Relevant & Current Issues No.3 - The New Carrier

No.3 – The new CVS is fast approaching Main Gate. Do we think it will get through?

Additional question - Which project is in a more precarious position – the carrier or the aircraft that will fly from it?

 

if we don't get the carrier the second question is irrelevant.
so the carrier

 

Given that the carrier is essentially designed around the aircraft, then the success or failure of the JSF is also fairly important.

No JSF? - No STOVL.
No STOVL? - Convential take off
Convential take off - catapult required & redesign

 

Could also argue if we don't get CVF, all other procurements are irrelevant.

 

As the new carriers are going to be conventionally powered it will be irellevant if it gets through has the the right aircraft or needs to be redesigned if we dont have fuel for it and the skill base in the faa to operate / maintain fixed wing aircraft and the correct type and number of escort and support vessels the carrier is only a small part of the cost. If the mod budget had increased in line with the nhs budget which has been squanderd the fleet would be full of carriers to make the yanks floating islands look like driftwood but who needs priperly equiped armed forces wasting all of that money as there is no clear threat to national security and the idiots in uniform will go and do what the great and good tell them regardless of legality and morality and risk of personal death or injury

 

CVF ? Carrier Vessel Ficticious

 

I only spotted 1 full stop in all that!

 

When having a rant who has time for a breath...................................... there you put them in where you see fit.

 

I do know that the CVF acquisition IPT leader expected a go/no go on the carriers in December 2004. Having done his bit, he has now left DPA (he was only ever a-very senior- temp) and gone back to industry.

So where are they?

Never mind the building (though if they go the same way as the LSD(A)s perhaps we should mind) consider the following (some already mentioned here). RASing (can this generation or planned RFAs provide?) aircraft, escorts, manning of those and availability, manning, training for and working up something we haven’t operated for 30 years (over 40 by the time they come into service-if ever).

The Yanks do things differently and with more bodies so perhaps not good mentors. The French may be closer to our way of operating (I don’t know-are they?) but they do it in French. I foresee a steep learning curve, economical steaming so not much flying, dockyard mateys and builders’ contractors everywhere still trying to get it right and lots of gapped billets around 2020, if ever.

 

What you waffling about shipmate, the whole fcuking Navy is in a precarious position. Didn't you know that they are over spent, totally flat bust and can't afford staples? Carrier? Aircraft? For fcuks sakes get with it. Before long the RN will join Belgium and the Congo in becoming a coastal protection consortium. Forget fcuking Navy, that was something from the past.

 

When the new carrier project was first briefed it had the acronym FAC (standing for Future Aircraft Carrier - or so they wanted us to believe).

I am a confident cynic - I fully expect us to get 2 x FAC in a dozen or so years but cannot see the advantage in trying to fly anything off the back of a Fast Attack Craft!!!

 

Thank you for that insight. You appear to have some fascinating inside track on the UKs Defence Procurement Strategy.:wink: :lol:

 

They have split the Main gate for the new cariers into 2. Current thinking, as far as I can make out, is that we will get the carriers, but at what cost to the rest of the RN programme. Just look at Eurofighter, and the inmpact that has had on the crabs....

 

Being even more of a cynic, I think the concept will be subtley changed from carrying only aircraft to being able to carry a wide variety of assets - with this change in concept will be the revised designation Future Universal Carrier, aka FUC - there'll still be 2 of them, so the DPA will be able to legitimately answer "Get 2 FUC" when ever their policy is questioned!

 

Any dates on that SF?

Of course the impact of big projects is not just felt "in service" it effects all the equipment programmes

 

None that I would want to be quoted on - but we have the DPA/DEC guys down in a few weeks to lecture the next course - will post an update then. Will also include T45s/ASTUTE/JCA etc and anything else interesting

 

Is that Shriv?

 

affirmative..

 

Hmmmm... I left there in Jul........ probly worth leaving the rest of this conversation to P.M.

Staff or student?

 

DS