A parliamentary answer has clarified that the UK has carried out only basic fit checks of the Future Cruise/Anti-Ship Weapon (FC/ASW) on the F-35B Lightning while maintaining no programme to integrate the missile onto the jet.
Lib Dem MP James MacCleary asked for the planned timeline to equip the Joint Strike Fighter with FC/ASW. Defence minister Luke Pollard made clear that FC/ASW is not being developed with the F-35 in mind.
“The Future Cruise Anti-Ship Weapon programme is designed to be integrated on Typhoon and Rafale aircraft, as well as future platforms including the Global Combat Air Programme,” he said.
Pollard added that “fit checks on F35 have been successfully conducted to test if FC/ASW can be integrated if required.”
These checks are limited to confirming that the missile can be physically mounted and that basic clearances appear feasible. They do not amount to a funded integration effort and do not include software work, fire-control integration, aerodynamic trials or release testing. In practice, this level of work preserves the option without committing to it.
The minister closed by stating that “all decisions on capabilities will be in the Defence Investment Plan,” placing any future integration behind funding choices not yet published.
The UK’s FC/ASW roadmap is centred on Typhoon, Rafale and the future GCAP fighter. The F-35B continues to operate without a long-range anti-ship strike weapon and remains outside the formal FC/ASW pipeline.
As we reported earlier this year, the planned in-service date for the SPEAR Capability 3 air-to-surface weapon, the system long expected to be the F-35B’s principal medium-range strike missile, has slipped into the early 2030s. The Ministry of Defence confirmed that SPEAR 3 is undergoing re-baselining with dates still considered “draft and of low confidence” pending the programme review due at the end of 2025.
No chance of any leading European missiles beyond ASSRAAM being integrated with the F35 ‘Boondoggle’ in any relevant timescale.
Nothing can be integrated until the block 4 software allows the F35s system to talk to the weapons. Pandemic delys plus issues with block 3 has pushed the block 4 programme back at least a year.
Pandemic delays for the defense sector are a joke. I worked on site throughout the entire scamdemic because my employer had links to the MoD.
The Americans kept theirs working throughout too.
Assuming that the UK aircraft can receive Block 4, not sure all can or will. See November Defence Analysis.
“Basic fit checks” hmmm.
So how much did it cost to have a person use a Tape measure ?
To the nearest million will be good enough.
I reckon someone could get away with a £10 million contract for that…. I am available with my tape measure for half that price… I would even go digital to secure the contract…
I could sell you a Solar Generating System to power your Digital Measuring device.
How does £4 million grab you ?
Certification please. Not certified? That will cost you 2 million & take a minimum of 2 years. Yes I am aware Ukraine can do it in 2 weeks, but we aren’t Ukraine are we.
Ohh.
what If I gave you the Isle of Wight and £35 billion then ?
Only if you first remove all the Wihtware first. I understand USN may be looking for a Chagos replacement.
ha ha, just saw this.
maybe we could give them Anglesey ?
Passing a basic fit check is considerably more complicated than tape measure. Air safety regulations require far more work than that. Unless you want to go back to the days of the Supermarine Scimitar when pilots had a 52% chance of being killed per calender year, thats the way its going to stay
Thanks, I never knew. 🙄🙄🙄
My best friends elder brother back in the 60’s/70s was a FAA pilot in training. Of c12 in the squadron only 2 of them survived to qualify, rest died in accidents. At least that’s what I remember being told.
I’m envisaging a Heath-Robinson ‘big clunky switch’ on the dash, with some twisted pair to the launcher bracket. That wouldn’t work of course, on its own ….. you’d need another twisted pair to the targeting computer, of course! 🤣
Of course there’s no plans to fit a naval jet with an anti ship weapon. Why give it the teeth it needs to do its job? That’s too logical and not at all the way we do things.
They just have to sale close to land so that they can use Typhoons to do the job, the information for targeting being passed on by those expensive F-35s no doubt. What away to fight a war.
So let me get this right.. our brand new main long range cruse missile will only be integrated onto an aircraft the RAF seem determined to bin as quickly as possible in favour of the F35A ( and B) an aircraft that has no available long range cruise missile strike option.
We now have 6 billion dollars worth of carrier we are buying the wrong F35 for and a new missile we are developing that does not fit on the F35s the RAF are buying… soo well planned.
Six (and a bit) billion sterling for the carriers
I don’t agree we have the wrong F35 variant. It just needs to be properly supported with ££££.
None of the F35 variants will have FCAS etc
This is the problem with the budgets for carrier fast air being RAF controlled. Carriers are not their priority when budgets are super stretched.
Yep I put dollars in because I was thinking about F35s.. when I said buying the wrong f35 I meant the 12 As they are buying ( the Bs are needed), that purchase of 12 F35As is pure politically motivated by the RAF so they can buy more.. they clearly don’t want more that 2 F35b squadrons and they clearly want to drop the number of typhoon squadrons.. they want the F35A and seem willing to have all the other capability programmes compromised to get it.
I bet by 2030 we will have 4 front line typhoon squadrons ( as that is all the 96 FGR4 tranche 2-3 numbers can reasonably support) 2 f35b squadrons ( 50 odd aircraft) and 2 f35A squadrons ( 50 odd aircraft).. when all common sense says we should be maximising our typhoon squadrons numbers as cheaply as possible for air defence and long range surface strike and the F35 buy should be about providing the optimal air wing for carriers to maximise sea control.. anything else is just weakening our ability to wage war with Russia and deter Russia.
Personally I would like to see a plan for 8 front line typhoon squadrons and 4 F35b.. those 30 tranche one aircraft should have been preserved and brought back into service as well as a possible second hand purchase from someone offloading tranche 2 typhoons ( Spain) ..the RAF should have had a plan to scrap up a total of 150 FGR4 typhoons and 100 F35Bs for 2030.. that would have been a good plan to increase overall capabilities and resilience across the fleets as well as maximising the key conventional deterrence and offensive capabilities we have against Russia .. storm shadow attacks and the carrier battle group taking sea control over is high north bastions….
The RAF is actually one of the worst offenders for scrapping perfectly good capabilities for the shiny and new.. as an example the 30 tranche 1 typhoons and those 200+ tonkas that were scrapped and had a good half their airframe hours left on them when scrapped..and we could still be running a couple of squadrons worth easily as long range storm shadow truck… it’s would actually be a far better aircraft for taking stormshadow shots at Russia than FGR4 because it could hit Russia with storm shadows without the need for tanker support.
I actually think one radical option is to go with the Gripen to increase mass of squadrons.. it’s very keenly priced at 65 million pounds a unit and is very significantly cheaper to operate than the typhoon and insanely cheaper than the F35, it’s also got the highest sortie rate of any modern western fighter and takes UK missiles.. what more do you want..it’s essentially the perfect air defence platform, in which sortie rate and cheap mass is probably the most important issue.. as Russia will send lots of cheap missiles and drones to attack the UK..
So if we were being completely pragmatic and as cost effective as we can be with a ligh low mix: 4 typhoon squadrons for expeditionary activities, 4 f35b ( 3 for carrier surge and 1 as fifth generation land expeditionary to support the typhoons) and 4 squadrons of gripen for air defence work across the Uk and territories.. but that’s fairyland stuff.
Firstly it is a function of tiny budgets.
With a real world 1.6% defence spend – what do you expect?
I agree RAF are tech edge obsessed rather than mass obsessed.
Tonka would be of zero use these days.
I agree the F35A thing is nutty when we can’t even fully operate the B due to resources.
Is it because F35A is part funded by DNO I wonder?
The thing is Ukraine is doing very well with aircraft that are far below the capability of the Tonka.. it depends how you use it, as a storm shadow truck in a conflict with Russia it would actually be better than typhoon.. simply because what you want most for strategic strikes against another nations systems is long legs and the ability to stay low for a long time ( efficient low level flight), it’s storm shadow that actually penetrates the air defence.
Let’s look at a mission and why the Tonka would have been a very very good capability to have in a UK Russian conflict.. it’s got a hi low strike range of 1500km at to that the 500km range of storm shadow and your can launch a Tonka sortie at Russia without any need for strategic tankers.. a typhoon strike would need you to have a strategic tanker sortie and air to air refuelling within halfway between home and the strike point..so it’s actually easier and less risk filled to undertake a Tonka strike.. especially if you pair that up with the fact the RN uses the carrier battle group to gain sea and air control right up to the point of the strike…
But the simple truth is no fast jet is useless.. and most western nations and all other nations have a trail of older 4th ( and sometimes even 3rf generation aircraft) after their cutting edge 4.5 or 5th generation tip of the spear.. because everyone it’s seems understands that mass wins wars.. technical edge only takes you so far.. and it’s generally always the side that can have more in more places that wins in the end.
I honestly think the who F35A was the RAF seeing the stars align to make the case of levering the door open to F35A.. they have never really wanted to pay more than lip service to the carrier battle group air wing and have essentially always wanted F35A.. the spit buy argument has something the RAF has kept alive ever since the first f35B order and there was after all a reason the FAA was given over to RN control in 1939..
I agree that FAA should be all RN.
It could be why F35B budgets are so strangled so that when RAF divests it only divests that limited budget.
There is something about the whole mess that doesn’t quite make sense….
If the government wanted to push the service chiefs, handing control to the FAA back to the RN should be the price the RAF has to pay for a good Tempest purchase. Otherwise, give the Navy the strategic strike role using ship-based STRATUS and hypersonic weapons.
Problem is RAF likely won’t accept a ‘jam tomorrow’ proposal as it could easily turn into an empty jam jar!
Also RAF do believe in the ‘if it flies we own it’ dictum…
If it flies, they pay for it then if they want it like that. I speak as an RAF cadet.
More seriously though, I think the RN operating their own Vanquish, MQ9B or even Airlander if the gods are good would be a convenient way to get their foot in the door and begin operating their own aircraft.
From a wider perspective we need to decide whether the RN’s focus on the North Atlantic means that they should hand over the global strike role to the RAF using Tempest following A400 refuellers with Typhoon (for example) , or whether the RAF should focus on being strong in Europe with extra E7, P8 etc while the RN get 6 MRSS and more T31s.
All of which would require more budget, but that’s not the point I’m making.
Unfortunately land based fighters just cannot do a global strike role, range and endurance has limits even with tankers… the longest fighter endurance flight was 15 hours so essentially 7 hours cruise to the target is the very top end of endurance so a hard limit of about 3500 miles.. and the sortie rate for those missions would be appalling….
A carrier, SSN and surface ships are still the best option for global strike.. unless we strap some AGM-84H/K SLAM-ER on P8.
Replying here as thread has run out
In that case we need to start a national programme for a sovereign hypersonic/ballistic missile in the class of the US Dark Eagle NOW ready for T83 and SSN-AUKUS to come into service.
The F35Bs need some sort of anti-ship weapon but Protector is needed for wide area sea control.
Meanwhile in the real world. Russia’s 300 odd tactical aircraft and 100 strategic bombers failed to gain air superiority against at best mid 80s vintage Soivet systems at the start of the war. 35 Israeli F35s took apart Iran’s air defences against the 1990s upgrades of the same system and current generation Russian “anti stealth” search radars. Hows that mass worked out?
The Russian anti stealth is just more wonder weapons.
A hybrid force is what is needed such that there is day 1 and standoff as well as stealth.
Mass is needed as well as tech.
If you have extra budget buying a smaller number of day one aircraft can get more weapons on traget on day one than a hybrid force. How days extra in a foxhole while some lobs 5000lb glide bombs at you would you be willing to spend for your hybrid force?
That isn’t a valid argument as UK F35 doesn’t have a full suite of weapons whereas Typhoon does and UK has sovereign control of integration.
So having the best selling 5th generation aircraft not coming with the default ability to use UK designed weapons and instead spending more money on an aircraft thats due to go out of service in 10 years time is your big idea?
Typhoon is not OOS in 10 years time. It will be around until 2045.
In the mean time we have a not very offensively useful F35B and A won’t be any better without weapons.
Even USAF has a HiLo mix and isn’t just going 5th gen.
It is too expensive putting all the Gucci stuff on one platform.
Also in the real world, NATO were sending their anti air weapon systems to Ukraine. Which was the real reason the Russians didn’t get air superiority (and of course their aircraft were also more about looks than ability. Which was always suspected.
The true real world, as evidenced in every single war of attrition such as Ukraine and what would be against Russia/china is that it is the ability to regenerate equipment that is lost or worn.
As Germany found out, they could have the best equipment in the world, but if it is that complex to build and maintain in ideal peacetime conditions, what chance have you got during an enduring conflict where resources are limited and equipment is destroyed?
The T34 wasn’t successful because it was better than the panzer 4 or Tiger, but because it had superior numbers. The P51 wasn’t better than the FW190 or 109G, there were just more of them.
There is a comment next to the original Sherman tank sent to UK that is now at bovingdon. It details a conversation between a prison guard and a German POW who was in command of an A/T battery. The guard asked how the prisoner how they lost the war when they had the best equipment. His response was “because we ran out of ammunition, before you ran out of tanks”
NATO didn’t send SAM systems that arrived inside the 12 days that 35 Israeli F35s took to destroy Iran’s air defences. Once again Russian mass failed to do the job that a force less than 10% strong did in the same time frame against a generation older versions of the same SAM systems.
Also in the real world Ukraine gets hammered nightly by long range cruise missiles and drones and has not gained air superiority over its own boarders. The UK has a significant area across the globe that it needs to provide air defence.. that means it needs mass. Because our fast jet squadrons are not just there to kick the shit out of another nation they are the primary defence against air attack for the UK and our overseas territories as well as providing an airwing for the carrier battle group and then also supporting NATO air policing.. in the REAL world that’s more than 8 front line squadrons can easily do.
The F35B is specifically designed to not need a very very expensive long range cruise missile option. It’s design to get in close and use much more cost effective weapons like Pave-way IV which is 20 times cheaper than Storm shadow and probably many times more that than FC/ASW.
As as Ukraine and Russia are finding out economics is the most important factor in major wars
SPEAR 3 is designed to further enhance the longevity of F35’s ability with a range sufficient to keep the F35 outside of the detection envelope of the latest generation of SAM systems yet still have a cost effective unit price per weapon.
The F35 is not very good at lobbing big expensive cruise missiles so it’s not surprising it’s not being equipped with one.
For an anti ship strike it’s entirely probable that 6 spear III missiles would be more effective than 2 JSM missiles (carried internally in F35A which is the only anti ship missile set for internal carriage)
All any of these missiles can do to a warship is a mission kill and hitting 6 targets rather than two gives you a better chance of setting fires or knocking out something useful like the radar or power generator
No 5th Gen stealth jet can carry large anti ship missiles internally (GCAP will likely have this capability hence 6th gen) and if you have to mount them on the exterior then it’s better to put them on a faster more manuverable aircraft able to give them a high inertial boost and extend their range.
Typhoon is probably the best aircraft in the world for this role.
No pilot would want to use Paveway in a peer conflict. The launching aircraft is pretty much forced to fly within visual range of the target which makes daylight attacks suicidal. What we should be doing is spending money on huge stocks of Spear and a cheaper Spear-glide using a passive seeker, not relying on Gulf War tech to fight IADS.
The rest I all agree with, especially if the loadout were 6 Spear 3 and 2 Spear EW for extra chance of success.
Depends if there is any enemy air defence left, I certainly agree we should have a glide bomb version of Paveway IV and or SDB.
The U.S. are putting their own heavy..long range strike missiles on F35..simply put you are not bringing a nation to its knees and to the table with a weapon that has a 10kg warhead and a range of 100kms.. spear three is a tactical weapon I’m talking about conventional strategic weapons.. storm shadow has a 450kg broach warhead.. thousands of storm shadows will do massive damage to a nations capability to fight and shatter infrastructure.. spear three will tickle it.
Spear three is designed to help win a battle not a war.. it’s for killing tanks and damaging ships etc, but wars are won by shattering your opponent nations systems, will and ability to fight and for that you need very very big bangs and lots of them… you could throw huge amounts of spear three weapons at a nations transport infrastructure and it would all be fixed in a few days.. 10 storm shadows is 10 key bridges gone.
So at present for f35 to take part in the bit of the war that matters in the long run, which is the strategic reduction of the enemies systems allowing them to wage war all the F35 can bring is free fall guided bombs.. that has 2 problems 1) it has to risk penetration of the enemy air defence systems and therefore loss if an irreplaceable aircraft 2) because it’s not firing a cruise missile with a 500km range it will need to air to air refuel very very close to the enemies AEW and air to air combat aircraft.. that puts your strategic tanker force at risk… if your firing a 500km range cruise missile you can tanker your fighter 1000km away from the enemy..
That is our entire problem the F35 with its preset and planned capabilities is supreme at fighting a campaign or short war or pounding a non peer nation for a political settlement.. if the UK and Russia got into a pissing match and NATO was politically neutralised ( a possibility ) it would be decided by hurling strategic weapons ( not the nuclear type) at each other.. and the nation that could both absorb and keep its systems running and shatter the others systems with long range big bangs will win.. why do you think all of a sudden there was a plan for 7000 of this type of weapon and the ability to make lots of them.. our enemy is 2000miles away and has a lot of long range big bangs.. a Uk Russia war will not be clever or subtle and a 10kg warhead clever missile will be tactically brilliant but do sod all to win.
The F35B was originally designed to replace Harrier and to a lesser degree Jaguar in UK service. When someone decided that it would be a good idea to combine the future offensive air system (FOAS) that was designed to replace Tornado, into the F35 program. The RAF were supposed to been getting a large contingent of F35As. So back in the day we were going to have a mixed fleet of F35s. As the F35A was specifically chosen for the interdiction role. Which is flying beyond the front lines and taking out key infrastructure, such as marshalling areas, bridges, HQs, war materiel manufacturers etc.
The F35B we have currently cannot do the interdiction role. Instead we currently use Typhoon, that was upgraded as part of Project Centurion, to lob a couple of Storm Shadows at these strategic targets. I suspect when GCAP comes into service it will be expected to do the interdiction role.
The F35B could do some of the interdiction roles if it were armed with Storm Shadow, or the later Stratus (LO/RS). In the interim it could be armed with the US made JASSM/JASSM-ER. Which uses the same BROACH warhead as Storm Shadow, but because it uses a turbofan instead of a turbojet, it has a much longer reach (JASSM-ER) than Storm Shadow.
Wow you really have been drinking the LM Coolade by the gallon !
It’s funny how the Norwegians, USA, Belgians, Germans, Australians, Fins, Italians and Japanese all disagree with your assessment and have ordered the JSM for use in their F35A/Cs and under the wings of their F35Bs.
They must have missed you off their list of consultants before spending 00’s millions of dollars !
Maybe they thought well the F35 is stealthy but it may not be in 10,20 or 30 years and why risk the Aircraft if you don’t need to and can just launch a missile instead ! After all it isn’t like it can’t carry both, so launch the missile then attack with bombs etc.
Right now I would bet that China and Russia are very busily trying to figure out how to detect and shoot down F35’s, and chances are they will succeed so not having a stand off missile available would be a pretty bad decision.
Also Stealth is great but in daylight it’s just as vulnerable as any other aircraft to a fighter and in Norther latitudes daylight can be 24 hours long !
As you rightly point out EO aided by AI is a thing. Silly resolution CCD is a thing too.
IRST as well. Plus there are radars that can see F35 but not suitable for missile lock. Once you know something is there you can act accordingly.
Yep a 2 point beginers guide to pounding the crap out of a nation and getting them to the peace talks AKA “winning a peer war with an enemy nation at distance or at least not losing it”
1) pound the ever living crap out of the nation you are at war with.. most people seem to forget it’s not militaries that are at war, it’s nations if the nation has the capability and will to keep rebuilding its military it will keep on fighting.. you have to kill the nations ability and will make war.. you are trying to destroy the systems of that nation so it can no longer wage war and the military are only one of the sets of Systems that must be reduced.. you need tons and tons of strategic weapons.. these need to be long ranged and have big warheads to be able to reduce things to rubble.. not tickle them with a 10kg bast frag warhead, you could shoot spear three at a nation’s infrastructure for all eternity and not get beyond their ability to repair it each day.. you need warheads in the 100kg-500kg range to do infrastructure and systems damage that is not easy to repair.
2) keeping your strategic war-fighting assets alive and ticking.. you need to be able to keep dealing strategic damage to the enemy nation if part of that strategic warfighting ability is not replaceable you keep it alive at all costs. That means your strike fighters that carry your air launched cruise missiles are not to be placed in harms way.. don’t put 1000lb freefall bombs on them and drive them through other nations air defences on a hope.. use them from a safe distance.. launching attacks from 500Kms+ away, this also means your strategic AAR assets don’t have to refuel within 500-1000km of the enemy putting them at risk..have your SSNs engaged the enemy nation from 1000km away.. have your carrier battle group 1500km away from their coast instead of within 1000kms… long range strategic effectors keep your irreplaceable strategic platforms safe and allow you to keep on hitting the enemy.. loss your strategic platforms ( SSNs, carriers with carrier borne aircraft, surface combatant with long range cruise missiles, land based longe range cruise missiles, conventional Medium/intermediate range BMs and strike fighters with AAR ) and you have lost.. simple as.
That is not the same need as winning a battle or even a campaign such as the Falklands war or if you happen to live next door and have a land boarder with your enemy ( in the land boarder case a functional field army becomes critical as a foundation even above strategic weapons).
Sure but none of them have Spear (not that we do either at the moment)
JSM is not exactly a long range or a particular heavy weapon either.
Great for the A and C models but LRASM is probably much more appropriate for B in an anti ship role if it has to carry something under the wing you want all the range and hitting power you can get.
I would still take 6 spear from a stealthy launch over two JSM fired from underwing on a target despite what Italy and Japan have assessed.
I think the JSM is neither fish nor fowl, it’s too light for a true anti ship weapon but it’s comes with a lot of the limitations of a light weapon like Spear on SDB but lacks their numbers.
It’s being purchased because it exists and there is little else to buy in its place.
However, the F35s priority role is suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD)/destruction of enemy air defences (DEAD). There have been a number of public cases studies, where an F35 is pitted against a S400 battery supported by a Pantsir. A lot of the studies agree that the F35 has the advantage. But there is a threshold on when it can not only be detected but also tracked. The sad situation is that if our F35s armed with Paveway had to take out the S400, it would likely get taken out by the Pantsir first. A lot will depend on the height the F35 approaches at. As that will also determine the “lob” range of the Paveway. But having the F35 approaching from closer to the ground, will allow it to get much closer. But still put at significant risk from Panstir using its infrared optics.
Even for our F35s it is crucial that it has a better stand-off range against air defence systems! The Spear-3 was supposed to answer that problem.
This has been the plan for many years, when they gave up any hope of integrating anything further beyond Meteor and Spear. Some of this goes all the way back to when the Cameron government were dithering around trying to turn the Prince of Wales CATOBAR. We are long past any sane attempts to make the Navy work and apparently moving into some Through-the-Looking-Glass fantasy.
They should have incorporated a Circus Big top rather than a hanger on those carriers. Hate to say it but beginning to think the French were right in arguing for the Rafale parameters rather than the Typhoon parameters to focus upon. Certainly so in regards to what has followed sadly, Typhoon never being given the claws and all round capabilities they deserved yet still having to do the job of the super jet that was supposedly the reason they were never given those capabilities. All we have had is a high turn over of circus masters. Geez let’s hope we don’t have to fight a war, we will be borrowing equipment from Ukraine.
with all the British F35 news i’ve been reading lately, one can’t help but come to the conclusion that this procurement was a very big mistake that had no planning or foresight and no roadmap to its name.
Totally. Underarmed carrier with underarmed jets. Why not resucitate and rebuild an upgraded Harrier with Tempest tech ? Can believe the lack of urgency here. Why not even upgrade existing Typhoon’s withheld MBDA ER-Marte as an interim? And the P-8s with something like LRASM if easy.
*Can’t believe….
Don’t be an idiot. Harrier was a shit can in comparison
It did originally. Up to 150 airframes to be ordered between 2002 and 2012 was the original plan
That was when they were meant to be cheap because of the bulk buying.
Slated price pretty much doubled and the operational costs tripled.
That came significantly later….and wasnt a known issue in the 2002 to 2005 period. The decision not to award follow on tranches came partly over ‘ the up to’ 60 x CV variant decision that kept getting deferred from original @2004 date …followed by budget deferrals…especially after 2008 financial crisis.
It wasn’t known because the aircraft was so late into production they weren’t available to buy in production lots!
The 2002 plans and optionality for composition of up to 150 F35 Airframes to replace / partially replace previous +/- 380 airframes of various types was ‘fluid’ but can be summarised as:
· 60-90 F35B airframes to replace 190 GR7/9 and SHAR Harriers with the SHAR replacement role to be a function of the then forecast earliest 2004 Carrier CATOBAR decision. (I assume the SHAR replacement volumes are difference between 60 & 90)
· An order ‘of at least 60’ F35C to be made as early as 2004 if future RN carrier program adopts CATOBAR
· If CATOBAR decision is ‘No’ then consideration to adding (in addition to 60-90 F35b’s) up to 60 F35A (or additional ‘B’s’ ) for RAF Deep Strike role to replace Tornado GR’s as they retire.
· The evidence strongly suggests the order volumes to meet operational requirements were originally going to be somewhere between 120 and 150 over a 10 year period with difference largely driven by a CATOBAR decision due in 2004 at the earliest.
The issue of why the ‘plan’ wasn’t followed can be debated but the Plan (until 2007) was for up to 150 aircraft (and not as a whole life of project concept but as a near medium term replacement for those @380 prior operational airframes) It is worth searching for and reading the following 2015 UK Parliamentary ‘Standard Note’ from which I’ve pulled the following extracts :
Standard Note: N06278
The UK’s F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter
Last updated: 6 February 2015.
Author: Louisa Brooke-Holland.
Section: International Affairs and Defence Section
……..
3: Background: short history of the programme
The selection of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter in 2001 was the culmination of originally separate programmes by the Royal Navy and RAF to replace the Harrier and Tornado fleets.
4.1 Weapons
…….According to the RAF a maximum weapon payload will consist of: 6 Paveway IV (precision guided bomb), 2 AIM-120C AMRAAM (advanced medium-range air-to-air missile), 2 AIM-132 ASRAAM (advanced short-range air-to-air missile) and a missionised 25mm gun pod.
Initial Operational Capability is expected to comprise two air-to-air missiles (ASRAAM and AMRAAM) and Paveway IV.
Future armaments include: Storm Shadow (long-range air to surface), SPEAR 1 (air-to surface), and METEOR (beyond visual range air-to-air missile). In the longer term it is also expected to carry the MDBA SPEAR 3, a munition capable of striking a moving target from long-range and of swarming enemy defences with multiple munitions.
5: How many aircraft?
The original planning assumption of 150 aircraft is not expected to be realised. Ref 54 & 55
In July 2012 the Government has committed to 48 aircraft but has refused to be drawn on the total number of aircraft it expects to order. Ref 55
Until early 2014 the Government had signalled the fleet size will be decided in the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review. However the Government has since suggested the final numbers to be ordered will not be confirmed until the fifth and final Main Gate in 2017.ref 56
Note 54: (regarding the figure of up to 150 aircraft) This was stated clearly to the Defence Committee as late as September 2005: Defence Committee, Future Carrier and Joint Combat Aircraft Programmes, 21 December 2005, HC 554 2005-06, Ev 42, para 14.
Note 55: By 2007, the number had dropped to 138: “Details emerge of UK JSF deliveries”, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 5 November 2007
I agree that was the 2002 plan.
I was in the conversations 2008-12.
The problem was the Camerloon budget cuts to defence and the rocketing cost of DNO.
Everything was predicated on the idea that budgets would return to 2.5% and not dip lower.
Reality was 10 years of 0.5% below baseline spend so we have a 5% of GDP funding hole. Which is more than two years of defence budget.
Indeed SB. Funding and budget cuts was the issue, not unit purchase price or operating costs (although that didn’t help). Having said that..im always comparing UK MOD budget v purchase outcomes to Australian outcomes. They seem to get so much more bang for buck for whatever dollars they have available. Their ORBAT for 2% of GDP with 40% the population of the UK is very impressive
I admire their dogged determination to make sure the money invested in the carriers, instead of the escort fleet, is put to waste.
Adding these weapons to give our carriers some serious punch, what a shame, I guess they’ll have to stick to air-to-air missiles and bombs.
Even the air to air missiles are not the best in class. Without something better this will be decidedly concerning post 2030. Of course any upgrade will inevitably be American in any acceptable timescale.
Good job Typhoons and Tempests will be able to sink orc ships before they get out into the Atlantic then isn’t it?🤞😡 or we could rely on the French with their carrier that WILL have anti ship missiles on board!
Beyond painful. Pitiful indeed.
don’t they mean Stratus LO and Stratus RS?
Good spot, slightly worrying that Pollard refers to a single variant rather than both types going on Typhoon.
Don’t Status also do a “Quo” version ?
Another brilliant plan from H.M. Government. I do wonder why Pollard has a job. He never says anything useful.
FFS NFC
Hang on, didn’t they say that carriers was getting strike capability from flight deck. I assumed it was going to be this.
The only “strike” capability planned for a Carrier group is the RFA not being able to turn up. No weapons need be purchased.
I mean flight deck launched from a f-35
What about integration on Merlin or Wildcat. Italian’s have heavy MBDA Marte anti ship missiles integrated to their naval rotary airframes.
Marte is not ‘heavy’ other than in the ‘Spear’ definition of heavy. Most of the heavy AShM have warheads well above 100kg. NSM/JSM – 120kg, Exocet – 165 kg, Harpoon – 227kg, RBS 15 – 200kg, Otomat – 210kg.
Marte 70 kg warhead is significantly heavier than SPEAR…but i take your point
Hang on a minute. The Storm Shadow integration on the F35 was supposedly cancelled to free up a slot to fit FCASW. Is this one of those cases where the MoD cancel a program and say its being replaced by a future one, that down the line also gets cancelled, just to save a few pennies? By which stage they hope people have forgotten that FCASW was supposed to be on the integration program.
Also in the real world, NATO were sending their anti air weapon systems to Ukraine. Which was the real reason the Russians didn’t get air superiority (and of course their aircraft were also more about looks than ability. Which was always suspected.
The true real world, as evidenced in every single war of attrition such as Ukraine and what would be against Russia/china is that it is the ability to regenerate equipment that is lost or worn.
As Germany found out, they could have the best equipment in the world, but if it is that complex to build and maintain in ideal peacetime conditions, what chance have you got during an enduring conflict where resources are limited and equipment is destroyed?
The T34 wasn’t successful because it was better than the panzer 4 or Tiger, but because it had superior numbers. The P51 wasn’t better than the FW190 or 109G, there were just more of them.
There is a comment next to the original Sherman tank sent to UK that is now at bovingdon. It details a conversation between a prison guard and a German POW who was in command of an A/T battery. The guard asked how the prisoner how they lost the war when they had the best equipment. His response was “because we ran out of ammunition, before you ran out of tanks”
Most of that is quite accurate and rather insightful. However one shouldn’t over estimate the quality of German equipment in WW2 there is an element of excuses for failure involved. Tigers and Panthers were indeed capable but over engineered and flawed, the overlapping wheels were a disastrous idea except on paper, but yes looked good because western tanks till 45 were generally poor until the Pershing and Centurian came along too late to be ot able in action. But early war the Matilda was considered better than the equivalent German tanks of the time. Meanwhile half the German army of that time used horses. The FW-190 was indeed superior for a year Summer 1941 to Summer 1942 but that was mainly due to an error we see far too often today, when the Air Ministry refused the 2 stage supercharger for the Merlin that RR had tested and proposed in 41 because they were all in on the ‘superior’ Griffon down the line and didn’t want to waste resourses due to the fact they weren’t expecting new superior German fighters till 1943. That wasted a year.
Their medium machine guns were generally better but most of their supposed superior weaponry wasn’t superior. No 4 engined bombers, no Mosquito equivalent, no microwave radar, less sonar capability, inferior knowledge of high temperature alloys (that held back their jet research) and had even fallen behind Britain in nuclear research which fuelled the Manhattan Project. Oh and despite the 88’s notoriety the best anti tank gun of the war was the 17pdr as Rommel discovered at El Alemein. Their main superiority was in rocketry of course, radio controlled missiles were certainly a potential game changer but too little too late and arguably a waste of resourses. If Germany had started the war two years later as planned it might have had advantages where it mattered mainly their rockets, but in reality by the end of the war the allies were for the most part surpassing them in most technological weaponry, tanks included.
That doesn’t devalue the gist of your argument mind where yes reliable if less capable can be far more useful than over engineered, over complex platforms in markedly fewer numbers.
Never be fitted to F-35
I posted this on the story that the F-35’s will be flying into the 2060’s.
“By 2060 maybe British F-35’s will have got Meteor’s, Spear 3, and maybe Spear 4. Even though the UK has handed over millions of £’s, the F-35 Joint Program Office and Lockheed have repeatedly pushed Meteor intergration to the back of the queue. Now in service date is sometime in the 30’s.
When I see an RN carrier with a deck loaded with F-35’s, as with the PoW now off Naples, I can’t help thinking of the “Emperor’s No Clothes.” Maybe the F-35’s are not completely naked but are just wearing vest and underpants.”
The whole failure to arm the F-35’s os a joke.
IS a jole.
Certainly something of a show pony as things not only stand but look like standing for many, many years. As things stand the F-35 appears to have a Role little more than defending the Carrier which has little more role than to defend the the supporting ships there to protect the carriers. Not sure that was the envisaged role of a carrier battle group. Well I guess if they can’t strike much at least the F-35 is far less easy to strike back, but still expensive for a show pony.
So w will have 2 strike carriers with aircraft that can’t carry antiship missiles, and land based aircraft that can carry them but can’t operate from the carriers?
I think my cat could come up with more joined up thinking than that.
Cue the Benny Hill music to sum it up.
We really need to look at fitting the carriers with catapults and arrestor wires, at the moment we’re constantly trying to shoehorn round pegs into square holes. It would be reasonably expensive up front but with catobar at least we could pick from all of the options used and developed for carriers by thr US Navy and French. F35B can then be retired either for F32Cs (on loan I’d suggest) or a naval version of Tempest.
Trouble is the F-35C Doesn’t really solve the problem as things stand though might have more US options internally stored later, we have no refuelling capability either to improve range, so Rafale would be the preferred choice, forget F-18. But we call these stealth carriers designed to exploit Gen 5 aircraft so filling them with aging Gen 4 would be ridiculous, do we buy more French Gen 6 aircraft to replace them, can’t see Tempest the size it’s going to be becoming an option. So a lot more money spent to achieve nothing or look even more humiliated by buying a jet we originally rejected as even a concept and not stealthy or as capable electronically as the show pony aircraft it would be replacing. Talk about wall and a hard place and no obvious way out. Having faith in the US is certainly coming back to haunt us.
There is a possible Plan C option. We kind of know that Tempest is going to be much larger than Typhoon, probably in the same class as the F111. Which is due to the need to incorporate a large weapons bay, as well as the internal fuel needed to meet the range requirement. The F111B was designed as USN carrier long range fighter aircraft, but it was considered to have very poor manoeuvrability needed for dogfighting, so got cancelled. But being swing wing, this would have helped its parking footprint on the carrier’s deck. All the models of Tempest show it with a large delta wing. The Rafale M, has a delta wing, yet does not have folding wings, As I believe, the mechanism would be too much of a compromise for the integrity of the delta wing. Or more likely the wingspan of the delta, doesn’t overly compromise the aircraft’s footprint and the numbers the carrier can carry. Sadly, an aircraft the size of Tempest will take up a large amount of floor space when parked. Which will reduce the numbers the carrier could carry.
If we forgo the madness of going doing the Rafale M route. There may be another option which will still be 5/6th Gen. Saab have proposed the Sea Gripen for the Indian Navy, which got beaten by the Rafale M. But the Swedish requirements for Gripen could play in our favour, namely the aircraft must have excellent short take-off and landing (STOL) capabilities. Roll forward a few years, when Saab (Sweden) decided that Tempest would not suit their needs, i.e. not STOL capable and left Team Tempest. Saab decided into instead to go it alone on a Gripen replacement. Some of the models that Saab have shown so far, show a single engined aircraft with a coupled canard and delta main wing. Though the images don’t show a thrust vectoring exhaust, the coupled canard and delta will give pretty good STOL characteristics, as per the current Gripen. Which is what is desirable for carrier landings. The aircraft is going to be larger than Gripen, as it will also use internal weapons bays, but it will be a lot smaller than Tempest. Meaning you can still park quire a few on the deck, even if the wings don’t fold! It’s likely that the avionics used in the Tempest, will also be used in the new Saab aircraft. Could Saab be swayed to design a maritime version of their 6th Gen jet?
Stobar is a terrible method and does not mix with Stovl, forget it
You’re assuming I was talking about STOBAR. I would only consider CATOBAR for non STOVL launches and landings. But that would also require the carrier being modified with an angled deck. Straight deck landings are way too risky for conventional landings. Perhaps even for STOL drone landings!
Another way we could do it, though it would be a much longer shot, is that F35B has already been used and deployed as a STOL aircraft for dispersed operations and airfield survivability- I think it was the Iceland deployment- and we have here in the UK the world’s best/only VTOL jet expertise.
So if SAAB wanted to collab with RR on a larger jet that retained the same STOL capacity as Gripen or even improved on it, then using a development of Liftsystem (perhaps optimised for maintainability rather than raw thrust) could be a good way forwards. Having the jet designed purely around STOVL as the X32 was might also allow a better packing arrangement and internal arrangement than F35B.
There’s STOL and there’s STOL. There’s can takeoff and land in 500m, great for dispersed land, and there’s takeoff and land in 100m, good for carriers. It’s a totally different level. We’d need to design and build a new plane to achieve it as it’s far beyond the Swedish requirements.
Given the proportion of cost associated with the systems as opposed to the airframe, I wonder if we could do just that, with Tempest insides and a whole new outside.
We have ditched the Ark Royal conversion plan
That would have required a decision. We are simply leaning the other way at the moment.
Could we not incorporate the missiles to the fighter drones for the navy probably the only way we can get longer range at sea.
Good Idea, just need to buy some Fighter Drones first!
We need to arrange a meeting to discuss.
Hahahaha aye think I’ll be dead by the time we move our arse a bit.
It is sickening the shambles that keeps preventing us from defending ourselves. Add to that HMG looking to allow PRC’s new super “Embassy” to enable wider repression of anyone/anything the PRC & we’re not only disarming, but cutting our own throats.
Sorry that should be, “anyone/anything the PRC dislikes”. Would we allow the Gestapo a base in the UK in the few years before WW2?
So our forthcoming anti-ship missiles can’t work with the F35B. And the F35B has to ditch any unused bombs before it lands back on the carrier because we have given up on shipborne rolling vertical landing (SRVL). And, theoretically, if the F35B was teamed with a drone that probably wouldn’t be configured to use the missile either. This is what happens when you’re locked into US platforms. It’s a concern in the current climate of uncertainty with Trump in the White House and potentially Vance as the next president.