HMS Queen Elizabeth sails for further F-35 training

Probably almost certainly be accompanied by nato or support from other countries as well, most of the time if there are any conflicts

… but then what? A Merlin releases a torpedo.

Eh, the First Sea Lord didn’t say that, that’s a quote from this article on Save the Royal Navy about issues he may have to consider: https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/the-new-first-sea-lord-and-his-vision-for-the-royal-navys-future/.

“The idea of launching anti ship missiles against modern warships from many hundreds of miles away is just fantasy.” That is true today Robert, provided adversary air assets are held at distance as expected and thus unable to locate the CSG. But the BM threat may not be so easy to dismiss perhaps as early as 10+ years time.

SpaceX are demonstrating the ability to launch many LEO satellites relatively rapidly. If Russia and/or China develop a similar capability, which we should assume they will, then a proliferation of many thousands of satellite sensors will be a serious threat to the ability for a CSG to “lose itself”.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33888/air-force-is-looking-beyond-traditional-orbits-to-get-an-upper-hand-in-space

Because of the expected proliferation of LEO satellites I foresee a number of countermeasures being developed.

The most likely is an airborne laser much like the one used in Boeing YAL-1 converted 747. This used a chemical IR laser which was supposed to knock out ballistic missiles in the boost phase, The problem with it was partly due to the aircraft’s operating altitude of 45,000ft. At this height the atmosphere is still thick enough to cause a significant absorption which lowers the power of the laser, meaning the aircraft had to be much closer to the missile to have a significant effect. It really needed to be flying above 60,000ft for the atmosphere to have a lesser effect. However, there aren’t many if any large bodied aircraft that can fly at this height and carry the weight.

However the laser was reputedly classed as 1MW laser. This would easily be enough to seriously damage if not destroy a LEO satellite. In fact if the solar panels were targeted, it wouldn’t need to destroy it as that would be enough to disable it.

A ground based laser could obviously be made more powerful. It would however need to be an order of magnitude more powerful than the airborne version in the 10MW range. Again this is so that you can counteract the atmospheric losses due to the denser air/moisture etc. As an example you would need a ship the size of a T31 purely dedicated to generating enough electricity and for providing sufficient area for cooling.

There is another method that is used currently for disabling satellites, especially by Russia, which is RF jamming. In the main satellites are in a fixed and predictable orbit, making them easy to find and track. Some satellites continuously transmit such as the GPS ones. These transmit a very low power signal, which means a similar signal on the same frequency can be broadcast by a ground or air unit, which effectively jams the GPS broadcast. It has now got to a point where the jamming signal mimics the satellite’s to generate erroneous navigation data.

Taking it to the nth degree, it is possible to broadcast a narrow beam of RF at the satellite to cause EMI overload. You would need considerable power to do this. There are a number of facilities in the UK that could do this. One of which is the AN/FPS-126 PAVE PAWs AESA radar at Fylingdales.

The T45/QEs S1850M has the ability to track satellites, but I doubt it has enough oomph to damage or disable them. This may change if The RN adopts the AESA upgrade for S1850M where the even more narrow transmitted beam may have a disabling effect on a LEO satellite. The RN may have to investigate how a T45 can be used in this capacity.

Interesting comments as usual DaveyB. To be sure there will be a range of attempts to counter anti-ship ballistic missiles and/or the systems used to target them.

It seems there are at least two factors that are the USN primary concerns about large ships, and probably also concern other western navies including the RN. As you point out, the first is that maneuvering AShBM will have the energy to sink the largest warships, they bypass most of the traditional layered defense and are not trivial to kill, especially if you need a 100% success rate in doing so. The second is that we have a number of theoretical ways to counter the sensor network but its still very theoretical versus having a trusted capability. Hence an argument, at least in the USN, for a greater number of smaller ships to spread risk.

That is a really good point. The fact our carriers could operate in a higher sea state is well know and i suppose the same characteristics would allow landing ( even vertical take off) with damage to the flight deck and or a level of listing.

I wonder also if an F35b could land in an emergency on an auxiliary to refuel or if the carrier flight deck was temporarily unavailable. I know the hot downdraught could damage the deck and that they are heavy, but it could avoid a ditch at sea. you can hardly say that of a catobar equipped carrier.

Interesting debate, at a guess it could probably land in an emergency considering the cost of replacement and danger to the pilot as compared to damage to the deck but I would doubt a take off would be contemplated but either I guess would be dependent on exactly what damage might be expected or if temporary solutions might be feasible to facilitate it especially with new ships coming online. For surely someone might contemplate the requirement as a last resort solution.

Just looking at relative weights it seems a Chinook capable flight deck might take an F35B for landing, albeit probably close to empty on fuel and after dumping weapons, unless the flight deck is already engineered for greater dynamic loads. It might also be possible to launch with a reduced fuel and weapons load for an in extremis role.