Everybody is already well into the design specs, while I'm still at square one. What I don't get is why you would want to have a carrier in the 1st place when you cannot have escorts for the carrier. (if I'm to believe posts on this board).

In my opinion no carrier will be able to survive in an hostile environment without proper naval escorts, no matter how much redundency is built in. Which means that if you wanna use the carrier and have it survive, you would have to ask another nation (the EU??) for help with providing escorts.

What good is a carrier if you have to ask another nation "pretty please" each time you want to actually do anything with it? It's like politically having one of your arms constantly tied behind your back.

Everybody is already well into the design specs, while I'm still at square one. What I don't get is why you would want to have a carrier in the 1st place when you cannot have escorts for the carrier. (if I'm to believe posts on this board).

In my opinion no carrier will be able to survive in an hostile environment without proper naval escorts, no matter how much redundency is built in. Which means that if you wanna use the carrier and have it survive, you would have to ask another nation (the EU??) for help with providing escorts.

What good is a carrier if you have to ask another nation "pretty please" each time you want to actually do anything with it? It's like politically having one of your arms constantly tied behind your back.

One of the things that has surprised me on this thread are assertions about the poor quality of the Aster missile system. In the UK we've repeatedly been told thast the Sampson/Aster combination is world beating (superior to the Standard SM3 for instance), and that the missile particularly has this "pif-paf" thrusting system which makes it hyper-manouevrable.

 

Why are some people saying that this isn't the case, and is there some evidence to back this up?

 

P.S I've really enjoyed this thread on the quiet! I couldn't care less if the the Falklands was like Mauritius or not  , but I have learnt alot from Heralds comments about the design compromises and issues with the Carriers. I still go back to my original post and think that they are too ambitious for us. 

Interestingly the first leader of the T45 IPT was a brigadier who happened to be an expert in SAM, presumably because they needed someone who could talk sense and understood what they were doing.  I won't say what cap badge he wore before leaving the field grade ranks.

 

Actually there's one major difference between FI and Mauritaus - climate.  Opt for the latter if you have the choice, if you want to checkout the former try Otterburn in bad weather as a proxy, it at least has some decent pubs nearby.

 

I actually think CVF will do the job UK requires, which is to provide one of the three core naval capabilities and in particular to support land forces.  I don't actually think they are excessively expensive (but perhaps they could be built more cheaply elsewhere) and all indications are they're designed to minimise the cost of crewing, which has a big impact on life cycle costs.  I'm not excessively agitated about AEW either, one of the features of UK services is that they do operate together and are steadily getting away from the old fashioned notion of each service doing everything itself, in this context and in many parts of the world AWACS can almost certainly help, it's basically an issue of forward basing AWACS and the C2 arrangements.  That's not to say that no upgrade may be needed.

 

Turning to another claim/insinuation/attempted digression into irrelevance of a couple of days ago.  The significance of allied aid to USSR.  I'd agree there's a good case to be made that aid in 1941/2 probably made the difference between defeat and victory in 1942.  This was the year Sov industry was relocating, in itself an immense task, and it certainly disrupted production. 

 

However, basically the Sovs didn't want western weapons after 1942 although they obviously kept what they had for a while, eg the battn of Churchills in 5 GTA at Kursk in 1943.  Of course they'd also been disappointed because the US had been unable to meet its commitments agreed under the 1st Protocol signed in 1941 (but the US had understandable reasons for this and the commitment was probably unrealistic, of course it could be argued that making undertakings you can't keep is not good practice).  After 1942 aid was mostly non-lethal.  Lots of raw materials, including industrial diamonds from UK.  US trucks were hugely important because it allowed the Sovs to put more effort in warlike equipment.  However, one of the most important US contributions was vast quantities of rail track.  Radios and radars were also provided by UK and I assume the US as well.  The Sovs had good reasons to avoid western weapons, one of Sov strengths was logistic simplicity - minimise the number of different types of ammo and maximise the use of common parts and assemblies across equipment, western weapons needed to be really superior or offer something really special to offset this - I'll leave 'would you prefer T34 or Sherman' to someone else. 

 

I'm still waiting for a halfway intelligent refutation of good system engineering practice and its application to CVF design.  I suspect it will be a long wait.

 

I'm also waiting for a credible and cogent explanation of the relevance of FI to CVF, or anything else for that matter (except possibly the training of GBAD to deal with fast jet popups).  Talking of GBAD it was interesting to read the other day that the Rapier/Seawilf replacement could be a cold VL system.  Which made me think of possible implications for CVF because

We are currently working on a multi-role missile (CAAM) that may well offer alternative guidance. I'm hoping that it will quad pack into a Sylver A50 cell. Add a Naval Scalp that fits A70 to the mix and Sylver launchers might not look such a white elephant.

Well no sense in any of that, just the usual bluster and crud mixed with irrelevancy and half truth.

 

However, I'm always interested to come across an expert on Otterburn, but it's not a place for shiny shoes.  No doubt I'll be able to think up some more similarities and dissimilarities between FI and sunny spots in the Indian Ocean.

 

I knew I get a bite on the organic AEW stuff, soo predictable, so yesterday and totally misses the point, these days armed forces (well some of them) really do work on their jointness.  It's like system engineering, it's the modern way in the modern world.

 

Oh, and I'm still waiting to read an informed criticism of Aster, other than it not being US, that must have been a bit of difficult research, but doesn't really count as a logical argument.  It's like CVF system engineering, what AD capabilities were the Aster nations after.  How does it compare with the alternatives in meeting them?  I look forward to a reasoned and insightful answer.