Aircraft Carriers III

Jura said:

liked

"a thoroughbred horse in the stable that you’re running in a race every single day"

analogy inside The US Navy’s fight to fix its worn-out Super Hornet fleet is making way

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Yep, thank Obama and Hillary for these poor beat airplanes and ships,,, if they are bad, you can only imagine how beat up our troops are....

When the Commander in Chief is a loser, you're gonna lose too, look at Iraq, (think ISIS), look at Afghanistan, (think Taliban), yeah, He owns that, She owns that, and the blood of our US ambassador and the valiant warriors who gave their lives trying to save him! and HELP NEVER CAME! Six weeks out from the election, Obama and Hillary couldn't risk the little gun running operation in Syria being discovered, so Christopher Stevens died!

that's the tragedy of the whole picture, everything, and I do mean everything went to HELL!

that's all changing for the better thanks to the firm hand of Donald J. Trump! The UK, Aus, and the rest of our true friends know there is a price to pay for freedom, its NOT free!

bd popeye said:

Despite many issues the Super Hornets still have not missed a deployment.

The deployment departure of R08 will be streamed live on FB;

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This is a great occasion for Obi Wan and all Royal Navy watchers..including myself. Obi Wan has been awaiting this moment for years. I'm sure he remembers the pundits at sinodefenceforum claiming that the politicians would cancel the Queen Elizabeth construction and even claim that both ships would be immediately mothballed. Well it ain't happening! She sails tomorrow evening at 1800GMT. I for one wish those shipmates aboard the R08 fair winds and following seas. They shall have a magnificent and successful deployment!

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Amen to every word of that BDPopeye, and to true believers like Obi Wan and Asif Iqbal , congratulations Gentlemen, and ASIF, thanks brother for all those awesome pictures over the years, of every step forward, good job Gentlemen!

There are still a hardcore of naysayers on forums like PPRuNe (ex crabs mainly) who still insist at every turn the next piece of bad news means the carriers are at the top of the Government's hit list for cuts. Oddly enough they say the same thing about the USN, whenever the economy hits a bump this obviously means drastic cuts to the carrier force, rather than making the cuts more sensibly with older and less effective surface units etc. They still hold the view that a carrier is the most vulnerable ship on the oceans, but an unmovable airfield is a much more sensible place to keep aircraft, and of course 'Everything that Flies should belong to the (land based) Air Force', a view originally put forward ironically by a certain Hermann Goering...

It is nice to be vindicated though.

Obi Wan Russell said:

There are still a hardcore of naysayers [...] who still insist at every turn the next piece of bad news means the carriers are at the top of the Government's hit list for cuts.

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Aircraft carriers are very expensive to maintain, which is why they have been on top of this list since their launch in the first half of the 20th century. And they will be there for more than the following 50 years.

the QE program has been pathetically slow,

("Should all go according to plans, an initial carrier strike operating capability is expected to be reached by December 2020, while a Carrier Enabled Power Projection (CEPP) capability is expected by 2026 (full CEPP meaning having both carriers in operation with F35B jets and the Crowsnest radar). )

taking several WW2-durations from a contract announcement to the point when they might be able to hit something (if weaponry is purchased for the aircraft),

so I wouldn't be surprised if the Admiralty were asked, 'You could do like two decades without carriers, so how much do you need them except for sailing to New York to brag'

?!

Jura said:

the QE program has been pathetically slow,

("Should all go according to plans, an initial carrier strike operating capability is expected to be reached by December 2020, while a Carrier Enabled Power Projection (CEPP) capability is expected by 2026 (full CEPP meaning having both carriers in operation with F35B jets and the Crowsnest radar).

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)

taking several WW2-durations from a contract announcement to the point when they might be able to hit something (if weaponry is purchased for the aircraft),

so I wouldn't be surprised if the Admiralty were asked, 'You could do like two decades without carriers, so how much do you need them except for sailing to New York to brag'

?!

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It's not that, by any means, it will take that long to realise the full potential of the carriers and their aircraft. The pace of development is deliberately glacial for one reason and one reason only: MONEY. The government is only spending the absolute minimum needed to keep the project ticking over; Remember back in 82 all restraint was thrown away and refit/conversion work that in peacetime would take six months to two years was accomplished in a few weeks. HMS Illustrious, which was due to join the fleet in mid 83 was completed in 12 weeks. Merchant ships were converted to auxiliary helicopter carriers (each capable of operating at least four ASW Sea Kings, becoming modern day ASW CVE 'Escort Carriers') in four to six weeks (MV Atlantic Causeway, MV Astronomer, MV Contender Bezant, the latter two having more extensive conversions post war becoming RFA Reliant and RFA Argus respectively):
So we can see what CAN be done and get a sense of how quickly it can be done if the political will is there. We have always had politicians un worthy of us, but that is a global problem for debate in other forums.

The Bottom line to my above post is if the UK government wanted the carriers in service sooner, there is no engineering or training reason why they couldn't have been in service and fully worked up (with Harrier GR9s, as was intended to cover the gap until the F-53Bs were ready) several years ago. Successive Governments of both colours have been obsessed with pushing payments for everything as far into the future as possible, to avoid paying today. The original ISD for QE was 2012 to replace Ark Royal and PoW was to be ready by 2015 to replace Illustrious.

here:

Obi Wan Russell said:

It's not that, by any means, it will take that long to realise the full potential of the carriers and their aircraft.

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not sure if you questioned NavalToday info

"Should all go according to plans, an initial carrier strike operating capability is expected to be reached by December 2020, while a Carrier Enabled Power Projection (CEPP) capability is expected by 2026 (full CEPP meaning having both carriers in operation with F35B jets and the Crowsnest radar)."

or if you referred to what I expressed as

"several WW2-durations from a contract announcement to the point when they might be able to hit something"

or you meant something else maybe?

anyway I consider the current status of the RN carriers and their aviation SCANDALOUS

the rest:

Obi Wan Russell said:

The pace of development is deliberately glacial for one reason and one reason only: MONEY. The government is only spending the absolute minimum needed to keep the project ticking over; Remember back in 82 all restraint was thrown away and refit/conversion work that in peacetime would take six months to two years was accomplished in a few weeks. HMS Illustrious, which was due to join the fleet in mid 83 was completed in 12 weeks. Merchant ships were converted to auxiliary helicopter carriers (each capable of operating at least four ASW Sea Kings, becoming modern day ASW CVE 'Escort Carriers') in four to six weeks (MV Atlantic Causeway, MV Astronomer, MV Contender Bezant, the latter two having more extensive conversions post war becoming RFA Reliant and RFA Argus respectively):View attachment 48397 View attachment 48398 View attachment 48399 View attachment 48400 View attachment 48401
So we can see what CAN be done and get a sense of how quickly it can be done if the political will is there. We have always had politicians un worthy of us, but that is a global problem for debate in other forums.

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looks like a recurrent reaction here, 'should the need arise, numbers/dates would change'

I hope it's true for the USN, but I doubt the RN still has the 'critical mass' to be able to pull what it pulled in the middle of the Cold War and many times before,

starting with ... Sir Francis Drake against Medina Sidonia, 1588?

as now the number of the RN ships approaches ZERO

Obi Wan Russell said:

The Bottom line to my above post is ...

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well I think the bottom line of this discussion is when the RN deploys a carrier to for example Persian Gulf

(LOL I of course don't mean a PR stunt of sailing there, covered by the USN 5th Fleet, with an empty deck)

Big Liz sailing any second!