Aircraft Carriers III

The new carrier Gerald R. Ford — the most expensive naval ship in history — was supposed to be commissioned in 2016, but a spate of problems with the ship's new technology pushed its entry into the fleet into 2017, though nobody knows exactly when.

The Navy is anxious to get its $13 billion carrier out for sea trials and into workups for its maiden deployment, because delays will affect the fleet's deployment rotations for years to come.

In September, Navy Times sister publication Defense News reported that the Ford's electrical plant was having issues getting up to full power, and that engineers were only now working a solution to the problem. And while Navy officials have faith that the high-tech electromagnetic aircraft launch system is ready for delivery, the advanced arresting gear — designed to rapidly decelerate an aircraft landing on deck — isn't yet ready for prime time.

The first deployment is still slated for 2021, but every delay ratchets up the pressure on the Navy's already stressed deployment schedule. The Navy needs a minimum of 11 carriers to always have a carrier in the Pacific and in the Middle East and also maintain six-or-seven-month deployments for sailors. Yet the Navy has been without 11 carriers since the Enterprise decommissioned in 2013.

That means more rushed deployments and more pressure on the Navy's already stressed maintenance system that will undoubtedly continue for years to come.

"Just getting into the fleet does not mean you've fixed your carrier problem because it's not going to deploy for another few years," said Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer and analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "The impact will still be more and longer deployments for sailors for as long as there are only 10 carriers in the fleet."

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With the high profile deployment of Russian carrier Admiral Kuznetsoz to Syria, we take a look at how the Queen Elizabeth class compare.

The Russian carrier is designed to lead a flotilla of vessels or operate solo while keeping enemy fleet at bay using its anti-ship missiles and using its aircraft to deter enemy Aircraft
The Queen Elizabeth class are designed to operate with a battle group to maintain air superiority, strike a variety of strategic and tactical targets using aircraft in addition to providing an air assault platform.
Despite recent sensationalist tabloid headlines, describing the Admiral Kuznetsov as

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while decrying the UK’s

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, the Queen Elizabeth class are of a significantly higher tonnage than the Russian vessel, each sitting at 70,600 tonnes compared to its 55,000.

That being said, size is a poor indicator of carrier capability so let’s look beyond tabloid headlines.

What are the basics?
The Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers will be the largest surface warships ever constructed for the Royal Navy.

The vessels will be utilised by all three branches of the UK Armed Forces and will provide eight acres of sovereign territory. Both ships will be versatile enough to be used for operations ranging from high intensity conflict to providing humanitarian aid and disaster relief.

Surprisingly for their sheer scale each ship will only have a total crew of 679, only increasing to the full complement of 1,600 when the air elements are embarked. This is made possible by extensive automation of many systems.

HMS Queen Elizabeth, the first in a fleet of two, is currently in the final stages of completion, the vessel is due to go sea for trials after the New Year.

The Admiral Kuznetsov serves as the flagship of the Russian Navy and is their only aircraft carrier. The initial name of the ship was Riga; she was launched as Leonid Brezhnev in 1985.

She was originally commissioned in the Soviet Navy and was intended to be the lead ship of her class but the only other ship of her class, Varyag, was never completed or commissioned by the Soviet, Russian or Ukrainian navy. This second hull was eventually sold to the People’s Republic of China by Ukraine, completed in Dalian and launched as Liaoning.

The Russian vessel carries a number of offensive weapons typically associated with guided missile cruisers and the carrier itself is capable of engaging surface, subsurface and airborne targets.

What kind of power can they project?
The Queen Elizabeth class carriers, in peacetime, will usually deploy with around 24 F-35Bs and typically around 14 helicopters. The exact types and numbers of aircraft embarked being adjusted to meet current requirements and threats.

In addition to the joint force of Royal Air Force and Royal Navy F-35Bs, the air wing is expected to be composed of a ‘Maritime Force Protection’ package of 9 anti-submarine Merlin HM2 and four or five Merlin for airborne early warning; alternatively a ‘Littoral Manoeuvre’ package could include a mix of RAF Chinooks, Army Apaches, Merlin HC4 and Wildcat.

The vessels are capable of deploying a variety of aircraft in large numbers, up to a maximum in the upper fifties in surge conditions.

The Queen Elizabeth class mark a change from expressing carrier power in terms of number of aircraft carried, to the number of sortie’s that can be generated from the deck. The class is estimated to be able to sustain a maximum sortie generation rate in surge conditions of up to 110 sorties per day.

The Admiral Kuznetsov can hold up to about 40 fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, including Su-33 fighters and various versions of Ka-27 helicopter, however it rarely sails with more than half of that number.

While designated an aircraft carrier by the West, the design of Admiral Kuznetsov implies a mission different from that of either the United States Navy carriers or those of the Royal Navy.

The Admiral Kuznetsov is a heavy aviation cruiser rather than just an aircraft carrier. The vessel carries a number of offensive weapons typically associated with missile cruisers. The carrier itself is capable of engaging surface, subsurface and airborne targets, independently of its air wing.

According to War is Boring

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:

“Admiral Kuznetsov has never seen combat, nor would she be of much practical military use. The 55,000-ton carrier has a bow ramp, not steam catapults, requiring her aircraft to shed weight before taking off.

This means her planes will go into combat with less fuel or bombs than the ground-based fighters Russia has already deployed to Syria.”

During the voyage the Admiral Kuznetsov reportedly “will have about 15 fighters Su-33 and MiG-29K/KUB and more than ten helicopters Ka-52K, Ka-27 and Ka-31”.

STOBAR (Short Take-Off But Arrested Recovery), the system used for the launch and recovery of aircraft from the Admiral Kuznetsov, does not allow for the same frequency of launches/recoveries and tempo of operations afforded by American carriers or even the Queen Elizabeth class.

With Short Take-Off But Arrested Recovery, the aircraft take off using the ramp and are arrested by a cable when landing back on the deck. This means that the Admiral Kuznetsov’s aircraft will only be able to fly a relatively limited number of sorties daily.

Other relevant factors include the process and capacities for transporting ordnance to assembly areas and from there to the flight deck, refuelling and arming stations layout, number and capacities of aircraft elevators, etc.

Conclusion
These vessels clearly cannot do some of what the other can, while the Admiral Kuznetsov can venture alone at times, the Queen Elizabeth would be unable due to a lack of offensive capabilities.

These vessels although similar in overall form are designed for different roles and with different ideologies in mind. The topic of which ideology is more practical today however is an entirely different topic.

As an aviation platform however, the Queen Elizabeth class will certainly be more capable and in the role of a cruiser, the Admiral Kuznetsov clearly comes out on top.

Is the press right to portray the Kuznetsov as something akin to the Bismarck however? No, clearly not.

The Russian flagship while a potent symbol is heavily outdated and its mix of roles, cruiser and carrier, severely restricts its capabilities in the mission has been deployed for off Syria.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the more modern Queen Elizabeth class vessels will be far more capable aviation platforms.

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The Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group chopped out of the European theater of operations Dec. 26, headed home to Norfolk after months of operating in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, where the strike jets of Carrier Air Wing 3 flew hundreds of missions against ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq. The homecoming is set for Dec. 30 – two days shy of the Navy’s stated goal of bringing the group home in seven months.

US carrier groups regularly relieve each other in theater, often handing off duties within sight of the other in the Persian Gulf or Arabian Sea. But this time, no carrier is in the Eisenhower’s wake.

The relief ship, the carrier George H. W. Bush, has yet to leave Norfolk – and is unlikely to do so before the Jan. 20 inauguration of the Trump administration, according to a Navy source. The gap could last as long as two months, sources said, between the time the Eisenhower left the combat theater and the Bush arrives.

And that gap comes at a particularly inopportune time. Numerous media reports indicate intelligence organizations and analysts are on the lookout for provocative actions by potential antagonists – in particular Russia, China, North Korea, Iran or ISIS. Terror alerts, according to media reports, are high in many regions, including Europe, the Mideast and North America, due to a confluence of factors – the new year, ISIS’ diminishing power in the face of counterattacks in Iraq and Syria, and a natural tendency to test a new administration.

Other Central Command carrier gaps have taken place in the past, usually when a strike group is needed elsewhere or maintenance issues at home have forced ships to deploy late. The Pentagon plans for such events, often dispatching expeditionary US Air Force units to the region to pick up the slack – something that seems to have taken place now.

The newest gap is not a surprise, and actually has been months in the making – arguably well over a year. The Bush entered Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia in mid-June 2015 for what started out as a planned six-month repair period, extended just before it began to eight months. Facing a scheduled early-December 2016 departure date to relieve the Eisenhower group, the initial delay seemed manageable, giving the group nearly nine months to work through the pre-deployment training cycle.

But the overhaul dragged on well past the March completion date. Navy officials have been sparing at best and sometimes contradictory in explaining why the overhaul took so long – the explanations complicated by multiple oversight commands, including Naval Nuclear Reactors, Naval Sea Systems Command, Naval Air Forces and US Fleet Forces Command. The reasons given ranged from poor planning to emergent work – often unspecified – to the lack of enough trained personnel at Norfolk Naval Shipyard due to previous layoffs and funding interruptions.

In the event, the Bush finally left the shipyard July 23 after more than 13 months in overhaul, facing a drastically compressed training period if the early December date could be met. But the command responsible for training the Bush and her strike group, US Fleet Forces Command, apparently did not have a plan in hand to deal with the short training cycle, although something called the Optimized Fleet Response Plan is supposed to deal with such eventualities. According to several sources, Fleet Forces didn’t hold a major meeting of all parties to determine a way ahead until late August.

Fleet Forces Command has declined numerous requests for comment on the Bush’s situation. The command has not issued a direct statement on its plans for the Bush.

Among the obstacles in getting the training going, several sources, said, were defects on the carrier not addressed during the overhaul.

The Bush is not alone in experiencing delays. The Eisenhower herself missed a deployment due to shipyard and maintenance issues, and had to be spelled in 2015 by the carrier Harry S. Truman. Chronic problems in the Navy’s four shipyards, which perform the majority of heavy maintenance work on the carriers, has meant that most recent carrier overhauls are running long. Naval Sea Systems Command has acknowledged these problems and is working to restore and improve the work forces in the yards.

But it is not clear why Fleet Forces did not have a training plan in hand even before the Bush returned to the fleet. The ship and its strike group completed their last major pre-deployment exercise Dec. 21, but Navy officials expect another month to go by before the Bush deploys.

The Navy did not respond to a request for comment before this story was posted.

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asif iqbal said:

QE against the Russian Kuzt?

There is no comparison

Silly article to even attempt to compare the two

When did we see Russian carrier without a tug ??

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Obi Wan Russell said:

... 'critics' of Aircraft Carriers ... claim a 100,000 tonne CVN can be sunk by a single submarine launched torpedo. In reality in wartime such a hit would not cause the carrier to even stop and ...

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kwaigonegin said:

sink no but significant damage yes if the lucky torpedo impacts near the screws and rudders or other critical areas.
...

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Jura said:

this:

makes me wonder how a Nimitz is protected right from below, in the middle ... would it be by a double bottom, triple bottom, empty/filled arrangement(s), huh?? ... no need to tell me it's classified

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