Carrier Aviation = Cheapest
 

Its official...

Prolonged Libya effort unsustainable, warns Navy chief | UK news | guardian.co.uk

First Sea Lord

"It's cheaper to fly an aircraft from an aircraft carrier than from the shore."

This 'sharky' type logic is surely misleading.

I can't see how the overall costs of a carrier based asset vs a land based asset can possibly be cheaper - unless you're not comparing like with like (i.e. ignoring the costs of the ship etc.).

I don't think these kind of statememts are acceptable - carrier aviation is a potentially brilliant capability - but lets not pretend it is cheap.

My first thought would be "well he would say that". However some interesting soundbites ....

But then goes on to say

He's obviously been catching up on PPRuNe each morning ....;)

Even taking into account the cost of the carriers etc (ameliorated over 30+ years, it probably is and the EFFECT (intensity of UK Ops) would be greater too as you can generate far more sorties from fewer aircraft - as the French and US are proving off Libya.

Kind of makes you wonder why we don't have any :confused:

Of course it is cheaper, that is why every country in the world doesn't bother with these pointless land airfields and just has carriers instead. Oh wait.....

You can bend numbers in lots of ways and use very specific examples, and if you want to have a fast response and happen to fight a country where all the targets are close to (an uncontested) sea but land bases are much further away then a carrier will be quicker responding. Maybe not more capable as you are limited to carrier capable aircraft, or longer on task (but possibly will be). But claiming that, generally speaking, flying aircraft off carriers is cheaper than flying them from land bases is ridiculous.

Anyone throw some figures around for how long a Harrier would take to get on task over Nad Ali from a carrier "somewhere in the Indian Ocean"? 700 miles @M.7 gives 100 minutes (plus the AAR time). Plus how much to support a carrier group in the Indian Ocean? Lies, damn lies and statistics.........
[A deliberate, parochial and biased view to show how you can make sense to a layman but actually have a bollox argument, for those that haven't noticed.]

Don't get me wrong I am a big carrier fan - I think the UK should have 2 full size carriers flying F35C (force mixed with rotary and FW AEW as required), but using flawed arguments to fight the case will only harm it, not help. I also fully agree with the 1SL that all this RN dripping is just becoming corrosive. We/they need to move on and put up a jt fight to ensure that we get the right capability in the future.

There's a whole lot of "hidden" costs in not having carriers. If you need to project power across the world without them you need to be keeping countries "sweet" ad infinitum - hence the outlandish "foreign aid" budgets people whine about all the time. While one understands those expenditures do not entirely cover basing aircraft on the ground there's a chunk of that expenditure that does so it's a bit like insurance - it's very expensive until you need it.

However, if you have serious international ambitions the ability to place, (as the US so brilliantly point out), 4.5 acres of sovereign territory anywhere in the world at short notice is priceless... But don't expect the polis to ever see that...

It's cheaper to drive from London to Edinburgh than it is to fly (well on BA anyway). But that doesn't take into account the cost of acquiring the car in the first place.

Then again, neither does it take into account the cost of the 737 that BA use. But that's a different argument. Apples and oranges all over the place.

But if they get the 737 on a PFI it is virtually free, as we all know, so then.........

It is cheaper to have an aircraft carrier, and a few escorts, in that it allows you to have an airbase anywhere in the world if you want one. That doesn't help all that much when dealing with land locked nations or locales (Tibet?) but since about 80 % of the world's population live within 200 miles of a coastline ...

What a carrier can't do is move big metal. (C-17, C-5, C-130, A330 ...) For that you have to have more runway. But, if you are dropping in to visit from the sea anyway, it is cheaper, albeit a bit slower, to bring stuff in a hull anyway. :hmm:

"What a carrier can't do is move big metal. "

really?

C-130 Hercules On An Aircraft Carrier!! - Video

93.7% of all statistics are made up.:ok:

Great if all your other assets are below deck ie not available for use, otherwise it's a pile of ploppy and totally irrelevant

so what about the need to have all the land based IPB enablers along for the ride.....

Also, lets just suppose we had Ocean, an RFA and a couple of escorts. That has to be about 2500+ people.....to deliver a very small number of AH....I'd love to know the actual true cost per flying hour.....:ugh:

This is all about political posturing rather than actual capability

...and it's a damn sight easier to **** up a carrier than a land base. The ideal is to have both, but if you insist on running a budget where you can't, then the carrier is the obvious one to do without.

As for overseas aid keeping people sweet - that's a bit dubious IMO (but only IMO) as when push comes to shove you can't rely on the people you bribed to stay honest.
(Amazingly enough).

As we have been finding out more frequently in recent years... I dread to think how much "bribe money" has been paid in the last half century that has been ignored when the western powers have asked for "consideration".

The moment you share your survival with another you guarantee the survival of neither.

And we won't even have any of those by the end of the decade.

Not having a fully capable carrier launched aircraft is daft for an island nation. DC has just got to realise that as you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.
As for the SDSR, well, Dave and his mates must realise that by three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

"Limited" to SuperHornet. Bugger.

Heaven Forbid
 

Being hobbled by only having the F18 E/F also means that you are restricted to only having the G-Growler available to you to choose from as well.
Outrageous!:sad:

I think we would all prefer to have all options available to HM's Armed Forces. Surley the smart move for the future is to ensure that as much of our air armada is CATOBAR capable so that all possible assets can be both air and land based as required.

I'm sure having the Ark Royal back would ameliorate the feelings of the Navy. But they'd still have to amortise the cost....... ;)

I knew that whole NATO idea was a rubbish one...

Carriers, and war canoes in general, are not as independent of friendly shore facilities as you might expect and probably have as much need as do aircraft.

The fleet train needs to be resupplied. Spare parts are often delivered by air. Dockyards are needed for essential repairs. If someone manages to blow a hold in the side of your ship, or you run into a rock, or bend a periscope things can get a bit fraught if there is not friendly state withing reach.

This is about as close to RAF Central disinformation as you can get. Do you seriously believe that the RN hasn't learned by now to take just about everything with it, including RFAs filled with POL, ammo, stores, spares and food plus heavy repair ships and maintainers when it deploys to the far flungs for umpteen months at a time?

Carriers do need support infrastructure for refits etc & they are not as fast to respond as air assets but they are clearly mobile so you don't need so many fixed bases; they can provide logistic support to other units; most importantly they are a C3 platform; it can be re-roled as a Commando Carrier; they have their own self protection & some long range Int gathering equipment; it can carry personnel & equipment for combat, NEO & disaster relief (all at the same time) & yes it can be used for a pretty good cocktail party (diplomatic power). ie the point that seems to be missed continually is that the carrier isn't just an airfield, its an integrated weapons and sensor system that can do a number of roles very effectively. The aircraft it carries can also be delpoyed to a maritime environment & ashore when necessary, whilst the carrier itself could still continue to do one of a number of useful roles even when denuded of its air assets.

Cheapest? I am not a defence economist, but flexible & value for money? I'd say so.

Two points:

First, as already mentioned, a carrier has with it, not just aircraft, crews and maintainers, but also radar, full command-and-control facilities, fuel, cafeteria catering, hospital, dental surgery, chapel, brothel etc. etc. (OK, so not the last, but you get what I mean). All these should be factored into the cost when debating ground vs seaborne air power.

Secondly, a carrier can do 'graduated response'. If you're going to up the diplomatic ante, flying a squadron of ground-based aircraft into the area with all it's support being flown in (something the RAF do very well), you're also making a pretty powerful statement. A carrier can just appear over the horizon and lurk offshore; "HMS Nonesuch is in the area having just finished major exercises with the Swiss Navy". Yeah, yeah, right. Nobody believes it, of course, but the diplomatic niceties are observed, and those who need to, get the message.

Andyy hits the nail on the head. RAF Marham is capable of doing only one thing, launching and recovering aircraft. An aircraft carrier offers so much more.

But on this matter the Government will not U-turn. The Admiral needs to fit in or **** off

Reading all of this now has me wondering how on earth we have managed in the 'Stan for all these years without a carrier.

Because we built an airfield there because we didn't have a carrier capable and no nearby host nation support!

And we managed all that without a carrier........ sort of blows a biggish hole in the "We must have carriers" arguement :ok:

SFF, you could argue that we did it for many years with our Carrier Air Wing, inc the ASac7, & in the mean time the Carrier itself was away doing other things.

No one is aguing that we ONLY need carriers, just that if you are going to have an expeditionary/ interventionist defence & foreign policy then seeing as the vast majority of the worlds population is relatively near the sea then carriers are a better VFM bet than having fixed bases all round the world.

What happens if a little old submarine decides it don't like a big nasty carrier off it's shore? Big assets like carriers need lots of support and defending, factor in these costs and I bet it doesn't look so good. Still who would want to attack a big friendly carrier, they're invincible aren't they? OOps sorry about Invincible......


pm575

At least on a Carrier you can close the bar to stop the aircrew getting drunk.

pm575, no one denies that submarines are not a threat but that's why you have ASW, Zig Zag plans, oh, & the ability to ultimately move the "airfield" if necessary. Factor in the fact that not many nations actually have submarines & even fewer can use them effectively and a Carrier remains VFM. Remember,too, that as the RAF so often reminds us all, an airfield can be bombed so are not invulnerable (or were the Port Stanley raids a PR/ political stunt in 1982 after all?)

Carriers can also be bombed, or even hit from over the horizon missles.

Fairly cheap those AShM when compared to a carrier and a runway that is listing significantly to one side is far harder to get back into operation than one (of possibly a number) that have been cratered.

Also there is the small matter of all those aircraft squeezed into a small space rather than dispersed over a large distance on an airfield when that fast, pointy and explosive thingy hits.

Yes the allied air operations showed in Iraq that, given a sufficiant amount of assets, airfields can be knocked out. But as a certain South American country showed not so very long ago, given a small amount of AShM some serious damage can be caused to the opposition, especially to large vessels carrying aircraft.

I thought Prince Philip was now the Navy boss :p

The bottom of the barrel ...
 

A snippet on Beebworld on 13/6 mentioned that the French Chief of Naval Forces said recently that the Charles de Gaulle's time on station to help the Libyan campaign will run out at the end of the year. The ship had been "elsewhere" befiore Libya began, and returned as planned to Toulon, where it was to be serviced. From there it was ordered "smartish" to be on hand for the campaign, with its crew and aircraft re-embarked for this unexpected duty.
By December 2011 it will really need the servicing, in which case it will not be available for most (if not all) of 2012 - the Admiral said something like "We are really scraping the bottom of the barrel".
Seems to me that if your politicians want carrier air to be available for any campaign they deem necessary, they've got to have two("One on and one in the wash" as one used to say on kit inspections) - and the campaign can't last for long either (which, clearly, was what "they" expected for this Libyan thing).
New subject:
As far as Prince Philip's new title goes, it sounds more than a bit Gilbert & Sullivan-ish - Lord High Admiral of the Queen's Naveeee. Some more salve for the Battenbergs' honour, perhaps. Historians will know what I'm on about ...

There will be no need for Aircraft Carriers when our politicians realise this cash strapped little country is no longer a world power. :ouch:

Couple here that may give us pause for thought :p

List of submarine operators - Ask Jeeves Encyclopedia

jamesdevice, does the Herc catch the 3 wire?

No.

First time I saw that video was about 30 years ago, and it's a great video.

It is irrelevant to the point I was making.

The C-2 won't replace a Herc anytime soon.

The reason the French carrier Charles de Gaulle needs a maintenance period is that she and her air group had been providing CAS for ground forces in AFG (mostly Brits in Helmand) since October 2010, her fifth such mission in nine years. She only had a couple of weeks in Toulon before providing over a quarter of the NATO strike sorties over Libya to date. US Navy carriers have been providing CAS and ISTAR in AFG continuously since 2001.