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Old 28th Oct 2010, 19:04
  #25 (permalink)  
Not_a_boffin
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
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I don't think you can blame the navy for the Global Power Projection concept that resulted from SDR98 (and in actual fact is still supported in the new SDSR). All three services signed up to it and in fact the concept behind it originated back in the early 90's as the Cold War ended.

The idea that "good money is being poured after bad" on the carriers is also a fallacy. If you subscribe to the idea that power projection is required, then naval air is also required, which means carriers. Ark & Lusty cannot be extended much beyond their present OSD, partly because the ships are totally sh@gged but mainly because their futures are inevitably linked to the only aircraft they can fly (the Harrier - F35B cannot operate from CVS). Therefore new ships are required and the fact is that new carriers need to be significantly bigger than the CVS, partly because of the aircraft and partly to ensure the deck has enough room to operate a useful number of aircraft. The sorties required were all supported by campaign-level OA, which drove the rate and therefore the deck park requirement and hence the size of the ship.

At this point it should be pointed out that a conventional carrier (or larger STOVL ship) might not be tied to a single aircraft type - size has a flexibility all of its own - something which is often overlooked. Indeed, the biggest objection to the carriers has always appeared to be based on their size, as opposed to their cost. Should we be paying £5Bn for two CVF? Hell, no - we could and should have got them for around £3.5Bn the pair (assets that will last 50 years and operate at least two generations of aircraft). The reason we didn't get them for that price is largely to be laid at the door of Cyclops, although the actual root cause is the failure to update the long-term costing lines originally generated for the ships circa 1998 when they were 40000 te concept designs costed at £2.7Bn. Is there an alternative - unfortunately not (the spanish and italians must be sweating a bit now Dave B is at risk, the Indians and Chinese on the other hand have no such problems).

Those concept designs were based on fitting aircraft into a ship (ie how many can you fit on the deck and in the hangar), rather than decks designed to generate sorties. Once the more detailed studies began, it quickly became clear that larger ships were needed and at that point, the LTC lines should have been updated. They were not (a MoD MB failing) and in 2003 the result was that when BAE / Thales came back with a price of £3.2bn, panic ensued. Four years was then spent trying to fit the budget cost-effectively (they couldn't). Result, lots of folk wanting to cover their @rses, while cost escalated (nothing ever gets cheaper by deferral). Lord Drayson eventually blackmailed the remaining shipbuilding industry into consolidation (the Maritime Industrial Strategy) through use of the carrier contract as a none-too-subtle blunt instrument at which point it became inevitable that the remaining industry would only sign up with some eye-watering cancellation clauses. Ironically, at this point, Cyclops belatedly realised that his constituency had a vested interest in the ships being built and started being supportive - just in time to pick up the sobriquet "Gordons carriers". In truth, were it not for the fact that they're being assembled in Rosyth, he would not have given 1% of two-thirds of a flying f8ck whether they were built or not, which brings us back to the reason for where we are now.

SDR98 endorsed the carriers (as has SDSR) - it's just that Cyclops never wanted to pay for them and the navy has paid a blood price ever since trying to keep the programme, as there is literally nowhere else to go. Either we have a global navy (and armed force for that matter) capable of doing at least some things alone, or we collapse on home defence in which case OPV, MCMV and SSK for the navy, Tiffy, Sentry and a few tankers for RAF (no need for strike or long-range AT), plus a home defence force for the army. Anything else is to become another nations political fig-leaf, nothing more, nothing less.
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