PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - India buys 36 COTS Rafales
View Single Post
Old 14th Apr 2015, 11:58
  #26 (permalink)  
Engines
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: UK
Posts: 799
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Just to help things along:

There have been a number of (quite expensive) studies carried out over around 15 years into adapting Typhoon for carrier ops. Some were funded by the Uk MoD, with the QEC as the possible target carrier. These studies involved a substantial amount of simulator studies. I am sure that further studies were carried out to back up BAe's effort to pitch a 'Sea Typhoon' to India.

The basic issue, which the studies revealed, is that the aircraft would need a new centre section and aft end, plus an all new landing gear and wing to handle arresting loads, plus some fancy and quite scary ideas about flying techniques in the last phase of a landing, with some fancy aerodynamic tweaks to be tested. Launch was assumed to be via a ramp assisted STO, which would be unable to launch the aircraft at anything near MTOGW i.e. with full weapons and fuel. Redesigning the aircraft for a cat launch would be highly problematic, especially with that intake scooping up lots of lovely hot steam. In short, the Typhoon as it stands is a non-starter as a naval aircraft, IMHO.

My take, for what it's worth (which honestly isn't much) is that this record of extended discussion of a marinised Typhoon only goes to show how far the UK's general level of fixed wing naval aviation engineering knowledge has fallen. It's generally not the fault of today's engineers and pilots, it's more down to lack of opportunity it to practice the discipline for real.

Hope this helps a little

Engines
Engines is offline