Defence review to assess aircraft carrier capabilities

Well quite – it is a rolling program.

I wonder what % of flying hours is actually used up on the frames?

Probably not that much even now?

As with early Typhoon it was not the hours but the upgrade path that was the issue.

As a finger in the air it’s likely that there will be f35 squadrons for a total of 50-60 years ( if you assume that the Elizabeths replacements will be a bit late and they go on for longer than 50 years and the F35 is the only fighter type we get for the Elizabeths).. to keep 3-4 squadrons running over 50 years will likely take 130+ aircraft..if you assume each f35b built after 2018 will do around 8000 hours total…but the early f35b have serious structural problems ( the first 12 front line delivered ) may only manage 2100 hours before needing to be retired as the weighting cutting created serious flaws in the airframes that required a redesign post 2018.

“…but the early f35b have serious structural problems ( the first 12 front line delivered ) may only manage 2100 hours…”

So I wonder if L.M will replace them one to one, under the original guarantee?

Yes but over time things have changed. You can now look to load up both carriers with autonomous system’s instead of only manned aircraft.

Such as???

Yes. But don’t forget that it is the Army and the RAF that has actually done the lion’s share of warfighting in the last 40 years. They need strong resourcing too.

Excellent point.

By the way, overkill in defence matters is a good thing!

I don’t recall it ever being said that the 138 was to be purchased at the same time. When have we ever purchased a single huge tranche of aircraft?

That was never the case. 138 was the predicted purchase (reduced from 150) over a given timescale, never would they all have been ordered at once. The vague bit is rally more down to If in the long term, we will end up with 138 being purchased, which I seriously doubt.

they will need 130+ over the lifetime of 50-60 years..especially as the first tranche had major design flaws which will cut their flight hours down to around 2100 hours…basically the first 8-12 are probably already close to knackered.

The navy does not have any F35s they are all RAF aircraft.

It’s a joint asset. They will be deployed depending on the operational requirement. Be it on a carrier, or land based.

… and the UK needs 138. That number wasn’t made up, it was the result of careful analysis.

The political will isn’t there for that.

I’m always amazed people blame politicians instead of themselves for governments ills.

Folks blame politicians for making idiotic decisions. Like Starmer cutting defence when every other leading western country is increasing.

Careful Jim individual responsibility and accountability, you’ll be joining the Tories next 😀

I believe there was a simlear issue in the Falklands with HMS Broadsword were a 20mm shell from an Argentine aircraft cut the main power to the bridge

My mistake I was thinking of spear 3

They sure would.

That depends, put it in Red Sea finding vs Houthis and it is easy to find, don’t forget also “fisherman” fleets. Unless there a full war you can’t blast merchants out of water.

Very well explained. People think anti ship is easy. Its very far from easy.

If the RAF were to aquire another F-35 squadron, it should be forward deployed to Sweden to hold St.Petersburg in its sights!

RN SSBN are for end of the world duties. RAF from Canberra to Tornado were available for tactical nuclear strike, using US nuclear warheads.

RN SSBN is our share of the nuclear burden, a NATO duty. Those NATO countries that still have tactical nukes, let them have their share of the burden, even though the capability is now overkill, for reasons I stated in my last comment.

The more the merrier, when it comes to tactical joint NATO deterrence.

Back then, AAG & EMALS were having development issues. Both now mainly fixed. I would be interested in fitting AAG to QE/PoW, to make them STOBAR capable. That does not impede their STOVL capabilities.

Relying on the RAF & Tempest to help the Navy is a forlorn hope.

Why did they design the ski ramp to be narrow? If it was much wider maybe they could have launched 2 aircraft simultaneously?

We have never used carriers to conquer another country. Where do you get this idea from?
I don’t think anyone else does. Plenty of countries have carriers and yet have no Imperial intent.
Perhaps you don’t know what our carriers are for?

He doesn’t get sea denial or power projection I fear.

That’s not really true. Supportive was discussing vertical launch systems and not every carrier nation puts those on its carriers ( infact only the French, Italians and Russians do)

the U.S. carriers use mark 29 and 49 launchers, as a point defence missile systems..they don’t use vertical launch systems,

japanese carriers only have sea ram..a very short range point defence missile.not vertical launched.

the Spanish carriers don’t have any missile armament.

So what’s the strike range of an F35b? Keep in mind the F35b has no anti ship or anti sub capabilities it best employed within strike range of land targets. So hence best bobbing around a few hundred kms from land.

The government strategy is North Atlantic and Europe, if you have issues with that then mail your MP.

The F35 has no anti ship capability for the next 5-6 years, maybe less. After that it will be ideal for sea control and attacks on enemy surface ships. What is an air defence destroyer but a very dense IADS?
You are advocating a path likely to lead to the complete removal of fixed wing capability for the Navy for the next 40-50 years.
I completely agree with you that the carriers are less useful than anticipated in the current environment of NATO first, though they are not as redundant as you imply.
I disagree that that requires the mothballing of one of the ships and the resultant loss in experience and skills that would make it very difficult to justify regaining the capability if events further afield assume priority again.

For tge record I’m not advocating removal.of tge carriers. I would prefer we kept them Heck even added another. It’s difficult for some to get their head around that I present facts and options for something that I don’t personally agree with but that’s the challenge of critical thinking to analyse what we don’t agree with and perhaps see some logic in it.

What I’m saying is for a certain defence posture carriers aren’t the best options there’s logically other solutions that could be deployed.

I agree that mothballing one would have consequences but I can reconcile why the government’ might do it.

Because our carriers are fairly useless against ships and subs, P8 is a far more practical and cost effective solution and doesn’t tie up escorts. In fact the escorts themselves carry the capability to attack ships and can act much freely when not attach to a carrier strike group. Having additional airframes from an allie means we can increase coverage and frequency of patrols.

F35B are best used for carrier strike and therefore need to be fairly close to land to be within range. Even if we did procure LRASM, for European defence it would better to swap F35B purchase for As and operate the longer range A from allied bases, with the new engine upgrades the A range advantages will increase over the B beyond the current 550kms. And saving from carriers would easily justify the purchase of tanker drones to allow F35A to strike even deeper inland or into the North Sea. And with drones like the MQ25 also able to carry LRASM and other munitions it gives us even more flexibility.

Personally, I’m for 2 fully operational carriers but they need to be employed at what they are good at, which is providing sovereign base 1000s of miles from home where other options are limited. But taking any emotion out of it for closer to home logic dictates there’s more practical options that reduce cost and improve the flexibility of the surface fleet and the airforce.

F-35’s are only currently limited in the anti shipping role due to the waiting list for UK Weapons intigration. SPEAR 3 and 5, intigrated onto F-35 will make it a very potent anti-shipping weapon.

P-8’s are land bound aircraft requiring operation from UK or allied Airbases, exactly the restriction that carriers are there to mitigate, so while they are better sub hunters (not anti ships, as it’s a big non-stealthy target that in UK service carries Stingray Torpedoes, short range and light anti-submarine weapons that would be carried by Merlin and Wildcat in a Navy context, so taking the ASW work away from a Frigates airwing rather than the carriers). Nor can a P-8 shoot down Russian air assets, and I’ll remind you that Russian strategic bombers launching cruise missiles at shipping has historically been one of the reasons we’ve needed fighter coverage for our ships.

You say you want 2 operational carriers, but then you argue for a swap to A’s, which says you don’t want operational carriers, since the A’s can’t fly from them. (I also don’t think you quite realise how big the Atlantic is and just how little an F-35A flying from an airbase covers, see point about fighter coverage for shipping above).

But of course, the carrier can’t operate aircraft above certain sea states, so all of a sudden this critical asset that appartmetly nothing else can replace is impotent. Whilst subs and high flying aircraft are not impacted by the same weather. Pretty.much Russian intelligence can use the Met Office website to decide when to lauchvan attack 😀 . Quite frankly having a carrier act as an air defence picket to the north makes no sense. It has limited magazine ties up.other assets that are needed to defend it and can’t operate in all conditions. At put the aset at huge risk. If we want deter and stop Russian airstrip it’s better to do what Ukraine has been trying to do and what Isreal has just to Iran is strike their
Military infrastructure.

Also my personal views of what I’d like to see have no.bearing. they’re not relevant I’m not in government or dictating the government strategy on defence. I’m also not arguing anything, just setting out logical points that are relevant to our European based posture.

Of course the Atlantic large but the earth isn’t flat and the Atlantic becomes very constrain with the distance between Scotland and Greenland being lass than 1200 miles. F35A flying with an MQ25 will have a combat radius of 900 miles and with LRASM having a range of over 200miles F35A can target any surface vessel between UK and Greenland. Of course Russia has to get past both Finland and Norway first. The Baltic is now a NATO lake and will be a no go for Russia

And as for long range bomber we already have QRA but most of tge time Norway has already intercepted them and hands the of to us.

P8 can also be armed with LRASM.

We have carriers that we ordered for global strike, but if we were starting from scratch with the strategic of aim of defending Europe (government policy), we would not order 2 65000 t carriers. There’s quite simple more effective way to achieve those goals. So we now people try to justify the carriers that we’re order for a defence strategy that no longer applies.

And as for these critical assets we’ll.its looking like Labour will mothball one and reduce F35 buy. Personally I hope they don’t but logically it makes sense they free up surface combatants and funds to reach their strategic goals.

What the government also knows is there won’t be a protracted naval.confrontation around Europe. A NATO Russia confrontation will very quickly move to tactical nukes which will either escalate further to strategic nukes or end at the negotiating table.

Oh no! Better tell every carrier operating Navy in the world that they need the sea to be millpond smooth to operate. Good thing we went for STOVL then that can operate in higher sea states than any other form of Aircraft carrier.

I’m sure the Royal Navy will be glad of your opinion, and take note of it, since clearly the policy of using carriers as air defence in the North Atlantic that was a primary driver behind the RN carrier force in the cold war was entirely in error and nobody managed to spot it.

The F-35A can target any surface vessel between the UK and Greenland.

After that asset has been spotted, the F-35A scrambled from the UK, flown a few hours out over the North Atlantic, and then engaged it, hoping that there is no Russian aircover anywhere near it as it’ll be at maximum combat radius, and ignoring the fact that the 900m range of the F-35A is carrying only light Air-to-air missiles…. Oh and QRA is for defending UK airspace, Typhoon doesn’t have the range to cover the GIUK gap from the UK, hence: Carriers operating in the Atlantic helps plug that gap (and again, you don’t seem to understand how long it would take a Typhoon intercept to get out to maximum range to intercept a Russian bombing raid with long range cruise missiles….)

We don’t own LRASM, and have no plans to aquire it as we have domestically produced equivalents in the pipeline.

You have this weird myopic idea that we’d never deploy a fleet out of region, which even in the Cold War, when the RN was specifically targeted at defending the North Atlantic (and even then, as I pointed out, had carriers), wasn’t the case: they still did out of area power projection.

You seem desperate to justify cutting the carriers at any cost, while ignoring the realities of geography, defence economics, power projection and history. As for you claiming that you want the carriers to be kept and saying that people can’t “get their heads around you arguing vehemently for something you claim to not want,” it’s not like you’d be the first person to lie on the internet.

You seem angry and getting into personal attacks really no consequencesfor me so carry on if thats your thing. I made my personal position clearly I’m pro carriers and pro global.deployment of them. I also stated I was arguing but rather naking points but you again ignored that wanting an argument. That fact you completely ignored, these points nakes me questioni if you even even contemplate anything I wrote. The art of critical thinking is to examine something that you don’t agree with and draw conclusions from it those conclusions may not fit with what a person wants or believes. Try it sometime you may find it liberating. And because I’m thinking critically I can actually agree with your points on keeping the carriers as they do also have logic and benefits.

The bottom line is getting emotional over it is irrelevant the government is changing our defence posture and is examining how or carriers will be used or not used. By entertaining all possibilities I will not be shocked by any outcome.

I would suggest a ketter lobbying your MP on the future of the carriers would be better time employed rather than attempting to pick an argument with an anonymous online avatar
who actually agrees with you. 😀

Cowboys and Clowns you’re being far too polite 😀

That’s absurd! A 60% year on year increase. Are you sure?

Its in the US budget request. LM pretends that an F-35 costs $85m, but that price does not include an engine, or other non LM bits. US budget price is the ready for operations price.

The flyaway price won’t fly because it’s engineless? Blimey! I had no idea.

[And I apologize for using exclamation marks in successive posts.]

They can operate anti sub assets to back up those off the sub hunters and if the shooting war starts. They will come after convoys with a lot more than Sub. The primary ship killer will be aircraft.

So what weapon will our F35Bs be targeting these ships with? We have torpedoes available on the Astutes and P8s, we have anti ship missiles on some of the surface ships. We have anti ship missile on some our helicopters which can deploy from frigates and destroyers.

I said aircraft not ship.

And why would transatlantic shipping operate that far north would be foolish to take peace tome routes. Russias longest range bomber is dliw and propdriven has a combat radius of 3900 miles it would need to travel within range of n allied country to be able target transatlantic shipping taking a southern route. Russia has had trouble targeting static assets with its long range missiles so hitting a moving ship is going to be a challenge especially as even civilian ships would start deploying thing like GPS jamming and spoofing as well as other counter measures.

There are such things as flying tankers which can extend the range but hopefully the Russians have forgotten they have them as well.
But hey I hope the Russians have your attitude if it comes to a shooting war.

Oh dear.

If you say so.

RN is still having trouble getting it’s subs out to sea.
ASM from helos are for smaller vessels and craft.

Perhaps if we didnt need 2 65000t carriers we would ve able to.focus morecres on subs.just thought.

The sub issue will be sorted hopefully sooner rather than later

A QE carrier can embark a number of Merlin ASW helos for a substantial submarine hunt, if needed to be done. No doubt the ruZZians may try to interfere from the air, which the air group of F-35b will come handy.

Yes, but you also.need to provide the carrier 1 airdedence destroyer one RFA vessel and 2 frigates one being a T26 possibly 2 depending on T31 availability and 1 Astute. So I have 6 Assets in confined area dictated by the carrier location

Alternatively I could have 2 t26 operating independently an Astute operating independently a Merlin operating from a T45 all hunting over wider area. Not only that, I afree up the running cost of the carrier and a minimum of 700 crew, which could man 7 sub hunting frigates.

You would not want a ASW frigate near a carrier, but many miles away on lookout for following, or escaping enemy subs and vessels of sorts(an outer screen). The close-by escorts would be at least 2 AAW/BMD destroyers on lookout for long distance air threats. As I said a carrier operating a number of ASW helos will sanitised a large area of ocean, better than lone frigates.

Because the RN has only a limited number of ASW frigates, due to their high cost.

I said unmanned loyal wingmen and interoperability with NATO allies.
Nowhere did I suggest the U.K. should buy the A variant,
Almost certainly if a war broke out , carriers will primary targets. And being able to fly off another nations aircraft would be very advantageous.

I don’t understand the interoperability argument. Consider the current NATO exercise, Neptune Strike, which features HMS Prince of Wales, USS Harry S. Truman, USS Wasp, Turkey’s TCG Anadolu, and Italy’s ITS Cavour.

The only one of those ships that has cats and traps is the Truman. All the rest were designed or adapted for the F-35B. It seems there’s plenty of interoperability, wouldn’t you agree?

The fact we played with a group of nations that mostly use the F-35b neither disproves or proves my point.
In a shooting war the ability to operate other nations aircraft will be very valuable.
Do you propose we continue to also use up F 35B airframe tine with them acting as tanker and are we also developing VTOL loyal wingman.

The F35B has limited range or do you suggest we continue to use other F35 S tankers burning up airframe time. Further as the intention is to operate the F35B with loyal wingmen. How do you suggest we get them off the carrier, given anything ski launched will have the same problem regarding fuel and stores.
Like it or not to get any meaningful size of loyal wingman/ tanker is a catapult.

Further if we are in a situation where we are in a shooting war and the Russian inconsiderately take out a carrier that doesn’t operate VTOL aircraft, where do you propose they operate from ?