tonyot Posted November 22, 2015 Share Posted November 22, 2015 Lets hope that the increased number of F-35`s will result in at least one more fast jet Naval Air Sqn being stood up,.......800 NAS hopefully but any takers? Cheers Tony Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnT Posted November 22, 2015 Share Posted November 22, 2015 I will be interested to see if the talk about the second carrier going to mothballs also goes away It was not that long ago she was getting built to be sent more or less to reserve And a point I made before was that following what the late Sany Woodward said we need 3 of the things to be viable. Not having any RN background I assume he had a point? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magwitch Posted November 22, 2015 Share Posted November 22, 2015 It's about this stage in the discussion where navalised Typhoon gets mentioned. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4scourge7 Posted November 22, 2015 Share Posted November 22, 2015 The only firm commitment (at the moment) seems to have 24 in service by 2023, building to an eventual 138, sometime when. Maybe it will be made clearer tomorrow. Cheers, Ian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyot Posted November 22, 2015 Share Posted November 22, 2015 (edited) We should have navalised the Tranche 1 Typhoon`s and updated them to current standards whilst also fitting catapults to the carriers,............right on cue,....just to make you happy!! Cheers Tony Edited November 22, 2015 by tonyot 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XV107 Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 I will be interested to see if the talk about the second carrier going to mothballs also goes away It was not that long ago she was getting built to be sent more or less to reserve And a point I made before was that following what the late Sany Woodward said we need 3 of the things to be viable. Not having any RN background I assume he had a point? I'd best not name the (retired) senior officer who I heard respond to this with 'He's a [swear] submariner! What the [expletive] does he [swear] know? Chump!' The Admiral was a WAFU, so I tended to suspect that Admiral Woodward's reasoning was not universally shared... A second, operational (vice mothballed/in reserve/sold to India) carrier has been more-or-less committed to by the government; David Cameron announced it at the NATO summit in Wales last year. I'd imagine that the next F-35 squadron numberplate will be an RAF one, simply because of the fact that the RAF will be providing the bulk of the personnel for the joint force, and it'd look a bit odd if there was only one RAF numberplate and two FAA amongst the frontline units. My guess would be that the FAA will provide two numberplates in due course (nominally one for each carrier) and the RAF will provide at least three [plus the OEU/TE&S] 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geoff_B Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 I'd best not name the (retired) senior officer who I heard respond to this with 'He's a [swear] submariner! What the [expletive] does he [swear] know? Chump!' The Admiral was a WAFU, so I tended to suspect that Admiral Woodward's reasoning was not universally shared... A second, operational (vice mothballed/in reserve/sold to India) carrier has been more-or-less committed to by the government; David Cameron announced it at the NATO summit in Wales last year. I'd imagine that the next F-35 squadron numberplate will be an RAF one, simply because of the fact that the RAF will be providing the bulk of the personnel for the joint force, and it'd look a bit odd if there was only one RAF numberplate and two FAA amongst the frontline units. My guess would be that the FAA will provide two numberplates in due course (nominally one for each carrier) and the RAF will provide at least three [plus the OEU/TE&S] Actually I think not, the RAF has two Typhoon Squadrons to stand up and the commitment to the rest of the 138 F-35B is to stop the RAF hogging them as Tornado replacements and to specifically field a 2nd Carrier Squadron so I would be surprised to see a 2nd FAA badged unit stand up rather than RAF now. Technically its a bit moot anyway as whilst separately badged they are well and truly mixed staff but I suspect being Naval badged means that those in it will be expected to be at sea more so than the RAF badged units so the light blue staff in it will be attuned to life at sea. Anyway the interesting aspect is that they intend to have either carrier with a single squadron available by 2023 and possibly will deploy one carrier with a standard 24 aircraft for a deployment tour. Going forward from that it does indicate that we can and will likely operate up to our full complement of 36 F-35B aircraft off one carrier and have enough to do the same with the 2nd should the need arise. Regarding the Carrier force, one Carrier will be on Active duty with 1 or 2 Squadrons on-board (available), the other will be in refit/reserve or training depending on its period in the down cycle as they will need scheduled refits, before or after a short period in reserve then it will be brought up to speed and made ready to replace the other carrier so that's when we will have those brief periods of having two carriers fully operational at the same time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XV107 Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 With respect, Geoff, that's not how it's planned to work, at least it wasn't.... All the squadrons, be they light blue or dark blue numberplates, are expected to do carrier duty, irrespective of the origin of their numberplate. The rationale for this is (was) to reflect the joint nature of the force, not to show which squadrons would be more carrier-focused, since it's felt that would risk undermining the construct of JFL. It should still be the case that we might, in future, see 617 flying from a carrier conducting ops somewhere while 809 (say) flies from a land base supoorting (say) a no-fly zone somewhere else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stoutdave Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 Random thought .... What always surprises me is that changes like this take longer to deliver than the entire length of WW2. Back in the day we could come up with an idea/design and get it into mass production quick enough for it to be effective. Now it's all about the money Please can we hold off on WW3 guys? ... we're waiting on a delivery !!! p.s. Not had my second coffee of the morning yet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMK Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 138 F-35 for the UK? I call shenanigans. As the saying goes "show me the money!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giorgio N Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 Random thought .... What always surprises me is that changes like this take longer to deliver than the entire length of WW2. Back in the day we could come up with an idea/design and get it into mass production quick enough for it to be effective. Now it's all about the money Please can we hold off on WW3 guys? ... we're waiting on a delivery !!! p.s. Not had my second coffee of the morning yet The level of sophistication of WW2 weapons however was such that there wasn't much need for complicated development. More important though, the kind of ideas that quickly put in production in those days (and later too) very often entered service with an extremely low level of reliability and the debugging of all problems was done in service. Many types in WW2 reached the units while not even being fully tested and not unsurprisingly were found lacking in one or more aspect and some even dangerous to fly. Had the F-35 been evaluated using what was common practice in WW2 and the '50s, it would have been in service for at least 5 years already. Today the F-35 is goiung through a long process to iron out every problem, meaning that every issue adds a delay to the program. Back in WW2 the aircraft would have entered service immediately and the pilots would have had to find out the problems while fighting a war. In the late '50s the main fighter of the RAF was the Hunter F.4, a type that risked an engine flame-out every time its guns were fired, wonder what a pilot should have told to the crew of their intended targets in case of war.. "wait a second, I have to restart the engine, wait for me so that I can try a second pass..." 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slater Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 The US went through a similar process when the Vietnam War started to heat up in the early 1960's. The conventional ordnance industrial base had been neglected in favor of the nuclear enterprise, as that was where it was thought that all effort should be concentrated. Consequently, the US found itself having to rush munitions through the design and testing stage and into combat without the benefit of thorough testing. Some weapons worked and some didn't, although by the end of the war there was a bewildering variety of munitions in the stockpile. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seahawk Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 I'd imagine that the next F-35 squadron numberplate will be an RAF one, simply because of the fact that the RAF will be providing the bulk of the personnel for the joint force, and it'd look a bit odd if there was only one RAF numberplate and two FAA amongst the frontline units. My guess would be that the FAA will provide two numberplates in due course (nominally one for each carrier) and the RAF will provide at least three [plus the OEU/TE&S] But did I not read that 809 Sq will be the OCU for the whole F-35 fleet rather than a pukka front-line squadron? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan P Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 It seems to me that it is a disappointing aircraft, every time I see a video or article on it where the F-35 performed poorly or had another setback there are loads of F-35 apologists coming to it's[sic] defence which always suggest to me that they know it's not that good hence the avid defence of the yet unproven and unsold aircraft.Thought I'd highlight the mind-boggling counter-logic of that bold statement as the least egregious of the many misconceptions in that post. "People defend it, so they must know it's a terrible failure". Extraordinary. Perhaps these "apologists" should just be quiet and let the ill-informed misinformation form a false consensus. That way, we'd know they truly believe in the product. Yeah.As for the latest Defence Review - an admission that scrapping Nimrod was a mistake, followed by an expanded F-35 order. Still doesn't ring any bells? No? I wish they'd stop pulling all these nails out of the coffin, it's really spoiling the critics' fun. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 The carrier group will be quite well protected, the first upgraded Merlin HM2 have been delivered for ASW work, and will also have the plug-in-and-play `Crowsnest` set for AEW, in development. I take it you mean a MPA replacement for Nimrod, which IS shockingly missing from the inventory of an island state such as ours- rumour is rife, we`ll see tomorrow. Cheers, Ian What? You mean the order for nine P-8s also mentioned? Shane Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisL Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 And a point I made before was that following what the late Sany Woodward said we need 3 of the things to be viable. Not having any RN background I assume he had a point? I recall reading a magazine article that said that the three carrier model was based on one carrier on deployment, one in refit and one being used for training at any given time. The third carrier was necessary primarily because cat and trap flying is very difficult and it takes a lot of time and effort to get pilots qualified for it and to keep their skills up. Apparently though the effort required to convert a land-based Harrier pilot onto one that can operate off a carrier is comparatively trivial. This makes a two carrier model practical. I think this article was in an aviation magazine around the time that the PM announced his intention to switch the UK's F-35 order from Bs to Cs. The article was pointing out that the carrier order was based on the use of STOVL aircraft for more significant reasons than the exclusion of cats and traps. Regarding the wider F-35 debate, I am undecided. I feel it will come down to whether all the new technologies (not just and probably not primarily stealth, but all the sensor fusion and information managment stuff) being put into it are as much of a step change as some claim. I reckon that the point-by-point comparisons of the F-35 to existing aircraft miss the point, the F-35 will be a success if it ends up doing useful things in ways that are utterly unlike to how current aircraft are employed. As a tenuous analogy, mobile phones wouldn't have taken off if people just expected them to be a better way of making phone calls from their homes. In some situations mobile phones are less useful than land lines, but there are many situations where a mobile can do things you couldn't even try to do with a land line phone. Time will tell whether the F-35 is offering the smartphone capabilities that everyone wants, or MMSes that nobody cares about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhaselden Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 If we are all going to fight IS together why do we need stealth? Let them know we are coming! Nigel Remember that small incident with Ukraine and Putin's henchmen taking over the Crimea? We're not just preparing to fight the so-called IS. We also have to prepare to fight a more traditional force-on-force campaign against the latest weaponry. China is sabre-rattling in the South China Sea and Putin is...well, he's behaving like Putin. If we just gear up for counter insurgency operations, we won't be in a position to meet a credible large-scale threat - and that's a challenge that confronts all of NATO not just the UK. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhaselden Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 It seems to me that it is a disappointing aircraft, every time I see a video or article on it where the F-35 performed poorly or had another setback there are loads of F-35 apologists coming to it's defence which always suggest to me that they know it's not that good hence the avid defence of the yet unproven and unsold aircraft. The price is an issue too, but that is also why they can't just walk away from it because heads will roll for that size of failure. Ultimately I agree with the view that Stealth has a place on the battlefield for certain mission profiles (like the F-117 against an integrated air defence network) but the US seem to want to apply stealth technology to everything nowadays to the detriment of the aircraft's capabilities. When you see the types of conflict that aircraft are going into today, why the need for the stealth capability, bombing countries like Iraq, Syria and Libya, which don't have any capable air defence against current aircraft that adequately perform their roles, can carry more weapons further with less air to air refuelling operations etc you have to ask why the need for such an expensive aircraft with a stealth capability when cheaper more capable options are already available like the F/A-18E/F, F-15E and so on which can arguably perform the strike/attack role better. Stinks of failure to me, but lets see how much more money they waste on it before a defence secretary finally comes out and admits it's a disappointment and is being scrapped. Rich We're not buying the F-35 to fight today's battles. We're buying it to do that and still be a potent capability in 40 years' time. There's far more to the F-35 than just stealth. It is one of the first multi-role combat aircraft designed from the beginning with a focus on sensor and data fusion. Stealth will have a vital role for some mission profiles while others will not require it...but the sensor and data piece will be present for all missions. Given that there are mission profiles that the F-35 can accomplish but which the F/A-18 and F-15 can't accomplish, I'd really like to understand how you can claim they're more capable? Also, the cost of upgrading them to the types of sensor fits and data integration that F-35 can achieve is always left off the table. And those are airframes that are already 40 years old. Do you really want the UK to be equipped with a fighter aircraft that's already 40 years old and then be lumbered with keeping it operationally viable for another 40 years? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyot Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 (edited) Mr. Cameron has just announced that there will now be three F-35 Sqns for the new carriers and two more Typhoon Sqns,........why not make 617 Sqn a Typhoon unit and then make all three F-35 units Naval Air Sqns,........why does it have to be a Joint Force when the main role is to fly from the carriers? Surely naval sqns can also fly from land where needed too,......why does the RAF have to be involved in the F-35 force? Most other navies in the world wouldn`t stand for the air force having a hand in the management of their naval airpower, so why should the RN? Cheers Tony Edited November 23, 2015 by tonyot 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeR Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 Mr. Cameron has just announced that there will now be three F-35 Sqns for the new carriers and two more Typhoon Sqns,........why not make 617 Sqn a Typhoon unit and then make all three F-35 units Naval Air Sqns,........why does it have to be a Joint Force when the main role is to fly from the carriers? Surely naval sqns can also fly from land where needed too,......why does the RAF have to be involved in the F-35 force? Most other navies in the world wouldn`t stand for the air force having a hand in the management of their naval airpower, so why should the RN? Cheers Tony I remember something that my cousin (ex-REME) said a few years ago: "We're going to end up like Canada. It'll be a combined arms set up but the names will stay the same". His wife, a serving PO, agreed that he was on to something. Mike. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spaddad Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 Well, in one way I applaud the size of the order - if - they see it through. It does mean we can have two air wings at sea at the same time. However, we have seen large orders in the past, only for them to be cut or cancelled entirely. I still believe a proven airframe in the same numbers would have been a better option. Two engines are always preferable, especially over water, and 2 seats are often better in the attack role. Belligerents these days seem to be of the insurgent variety, who don't carry sophisticated radar sets with them, or have air to air capability. We would have been better off letting Uncle Sam do and pay for all he spade work, to see if this dog really hunts, before making an 'informed decision'. Far easier to have built as CATOBAR from the outset, then you have all the options. We could have leased legacy jets in the interim, and purchased the best option at the end of the day. This has the ring of commonsense about it and is therefore unnaceptable. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Navy Elephant Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 I thought that we could conclude the factual arguments and move onto some more generic 'banter' re F 35 etc. Here is the extract form today's SDR. Note the long term plan is to buy 138 F 35s. The document also goes onto confirm 9 MPA and a life extension to 14 C130s. Typhoon and F35 Lightning aircraft, which will ensure that the Royal Air Force can continue to deal with evolving threats. We will establish an additional F35 Lightning squadron and two additional Typhoon squadrons. We will invest further in Typhoon’s capabilities, including ground attack and a new Active Electronically Scanned Array radar to ensure that we can continue to operate it until at least 2040. We will maintain our plan to buy 138 F35 Lightning aircraft over the life of the programme. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kallisti Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 What annoys me "most" about the F-35 its is appropriation of the name "Lighnting". There should only be one aircraft called Lightning and it should be prefixed "English Electric" 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bentwaters81tfw Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 You're forgetting Lockheed's P-38 had first dibs, though I agree with your sentiments. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nigel Foster60 Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 I must have missed the bit in the review which told us where all those pilots are coming from? Is the training organisation being expanded? Linton on Ouse not closed after all? Nigel 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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