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zoux posted:Is there a story why the UK, the naviest of all nations, didn't go for nuke carriers and catapult operations There is way less point to having nuclear carriers compared to nuclear subs, especially if you don't have to make steam for catapults. The fuel use from the jets means you have to refill them with aviation fuel every few days when doing a lot of sorties anyway, and it's not like they can make a huge use of the ability to go full throttle forever as they'll just leave all the escorts behind. Subs on the other hand are unsupported and it's great for them having effectively unlimited underwater range for sneaking around. Catapults are clearly a better way of getting the plane off your ship but it comes with a huge training burden compared to STOVL, and for a cash-strapped royal navy that is a big plus. There is also a potential for higher sortie rate with STOVL. The F-35B still has a larger combat radius than F/A-18 so it's really not a bad option for the UK. Also STOVL means the UK can cheap out on things like having a helicopter up all the time in case a pilot decides to go for a swim. for a new page here's a clip I took of apparently a PEDRO though I have no way of confirming / disconfirming that. 
knox_harrington fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Dec 10, 2020 |
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Dec 10, 2020 19:35
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mlmp08 posted:I suspect cats 'n traps will matter a lot less as "the" distinguisher as the F-35B percolates through several operators of smaller carriers, especially as they figure out their long-term COD-equivalent programs, be they CMV-22 or otherwise. What’s the launch payload of the f35b vs the c model? Because it’s not the airplane you’re launching that makes ski jumps unattractive as much as it is the payload it’s taking off with.
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Dec 10, 2020 19:41
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knox_harrington posted:There is way less point to having nuclear carriers compared to nuclear subs, especially if you don't have to make steam for catapults. The fuel use from the jets means you have to refill them with aviation fuel every few days when doing a lot of sorties anyway, and it's not like they can make a huge use of the ability to go full throttle forever as they'll just leave all the escorts behind. Subs on the other hand are unsupported and it's great for them having effectively unlimited underwater range for sneaking around. The F-35B can do all that with a full combat load, or at least one comparable to an -18? I thought that was one of the primary differences between catapults and ski jumps: that cat launched fighters can carry many more stores Also the French have nuke subs too what would Lord Nelson say about this state of affairs e: one of the french boomers is called Le Terrible that's awesome zoux fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Dec 10, 2020 |
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Dec 10, 2020 19:45
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Cyrano4747 posted:What’s the launch payload of the f35b vs the c model? Because it’s not the airplane you’re launching that makes ski jumps unattractive as much as it is the payload it’s taking off with. The biggest difference is the C can haul 2k# JDAMS, B on a STOVL profile can only haul 1k#. It really isn't a huge deal as there aren't many jobs that require a 2k# bomb that can't be dealt with by a 1k#. The bigger capability difference is the combat radius of the C, it can go a lot further on its own tanks.
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Dec 10, 2020 19:50
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Kinda lol comparing a brand new fighter to one that first flew in the 1970s, but even if the F-35B can take off vertically and carry the same payload to the same radius as the F/A-18, that just implies that the F-35C launching from a catapult will carry significantly more than the F/A-18 to an even larger radius. e: yeah
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Dec 10, 2020 19:53
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Sagebrush posted:Kinda lol comparing a brand new fighter to one that first flew in the 1970s, but even if the F-35B can take off vertically and carry the same payload to the same radius as the F/A-18, that just implies that the F-35C launching from a catapult will carry significantly more than the F/A-18 to an even larger radius. The F-35B is not taking off vertically with that payload. It's taking a shorter takeoff roll from a moving carrier or from a shorter airstrip. But yeah, it can take off with 500# or 1,000# bombs, including using "Beast Mode" pylons from STOVL carriers.
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Dec 10, 2020 19:56
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The second carrier also has a landing light system to allow rolling landing which gives higher bring-back weight. Because the B is much more likely to land successfully they need a lower fuel reserve compared to a C. The difference in range is significant but not that huge.
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Dec 10, 2020 20:03
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The difference between an actual supercarrier and one of the pocket ones for Harrier slash F-35Bs is pretty stark. Wikipedia says the Italian Cavour carries between 10-16 Harriers and F-35s, where I presume the higher number is total war. On top of that some amount of helicopters. That's compared to Charles De Gaulle that does 30-40 Rafales, plus the support aircraft. That basically gives a napkin math of four times more strike aircraft that take off with larger payload. In addition it doesn't have to overpack. The Spanish Juan Carlos has capacity for 25 AV-8B/F-35B + 6 flight deck parking spots and that's the "total war" setup with no room for anything. And Charles De Gaulle is the smallest of the supercarriers.
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Dec 10, 2020 20:09
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I could be wrong, but outside a helicopter or COD, I suspect the EA-18G has the most consistent heavy bring-back weight requirement anyway.
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Dec 10, 2020 20:10
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Speaking of carriers are any of the new Chinese ones using catapults / nuclear power? They seem like a nation on the fast-track to the big boy club.
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Dec 10, 2020 20:17
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The little baby ones they're making for drone launching do have catapults but are not nuclear powered, iirc.
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Dec 10, 2020 20:18
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Solaris 2.0 posted:Speaking of carriers are any of the new Chinese ones using catapults / nuclear power? They seem like a nation on the fast-track to the big boy club. Liaoning is just a ski jump; Shandong appears to have added steam cats to the ski jump although I don't think this has been confirmed publicly. Supposedly they're shooting for electromagnetic cats in the 003. All are conventionally powered but they're going to try to do electricboat stuff with the 003.
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Dec 10, 2020 20:24
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Vahakyla posted:The difference between an actual supercarrier and one of the pocket ones for Harrier slash F-35Bs is pretty stark. That is true, but the gap has decreased hugely. The difference between a Nimitz full of F-18 vs Cavour full of AV-8B and Nimitz full of F-35C vs Cavour full of F-35B is way closer.
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Dec 10, 2020 20:30
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Wibla posted:Proper in what context? If you're looking at this from a US naval doctrine standpoint, you're clearly correct. But France is not the US, so their requirements and goals are different. This is an important, often overlooked part of France and their relationship with NATO. Remember that France famously left NATO in the mid-60s under De Gaulle, and they still maintain government owned arms manufacturers. The French are fiercely independent, and want to retain some level of autonomy just in case poo poo goes completely sideways with their current alliances. Historically, that's not exactly unprecedented.
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Dec 10, 2020 20:44
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What's the idea behind the VL bit of STOVL? Why not STOSL? Or does that just mean that you can land vertically because you're lighter now, not that you'll usually be doing it?
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Dec 10, 2020 20:46
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Shooting Blanks posted:This is an important, often overlooked part of France and their relationship with NATO. Remember that France famously left NATO in the mid-60s under De Gaulle, and they still maintain government owned arms manufacturers. The French are fiercely independent, and want to retain some level of autonomy just in case poo poo goes completely sideways with their current alliances. Historically, that's not exactly unprecedented. See the french Nuclear deterrent which is basically, "gently caress around and find out".
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Dec 10, 2020 20:48
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aphid_licker posted:What's the idea behind the VL bit of STOVL? Why not STOSL? Or does that just mean that you can land vertically because you're lighter now, not that you'll usually be doing it? Basically by design they always land on ship vertically. The new development is the "shipboard rolling vertical landing" which allows a bit of forward motion and therefore lift, but it was a theoretical concept until a couple of years ago and needs specific equipment on the ship.
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Dec 10, 2020 20:55
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aphid_licker posted:What's the idea behind the VL bit of STOVL? Why not STOSL? Or does that just mean that you can land vertically because you're lighter now, not that you'll usually be doing it? I understand that vertical landing is easier to reliably accomplish than a full-speed arrested carrier landing. Certainly it doesn't need as much infrastructure on the deck; one flat area about the size of the jet vs. an offset fantail and arresting gear and OLS and directors and all that.
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Dec 10, 2020 20:58
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What are landing stresses like for arrester vs SVTOL? Do you need to go hog wild navalizing the gear like you do on a cat launched plane?
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Dec 10, 2020 21:04
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Ah wow, okay. Thanks!
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Dec 10, 2020 21:05
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zoux posted:Is there a story why the UK, the naviest of all nations, didn't go for nuke carriers and catapult operations Because the UK is poor, and the people who made the decision to commission the carriers were loving idiots.
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Dec 10, 2020 21:10
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Didn't BAE pocket a hefty fee to make the new carriers CATOBAR-backwards compatible and then told the Admiralty, "Haha, get hosed" when they didn't actually do that?
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Dec 10, 2020 21:19
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drgitlin posted:Because the UK is poor, and the people who made the decision to commission the carriers were loving idiots. And has been poor since after WW2 (at least), partially because they keep chasing dreams of empire.
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Dec 10, 2020 21:25
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PCjr sidecar posted:And has been poor since after WW2 (at least), partially because they keep chasing dreams of empire. And then they cut all their taxes so they couldn't afford to print more money without going into an inflation spiral.
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Dec 10, 2020 21:33
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Continuing wartime rationing into the 50s did a number on the UK's economy. (e: although tbh looking at mid-20th century policy to explain their situation now is, well, kind of irrelevant) To be honest considering the difficulty the RN is having in paying for anything, STOVL was probably the right choice, and the difference between STOVL and nothing is far larger than between CATOBAR and STOVL. Mortabis fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Dec 10, 2020 |
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Dec 10, 2020 21:53
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drgitlin posted:Because the UK is poor, and the people who made the decision to commission the carriers were loving idiots. It was maybe a lucky decision but the choice to go for STOVL carriers was the right one for the RN. The switch in design to catapults and back again was a huge waste of money. British military procurement has lots of hilarious failures but the carriers are not really one of them, though one is leaking a bit at the moment. Nimrod mra4, AJAX, failure to modernise CR2, SA80, T45, having to get Electric Boat in for Astute, and many, many more are all very lol worthy. knox_harrington fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Dec 10, 2020 |
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Dec 10, 2020 22:02
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I don't know if I would call a nation that ranks top 10 in GDP "poor" but yes, it does seem like they are chasing an empire that they haven't had in over 60 years.
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Dec 10, 2020 22:05
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Solaris 2.0 posted:I don't know if I would call a nation that ranks top 10 in GDP "poor" but yes, it does seem like they are chasing an empire that they haven't had in over 60 years. Probably because they don't have CATOBAR carriers...
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Dec 10, 2020 22:07
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Shooting Blanks posted:This is an important, often overlooked part of France and their relationship with NATO. Remember that France famously left NATO in the mid-60s under De Gaulle, and they still maintain government owned arms manufacturers. The French are fiercely independent, and want to retain some level of autonomy just in case poo poo goes completely sideways with their current alliances. Historically, that's not exactly unprecedented. There's also this that led to some interesting reactions from certain heads of state and some upheaval in NATO  Blistex posted:See the french Nuclear deterrent which is basically, "gently caress around and find out". This comes to mind  Despite a certain Thales senior sonar engineer stiffing me on a bottle of cognac I won fair and square in a bet, I like the french, and they're doing a lot of things right. Solaris 2.0 posted:I don't know if I would call a nation that ranks top 10 in GDP "poor" but yes, it does seem like they are chasing an empire that they haven't had in over 60 years. The GDP is not exactly a stellar indicator for how wealthy a country actually is. There can be rampant inequality and widespread poverty even if you are in the top 10 of GDP.
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Dec 10, 2020 22:16
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Wibla posted:The GDP is not exactly a stellar indicator for how wealthy a country actually is. There can be rampant inequality and widespread poverty even if you are in the top 10 of GDP. GDP *can* be dubious when there's a lot of wonky cross-border transfers going on and as the area/population involved gets smaller. Ireland is a notorious example of this. But on the whole GDP works pretty well, and in any case you can look at the income distribution for the UK if you want to and you'll find that while basically every decile is poorer than its equivalent decile in the US, it's still way wealthier than most countries.
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Dec 10, 2020 22:18
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Wibla posted:The GDP is not exactly a stellar indicator for how wealthy a country actually is. There can be rampant inequality and widespread poverty even if you are in the top 10 of GDP. i can't imagine how that could possibly be true. *drives to $7.25/hr job delivering dog food to jeff bezos' eighth favorite pied-a-terre*
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Dec 10, 2020 22:19
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Solaris 2.0 posted:I don't know if I would call a nation that ranks top 10 in GDP "poor" but yes, it does seem like they are chasing an empire that they haven't had in over 60 years. Britain is a peripheral european nation that happens to have a global financial capital bolted on. Without london, they’d be in spain- and poland-tier, not france- and germany-tier. knox_harrington posted:That is true, but the gap has decreased hugely. The difference between a Nimitz full of F-18 vs Cavour full of AV-8B and Nimitz full of F-35C vs Cavour full of F-35B is way closer. this seems more like an indictment of the harrier than a discussion of the relative values of carriers and supercarriers
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Dec 10, 2020 22:37
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hypnophant posted:this seems more like an indictment of the harrier Something we should probably do every chance we get.
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Dec 10, 2020 22:39
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knox_harrington posted:It was maybe a lucky decision but the choice to go for STOVL carriers was the right one for the RN. The switch in design to catapults and back again was a huge waste of money. It’s still been a fiasco like every other UK defense procurement. On top of the prevaricating about the cats, which earned BAE Systems some more cash, the Royal Navy had to immediately mothball one carrier because it can’t afford to run them both. Or any surface ships that ought to go to sea with her. And let’s not forget dispensing with the entire Harrier fleet I suppose you could argue all of those are budget problems not procurement, other than the cats. It’s been nothing but cock ups since the Sandys report. drgitlin fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Dec 10, 2020 |
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Dec 10, 2020 22:56
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bewbies posted:scorching hot take: test pilot arrogant dick Another famous example, from engineer Kelly Johnson of Lockheed fame and Howard Hughes: HistoryNet.com posted:One of Johnson’s hell-scaring test flights occurred during development of the Con – stellation airliner, when he had to sit on his hands with Howard Hughes at the controls. Kelly never forgave the wealthiest man in America for allowing people to think Hughes had designed the Constellation or that the P-38 configuration was based on Hughes’ D-2 design. On one such flight, Hughes so enthusiastically stalled a Connie, power on, gear and flaps down, that Lockheed test pilot Milo Burcham was barely able to recover it. Later that day, Hughes was doing touch-and-goes in the same airplane and making such a hash of it that Johnson finally said, “Milo, take this thing home” (Burcham was in the right seat). Hughes was furious at this open criticism of his piloting skills. “I never flew with Hughes again,” Johnson wrote in his autobiography. “It was mutually agreeable.” In Kelly's autobiography, he really thinks Hughes would have killed them. Kelly pulled the plug despite it being the biggest possible insult to their most important customer. He was deeply appalled at Hughes putting someone in that position.
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Dec 10, 2020 23:03
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drgitlin posted:It’s still been a fiasco like every other UK defense procurement. On top of the prevaricating about the cats, which earned BAE Systems some more cash, the Royal Navy had to immediately mothball one carrier because it can’t afford to run them both. Or any surface ships that ought to go to sea with her. Which one is mothballed? e: 𝚔𝚎𝚒𝚗𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚝 like I say there is a whole heap of things to laugh at in UK military procurement, but at least get it vaguely right. retiring Harrier and deploying a load of pilots for training in the US to be ready for F-35? Seems to have worked out OK. Likewise, shitcanning the mra4 program and sending the teams to the US to keep current on ASW until P-8 was available? actually a pretty good idea. knox_harrington fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Dec 11, 2020 |
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Dec 10, 2020 23:51
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Pro-click snippet from a Tomcat driver talking about intercepting a Vulcan that got too close to the carrier ~back in the day~: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fUsuFRGdhc There are others as well, all taken from a longer interview. It's Mover's channel, so be sure to skip the "I'm so cool" montage at the end of the clip.
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Dec 11, 2020 00:16
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knox_harrington posted:Which one is mothballed? I guess I am out of date, they found the money to keep both flattops.
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Dec 11, 2020 00:26
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drgitlin posted:I guess I am out of date, they found the money to keep both flattops. If I recall, the UK government had a little bit of a rethink some years back when Putin started getting spicy in Ukraine. Of course you're only really guaranteed one operational at any given time but that beats zero. Also um yeah do you think keeping the Harriers in 2020 versus a peer opponent would have been a better idea? 
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Dec 11, 2020 00:41
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Who ordered the Harrier, hold the guns, 2 Heaters, Extra AMRAAM, pod, bomb (singular), and a side of false canopy? 
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Dec 11, 2020 00:48
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