And an urgent call from the treasury for huge cuts in the defence budget. Followed by a call from Labour central office telling him how to spin it as expansion of capabilities

Only just seen that. Some slight irony really. In the original contract award decision where BAE and Thales competed, and they gave the contract to both of them, guess which area of the design was the only one where the BAE design was judged better. Andthe Thales deisgn therefore rejected

Can you guess?

OK, but you don't really expect anyone to be surprised by the answer do you?

With reference to communications (since CVF will be a command and control platform as well as a platform for aircraft - see:

Island Start for Royal Navy's World-Leading Carrier Comms System

The launch of HMS Queen Elizabeth - the first of two new aircraft carriers - may be six years away, but work is progressing on a vital part of it deep in the heart of the Isle of Wight. When the vessel puts to sea she will break the mould in many ways, not least in her cost efficiency.

Central to her success - and that of the second carrier HMS Prince of Wales due in service towards the end of the next decade - will be her mission system. The system, which will use 1,740km of fibre optic cable and 14,000 items of equipment, underpins her war-fighting capability. It will support voice and data services needed to effect command and control along with management of aircraft and protection of the ship through sensors and radars.

A forest of radar and communication antennae, around 100 in all, will be grouped on the vessel's aft 'island', one of two superstructures to control ship and air traffic:

"The two carriers will be the most powerful communications platforms the Royal Navy has ever seen," said Commander Simon Petitt, combat system manager for the Queen Elizabeth class carriers. "In fact, by a factor of at least two of all UK vessels that have ever put to sea."

The two-island superstructure - separated by 85m of deck - is a cramped environment for mounting the equipment which includes communications antennae and aerials for radars and other devices such as the precision approach system to enable aircraft to find the ship. In particular, communication systems will be substantial for the carrier so that the ship can stay in contact with its aircraft, other ships in the task group, headquarters and land forces.

The C3I aspect of CV(F) is a very interesting example of "requirement creep". I understand from a former member of the Sub-Navy Board that the original intention was for the ships to be simply floating decks/ hangars with the vast majority of the combat power to be invested in the aircraft. C3I was supposed to be accomplished from the Type 45. The RN also had an aspiration that HMS Ark Royal would be retained in service and converted in to an RN equivalent of the USS Mount Whitney in order to provide a base for a JFHQ (Afloat) under a completely different operational requirement, with its own budget.

Obviously the Ark Royal plan never made it very far but the CV(F) indigenous C3I is a very expensive addition. The RN might have been better off sticking with the original floating airfield plan & buying the extra T45s with the money.

May have made more sense, but that would mean the senior naval officers would fly their flag from a little bitty destroyer rather than a nice big carrier.

No chance

Your mate in the Sub NB may be confusing C3I with combat system. There is very little in way of combat system in terms of missile systems,CIWS,EW etc aboard the ship and that part still is "on" T45. However, to make "strike" work, you need access to all sorts of data, which in turn drives comms IER etc. There is very little point shoehorning ISTAR product into a T45 and then having to squirt it across to an accompanying CVF - ditto battlestaff when fitting sufficient space in a size constrained ship, compared to fitting it in something eight times bigger......

Good to hear that CVF is making progress. I have read Phoenix Squadron by Rowland White about the Belize operation in the 1970s. Ark managed to put two Buccs over Belize and deter an invasion while the RAF where scratching their backsides wondering how to get there. So much for HNS and all the BS talked about it here and in other places. Required reading.

NaB, my mate is bright enough and experienced enough to understand the difference between C3I systems and combat systems and I have spent enough time writing IERs and trying to squeeze quart sized pints of info down pint sized comms pipes to know how difficult it can be. Nevertheless, that was the plan. All part of the RNs attempt to give the impression of being a Rolls Royce Navy whilst actually using Hyundai/ Daewoo platforms (because that was all that could be afforded).

The idea of a JFHQ(Afloat) in a converted CVS was the recognition that the Battle Staff needed more space & their own extensive Comms suite. It was an attempt to get this capability via an additional project budget.

Whilst no decision has been made it seems as though the F35B is the only game in town, for the RN in particular.

It's rather worrying though looking at the potential costs. Project is only slightly behind schedule but costs seem to be rising exponentially. The US will be paying an average of over $100 million for theirs, and the B is significantly more expensive. Initial B examples are looking at close to double that. PW seems to be running a campaign to get the F136 canned as well, the DoD hasn't requested funding for it in the last couple of years.

Oddly F35As were offered to Norway for about $60 million apiece, though the price offered wasn't a binding contract.

Does anyone think our defence budget can afford $120 million dollar airframes?

Andyy

In which case it's the JFHQ(A) that's been added. The "strike" element would still need plenty of ISTAR-related product and associated IER. In fact the bloke who wrote the original ST(S) which did include the "strike" element went on to become DACOS(Av) at fleet with specific responsibility for Carrier Strike. He was pretty clear that you couldn't do the "strike" ISTAR from another platform.

I also remember the JFHQ(A) plans and they were also trying to cost bespoke platform designs, never mind CVS conversions. It's JFHQ(A) that has developed requirement creep, not CVF - although to be fair, I'm not sure JFHQ(A) is even an endorsed requirement.

All part of the RNs attempt to give the impression of being a Rolls Royce Navy whilst actually using Hyundai/ Daewoo platforms

Is RR circa Christian Era 2009 a more profitable or more technologically advanced or more rapidly growing car maker than Hyundai?

Hyundai and Daewoo, especially Hyundai, are extremely high quality shipbuilders (and cheap) so I wouldn't take the mickey too much!

And they still blame the RAF for lying to the politicians.....

Source: Defence Select Committee, Session 1999-00, Tenth Report
Date: 6 July 2000

The Future Carrier and the Future Carrier Borne Aircraft

.......A carrier is not a complicated ship, it is basically a big box with a big hangar inside it and a flat deck and a sufficient degree of command and control arrangements to enable the ship to communicate, as it has to. It is not going to have lots of other weapons. It is not full of systems like a destroyer that is stuffed full of the most complicated electronics, etc.. When you go on board a carrier it is basically empty, it is just a box. What is complicated is the aeroplane. I do not want to allow us to create an impression in your minds that the construction of the ship is an immense technological achievement.....

".......A carrier is not a complicated ship, it is basically a big box with a big hangar inside it and a flat deck..."

I think you'll find it's a little more complicated than that.

"I do not want to allow us to create an impression in your minds that the construction of the ship is an immense technological achievement..... "

And your qualifications to make that statement are?

In some respects he is correct. If you have a look around Ocean, Albion and Bulwark..... the design of those ships didn't take much longer than a forenoon....

"In some respects he is correct. If you have a look around Ocean, Albion and Bulwark....."

I have done, and the design and construction of those ships is far more complicated than you (or him) think.

"the design of those ships didn't take much longer than a forenoon...."

And your qualifications to make that statement are?

Ocean, Albion and Bulwark were designed to carry Royal Marines and all their swag, which need slightly less ship-borne infrastructure than JCA. Hence those 3 are all relatively simple ships.

LFT,

"And your qualifications to make that statement are? "Today 07:38
I think you'll find that ORAC was quoting from one of the documents in the link.
The statement was made by the then CDP, you may like to challenge his qualifications.

Unless ORAC was CDP in 2000 .............:ooh:

A carrier isn't that complicated compared to a destroyer/frigate. There are a number of challenging areas, like running uptakes/access//stores/magazine lifts past an acceptable hangar arrangement, making sure the aviation ops spaces are in the right place and arranged properly, but in general there is space to do things. There are also some tunes to play in local strength and trade-offs between ship stability and aircraft operations and of course the power required to shift the beast can be a bit interesting to get into the water without shaking the aft end to bits.

A DD/FF on the other hand, has to meet most of the same challenges with far less space but the same variety of spaces to accommodate. Plus it will generally have multiple roles some of which tend to conflict with each other and require more/separate CS elements. A bit tricky to say the least.

CDP was essentially trying to play down the technical risk that some statements at the time were (wrongly) implying. The CVF risk is almost entirely programme (ie political) at this point.

I don't think the LPH/LPD took a forenoon to design either (in fact the LPD detailed design probably took longer than CVF!). Their problems are almost entirely ha'porth of tar induced and slowly being fixed (at a price of course).