[Closed] The Fleet Air Arm showing the Americans how it’s done

That’s not fully laden, hard points not fitted and populated.

Impressive technique though

I still think they’re a 50 year white elephant.

Slow, crap range, poor manoeuvrability (compared to F-16), no IRST at present.  Also it’s much vaunted  networking abilities are pretty rubbish when you’ve no F-22/Hawkeye or Aegis system to talk too. Stealth is rapidly fading in importance against peer competition and finally single engine over water goes against decades of carrier doctrine.

Yeah bring back the multi-engined Harrier........

Tomcat, Hawkeye, Rafale, Hornet, Mig-29K, Phantom.  Twin engines over water gives you better get you home ability.

Considering we could’ve gone cats and traps (apart from people signing off on the missile magnets being sold a “stealthy” harrier so no need).   Super Hornet wouldve been been the better bet for due to better takeoff fuel and weapons load.

You’re right, it’s not fully laden, but whilst the technique is proven outside the simulator I wouldn’t expect it to be, no doubt the next step is load one up with a dummy load...and nope, it’s no Sea Harrier, but all we’ve got.

In other news; between 12 and 22 F22’s maybe write offs after they didn’t escape their airfield before Hurricane Michael hit.

Some were apparently waiting spares valued at a few thousand dollars......

Hopefully they’re training/old/lower mid state but still, they only have 187 of them.

Not really Fleet Air Arm, the pilot works for BAE!

Are there any diesel ships running cats? Shudder to think at the development costs of electromagnetic ones

Super Hornet is a very nice aircraft for now. I don’t believe anyone thinks it’ll still be competing in 20+ years time. At the end of the day it’s still an old jet. The F-35 is just at the beginning of that very long upgrade path

The original design brief for QEC was to include EM launch, except they couldn't afford it and by the time they'd considered adding cats and traps, the design was too mature / created stability problems to put all that weight topside.

Rolling landing not a bad idea as it doesn't stress the airframe as much / extends working life as its the thing that shortens their life the most.

Every time I see the F35 i'm reminded of what an absolute dogs dinner of a airplane it is.

Slow? It's fast enough

Crap manoeuvrability compared to F16? it wasn't designed to be as manoeuvrable as an F16. Why would you compare to an F16? F18's are not as fast or manoeuvrable as an F16 and the F35 is about as fast as an F18. And it can super cruise which an F16 or F18 can't. An F16 wouldn't be as fast or manoeuvrable as it is if it were navalised with arrestor hook and all the additional heavy structure to deal with the beating of carrier landings and take off's.

Crap range? it's on an aircraft carrier, so doesn't need the range, it's got all the range it needs.

the rest is stuff that will come...it's software and will be continually updated and improved through the life of the machine.

Stealth going out of fashion. maybe, and it's always going to be easier and quicker to advance radar technology than aircraft technology, but so what...when there is a radar guided missile on your tail you want your radar cross section to be as small as possible and you really want that additional time it takes for a radar to target you.

These things are designed to a spec. The navy says I want an aircraft that can do this....then that aircraft is built to deliver that. Anyway, we'll see how things develop over time. The F16 is a '70's aircraft and fully developed, this thing still hasn't opened up its full envelope so nobody knows what it's truly capable of. The F16/15 & 18 have all had their envelopes extended beyond their original design intent over the decades, this will also have its envelope extended over the coming decades so comparing its ability now (as if you have any idea what it's true abilities are...this will hardly be out there in the public domain).

Rolling take off and landing is a very good idea...hugely more fuel efficient so more of the payload is available for the tactical mission instead of fuel.

Shame its not the cat and trap but they are expensive, unreliable and less safe and in reality give you very little additional tactical ability. the days of getting your whole fleet into the air in a matter of minutes to the dogfight over the sea are long gone, these things are about electronic warfare, they'll get nowhere near their targets.

Twin engines will get you more 'get you home ability' wether you're over land or sea, but the redundancy is not needed. Why carry an additional engine and all the additional fuel around, making the aircraft larger and heavier than it needs to be when you don't need it? Utterly pointless.

Utterly pointless.

+1

Actually, no, the F35 does not have supercruise capability.

You’re probably confusing it with the Typhoon

Rachel

Was at the San Diego Air and Space museum at the weekend. Reading one of the Appollo astronaut’s entries, despite flying to the moon, his proudest flying moments were night time carrier landings.

So do all of the options allow us to bomb nations who's air defences we have obliterated with cruise missiles?

If you like night time landings you’ll enjoy this

So do all of the options allow us to bomb nations who’s air defences we have obliterated with cruise missiles?

Yup. And if the CMDS is as good as they say, it'll also do it with AD still operating.

So we still need people in planes to do this stuff? Drones do so much so why continue to insist in meatshots on every launch?

So we still need people in planes to do this stuff? Drones do so much so why continue to insist in meatshots on every launch?

Different roles, Drones work for ISTAR really well and the use in COIN ops to target HVT's and the like. Although slow moving (compared to jets) they have a good loiter time. But as of yet no DAS so in contested airspace would get turned to dust.

I'm sure someone somewhere is playing about with an unmanned fighter capability, the tech required to immerse an operator to be able to have the full sensory simulation to enable reaction time, etc. That's quite expensive.

I'm sure it'll only be a matter of time though.

So we still need people in planes to do this stuff? Drones do so much so why continue to insist in meatshots on every launch?

Because current UAV technology isn’t advanced enough for anything more than ground attack and surveillance rôles. Combat UAV’s that can dogfight are still a ways off, but are getting there.

Compare the BAE/Qinetiq Taranis combat UAV with a current Reaper:

What's the payload and sensor capability on that thing?

EDIT: The Taranis, I'm more than familiar with the Pred/Reaper.

As others have said, it’s getting there

The reason I compared it to an F-16 is that the F-35 recently “lost” an air to air engagement against in a visual combat situation.

In a Beyond Visual Range it may win being better able to “shoot and scoot” but our Rules of Engagement usually prevent this.

Range is important, the ability to loiter a long way from your missile magnet facing down incoming fighters and bombers is important (and for this our ROE really should be BVR) you ideally have to kill the anti ship missiles whilst they are still in the bombers.   The F-35 cannot do this without extensive air to air refuelling which we cannot do and also it’s takeoff load restrictions willl limit the weapons load as well.

We cannot fight against peer competitors so why waste money on something that is stand alone hopeless.  F18 or Rafale, maybe even a seaphoon would stand us better.  Proven, cheaper to buy and maintain.

EMALS are hideously unreliable at present.  The new carrier the Americans have, has got has a hideous design flaw in that to work on one EMAL you have to power down the other three!  This takes many minutes to do safely.

Theyve also discovered they are hideously noisy (no shi*) and ruin the running quiet ability of the carrier.  They think that from the shape of the EM noise the enemy will be able to deduce what they are launching.

They might be making one engine more reliable but when it’s taken one up the tail pipe or that side of the fuselage has taken an AA hit it won’t get you home, two engines might and have.

Ahh the F-35 the plane that was supposed to cost about 30-49 million dollars but do everything for the US airforce, Navy and Army. Copy the airframe design of the F-22 remove one engine and use the mass production techniques BAE developed for the Typoon...

it was always going to be a bit shit at everything as it was not a focused design. Internal bomb and missile bays to retain stealth were always going to be massively limiting.

still the uk has not been sole developer of an aircraft since probably the early 60s as it costs too much and we are now a customer. No choice but to take what it on offer

It is a bit of a waste of money no doubt but in reality comparing the F35 against current same-gen/previous-gen fighters is a bit moot - they'll likely never end up in a conflict where they're trying to gain air superiority against that class of fighter and in carrier defense BVR is much more important and unless dealing with a surprise first strike RoE would readily permit BVR for carrier defense (most of the reason the Tomcat was so good in that role is it's ability to use the Phoenix).

If we end up in a conflict vs fighters that will give the F35 a headache it will be vs Russia or China (sure other unfriendly nations have modern fighters but they don't have the command and control and other systems to properly support them), it's not like they'd deploy F35's for the initial sorties to try and gain air superiority/supremacy anyway. And if we end up in a conflict with Russia or China then it's going to be either a very limited engagement followed by a ceasefire and political resolution or it's going to go nuclear and then who gives a shit about the turn rate of an F35?

The F35 is just plugging a gap before UAVs are ready (technically and politically) to take over, it might be stated as having a 50-year service life but it won't come close to that

The reason I compared it to an F-16 is that the F-35 recently “lost” an air to air engagement against in a visual combat situation.

When you say recently, wasn't that actually years ago? You can also find comments about it (the F-35) beating an F-15C if you want

So you're earlier comment saying we should've gone cats and traps was pointless as you're now saying there are massive problems with cats and traps?

You seem to be constantly comparing to Cold War era jets and fighting our peers. The MoD clearly has no interest in procuring another previous gen aircraft. As was pointed out above, these aircraft are far more mature than the F-35 and they've been taken about as far as they can go. We're just beginning to see what will happen with the F-35.

An impressive bit of kit, but a compromised design that fits purpose.

I would have expected a big advantage of cat's and traps on any carrier is that you get aircraft that can fully utilise the decks of the USN, and others.  And Vice versa.

Yes, there's a cost, power, weight and stability issue, but thrown in at the design stage its affordable.  Sadly, the politicians and the MOD(N) were scared of the numbers right from the start.

Considering the fact that the F-35B which we have chosen has already had to go on an extensive weight reduction programme & still comes in over it’s designed weight it doesn’t really have much wiggle room for further updates over its service life other than software.

Blimey, that pitching deck.

WAFU’s pah 😜

It's no more shit or flawed than the SeaHarrier, or normal Harrier was.

A lot of the vertical flight control systems were developed off the back of the x-gen harrier stuff the RAF or whoever it was were developing at the end of the harrier's lifetime.

There's an interview with an X35/F35 test pilot on YT that's really informative.

I’m not going against cats and traps just EMALs perhaps I should’ve clarified that earlier.

I doubt software patches/updates will fix all its flaws.

It is the wrong aircraft for our limited budget.

So you're now telling BAE to build a boiler and put it on board as we're not running steam ships, then buying old aircraft that have already peaked and will be outdated in no time? Can't see why that idea didn't sell

WAFU’s pah

More importantly, what is the mail carrying capability of this fancy new thing? ;P

And where would the steam come from for your (non electric) cats?

QE is not nuclear (for a variety of good reasons) and can't run them.

Edit: Legend beat me to it 🙂

I guess it bodes well for the future of the U.K carriers that there are so many interested carrier and air warfare experts out there on the interwebs 🙂

Steam from the tea kettle?

No expert but cats and traps aren't just useful for fighters, maritime reconnaissance needs to get up as well. Pretty sure we wrote off a lot of roff the shelf options when we went with what we did. Back to Sea Kings with pods again I guess.

On boilers, I'm pretty sure something could have been put in, oil fired boilers are nothing new.

pfft, Merlins these days. The only off the shelf option that was ruled out was the Hawkeye.....because it is the only off the shelf option

A boiler that can generate enough steam to launch many tons of aircraft to 150mph in a very short distance would be no mean feat - then ask it to do it all over again 60 seconds later. I don't believe there's ever been a carrier thats done it. It would be a significant bit of kit that needs to find space inside and already crammed structure

I'm sure I've read somewhere that the F35 didn't have enough range to strike against land based targets seeing as the carrier would be forced to stay so far off shore so as to reduce its likelihood of being hit by China's DF-21D hypersonic anti-ship missiles and both Russia and China's A2AD capabilities.

Range is important, the ability to loiter a long way from your missile magnet facing down incoming fighters and bombers is important (and for this our ROE really should be BVR) you ideally have to kill the anti ship missiles whilst they are still in the bombers. The F-35 cannot do this without extensive air to air refuelling which we cannot do and also it’s takeoff load restrictions willl limit the weapons load as well.
We cannot fight against peer competitors so why waste money on something that is stand alone hopeless. F18 or Rafale, maybe even a seaphoon would stand us better. Proven, cheaper to buy and maintain

You do realise that according to wiki - the combat radius on internal fuel is little different between the F-35B and the F-18 Super Hornet, don't you? Seaphoon was a shit idea for a litany of reasons.

I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that the F35 didn’t have enough range to strike against land based targets seeing as the carrier would be forced to stay so far off shore so as to reduce its likelihood of being hit by China’s DF-21D hypersonic anti-ship missiles and both Russia and China’s A2AD capabilities.

The strategy for carrier aviation in the pacific has never been to park them off the coast of China on day 1 of the war.

That is simply - stupid.

It would go something like this, the carriers would be further back - defending the island chains - submarine TLAMS would be used against known targets on mainland China. Aegis ships would start destroying Chinese satellites and attempt to intercept any ballistic missiles. Once the satellites were gone, destroyers would move forward and start hitting land based targets such as fixed radar sites and airfields with cruise missiles. Wild weasel operations would be launched from Okinawa against radar sites.

Then the carriers would be brought forward once Chinese situational awareness had been degraded.

Basically, ya'll don't know more than the best of the US Navy.

 The reason I compared it to an F-16 is that the F-35 recently “lost” an air to air engagement against in a visual combat situation.

How recent? Prior to 2015, the flight control software for the F35 "assisted" the pilots which they didn't like as it interfered with them pushing the envelope of the aircraft, this has now been remedied.

The only other engagement with an f-16 that's documented was an F35 designated as AF-2, which was an early test aircraft with the software restrictions on the flight envelope. The aim of the test was to demonstrate the ability of the F-35 to fly to the edge of its restricted test limits without exceeding them. The test scenario was apparently successful as it allowed the aircraft be cleared for greater agility in future tests. The F-16 involved was just used as a visual reference to maneuver against.

The one thing I don't like about the F35B is all the extra weight due to the lift fan and associated gumpf, I would have preferred the F35C with cats and traps, but low and behold the aircraft carrier that could be converted to cats and traps easily according to the ACA, turned out to be an expensive undertaking after all.

I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that the F35 didn’t have enough range to strike against land based targets seeing as the carrier would be forced to stay so far off shore so as to reduce its likelihood of being hit by China’s DF-21D hypersonic anti-ship missiles and both Russia and China’s A2AD capabilities.

I’ve also heard that we can’t leave port as Swedish subs could sink it at the drop of a hat. You adapt for the theatre being presented, the chances of the ship being faced with Russian and/or Chinese hypersonic missiles is going to be very slim (see above comments about fighting the Ruskies being highly limited or we’re all toast anyway)

 I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that the F35 didn’t have enough range to strike against land based targets seeing as the carrier would be forced to stay so far off shore so as to reduce its likelihood of being hit by China’s DF-21D hypersonic anti-ship missiles and both Russia and China’s A2AD capabilities.

The problem there is that those missiles will still need something to locate a moving target so the missile could be guided to their targets.

10% of it is made in the UK - one massive reason why the UK is buying it.

What else would we be buying? The J-31?

10% of it is made in the UK – one massive reason why the UK is buying it.

Not really. If we’d bought something else a material offset or sovereign tech would’ve gone into the deal, it’s pretty standard (new Anglicised Wedgetail for example)

10% of it is made in the UK – one massive reason why the UK is buying it.

Many thousand times no...

the UK is a prime customer which means it is allowed to buy a full spec craft. The government invested in the development which can be stopped at any point by the us government even during production with no call back. I think the investment was 6bilkion dollars or so.

there are no options for us from a “friendly” nation. We could form another partnership as was done for jaguar, tornado, typhoon but the consortium needs to buy maybe 700-1000 aircraft to bring the investment value back. The UK is not a power or even influencer in terms of military purchases and the government gave away control of the development decades ago.

We did have the nicest building on site when I was on the project though..

Sorry, you're right, its not 10%...

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/british-f-35/

...it's 15%.

Perhaps I'm missing something here, but that seems fairly clear cut.

Perhaps I’m missing something here, but that seems fairly clear cut.

It is better for the UK to buy this aircraft as some of the money remains in the UK.

it is a higher spec aircraft than we could get from an alternate source.

the UK government is just a customer though they have not been instrumental in any developments. If the US government decides to not sell, restrict production or even cancel the entire project (there is a provision for this in the award) they can pay off contractors collect the drawings and walk away. BAE even shifted their holdings to make them a more “US” company to make this a more favourable partnership.

Perhaps the biggest reason for the UK government to buy is so that we are not going to the French and purchasing an aircraft. This would be admitting that we have finally managed to run down our final aero industry.... we were world leaders in airframes, engines, rockets etc. but no investment and buying from the USA has broken this. What we do do which is good is mostly heavily owned by EADS.

Anyone remember Carrier Cimmand for the Atari ST. Seemed like science fiction but how far off that are the drones we have now?

There is a huge amount of the most advanced technology flying developed in the UK by the UK off the back of F35. Technology and capability that we wouldn’t have developed if we’d just bought an off the shelf F18, which would be even more outdated in 20 yrs time than it is now. This is so much more than just buying a bunch of planes. How else do you think properly expensive technology gets invented.

our activities in the 50’a when we were world leaders in Aviation was done for political purposes to ‘buy’ our power and position in the world and demonstrate that we could continue to be a world player post WW2 going into the Cold War. The US knew they couldn’t rely on Europe to tackle the Soviets and we had to prove ourselves to the yanks which meant developing nukes and aviation. We never intended to sustain it, just develop it then exchange the technology for our place in he world. We were investing a stupid amount of our GDP to create our aviation industry which was completely unsustainable long term ever intended to be sustained. Airbus receives significant government support (as does Boeing) it’s hardly standing on it’s own two feet. We’ve opted for a different tack with our aviation industry, inventing and developing the highest technology off the back of programmes like the F35.

If the US government decides to not sell, restrict production or even cancel the entire project (there is a provision for this in the award) they can pay off contractors collect the drawings and walk away.

F35 has a level of technology the US is happy to share with friendly nations, but not such that it gets the Raptor treatment, so refusing to sell seems an unlikely option.

Yes, they could restrict production, or even cancel - but changing the UK contractors involved to US counterparts would be prohibitively expensive and is not going to happen without a massive change in world relationships, I'd say trying to do so would be the financial ruin of the project and reducing cost has been a massive focus for LM of late.

Concur with wobbliscotts post though. Our aviation biz is all prime and secondary subcontractors and IIRC we have one of the biggest aviation industries around (is it US - obvs - and France that are bigger?) which is not too shabby a thing to have here.

F35 has a level of technology the US is happy to share with friendly nations, but not such that it gets the Raptor treatment, so refusing to sell seems an unlikely option.

The F22 is a bit of a weird one, the Americans refused to sell it - because of ill informed political opinions - I think the Pentagon and USAF were happy to see allies get an export version.

The avionics in the F-35 are way ahead of the F-22, to the point that Japan has floated the idea of transplanting the F-35 avionics into a twin engine airframe. There are now grumblings of a new fighter program kicking off as the US seeks to capitalize on a fighter program subsidized by Japan.

As others have said, the F-35 has been great for our industry - without it, the BAE Tempest would probably not be being even considered as a viable option.

Another probable reason the UK opted for the F35B was that it would be the first of the JSF platforms to be finished. Primarily because the USMC has been using Harrier AV8Bs and II+'s and they need replacing ASAP. The USMC other airframes (legacy hornets) cant utilise the LHAs or LHDs of the MAGTFs, so the most impetus was put behind delivering the B over all the other models. I wouldn't be surprised if the USMC was a bigger customer of the F35 than the RAF/RN. So if we had gone for a CATOBAR F35 we'd be driving around a QE carrier with no planes for even longer.

Just read through this thread and i find it funny how people use the argument that the F-16 is better in a dogfight due to the very early tests, where the F-35 was very limited in how it could fly compared to now.

Since then F35 have had a kill death ratio against F16s of 20-1 during Red Flag.

Nerd alert.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the USMC was a bigger customer of the F35 than the RAF/RN

Of course they are. Current position seems to be that USMC are buying around 440 (thanks, wiki) and RAF/RN total is 138.

To nobody's surprise at all, the other US forces are also buying a lot of these things.

Primarily because the USMC has been using Harrier AV8Bs and II+’s and they need replacing ASAP.

No they plan to keep them in active service until 2030.

<p>A boiler that can generate enough steam to launch many tons of aircraft to 150mph in a very short distance would be no mean feat – then ask it to do it all over again 60 seconds later. I don’t believe there’s ever been a carrier thats done it. It would be a significant bit of kit that needs to find space inside and already crammed structure</p>

<p>Yup, it would be a mean piece of kit but totally doable - Kitty Hawk carriers managed to do it with C-13 catapults back in the 60's. My point was that it could have been designed in at the beginning but it was written off and we ended up where we did. F35B's could have been C's.</p><p></p><p>And yeah, Hawkeye was what I was thinking of.</p>

F35 has a level of technology the US is happy to share with friendly nations, but not such that it gets the Raptor treatment, so refusing to sell seems an unlikely option.

Its an odd contract. The development is cost plus with bonuses for meeting completion targets. This allows the US government to retain ownership of prototypes, tooling, IP etc. There is provision for cancelling the US orders at certain points.

This was done before on the day of launch of a previous aircraft (the name eludes me at the moment) and the entire line was stopped packed up and disposed of as per the contract.

so it’s not a case of not selling it to us, it’s a case of if the US decide (however unlikely) to cancel their orders and halt production everyone else stops getting theirs too.

Yup, it would be a mean piece of kit but totally doable – Kitty Hawk carriers managed to do it with C-13 catapults back in the 60’s

They were steam ships, steam wasn’t an accessory. If they didn’t have steam they weren’t going anywhere, they had 8 boilers producing it. Hence why the U.K. has also had catapults in the past