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Subject: VT, BAE to finalise JV after MoD gives go-ahead to Navy Carriers
DragonReborn    5/20/2008 2:45:52 PM
So the Carriers still looking pretty certain then? But will we have much to fly off them once their built?? h!!p://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2008/05/20/afx5029874.html ONDON (Thomson Financial) - VT Group Plc. and BAE Systems Plc. (other-otc: BAESF.PK - news - people ) will launch their long-awaited joint venture to combine their shipbuilding and naval support operations after the UK Ministry of Defence approved a project to build two aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy, the companies said Tuesday. The two groups said they would finalise arrangements for the venture, which has been on hold while they awaited the MoD's go-ahead for the carriers. There had been speculation that the 4 billion pound CVF carrier project, first announced last July, might fall victim to defence spending cuts. BAE and VT said they expect to sign the JV transaction documentation shortly. The agreement will then be subject to VT shareholder approval. BAE chief executive Mike Turner said: 'This is an important milestone in the development of the CVF programme and plays a major part in the long term sustainability of the UK naval sector and the transformation of our business. 'The programme will provide a strong order book and forward workload over the coming years and, most importantly will provide our armed forces with significantly enhanced capability.' In a separate statement, the MoD said it had completed all the necessary financial, commercial, and management arrangements for the project, adding that the super aircraft carriers will be the biggest and most powerful surface warships ever constructed in the United Kingdom. The new VT-BAE joint venture will be a key member of the Aircraft Carrier Alliance which will construct and assemble the new carriers at shipyards in Portsmouth, Barrow-in-Furness, Glasgow and Rosyth, said the MoD. Other members of the alliance include Bab International Group Plc. and Thales (other-otc: THLEF.PK - news - people ) UK. Bab said the contract will be worth some 600 million pounds to Bab through the duration of the programme to 2015. Thales said the contract will be worth well over 500 million euros to the group. 'We are delighted with the decision which has been taken today. We have been working on the programme since the very beginning and the design which has been processed so far is a Thales design,' said CEO Denis Ranque. VT is also awaiting a government decision on a 6 billion pound military flight training contract and last week said it and Lockheed Martin (nyse: LMT - news - people ) were expecting to reach a financial close on the project before the end of May.
 
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Herald12345       5/24/2008 9:22:26 AM

LB, The QE class design can incorporate an angled flight deck, but when operating as a STOVL carrier, it doesn't need to. The purpose of the angled flight deck is to ensure that your landing aircraft do not interfere with your launch operations, so both can be carried out simultaneously.

This is correct. Pending the purchase of a full naval AWACs, though it makes RN sense to use the STOBAR design for now. The advantages of such a choice outweigh the disadvantages for the moment due to economics.

With vertical landing, you just need a long enough flight deck for landing at the back and take-off at the front.

This is true, but you still would like that rolling takeoff option so that you can launch a burdened strike to support the ship to shore and  the anti-naval mission, otherwise you are no better than an over-sized Kiev-i.e. an air defense ship. With a decent takeoff run you can actually bomb  somebody and make them yell ouch!

Herald, thank you for the measured response.

I said you deserved one.

The diagrams are a bit strange though. The comparison between one and two island layouts with the arrows is different when assigning take off and landing allowance. Diagram one has take off role starting from spot two from the rear while diagram two starts from spot four. Landing role is truncated in diagram two so that it does not conflict with the shortened take-off as well. The advantage of the one-island approach, AFAICT, is that it frees up the location of the front island for hardstanding, permitting more aircraft in a ready position. However, in order to get into position, they need to taxi back against the flow of aircraft.

1. I know the arrows for trap and take-off runs are different.  My choices were deliberate. You will have to design a more robust arrestor  mechanism to shorten the trap  and you will have to shorten the takeoff run to  prevent mutual interference . Or you go with the existing design runs and accept the yo yo delay. That means that you wait a couple of minutes while your tractors haul the planes out of the run path of your flight deck port side.

2. You have two strategies for plane movement. You can either X cross the planes, fouling your traps and takeoffs, using the forward lift to strike below and the aft lift to raise out your aircraft out; or you can dogleg turn back  using your forward lift to lift-out and your aft lift to strike below. The first choice, cross pattern, involves more travel distance, takes more time, and reverses feed routes and requires TWO tractors. The turn-back routing option takes less time [I think] and could be done with one tractor. 

Bear in mind that you will also be using hardstand aircraft  space to support flight operations; so whichever method you chose, that hardstand will either clutter up with aircraft you will strike below, or fill up with aircraft you prepare for a strike package. Either method will work. I just chose the FASTER and simpler of the two to use.  I call it the "oscillator" in that you launch/recover, running the one tractor like a yoyo between the two hardstand parks. 

Recent pictures puts the position of the jet deflectors at spot three on your diagrams.

The jet deflectors [there should be more than one set in the ACTUAL real carrier] I expect should be set at about 1/3 and 2/3  the longest possible takeoff run set backs from the bow, so that you can have a lineal series rolling launch capability of PAIRS of aircraft.  

ISTR that the islands are under some kind of height constraint by the bridges it must pass under, which seems a funny way to design a carrier and probably more to do with political considerations. (Jobs and therefore votes in Scotland)

That may be a local concern, but that shouldn't affect the height of the island as shown in option two as it was set at the height of the two islands as seen in option one.

The inclusion of a third elevator forward or aft would immeasurably speed up operations, but as long as you stick with two, I would try to get as much open deck space to service aircraft  on the flight deck as I can.  Design  this movement plan right, and you can easily STOBAR match the tempo of an angled deck CATOBAR carrier, even with the minute or so delays  caused by moving an  aircraft out of the landing run between traps..

Her
 
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Herald12345    Addendum tio explanation   5/24/2008 10:12:59 AM
Self-explanatory. Slower but surer.

Herald

 
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Herald12345    !@#$%^&*() buggy HTML!   5/24/2008 10:14:32 AM


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2065/2517881179_c9b442a9c6_o.jpg">Self-explanatory. Slower but surer.

Herald

 
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Exemplo Ducemus    Entente Cordiale   5/24/2008 11:42:39 PM
I don't wish to bowl a googly here but there have been recent authoritative reports that the French and UK Governments are proposing some form of Navy to Navy carrier sharing with the new CVF class.  Given that the French future carrier will be configured for Rafael and not STOVL F-35B will this be an issue?  Is this kite-flying that the UK may buy Rafael fighters instead?  Should we be told?    
 
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neutralizer       5/25/2008 12:38:48 AM
France has agreed to pay UK a few hundred million for the design, but earlier talk about building 3 ships as a single batch seems seems to have been dropped.  F35 is the biggest risk in this whole thing and it makes saense to have a plan B, but I think F35 would have to be a total disaster before Rafael was chosen.
 
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neutralizer       5/25/2008 12:58:16 AM

I'd argue that the first
modern amphibious assault was by UK but in 1956 not 1982.  Even if the
helicopters used were exceedingly limited in their capability, it was
the concept that counted.  Of course land based air support was
available.  Since the landing is FI wasn't opposed apart from limited
air then comparison with the Pacifc War and fortified islands are
barely relevant, I'd suggest the best WW2 comparison was Madagascar.


Are you trying to equate the Suez operation with something like Biak, or the Turkey Shoot? Nope, I don't see it. Suez was more like the recent Cote d"Ivoire debacle; or possibly the modern Somali debacle in that the opposition at the time was totally incompetent and not really much of a military threat, but that the political reasoning that supported those efforts and political machinations behind those operations was a complete farce.

The closest military model for the Falklands on a far more massive scale is Okinawa. There you have enemy land-based air trying to drive off a surface fleet that supports an army trying to take an island. there is no way that the Suez operation resembles such a purely NAVAL exercise. You even have the Yamato standing in for  the Belgrano in a similar eventual role.

I suppose that Madagascar counts as a successful island assault, but seriously do you think the Vichy French were anywhere near as tough as the JAPANESE or that Madagascar was anything like Tarawa or Guadalcanal? 


Please try and pay attention and leave the wacky baccy alone.
 
I was saying that the first modern amphibious assault was Suez because it was the first to involve the critical use of helicopters (unlike Inchon a few years earlier).  The assault was also successful, the campaign would also have been successful were it not for US treachery.
 
I am also saying that if you want a WW2 comparison to Falklands then Madagascar is a better one than those in the Pacific.  Falklands was not an opposed landing, there were no more than a handful of enemy in the vicinity of the landing areas.  
 
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neutralizer       5/25/2008 1:21:42 AM
Well I know everyone's an expert and knows far more than the people actually taking the decisions.  However, the points to remember are:
 
1.  MoD received proposals from at least two groups.
2.  Based on their brochure engineering there were at least two very different designs.
3.  I'd have no doubt that there was voluminous documents responding to the MoD's stated capability requirements and explaining why a particular design was the way it was and the best way to meet these. 
4.  I've no doubt that proposals were examined in great detail by MoD, no doubt including outside experts, to assess the credibility and merits of the detailed proposals.
5.  MoD required the two main tenders to work together, which no doubt involved cross-fertilisation to finalise an acceptable design and construction plan to meet MoDs capability requirements.
6.  If there are signicant flaws in the design then either MoD does not consider them important and/or has decided that there are offsetting advantages that outweigh them.
 
We could start a thread on intelligence failures based on the premise that 'our way is the only way'.   For openers the total US stuff up of the mid 80s claiming that Europeans must be exporting US computers illegally to the USSR because the USSR could not produce high performance computers (true) therefore to build their advanced aircraft and weapons they must be getting US ones illegally (false - USSR had better mathamaticians who didn't need high performance computers)
 
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neutralizer       5/25/2008 1:23:03 AM
Well I know everyone's an expert and knows far more than the people actually taking the decisions.  However, the points to remember are:
 
1.  MoD received proposals from at least two groups.
2.  Based on their brochure engineering there were at least two very different designs.
3.  I'd have no doubt that there was voluminous documents responding to the MoD's stated capability requirements and explaining why a particular design was the way it was and the best way to meet these. 
4.  I've no doubt that proposals were examined in great detail by MoD, no doubt including outside experts, to assess the credibility and merits of the detailed proposals.
5.  MoD required the two main tenders to work together, which no doubt involved cross-fertilisation to finalise an acceptable design and construction plan to meet MoDs capability requirements.
6.  If there are signicant flaws in the design then either MoD does not consider them important and/or has decided that there are offsetting advantages that outweigh them.
 
We could start a thread on intelligence failures based on the premise that 'our way is the only way'.   For openers the total US stuff up of the mid 80s claiming that Europeans must be exporting US computers illegally to the USSR because the USSR could not produce high performance computers (true) therefore to build their advanced aircraft and weapons they must be getting US ones illegally (false - USSR had better mathamaticians who didn't need high performance computers)
 
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LB    Angled Deck   5/25/2008 3:03:02 AM
There are many utilities to an angled deck on a carrier.  One is to provide more deck space.  Another is to provide dual launch capacity.  There are many others.  The design in question may have the deck area but without the canted deck for operations it would seem to create problems.  Either one has parked aircraft on the side opposite the islands and VTOL landing is restricted to over the stern in between rows of parked aircraft or all the space there is empty and wasted to allow VTOL aircraft to approach from the side and land.

With a canted deck one can launch and recover there and preserve the bow as an isolated deck park or use the bow for launch and have much of the deck free to help cycle or use both the angled deck and bow for dual launch.  The right down the middle of the deck flight operation area seems a bad use of space.  It's difficult to know what the design teams were thinking.  It almost seems they came up with a design that only works because the design air wing is so small compared to the size of the hull.

That the RN will end up not having a fleet air defense fighter for around 20 years does not indicate, nor have a Sea King AEW replacement before 2022, does not indicate these ships will have a proper air wing anytime soon.

Lastly it doesn't seem to make much sense to have 2 air wings and 2 carriers.  Having 3 carriers would ensure the 2 air wings are normally always active.  Naval aviators need to fly as operating at sea is rather challenging.  Personally I doubt a Labor government will actually order them as they've been putting it off for years now.  The Sea King AEW has been flying since 1982 and it's not like the replacement program for them has been given any funding either the past ten years.




 
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Herald12345       5/25/2008 6:42:35 AM



I'd argue that the first
modern amphibious assault was by UK but in 1956 not 1982.  Even if the
helicopters used were exceedingly limited in their capability, it was
the concept that counted.  Of course land based air support was
available.  Since the landing is FI wasn't opposed apart from limited
air then comparison with the Pacifc War and fortified islands are
barely relevant, I'd suggest the best WW2 comparison was Madagascar.


Are you trying to equate the Suez operation with something like Biak, or the Turkey Shoot? Nope, I don't see it. Suez was more like the recent Cote d"Ivoire debacle; or possibly the modern Somali debacle in that the opposition at the time was totally incompetent and not really much of a military threat, but that the political reasoning that supported those efforts and political machinations behind those operations was a complete farce.

The closest military model for the Falklands on a far more massive scale is Okinawa. There you have enemy land-based air trying to drive off a surface fleet that supports an army trying to take an island. there is no way that the Suez operation resembles such a purely NAVAL exercise. You even have the Yamato standing in for  the Belgrano in a similar eventual role.

I suppose that Madagascar counts as a successful island assault, but seriously do you think the Vichy French were anywhere near as tough as the JAPANESE or that Madagascar was anything like Tarawa or Guadalcanal? 



Please try and pay attention and leave the wacky baccy alone.

That insult is noted. To others, British,  in this forum, I apologize for what is about to happen as I reply to this "gentleman".

I could care less about your claims. The so called amphibious assault was a crass exercise in colonial adventurism. Your government was explicitly warned not to attempt a military solution to the crisis which the US was trying to solve diplomatically. When Britain's Crown government of the day  went ahead and acted in concert with France without even bothering to notify the United States that it was going ahead,  or even cared  about the hornet's nest they stirred up, you can anticipate what volatile US reaction was going to be.

As for that military exercise, your logistics collapsed when the US squeezed you on oil and through the financial markets. Just what did you think was happening elsewhere, while you went a colonial adventuring? Did not the Hungarian Crisis and the powderkeg that was central Europe heating up, not show up on London's radar? Of course not.  The London dream was to restore Britain's influence in the ME with the Baghdad Pact. Well that hashish dream was kaput when the Egyptians threw you out of Suez.  The days of British colonialism were over.  Too bad that Washington doesn't seem to understand that lesson about colonialism today.  Might have saved us a lot of grief in the 1960s and in the present.
 
I was saying that the first modern amphibious assault was Suez because it was the first to involve the critical use of helicopters (unlike Inchon a few years earlier).  The assault was also successful, the campaign would also have been successful were it not for US treachery.

Edit that to read BRITISH treachery. You were the ones who pulled out leaving the French and the Israelis holding the bag.  The US warned you what we would do, if you tried something funny without consulting us, and in fact not to try going in while we were talking. We simply followed up in action on what we told you, we would do. You found out quickly that your military bluff collapsed.     

I am also saying that if you want a WW2 comparison to Falklands then Madagascar is a better one than those in the Pacific.  Falklands was not an opposed landing, there were no more than a handful of enemy in the vicinity of the landing areas. 

You obviously know absolutely nothing about Okinawa, then.  The fighting was inland and more of less consisted of staged lines of resistance around key terrain positions where the Japanese made their stands.  There was little or no fighting on the beach.

Madagascar from what I remember pitted about 15,000 British and Free French troops who INEPTLY advanced on about 8000 Vichy troops who more or less mounted a half-hearted type of guerilla res
 
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