Originally Posted by
Pontius Navigator
ORAC, your comment 're WEBF is a little wide of the mark. He started this thread 12 years ago. Then he may have been seen as naive and ill informed. Today, after 12 years and the informed comments on this thread and others, he is probably better informed than many defence journalists.
Thanks - or is that damning by faint praise? At least I am better informed than Mrs Moon, and I have never fiddled expenses claims either. Does ORAC have direct experience of everything she posts about? Queen Bee syndrome perhaps?
I am not sure why starting this thread, or inviting learned comments from Not_a_boffin, Engines, orca
et al counts as naive, but there we go. As the initial thread starting post notes, I did indeed first read of the future carrier in the media in the summer of 1995 - I think it was
Flight International. A few months later I read of what was then JAST, with a V/STOL version for the US Marine Corps and the Royal Navy. Therefore the myth that carrier and aircraft were not considered at the same time is total nonsense. At this time the RN was busy in the Adriatic and the Gulf, and often had a carrier deployed with escorts. So the Navy did know something about escorting a carrier.
So why would I regard
this is anything other than total nonsense?
Originally Posted by Melchett01
Rather than considering the carriers as items on their own, they should have been part of a fully integrated project that considered the carrier as the platform, the air assets as the delivery mechanism and the need for protection. If we have have considered these holistically, and I’m not convinced we have in any sense other than accidentally, I’ll be surprised.
The Merlin HM1 was being built at the time, with a role of carrier and frigate/RFA based ASW and ISTAR.
Anyway - through the period of this thread running I have actually been in dark blue, albeit part time. This has led to learning things from people directly involved, such as the chockhead who noted that post Sea Harrier there was less opportunity to have jets on deck and skills were at risk, the Cdr(Air) aboard HMS
Illustrious who made a big point of the whole ship nature of shipborne aviation (she had Harriers from IV Sqn RAF (I think) doing fixed wing work ups at the time), then a little over a year before SDSR 10 having a "state of the Navy" brief from two of the fighting arm Command Warrants, with the one for the Fleet Air Arm stating that the plan to get everyone ready to the new carriers and jets was to embark Harriers aboard
Illustrious and
Ark Royal as often as possible, for longer periods.
More recently I have heard the normal rumours and other things, a lot of which has turned out to be true. I have paid attention to what the Navy has been doing - such as conducting task group deployment (LPD/LPH based - and often using
Ocean for what were really carrier roles) and supplying frigates and destroyers to US or French carrier groups, as well as standing deployments and dealing with Geopolitical events.
Then there is the Whole Force Concept.... Some of us are closer to the things discussed than you might think.
Anyway - this morning HMS
Queen Elizabeth has returned to Portsmouth after another phase of trials, including the first RAS with RFA
Tidespring.