UK MOD in a muddle over F-35C

An Astute stealth submarine will always be part of a QE carrier battle group, they just don't publicly advertise it to adversaries as their deployments are always kept secret !

I'm waiting for the mythical sub ARF of a hovering F-35B as noted in a fantasy post elsewhere in this forum. Meanwhile...

HMS Queen Elizabeth, UK F-35Bs first week, Westlant19 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvEc2qER3Do

Some PICS I had not seen before at this URL: https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/galler ... -f-3287640

ONE would think a PLYMOUTH nob would know that RN comes before RAF ALWAYS but hey this is the age of IGNORANCE.

https://i2-prod.cornwalllive.com/incomi ... ldrose.jpg

& a cartoon JPG funni via e-mail....

Wish they'd get on with it... so we can see some SRVL videos...

An Astute stealth submarine will always be part of a QE carrier battle group, they just don't publicly advertise it to adversaries as their deployments are always kept secret !

Sure. But there's nothing preventing the use of Astute-class submarines for also being used as opponent/red/aggressors for training/simulation against a QE carrier battle group, is it?

Maybe I've just missed them. This apparently was from 2018. Spaz shirley must have posted this one already:



Here's da URL: https://youtu.be/jP0rUkDz_Fg

Boring boring boring...

Need one after the other... or bringing back weps. Something more dramatic. <sigh> The F-35B is just so boring(*). At least it's NOT Boing.

(*) It makes the near-impossible seem so effortless.

An Astute stealth submarine will always be part of a QE carrier battle group, they just don't publicly advertise it to adversaries as their deployments are always kept secret !

Sure. But there's nothing preventing the use of Astute-class submarines for also being used as opponent/red/aggressors for training/simulation against a QE carrier battle group, is it?

Nothing at all but such results would remain classified. I was just pointing out that the QE battle group would be potent all round with the carrier backed up by air defense destroyers and anti-submarine frigates as well as a stealth submarine. Rotate it with the second carrier every six months and you could lay siege to someone with F-35B all year round !

STEPhan the Wonder When: what has given the idea that 'all of a sudden' SRVLs will be everywhere? Methinks you need to read and ponder the SRVL thread. It is not yet a given until proven that SRVL will be carried out by sundries & all others.

F-35B UK SRVL info - Updated when new/old info available
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=20304&p=230592&hilit=SRVL#p230592

SecondaryFRED: F-35 the QE and SRVL BOLTERS
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29798&p=320457&hilit=SRVL#p320457

Thanks for the links Spaz. Will go submerge myself in SRVL goodness.

I just thought the SRVL was going to be the "primary" means of recovering aircraft on HMS QE, and thought they'd be working on operationally validating the concept by now.

Vice Admiral Jerry Kyd On Progress Of HMS Queen Elizabeth VIDEO (at my end almost impossible to watch, too slow)

https://www.forces.net/video?videoId=6095829830001

VIDEO: https://ipx.bcove.me?url=https%3A%2F%2F ... 5829830001

Turn the resolution down using the cog icon as 1080 is the initial setting.

Thanks - I could not even get to that stage and then ran out of time to only hear the opening sentence. Meanwhile the NBN you've perhaps heard me whine about (National Broadband Network in Australia) is delayed again in my area to be available at the end of this December. This date is now two years delayed from initial promise. Perhaps that is irrelevant but it indicates the problems I have here with being on the internet albeit with ADSL2 - which generally is good enough.

This is a rehash of the history of CVF and F-35B to F-35C to F-35B again with some errors of 'fact' in my estimation so far. I believe the authors at SaveTheRoyalNavy are fish heads (surface navy) so perhaps we can allow leeway sometimes.

Cats, traps and claptrap. Why the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carriers operate VSTOL aircraft
19 Oct 2019 SaveTheRoyalNavy

"There is a consistently held view that the Royal Navy was mistaken when it chose to adopt Vertical/Short Take-Off and Landing (VSTOL) aircraft carriers. In this long read we look at the convoluted history of the issue and review the arguments both for and against.

Background
During the development of the QEC aircraft carriers, various configurations and aircraft options were considered (see previous article) https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/develo ... n-history/ but the STOVL B variant of the Joint Strike Fighter was formally recommended by the navy in September 2002 and approved in July 2006. From the outset the design was specified as ‘adaptable’, should it be decided to reconfigure the ship as a conventional carrier in future. Work on STVOL carriers proceeded until 2010 when the coalition government made the announcement that the QEC would instead be configured for Catapult Assisted Take-Off and Barrier Arrested Recovery (CATOBAR colloquially known as ‘cats and traps’). The C variant of the F-35 would be purchased and the UK would be back in the conventional carrier business (which they had effectively pioneered but were shut out of in 1966 with the decision not to build the CVA-01 carriers).

The Prime Minister saw the main advantage of the change as cementing relations with the US and France as the RN’s carriers would be fully ‘interoperable’ [not true with CdeG] with the conventional carriers of our key allies. Most in the navy and many commentators (including this writer) initially backed the decision as it offered a significant uplift in capability and was an apparent bright spot amongst the carnage of the 2010 defence review. Both carriers would be completed (The ACA sensibly locked the MoD into a contract for the 2 ships that was too expensive to cancel on the whims of political or financial expediency) but one would be ‘held in extended readiness’. In practice, this meant one would be put into mothballs and possibly sold, but there were hopes this decision could be overturned in time as finances improved.

An 18-month study into converting HMS Prince of Wales to CATOBAR began but it rapidly uncovered serious cost implications and delays that the changes would entail. Alterations and new equipment required were estimated at £886 Million per ship in November 2010 but by February 2012 the figure was £2 Billion and rising. Perhaps even more intolerable was the realisation that the conversion work would have added another 3 years to the construction time. Purchasing the F-35C would leave HMS Queen Elizabeth unable to operate any fixed-wing aircraft until she was replaced by the second carrier around 2023. Something had to be done.

The U-turn on the U-turn
On 10 May 2012, the Defence Secretary Philip Hammond announced that the government had decided “not to proceed with the cats and traps conversion, but to complete both carriers in the STOVL configuration.” This was painfully embarrassing for the Tories who had loudly blamed Labour for making the wrong initial choice. During the whole episode no one had covered themselves in glory, the navy, the civil servants and politicians had been deceived by a conspiracy of optimism as they over-reached for a capability that in reality was beyond the means of the inadequate defence budget. To be fair to Hammond, although part of a government responsible for brutal cuts to defence, at least he had faced up to a thorny problem that he could easily have left to fester, only to be faced by one of his successors.

Research by the National Audit Office reveals an exceptionally lax assessment had been done of the true cost of CATOBAR conversion in 2010. Part of the problem was the ‘adaptable carrier’ just had some empty spaces that could theoretically be used to take CATOBAR equipment but no detailed design work had ever been done. The specifics of the commercial contract are not public but it is unclear just how mature the CATOBAR elements were supposed be. There is some suggestion the MoD had effectively paid for a ‘feature’ that the ACA had ignored, once STVOL configuration had be decided on. [then discussion of cost of EMALS & CVF conversion & at the time the viability of the F-35B on probation]…

...Perhaps more significant than the cost of fitting EMALS and changes to the ship are the long term costs of maintaining conventional carrier aircraft capability. CATOBAR operations require a lot more trained personnel on the flight deck who have skills that can perish quickly. For F-35C pilots, making safe arrested landings is far more demanding than the highly automated, push-button vertical landing of the F-35B. The skill to effect a ‘controlled crash’ of carrier deck landing requires constant practice and training. UK has a constrained number of both fast jet pilots and aircraft, with just one carrier likely to available most of the time, there would be a struggle to generate and maintain sufficient qualified personnel. The French Navy has managed to pull this off and typically deploys up to 24 Rafale M on its single carrier. The Marine Nationale, however, owns its jets and its aircrew are entirely focussed on carrier operations, whereas the UK Lighting Force has a dual role and must also conduct land-based operations.

The case for CATOBAR [discussion of differences between F-35B & F-35C & addition of fuxedwung AEW aircraft]…

...The first tentative F-35B SRVL trials were successfully conducted last year but there are still questions about the safety of the manoeuvre in anything but the most benign weather conditions.…

…EMALS maladies…
...Unfortunately, although many EMALS launches have been conducted, it is fatally unreliable [I believe this is NOT CORRECT with remedies in place now] and in 2017 the USN admitted the system was failing every 400 launches. (The original specification was for a maximum of one failure per 4,100 launches.) The Ford would only have a 7% chance of successfully completing a typical four-day operational period. To compound the problem, when the system fails, all four catapults are out of action, unlike in a steam system where the other 3 cats usually remain working and the carrier can continue operations.

The USN says EMALS reliability is improving but will not provide details as the Ford is increasingly mired in technical problems and is a very long way from being able to sustain combat operations. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but the UK has clearly dodged a bullet by not becoming dependent on EMALS. The Ford’s ongoing woes should be cause for concern to all US allies but does serve to highlight UK success in delivering its carriers.

Plan B makes sense
Nearly a decade on from the U-turn the first UK aircraft are flying from HMS Queen Elizabeth for the first time. QEC-based Carrier-Enabled Power Projection (CEPP) capability is a vast step up from the CVS/Harrier and QE is going to be ready to deploy operationally in less than two years. Even having selected the ‘budget’ VSTOL carrier option, generating CEPP is still a major overhead for the defence budget. There are still questions about whether the UK will able to afford to maximise the ship’s potential, particularly in terms of aircraft numbers. Conventional carrier/s would be pushing the budget to breaking point and creating more complex manning and training headaches.

Cameron made another U-turn in 2014 and announced that both aircraft carriers would enter service after all and HMS Prince of Wales is currently on sea trials beginning her journey towards becoming operational. Two carriers offer almost continuous carrier availability whereas the CATOBAR carrier would have been be a part-time capability. The officially stated cost of running the STVOL second carrier is just £70M per year (although this seems like a highly optimistic estimate).

From an operational perspective the F-35B does have a few advantages over the C. As their launch and recovery requires less preparation on the ship, the B can sustain higher sortie rates than the C, especially important when aircraft numbers are limited. Aircraft can be launched and recovered in higher sea states and wind conditions and do not need long smooth runways to land ashore. Theoretically, the B could be dispersed to austere landing sites or could land on other ships in an emergency if the carrier was damaged.

Those that causally [casually]disparage the RNs carriers, bemoan the ski ramp and argue for CATOBAR need to bear in mind the limitations of the defence budget and especially the manpower struggles of the armed forces....

...In an ideal world where defence spending was north of 3% of GDP and manpower was abundant the RN would be commissioning two CATOBAR carriers that would routinely carry 36 F-35Cs. We cannot indulge champagne tastes on a beer budget – the VSTOL Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers are still enormously powerful while more in keeping with the limited resources available. Whether we may come to regret their slightly lesser capabilities in a future conflict should be discussed in the wider context of Britain’s defence spending priorities."

Graphic: "One of the possible configurations for the CATOBAR QEC aircraft carriers featured twin catapults launching over the bow." https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/wp-con ... ATOBAR.jpg

Source: https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/cats-t ... -aircraft/

The biggest advantage of the STOVL over CATOBAR is the availabilty of deckspace. Look at the "undisturbed" area of the flight deck for the CATOBAR above compared to that of the STOVL layout. That means much simple flight deck ops and the potential for more operational aircraft.

Take out the cats on a CATOBAR and that's a mission kill for catobar fighters. Although in reality, no one ever close enough to take out anything from a CVBG,

Will need to take out the entire STOBAR to prevent flight ops. An F-35B can even VTO if shoved.