performance point of view, it means you can launch with more weight from a shorter distance on the ship."
The ski-jump ramp needed to be updated for the F-35B, so a version based on the dimensions of those on the Invincible class was built at the Naval Air Station in Patuxent River in Maryland (where Atkinson was heading after WIRED talked to him). Test flights showed that the F-35B was successful in automatically directing its thrusters when on the ramp. BAE just needed to figure out the ramp's optimal dimensions, which took two years. The new versions are 15 metres longer than the Invincibles', but are the same shape, and are now in place on the two flight decks. No prototypes were needed. "We don't need to with analysis and simulation," Atkinson says.
Next problem. When an F-35B pilot needs to land, the standard procedure would be to fly alongside the ship on the port side, towards its stern, then match the speed of the ship before applying a little lateral thrust to move the plane over the deck where it will land vertically on a designated spot (one of Kyd's "pros" for the F-35B is that there aren't planes coming on to the deck at high speed, so it's safer). However, when landing vertically, the F-35B can't carry much weight, so if the pilot didn't drop the ordnance the plane was carrying during the mission, it may have to drop those munitions in the sea before landing.
The F-35B may carry some very expensive weapons, which the Ministry of Defence would not like dropped in the sea. The potential solution is the Shipborne Rolling Vertical Landing (SRVL), a technique dating from the 70s and researched by the Ministry for use with the Harrier, but never brought into service. The pilot will fly towards the stern of the ship at a low speed while descending, guided by a helmet-mounted display and a stabilised aim point on the ship. The plane will then roll forwards as it lands and apply its brakes. Testing by Atkinson's team in an F-35B simulator at Warton will continue throughout 2017.
"We've been conducting our experiments," he says. "We've identified some things that we wanted to adjust slightly - the point at which the aircraft gets on, the speed that it's going to land at - those kind of things and what the advantages and disadvantages to each of those are. And we've worked with a whole range of test pilots and taken people's opinions and done analysis and shown how much extra fuel is needed if you get on-speed earlier. All of those things are traded, adjusted and adapted until you get to the final solution that is now in the aircraft software, and is the defined end-game. We're at the point where we know what the aircraft is going to be like when we go to the ship."...
...The flight deck on HMS Queen Elizabeth was covered in tents when WIRED visited in September 2016 because a thermal metal coating was being applied by robots to protect it from the heat blast of the jets as they land. (Equipment on the flight deck such as rafts and catwalks are given upgraded heat shielding.) When the standard surface used on current aircraft-carrier flight decks was tested at the BAE lab in Warton it survived for mere seconds.
"It just vanishes," Booth says, "and you've just got a bare deck which then would start rusting away, and worse than that, potentially you get blisters which could get ingested into aircraft."..."
Source: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/navy-que ... th-warship
21 Mar 2017, 10:53
Culdrose trains flight deck teams for future carriers
19 Feb 2015 RN Navy News
"Flight deck teams at Culdrose are training 70 sailors to ensure F-35 jets, and Merlin, Chinook, Apache and Wildcat helicopters are safely marshalled around the Navy’s two new carriers. Fourteen working Harrier jump jets – their engines limited so they don’t take off – give aircraft handlers the experience of the noise, smells and jet blast of a busy deck....
...The school uses a mock-up of an Invincible-class carrier flight deck, with a limiter on the engine keeping the 14 single and twin-seat Harrier rooted to the Cornish tarmac.
The F-35B is longer, wider (10ft greater wingspan) and twice as heavy as the Harrier, but shepherding and directing working jets does give you all the indispensable parts of the carrier experience. The existing ‘dummy deck’ will require rebuilding for the Queen Elizabeths, whose flight decks are more than twice the size of their forerunners.
The school doesn’t need the entire flight deck, but it does need a section recreating – a 140-metre-long section from the aft island to the stern (including one of the ship’s two lifts), and 70 metres across; it’s the width, more than the length, of the new carriers which is likely to catch people out.
The school uses simulators for some of its instruction to teams on small ships, but for the carrier experience you need a heavy dose of reality. “You still need a jet trundling along for that realistic feeling that you are on a flight deck,” said Lt Cdr Dave Dougan, formerly flight deck officer on HMS Illustrious and now in charge of the flight deck school. "Every naval airman comes through here for the experience of moving working jets around, the noise, the weather, the reduced communications."..."
Source; http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-la ... drose-jets
22 Mar 2017, 03:53
27 Mar 2017, 11:35
F-35B the right choice and the only choice for the Royal Navy
13 Jan 2017 Save the Royal Navy
"...A networked aircraft for a networked age
The majority of the critics of the F-35 have limited aviation experience or are retired pilots who flew 3rd or 4th generation aircraft. The F-35 is not just an upgrade on earlier aircraft, but is conceptually quite different, drawing its greatest strength from its situational awareness. The older generation may question its close-range dogfighting capability, but it will be very hard to kill an F-35 when it can see you in any direction at great distances, while itself almost invisible to radar. It can manoeuvre hard, but shouldn’t need to. Early beyond-visual-range missiles were unreliable, so all good fighter pilots believed in having an aircraft and the skill for the dogfights that were inevitable. Radar and missile technology has moved on to the point where the F-35 pilot can reliably expect to engage the enemy from a distance almost every time.
If recent history is a guide, the F-35 will probably spend more time on strike missions than in air-air combat. Its situational awareness, stealth and networking capabilities will make it exceptionally capable and its mere presence will act as a significant deterrent. The perception that F-35B is just an upgraded Harrier is entirely wrong. Vastly superior to the Harrier, its has longer range, is supersonic and can penetrate advanced air defence systems which the Harrier could never have contemplated. Even when only a handful of F-35s are embarked aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth, the RN will have a step-change in capability that can even mitigate for some of the weaknesses in its undersized fleet. Effectively a flying networked ‘data node’, the aircraft can not only fight but share intelligence and vast amounts of sensor data with ships and other aircraft. By buying into a massive international program, the RN will benefit from interoperability with the US and other NATO allies. Its potential will still be being expanded into the 2030s and 40s as new software and weapons are developed...." [Longish article with more at the jump]
TIMELINE PDF: http://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/wp-cont ... line-B.pdf (4.1Mb)
TIMELINE JPG: http://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/wp-cont ... line-B.jpg (0.58Mb)
Source: http://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/f-35b-t ... oyal-navy/
27 Mar 2017, 19:10
29 Mar 2017, 02:49
spazsinbad wrote:600 degrees Celsius is 1112 degrees Fahrenheit, seems arbitrary to make the point that conventional non-skid disappears. Engineer says simulates the jet engine but does not say this is the temp underneath the F-35B. I'll go with previous temps.
29 Mar 2017, 03:12
Story 05 Sep 2013: http://aviationweek.com/blog/f-35b-dt-2 ... s-uss-wasp [still online - praise be - wots happening?]
"...Below, the dark section on the right is the Thermion coating. You can see on the left where Wilson landed with the engine nozzle just over the divider between the Thermion and standard anti-skid -- the the latter a bit toasted...." JPG: http://aviationweek.com/site-files/avia ... b.Full.jpg
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