British aircraft carrier arrives in Spain

Which is totally irrelevant as this was a warship.

How do you recognise items if it’s only for “people with intelligence”?. You do realise that you don’t have to be insulting to respond to a post.

The QE class are designed as fixed wing carriers. They do not possess littoral water capabilities normally required of an LPH. The idea that POW would act as some sort of LPH in support of Amphibious operations was scrapped a long time ago, I was at a briefing where it was made crystal clear that it would never happen, and some proposed mods to the ship were abandoned.
At present the UK has F35Bs operating from land based locations focusing on re-inforcing certain countries, due to the crisis in Ukraine, bit like joint force Harrier spending a lot of its time in Afghanistan……..The RN would love to have F35Bs aboard, but due to priorities elsewhere, and a lack of available airframes, that can’t happen right now.

all good right up to airframes, UK has 24.5 F35s on strength, we lack Pilots as currently its about the 14 mark, due to training delays and pandemic and one thing and another.

Thank you Paul for a sensible and accurate situation report.

They are in service for 50+ years- large strong hulls with much upgrade potential.
The QE class is without doubt the most cost efficient and effective carrier design in terms of flexibility and efficiency yet designed.
Our carrier ambitions have only been let down by dreadfully slow integration of British weaponry onto the F35B frame and the slow ordering and commissioning rate of airframes. Add in the fact we only have 15 escorts available for front line service of which only 7 or 8 are truly available at any one time and this is why our carrier ambitions look less than great.
All of which has been said before. I am an optimist though and hope that the confirmation of a further 26 F35Bs will be followed by a further batch of 26. I also hope for the type 45s to be significantly upgrade and up-armed and that we can squeeze a few more type 26, 31 and 32 frigates out of orders so we end up with 26-28 frigates/ destroyers by 2035 and a return to a reasonably effective and large fleet.
Hopefully by committing to hypersonic missile research £2 billion we might get some decently capable weapons out of our eye wateringly expensive research programmes.
Ditto PODS and unmanned systems- hopefully these can deliver using smaller cheaper platforms that are just launch pads for swarms and swarms of drones.
So the future is really only limited by our navy lacking investment- if we invest in defence coupled with British ingenuity and inventiveness and we might just end up with a really capable and deadly navy again.

We have no aircraft to go on it though 😂 an aircraft carrier with no aircraft, that’s difficult for people with no intelligence like me to comprehend, I’m sure there are intelligent people out there who can explane it though, see what I did there 😁👍

People with any intelligence will be wondering why if we are going to operate the QE’s as LPH’s why did they put a sky ramp on them both and treated the decks with heat resistant paint at grate expense. The intelligence factor seems to have been missing when they ordered the 2 carriers but did not synchronise the ordering of aircraft to go on them. If they want to operate them as LPH’s that’s OK but they should have a flight of 35’s for the CAP and to support the troops ashore that would be an intelligent way of operating the Carriers.

Here, here!

Grate?

People with intelligence realise that you can operate as one thing one week and another thing the following week.
During the pandemic passenger aircraft were used as cargo freighters with cargo piled on seats. They didn’t tear the seats out only then to have to buy new ones when they returned to passenger service.
I assume you thing a T23 should have it’s towed array removed when not sub-hunting too. 🤦🏻‍♂️

I think you’ll find Lockheed Martin are in charge of delivering F35s not the Carrier Alliance. But if you knew anything about the F35 you’d know why the U.K. has waited, because we want Block IV types.

I think you’ll find “grate” is a noun; eg something that coal fires have. Whereas “great” is an adjective, as in “great expense”. Lacking education too (that’s “too”, not “to” or “two”) I see, and not just intelligence. 😂

Passenger aircraft are not the focal point of a multi-national task force putting themselves in harms way, an aircraft carrier with no aircraft to defend itself or the other vessels in it’s task force is a liability.
We have a 10% stake in the F35 programme, we were offered a bigger stake at the out set of the programme but the powers that be decided against this. Maybe if these so called intelligent people in charge of the UK’s defence procurement had a little forward planning we may have had a few more 35’s to play with.
I might well lack an education but I am not the one sending our men and women to sea in substandard equipment with next to no offensive capability that falls to the so called educated and intelligent people at the top of the tree who are quite happy taking their rather fat pay cheques each month,
If that is what an education dose for you I am quite happy in my uneducated bliss.

You don’t need an education to grasp the concept of an analogy, which is what I was using with regard to passenger aircraft. 🤦🏻‍♂️

No we don’t have a 10% stake in the F35B programme, we have 13-15%. Trying googling figures first and you wouldn’t get so many facts wrong.
We only have that much because we are the only Tier 1 partner, though Japan might ask for this in future given the large number they’ve now committed to buying. We were never offered more.

If we had more F35Bs now, it would cost more long-term because all of our current ones will need upgrading to Block IV standard which costs ££££s.

If you think you can do better than CDS Radakin, etc, then feel free to submit your curriculum vitae to the government. But I suspect they won’t take you up on the offer and I suspect the entire Armed Forces will breathe a collective sigh of relief at HMGs decision to stick with the professionals.

Passenger aircraft are not asked to go into harms way so there is no real analogy.

At the outset of the F35 programme we (the UK) was asked if we wanted to be part of the development team which would have given the UK a much larger stake in the programme, our intellectual elite declined happy to let the full development costs go to the Americans who now are happy to recover those costs from country’s like the UK.

The UK is showboating the idea of STOVL for its carriers which is a continuation from the Invincible class and its Harriers all well and good but this idea falls down when the carriers arrive on the scene but have no air assets to put on them. We have put all our money into the F35 programme knowing this will probably come to fruition in about 5 years time (2027) so in the mean time we need a small number of 35s to be able to be deployed on both carriers (as both are active) as up grades for both ships and aircraft are inevitable. How many upgrades did the Harrier have before we sold them off to the USMC.

You seem to be one on Admiral Radakin’s believers I just wonder if he is worth the £235,000.00 a year that he is paid keeping in mind that he was head of the fleet when all these planning issues would have been discussed.

Radakin is worth £235k more than you’ll ever be.

You are probably right there, just wondering if that money could be better spent on recruiting more people into the navy so we could put more ships to sea,

Still not learned the lesson from the Falklands regarding lack of aircraft numbers lets hope we don’t get caught out again.

There is a lot we seem to have forgotten, lack of offensive capability for our surface fleet, lack of aircraft for our carriers with an over reliance on the RAF to be able to protect the fleet, lack of submarines, lack of personnel, lack of auxiliary’s but the most damming is the lack of foresight by the MoD and our politicians in failing to build of previous mistakes.

BTW It is quite usual to take seats out of commercial planes to use them in a swing cargo role if the hold doesn’t bring it to weight capacity because the density of cargo is low.

The seats simply bolt into rails in the floor.

Alternatively the seats can be slid into groups positioned according to load out requirements.

The seats are stored and not thrown away!

I know but during the pandemic they didn’t even bother doing that, they simply stacked cargo on seats. Possibly they had nowhere to store all the seats had they removed them.

It was an analogy, a concept that some people it seems have difficulty grasping 🤷🏻‍♂️

SAR before questioning the intelligence of others perhaps you should inform yourself on the topics. There are very good reasons for the slow pace of F-35 purchases, which professionals and anyone paying attention is well aware of.

Yes, we are all holding out for the Block IV to surface but in the mean time we have men and women at sea with very little offensive capability and an aircraft carrier with no fixed wing assets to defend it’s self or its escort is a liability.
If that is the extent of our professional elite’s thinking then maybe we should be changing the people at the top of the tree who get rather a lot of money to make these decisions.

As you acknowledge, we are holding out for Block IV F-35 upgrades and purchasing any more than the bare minimum in the interim would be un-professional.
No our sailors are only endangered in video games, because we live in the real world, which is a NATO world and our Carrier Strike Groups (CSG) travel with NATO allies, including the Americans.
And due to careful planning, over many years and brilliant execution when the CSG set sail last year, it sailed with the most potent air wing ever to set sail (with US Marine assets included) and the most powerful CSG to sail to date.
So maybe we should be looking to upgrade the level of comment from people who get no money to hold forth on our service!

You are right to point out the success of last years QE deployment but if you are going to keep 2 carriers at sea we should have enough 35’s to protect them both. If that means we have twice as many aircraft to upgrade after the Block IV come out so be-it, after all, how many upgrades have the Typhoons had and yet we did not stop the delivery to wait for the latest version to enter service.
The PoW is operating as the Nato flagship but dose not have a US or French Carrier CSG to escort her, yes she could have US aircraft deployed on her at short notice but in my meagre estimation she should be able to at least deploy her own CAP so she can protect herself and her escorts.

The main limiting factor to intensive F35B use is pilots and maintainers being g qualified.

You can have as many airframes as you like but if you can’t fix/fly them they are pointless.

You are bang on, but who’s fault is that ? it take approximatly 5 to 7 years to train a fast jet pilot so we should have put forward a recruitment plan for pilot when we had a good idea of the requirements of the joint carrier force but yet again our intellectual elite have squandered the money away on god knows what!.

‘Were operational”

6 mate. 😉 There were 6 F35 in the flypast.

Red Arrows pilots dropping in and out??

The Reds are flying as a seven ship this season other than for “special occasions”.

14 ☹

To think that the RAF once operated two airfields just for advanced combat training.

Just rinse it off with some Peckham Spring and it will all be cushty.

Best solution 😆 Com’on Rodney we’ve got to get these F35s’ ship-shape 😂

Hi Supportive Bloke, I fully understand after reading up on the subject and confirmation from Rfn Western, try explaining it to Uncle Albert who clearly does not!

My concern is the cost of fixing it one and the damage to the stealth coating? An F22 had some peel off and enter the engine during the flight which almost caused the loss of the aircraft.

As for stealth?

Hope this finds you well.

Ah

That depends.

On F22 the coating was post manufacture applied

In the F35B my understanding is that it is part of the layup process. I have zero inside knowledge but there are various public statements that hunt as this.

So with F35B there is an inert gel sprayed onto the mould followed by RAM/resin followed by the structural layup which probably has RAM incorporated into it. The issue can be things as simple as micro bubbles or abrasion if the outer sealing gel layer that would allow moisture to produce the appearance of ‘rust’ well it is rust but you won’t get banger style holes! It could also be that the outer layer has micro cracked from thermal excesses. This might be the reason for the speed limits imposed?

Pressed the flag on this by accident and can’t seem to remove it. Sorry

No problems, I often suffer from fat finger syndrome on these stupid phones.

It’s my one year old twatting me while I scroll through that caused it hahahaha. As well as tge fat fingers!

Actually that price is an average price over a period of time, todays price in $ is 8.60 or $125 to fill up your average family car. I’m sure it will get worse in Europe especially when they start importing less oil from Russia.

It would have been a choice between Harrier and Tornado. And if you look at what was needed from the RAF between 2010 and 2020, keeping Tornado was 100% the right choice.

The Sea Harrier FA2 had an awesome radar, awesome AMRAAM integration. The rest of it was seriously under developed. The GR7/9 was a far superior airframe

Ahem. Cameron did not scrap the Sea Harrier.

All 3 squadrons, 800, 801, 899 NAS were deleted by the previous Labour government, as we’re 3 and 4 Squadrons RAF with Harrier GR9, and their base at Cottesmore handed to the Army.

We keep seeing this myth that Tories, Cameron, Osborne put paid to the Harrier force. They did not and I won’t let it stand without a correction. It probably stems from the memories of the cut of Ark Royal.

Only 1 Squadron and 20R Sqn RAF remained when the axe fell in 2010, the rest had already gone.

Excellent, well put DM, The rot set in with the Blair 2003/4 “review” or more accurately cuts. That was the start, anyway.

Morning mate. Indeed.

But that never suits the narritave for many, and people also forget. I don’t!! I used to have the same rants then as now on another forum.

Interestingly, over the years when I remind/correct posters on who exactly cut what there is then deafening silence in reply.

Gareth Ainsworth was the DS at the time, when defence was seen as so vital by Brown I recall the DS was double hatted as a minister for another department!🙄 I may be recalling a different DS there though.

Johnson Beharry VC treated Brown the correct way by turning his back on him and refusing to shake his hand. I’d buy him endless pints for that. Respect.

Nicely put DM, couldn’t agree more with you , people do have short memories. Enjoy the the summer Surrey weather.

You may be right, looking back says Italian F-35B from the Cavour, and there is no mention of the US Harriers that acted as Aggressors during QE’s air defence certification in 2019 landing on her.

I remember back in the 73/74 oil crisis things were really tight. The only vehicle allowed to leave our camp was the Duty Driver and then only for essential runs like picking up/dropping off messages to the Com Centre. I was also doing a B3 Signals course at the time and our field based work involved sitting in a circle outside the classroom shouting radio messages to each other. Obviously that situation revolved around fuel shortage rather than price.

Currrenty we don’t have a fuel crisis, there is pently of oil from other places available, the producers are just massively profiteering from things rather than easing their restrictions and allowing more oil onto the market, for example Saudi has the capability to supply many times what it does today but it restricts it for profit. Worst case we have plenty from domestic waters available to supply the UK for decades to come, just that would require a serious crisis for any government to force the issue.

Absolutely, but higher prices can bring restrictions and if it keeps increasing it will start to creep into business and institutions. As for the oil, I know its in UK waters but its up to those companies that drill it where they sell it, they have other customers as well as UK PLC, so whilst we have oil we still might go short.

Yeah, I’m just frustrated with hearing it blamed on Russia in the media, it’s not, it’s down to profiteering thanks to the war and world governments letting them do it.

Gas is a different topic, as it’s in more short supply.

As for our waters, we can just ban the export if needed, and therefore force them to sell domestically, but yeah that would be restricted to extreme emergency senario.

It would need legalisation to ban the export of oil as the oil companies would launch a judicial review and sue the government for beach of contract. They’ve already bought and paid for licenses for those fields and to sell the oil to whoever they want.

Yeah not suggesting doing it over this would need something far more extreme, but the government writes the law, so they don’t need to care about being sued as the court can only rule over whether something breaches the law, which is why legally all the covid threat happened, because the government was given ability to do it and therefore it was legal. Plus the oil company would be stupid to sue the government as they would kiss good bye to their licence to mine

Wrong. We don’t live in a dictatorship like Russia, we have separation of powers.
If the government had the powers you suggest the Supreme Court wouldn’t have been able to overrule Boris’ peroration of Parliament. Laws can be challenged as being unlawful, and decisions not covered by law can be challenged by judicial review.

The government can’t just seize the licenses of oil companies that have bought them. The technical term for that is theft, and you won’t get any more foreign investment if you do that. Cuba is a good example of what happens when a country does that.
Or are you suggesting we should turn into a Communist dictatorship?

ps: you don’t “mine” oil…

I don’t know why you are always so combative and rude when you participate in discussion, especially considering you depict yourself as always correct yet often poorly analysing situations and making errors. Everyone is entitled to making mistakes, regardless.

Firstly, the Supreme Court in the U.K. is almost always on the side of the Government. Statistics show the proportion of cases lost by public bodies or the government has only decreased under the current presidency of the SC.

Secondly, I think you’ll find that the government CAN seize licences… though that wouldn’t be necessary. All that is required is an export ban, and this would be entirely legal due to the existence of force majeure. The criteria for this would be satisfied through the war in Ukraine.

If you remember, the European Union imposed an export ban on vaccines in the early days of their rollout. This was not considered theft and due to the continuing pandemic.

It is entirely possible for the U.K. to institute an export ban if our oil companies are capable of increasing supply to the point where we are no longer a net importer; for if we pass a bill limiting the export of oil it is certain other countries that have short supplies of oil will do the same.

Do be more considerate when replying or attempting to correct others. And correcting someone’s calling the drilling of oil “mining” is purely childish.

Because that’s all idiots understand.

Yes HMG wins most cases in the Supreme Court because they take expert legal advice to prevent them being dragged there. You also have idiots like the “Good Law Project” constantly taking cases to the SC and losing.
The SC still has, and can, rule against HMG however.

Imposing an export ban is not theft. If you bothered to read my comment before replying you would have seen that I said seizing licences is theft, which it is – unless you’re called Putin in which case it’s SOP.

HMG can’t seize licenses. It would be challenged in court. It would scare foreign investment away, etc, etc. I’d have thought that was pretty obvious.

Wrong. Just because we impose an export ban, the oil companies wouldn’t have to sell to us. They could simply stop drilling and wait.

But the biggest reason why we can’t? Reciprocity.

The EU reversed its ban on vaccines to the U.K. within hours when they realised that vaccine production on the continent required a precursor/ingredient that was only available from a factory in Yorkshire. If the EU stopped vaccines being exported to the U.K. we could in response shit down their entire vaccine production.

So if the U.K. stopped exporting oil to other countries they would respond in kind. And while we then might have enough petrol for our cars, we might not have food for our mealtimes, or parts for our military, etc, etc.

Try reading posts before responding, try to think through your arguments for more than 5seconds before posting them, and then your opinions and yourself may be deserving of respect.

Incorrect, the courts do not have the power to overrule the government. Not how are government works. Only the house of lords can and even then all they can do is delay it. The court can only rule on whether an action is legal or not based on the law which the government is able to write and change at a whim, as seen my Patel adding hundreds of pages to the crime bill after it had been voted on my government, in that case the lord’s rightly threw it back under nice try mentality.

We don’t have a dictatorship because the house of commons has to vote on law changes but so does the equiv in Russia and that isn’t working so well. A goverment with a large majority can pretty much do what it likes, including granting powers to the PM, like they did when they voted to give Boris the power to sign trade deals without needing to come to the house for vote.

The only thing the courts have power to do is rule on the practical implemetation of law. So if the government says something has to happen in a law but then don’t do it in practice the courts can rule against the government. At which point the government can change the law, so all the courts does is slows them down and keeps things transparent.

Wrong the courts can rule something is unlawful where no-law applies. The U.K. operates on a common-law principle.

No they can’t. The idea of civil style law is that everything is effectively illegal and there needs to be a law in place to make it legal, We operate on the reverse, everything is legal unless there is a law, which is common law.

The idea of common law is that the court intreprets the underlying regulation and that intretration then applies to all lower courts, so effectively they can extend the legilation by intrepreting what it is intended to achieve, but they can’t write the legisalation. It can not therefore intrepret something if there is no law in place to intrepret.

Plain and simply wrong, even someone with no legal expertise would know that simply by following the news 🤷🏻‍♂️

I would suggest reading up on how the government and constitution of the UK works, its surprising how many people don’t understand how the law works in their own country.

If you need a basic proof of this think about legal loop holes, they are used every day to get people off, because the legislation written by government said slightly the wrong thing, the courts are powerless to convict, if they could enforce stuff not in law, loopholes wouldnt’ work.

If the courts could overrule the goverment, we wouldn’t live in a democracy as the law would not be drafted by democratically elected people but instead by undemoncrafically elected judges.

Those other OPEC countries could just pick up the slack if they chose as you say its all about the dollar. Just wait till they run out of fresh water thats what I say.

AIUI we can’t.

Oil is not universally fungible.

Just to add to that, oil prices have come down considerably recently but the prices of refined products have increased by over 300%. The refineries are selling to places like America where local taxes are lower than our VAT at increasing levels further pushing up our forecourt prices.

I can tell you that prices here in LA are not any lower than your own. We’re pushing 8 dollars now and large cities in Texas are nearing the mid 6s. Any country where there is demand for oil will have exorbitantly high prices.

The average price for a gallon of petrol in dollars here in the UK is $8.324

In the US, a gallon is 3.785 liters. In the UK, it’s 4.546 litres. I hope you remembered to account for that.