Canberra Class
 

I took this picture from the Sydney Tower of Fleet Base East and in it you see the 2 Canberra Class Helicopter Platform ships, and you see they have Ski Jumps. This led me to consult Wiki and I see they were constructed to plans used for the Spanish Navy San Juan, (Harrier ) and even though Australia have no plans to operate Harrier or F35b it was cheaper to go with the plans including ski jump, and would have cost more to build with no ski jump

Guess who the builders were?.....Yep Bae


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....dbea2f54c9.jpg

If the builder follows the client's instructions, who do you hold accountable?

BAe would have charged them $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ to remove that jump............

Well....actually...(according to Wiki)... BAe may be off the hook anyway. From flight deck down it's based on Juan Carlos I, and bid/constructed by Spanish company Navantia. BAe Australia did the superstucture. But I can imagine it would have been expensive - and you never know when a ski jump might come in handy?

And I thought this thread was going to be about the Queen of the Skies....oh well, back to the claret

A bit like a catapult?

As the ramp in integral to the hull, the whole design of the front of the ship would have had to be changed to remove the ski ramp - affecting not just the physical engineering of that area, but also the aerodynamics and hydrodynamics of the ship (less weight at the front)

So it makes sense that it was cheaper just to sick with the original hull

The ships were purchased off the plan, it was to expensive to redesign them without the ramp and it was to expensive to redesign the ramp (and other areas ) for operation of the a F-35. If they were to remove the ramp they would have to change the structure of the forward 1/4 of the ship, then all the testing involved of the change. What do they gain ? Maybe an extra parking spot for the helicopter Cost >> benefit

Two great big floating targets.
Paul Keating's a bit of a nut job these days but he did get one thing right.
The sound they make is glug, glug, glug...

Yes BAE was responsible for the fitting out of the ships at williamstown, naventia built the hulls, the hulls were taken to williamstown on a heavy lift ship where they fitted out by bae

Never let the facts get in the way of a pop at Bae :)

The deck is not reinforced or covered to be able to take the get blast from F-35's.

Because it was built as amphibous ship, much of a aviation side of fitting were removed on converted in fuction. ie the amount of avgas it contains was changed to other fuels. some of the ammunition elevators were not installed. So the ship would have limited capacity to operate harriers even. If we wanted something to operate F-35 probably cheaper to buy something else than convert one of these

Buying something unsuitable for one particular purpose (because it was very obviously designed to do something else) is an error of the manufacturer?

F44 I think is what they said, Its been a few years since I got a captains tour (actually the XO) they carry less of that because they dont have the aviation wing so carry more fuel for the ground vehicles and LCM. The one major mod was taking some of the hanger and conversion to a light vehicle storage

https://www.fmv.se/FTP/Drivmedel_201...F-44_Shell.pdf

The purchase of the LHD's goes back over 20 years - the requirement was discussed in a White Paper in 2000 and confirmed in 206.

the aim was to project power across the Australasian area and to assist in humanitarian/police actions. Of course the possibility of doing other things (aka mission creep) was identified early on and there was discussion of using F-35B's.

The need for special coatings etc wasn't appreciated until they were well into development - around 2014/15. The assumption had always been that the F-35B would operate where a Harrier had operated. Even the USN were caught out and had to dock the USS "America" for nearly a year just after she commissioned to fix the problem.

Australia has only ordered F-35A's so any "carrier ops" would require B's or C's

Malcolm Davis in"The Strategist" in Jan 2019 advocated "taking the F-35 to sea" but admits that neither of the current vessels are suitable and it would cost at least $A 500 million EACH to modify. He suggested:-

" If the money is made available, a third LHD with a wing of between 12 and 16 F-35Bs, supported by a larger fleet of destroyers and frigates, is an option that should be on the agenda in any force structure debate."

The cost of such a program to produce a force of 16 aircraft seems make it highly unlikely that the F-35B will ever be acquired TBH - worse IMHO, is that people will start to think of the 3rd vessel as an Aircraft Carrier and put it in harms way in the same way that the RN confused Battle Cruisers with Battleships in 1914 which proved very costly at Jutland...................

The Turkish Navy has recently launched the TCG Anadolu (Anatolia) which is a San Juan class as well, with the hull by Navantia.They were interested in obtaining Harriers as an interim fit and then F-35s, but as some astute observers will have noted, Turkey has been hoofed from the F-35 programme.