Future Carrier (Including Costs)

[Finningley Boy]

During the reign of the Audacious Class Carriers, Ark Royal and Eagle, all the Tactical fixed-wing stuff relied on Tanking, both Sea Vixen and Scimitar could Buddy Buddy refuel and the mark 1 Buccaneers relied on a retained Flight of Scimitars to keep them going over s sufficient range from the carrier. I understand the reason being so that the carrier could stand off as far away as possible, especially if the Scimitar/Buccaneer was carrying a Free Fall/ Toss Nuclear Explosive Device. This process lost out in an argument with the R.A.F. who maintained even once the TSR2/F111 future had been abandoned that they could still reach anywhere in the Globe!

Personally, I think it was a poor day for U.K. Defence Policy, if we purport today as then to have a Global air strike function we're best off not trying to force an argument between the F.A.A. and the R.A.F. as to who should have sole responsibility, the carrier has its moments and sometimes its more convenient to deploy a land-based squadron, quickly.

FB

[Courtney Mil]

WEBFoot. If you insist on keeping this ridiculous line of reasoning going, please stop using the "I know something you don't know" line. Seen it twice from you recently.

I recently heard a couple of interesting rumours from people in the know, but to avoid another circular argument (and to protect my anonymity) I will not repeat them

Either state your case or keep it to yourself. If you cannot provide evidence to support your rather tired argument, then just leave it.

[Rhymenoceros]

Originally Posted by WE Branch Fanatic:
From what I have heard, building a cadre of pilots for F35B (including ramping up numbers) is proving to be a bit of an issue for the RN.

From what I have heard, there are the best part of a dozen F18 qualified RN FW aviators, with another group set to join them in the coming 12 months. The first RN pilot has also started on the F35 OCU at Eglin AFB. With those flying at Yeovilton, Culdrose, Valley etc also in the mix in the future, I think the RN FW cadre is looking pretty healthy.....

[WE Branch Fanatic]

But we cannot send everyone Stateside until F35B is ready and landing on a RN deck can we?

In any case, that does not deal with the issue of skills amongst future CVF personnel. We need some jets on deck.

[david parry]

Think these days have long gone ,and will never be repeated,anytime soon on the new carrier QUOTE GP ..On descending out of cloud,this was the mighty Eagle and i was expected to land on her. When we landed ,i picked my face out of the instruments in front. From that day on,i have always considered the fully worked up aircrew/deck party of a ROYAL NAVY carrier as the most professional military operations that i have ever witnessed, in 36 years RAF service

[glojo]

Originally Posted by Rhymenoceros

From what I have heard, there are the best part of a dozen F18 qualified RN FW aviators, with another group set to join them in the coming 12 months. The first RN pilot has also started on the F35 OCU at Eglin AFB. With those flying at Yeovilton, Culdrose, Valley etc also in the mix in the future, I think the RN FW cadre is looking pretty healthy.....

Excellent point

I stand to be corrected but I understand that some Royal Navy pilots might be taking a step back in time and be doing ALL their training in the USA. By that I mean learning to fly an aircraft and then going on to honing the required skills for military flying. We have an EXCELLENT thread that talks about this but the aircraft had a radial engine and were mostly bi-planes.

Not only are our officers learning their trade in a country that struggles to speak English, we are also lucky enough to have British pilots flying from the Charles De Gaulle. I just hope our pilots remember to celebrate Trafalgar Day

We are playing big boy games with the budget of a school boy's tuck money, putting a pint of oil into an empty fifty gallon oil drum is never going to impress anyone.

Do we seriously believe our country will ever have two operational carriers with sufficient aircraft to have both ships fully combat ready?

We now have a carrier sailing the high seas without a single fixed wing aircraft and that speaks volumes about our attitude toward carrier capability (a badge has been stuck on the funnel of this ship which is supposed to change its role)

When and if our first new carrier puts to sea it will probably not have any type of AEW cover and when this does finally arrive it will be a rotor wing flying machine with the limitations of any helicopter and contrary to what their lordshiops are saying, its beyond horizon sea skimming detection capability must surely be very limited when compared with a 'high flyer'?

We are allegedly putting to sea a ship with second choice fixed wing aircraft, second choice AEW capability and absolutely no way of embarking any type of tanking aircraft and then we will no doubt ask why are we bothering?

[ORAC]

Why is it so important to have AAR for the ship-based F-35 then ?

The F-35B has a combat radius of 450nm on internal fuel. Assume the carrier has to stand-off shore at 200nm to avoid land based anti-ship missiles, such as the C-802, then the effective range against a land based target will be 250nm.

That severely limits the system capability against any land-locked country or large country such as Iraq, Libya or Afghanistan - to name only the last 3 in which we have conducted operations.

And that ignores the advantages in both time and numbers in being able to to airborne alert as opposed to GCAS etc.

[eaglemmoomin]

Are you sure? Thats why we are spending billions of pounds on big transatlantic capable air tankers for the RAF. I mean AAR or proper air tankers?

The F35 may or may not get buddy tanks refuelling later down the road anyway.

Can I ask why people get so upset about us using helicopter based AEW. If I recall the Merlin is more powerful and can stay up longer than the SeaKing so the range should be better and the ceiling is what 12,000 ft to 15,000ft is'nt it. I don't see why the hysteria about we must have fixed wing AEW.

Chopper based AEW seems to be good enough for fleet defence and for country based stuff we have what 7 odd AWACS?

[ORAC]

Don't think of tankers just as range extenders, think of them as force multipliers.

If I have a CAP 1 hour from base with 1 hour on task and a 1 hour turn, then 8 aircraft are required to maintain a pair on station. But if I have a tanker allowing the TOT to be extended to 3 hours, then I only need 4, halving the required force or doubling the number on CAP.

The proximity of the carrier means aircraft can be rapidly rearmed once fired out, but even if flown from a remote base the tankers provide a massive boost in capability. Which is why the carrier based assets off the coast of Pakistan for Afghanistan Ops were supported by Oman based tankers and why the RAF in Bahrain supported USN FJ flying up from the Indian Ocean in GW1.

[ORAC]

Ref AEW.

The higher you go the further the radar horizon. As a minimum I'd want the AEW at FL250, ideally FL350+.

The speed of a helo severely limits it's use/flexibility. It can't be used to accompany a CAMAO and can't be rapidly moved to face a new threat axis. it's also very vulnerable as it can't retrograde out of range if targeted.

it's better than nothing, but nobody would use rotary if fixed wing was an option.

[LowObservable]

Once again - there is no fundamental reason why fitting the A with the refuelling probe should be expensive, since the hardware and the great majority of the clearance work can be ported directly from the B and C. (The B's up-and-away characteristics will not be much different from the A because the aerodynamic differences are small.)

It certainly should cost less than boom tankers. On the other hand, the US may well put a vast price tag on the conversion, or assign it to the Block 12 configuration, while suggesting brightly that the partners might want to junk all those Froggy Airbus things and buy some shiny new KC-46As. Coalition interoperability, don't you know.

After all, it's not as if JSFs will be flyable at all in an operation that the US doesn't support, or that they will necessarily be flyable after the owner sends regrets to an invitation from Washington to join it in a war.

[MSOCS]

LO

Cynic....

[Engines]

LO and others,

I think that Rand were tasked to do a study into USAF tanker configuration options - worth looking for.

I believe the conclusion was that it would be effective to swap smaller tactical aircraft over to probe and drogue and leave boom refuelling for large aircraft, but I am very prepared to be proved wrong.

What I do know is that replacing the A's boom receptacle with a retractable probe (as per B and C) would save a lot of weight (around 200 pounds plus) and give back a good amount of fuel (over 400 pounds). That's good numbers for a tactical fighter bomber.

Best Regards as ever

Engines

[JSFfan]

Canada already has a requirement for the probe and drogue in their F-35A, I haven't checked on the other partners or Japan and Israel

[Heathrow Harry]

Multipoint Aerial Refueling: A Review and Assessment | RAND

RAND study downloadable from here

[glojo]

We are now getting the F-35B and as far as the Royal Navy is concerned it will not have a capability of refueling this aircraft. If it has to take off and investigate any contact then it has a limited time in the air before the requirement to return to the ship and refuel. This will be the time the carrier will be vulnerable with a limited amount of aircraft and no means of in-flight refueling.

Going back to the original alleged concept of these carriers, I am led to believe a steam option was considered for fitting catapults and this would have been cheaper than the newer EMALS system?? (question)

I keep asking myself where the boilers for these catapults would be located, what would they be used for and how much space they would occupy.

Would these boilers be like an electric kettle where they could be switched on and solely used whenever the ship was at flying stations or would they take time to bring onto line and build up the required amount of steam pressure? I am assuming we are talking about a boiler capable of operating systems requiring a pressure in excess of 300Ib per square inch and capable of launching multiple heavy aircraft over a very short period which would indicate the need of an exceedingly large kettle which in turn would surely take SEVERAL hours to build up the required pressure to go on lineand start launching multiple aircraft??

Once the required pressure is built up then what would happen to the boiler, where would it dump the excess steam or would the ship have other items of machinery capable of using this excess steam? If the answer is yes then would this boiler be used to run machinary when not at flying stations? If the answer is yes, then surely the boiler\boilers would have to have the capability of running machinary, plus launching aircraft and would this mean HUGE boilers capable of pwering the ships engines and if so why have huge gas turbines to power the ship when the boilers are already installed? If this boiler is shut down on completion of flying stations then would that in itself take hours to accomplish and do we then have an extremely large area of 'dead space'?

I ask this because from what I understand the ship has no requirement for any large boiler system and is powered by gas turbines along with other diesel powered items, all the equipment is not designed for any type of steam power? (question)

I was under the impression that the EMALS system was all self contained and had its own diesel powered generators that produced the copious buckets loads of volts that are required to launch and current Naval fixed wing aircraft?

Is there any conventional aircraft carrier in commission anywhere in the World that is not steam powered and has steam powered catapults?

I ask this as it looks like our new carriers were designed from the outset to be powered by gas turbines so what method was PLANNED to launch fixed wing fast jets??

Please read this post as me asking questions as I just feel we are being told any old yarn that will hopefully baffle us with so called science and hopefully the Boffin will put my mind at ease and explain all my silly queries.

[Not_a_boffin]

1. Current plans do not appear to have a carrier-borne AAR asset for F35B, just as was case for SHAR/GR9. However, F35B combat radius is greater than SHAR/GR7 and the PnD fit (compare with SHAR) less likely to incur operational restrictions.

2. AFAIK, the initial consideration of "steam" cats was limited to digging out the old BS6 drawings and comparing them to the available space. The team later got limited access to US C13 cat info to update weight and space provision, but these are subject to ITAR issues (as is EMALS for that matter). I don't know whether specific boiler fits were actually looked at. I'm pretty sure costing was unlikely to have been detailed enough to say whether cheaper than EMALS or not. Likely to have been cheaper only in an initial sense in any case. TL support for steam systems that would be unique in the fleet outside the SSN/SSBN community and requiring a significant number of below decks bodies to support would not have been cheap. Nor would finding them accommodation in the ship.

3. The type of boiler was probably not looked at in detail (see above). I'd bet the ranch no-one ever considered using steam turbines for propulsion. The system would have used steam reservoirs on 2 deck (similar to the US systems) charged off a dieso-fired set of boilers. That also provides a level of persistence / capacitance. Without doing the maths, you're looking at a boiler of a few tens of tons, not a drama in a ship that size. As with all steam systems, in operation you have to keep them warm, so it's unilkely that the plant would ever be shut down completely.

4. The designs have NEVER considered any use of propulsion steam turbine. The early concepts used 4 off WR21 (thank God THAT never got any further)driving electric motors , before they got a bit bigger and ended up as a GT/diesel combo for the generating plant.

5. No - EMALS is not self-contained wrt power generation. It interfaces with the CVN electrical distribution system, via a power controller. This may have been one of the issues with the UK fit. We will distribute shipwide at 11kVA (standard offshore practice). The US distribution system is at a lower kVA rating.

6. Three navies operate steam cats - Brazil, France and the US. All use steam powered carriers.

7. The CVF has always been planned to operate as GT (or primarily GT) powered ship. CTOL operations have always been seen as a "fallback" option in case STOVL failed. It was only when F35B started going seriously wrong that CTOL ops came to the fore. The reasons are complex and include political and technical factors.

On the political side, STOVL was always attractive to the RN as it was what they had become used to. It is also relatively cheap in terms of people and if the RN has failed in the CVF programme, it is in continually being unprepared to pay for and defend the f/w FAA until it was too late. Once FCBA had been captured and became JCA, the RAF liked STOVL because (they thought) it meant they could "replace" the Harrier GR capability and thus maintain squadron badges and aircrew numbers, without going to sea regularly, as would be required if they were the augment to a CTOL CAG. The pollies liked it because Rolls Royce kept a foothold in US military engine supply.

The technical side is a bit more straightforward. The timeline for gestation of the ship design has unfortunately spanned a period where everybody was CERTAIN that steam aboard ships is a bad thing (probably rightly) because it's difficult, hard to maintain, has safety issues and eats manpower. At the same time, the "alternative" EM technology was not sufficiently mature to include in the design without an eye-watering risk allocation (cost!). It is only comparatively recently that the EM technology has been considered low enough risk to be affordable. Unfortunately, by that time the build of the ship has progressed, making fitting it more expensive - although I certainly don't believe the £2Bn figure quoted. If we were at the same stage now as we were in 2002, then I have no doubt whatsoever that a more detailed CTOL option would have been prepared as part of the adaptable design and that it might even have won out in a cost-benefit analysis. However, we're not and it didn't - for whatever reason.

[LowObservable]

One aside to N-a-B's (as usual) informative post: I would not be surprised if the Chinese stay with STOBAR until they have a nuke carrier, at which point they will jump into EMALS.

It was unfortunate timing for CVF. However, the decision to go STOVL at the outset was also influenced by the high degree of optimism around JSF in general, and STOVL in particular, in the formative 2000-04 years. Had the F-35B come in with the performance forecast early in the program it would have been a more robust capability, no SRVL necessary and possibly enough payload for beneficial buddy tanking.

[glojo]

As usual an excellent post which answers lots of questions and on the Centaur they would flash up the senior boiler room whenever the ship went to flying stations although it could be suggested that this extra oommphh also helped to get a few extra miles per hour. Are you convinced a boiler of that weight would suffice? (polite question)

As you rightly point out ALL conventional carriers have steam catapults but these are fed off of either huge diesel fired boilers or nuclear felled units.

My comment about EMALS being self contained was based on what you had previously discussed but it could well be me misunderstanding what you were saying. Having large generators low down in the ship makes far, far mores sense and something I had always thought would have been the better option.

I agree that it looks like the government was ALWAYS leaning toward a STOVL aircraft which always meant no decent AWAC, no refelling capability, no COD and a reliance on a submarine escort for a decent ASW shield??

Could it be that there was no real understanding of carrier capability or were those with the knowledge never consulted?

I accept we can say we have no money and cannot afford this capital ship but that is a separate argument. If we want carriers then should we have premiership players and not something out of the Conference league. It is a half hearted pot mess that has a short shelf life!! What will replace this latest STOVL aircraft?

Can this ship ever operate without shore based air support? (polite question)

[JSFfan]

from what I have seen posted about the place, the forces always wanted STOVL, it was a knee-jerk political "uk strong" that swapped to EMALS, till the realisation that it doesn't fit the UK CONOPS and the forces got their way, the rest is just face saving