Hypothetical: the transfer of HMS Invincible to Australia went through

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Subject: Hypothetical: the transfer of HMS Invincible to Australia went through
Volkodav 3/9/2010 10:58:52 PM

Following the Falklands conflict the RN successfully lobbied the UK Government to build a class of two to three larger more capable carriers based the Invincible but incorporating the lessons learnt so recently and painfully. Two of the Invincibles would be retained and converted to Commando Carriers. As a result of this Invincible was still available for sale to Australia as originally planned. All of this would occur prior to the election of the Hawke Labor Government. Would the purchase have gone through? What would it have done to the future structure of the RAN? The original plan didn't include Harriers or Sea Harriers, would we have acquired any going forward? Had we operated this ship from the mid 80's it would now be in need of replacement. If we replace it and what would we replace it with?

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Volkodav 3/13/2010 11:59:27 PM

1. Yes, a fleet consisting of a carrier, three DDG, 10 FFG and 6 SSG was budgeted for the 80's and 90's. Economic reforms actually improved Australias financial situation in the 80's, what changed was the political will, which saw the ADF reshaped to fit the Defence of Australia policy. Replacing the carrier and the 3 DDG's with three large, through deck, helicopter carrying destroyers would be affordable and result in a crew saving.

1. a. In the 1980s the Invincibles were the best helo-carriers that money could buy. Nevertheless those were compromised designs that were optimized for VSTOL jets. Even at that they were undersized and lacked a good area defense capability.
The lead ship of the Invincible class is what Australia bought because it was the best value for money (demo pricing). The final configuration had yet to be determined when the UK decided to retain her so questions such as Harriers, Sea Dart vs, Sea Wolf vs, Standard vs, Sea Sparrow vs, nothing, were never answered. Australia was offered Hermes at a bargin basement price to serve as an interim until a new carrier could be built but this option was refused and a decission on the way forward on the program defered. An enhanced Invincible or a modified LHA would have been interesting had the new government not killed the program alltogether.

b. The current Cavours and Hyugas are builds based on the defective Zumwalt era Sea Control Ship and Falkland Lessons Learned. The chief defects with these ships is the same one that the French persist in. Piling on systems that interfere with operation of aircraft. A carrier is a carrier. What interferes with that function os a waste of resources and hull space and manpower.Its cheaper to send a frigate in to get a new missile system than it is to send in the carrier. By restricting the carrier to just being a carrier you extend service life of embarked systems and reduce costs. Aircraft can be replaced, radars upgraded, and a helo hanger changed out AFLOAT in service. Try changing out ASTER for ESSM? Dockyard.and not for a short time.

A pure carrier needs high end escorts, if you cant afford both you have to do without the carrier or find a compromise. Fitting the high end area air defence system to the carrier is just such a compromise. I am not arguing with what you say just stating the fact that a through deck helo cruiser with a high end air defence system is more affordable than a pure carrier and an escorting destroyer.

2. These are large hulls so working in AEGIS and a pair of 32, 48 or even 64 cell VLS would not be an issue. We would have our high end ASW and Air Warfare capabilities combined in one hull, leaving the FFG's as perfectly adequate escorts.

2 a. Rockets are HEAVY. You have to counterballast and that strains the hull. That also wastes volume you can use to operate aircraft or billet Marines.

These are design issues that can be overcome in a large hull. Volume is only an issue if you are selecting such a design over a pure carrier, if you can not afford the pure carrier (and the overhead of its escorts) the compromise will actually provide you with more usable volume than you had to play with in the first place.

b. Firing a missile (blowtorch) straight up over your own deckpark stacked full of planes or helos? Are you French?^2 Not even the Americans do that. They put their SAM missile launchers away from the parked aircraft in slant launchers below the flight deck. That allows the duds to fall into the sea instead of on top of an armed Wessex or Sea Hawk. Furthermore, they use slant launchers and point defense missiles on carriers to minimize wasted space as well as improve missile engagement times. Those last ten seconds are life or death against a cruise missile. You can't waste the second taken for a vertical launched missile to flop over and acquire. It has to acquire right out of the box Good arguements, however think deckhouse sitting above the flight deck with the VLS countersunk in it similar to the arrangment on a Type 23 or Type 45, as opposed to flush mounted in the flight deck. These would also be SM-2, SM-3, SM-6, ESSM and VLASROC, maybe Tomahawk, point defence would be handled by RAM mounted below the flightdeck, backed up by CIWS. Go for phased array directors and you can have multiple firecontrol c

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Hamilcar 3/14/2010 1:21:45 PM

The lead ship of the Invincible class is what Australia bought because it was the best value for money (demo pricing). The final configuration had yet to be determined when the UK decided to retain her so questions such as Harriers, Sea Dart vs, Sea Wolf vs, Standard vs, Sea Sparrow vs, nothing, were never answered. Australia was offered Hermes at a bargain basement price to serve as an interim until a new carrier could be built but this option was refused and a decision on the way forward on the program deferred. An enhanced Invincible or a modified LHA would have been interesting had the new government not killed the program altogether.

Okay, I am not an expert on that era of Australian politics, but I know something about the purchase of "bargain basement price offerings" that are not serving ships. I confidently predict, for example, that reconstructed carrier that India buys from Russia will be a technological disaster. You can count on that debacle. So I think Hermes at the time was actually a smart wave off. In the case at hand, here, I think a simplified Invincible would have been viable as bought as a commando ship. The work on a VSTOL flight deck later was well within the Australian shipbuilding industry's capacity.

A pure carrier needs high end escorts, if you can't afford both you have to do without the carrier or find a compromise. Fitting the high end area air defence system to the carrier is just such a compromise. I am not arguing with what you say just stating the fact that a through deck helo cruiser with a high end air defence system is more affordable than a pure carrier and an escorting destroyer.

Actually when you do through life costs, its not sensible to try to make a carrier into a missile ship. The fact is that a pure VSTOL aircraft carrier that has ancillary troop facilities can function as a base ship for almost seventy years, if need be. The only thing that then needs concern you is the current state of its bodyguards. Australia is a rich nation, but she is small population wise, and her tax base is not as robust, as say France. France chose the "cheap" solution you suggested (based on the Russian one ship does everything model) because they thought the USN was stupid.and resource wasteful. Arrogant Americans and all that.

What the Americans tried to tell them, (and the British too) was that war at sea is task-oriented (hence task forces) You tailor scarce resources to the specific task. If you take air-power to sea aboard ships, then build those ships to handle the type aircraft you expect to use against the threats you expect, don't waste attention to things that those ships should not do. Australia can expect a lot of commando or peace keeping type operations. The HMAS Kuznetsov is NOT therefore economically viable. A helo-carrier that could operate Harriers, as needed. and land a rump battalion of Australian Army "marines" in the Solomons was, and is.

You see, you would build anti-air warfare ships anyway to protect freighter convoys and to protect your ASW ships. If you already have to build the bodyguard ships anyway then why waste the scarce money reducing the actual effectiveness of your carriers?

2 a. Rockets are HEAVY. You have to counterballast and that strains the hull. That also wastes volume you can use to operate aircraft or billet Marines.

1. Volume is always an issue with an aircraft carrier. The new Queen Elizabeths, because of their incompetent island arrangement waste so much internal volume and deck park space that they actually have less usable aircraft handling and troop billet space than an ESSEX class, and I mean the WW II short hulls.

2. There is no reason to shorten the usable lifetime of a ship by unduly straining the hull. This is a lesson that DCN could have asked Newport News about when Standard was deleted from the USS John F. Kennedy. The DCN nimrods went ahead and built the Chuckles de Gaulle wrong anyway. When space on a modified Forrestal is considered so critical that a Mark l3 fantail missil

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Aussiegunneragain 3/15/2010 8:22:32 PM

Can't help but feel we got a Labor government at the wrong time with the wrong leader. An election earlier with Hayden or one later with Keating would have done us much better IMO. Hawkie was popular with the masses but that doesn't mean he was the best man for the job.

I don't know anything about Hayden but I don't think that Keating would have done anything differently on defence to what Hawke did. He certainly never gave any indication that he was interested in any defence policy while he was Prime Minister other than sticking his nose up Surhato's arse. He has even credited Surhato's rule in Indonesia as the reason why we didn't have to spend so much on defence.

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Volkodav 3/16/2010 7:19:53 AM

Well he does have a point, Surharto was more a corrupt despot than a nationalist fruit cake, his removal of Sukarno definitely made life safer and easier for Australia. He ended Indonesias ties with the USSR and turned the focus of the military towards rooting out communists, internal security and finding new ways to make money.

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Volkodav Hamilcar 3/16/2010 7:46:31 AM

I understand your arguments and agree that the suggestion is not ideal but I do believe it is workable. Thanks for the youtube as well but the accidental launch of a 5" Zuni across the crowded deck of a super carrier in the process of launching a strike during Vietnam is a very different situation from firing a missile from a modern VLS fitted to a modern helo carrier.

VLS are extremely safe and extremely reliable, the only issue would be the loss of usable space to use for spotting the helo's. The VLS would actually be safer than the ordinance and fuel of the helos themselves.

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Hamilcar 3/16/2010 10:32:27 AM

None of these episodes was funny. SEADART is a very good missile. Standard is DANGEROUS in boost phase. Having a hot dud fall on you or near after the motor fails to fire is not a joke.

When you launch a rocket or missile, unlike the usually reliable gun, there are no guarantees. None.

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Hamilcar 3/16/2010 10:33:26 AM

None of these episodes was funny. SEADART is a very good missile. Standard is DANGEROUS in boost phase. Having a hot dud fall on you or near after the motor fails to fire is not a joke.

When you launch a rocket or missile, unlike the usually reliable gun, there are no guarantees. None.

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Aussiegunneragain 3/17/2010 8:42:36 PM

Granted, but it gives you a pretty good indication that he was only looking for a justification for defence expenditure to go one way, down. Too bad for our ability to contribute to our alliances.
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Volkodav 3/18/2010 7:29:51 AM

Granted, but it gives you a pretty good indication that he was only looking for a justification for defence expenditure to go one way, down. Too bad for our ability to contribute to our alliances.

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The thing is the situation allowed successive governments to go cheap on defence, not just Hawke and Keating.

There was a raft of programs underway in the 60's, many of them FMS, that were canned following Indonesias coup. This included but wasn't limited to :

Strategic airlift - Starlifter or Galaxy

Attack helo - Cobra

SAM - HAWK

Strike carrier - Oriskany, CVA-01 or Centaur

A fourth DDG

A class of 10 patrol frigates, in addition to the Adams, Darings and Rivers

Nuclear weapons

and don't forget the reason the RAR was increased in size to nine battalions was to guard against Indonesian aggression.

We also raised an additional fighter sqn (No 79) to serve in Thailand as the maintenance of 2 sqns in Malaysia was seen as a must.

For years the army was operating on the assumption that we would be able to form a second armoured regiment to provide teeth to a second division, this was pure continental defence thinking in the event of an Indonesian invasion.

There is little doubt Indonesias coup saved us billions in defence expenditure, but I can't help but wonder if perhaps we may have been better off had the Communists succeeded in their planned coup in Indonessia. This may be a cue for a new thread.

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