Senethro
Overlord
Whats the situation regarding Britain actually having planes capable of taking off from these things?
Whats the situation regarding Britain actually having planes capable of taking off from these things?
Wikipedia says the things have a potential capacity of 50 aircraft. A handful doesn't sound like a number that needs a carrier to move them about, or indeed contribute very much to an operation.
That presumably doesn't make allowances for the upper deck. The Americans use their flight deck as parking space, which you have to factor in when they say they can 'operate over a hundred aircraft'. The RN doesn't count that bit, if they did these would probably be able to 'operate' up to 70-80 aircraft using the US standard.
I still think we should have ordered Rafales. Lovely aircraft that.
Link to video.
Very impressive. :b: Any ideas where each will be stationed?
Yep. The boat floats.
Good job Britain.
_______________________________________________
In all seriousness, has the F-35 even begun carrier trials yet?
Also, interesting article on why the F-35 was doomed from the start:
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/fd...th-the-worlds-worst-new-warplane-5c95d45f86a5
tl;dr: The necessity of including the lift fan for VTOL warped all of the other design requirements. The lift fan's location prevented wasp-waisting (increasing drag), the stealth elements necessitated storing the weapons in internal bomb bays -making the fuselage even wider- and reducing capacity.
So we have an air-superiority fighter that is less agile and slower than a 1980s vintage F-16 (to say nothing of the Typhoon or Rafale) and less powerful than ground attack aircraft (such as the Tornado).
B-but muh multirole!
That depends: how long until they realize that the F-35 is a procurement disaster for the UK?
You want multirole, go find some Hornets; if it's good enough for the USN and their dozen big-deck carriers it's good enough for the Royal Navy.
The F-18 was considered, for quite some time, but dismissed due to not meeting quite a few requirements the UK deemed essential it seems, as to what those requirements were...
The Hornet is an all-American design and production. That probably is all it takes to disqualify it.More seriously, if it's good enough for the USN, it's good enough for any other navy.
Aren't the US Navy planning an all F-35 fleet? The F-18 was considered, for quite some time, but dismissed due to not meeting quite a few requirements the UK deemed essential it seems, as to what those requirements were...