The truth on the Navy carrier debacle? Industry got away with murder
The Ministry of Defence is in the pillory again today, being corporately pelted for the recent unedifying sequence of events in which the Coalition government decided in 2010 to fit the Royal Navy's new aircraft carriers with catapults - and then abruptly changed its mind in 2012, reverting to the former plan which will see them …
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Re: Eh?
@ The BigYin : "why wasn't the feckin' thing nuclear?"
yes, exactly my question. If it is acceptable to consider the French Rafale as an option (which is probably one of the best carrier-grade aircrafts flying today), why not consider the French nuclear drive of the Charles-de-Gaulle as an option, that would make long missions possible, and would also give steam catapults for free ?
I mean, Waterloo, Trafalgar and Austerlitz are forgiven today, aren't they ?
Re: Eh?
@TheBigYin 'Also, why wasn't the feckin' thing nuclear?'
Oh Jesus, can you imagine how much BAE would shaft us for a nuclear carrier?
Re: Eh? (TheBigYin @ 11:15)
Precisely this.
Claiming the ships to be 'modular and adaptable with the facility to fit cats'n'traps afterwards', and then providing a ship which is neither modular, nor sufficiently adaptable that the cost of fitting said gear to an already extant seaframe exceeds by a considerable margin the cost of building said seaframe in the first feckin' place does very much seem to be the very definition of "bait and switch", and surely must constitute fraud.
Surely.
Surely?
As for why it wasn't nuclear, screwed if I know. It's not even like we have to look at what Peirre across the Channel is doing - we've been developing naval nuclear reactors for our SSN and SSBN programmes for at least the last 40-50 years. Rolls Royce have all the gear ready for the Astute subs - why not just design the engineering spaces of the carrier (which you're designing anyway) around the available power plants rather than doing it the other way round which would no doubt have been substantially more expensive?
The MoD couldn't be more full of fail if it tried. In fact, I'm surprised that they don't fail at failing.
Please - take some more of my tax money to piss away against the wall.
Re: Eh?
The more left wing of us have never forgiven Napoleon for losing at Waterloo. If the British aristocracy had gone the way of the French one, we might still be in a mess, but it would be a less oligarchic mess.
Re: Eh?@Zolko
"why not consider the French nuclear drive of the Charles-de-Gaulle as an option"
What, and let the incompetents of MOD + BAES design a ship round that? You don't think that would have exactly the same problems that we now have?
On the basis of defence procurement history, it was evident at the time these were ordered that there would be substantial problems of both capability and cost. Moreover, with at most three being built (even assuming the French do exercise the option to build a third) you'd only ever spread the design and tooling costs over three ships. This was always a disaster in the making.
The logical approach would have been to have bought a US nuclear powered carrier, this guaranteeing interoperability and buying a far better defence asset. Since the proposed aircraft are US built they already have the ability to restrict what we can do with the new carriers (not to mention the keys to Trident), why not the hull as well? The Yanks are currently having ther own cost over-run problems with the new Ford class CVN, currently being cranked out at a cost around £8bn a pop, but that's likewise for a three ship set. Our ships, even at this stage of construction are projected to cost £5.3bn, so 30% to account for mess-ups-in-progress and yet to be mess ups, and you're talking £7bn.
So which would you rather have: A couple of oddball, low capability carriers we've made in the shed at the end of BAES' garden for £7bn a pop, or a couple of fully compatible Ford class CVN's for £8bn a pop? A third option might be "none of the above", but until our politicians stop conducting air-based campaigns in far off bits of the world that doesn't seem a good idea.
Re: Eh?
Actually, as I understand it the French nuke engines are barely capable of the doing the job of shunting the big ship around with nothing spare for anything else. They chose "baby" sub reactors over proper "nimitz" type reactors as a..... <insert fanfare> ... cost saving exercise :-)
Re: Eh?
"The more left wing of us have never forgiven Napoleon for losing at Waterloo..."
Then the more left wing of us should brush up on their history. Has it escaped your attention that, at the time of Waterloo, Napoleon had been Emperor of the French *and King of Italy* for over a decade? He made his brother Joseph King of Spain, and showered titles on his family, his marshals, and everyone else of whom he approved. Napoleon was no more anti-royal or democratic than the Hanoverian kings of England or the Bourbons. He just aimed to replace the Bourbons with his own dynasty. (And, incidentally, an emperor outranks a king).
I can't recall the exact wording, but when some Italian snob asked Napoleon about his ancestry, he replied to the effect that it didn't matter from whom he was descended; what mattered was that, in future, his descendants would be top dogs.
Re: Eh?
And we let them win Austerlitz by not being there ourselves...
Re: Eh?
I suppose that at this point it may be worth mentioning that Mr. Bonaparte was born in Corsica from parents of noble Italian ancestry, (did you know his father was the representative of Corsica to King Louis's court?) and he therefore the advantage he had in family connections (ie; patronage) and wealth offered him more opportunities to study than typical citizens had. He was part of the nobility, not an enemy of it.
Napoleon was also not responsible for removing the existing dynasty of France, that was the enraged citizenry of France incensed at being taxed to death to pay for winning the American revolution. Louis bankrolled the American Revolution and provided cannons, muskets, powder, shot and military advisor's to the Americans. (As well as the help from the French Army & Navy)
Why did he do this? Because he lost out in the 7 years war quite badly and wanted to get his own back, which means that from a certain point of view you could thank the aristocrats in Britain for the downfall of the Bourbon dynasty. ;)
Also, if we are being pedantic one could point out that the first industrial revolution was followed by the second industrial revolution which was only really ended by WW1. (some would say because the resultant arms treaties killed off the huge spending on ever bigger dreadnoughts...)
Re: "pillow biting"
"Homophobic"? Please explain.
I view it more about the MoD being the submissive in this BDSM relationship.
Re: "pillow biting"
How is a spanking reference homophobic?
Re: "pillow biting"
Hmm, never heard that phrase - I just read it as a reference to being shafted. Maybe I've just led a sheltered life. Then again, I didn't understand the whole American outrage at the KFC advert in Australia that had fain placating Windies supporters by giving them some KFC - I'd never heard about the whole Black, fried chicken stereotype.
I suppose some people just enjoy being offended and announcing it to the world.
Re: "pillow biting"
I've always thought it was referring to non-consensual non-homosexual anal sex* in a dominant/submissive situation.
* its not sex for pleasure purposes but to show who is boss.
Re: "pillow biting"
I didn't actually know that. Well done for perpetuating a phrase that horrifically offends you by telling people just how offensive it is when, clearly, people just weren't making that connection.
And so the "I’m really offended by x" circle continues, sigh.
Re: "pillow biting"
"Just because you and others in this thread are ignorant of the term's pejorative use"
Language changes and given the various...augmentations now available, such an action does not have to be the preserve of the homosexual male.
If you genuinely feel it is homophobic and offensive, send the author a message asking them to remove it.
Re: "pillow biting"
"And so the "I’m really offended by x" circle continues, sigh."
Hopefully the Reg Icon Review can offer us an appropriate icon, with a description "I've taken mortal offence, and intend to flounce off as soon as I have mouthed off"
Mmm...is the word "flounce" permitted? Or will some thin skinned berk presume that they are being got at?
Re: "pillow biting"
How did we get onto the subject of a fear of being the same? Although I have always prided myself on being different, I'm not actually frightened of being the same.
Petition, anyone?
It might be a naïve, shot-in-the-dark, unlikely to garner a meaningful response idea, but would submitting an e-petition via the HM government portal be a worthwhile endeavour?
If so, may I humbly suggest the Mr Page as its instigator, as one who would best able to phrase it with the minimum opportunities for weaseling out of giving an answer?
Re: Petition, anyone?
The problem is: would this petition be popular with ordinary people? I suggest that it would not be.
In the news, military spending is presented in the context of 'jobs', rather than 'decent quality kit delivered on time at reasonable prices'. A screw up at the MoD that forces it to waste money on something they otherwise would not need is actually seen as a good result, unfortunately. Am I too cynical?
Re: Petition, anyone?
The reason the MoD doesn't care less is *because* the media doesn't focus on anything but jobs. If the media did a proper job of saying "This is overpriced gash and we need BAE to be more competitive to stay in business", THEN maybe the MoD would start negotiating better contracts.
Re: Petition, anyone?
I often wonder how effective and value for money all these BAe jobs are.
Say the average BAe worker earns £50000 a year. How much against that is the taxpayer subsidising that wage?
If those £50000 jobs are costing the taxpayer £2 million each to keep.............
(shrugs)
Re: Petition, anyone?
> I often wonder how effective and value for money all these BAe jobs are.
They just bring negative value to the economy.
> How much against that is the taxpayer subsidising that wage?
130% of course. The other 30% are for expensive swimming pools and mansions for the well-connected ones. Where do you think the money comes from. And you get for this... some unusable boondoggle. Not anything that would bring in the bacon in the future.
Re: Petition, anyone?
You can send all the petition you want, but it won't make any difference as the correct decision was made not to install cats and traps. The scandal was the badly thought out decision to switch away from STOVL in 2010 which wasted £100million before coming to the same decision my by Labour a decade ago..
So they asked for an option but didn't contract the option.. and when they say lets do that option the price doubles.. easy answer.. tax the fucking bollox of the company that thinks it can milk it. This is for the good of the nation after all not a windfall for their profits.
Persuasive Arguments
I've read the Reg articles on the carrier, catapult, F-35B/C debacle and they're very persuasive; the selection of the F-35C seems like a no-brainer.
Is it really that simple? Is there really no other case for the F-35B other than the stated cost of installing catapults in the carriers? If there is a case, it should be presented in these articles so that we have a more balanced/interesting article to read.
Just asking...
Re: Persuasive Arguments
A good question but when all is said and done it really is that simple. There is nothing that the F-35B can do that the F-35C will not be better at, unless you count melting through the steel plate it’s trying to take off from. The more pounds of lifting gear you are trying to carry with you means less pounds of capacity you have for AMRAAMs. Basically the MOD, the Government and BAE have absolutely no interest in providing a frontline fighting force and by extension no interest in keeping British troops alive and fighting, this whole farce proves it.
Re: Persuasive Arguments
It was mooted in these forums previously, that F-35Bs could take off and land on cheap merchant ships (or at least modified merchant ships). So that rather negates the need of multi billion pound carriers.
Though taking that argument, if they chose "cats and traps" they wouldn't have needed any type of F-35 and could use F-18s/Rafales instead.
Re: Persuasive Arguments
The F-35C cannot land on a carrier, its redesigned tail hook has still failed to perform satisfactory. Redesign my require major structural work and delay the variant for years.
The F-35B can operate of 20 US Navy and USMC, 1 French,1 Brazillian, 1-2 Indian, 1 Spanish, 1 That and two British carriers. plus any number of Aux/support ships. The F-35C can operate off 10 USN and one British navy carrier.
The F-35C is so slow its performance specifications have had be reduced. The time it takes to to go from mach 0.8 to mach 1.2 have risen from 70 seconds to 113seconds. F-35B has risen to 83seconds.
The F-35C costs more than the B and is shares the least commonality with the A and B
F-35C will not be in service for several years after the B
F-35C is the least popular variant bought only by the US Navy.
Due to the very expensive training and certification for carrier landing, only 12-18 F-35C would be affordable on one carrier. This would mean long periods with any carrier while it undergoes periodic refits.
With the B, larger number of pilots could train to land on the carrier and surge to up to 40-48 aircraft within a few days due to the simplicity of vertical landing and ski-jump launches.
Two carriers could be afforded with STOL aircraft providing 100% coverage and the possibility of two carriers with up to 40 aircraft each (i.e. most of the RAF) in emergences. The French fly 12 Rafales from the CdG.
Up to three other Aux-carriers would be possible operating small numbers of F-35B's in emergencies (like the Atlantic Conveyor)
The f-35C has longer range and bigger internal weapons storage. The UK will soon have a very large tanker fleet that could refuel a fleet of F-35B pretty much anywhere they need to go. The small internal storage is somewhat mitigated by the new weapons been design for the F-35, up to eight SDB's or Brimstones for instance
These are the reason why the Conservatives/Libdems made the very embarrassing decision to switch back. It really is a no-brainer, the F-35B is the best option..
.
Re: Persuasive Arguments
Not necessarily that I don't believe you, but any chance you could provide some links for some of these claims?
Re: Persuasive Arguments
"The UK will soon have a very large tanker fleet that could refuel a fleet of F-35B pretty much anywhere they need to go."
I see, and that tanker fleet will be able to operate off the carriers in support of F35B operations in, say, the South Atlantic?
If we were talking about RAF F-35Bs then you might have a point. But we're talking about naval deployments. The carriers can't carry any sort of refuelling aircraft because they have no cats and traps. Which means you're stuck with the standard range of an F-35B unless the Americans let us fuel off their naval tankers (except we'll be using incompatible drogue-and-probes no doubt) or you're within range of a friendly ground base anyway where you can operate FSTA/Voyager. In which case why are you piddling around with expensive carrier ops anyway when you could just fly the RAF into said friendly airbase?
The only thing that I agree with is that F-35C doesn't make sense either.
You're building huge mid-heavy carriers, which you would only pay for if you wanted to run CATOBAR ops from. And then you're not only fielding jump jet fighters (which only need a helicopter carrier like HMS Ocean), but not fitting cats and traps for ancillary aircraft such as transports and AWACs. Which begs the question why we're not building a couple of HMS Ocean variants with ski jumps. That's all we need!
(expensive) F-35B with (cheap) light ski-jump carriers
OR
(expensive) F-35C / (cheap) F-18E/F with (expensive) CATOBAR mid-heavy carriers.
Building an expensive heavy (yet crippled) carrier for expensive jump jets is plain retarded.
Re: Persuasive Arguments
You may very well be correct in all the above assertions regarding F-35C, however the point of catapult is to enable the carrier to carry different non-STOVL aircrafts, not just F-35C.
We are currently building a carrier which can only be used with STOVL aircraft (choice of F-35B or nothing) . This is very suboptimal use of taxpayers money compared to more expensive but also universal carrier which can be used with many different models, including F-18 (relatively cheap and available right now).
Awful!
This is just typical of the waste and horrendous decision making that has been going on for decades, go back to the TSR2 best aircraft in the world in its class, cancelled why?
Nimrod....lets not even go there
Tornado......Someone needs to ask about the maintenance contractors replacng panels on the airframe damaging them so badly they need to be retired......
Harriers.....useful adaptable and sold to the US Marines.....
Jaguars.....useful reliable cheap to run.....scrapped.....
HMS Ocean.....great idea
Various Type 22's great fleet ships still effective needing upgrades.....scrapped
Ark Royal....a disgrace
Invincible....a disgrace
Bay Class sold to the aussies, useful adaptable model of excellence.....
You get where I am going here, why are we doing this to our forces, its beyond belief that we keep seeing these vested interests taking hold and leaving our country in a poor state of defence.
Its one of the few duties the government has to do properly.
Re: Awful!
"TSR2 - according to a former colleague who worked on the avionics, they were utter crap"
Well, they were only prototypes, so plenty of opportunity to fix them.
And given that we now can't build an aircraft without help from other nations, perhaps cancelling TSR2 might now be seen as a milestone in losing our advanced aviation capabilities. Interesting to note that the same procurement incompetence, repeated design and spec changes, industrial meddling, and lack of foresight that we see today were all part of the TSR-2 story.
Re: Awful!
I remember seeing a documentary on the TSR2 that had some retired Shop Steward grinning from ear to ear about how it all went down.
Basically management would tell the shop stewards that the next phase of work had to be completed in 30 days. The Steward said that 30 days was perfectly acceptable to do the job in but they would demand 90 days instead so the workers could do as little as possible. Apply that attitude throughout a whole project and you can see why it was canned and jobs were lost.
He however, sat there looking very smug and satisfied with himself. All just a big laugh!
Re: Awful!
"I remember seeing a documentary on the TSR2 that had some retired Shop Steward grinning from ear to ear about how it all went down."
Have you got a reference or link to this 'documentary'?
Strangely enough the US F-111 was bought as a 'replacement'. Sounds to me like the UK gov got an offer they could not refuse from the US mafia (aka US gov).
Re: Awful!
The F111 was ordered because the estimates were cheaper than TSR-2, but none were delivered, because of cost over-runs on the F111 programme. So we cancelled our own advanced project, ordered somebody else's advanced project "off plan", and were then surprised when we couldn't afford that. IIRC there was also a slight problem of foreign exchange as well, in that we simply didn't have the foreign currency to pay the bill at the time.
Re: Awful!
Let's not forget the horror stories of Harriers returning from sorties and having to dump their entire weapons load in the sea before attempting to land. STOVL planes look great at air shows, but their military benefit is questionable, and their massive cost unarguable.
Re: Awful!@ Frank Bough
"Let's not forget the horror stories of Harriers returning from sorties and having to dump their entire weapons load in the sea before attempting to land."
All carrier aircraft have a maximum landing weight, above which they need to dump fuel and/or ordinance to meet that weight. Nothing special about the Harrier, unless you're comparing it to something with very big wings that can land with a full weapons load, and even then you've got limits to the load on the arrester wire that would be an issue. During all wars featuring carriers returning pilots have often dumped unused weapons, rather than risk crashing on landing for the sake of a few bombs.
In the grand scheme of war, the cost of dumping a few bombs like ths is nothing. Your point about the military benefit of SVTOL aircraft is much more valid.
Re: Awful!@ Frank Bough
The F-18 super Hornet has a carrier bring back of about 8000lb. The F-35C has 9000lb, The F-35B has just over 5000lb carrier bring back in vertical landing (all its internal weapons plus fuel in effect).
However, with SRVL (Ship board Rolling Vertical Landing) the F-35B will land at about 40knots relative to the ship and use its brakes to stop (same technique has been use on land based Harriers for over decade).
This will increase Bring Back to the same as the F-35C - 9000lb. This would only be used in exceptional circumstance when a Storm shadow was not fired on a combat mission for some unforeseen reason.
Re: Awful!
"This is just typical of the waste and horrendous decision making that has been going on for decades, go back to the TSR2 best aircraft in the world in its class, cancelled why?"
Not a simple question to answer, there was too much interference by the Ministry of Aviation both in mistaken overall policy and directly in the project. The '57 defence white paper had allowed gross stupidity into capability planning. Inter-service politics played its part, and the Yanks were their usual helpful selves, and then their was Dennis Healey who thought that if he shut it down he would be able to place other orders that would secure an overall greater number of (unionized) jobs.
Lets remember what the fall out was from these cost cutting measures. A large investment in the TFX (F-111) which was lost, An investment in the Anglo-French AFVG which was lost, Procurement of Buccaneers for the RAF, Procurement of Jaguar for the RAF, Extended service for the V-force, Extended Service for Canberra PR units until this capability was lost altogether in 2006, The procurement nightmare of the MRCA (Tornado) aka Must Replace Canberra Again. You really need to pay close attention when a politico says we can't afford to finish a project...
New Carriers Defensive Weapons
It's even worst than that, these new ships will have the most basic point defence weapons installed upon them, in contrast to every other major navy who would install an anti missile, close in guns combination, our new ships will have re conditioned phalanx rapid firing gun, which whilst effective against an exocet class weapon, will not be able to defeat the latest class of anti shipping missiles with final terminal speed of mach 5!
Re: New Carriers Defensive Weapons
Wont they have the luxury of protection by our destroyers with their untested anti-missile system? And those fairly pointless frigates mentioned some time ago on the reg?
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