Cost per tonne fabricated steel in UK is many times that in PRC (and still much more than Korea, Singapore and Japan, not to mention Brazil). Tends to be down to labour cost (inc overhead) rather than efficiency.

These QA surveillance firms in China are staffed by local Chinese inspectors. The Rosyth crane had Scotsmen crawling over it. The Fab Yard QA function was not devolved to one of these companies.

Don't forget Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. Maybe we should have outsourced the carriers to the far east? That would keep me busy for a while.

Peace :)

WE Branch Fanatic,

You've simply misunderstood my attempt at ironic humour!:ok:

But thank for posting the justification for carriers, its an interesting read!:)

FB:)

Wrathmonth

I refer you to the discussion here on page 9 onwards.

As others have noted, keeping the ability to skills to run fixed wing flying at sea prior to CVF is going to be a huge challenge. Hence ideas such as a small number of Harriers being retained and operated mostly by Reservists, and being interested in being able to embark US, Italian or Spanish Harriers. This is why possible modifications to Ocean are of interest.

There is also the issue of not being defeated by a third world air force.

WEBF,

I don't mean to rain on your parade, but I doubt that there are many posters here who don't fundamentally agree with you. Yes, it would have been more sensible for GR9 / GR9A to run on with ARKR and LUST to seamlessly transition to the QE Class with Dave-C and cats'n'traps. :D

And to make sure we had two full airwings with 120 RN Dave-Cs. :cool: And to have 4+ E-2Ds on order. And 4 C-2 CoD birds. And 6 more T45s, an FF/DD force of 32 - 35 hulls, around 12 Astute SSNs .... oh, and some of those Nimrod MPA thingys would probably help maritime picture building stuff and whatever else it is that they were supposed to do, too. :*

And, and, and... and quite a lot of other things that it is pointless talking about because it simply isn't going to happen. Did you not read SDSR? :hmm:

Specifically on CVS.

Q: In real world terms, how effective would 8 FA2s and 8 GR9s off a CVS BG be today?

S41's Cynical Answer (and I'm delighted to be corrected):

A: Well (other than depending how warm it is outside, how much land-based tanker support you need, how much offensive EW kit you could carry and how much offboard cueing you required) it'd be fine if you were going to take a crack at someone without an IADS, with targets quite close to the coast and preferably where it doesn't get too hot (all that ambient temperature for bring-back malarky).

It's no good harking back to the "glory days in the Adriatic" unless you appreciate the amount of support that the CVSs received from land-based jets in Italy, France and Germany. This isn't to say that Fisheads and WAFUs don't do a good job - they do - it's merely to gently point out that CVSs were so small that they were very limited in what they could do - and the RN wrung every last ounce of capability out of these limited platforms, but they were still limited.

In other words, at best, a nice to have.

We stopped funding the majority of "nice to haves" quite a long time ago, and have been cutting real capability left and right for several years - or did you miss that. This is the major reason I have a problem with Trident replacement - it's a really expensive "nice to have" that is costing lots of real capability (and will continue to do so for another decade or so.) And yes, as I've said before, I'd bin the Reds to make this point.

S41

S41

Happy New Year. To an extent I think we'll have to agree to disagree.

I did try to read the SDSR paper but gave up as it was poorly written, full of contradications, based on wishful thinking, and lacked detail. I did watch Dr Fox looking increasingly angry as the Prime Minister announced the review. I also read the post SDSR message from the First Sea Lord who acknowledged the risks and problems losing carrier aviation for a decade would cause.

I also remember hearing a senior RN Officer talking back in March. He stated the the decisions being taken over the next few months would affect the UK for decades. He also suggested that it was possible that some capabilities not currently needed could be taken over by Reservists - this was a general comment and NOT aviation related per se.

I remember being aboard Illustrious several years ago during a period of Harrier flying. Whilst waiting in the scran queue, I found a naval aviation magazine. Inside was an article by a senior aviator - an experienced Sea Harrier pilot, stating that there was a danger of naval aviators losing familiarity with the shipboard environment, and of carrier personnel losing the skills needed for fixed wing operations.

A number of times I have heard and seen the expert opinion, based on the experience of other navies, that it takes about ten years to go from scratch to having our current level of expertise at conducting fixed wing carrier flying operations - a point that the SDSR ignores. That is why this is such a huge issue.

It is rumoured that one of the reasons that so many Challenger II MBTs and 155mm guns are being retained is because the Generals worried about skill fade, but persumably feel no need to consider the problems of the other Services.

For a variety of perfectly obvious reasons skill fade will be an issue. However, let us be quite clear, keeping a small number of reservists pseudo-current in VSTOL jets will not have any benefits whatsoever. If you want to operate cat and trap then that is the experience you must build and you must do it for a relevant cadre of pilots, i.e. pay for young pilots to get it with the two possible providers.

There are enough (very disappointed) stovies around to populate any unit set up to keep the fleet current without looking in the reservist locker.

If the new carriers are to be out of the blocks in 2018 and the oldest product we're looking for is a 40 year old Cdr (Air)/ Wings/ Air Boss then the oldest guy we should be looking for at the moment is 33. (Plus or minus years depending on how much wee you want Wings to smell of)...(then minus a couple for programme slips). Why on earth pay for post 38 reservists to fly anything?

And that's the bow wave, if you think that a 2018 F-35 'graduate' JP might currently be 18 and a non-grad as young as 15 you get an idea about who we should be giving hours to.

The two actual players in this game wouldn't dream of letting someone run the deck or Air Group without having flown cat and trap themselves. You also need big deck experience throughout the whole ship. So you might want to consider identifying the people who will actually matter as much as the pilots and get them overseas as well. Let's go for FDO (currently a non-selected CW candidate), CFD (a killick handler), cats and traps man, Wings (Air Boss in USN parlance), F (First tour rotary), little F (Shawbury or Linton), SATCO (Lt ATC at Yeovs) and DATCO (no yet joined up) as the barest of minima.

I am convinced that we have created a mountain to climb, but feel it would still be a considerable hill-shaped obstacle if we arrived at its foot with CVS/ GR9.

For a variety of perfectly obvious reasons skill fade will be an issue. However, let us be quite clear, keeping a small number of reservists pseudo-current in VSTOL jets will not have any benefits whatsoever.

We will have to wait and see what proposals, if any, come out. I don't think this would be feasible without at least a small cadre of personnel being kept full time. I read the article thinking that it was proposed to keep Harrier personnel (presumably RAF as well as RN). It would provide a capability to embark some fixed wing aircraft aboard Illustrious until 2014, Queen Elizabeth from 2014 (hopfully until 201x), and so on. Remember reservists can be mobilised for operations or deployments. I suspect this isn't going to be a crisis free decade.

If you want to operate cat and trap then that is the experience you must build and you must do it for a relevant cadre of pilots, i.e. pay for young pilots to get it with the two possible providers.

Agreed. But surely with former pilots from both services - they'll be at least a few of them that are not going stateside or across the Channel. And what of the skills of chockheads (need experience of moving live jet aircraft around a pitching and rolling deck), personnel involved in fueling, maintaining, and arming them, the Officer of the Watch and bridge/navigation team who need experience of working with flying going on, and so on and so on?

Apart from being a sign of desperation, this idea is less to do with the specifics of future cat and trap operations and more to do with the general basic skills involved in dealing with fixed wing aircraft at sea, and the teamwork needed. I think the term is Corporate Memory.

As an aside, a Google search found this website (Save The Harriers) as well as other results.

BTW here is a link to the Air Branch magazine - PDF.

Also in HTML format.

WE BF

Your link doesn'a work...

LJ

I edited the above post so that the link works. Thanks for letting me know.

The linked magazine talks about corporate experience and the run up to the new carriers. Actually that is painful to read now. However, it does make they point that they (RNR WAFUs) are useful, and indeed can be safely entrusted with aircraft, and fill flying and other billets. The Army used to have an AAC unit (7 Regt(V) - Gazelles) that employed TA (ex regular) pilots.

Reservists can do things - it is what we are here for.

Meanwhile - a quick look at the Telegraph website shows this story:

Royal Navy's Falklands ship turned away by Brazil

Spot the obvious mistake! Anyway, Argentine Super Étendard continue to embark on Sao Paulo (ex Foch). Argentina seems to be upping the ante - what message did the SDSR send them?

Re Ocean - it may be an apocryphal story, but at the time she was being built, someone who worked in the shipyard told me that her deck lifts were too narrow to carry Harriers - and that was a deliberate decision.

Any truth?

Mmm, I see the Telegraph's ship identification is up to usual Journo standard.

Bay class? Hmm, it's a grey floaty thing... all the same, right? :hmm:

S41

The Air Branch magazine made a number of references to Naval Flying Standards Flight (Fixed Wing). Any idea what the plan is for them post SDSR?

I too was suprised by the mistake made by the Telegraph. Hopefully their reporting (such as comments about the Harriers and Reservists proposal being put to the Defence Council in January - reported on 15 Dec 10) is based on real ideas and proposals. It is meant to be a quality newspaper.

When does the Defence Council meet?

Now here is something that has been confusing me. The Navies of Italy and Spain both operate Harriers, but both of them have much smaller numbers of aircraft that the UK does (did). How could they do that without it being prohibitively expensive? I really do not understand the line of argument that claims that a smaller number of aircraft, flying less hours, is just as expensive as a larger one. Is it because of RAB? Is it due to personnel needed for support (which would explain proposals involving Reservists)? Have we operated and supported Harrier in a particularly expensive way?

Are you sure they're not prohibitively expensive? Have their Armed Forces got an equipment programme that due to mimanagement at the highest levels (for example - slip the programme to the right so 'it's not on my watch') like ours? Have they got other broader budgetary problems that need sorting out without resorting to being bailed out bu the EU i.e they are having to rob Peter (JFH / MRA4 / T45 etc) to pay Paul (Carriers / JSF / NHS / Social Welfare / Aid to former countries of the Empire / bail out the banks)?

Surely you're not suggesting that the cost of operating a few Harriers is the source of all the economic woes of the UK/Italy/Spain?

By the way, I have noticed that my previous attempts to post a link to the RNR Air Branch magazine failed, due to an unwanted full stop at the end. How ironic!

Here it is again in PDF format, and it should work.

Additionally, relooking at the page on the MOD website that detailed cuts to the surface fleet - I notice the following:

The White Paper announced that the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal would be decommissioned, and, accordingly, she will finally be withdrawn from service at the end of this month.

It also announced that either her sister ship HMS Illustrious or the Landing Platform Helicopter ship HMS Ocean would be withdrawn from service following a short study into which of these two ships was better able to provide the capability we require over the next few years.

This work has now been completed and it has been decided that HMS Ocean should be retained to provide our landing platform helicopter capability for the longer term.

HMS Illustrious will be withdrawn from service in 2014, once Ocean has emerged from a planned refit and been returned to a fully operational state. This will ensure that we retain the ability to deliver an amphibious intervention force from the sea and maintain an experienced crew to support the later introduction into service of the new Queen Elizabeth Class carrier.

Experienced in what? Flying operations?

Maybe I was being hard of understanding, but when the SDSR was announced by the Prime Minister (with an angry looking Dr Fox sitting next to him) it was intended to get rid of either Illustrious or Ocean straight away?

Surely the bottom line on this stupidity is that the Harrier mission availability in Afghanistan was 95 per cent while the Tornado mission availability is 50 per cent. No wonder Fox sat there with anger etched across his face and Stanhope didnt discover the Harrier was axed until the day of the announcement, having thought it was saved! At least two Tornados lost on the runway at Kandahar because they couldnt even get off the ground and the crews had to eject, and this inability to do the job comes at what cost to lives in the field? Then Cameron gets up and says that it is the best aircraft for Afghanistan - on the say-so at the last minute of Stirrup, surely the worst chief of defence staff in history. The RAF Tornado mob seem to live in an Alice in Wonderland world!

95 v 50.... Might want to check your figures chap.

Also I suspect that a few people I know would be mildly perturbed to say the least were you to tell them about the "cost to lives in the field" resulting from their "inability to do the job".

WEBF,

Please listen.

The cost of maintaining a fleet has two elements:

- Variable cost based on the number of aircraft, aircrews, amount of flying, number of bases (including CVS)

- Fixed cost based on the cost of support (design, commercial, training, tactics, certification and engineering), and at least one base, at least one simulator

The cost per flight hour is the (Variable cost + Fixed Cost) / (Total Number of hours per year).

You can drive down the variable costs by reducing numbers and flying hours, but the Fixed costs remain, um, fixed. So if you were to cut Harriers one airframe at a time, the most expensive one would be the last one, because Fixed costs are an increasingly large percentage of the overall cost.

Therefore (as I've said before) the savings are made when you cut an entire fleet because the Fixed element goes as well. Having two small fleets (eg Tornado + Harrier) requires two lots of the fixed costs, driving the overall cost up.

So please; you, along with many of us, lament Harrier's passing. But if you're going to (pointlessly) rage against the dying of the light, at least do so from a position informed by the facts.

S41