Thomas,
Thanks for coming back. Taking your points one at a time:
1. Putting coatings down on flight decks can be surprisingly difficult to achieve reliably. The RN, the USN and many other navies have had experience of coatings lifting. It's easy to blame the people doing the job, and on occasions it's the right thing to do. Sometime's it's 'the unforeseen' or just bad luck. My guess (and that's all it is) is that QE may have had a bit of all three. I'd guess that it's the Camrex that has caused the issue, rather than the newer Thermion - but I stand ready to be corrected.
2. Noise. All I can say is that unless there is some form of new mechanism causing an increase in noise intensity the F-35B noise signature was pretty well characterised by the end of initial flight trials. Incidentally, the signature is far better understood than the Harrier's ever was. I stand by my assessment that it shouldn't present an insuperable problem, as long as decent hearing protection is provided. The measured noise levels during VLs and STOs were higher than the Harrier's, but certainly not 'off the scale'. The highest F-35 noise levels we found were those encountered by deck crews close to the F-35C during catapult launches. As far as hearing protection goes, I cleared the RN's first use of Active Noise Reduction (ANR) aircrew equipment on the Harrier T8, where we stumbled across very high noise levels in the rear cockpit. It's fair to say that the RN's understanding of the potential for noise related damage to hearing was about as good as anyone else's in the 90s, which wasn't very good at all. The kit I wore on flight decks in the 80s was frankly poor, and anyone who cared about their hearing did their best to source a USN flight deck headset once they got across the pond. (I got my USN headset in exchange for a No. 8 shirt, which the USN guys coveted greatly). By 2002, when I joined the F-35 programme, hearing protection was a MAJOR issue not only for the UK but also for the USN, as their bill for paying compensation to ex USN flight deck personnel started to go stratospheric. As I mentioned earlier, the UK's decision to comply with the EU's Directive 2003/10/EC on noise exposure was a real challenge, which gave the problem even higher visibility.
The teams were looking at just about anything that could help, including (but not limited to) 'deep in ear plugs' (the 'wet snail'), ANR, and more effective ear cups. Once you'd exhausted that, they were looking at noise transmission through the skull, and I believe people were looking at some form of fully enclosed helmet, a little like the ones used by firefighters these days. One problem was that if you sealed the deck crews off from all external noise, it made any sort of verbal comms a bit of a challenge - it would also rob them of useful audio cues for when something bad happened on the deck - such as loud bangs or grinding metal. I'd be interested to learn what solution the RN has come up with for flight deck comms - the 'mag loop' systems we were using were really not fit for service.
As ever, working a flight deck can throw up new and unexpected challenges. If there's ONE thing I have confidence in, it's the ingenuity and good sense of the Fleet Air Arm, which has overcome these challenges for many years. it's a fine tradition, and I think it will win through again this time.
Best regards as ever to all our great new, young, flight deck crews,
Engines