Engines,

You said:

"Just once more - the RAF are a great service, who I respect enormously. But they don't 'do' maritime aviation, mainly because they really, deep down. don't 'get' it. Doesn't make them mad, bad or stupid - it's just not their bag."

I agree. We don't. Any more. However, I'd argue that prior to SDSR, we did; albeit in a 4-engined, land-base, ASW/ASuW platform. ;)

Apologies for thread hijack!

Duncs:ok:

The QEC propulsion plant is designed to give the ship 26knots max speed at End of Life displacement. That should be plenty for launch with EMALS. Where it will hurt is in having to turn away from MLA with light winds from astern.

Duncs, with the utmost respect for the Nimrod force and no offence whatsoever intended, I think you have just re-inforced Engines' point.

:ok::ok:Spot on and it is typical remark made by all the doom and gloom merchants.

How would they define 'still air'? Would that be when the ship is steaming at 25knots with a wind blowing over the stern at 25knots??

Something that is simply not going to happen and when you look at any footage of a carrier at flying stations have a look at the angles the crew have to stand at to compensate for the wind blowing over the deck.

There have been some discussions as to whether the current steam cats are limited, versus EMALS, in terms of launching F-35C at MTOW (which is up around 74,500 lb) in some conditions. However, you have to load the thing up like a Christmas tree to get to weights like that.

Must confess to being a little concerned as to the numbers being bandied around for the EMALS conversion. Have done some digging in the USN FY13 budget lines (see link).

http://www.finance.hq.navy.mil/fmb/13pres/SCN_BOOK.pdf

If one goes through it, you find on page 1-24, a tidy little breakdown in $US of what the thing (EMALS) is contracted to cost. For the USS Ford (CVN78), the total fixed price contract cost for one shipset, including engineering & design support is $676M - for a four cat system. The equivalent for CVN79 is $847M, increase in price partly explained by inflation over five years difference in contract placement.

Now the hardware component of these costs is about 85-90% of the total, but that's for four cat systems, so you'd think that for a UK 2 cat system, you might be looking at $US300-400M hardware cost per shipset. Now admittedly, these costs don't include installation at the ship, but surprisingly you might think, installation of big expensive bits of hardware (engines and propulsion systems etc) is usually quite light on labour. Admittedly, this one will involve lots of sparkies (in their little pink ovies) so you could get a significant chunk of cost there, but I'd be surprised if it was more than 75000 manhours per ship set (say £3-4M).

There will be a significant design cost in integrating the system into the QEC electrical distribution grid and associated software, but if I put a wet finger £50M one-off cost on that it doesn't seem absurd.

So, we then get -

£50M UK-specific integration, plus (per ship) around £250M hardware, £4M labour and probably another £50M per ship on technical support, systems engineering and documentation.

Add that up and you get - £360M-ish to do one ship, with another £300M to do the second, although admittedly if that's QEC, there will be an awful lot more work on the ship itself. Still, nowhere near £340M, which is the difference between the costs so far and the putative £1Bn.

I wonder whether this reflects the usual MoD risk on risk costing approach, which often inflates costs to the point where projects are perceived as unaffordable, followed by years of trying to square the circle with nugatory studies which publicise the "budget" and funny old thing, the artefact ends up costing the same as the "budget".

That bu!!****e claim about EMALS and CVF has come up before... so I wilol repeat my response the last time.

One of the design specifications for EMALS is that it must be capable of launching current and planned aircraft with NO "wind-over-deck"... as in "no forward ship speed".*

So tell me... does CVF's 26 or whatever knot max speed make any &^%%$$ difference whatsoever?




* The USN has, from Nimitz-class carriers and their steam C-13 catapults, launched F-14s (with a light A-A loadout and no drop tanks) and S-3s (with normal ASW loadout) just after clearing the pier... while still in San Diego Harbor... as part of an "opposed break-out" exercise. Ship speed was ~5 knots.

EMALS is more powerful than any C-13 ever built.

Hi Mr Boffin,
I have NO knowledge or experience of the EMALS system so please accept these are questions and NOT disagreements.

The Americans are staying with a four catapults to launch their aircraft and we are opting for a more feasible two catapult system. Looking at your figures you have roughly cut the costs by 50% so my question is...

Is each catapult a self contained and independent unit. By that I mean FULLY self contained with one power source, one control unit per catapult? My only experience is with steam powered cats and we would always operate ALL boilers whenever at flying stations and the extra boilers supplied steam to all the catapults on the deck.

Would something similar be used for EMALS namely one huge power unit to supply the copious buckets full of volts required to launch the aircraft. If yes then the costing for our system might not be 50% cheaper and possibly on 20 - 30%. The3se are questions and definitely NOT statements. If each unit is indeed autonomous then 50% it is :)

GreenKnight
No way could our previous conventional carrier HMS Centaur launch fixed wing fast jets from her deck without having wind over the deck. I would also be VERY surprised if any of our other fixed wing carriers could have done.

If this new system can do that then what a bonus! In the meantime though we are looking at an amazing 21st century system that appears to be far superior to the tried and much trusted steam catapults.

Green Knight
This was our biggest ever carrier that operated Phantoms just like US carriers of the same time period.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...olk1_1978.jpeg

I accept what you say about the F-14 but even with a 5 - 10knot wind and a speed of just 5 knots there is still 'wind over the deck'. I have no idea about conditions required for that aircraft to get airborne but as you can see there is a considerable difference in size and the tiny Centaur was significantly smaller than the Ark royal and yet we still operated the Sea Vixen!!

GK - I'm with you. EMALS should have plenty of grunt for any aircraft we wish to shoot irrespective of WoD. Where the relatively slow 26kts of QEC is going to hurt is in the launch (and particularly) recovery cycle, where a lightish (~10kts) wind from astern may well result in the ship having to turn 180 degrees off the MLA to ensure that relative wind is suitable.

Glojo - comparisons with our carriers (even Eagle and Ark) are of very limited relevance, as the BS4 through BS6 cats were always constrained by being fitted into existing (small) ships, with limited steam generation capacity. They were also battling against the growth in aircraft weight prevalent at the time where in a little over 15 years you went from a 16000lb Sea Hawk to a 62000lb Buccaneer S2. This isn't really a factor anymore - I doubt we'll ever get a naval aircraft heavier than the A5 or the F14.

As for the Phantom - don't forget we had to extend the nose gear leg to get a launch attitude that allowed an F4 to get off the short BS6 cats with anything like a usable load. We operated them (and in a very demanding envelope) but I'm not sure comparing US and UK practices is comparing apples with apples.

As far as EMALS is concerned, I have limited knowledge of the system, although a cursory glance through the GA website suggests that each catapult comprises a linear motor (the cat trough & shuttle), with a power distribution and conversion system, which is fed by an energy storage device at each cat. The energy storage device is fed by the ships main distribution grid, so QEC will be broadly similar to CVN78, but with the crucial difference that our main grid also feeds the propulsive load, which is where balancing the electrickery might just get a bit complicated (but entirely feasible). Hence my suggestion that UK hardware costs for a two-cat system should be in the region of 50% those of a US equivalent four-cat system.

glojo,

When was your photo taken? I'm imagining 1964 or there abouts? Meanwhile, back to F35Bs versus the Cs.

Will this mean that having had it mentioned that 50 F35Cs would be all we could likely afford, just how many Bs would they think they could manage to pay for now?:confused:

FB:)

My bet is Norfolk 1975. Nimitz didn't commission until 1973.

As for the "fifty", I don't believe that's an offical number of any sort, rather a projection by various defence "experts" that appears to have taken on a status of it's own.

Hi Boffin,
My comparison is merely pointing out that we were operating carriers that were possibly on the limits regarding launching fast jets that were getting heavier and heavier and I was merely suggesting a British carrier would possibly not be capable of launching their aircraft with little or no wind across the deck.

The EMALS system appears to offer far more bang for the buck, in a far more controllable manner.

Thank you very much for that explanation regarding EMALS and as you say it looks like they are autonomous units.. 50% it is :)

Answer to query I believe Ark Royal last commission 1978

.

Indeed, the figure of 50 (some say 40 or even as few as 30) has been chucked about while a unit cost is far from decided. Who knows, the way things are going we might just get the half-dozen, the figure mentioned for those able to put to sea in 2020. To think they want to share these airframes between both the Navy and Air Force must surely prompt a radical re-think. If they can resolve the issue of Carrier conversion, I'd have thought 30 or 40 F35Cs just for the Navy would be rational enough. This then leaves a simple question, what to replace the GR4 with? If it can't be any number of additional F35s, of any variant, then surely it has to be something else? Or is UK plc that broke that despite Billions being found here and there to inflate overseas aid for Argentina and India of all places, not to mention bailing out the seemingly ill-fated Euro, but can't/won't agree a minimum Tactical air force.

I can't see what exactly the point is in having a tiny tokenistic flight of carrier-borne super jets. Just who are we going influence against encroaching on our national interests, with just six aeroplanes at any given time?

FB:)

This is another example of planning assumptions suddenly becoming holy writ. The "six" (I believe) refer to the IOC of a carrier-capable squadron, rather than a final number. The "six" can also be changed by changing assumptions on airframe delivery rate, training pipeline throughput, OT&E etc. Changing those assumptions means changing funding profiles, but provided absolute capacities for delivery are not exceeded, it's all do-able.

I'd hazard a guess that the "fifty" is generated by dividing a published EP budget assumption by the current UPC. However, the EP budgets are only firm for 10 year forward, beyond that, there is no reason that additional funds cannot be programmed to get more aircraft etc. At the expense of "something else"? Almost certainly, but remember that the "something else" won't even be programmed in yet.

As I said, the way things are going I wouldn't be surprised if the overall order became 6. I understand that as yet there is no firm number for very much the reason that nobody knows yet just how much they will cost. I just used the plucked figure of 6 to illustrate the endless whittling down of everything while costs head in the other direction of course!:(

FB

The gen that I've heard from the MoD is around 25 front-line jets, so another 14 for OEU and OCU + roughly 1/3 of that number in deep servicing etc. brings the number to 52...

Also, FB, I agree with you; the airforce is sacrificing 50 Typhoons, sentinal, A400s, a definite Nimrod replacement and the Navy's sacrificing a 2nd carrier strike group, all so we can say that we have 6 LRIP F35s on board by 2020...which, by the way, will be as useful as a turkey for a few years. Seems like an awful lot of capability to relinquish for, what will realistically, be very little initial capability. Why not keep tranche 1 typhoons and upgrade them, get the typhoon sorted into a true war-winner (buy a few more,expand the typhoon force to 10 squadrons?), and rapidly build up a truly useful carrier air wing (or maybe 2 slightly smaller air wings) with F18s and then start getting the F35 2022? and beyond?

The Dismal Science

The link is to a Bill Sweetman piece in Aviation Week, today, 7 March. Bill is not a fan of F35, so unsurprisingly there is little positive news in this item. The UK does not know how much the aircraft is going to cost, so numbers cannot yet be firmed up. That is being left until the next Strategic Defence Review in 2015, when presumably they hope to have a better idea of the costs involved, or, more likely, let the next sucker take the fall.

Duncs,

Thanks for the response. However, in referring to 'maritime aviation' I was referring to aviation generated from ships - sorry if I wasn't clear. Yes, Nimrods were very much aimed at ASW, and extremely valuable in that role - but when I was at Strike, they were being used far more in an ISTAR role than for ASW.

But aviation from ships? The RAF don't 'get' it, don't want it, and will not do it. (Once again, doesn't make them bad people or lesser aviators). That's why I am arguing that the only way that the country will get an effective maritime fixed wing capability (as required by our Government) is to give the RN and the FAA the job of delivering it.

That leads on to some interesting issues with the future F-35C force and how they would be managed. My put, for what it is worth, would be a single support sponsor, but with operational command split/alternated between RAF and RN as required. Land based capability- RAF command. Sea based capability - RN command. And if that means a split fleet command. so be it. My direct experience of 'jointery' is that such an arrangement could use less people that a joint command.

Best Regards as ever

Engines

Engines,

Roger!

Duncs:ok: