imperialman
Admiral
You're joking surely? Have you not noticed the huge cuts to the British military?
Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier
- Thread starter imperialman
- Start date
You're joking surely? Have you not noticed the huge cuts to the British military?
aelf
Ashen One
Alright, so if I'm reading this right, it means you don't actually have a meaningful surplus?
What budget cuts have been made to the Royal Navy?
I think there's some question as to whether they decommission the Enterprise in 2012 even though the Ford will not be operational until 2015.
"Defense in depth" Yes, it is the role of fleet interceptors to engage air targets beyond SAM range, even if we don't have Tomcat and the mighty Phoenix for CAP duties any longer.
In fact, part of the mission of those fighters is to prevent the enemy aircraft from even getting close enough to localize the carrier as a target in the first place. What gets past the fighters gets picked up by Aegis and engaged with Standards, and if anything gets through that there are point defenses like CIWS and frigate hulls.
imperialman
Admiral
1 Invincible class carrier cut
Removal of entire fleet of Harriers that fly from the carriers
1 remaining Invincible class carrier relegated to helicopter carrier
1 Bay class LPD (landing platform dock) cut
1 Albion class LPD put into reserve
4 Type 22 frigates cut
5,000 Navy personnel cut
Quite frankly, the list goes on and it wasn't just the navy that was cut. Tanks will be cut by 40% and heavy artillery 35% for example. Of course no one wanted to see the Largs Bay, Harriers, CVS, Type 22′s, Tornado squadrons, Sentinel and Nimrod MRA4 etc go to the knackers yard but what is the alternative?
imperialman
Admiral
I was just curious as to the extent of budget cuts in the US navy, sorry if I sounded belligerent!
aelf
Ashen One
So, in this context, what makes it imperative to replace the old carriers with new ones? Why not just not have any for now? Just for the defense of far-flung territories?
That's certainly a part of it. Do you really have confidence predicting the future of Argentina 30 years from now?
The new ones are shiny. Sailors like shiny things, it makes them feel important. In the eyes of the rest of us, they're a colossal waste of good money; the old ones are obsolete, but they'll do for the job we ask them to for a good while yet unless there's another shooting war at sea.
aelf
Ashen One
So the UK is just scared of big bad Argentina?
imperialman
Admiral
I'm not sure about that, a good number of people support them. I think their primary purpose, enabling power projection, is a worthy cause. Old ships need replacing otherwise costs spiral I believe.
One carrier could provide more firepower than Britain’s combined fleet of current aircraft carriers and will be more potent than the majority of the world’s national air forces, meaning that these vessels will be the most powerful warships ever built by a European country.
A good quote on the matter is;
"Britain’s ability to project naval power in distant waters has been crucial to its foreign and defence strategy for centuries. At first, this was accomplished by wooden Men-O-War, which were followed by ironclads, then Dreadnoughts, and today, by the aircraft carrier and its escorting naval squadron. Since the end of the Second World War, the deployment of aircraft carriers to the Falklands in 1982, to Bosnia and Kosovo in 1995 and 1999, Sierra Leone in 2000, and to Afghanistan in 2001 and the Persian Gulf in both 1991 and 2003, has confirmed again and again that British overseas involvement would be impossible or greatly reduced without this unique capability. The aircraft carrier is and will remain the armed forces’ backbone. Currently, the Royal Navy holds two such vessels, but these remain smaller in comparison with the supercarriers operated by the United States. In reality, they are relics – although since upgraded – of the Cold War era. But this situation is not to last much longer, for the Ministry of Defence has underway a naval programme to replace these three smaller vessels with two new supercarriers of its own. Britain’s current ‘Invincible’ class aircraft carriers weigh approximately twenty-two thousand tonnes and carry an air-wing of twenty-two aircraft, including both ‘jump-jet’ ‘Harrier’ strike-fighters and an assortment of helicopters for reconnaissance and air-to-surface attack. The new aircraft carriers will be three times bigger, weighing approximately sixty-five thousand tonnes, and equipped with over fifty aircraft, forty of which will be the new Anglo-American ‘Lightning’ strike-fighters.
The ability to deter or coerce is also critical, and the Royal Navy’s fleets will continue to have an unmistakably physical and threatening presence when deployed overseas. When located outside a problematic country’s territory, the very existence of an aircraft carrier or nuclear submarine, capable of firing cruise missiles, may be able to cajole autocratic regimes into abiding by the will of the international community, and/or that of Britain. Such a naval presence provides London – or, the European Union – with a modernised version of the ‘gunboat diplomacy’ of lore, a tactic which had its origins in the Victorian era, where such displays typically involved demonstrations of naval might to symbolise political will and determination. The mere sight of such power almost always had a considerable impact, and it was rarely necessary for such boats to use other measures, such as demonstrations of cannon fire.
Yet the most important and profound consequence of Britain’s upgraded, twenty-first century fleet, is that foreign interventions will become more achievable. When necessary, Britain will be better equipped and able to act unilaterally, as it did in the Falklands War, or in the Sierra Leone intervention, when rebels were set on slaughtering the people of Freetown. But also, a powerful navy will provide Britain with unprecedented influence in the evolving strategic culture of the European Union. Britain and France already cooperate on a whole range of military issues, and France will work with Britain to build its next aircraft carrier, by using British designs."
Frankly, I think the need to replace the Invincibles with something much more capable is quite pressing. If we want to retain a top spot at the table of world military powers, we need such assets, especially when many countries around the world are building their own large carriers.
imperialman
Admiral
I'd say the military is more of an insurance policy. Having these ships enables the British government to consider a wider ranger of options when dealing with a situation. Action in Libya for example would have been much cheaper if a carrier was used.
holy king
Deity
it would sink due to overweight.
imperialman
Admiral
This article from the HJS think tank explains the need for carriers in Britain's context quite well. http://www.henryjacksonsociety.org/stories.asp?id=284
"The arguments for not building the new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers come from two angles: Firstly, their detractors say, the nations enemies are changing. We no longer face hostile national navies but rather Islamist terrorists in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. As such, the argument is put that Britain should re-equip its Armed Forces with lightly armed mobile forces, Special Forces, and high-tech equipment. While this is undoubtedly correct, we must also retain the large strategic platforms in order to protect and support those forces.
Britains need for aircraft carriers has never been greater. There is no financial argument sufficient to contemplate their cancellation; if funding is needed elsewhere in the Armed Forces, the governments responsibility is not to raid one part of the defence budget to pay another, but to increase defence spending overall. As has been demonstrated, aircraft carriers are needed for the new wars of the twenty-first century, even those requiring lightly armed and highly mobile ground troops deployed forwardly in hostile lands. They are also needed to maintain command of the seas, keeping open the channels through which most of the worlds trade continues to flow. Ultimately, the aircraft carrier is necessary for deterrence and political impact; should Britain decide to lose this capacity, it will have profoundly negative consequences for the nations international standing, as well as for the role of the rest of Europe and the West in general. Britains aircraft carriers demonstrate that we remain willing to uphold our duties and discharge our obligations in the wider world: in other words, remaining on the top table of global affairs."
"The arguments for not building the new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers come from two angles: Firstly, their detractors say, the nations enemies are changing. We no longer face hostile national navies but rather Islamist terrorists in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. As such, the argument is put that Britain should re-equip its Armed Forces with lightly armed mobile forces, Special Forces, and high-tech equipment. While this is undoubtedly correct, we must also retain the large strategic platforms in order to protect and support those forces.
Britains need for aircraft carriers has never been greater. There is no financial argument sufficient to contemplate their cancellation; if funding is needed elsewhere in the Armed Forces, the governments responsibility is not to raid one part of the defence budget to pay another, but to increase defence spending overall. As has been demonstrated, aircraft carriers are needed for the new wars of the twenty-first century, even those requiring lightly armed and highly mobile ground troops deployed forwardly in hostile lands. They are also needed to maintain command of the seas, keeping open the channels through which most of the worlds trade continues to flow. Ultimately, the aircraft carrier is necessary for deterrence and political impact; should Britain decide to lose this capacity, it will have profoundly negative consequences for the nations international standing, as well as for the role of the rest of Europe and the West in general. Britains aircraft carriers demonstrate that we remain willing to uphold our duties and discharge our obligations in the wider world: in other words, remaining on the top table of global affairs."
But for all the politics behind it, it has even more reason to cancel it. Defense contractors in the US today have accomplished what Eisenhower warned us about. They have portions of the project in almost every state to maximize political support. But they also maximize project costs and make the project more likely to be a technical failure. The true final costs of the F-35 would beggar the entire defense budget. But so far they are hiding that.
It is not going to be a good airplane. It is not going to be an airplane you can put in the air every day. None of the stealth airplanes have good mission availability.
I can not believe, from how this program is progressing, that there will be a cost effective, cost acceptable, airplane out of it.
Both preview images feature F-35s on the carrier.
And the old version can only use the F-35 of all the new aircraft in the foreseeable future. Yet the other can use any carrier based fighter. That doesn't sound like an insurance policy against the F-35 not being bought?
Which further illustrates my point. The chances of this program being a failure are rising steadily.
The hype is political advertising. There's no guarantee that that can save the program.
imperialman
Admiral
I sincerely hope you're wrong on that point, though, I could just be in love with it due to looks.
I sincerely hope you're wrong on that point, though, I could just be in the with it due to looks.
Look, what makes a good airplane? In particular, what makes a good warplane? The ability to fight. The F-22 can outfight anything in the sky. But it's service and maintenance history so far has been, to say the least, ugly. Why will that improve as the aircraft ages?
Same thing is probably going to be an issue with the F-35. When it works, when it is available, it will likely be quite good at what it is designed for. But carrier operations are very hard on an airplane. And I simply have no faith that the plane will be robust enough and have a good enough maintenance record to be something you can use day in and day out on a carrier environment.
imperialman
Admiral
Let's just hope the people who design, develop, maintain and operate the aircraft know what they're doing then and have taken some lessons from the F-22 debacle.
imperialman
Admiral
The size differences between the new and old class of carriers. The Queen Elizabeth class ship is shown in STOVL (ramp etc) config rather than the now decided upon CATOBAR (catapults etc) config. The difference in size shows what a step change these are for the Royal Navy.
I truly do not believe that. Read a few articles on the development of the plane. Over budget, over time, delay for problem after problem. This is the way that defense contractors work now. They have perfected what Eisenhower warned us of.
Almost every major military procurement in recent memory has been a failure, or at least vastly too costly for what was bought. The F-22 was supposed to replace all of the F-15s. Not happening. The new Navy "corvette" is going to cost nearly as much as an AEGIS destroyer. The Army's 21st century communications system that was supposed to revolutionize ground warfare is an utter failure. The B-2, well we are still going to be flying B-52s that are the age of the fathers of the men flying them for the foreseeable future. So what does that tell you? The Coast Guard's Deep Water Fleet Modernization program? Dead in the water with no useful results. The V-22? 60% mission availability. The Virginia class submarine? Chosen because it cost half of what a Seawolf class costs, it immediately became 50% more expensive than a Seawolf.
And on and on and of. Failure after failure.
It would take a special miracle for the F-35 to not be a failure.
Ajidica
High Quality Person
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2006
- Messages
- 22,474
This seems relevant:
Link to video.
"The others are fine.... The ones that were designed during the Second World War."
Link to video.
"The others are fine.... The ones that were designed during the Second World War."
Similar threads
