Carrier Aviation = Cheapest

[draken55]

Biggus

You suggested that the demise of LRMPA and the reduction of other capabilities was due to the cost of the new carriers and the F-35 "swallowing up" available funds. I disagreed as I consider that HMG decided it was time to clobber Defence for years of uncontrolled expenditure.

Re the IMF loan. We are increasing our annual contribution by £ 9 Billion, doing so without democratic debate and don't seem to believe the funds are at risk in being loaned to States whose economies are in distress. I don't believe that will go down well with a domestic audience that is being subjected to cuts on the basis that we are heavily in debt. Economists will have some reason but to the Public, how can we afford to lend when we ourselves are still financing current expenditure by borrowing!

[Biggus]

draken55,

I think we'll have to agree to differ. MOD expenditure (especially procurement) certainly needs tightening up, I don't disagree with you there, but a policy of deliberately "clobbering" MOD while the streets of Wootton Bassett are still regularly being lined, and we have just made an unlimited commitment in Libya, would be a very risky and foolhardy thing for any government to undertake if it wants to stay the right side of public opinion - which they invariably do!

[oldgrubber]

Biggus,
The defence budget you mention is the Navy's slice of a small pie to do with as they see fit. The fact that the carriers had already been "budgeted" for by early retirement of vessels, reduced buy of others etc, was conveniently overlooked by the axe wielder and, it seems, all of the light blue naysayers on this thread/forum. You seem to lump the MPA loss into the Navy's area of responsibility rather too conveniently as well, when the other threads point to the Navy grasping the nettle and possibly coming up with the funds for some sort of replacement. The last time I detached to Kinloss the Nimrods had "Royal Air Force" on the side.
All the arguments against carriers are almost rabid in their assertions that carriers have no place in modern warfare and we couldn't "ping" a submarine with our Merlins if the thing was on the surface with the crew sunbathing. It pains me to say it (as an engineer) but the aircrew acually do know a thing or two about finding submarines, and don't forget where a few of your Nimrod guys came from when we cut back on the MK 6 Seakings, so they must be fairly useful?
None of the carriers supporters say that we don't need airbases, that is always the preferred option IF the airbase is;
1/ close
2/ well protected
3/ easy to supply
4/ has it's own accom (sorry couldn't resist)
5/ permanent after the conflict (preferably)
If not then what we say is, a carrier is a damn useful bit of kit in just about every way you can imagine;
1/ Offence (maritime and land support)
2/ Defence (shipping, home shores, dependencies, etc)
3/ Disaster relief (After recent events, need I say more)
4/ Political persuasion (Its worked before, trust me)

We all know about the shifting of Australia to prove CAP and the dropping of a bomb on the Falklands at "any" cost to prove a point, but that, as they say, is history. The rest of the developed world is apparently looking to bigger, more capable navies, with (not surprisingly) aircraft carriers figuring heavily in that build up. Lets at least give ourselves a chance of protecting our interests and our allies.

Cheers now

[Biggus]

oldgrubber,

I'm not saying we shouldn't be buying carriers! Neither did I imply that in any of my posts. However, I am trying to be realistic about the situation we are in. Two carriers plus 100 odd F-35s is going to consume enough of the defence budget such that other things (RN or not) had to go, including MPA, going from 13 odd SSN down to 6-8, 12 DDG down to 6, 20 odd frigates down to ???.

Neither am I interested in an RN/RAF willy waving contest. I'm sure RN Merlins are very capable of pinging submarines, now try and get them to search a large area 200nm ahead of the task force.....

The RN, and defence in general, has made considerable sacrifices to ensure the procurement of 2 carriers and (eventually) the aircraft to fly off them. I'm not saying that is wrong, but I am concerned that the rest of the defence cupboard is looking pretty bare.

While not "bashing" carriers, I will point out flaws in any pro carrier arguements, just as I will point out any other flaws in any other arguements that I read on pprune - in an attempt to make a useful contribution to the overall discussion taking place!

[draken55]

Biggus

Post SDSR we are now planning for one carrier and a much reduced
F-35 buy so I remain puzzled why you think what we might buy in future has already impacted on current capability.

Had Nimrod been on time and within budget we might still have LRMPA. Had Astute been on time and within budget we might have been able to buy in the numbers first planned. Ditto the Type 45, perhaps even Typhoon and many other big ticket items in the MOD Budget across all the Services.

Many argue that protection of the largest possible Typhoon buy was at least one of the reasons why the RAF gave up LRMPA. Typhoon and the supporting multi billion AAR PFI were considered core to the whole case for having an Independent Air Force, LRMPA was not. Not my view I must stress but a quick read of many posts on PPRUNE circa last October suggests it's the belief of many others.

[oldgrubber]

Biggus,
I'm sorry if you interprated my comments as a suggestion that you were "dark blue bashing", that's not what I meant and I apologise.
You do however seem to still infer that if it wasn't for the money being spent on the carriers, that we could "keep" some of our other toys
"The RN, and defence in general, has made considerable sacrifices to ensure the procurement of 2 carriers and (eventually) the aircraft to fly off them. I'm not saying that is wrong, but I am concerned that the rest of the defence cupboard is looking pretty bare."
The reason we lost a valuable (yes I do agree that long range sub hunting is not the Merlin's forte) capability in the Nimrod was not the carrier's fault, or the cuts that the Navy took to fund it (they were after all NAVY cuts). Look to cost overruns, delivery slippage and political shenanigans, and not least, it was a RAF aircraft.
Having read my comments back, I don't accept that I have accused anyone of "willy waving", but like you, I see so much of it going on on this forum that it does often get in the way of sensible debate.

Cheers now

[just another jocky]

Originally Posted by oldgrubber

The rest of the developed world is apparently looking to bigger, more capable navies,

What, all of them?

[oldgrubber]

JaJ,
The list of countries is quite long, but exaggeration to emphasise a point is common practice, even on this forum (sorry, especially on this forum, he he).
However, from memory, without resorting to the interweb.
Got or getting soon.
Carriers:
China
Russia
America
India
France
UK
Brazil (used by Argentina for training)
LPH: (with or without ski ramp)
Spain
UK
Italy
France
Thailand (i think)
Russia
Australia
Japan (the next one planned is an aircraft carrier in all but name)
America
And don't think Argentina would turn down the chance to acquire another conventional flat top if they could.
I've lost interest a bit now but you get the idea!

[DBTW]

Interesting debate with many lists. Talking about the threat of submarines to big ships, can we have a list of all the aircraft carriers sunk by submarines in the last 60 years? There have been quite a few wars in that timescale...

It is worth remembering that all aircraft capable of operating to and from ships are also capable of operating from airfields. The same is not true in reverse. As the carriers seem a key element of the current defence plan for the UK there must be some cost saving associated with buying types which can operate either from ship or shore rather than persisting with some types which are tied to land bases only?

[North Front]

I suspect that this strand will go on an on and on and on.... but I can't resist.

The issue is not that carriers are useful/better than land bases etc etc... if they had no utility then they wouldn't have survived and wouldn't form the backbone of America's power projection capability.

No, the issue is that we are broke and we have to spend our money as effectively as possible. The argument is obfuscated by nonesense claims about Harriers/Ark Royal and inter-service back biting and ill-informed pops at hotel bill etc. but actually comes down the fact that we can't afford a big RAF, big ships or a stupidly oversized army and need to face some hard decisions as to what gives value for money. F35C/QEC would be an awesome capability but "routinely deploy twelve" and the tens rather hundreds that are being bandied round as an eventual buy rather suggest a less than awesome end result. What is the cost per flying hour of Ocean and its escorts/oilers etc for 4 AH64?!!

A true CS capability is worth aiming for and would be entirely coherent with our foreign policy - we won't get it by rubbishing the other services with ill-informed arguments. Our leaders need to get at the government and readdress SDSR.

....oh, and why does a maritime nation need an army that is three times the size of its navy/air force?

[glad rag]

aircrew acually do know a thing or two about finding submarines

Not always is seems and not when it counted either.

Chinese Sub Outfoxes U.S. Fleet :: International News :: Hyscience

4 years ago, who do you think has improved their capabilities in that time, the Chinese or yanks??

[glad rag]

@Draken

Of course the argument is that we are broke and need to cut our cloth to reduce our National Debt. If that's really the case, how on earth has HMG now found Billions more to lend to the IMF to help other Nations sort out their economies?

BBC News - UK raises annual payment to IMF by £9bn

Indeed, telling that none of the armchair admirals etc can actually answer that one.

"Things" are bad, a lot more than they are letting on.

[Airborne Aircrew]

....oh, and why does a maritime nation need an army that is three times the size of its navy/air force?

Perhaps because, in the end, you rarely win any conflict without having put boots on the ground...

[Modern Elmo]

Said Rear Admiral Bumblower in 1941:

The issue is not that battleships are useful/better than aeroplanes, submarines etc etc... if they had no utility then they wouldn't have survived and wouldn't form the backbone of Britain's power projection capability.

[Capt P U G Wash]

Maths in Public....

Let’s test this cheaper argument with a few facts

Last year the cost of the UK Carriers to the MoD was about £340M (so approximately £1M per day)

That does not include the cost of the aircraft or the weapons, so that can be discounted from a comparison.

It also does not include the cost of the Harrier base that is still required for home based training (i.e Cottesmore as was). There is no charge for the use of GdC, so that can be discounted also.

It also does not include the cost of the RFA or other support ships – I think we can safely assume that these will cost as least as much as a few Italian hotel rooms and some MT track miles for resupply – I can imagine that it would probably be a lot more.

So assuming that this comparison is simply between the additional cost of the ship, versus the cost of additional hours the maths is as follows:

Marginal costs of a Harrier, Typhoon or Tornado hour (fuel, spares etc) is just under 4k. So, to be cheaper the additional hours flown from land would need to exceed 250 (1M / 4k).

Based on the additional transit of an hour each way per sortie from GdC, that would equate to 125 sorties flown from land per day before it would cost more for land basing.

This of course is theoretical as the Carrier would have to fly 125 sorties a day to provide a fair compariosn,

So the carrier is not so very cheap after all is it?

In fact, if we could fly 30 sorties from the UK per day it would still be cheaper than 30 from the carrier.

[Capt P U G Wash]

Not so responsive after all....

And now to scotch the “more responsive” argument.

This argument has been based on a GCAS type deck alert.

Yet the Libyan operation cannot afford to be so slow. The lack of reliable ground based Intelligence or any preplanned land operation means that we have to be totally proactive vice reactive.

A grad rocket launcher can fire its load in a few minutes so the only antidote is to be airborne over the likely threat areas and catch it before it gets into a firing position.

This means pre planned times over the likely areas. So aircraft from GdC launch in sufficient time to take over from a previous sortie, thus providing a 24 hour coverage in concert with others

Anyone who knows carrier operations, knows that a single Carrier could never hope to provide a 24 hour capability (CdG does between 6 and 8 hours a day max).

The big USN carriers (just as will be the case for PoW and QEC) have to carefully orchestrate launches and recoveries, so they are relatively inflexible on their own.

So neither cheaper or more responsive in this theatre – I hope the PM asked 1SL to show his workings as well as just take his b*****ing.

[RODHJ]

Carrier v land base

Also carriers are susceptable to submarine attack, lets not forget the Belgrano!

[Justanopinion]

This means pre planned times over the likely areas. So aircraft from GdC launch in sufficient time to take over from a previous sortie,

Land based aircraft goes winchester 20 mins after arriving on task, other land based aircraft still 600 miles out. Fail to see how that is more responsive than a carrier based aircraft 20 mins away.

GCAS from Kandahar was aways good to have to fill the gaps as well as the XCAS covering areas. The carrier off Libya could be providing this flexibility.

The big USN carriers (just as will be the case for PoW and QEC) have to carefully orchestrate launches and recoveries, so they are relatively inflexible on their own.

Discuss?

Yes a SINGLE carrier will not do 24 hour ops. Again, there is a need for both the Land and Sea based operations to cover the 24 hours efficiently but lets not pretend a land base as far away as GdC is more responsive than a Carrier can be in this current theatre.

[Capt P U G Wash]

As I tried to explain, it isn’t about response it is about proactive presence. In any event, much of the targeting is now deliberate.
If the scenario was as you described (it isn’t), then theoretically the carrier could feed the fight more quickly (I will grant you that), but an Invincible class arsenal would be empty in matter of days and would have to return to dock to rearm.
And, of course, the carrier fans conveniently forget the same argument in favour of the response time of land based air for Afghanistan, where response from GCAS is far more critical and cost effective.

As the CdG shows, it can only keep up that intensity for short bursts.
And a carrier based aircraft invariably carries a smaller load, especially in the summer heat we are now about to encounter.

Most importantly, the carriers could not deliver any of that without all the land based air support – ISTAR, refuelling and ABC2.

[lj101]

Capt P U G Wash

Allied nations are NOT allowing some foreign weapons to be deployed from their shores though (but i am sure you are aware of this).