Queen Elizabeth class Aircraft Carriers

[Jellington]

Ik ben helemaal voor... 2-3 Europese carrier battle groups, en ja hier zie ik een niche waarin we daadwerkelijk een rol van betekenis kunnen spelen met de fregatten, LPD's/JSS (en een tweede), de subs en de mariniers.

De MFF's tzt vervangen door 4-8 schepen, de Belgen (alle) MCM capaciteit en we hebben een top capaciteit.

Vergeet de "carriers" van Spanje en Italië niet. Was er geen apart topic over de mogelijkheid van Europese Carrier Battle Groups? Dan kunnen we namelijk daar hier verder over praten.

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

En ook voor de Frans-Britse expeditionaire macht (als we ons DAAR nou eens bij zouden aansluiten...).

Ik ben helemaal voor... 2-3 Europese carrier battle groups, en ja hier zie ik een niche waarin we daadwerkelijk een rol van betekenis kunnen spelen met de fregatten, LPD's/JSS (en een tweede), de subs en de mariniers.

De MFF's tzt vervangen door 4-8 schepen, de Belgen (alle) MCM capaciteit en we hebben een top capaciteit.

[Mourning]

Na verwachting en toch fantastisch nieuws! (ook voor het aantal Engelse F35B)

En ook voor de Frans-Britse expeditionaire macht (als we ons DAAR nou eens bij zouden aansluiten...).

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales is to enter service and make sure Britain "always has one carrier available," UK Prime Minister David Cameron said.

Na verwachting en toch fantastisch nieuws! (ook voor het aantal Engelse F35B)

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

UK Royal Navy's HMS Prince of Wales to enter service

Published time: September 05, 2014 
 
Aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales is to enter service and make sure Britain "always has one carrier available," UK Prime Minister David Cameron said. The fate of the ship has been in doubt ever since a defense review in 2010.

At the beginning of August, while it was being assembled at Rosyth dockyard near Edinburgh, it was still unclear what would happen to it, despite knowledge its sister ship, the aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, would go into service.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking at the NATO summit in Wales, said that utilizing the aircraft carrier would mean the UK "will always have one carrier available, 100 percent of the time."

"They are an investment in British security, British prosperity and our place in the world, transforming our ability to project power globally, whether independently or with our allies," he said.

Building commenced on the aircraft carrier in 2011 and it is expected to be ready in 2017. However, it will not be fully operational until 2023, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported. It will continue to be completed in Rosyth.

Some 6.2 billion pounds ($10.1 billion) was spent on the construction of the two new carriers – the idea of which was first proposed in 1998.

It was already under construction by BAE Systems and partner companies, but the government hadn't decided whether it would be used, dry docked or sold on. There had been speculation that one of the carriers could be sold after it was finished.

The 2009 deal on the new offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) postulated that the MoD would be liable to pay for any periods when no work was taking place at UK shipyards.

The announcement of HMS Prince of Wales entering service came as NATO pledged to make across-the-board increases in ever-decreasing defense budgets.

Cameron said that the UK was a rare case in that it spends more than two percent of its national income on defense.

"The cost of building the ships is funded from money that would have been used to pay for idle capacity, finance redundancies and meet the cost of industrial restructuring," the MoD said last November, when the plan for the new vessels was first announced.

However, four years of government cuts to defense spending to reduce the country's budget deficit has already started to cast doubt over the future of the industry in the country.

http://rt.com/uk/185464-navy-prince-of-wales/

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

July 2, 2014 7:45 pm

Royal Navy carriers sail into uncharted waters

By Sam Jones, Defence and Security Editor

On Friday, amid great pomp, the Queen will smash a bottle of Islay malt whisky against the hull of the first of the Royal Navy's new 65,000-tonne aircraft carriers as she officially names it at Rosyth dockyard in Scotland.

HMS Queen Elizabeth will bear the motto Semper Eadem – Always the Same. Its sister ship HMS Prince of Wales will boast Ich Dien – I Serve.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/7353eec8-01d1-11e4-ab5b-00144feab7de.html#axzz36QmVv0zm

[dudge]

If you want an idea of the scale of new carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (www.royalnavy.mod.uk/The-Fleet/Ships/Future-Ships/Queen-Elizabeth-Class/Queen-Elizabeth), here are two Type 23 frigates side-by-side in her hangar.

Our graphic artist Andy Brady has produced this artwork as part of the 100-day countdown to the ship's launch on July 4 (he's had to cut out the flight deck to accommodate the frigates' superstructures...)

You can read more on the countdown to the QE's launch (67 days to go now till July 4) in the May edition of Navy News, the Royal Navy's official newspaper, which is out tomorrow.

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

UK Aircraft Carrier Budget Shortfall Likely

Farnborough Air Show » July 10, 2012

by Chris Pocock, July 9, 2012

Controversial from the start, the UK's new aircraft carrier program has endured many twists and turns. It is now 14 years since the government first defined the need for new carriers and it will be another four years before the first of the two Queen Elizabeth II-class warships is delivered. Beyond that, it will be another four years before the carrier-strike capability becomes fully operational, in 2020.

The second vessel is now being built but, on current budget projections, the country cannot afford to operate both. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has twice changed its mind on the type of F-35 stealth fighter to be operated from them.

At 65,000 metric tons displacement, the QEII and the Prince of Wales are the largest ships ever built in the UK, and are designed to support a variety of missions, such as amphibious or humanitarian operations, as well as air strikes. Described as eight acres of floating sovereign territory, they are three times the size of the three old Invincible-class carriers, which were originally designed for antisubmarine operations during the Cold War. Two of those warships have now been retired in defense cuts, along with the entire fleet of Harriers. One remains but only as a helicopter carrier.

The Invincible-class was originally designed for antisubmarine operations during the Cold War. The QE II-class replacements are designed to support a variety of missions, such as amphibious or humanitarian operations, as well as air strikes.

Between 1999 and 2002, BAE Systems and Thales UK worked on competing designs for the big ships. That work informed a decision in 2002 to buy the F-35B STOVL version of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The original target for placing contracts was December 2003, with the first ship to be delivered in 2012, and the F-35Bs to follow in 2014.

Meanwhile, though, the government concluded that the development and construction task was so huge that an alliance approach between industry and the MoD was best. Politically driven considerations also played a part, especially in deciding which British shipyards would get the work. A building-block approach to construction would spread the work to some high-unemployment areas. No fewer than 16 shipyards or fabricators and 12 other major suppliers eventually contended for the big subcontracts.

The assessment phase continued with the Thales design adopted in partnership with BAE Systems. One unique feature was the two "islands" on the flight deck–one for air operations and air traffic control, the other for ship control and navigation. The carriers would be able to operate away from port for up to nine months and support air operations for up to 70 days.

Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) joined the alliance in early 2005 as the "physical integrator," based on its expertise in the offshore oil industry. Babcock Engineering Services and VT Shipbuilding also joined in 2005. BAE Systems subsequently bought VT's shipyard at Portsmouth.

There were protracted negotiations as the alliance members discussed the build strategy and sought assurance from each other on the risks involved. At the same time, the French government indicated interest in joining the program, since the British design met its requirements for a second carrier. France eventually decided that it couldn't afford a second carrier.

Detailed design work continued into 2006, when a demonstration phase was launched. The carriers, which would have more than 2,500 separate compartments, were designed to be electrically powered by two Rolls-Royce gas turbines and four diesel generators. There also would be a highly mechanized weapons handling system. Long- and medium-range radars would be the same as on the Royal Navy's Type 45 destroyers and refitted Type 23 frigates, respectively.

The carriers would be assembled in Babcock's shipyard at Rosyth from 25 building blocks constructed there and in five other shipyards, with some of the assemblies weighing 12,000 pounds or more. Significantly, the all-steel construction would meet commercial standards, and the MoD has admitted to "a certain degree of risk with regard to shock and survivability."

In July 2007, the MoD gave the go-ahead to build the carriers, at a "not-to-exceed cost" of £3.9 billion ($6.25 billion) including the foregoing assessment and demonstration stages. But it was another year before the incentivized target cost contract was signed. This called for the first warship to be delivered in 2014. Within six months, however, the MoD ordered a slowdown for budget reasons. This reduced short-term costs, but increased the ultimate bill. The latest target cost for the two carriers is £5.24 billion (about $8.4 billion).

The came the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). Faced with budget cuts of up to 30 percent, senior military commanders suggested canceling one or both carriers. But more than £1.5 billion had already been spent and canceling saved only £1.2 billion, partly because the government had just guaranteed shipyard work to BAE Systems for the next 15 years. In the end, the defense budget was cut by 7.5 percent and both carriers survived. But only one would enter service and it would be converted for catapult takeoffs and arrested landings so that the UK could switch its order for JSFs from the F-35B to the "more capable" U.S. Navy F-35C version. The other carrier would be mothballed or even sold.

Recently, the MoD reverted to the F-35B after it discovered–thanks to a £40 million study–that the cost of conversion to "cats and traps" could be a whopping £2 billion. The MoD also said that the next defense review in 2015 might provide enough funds to bring the second carrier into service.

Work on the two carriers is proceeding apace. The government's audit body said that the alliance is working well, including the incentive provisions. Over 300 companies, not all of them in the UK, have gained contracts worth £1.6 billion. A dry dock at Rosyth has been modified into the UK's biggest.

Some big blocks of the QEII have already arrived there from the other dockyards, floated around Britain's coast. Two software integration facilities are up and running. Thales is leading on aviation equipment, integration of the F-35 and on power and propulsion. BAE Systems is responsible for the mission systems. The QEII is scheduled to be fully assembled in 2014 and delivered in June 2016, with the Prince of Wales following in September 2018. Sea trials should begin four months after these dates.

One key associated procurement has yet to be finalized. The carrier must also have an airborne early warning capability. The Royal Navy's radar-equipped Sea King Mk 7s are nearing the end of their service lives. Embarrassed by its budget problems, the MoD has said little about their replacement. But Defence Secretary Philip Hammond recently announced that the "£38 billion black hole in the defense budget" has been eliminated. The MoD now plans to spend £152 billion (about $240 billion) on equipment over the next 10 years. More than £4 billion of that will be spent on ISR projects, including the carrier AEW capability that is codenamed Crows Nest.

Vexed Choice of Carrier F-35

In 2002, Britain committed approximately $3.2 billion to the development cost of the F-35, then estimated to cost $39 billion in total. That cost has risen to nearly $60 billion in current dollars, an increase borne entirely by the U.S. Meanwhile, 10 aerospace companies in the UK are supplying parts and equipment that is potentially worth billions of pounds over the life of the program. It seems like a good deal.

But while estimates of the F-35's production cost have steadily increased, the UK's defense budget has steadily decreased in real terms. The MoD sticks doggedly to the mantra that it doesn't need to decide how many F-35s it will buy before 2015. But the SDSR reduced the number of F-35s to be routinely deployed onboard the new carrier from 36 to 12. The UK total may not be much more than half the originally-planned 138.

When the MoD switched to the F-35C version in 2010, it was good news for the Royal Air Force (RAF). The F-35 is also supposed to replace the RAF fleet of Tornado land-based strike aircraft. Its greater payload, range and internal weapons capacity made the F-35C a closer match to the ageing but still-very-capable "Tonka." Moreover, the F-35C would have cost 10 to 20 percent less than the F-35B to acquire, depending on how the sums are done.

Now that the MoD has reverted to the F-35B, officials are making the best of it. The UK doesn't have a 2,000-pound bomb, so it doesn't matter that the F-35B weapons bay can take only 1,000-pound-class weapons. The STOVL version can be topped up by aerial refueling after takeoff, thus mitigating the range penalty. The additional cost of operating a cat-and-trap carrier, including the extra pilot training that is required, was over half that of the additional acquisition and support costs of the F-35B versus the F-35C, an senior MoD official said.

The F-35B's development problems are also being discounted. "The F-35B is off probation now," a senior British officer noted. Only last year, Rear Admiral Amjad Hussein told a parliamentary enquiry that "the STOVL aircraft is more complicated...it is trying to do some difficult things... it requires an awful lot of power...it probably needs to lose its stores before it can land." Lockheed Martin program v-p Larry Lawson said earlier this year that "critical engineering challenges" on the F-35B had been solved. But the recent GAO report on the F-35 program noted that "three of the five fixes for the STOVL version are temporary and untested."

Having recognized a few years ago that the F-35B still had a weight problem, despite the 2004 redesign, the MoD was contemplating a shipboard rolling vertical landing (SRVL) technique to solve the "bring-back" problem. In a recent briefing to explain the decision to revert to the F-35B, the senior British officer confirmed to AIN that SRVL would now be further explored.

The F-35B is scheduled to make its first landing on the QE II sometime in 2018. If the switch to the F-35C had been sustained, there would have been a two-year delay. Meanwhile, the RAF's prospective land-based operations of the F-35 have been largely overlooked in all the debate over the carriers. An RAF spokesman told AIN that the service was hoping to declare initial operating capability in 2018.

http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/2012-07-09/uk-aircraft-carrier-budget-shortfall-likely

[andré herc]

15 May 2012 Last updated at 15:13 GMT

Help Work has begun on moving a massive 6,000 tonne section of the first of Britain's two new aircraft carriers from Portsmouth to Rosyth in Scotland, where it is being assembled.

The section makes up just one tenth of the overall size of the 65,000 tonne, £3 billion Queen Elizabeth carrier.

When completed, the ship will provide the Royal Navy with a four-acre military operating base that can be deployed anywhere in the world.

Defence Correspondent Jonathan Beale talked to Paul Bowsher, BAE Systems Project Leader for the carrier in Portsmouth, about the latest stage of the giant construction project.

zie video
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18078016

[ARM-WAP]

Van het begin af aan was dit project gedoemd.
Het waren politici die beslisten dat er carriers zouden komen, terwijl de rest van de surface fleet stelselmatig afgebouwd (lees gedecimeerd) wordt. Voor twee zulke carriers zullen er slechts 6 AAW destroyers zijn en de Type 23s die nu nog resten worden ook ouder en zijn qua AAW-uitrusting te beperkt.
De keuze voor alweer een jump-jet is er een die er bij mij gewoon niet ingaat. Ook de Invincibles waren een miskleun in meer dan een opzicht.
Wanneer men carriers van deze grootte bouwt zou je toch verwachten dat er een hoekdek, catapult(en) en arrestor wires zijn, zoals bij de Amerikanen en de CdG:
- vergroot de keuze van vliegtuigen die je inzet: Hornet, F-35C, Rafale M en ook degelijke off the shelf AEW capaciteit met de Hawkeye ipv weer eens een heli te moeten modificeren zoals met de Sea King gedaan werd...
- niet alleen is de keuze vwb vliegtuigen groter, maar is ook de maximale take off weight groter, groter bereik en langere 'on station' tijd.
- het landen met een F-35B met wapenlast en zeker wanneer deze technische problemen heeft, houdt volgens mij meer risico in dan met de andere toestellen.

'Value for money' is hier zeker niet van toepassing...

[yelloow]

Ik hoop dat de eilanders dit wel even met hun atlantische broers overlegd zullen hebben.

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Onderstreep dat voorbehoud maar....want de F35B wordt ook nog steeds duurder en een zorgenkindje. Dus ik vermoed zo dat we eindigen met 1 carrier met wat F-35s en 1 heli-carrier die de HMS Ocean gaat vervangen. Halfbakken resultaat dus....terwijl men door te kiezen voor wel cat and traps (desnoods oud model en niet elektrische versie) en een goedkopere jager, F-18E of liever Rafale M...een grotere kans zou creëren beide carriers beschikbaar te hebben in de rol waarvoor ze nodig zijn. Althans zo schat ik dat in. Zonde...zonde.

Het is een reëel gevaar, alles zal afhangen van het aantal F35B's die het VK zal bestellen.

Het zal ze gebeuren dat de US de B en C versie killed in de volgende bezuinigingsronde die ze boven het hoofd hangt.... (al zie ik dat niet zo snel gebeuren met de B eerder met de C variant)

Zullen ze hiervoor garanties (in de politiek  :lol:) krijgen?

[Elzenga]

Het lichtpunt dat nu beide carriers (onder voorbehoud) worden ingezet. Beter 2 VTOL carriers dan 1 'cats and traps' carrier.

Ik had in dit kader een mix van F35B en C overwogen, mijns inziens in het UK geval, de beste oplossing.

Onderstreep dat voorbehoud maar....want de F35B wordt ook nog steeds duurder en een zorgenkindje. Dus ik vermoed zo dat we eindigen met 1 carrier met wat F-35s en 1 heli-carrier die de HMS Ocean gaat vervangen. Halfbakken resultaat dus....terwijl men door te kiezen voor wel cat and traps (desnoods oud model en niet elektrische versie) en een goedkopere jager, F-18E of liever Rafale M...een grotere kans zou creëren beide carriers beschikbaar te hebben in de rol waarvoor ze nodig zijn. Althans zo schat ik dat in. Zonde...zonde.

[Elzenga]

Ik zie dat  Elzenga en Jurrien Visser het er wel overeens zijn dat de Queen Elizabeth class Aircraft Carriers een hoekdek krijgen in plaats van een skijump? Dat heeft weer het voordeel dat men op langer termijn E2D Hawkeye-type AEW kan aanschaffen daar heb je meer aan dan aan een helicopter AEW.

precies...ook dat maakt de Britse stap onbegrijpelijk. Al verhoogd het wel de kans voor de V-22 tiltrotor en eigen EH-101 in die rol. Maar wil je echt serieus kunnen opereren dan heb je wel een toestel als de E-2D nodig. Ik snap de Britten dus niet...maar ja...ze doen vaker dit soort gekke dingen en willen blijkbaar nog wat langer de vreemde eend in de bijt blijven.  

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Dat is inderdaad ook een van de grote voordelen die de Britten nu gaan mislopen. Toch zonde, een carrier die een stuk groter en nieuwe is dan de CdG, maar aanzienlijk minder zal kunnen.

Het lichtpunt dat nu beide carriers (onder voorbehoud) worden ingezet. Beter 2 VTOL carriers dan 1 'cats and traps' carrier.

Ik had in dit kader een mix van F35B en C overwogen, mijns inziens in het UK geval, de beste oplossing.

In bovenstaande optie had men er ook voor kunnen kiezen om, gezien de samenwerking met Frankrijk, te kiezen voor de aanschaf van voldoende Rafale M's om deze, vanwege de logistieke kosten, te stationeren en onderhouden in Frankrijk.

Maar helaas... gemiste kans!