ArmchairGeneral

As a preemptive strike- Mods, please don't lock this highly interesting and informative thread.

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ArmchairGeneral

I know you've given up on WAB (again) as a bad job, but, if you're still out there, would you mind telling me which article talks about the limits of JFH compared to a dedicated naval force? You linked to several articles, and I wasn't able to figure out which one you were talking about.

dave lukins

wabpilot be careful of Guideline No 10

glyn

Obvious, you smooth old sweetie?



Quote:
Originally Posted by ArmchairGeneral
According to what pdf said, it won't be any big deal, since they've been doing it for a while now. I don't see why the JSF would be any different from Harriers, which are all RAF operated.

Then you have no clue what it takes to train a pilot and crew. Anyone who assumes it is "no big deal" is a fool.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ArmchairGeneral
By "no big deal," I meant that the Brits won't have any trouble doing it, since they've been doing it off and on since the Falklands War. The Joint Force Harrier program probably provides the kind of training you were talking about.

In other words, you have no clue what you are talking about. Quit wasting bandwidth

As a certain Irish comedian says "Oh, it's the way I tell 'em!"

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PubFather

I was unclear as well. I think we need to distinguish between the RN not being overly happy that it doesnt always get priority with the distribution of the JFH aircraft - but this is as much to do with the very small numbers available and the overstretch, rather than a fundamental failing of the JFH itself.

Secondly, I'm unclear why RAF F35 drivers would be able to launch ground strikes, but would be unable to contribute to fleet defense. This distinction was valid when comparing the SHAR with the GR5/7/9, but won't be valid for the F35 as the F35B's will be indentical in capability to each other.

As dave-angel and several others have pointed out, operating RAF Harriers from the CVS worked in the Falklands, works now and will surely work in the future. Furthermore, CVF will offer a much improved enviroment which will only make this easier. Given that they will be using identical aircraft - why such an issue?

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Dreadnought

Rick, Please do reconsider leaving the WAB. Ive been here awhile and there are only choice few people that bring interest along with alot of research inpart of your own time to these particular threads and you are certainly one of those people. Let the others linger in speculation and squabbeling. Your not that type and you know it. I have ALWAYS found your articles very informative and insightfull. (I even sneak on while "away" just to read some of those topics and get caught for it and the hands slapped)..lol. However many here do enjoy your works and attitude and I for one can/will be counted along with them. You will be missed greatly if you were to choose to depart.

Thanks for the great articles,your time and sharing the info and insight on one of my more favorite topics.
Dread.

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HKDan

Amen to that.

ArmchairGeneral

With cherries on top, even.

rickusn

Thanks for the show of support. Its much appreciated.

Heres some more info Ive been debating whether to post or not. So I guess I will.:

DefenseNews.com - Learning To Fly Off Big Decks Again - 07/30/07 18:56

Learning To Fly Off Big Decks Again
In Atlantic Exercise, British Re-Learn Large Carrier Operations

By VAGO MURADIAN, ABOARD HMS ILLUSTRIOUS


As officials in London prepared to approve construction of two 65,000-metric-ton aircraft carriers, one of Britain’s two existing flattops was off the U.S. coast for a refresher course in big-deck carrier operations.
“Although we invented carrier operations, we have lost a lot of the knowledge needed to run big decks, and we are relearning it from countries like America and France,” said Lt. Jon Llewellyn, flight deck officer on the HMS Illustrious.
The Royal Navy last operated a big deck in 1978, when it retired the 54,000-ton HMS Ark Royal and its 50-jet air wing. Since then, the British fleet has flown 20-aircraft groups of Harriers and helicopters from three 22,500-ton Invincible-class ships.
Now, the Royal Navy is preparing for its return to complex carrier operations with the 2014 commissioning of the HMS Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales two years later, each capable of operating with air wings of 36 Joint Strike Fighters and other surveillance aircraft.
Several years ago, the fleet launched an effort to rebuild its expertise by:
Embedding officers aboard U.S. and French carriers to relearn operational, flight-deck and other long-lead skills.
Drawing on 75 years’ worth of experience with Invincible-class ships.
Readying Navy personnel by training and operating at higher tempos.
Embarking a one-star officer and staff aboard Illustrious to practice running the kind of battle group that will accompany the new ships.
“There is an old saw which is: Do you equip the man or do you man the equipment?” said Commodore Alan Richards, who commands the U.K. Carrier Strike Group. “British forces, by and large, have looked to equip the person rather than get a bunch of equipment and then just man it.”
Richards, his staff and the carrier’s crew brought their ship to the coast of North Carolina July 15-31 to operate alongside the USS Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower battle groups as part of Joint Task Force Exercise Operation Bold Step 07-02. Truman was preparing for its six-month deployment to the Persian Gulf; Illustrious was wrapping up its certification as NATO’s High Readiness Maritime Strike Carrier.
Because the ship no longer operates with a dedicated air wing — Britain’s joint Royal-Navy-Royal Air Force Harrier force has shrunk, and four squadrons are fully committed to operations in Afghanistan — the head of the Royal Navy asked the commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps for help.
After months of elaborate planning and a few days of high-tempo carrier-qualification ops, 16 U.S. Marine AV-8B Harriers and 200 support Marines settled aboard Illustrious, the largest Marine-aviation detachment ever to fly from a foreign warship.
The Harriers joined two Navy search-and-rescue and two airborne surveillance and control Sea King helicopters, and together the two-nation air wing set off on high-tempo air operations to test men and procedures at a record-setting pace.
Illustrious also became the first foreign warship to welcome aboard the Marines’ newest aircraft, the V-22 Osprey. The landings demonstrated the feasibility of operating the 23-ton tiltrotor, but also pointed up the difficulty of flying an aircraft with an 84-foot rotorspan from a small deck.
That shouldn’t be a problem on the new carriers, whose 4-acre flight decks are more than twice the size of Illustrious’ and only half an acre smaller than those on America’s Nimitz-class supercarriers.
The first lesson in big-deck ops “is that you need real estate,” said Cmdr. Henry Mitchell, the commander of Illustrious’ air operations. “You need a large deck to provide the flexibility. What we can do on this platform is pretty spectacular, given that it was designed for seven anti-submarine warfare Sea King helicopters.
“Nevertheless, what we can’t do [simultaneously] is the LPH role and the carrier strike role and provide the flexibility for other assets to come and go, especially aircraft as large as the V-22 or the CH-53,” he said. “But with something as large as CVF, you could operate a much more flexible air group with attack and support helicopters, V-22s and jets.”
Coalition Ops
The Marine embark — the first in which foreign aircraft have flown in rigorous operational scenarios from Royal Navy carriers — might one day pave the way for real-world operations.
For one thing, the Royal Navy has two carriers — Illustrious and Ark Royal — but not enough planes to equip them full time.
Mitchell, who spent a tour flying U.S. Marine Harriers in Yuma, Ariz., said commanders would have to become more imaginative in using coalition assets. The next step, he said, is “being a coalition within a ship, as opposed to a coalition of ships or a coalition of capabilities.”
He noted that Italian, Spanish and most recently Indian Harriers have already done photo-op-type landings on British carriers, and that the Italian and Spanish warplanes would return later this year for exercises.
“One of the strengths of this deployment is that if we end up in a coalition operation where we need the capability, which is currently a capability gap in the U.K., and if we need that gap filling for a particular operation and the only way of filling it on here is to invite the Spanish, Italians or the U.S. Marine Corps,” he said.
Mitchell declined to speculate on whether U.S. and British leaders might actually send U.S. aircraft on missions from U.K. ships. But he said, “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that we could operate as we are in a conflict.”
Illustrious’ weapons engineer, Cmdr. Ian Annett, spent 10 days aboard Truman earlier this year studying knowledge management, the art of harnessing thousands of bits of data and information to manage a complex organization. On a carrier, information is critical.
“What you want is decision-making superiority, so how do you get the right information to the right person at the right time to make the right decision?” Annett said. “It’s hugely complicated ... but if we’re going to get our graduate levels in strike ops, then we’ve got to go back to school, and that’s where we are now.”
Illustrious’ commanding officer, Capt. Tim Fraser, found the exercise a perfect way to get ready for bigger ships.
“The way this ship operates now, since its refit a couple of years ago, and its role as a strike carrier is part of the glide path toward the new carriers,” Fraser said.
The key, he said, is training as hard as possible.
“The Marines challenge us to operate at a different level,” he said. “Having a team of this sort of size and capability on board operating side-by-side, you learn a lot of lessons that this game is about people.”
Tough training creates the capacity for the greater capabilities that will arrive with the new ships, he said. “My experience with the Royal Navy and its people is that the people will do their bit; we just need the kit.”
Cutting Corners?
Some worry that the new carriers will turn out like the HMS Ocean. Built on a tight budget to commercial standards, the 12-year-old helicopter carrier is a floating maintenance headache.
But Cmdr. Peter Gilbert isn’t among the concerned. Illustrious’ head of marine engineering worked on CVF in his earlier post as chief of Navy propulsion systems.
“It shouldn’t be another Ocean,” Gilbert said. “That whole program was done on a much, much tighter budget, so the decision was taken to make it genuinely affordable as a truly commercial-design ship. It’s easy to say now, ‘It would have been nice if,’ but would we have the ship at all if we hadn’t made the tradeoffs? If we didn’t have the ship, how would we have reacted to the tsunami or done the kind of operations Ocean did off Sierra Leone?”
Still, Ocean’s combination of lean manning and less reliable systems taxes hardworking engineers, said Chief Petty Officer Steve Barr, who manages Illustrious’ fuel systems and has served aboard the ship several times since helping commission it in 1982.
Barr praised the carrier’s main engines, generators, gearboxes and subsystems.
“It was a good design that’s withstood the test of time,” Barr said. “On Ocean, the problem was always solved by going to the commercial market and things that were not known and well tested in the Navy.”
Ocean came with a low price tag but plenty of aftermarket expense, he said. “We got the platform we needed, but there wasn’t a real cost savings at the end. It’s coming out of a different purse and different year. so you are spreading the cost around, and the cost was ultimately the same but spread around in a different budget.”
Also, Ocean is a lean-manned ship, which worsens problems “when the machinery starts failing for whatever reason and they haven’t got the crew to actually keep on top of things,” Barr said.
Count the chief among those who worry about the new carriers. “On CVF, we’re already hearing of cutbacks here and there and watering it down a little bit, which we really shouldn’t need to,” he said.
Commodore Richards, who managed the MoD equipment budget before taking the seaborne strike job, noted that every program contains tradeoffs.
“Overall, Ocean is a triumph, and I think our new carriers will be a triumph,” Richards said. “The reality is that there are a range of things that the government wants to do for defense ... It is totally wrong if one area of defense overspends because that money will have to come from another area of defense. So the military have to have an understanding of living within our budget and making our capabilities fit the budget.”
As for the new carriers, Richards is confident the Royal Navy will get it right.
The difference between the current and future U.K. carriers is like that between a 5-ton truck and an 18-wheeler, said the commodore, who was replaced July 28 by Commodore Tom Cunningham, who has served as a liaison officer aboard U.S. carriers.
“Although one is significantly bigger than the other and it requires a certain amount of care and some special considerations, it is still basically truck driving.” •
E-mail: vmuradian@defensenews.com.

This was posted on another site:

"There are 3 Harrier squadrons on JFH, each established for 9 a/c, thats 1 and 4 from the RAF and the combined 800/801 from the RN who can't find enough pilots for 2 full squadrons.

One squadron is deployed on OPERATIONS in Afghanistan, one is recovering from being deployed and the other is preparing to deploy. At the same time the fleet is being upgraded from GR7 and 7A status to GR9 and 9A on the combined industry and mil JUMP line at Cottesmore.

Currently Lusty is being used by the USMC harriers for Deck landing Experience of the easthern cost of the USA.

So your is right at this point in time, as the GR are too busy in Afghanistan as there is no other aircraft aviable to cover CAS at this time(until 2008 when the Typhoon with CAS is ready)

Great planning by the MOD- very SMART!!!! "

And from another poster:


"The possibilities and by 2022 22 escorts in service (unless Type 23 are kept in service longer than 28 years)

2008 - 2013 5 Type 45 & 4 Leaf class replacements (to be built outside the UK) & Hunt class MCMV's started to be being replaced
2013 HMS Queen Elizabeth (commissioned) & new Ice Patrol Ship (to be built outside the UK)
2014 7th Type 45 & RFA Diligence replacement (to be built outside UK)
2015 HMS Prince of Wales (commissioned) & 8th Type 45
2016 1st of a new escort class
2017 2nd of a new escort class & new AOR
2018 3rd of a new escort class
2019 4th of a new escort class & second AOR
2020 5th of a new escort class & RFA Argus replacement (to be built outside UK)
2021 6th of a new escort class & third AOR
2022 7th of a new escort class"


And another:

"There is a good chance that the Future Surface Combatant 'family' will progress significantly next year, with the objective of getting the first of about 8 'slightly less capable' 4000 tonne C2s escorts in service by 2017. They will be followed in to service by a class of 6000 tonne ASW frigates (C1), and modular multi-role 2000 tonne C3 patrol vessels. With T45 and CVF, that's a decent construction programme to sustain industry long term.

Evolving from the concepts developed by S2C2, FSC plans are advancing with the object of getting Initial Gate approval next year, and the first Main Gate in 2010.

C1 will be a high-end ASW frigate - basically a T23 replacement to partner the T45 as escorts for the carrier strike and amphib TG's.
C2 is a smaller and lower capability 'stabalisation combatant' (Im reminded of the old Type 81)
C3 is a smaller again modular design (but still with helo capability), the first 8 will replace the remaining 16 Hunts/Sandown's in the MCM role. Later ships will be fitted for other roles, including ocean going OPV, survey ships, etc.

The displacements I previously mentioned are probably full load, but I'm not certain. They are only indicative and could (and probably will) change at this early stage. It's likely that the three designs will be new, there will of course be "pull through" but previous ideas for basing C1 on the T45 platform, and/or adopting a common hull for C1 and C2 have been considered and abandoned.

Planning is for roughly 17-18 C1/2s in total (10 and 8 respectively are sought - perhaps a starting point for negotiations), and for a final total of 14-18 C3s. But nothing is gospel yet.

As I said, MARS looks likely to slip, with the exception of a dedicated fleet tanker to support the CVFs which has actually been advanced, the RN now wants to have it in service by 2016.

About one major surface warship (C3 is considered a minor warship) per year will be built in the UK for the RN as far ahead as can be reasonably seen. Subs are on a 22 month 'drum beat' right through the Vanguard replacements. The MARS (hulls at least) auxiliaries are almost certain to be foreign built.

Overall, we finally seem to getting some clarity on the future RN. It's not quite the impressive vision of c.2000 (e.g. 18 trimaran 'cruisers'!) but its credible and realistic - and could be worse.

That's all I can post at the moment, DSEi is coming up and we may hear more then."

Dectilion

interesting piece. The future construction program at the bottom is interesting, but i noticed theres no replacement for Ocean which is supposed to decommission by 2018. Also the 7th and 8th T45's are practically canceled, so we can hardly count on them. Interesting thought though: the Government has promised to maintain 25 escorts, yet by 2014, 8 type 42 will have decommissioned, with (most likely) only 6 type 45's as replacements. Even assuming all current type 22's and 23's are still in service by 2014 (a very optimistic assumption) the navy will only have 23 escorts, how is the government planning on replacing the last two

rickusn

I forgot this.:

Defence Internet | Defence News | Harriers touch down on HMS Illustrious



Harriers touch down on HMS Illustrious

12 Mar 07

The Harrier returned to HMS Illustrious, last week, when seven GR9 Harriers from IV (Four) Squadron Joint Force Harrier touched down on the aircraft carrier’s deck, while in the North Sea.

HMS Illustrious was conducting Fixed Wing Flying serials in the North Sea over a two week period when the GR9s joined her. The aim of the exercise, called Exercise Hold Fast is for the Harriers and ship to re-qualify for day operations. The gruelling two-weeks of training ensures the Ship’s company and RAF personnel reach the highest standard of ship borne operations, an extremely challenging skill that requires exacting standards from the pilots and crew of the 22,500 tonne warship.

Sorties in air-combat, electronic warfare training and day combat demonstrate the Squadron's commitment to Joint Force Harrier elements at readiness and the projection of air power from land or sea.

The first of the GR9s to land on HMS Illustrious was flown by Wing Commander Ian Duguid, Commanding Officer of IV Squadron. Once the remaining aircraft had come in the squadron was welcomed onboard by Captain Tim Fraser, Commanding Officer of HMS Illustrious.

Upgraded from the GR7a, the new Harrier GR9 has greatly enhanced avionics and weapons capability.

The conversion is part of the Joint Harrier Force development programme and so far Harriers of IV Squadron and 800 Naval Air Squadron (NAS) have undergone the upgrade.

Joint Harrier Force is made up of 3 Frontline Squadrons of GR7a/9 aircraft. One Squadron is predominately Royal Navy manned, while the other two are predominately Royal Air Force manned (I (One) and IV (Four) Squadrons). Pilots, engineers and other support staff 'cross pollinate' to spread the best practice and expertise of both services throughout JFH.

The integration of the Squadron with the Ship's company proved to be a resounding success surpassing both the Ship's and the Squadron's objectives. Upon disembarkation from HMS Illustrious No IV (Army Co-operation) Squadron will continue to prepare for its fourth operational tour of duty on Operation HERRICK in Afghanistan this summer.

rickusn

Dectilion:

Did you miss this?

From another poster:

"There is a good chance that the Future Surface Combatant 'family' will progress significantly next year, with the objective of getting the first of about 8 'slightly less capable' 4000 tonne C2s escorts in service by 2017.

They will be followed in to service by a class of 6000 tonne ASW frigates (C1), and modular multi-role 2000 tonne C3 patrol vessels. With T45 and CVF, that's a decent construction programme to sustain industry long term.

Evolving from the concepts developed by S2C2, FSC plans are advancing with the object of getting Initial Gate approval next year, and the first Main Gate in 2010.

C1 will be a high-end ASW frigate - basically a T23 replacement to partner the T45 as escorts for the carrier strike and amphib TG's.

C2 is a smaller and lower capability 'stabalisation combatant' (Im reminded of the old Type 81)

C3 is a smaller again modular design (but still with helo capability), the first 8 will replace the remaining 16 Hunts/Sandown's in the MCM role. Later ships will be fitted for other roles, including ocean going OPV, survey ships, etc."

Or do I misunderstand your question????????????????

ArmchairGeneral

"Modular multi-role 2000 ton patrol vessels?" Is it just me, or is there potential here to make some money off the LCS boondoggle?

Dectilion

yes, i did read that rick, but as it says the first of these new surface combats will enter service in 2017, the last T42 will decommission in 2014 when the last T45 enters service, so their will be an immediate reduction of two escorts to just 23, and it wont go back up until 2017 and wont get back to 25 until 2018 (assuming the future surface project is delayed, which it almost certainly will be) so an optimistic view see a reduction in hulls from 2014-2018

dave angel

enormous 'capability hole' in the RN just because the MOD can't count or make a decision to save their lives?

no surprise - or indeed new experience - there: see the mighty 'SeaJet' thread on Pprune for details...

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