Errr...

Then anyone who decided not to play by the rules would be in for an easy win. For starters you've just tried to outlaw most forms of aerial attack that don't put the aircraft in danger, submarines or any weapon that can take out a tank.

China?

I think China has SSKs, North Korea although they may not be sea worthy, Iran they've got three, Libya had some the list goes on...

The Royal Navy should by now have swapped all its subs to nuclear power

That happened around 1994, do try and keep up.

No

Because Rupert Murdoch tends to back winners, you do the maths...

I think you'll find

most Apple products are made in China, hence the need to import them to America if they want to sell any there.

Yes

because a 30' high tsunami is unlikely to have damaged their fuel supply, or the communication infrastructure to get more there....

Vietnam

Had plenty of dogfights, despite the presence of 20+ mile range missiles. Why? Because the politicians wouldn't give the US forces the Rules of Engagement to fire without a positive visual ID, by which time it was all a bit too late.

Also you may want to review the Falklands war where there was quite a lot of dogfighting what with the Navy's Sea Harriers only having short range missiles and guns.

I'm also sure the Israelis have done a lot of dogfighting since the '50s.

So actually yes dogfighting ability is important because at some point your wonder weapons fall short and you end up in a turning fight within visual range and it all gets quite emotional.

Yes, but

Gates didn't get his for producing shonky code, he got it for his philanthropic acts, and I don't mean stamp collecting

Brian!

No!

Forgot to say

STOBAR is also the most inefficient use of deck space compared to the other ways of getting things on and off carriers. i.e. You need the maximum possible space to take off and to land, whereas with VSTOL you need the max possible to take off, but just a small spot to land and with CATOBAR you have a short take off run, but the max space to land. This has a knock on effect in terms of sortie generation etc. Admittedly if nice Mr Cameron is only going to let the navy put 12 aircraft on these things it's not that much of an issue but as the planning assumption was an air group of 40-50 aircraft these things matter.

And yes this is more interesting than interacting with my family at Christmas...

Hmmm

I see what you're saying but the carrier would still need the BAR bit of STOBAR fitting which would be a delay. Personally I wouldn't want to try and land without wires on a carrier if I couldn't hover. Also I know SAAB say the Gripen could be converted easily, but if they're wrong (and they have less carrier experience than BAe) you're then kind of stuck with a carrier that can either operate the F-35B or get fitted with catapults which puts the price back up either way.

I have a feeling the current administration would sell off both carriers given half a chance even if they were being supplied free of charge so I'm not convinced changing to STOBAR would help. I think we're also at the stage where dicking about with the ship's specifications is going to add cost at the expense of capability. They're already in build and the last time we tried to save costs by changing things that late in the day it ended up costing more (think Albion and Bulwark losing a deck to save material costs at the insistence of the Treasury).

As for keeping them in Afghanistan, why on earth would you do that? Do what the USN does and fly sorties from off the coast of Pakistan, it massively reduces your logistics footprint in theatre and the associated security issues plus maintenance can be done in an environment designed for it. They have more than 8 aircraft over Afghanistan at any given time without having to import suitable concrete over the mountains from Pakistan and expensive contractors from the UK to build a big enough hard standing.

Ships with electricity? Yes I've been on those

Do you think the electrical equipment is actually in the slot? Navies, quite experienced with using high voltage systems and not getting them wet.

I'm aware how many people are on a carrier, the fact is you need an extra ton of water for every catapult launch you make, that's a significant increase in the fresh water making capacity of a vessel. Having been on a ship that lost one of it's RO plants for a period I can assure you there isn't that much flex so it's now a bit late to start adding sufficient capacity to the design.

The carrier was specified with an aircraft, the F-35B, that's now been changed to the C in either case the Harrier could operate from it. The fact that the government have now scrapped them isn't something the RN could have planned for 15 years ago when they started drawing up their plans. Steam catapults were in fact considered for the CVF Alpha design and steam generating capacity was allowed for in the design with a dedicated steam generating plant, it was dropped by the time the Delta design was drawn up as the decision had been made to go VSTOL and EMALS/EMCAT both indicated that any follow on aircraft could be launched electro-magnetically. I repeat the RN haven't used steam in any surface ship since the start of the century so there isn't that much corporate knoledge.

Steam catapults also exert a much greater shock to the aircraft than the EM drives will which is a bonus of the EM system in that your airframes last longer.

I think you'll find the RN's history includes lots of examples of being the first to try out new technology, especially in the field of aviation.

Do you work in project management?

I'm guessing the whiz-kids on youtube haven't built their rail guns and linear drives to the specifications asked for, e.g. will launch a 20+ ton aircraft at 140kts, will work on a ship and conduct one launch every 45 seconds for a quarter of an hour every 90 minutes for a fortnight. And be repairable by someone with a high school diploma.

As for running a steam catapult on compressed air, they used to do that, then they moved to hydraulics and then steam because compressed air couldn't do the job. Now I'm sure you could build a compressed air plant that gave the required pressure but then its only job would be to do that. Whereas on a nuclear or steam powered carrier there's an abundant supply of steam and on a nuclear or electric drive carrier there's an abundant supply of electricity. This means you don't need to find space for another system, another set of maintainers, accommodation for the maintainers etc. etc.

Are you sure

That Gripen NG will work off a carrier, I mean really sure not SAAB say they can do it and it'll cost peanuts? The Gripen wasn't designed from the ground up as being carrier compatible and it can add a lot of weight beefing up the undercarriage and fuselage to take the pounding of landing on a deck, plus hardening the electronics so they don't mind being parked next to a radar for hours on end. Never mind altering the construction methods so the whole thing doesn't suffer from terminal galvanic corrosion as soon as you put it in the middle of the ocean.

I'm not saying it can't be done, and the Gripen would probably be your best bet if you were going to try, but as fallback options go there are proven aircraft available that wouldn't involve throwing money at Saab/BAe (they already make the wings) to develop a sub-variant that may or may not be a success. Think Rafale M or Super Hornet, or indeed plain Hornet but I'm not sure you can buy new build any more and I wouldn't recommend buying second hand as the main supplier has thrashed theirs to death.

I'm actually hard put to come up with more than a handful of land planes that successfully became naval ones, the other way round tends to work better for some reason.

Welcome to the 21st Century

The Royal Navy's last steam powered surface ships were HMY Britannia and HMS Fearless. Everything is now powered by internal combustion, either diesel/electric, gas turbine/electric, gas turbine or a combination of those systems. There are no steam plants, hotel services being provided by electricity.

The move was made as it reduces the amount of room taken up by the prime mover giving more for fuel/weapons/accommodation etc.

If you want to institute a design change to the carriers to get steam catapults, apart from doubling the cost due to changing something that's in build, you'll also need to include a steam generating plant capable of generating the pressures needed and add enough fresh water generating capacity to produce 300 gallons per launch.

I suggest you get yourself a copy of Janes' Fighting Ships for Christmas as yours appears to be out of date.

ICBM Accuracy

Generally the idea with cold war era ICBMs (i.e. those actually in service not whatever North Korea might eventually come up with) is to be able to target the missile silos of the other side so you destroy them before they're launched. To counter this the land based silos have incredibly strong protective covers, to the extent that missing by 100m would in fact be a fail.

Having said that if they can't hit one re-entry vehicle how they'd cope with the 10 you'd expect from a standard ICBM is beyond me. Although I suspect it's beyond them as well which makes you wonder what other use it could have?

Well

I don't agree with your max range for Phalanx.

Also knowing something about what Phalanx is designed to do currently, you're a bit optimistic if you think every slug is going to the same point in space. The idea is to create a wall of lead the incoming object flies through, which for a missile or aircraft is all that's needed.

FFS

Yes there are videos on youtube of successful Russian weapons launches, however have you actually seen what condition they're in on the front line?

Regarding the AEW system it isn't a case of 'the Helix could fulfil that role' it is fulfilling that role. Look up the Ka-31, it's even on your favourite source of intel - Wikipedia. Presumably they used that rather than Halo so they could fit it on the ship.

And stop banging on about EriEye there are lots of radars and the Russians have developed several that are more useful than EriEye because the scanner rotates so you don't spend your whole time looking one way. If you can't even name an alternative that the Russians are using it does imply your google skills are weak young man.

Hmmm

I see your points, but I think you're overestimating the level of vibration weapons systems can be exposed to on a ship. Certainly it's probably no more than you'd get in a tank, although I'd imagine a static artillery piece may be better.

At 2.4m I don't think it's longer than many large calibre naval guns.

Having said that there's definitely a lot of work to do before it's a viable weapons systems, but then the first jet engines and guided missiles weren't that good either.

re: Shells going through

I was thinking about that, it might be better to just miss the ship and put all the energy into the water next to it, like a heavyweight torpedo that goes off under the ship rather than on impact. This creates a big bubble, various things I just about understand happen* in terms of it attaching itself to the ship et voila two bits of ship. Not 100% sure how that would work out in terms of the explosion being next to the ship rather than underneath but I think it might be a better idea than just punching lots of holes in it.

*Like what it says here

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2005/09/01/1448475.htm

g

Err... because acceleration is measured in g so 60000g is 60000 * 9.8m/s/s

That's the idea

it just hits things really fast and relies on that to **** them over. Explosives would be overkill, plus it massively eases the onboard storage problem as you don't need to worry about accidentally setting them off.

Normal Guns

Are affected by all the wave stuff as well, that's why they have gyro-stabilising systems which keep the barrel pointing the right way while the ship moves around it. Anti-vibration mounts are already common, as are active anti-vibration systems.

Two Words

Task group, you can probably figure the rest out, but you don't need a carrier with the task group to maintain AEW coverage, RFA Fort Victoria can take 3 without any hassle, as well as refuel and supply the other ships. And if you don't want all your eggs in one basket mix it up a bit around the group.

Unless the 849 Flight I saw on her in '03 was some sort of optical illusion.

If you think there's going to be some sort of battle involving Mach 7 rounds being flung about without ships being formed up in a SAG then I'd like to hear how you'd deploy them?

Ohh

You're playing imaginary Soviet Technology Wikipedia Top Trumps again aren't you.

The imaginary bit being where it works and the launcher tubes aren't sealed shut with layers of paint. Or your insistence on putting EriEye on anything that flies, although why you chose the Mi-26 is beyond me when the Russians already have Helix to that very job with a Russian radar they can presumably data link to.

And you still don't seem that clued up on how military tech and tactics actually work rather than your Tom Clancy version of it.

Oh yeah, anything on successful test firings of S-400 or are you just going with what the brochure tells you?

Cooling for a minute

Says who, there's a lot of water around for cooling and it's not like the world's navies don't have experience of ripple fire to maintain a continuous barrage.

Also it could take less than 50 seconds for the projectiles to hit if you move closer to the target, very few weapons are fired at max range, you wait for the pk* to be a sensible value like 0.7. Plus you've just used 15 Aster missiles which is a large proportion of the magazine stocks of any missile carrying warship, another couple of salvos and you're empty. Never mind the issue of deconflicting 15 missiles that are all aiming for roughly the same space.

The massive advantage this system has is you can store lots of cheap inert projectiles onboard and saturate any defenses. Sure some of the rounds may get taken out by some mythical SM-3 or S-400 that actually performs according to the manufacturers specs and trials, but you only need a couple of hits to ruin the enemies day.

*pk - Kill Potential, old avaition saying 'The ground has a pk of 1'

BOWMAN

What happens when you let the Army write the spec for something more high tech than an anvil.

A couple of years ago doing BOWMAN trials on one of Her Majesty's steely grey harbringers of doom (okay it was a Type 23 frigate so at least two of those statements are true) an Army officer was in the Ops room and said

'If you had BOWMAN on all your ships you'd know where they are without radar!'

Cue amused looks before someone pointed out the RN had been able to do that for decades with something called Link 14 and it also handily let ship's share contact information as well.

Err...

Only if they have the receiver hardware included. When you buy one of those USB TV sticks in PC World they ask for your details so they can pass them onto the TVLA but just having software that can decode/record/playback TV signals doesn't require a license as the legislation doesn't cover that.

Yeah but

a) Does it, I mean have they function tested it? And what's the minimum altitude it can detect aircraft at at 200 miles?

b) Can you mount S-400 on a ship?

c) Who says the CONOPS for the anti-air rail gun is taking things out at 200 miles, which is a capability of limited use in most modern conflicts where issues of friendly fire and IFF raise their heads?

Oh well

If it's according to wikipedia it must be right....

Of course with the e-slug coming in at M7.0 you're not going to be able to get 150 rounds off before it's hit you, the effective range isn't big enough.

AEW Seakings are currently limited to large helo carriers

Not really, they can operate of anything that can take a Sea King, which includes T-45, Tankers and T-23. Although they tend to prefer the RFAs tankers as the accomodation is nicer...

As for there being less AEW aircraft than ships, yes but that's not a problem because in an ongoing war type situation the ships like to be close enough together that they can provide mutual support with some doing the ASW thing, some doing the AAW thing and both doing a bit of ASuW. Handily you should be able to get quite a few under the radar footprint of a Sea King ASAC.

ESSM is a MISSile

Not a HITile, it's not designed to necessarily hit the target, just get close and go boom which is easier and to date provides a reasonable chance of hard kill. Also the ESSM is significantly less dense than the slug, so you'd have to make sure a nice hard bit hit it or it'd probably just punch straight through and carry on its way.

Phalanx may or may not help, bearing in mind even against something like Sunburn the best it's thought possible to achieve is converting a missile at Mach 2 into lots of shrapnel at Mach 2, the final destination doesn't really change much.

I would be interested to know what putting that much energy into the water near a ship was likely to do though, that may be more than sufficient to achieve a mission kill without having to actually hit the target.

Hypersonic Interception

Is extraordinarily difficult*, assuming the rail gun becomes suitably weaponised, it should be relatively easy to saturate your defences with multiple rounds in a short period of time. I'm also not sure why you're using inert uranium warheads on weapons systems that aren't designed for them. SM-3 and I believe S-400 aren't designed to necessarily hit the incoming target, just get close enough for the explosion of the warhead to rip it to shreds.

*The difficulty increases by an order of magnitude for every Mach number you go up.

What the navy forgets

German invasion of Norway, all kinds of fortified coastal artillery there and they did even manage to sink one German battle cruiser.

Of course the key point is frontal assault, what kind of moron commits a frontal assault?

Depends on the range

A Close In Weapons System (CIWS) like Phalanx or Goalkeeper is only designed to take things out in the final mile or so and they use slugs going at a mere Mach 3. I think upping the velocity to M7 can only help and possibly increase the range, plus if it's attacking you it depends to be coming directly towards you so the firing solution is less tricky.

Of course for longer ranges you could give the projectiles steering fins and a laser seeker, it still keeps the rounds relatively cheap as most of the guidance equipment is onboard the platform.

the Official Secrets Act applies to all UK citizens

No, it can be applied to any UK Citizen if they're in a position to know anything covered by it, but unless you're in that position you're not subject to it. Because you don't know anything.

If it does apply to you, you generally have to sign it, otherwise you wouldn't know what you couldn't do, and that's too Kafkaesque even for us.

http://www.ros.gov.uk/foi/staff_handbook/Official_secrets.htm

Scarely

I saw a post from him on the Daily Telegraph website the other day. Mind you it stood out as being coherent over there...

Err...

They only made £23m from that invention, Unilever Group may have made much more, but it's irrelevant to the case.

Oh I get it

You're living in fantasy land.

You lost any credibility when you started talking about nuking Argentina. Look up the concept of deterrence, the UK's policy on the use of nuclear weapons and all the occasions they haven't been used in the past e.g. Korea, Suez, the Falklands.

The range to the Falklands from Ascension is 3434 Nautical Miles, assuming you want to get back that's 6868 NM. And that's if you're happy not going any further than overhead the islands themselves and a flying a perfect great circle route. Google Earth will confirm this.

Further more it's all very well saying it'd be easier to bomb the mainland than fly all the way to the Falklands, but if that's the bit of land you're trying to take back at some point you'll actually need air cover down there. You'll also notice since WW2 it's now rather out of fashion to bomb civilian targets, again look up the Law on Armed Conflict, I think you'll find it's now a war crime and strategically it would be a massive mistake.

How the f**k you think you can get a transmitter on a submarine to imitate a T45 without a major R&D program and a refit is beyond me. Hint the T45 isn't big just to look imposing.

You still haven't explained how you're going to keep an RC-135 on station over the fleet 24/7 with only three airframes, or why a neutral country would lend us an aircraft and crew. Or do you think the RAF have a spare crew trained up on how to operate Erieye?

Meanwhile your explanation of the SU-34 shoot down might have Tom Clancy worried for his job but that's about it.