Thats one way of looking at it..what if we spent 6.5 billion on a large boat to deliver Greggs Sausage rolls and steak bakes.

That would come in handy from day one.

Back in the real world people are dying, because grown men like to play power games with their big toys.

Deary me, did you not study 20th C history at school, or did you spend most of the time at the back of the remedial class?
I’ll let you in on a little secret; Mao Tse Tung and Stalin both managed to slaughter tens of millions of people without the use of a single fast jet or chuffing great aircraft carrier!
Pol Pot managed a similar trick as well, all his troops had were AK47’s.

Had a chat with somebody from BAE last weekend….. s’all about drones these days apparently

Seriously, do people think we are doing to be “dogfighting” in fast jets in the forseeable?

*ducks for cover*

Have the Harriers actually been broken up for scrap?

If they still exist, couldn’t the navy just line em up on deck, just for the look of the thing, for the next decade or so ?

Pump the tyres up and you could probably roll them around a bit and really mess with the Ruskies minds

Not scrapped as such, more dismantled for parts. We’d have to buy them back as well.

Why not F-14? Excellent missile carrier, fast, very cabable radar and long range. Only got killed off as they were getting hard to maintain . The manufacturer had proposed a vastly upgraded new version (bit like the super hornet compared to the hornet) which internally would’ve been pretty much a new beast with avionics, internal systems like hydraulics brought up to date and more powerful engines.

Sadly the USN was obsessed with the Hornet and F-35 program, which they may pay dearly for in a Pacific conflict with the Chinese in 20 years or so.
I think they’ve got a rewinging program in place for the A-10.

You can fit a lot of drones on that boat.

A great big vanity project, but still more useful than a Trident sub.

Why is it taking another 9 years to commission though?

I’m another that doesn’t see the point of it, unless it’s for humanitarian evacuation or assistance for medical needs POV.
Just a big lump of inter-Government lahdidah “we need more money, because we are the navy and the army blokes have guns n stuff because you keep sending them into wars” horsecrap.

How many hospital beds can you fit on the deck ?

Had a chat with somebody from BAE last weekend….. s’all about drones these days apparently

F35s are liekly the last manned generation of aircraft. I think you can expect unmanned airbourne things to be launched from these in the future. But that will be some years in the future, not next week. This isn’t “Amazon Delivers”. Yet.

Anyway. The carriers;
1) should have a nuke running the show
2) should have catobar

They might get some kind of #2 in the future.

Seriously, do people think we are doing to be “dogfighting” in fast jets in the forseeable?

*ducks for cover*

No need to duck – you won’t see the incoming because it’s all done BVR nowadays. It’s decades since a dog fighting kill AFAIK – I can only assume people have watched Top Gun too many times if they think it’s an important capability. Even when that was filmed it was already becoming outdated.

You can fit a lot of drones on that boat.

Yep, they’ll be flying drones off it before it is up and running with F35s.
The Navy have been flying drones off various platforms for a while – including T23.

Why is it taking another 9 years to commission though?

I’m not sure it is?
Last we’ve heard is it’ll be doing a couple of years of commissioning + sea trials out of Portsmouth when it arrives later this year/early next, followed by a period of time doing ‘aircraft integration’ trials off the coast of Florida (Fort Lauderdale?)

The full compliment of F35s will not be delivered/operational until the mid 2020s, so that might be where the 9 year figure has come from.

mrmonkfinger – Member

I think you can expect unmanned airbourne things to be launched from these in the future. But that will be some years in the future, not next week. This isn’t “Amazon Delivers”. Yet.

Anyway. The carriers;
1) should have a nuke running the show
2) should have catobar

They might get some kind of #2 in the future.

Drones (big ones) have already been tested on carriers in the US, no reason we wont be doing it before long.

1) Can you imagine the STW-froth?!?!
2) Not without massively changing the construction of the flight-deck, think that ship has sailed now

It’s decades since a dog fighting kill AFAIK

Yep, decades.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/21/politics/us-syria-russia-dogfight/index.html

Nice boat that HMS QE with some good kit on it.

It’s decades since a dog fighting kill AFAIK
Yep, decades.

To be fair that was the first one since the 90s
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convert – Member
She’s still a baby in comparison to the US ones.
Ones we could’ve bought for a lot, lot, lot less money too…..
Wiki says the latest US show pony the USS Gerald R. Ford which gets commissioned next month is 100,000 tonnes and cost $12.7bn + $4.7bn R&D whilst the Queen Elizabeth is 70,000 and cost £3.1BN (£6.2bn for the pair).

It’s a bit smaller (US craft 50m longer but pretty much identical beam) but a lot, lot cheaper. I’d be amazed if the yanks would have sold us a cast off for less than we spent once you took a refit into account. We’d also have struggled to park/service it in a UK port.

Whilst I’m first in the queue to bin trident I can still see the point in an aircraft carrier even for a tinpot nation such as the UK.

Its also worth pointing out the manpower disparity –

US carrier – 6000 crew including airwing
HMS QE – 1600 including airwing

That’s a substantial recurring cost reduction

Also, a US style nuclear carrier costs substantially more (££Bn) to de-commission than a conventionally fuelled one.

Telegraph reporting it’s running Windows XP, but thankfully will be due for a computer upgrade within the next decade.

In terms of value for money, the carriers whilst expensive are definitely better value than their US Super Carrier counterparts – for the price of the USS Ford we could have 3 x QE class carriers.

It’s too late now to harp on about CATOBAR; the decision should have been taken around 10 years ago to either build them that way, or just replace the 3 light carriers, with 3 more light carriers…

Now that we have them, I’m sure we’ll get good value. The expected life-span is 50 years, and as pointed out drone tech is coming along rapidly and can do all sorts of clever things without a bag of meat to carry.

For those that slate the F35B, it is late, and it is expensive but from what I’ve read/been told/understand it will be a game changer. The old RAF Tornado F3’s proved themselves in exercises against proper fighters like the F16 once they were properly upgraded with data-links and BVR weapons. The F35B has that and will be more capable that the Harrier ever was.

Could we put some Sea Harriers on them? Yes, but the School of Flight Deck Operations at RNAS Culdrose might be a bit miffed to lose their toys, and Sharky Ward is a bit long in the tooth now 😀

Telegraph reporting it’s running Windows XP, but thankfully will be due for a computer upgrade within the next decade.

The problem here is caused by shipbuilding lead-times.
The computer kit in question was probably ordered 8 years ago, and would have been current spec at the time.
We have huge issues with this at work – we build refrigeration plant for Navy Ships and submarines – there is anything from a 4-8 year gap between delivery and commissioning.
How many people are still using an 8 year old laptop? or mobile phone?

F35s are likely the last manned generation of aircraft.

I don’t think that will be true, as part of engagement rules you still often need a person to eyeball the target. Planes are also better in bad weather, which is why the Yanks are still using the U2 in areas prone to tropical storms.

Why not F-14?

Because it’s design was outdated, swing wings are heavy and hard to maintain. It has a history of reliability issues and was only really good in one role, where as the F-35 is multirole.

As for the A-10 not sure why it is being discussed as it isn’t carrier based, but anyway it was designed to attack tanks and is far too susceptible to missile attack hence, it’s demise.

F35s are liekly the last manned generation of aircraft

Industry and governments seem to think otherwise. Unmanned aircraft work very well for lots of roles, but not all of them.

The problem with drones is that you’ll still need to launch and recover them, something that QE won’t do without CATOBAR.

I did love the F-14 comment, it’s a hugely charismatic jet, but it’s big and the design dates back to the late sixties. It’s extremely maintenance intensive and isn’t built for low level strike missions – the F-14B and D variants suffered a lot of airframe fatigue from being bounced around in low level turbulent air.

As a long range air to air carrier carrier defence aircraft, it really needs a long range AWACS platform to work, something we don’t have.

The UK has the typhoon to do that.

F35 was never designed for that roll.

The Typhoon cant operate from a carrier. We bought the wrong F-35, we should have bought the A model for the Air Force and the longer range C model for the Royal Navy. The latter has larger wings and greater ordinance capacity.

PJM1974 – Member

The problem with drones is that you’ll still need to launch and recover them, something that QE won’t do without CATOBAR.

Unless you either build VSTOL drone or they are light enough to land on the deck without reinforcement (but this would of course still require an arrestor system)

how does an aircraft carrier stop a suicide bomber in London?

Well not directly obviously. The war on terror is an intelligence war. How do you think intelligence is gathered? Intel gathering uses all wings of our armed forces including aircraft carrier operations. An aircraft carrier parked off the coast of some country brings capabilities into region that work as part of an integrated system. So on its own an aircraft carrier does nothing, but as part of an integrated system it is an important contributor.

2) should have catobar

Why? Where is the need to be able to launch 5 planes an hour (or whatever it is)? Catobars are all about getting lots of planes, whole squadrons, into the air quickly. Future wars are not dogfighting they are electronic wars. Dogfights will become more and more rare going forward and will be irradiated by beyond visual range missiles anyway. CATOBAR are a whole order of magnitude more expensive and quite unreliable. Yes you can empl9y aircraft with greater capabilities, but they are capabilities that will become more and more redundant as time goes on – the concept of ‘dogfight your way to the target, destroy the target, dogfight your way back again’ is yesterday’s theatres of war. The aircraft is simply a platform, the important bits are what it’s carrying and the electronics on board.

Why not F-14?

It went out of service in 2006 or something…and wasn’t that good when it was in service. Top Gun’s a great film, but Hollywood movies don’t make particularly accurate historical documents.

If we were to go for a Catobar system then we’d be better off with the F35 CV variant or a navalised Eurofighter.

As for the A-10 not sure why it is being discussed as it isn’t carrier based, but anyway it was designed to attack tanks and is far too susceptible to missile attack hence, it’s demise

Another outdated aircraft. We now have shoulder mounted guided missiles to kill tanks so no need for a tank buster. Also a helicopter with Hellfire’s hiding behind a mountain 20km away can fire missiles to kill tanks that have been targeted by spotters on the ground. Similar shoulder mounted guided missile systems would blow a slow and cumbersome A10 out of the sky as soon as it rocked up. It’s a redundant weapon system if ever a conventional war broke out against a well equipped army.

Do we have any planes to put on it yet?

Only helicopters right now, although RAF/FAA crews are training on the F-35B.

The training and integration of a fast jet air wing takes time, we’ve a new jet flying from new carriers with new subsystems – there will be bugs to iron out.

Wobbillscot, FWIW, I think you are wrong on a couple of points…

Catobars are all about getting lots of planes, whole squadrons, into the air quickly.

Not quite true. It’s there to make launching planes a lot easier. On the QE class, it would have meant that we could launch and recover planes without having to rely on STVOL, freeing up money to buy a more simple variant of the F35 with a larger range and payload because it did not have the extra fan for landing/take off.

ther outdated aircraft.

Again, I disagree. In the wars that we are fighting now, it is proving to be the workhorse that is carrying the Close Air Support role. It may not be living the ream as far as killing tanks is concerned, but it’s got a long loiter time and a huge payload and that means more time on station to pull people out of holes.

If old, slow planes were not survivable in the wars we are fighting, then the Super Tucano would not be the CAS plane of choice in a lot of the shittier countries around the world.

I agree that the A10, no matter how tough, would have a hard time surviving against the latest Russian and/or Chinese kit, but with the right tactics, I think it would more than prove its worth even in those environments.

Do we have any planes to put on it yet?

This feels like a question I should re-visit every few months, a little like the incessant snow thread…

It’s been asked three times already just in this thread by people who already know the answer. It’s a good tosser identifier

That’s handy – we could do with some tossers, then we wouldn’t need the 35B variant.

Flight Deck handling is going on at Culdrose.

Here are the toys. http://www.gateguardsuk.com/gta/4961546

Catobars are all about getting lots of planes, whole squadrons, into the air quickly

The QE class have a rather impressive sortie rate – it isn’t just cats and traps that matter. The sortie rate drove many of the requirements.

Do we have any planes to put on it yet?

You want to put planes on a carrier before they have even tested the basic systems?

Perhaps we should wait until the sea trials are over… (then yes, there will be planes on it at that point)

To expand on the capabilities mentioned earlier and side tracked. It gives us the abilty to put a heavily armed and protected UK platform anywhere in the world. That means that if any of our citizens in a foreign country are under threat, we can quickly evacuate large numbers to a safe place. That in itself is a fantastic capability and one you never know when it might be needed.

It also allows us to help out other countries in times of natural disasters, which again is a huge bonus to smaller countries with 3rd world abilities.

Presumably this is one of the reasons ‘them’ are training with V-22?

Will be interesting to see which drones can successfully launch from the new ship.

Rockape63 – Apart from anywhere landlocked. Like AFG for example.

I get your point though, it’s nice to have something like Ocean that can be used for disaster relief, but that’s not the whole point of an aircraft carrier; it’s force projection and I am not sure that the limited capabilities of QE are enough to project force on an opponent in the Russian/Chinese category. Possibly even that Turkey/Brazil category.

Well you could turn the thing beam on and ram it up a sandbar to stop immigrants rowing up the Thames.

#Dailywhail

It also allows us to help out other countries in times of natural disasters, which again is a huge bonus to smaller countries with 3rd world abilities.

Tenner says it’s never used like this. Other RN logistics/supply/helicopter carrying ships maybe.

Tenner says it’s never used like this. Other RN logistics/supply/helicopter carrying ships maybe.

As far as i am aware, HMS Ocean, whilst not a pure aircraft carrier, being a troop ship and helicopter carrier, was deployed in Honduras following the Hurricane there, in Sierra Leone in support against the rebels there and provided a base during the London Olympics or helicopters, so it’s not all war-mongering!

I seem to remember (mate was serving on board for 8 years) that the captain had a seat from a Lotus Elise on the bridge to sit in..