Posted on 02/13/2005 5:28:59 PM PST by Eurotwit
As a hopelessly patriotic sort of person, I have a fantasy of one day being on holiday in the south of France and looking up from, say, a biography of Nelson, to see an aircraft carrier appear on the horizon. Only instead of it being an American one, it will be British. No doubt the captain will come ashore in a smart launch and, if I were to be lucky, he might invite me aboard for a sundowner. All would be well in the world, and I would sleep soundly, dreaming of past glories at the Nile and Trafalgar.
I am not the only one with this fantasy. Geoff Hoon says he has now taken personal charge of the Government's pet defence programme - to build two super-carriers for the Royal Navy. These will be the largest warships ever built in Britain, with four acres of flight deck apiece. In fact, they are so big that no single yard can build them and they will be constructed in bits, by a consortium of companies, before being put together by a "physical integrator", otherwise known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of US vice- president Dick Cheney's alma mater, Halliburton. The Navy is salivating at the prospect of having some smart new toys to play with. The current military vogue is "expeditionary warfare", and Vice-Admiral Charles Style, commander UK maritime forces, says: "I absolutely believe this is a very relevant and important capability." Even the Department of International Development, eager to carpet-bomb Africa with aid, or, more usefully, help the victims of natural disasters, wants the carriers. So, how come, six years after they were first proposed, they have not yet been ordered?
Here is the rub. Despite all the brouhaha over the surprisingly fierce negotiating style of Mr Hoon, these carriers have got no further than the drawing board. They have, however, been provisionally named HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales. Something about those names, chosen by an administration that axed the Royal Yacht, worries me. Are they just a bit too unreal, a bit too good to be true? The last vessel to be named Prince of Wales, also the pride of the fleet, sank in unfortunate circumstances in 1941, after Churchill rashly sent it to defend Singapore without enough escorts.
Sadly, there is not much prospect of the super-carriers having enough escorts either. Another handful of frigates and destroyers have been cut, so the Royal Navy now has just 28 afloat, half the number it had at the time of the Falklands. Assuming a typical carrier battle group has at least six escorts, the Navy will be stripped bare to provide the minimum support, once these ships are supposedly at sea from 2012 onwards.
All this points to the really serious question: can we afford them? The initial cost estimate, now six years old, was that the carriers would cost £3 billion, plus their air complements. In theory, we should be able to find the money. After all, Britain is the world's fourth largest economy and a global trading nation. The trouble is that, over the past decade, the defence budget has been halved in real terms by both the Conservatives and Labour, to just 2.4 per cent of GDP. Every bill that comes in from Iraq is quibbled by the Treasury and the MoD has been reduced in effect to cannibalising future capability in order to fund Tony Blair's wars. Furthermore, as far as I can see, such are the burdens on the defence budget, the MoD has resorted to some pretty novel accounting. It treats some items as "near cash", an oxymoronic concept. It also records its hardware as £27 billion of capital assets. All those weapons, so expensive to maintain, depreciate rapidly and so are an odd kind of capital.
But there is really only one very significant thing you need to know about the Ministry of Defence's budget. It is to be found in note 21 to the accounts of a quango called the Defence Procurement Agency and it says future commitments "contracted but not provided for: £14.4 billion". That is the current cost of newly ordered weapon systems, which have yet to be paid for. But the Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales have not even been ordered yet, nor have their 70 joint combat fighters. The MoD protests otherwise, but that number looks to me like the black hole in the defence budget, blown by, inter alia, the Eurofighter. No wonder those doughty Scottish regiments are being merged or axed.
The "black hole" is also the ultimate financial consequence of the dualarchy which runs our country. On one side, there is Tony Blair, strutting around the world with a sword in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, sending the Armed Forces into battle. On the other side, there is Gordon Brown, with a fundamentally different idea of Britain as a soft power, a welfare state, whose principal foreign policy ought to be a "Marshall Plan" for the Third World. Mr Brown evidently has no time for the Armed Forces. Gerald Howarth, a Conservative defence spokesman, recently asked in a parliamentary question what defence establishments Mr Brown had visited. And the reply? Too expensive to find out. If any readers have ever seen Mr Brown at a defence establishment, perhaps they might write in to The Daily Telegraph to help solve the mystery.
The military are caught in the middle of this two-personality state - forced to deploy in Iraq and elsewhere, but without the proper support of the Treasury. So here is a pre-election challenge to Mr Blair and to Mr Brown, assuming they are speaking to each other. When will you order these carriers, and where, exactly, is the money to come from? Unless they can give satisfactory answers, my approach to the carrier question will be not to believe the Government, until I see the vessels bobbing on the horizon.
>>As far as the love in with the Harrier, I always felt sorry for my friends flying Brit Harriers<<
Really??? Which ones and what Squadrons? Having spent over 2-yrs on an exchange assignment with the Brits, I happen to know quite a few Harrier pilots. Maybe we know the same guys?
***I believe that comment was from Bandit. I don't know anyone who flies Harriers.
While they luv flying the jet they most certainly don't share your rosey opinion of the aircraft's actual performance when flown against our fighters.
***We would all like to hear from them.
< /sarcasm >
#108: That seems long -- what did you say?
Should anyone care?
< sarcasm >
Your link references an article from 1985. A little outdated.
***That might be the key to unwravelling this whole melee.
>>According to B. R. A. Burns, Chief Aerodynamicist at British Aerospace Aircraft Group, in other than beyond-visual-range (BVR) air-to-air engagements, maximum speed is often less important than maneuverability and the ability to change energy by accelerating or climbing rapidly.<<
Spoken by a non-fighter pilot OR (operations research bean-counter).
***I thought it made sense. I would welcome comments from actual Harrier pilots.
>>He points out that, particularly with modern missiles, there is no escape from close air combat by speed alone; once engaged, only superior maneuverability or tactics will win the day.<<
"Speed is life" That is something you learn about as a fighter pilot. Stopping dead in your tracks and/or trying to jump out of the way of a missile is lunacy and fantasy.
***OK, but like the High G Barrel roll, it's probably a good maneuver against another aircraft so you can line up a hit.
First, where do you think you get the energy to turn at corner (quickest, tightest turn)? Airspeed. Second, missiles most always were faster than the aircraft otherwise they would merely hang on the rails as you flew faster than their launch speed.
***Doesn't that say the same thing as "there is no escape from close air combat by speed alone"? I'm afraid I don't understand.
Third, missiles have proximity fuses and do not require a hit. Four, you beat the missile by trying to generate miss distance, if you can't spoof it entirely.
***I don't understand how these 2 points counteract anything I've said. Please elaborate.
Five, disappearing from doppler by putting yourself on the beam
***I don't know what "on the beam" means.
or by hovering doesn't work against our stuff. I could go on and on and on. . .
***How about some primary source material on that?
>>Except for "slashing attacks on an unwary foe, speed is an embarrassment because rate of turn is restricted by G limits (structural or physiological)."<<
This guy has no clue about Corner Speed. Also, he is BAE, the people who build the Harrier and one suspects he is a bit biased and tainted in his analysis. . .wanting to make sales to those that don't know any better.
***I don't know about Corner Speed either. Please elaborate, I'm sure the forum will appreciate it.
>>Burns identifies three key parameters for achieving success in air-to-air close combat: maximum sustained (thrust-limited) turn rate, maximum attained (lift-limited) turn rate, and specific excess power.9<<
Corner, Corner, Corner, and don't go to the merge if you can avoid it.
***I don't know what you're saying here, please explain.
>>The AV-8B performs extremely well in all three of these areas. <<
*Snicker*
***Source material please.
I assume from your responses to Rokke, gunrunner2, elbucko, GBA and myself that you are now going to refer to all of us as Joe Flyboy. Quick, alert Jim Robinson of all the pretenders ganging up on you, and ping the rest of the aeronautical ping list to weigh in on our collective credibility.
I will acknowledge the sub threat. I didn't mean to imply an AA threat affected the carrier positioning. I meant the Air to Surface threat like Exocet.
***Yup, if the Argies had pressed the attack here, there probably wouldn't be many ANNOYING MAN Harrier afficianado clones, we woulda slumped away & cried in our beers. Darn those Argies...
Flying against fighters that were RED FORECES. . .replicating Soviet tactics and technology. Any other game and they get kicked pretty easily. So what if the Harrier slows down. . .you just shoot to the moon, take the fight vertical and smoker his butt. . .meanwhile the Harrier pisses his gas away FAST, has no energy to maneuver when shot at.
***Good post, Gunrunner. High Fact/Opinion ratio. Maybe you should elaborate here. And, if you don't mind continuing in this attitude, what is your take on the posted kill ratios? Where can we get source material to settle this dispute to everyone's satisfaction?
Your air to air kill ratio numbers against anything more potent than the Argentinian Air Force are all based on anonymous sources pulled from internet chat sites. That is ironic considering you spend several paragraphs explaining your "rule of COIN". Live by your own rule, and stop posting "bogus" numbers. For the record, my last name is Rokke and I've been flying F-16's for 15 years. I've personally met Gunrunner2 and am very familiar with his background. USNBandit and I both attended the finest military academy in the world and graduated one year apart. I have also met A6Intruder while I was deployed to Langley AFB shortly after Sept 11. Grace522 and I just sat Noble Eagle alert together 2 days ago. The only person I haven't met in person is Mr Rogers, but I've corresponded with him enough to know he is who he says he is. None of us claim to be aficionados. That is because we are all experts. We have to be to accomplish our jobs. Knowing the air to air capabilities of aircraft is a job requirement, and one that our life depends on. I have fought against Harriers several times in my career. Never. Not once have I seen them use anything resembling a "VIFF". Nor do I know anyone else who has ever fought a Harrier that performed a "VIFF". That is because it would be stupid for them to do that, and they know it. Getting extremely slow in a within visual range engagement is your last move before dying. It may give you the turn radius from hell, but when your adversary takes it into the vertical after you try your little trick, your little Pegasus motor doesn't have what it takes to transition from nearly stopped to useful forward thrust before you're taking a AIM-9 up one of your very hot little nozzles. By your definitions, the meanest air to air aircraft in the sky would be helicopters. And since the B-52 has a 2 - 0 air to air record in actual combat, it must be a potent air to air platform. Hell, it's undefeated against a threat that actually did quite well against our top fighters at the time.
Your lectures on this site being Jim Robinson's house are all very nice, but since you've been here for so long (and incidentally, my first signup name was Rock and I can't remember my login either. 23 July 1998) you must know that one of the greatest assets of this site is the fact that it is populated with true to life experts on just about every topic imaginable. Since you acknowledge that you aren't one in this field, perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss others who offer reasonable discussion on the topic at hand just because their opinions are not the same as yours.
I tried but the more I read from that guy the more it became crystal clear he is a pretender, a fake and a fraud.
***I haven't pretended to be anything but a Harrier afficianado. How can I be a fake and a fraud? That makes no sense whatsoever.
His arguments are based on long cut-and-paste extracts with no analysis, expereicne, and are absent context.
***Unfortunately, real low Facts/Opinion ratio on this post. My analysis is as good as I can do with my limited knowledge & resources -- I've been up front about that, I acknowledge that I don't have experience (so what's that all about?), and I have provided context. I hope that this laziness about reading through the material isn't a common trait among fighter pilots.
Hey hey hey. We can at least accomplish two-pass-haul-a$$ missions now! And we do it without a stewardess in the back seat! ;)
I'd hate to be out on a ship built by the same guys that build my old MG. Every part that fell off of that car was of the finest British craftsmanship.
I don't think he ever claimed to have any actual experience,
***Glad you cleared that up.
he just refused to take my input to refute his google based expertise.
***I have not refused to take your input. I still don't see any refutation on the kill ratios. The turn rate is also still an open question, as well as the turning off VIFFing during exercises. That's all it would have taken to scoot me on my way.
Appreciate your response to his request to validate my posts.
***All we need is some primary source material and this thing should get cleared up pretty fast.
Which reminds me. You never explained to USNBandit how an F-35 could VIFF.
"so let's see some comments on the primary source material using other primary source material."
Your primary source material is out of date. And until you can offer a quote from Commander Ward discussing the lethal technique of VIFFing over the Falklands, I'm afraid I'm unimpressed.
"All right, then let's go & find some primary source material that refutes the kill ratios & Turn Rate stuff."
You mean your anonymous chatsite cut and pastes? I've got one word for you...COIN.
You guys get stewardesses!? All I got was a talking self loading nav bag that always managed to hack his wristwatch one minute off.
I guess you are taking back the following statement? Four separate people chime in, give their opinions, so you launch into that tirade on post 108.
***That was a tirade? I guess it would be your turn to ping JimRob, then. I thought I was being pretty straightforward. We should be able to get to the bottom of this if people are willing to post primary source material.
When it first entered service, it racked up some impressive air-to-air kill ratios, even though it was a bomber, because of its high speed and maneuverability.
By the way the Stuka had a top speed of around 250 mph. Not very fast, even for the beginning of WWII.
***Maybe because it was going against Poles & weaker foes? I was operating from memory, it's been a while since I read that book on the Stuka. Sorry I didn't take the time to double check. I dislike it when a good analogy gets shot down.
While I seem to be wasting my time and efforts on you I have made four new friends here on Free Republic.
***Yep, Free Republic is a pretty cool place, even when you find yourself disagreeing with some ANNOYING MAN... I don't think you're wasting your time nor efforts. Think about the others who will read through this thread to find answers to the discrepancy. So, keep your Job-like patience, answer the questions, use primary source material, find out about the kill ratios, and soon we should be pretty much done.
Well you must have seen the picture of our carrier a few posts up. And while I fly a man's airplane (one engine, one seat, one tail), Gunrunner2 spent part of his career loitering around in an air yacht. So of course he had to have a stewardess. Who else would fluff up his pillow?
Answer the questions? That is what I've been doing, even when you were calling me a fraud. I'm not sure if I need primary source data when I am posting fact. You certainly haven't needed it when you are posting absolute fiction.
Which reminds me. You never explained to USNBandit how an F-35 could VIFF.
***Yes I did, do a search for "brainfart". Please read through the posts before going into accusation mode, and lose the attitude.
"so let's see some comments on the primary source material using other primary source material."
Your primary source material is out of date.
***Fair Enough. Feel free to post updated primary source material. That should clear up the discrepancies.
And until you can offer a quote from Commander Ward discussing the lethal technique of VIFFing over the Falklands, I'm afraid I'm unimpressed.
***Why are you avoiding the " 7 to 1 valid kill claim by the SHARs" from Ward's book? I guess I don't aim to impress you if you don't accept primary source material.
"All right, then let's go & find some primary source material that refutes the kill ratios & Turn Rate stuff."
You mean your anonymous chatsite cut and pastes? I've got one word for you...COIN.
***As I stated, "These tend to be secondary sources rather than primary sources, but the fact that both sides agree on certain facts tends to be highly significant." And, this is an anonymous site as well. So feel free to point all of us in the right direction.
Well, I gotta go now. Kid's crying.
You couldn't have for one simple reason. IT CAN'T!
Answer the questions? That is what I've been doing, even when you were calling me a fraud.
***I really thought I had a live one at that time. I've been chasing too many trolls lately. Anyways, I withdrew the masquerade accusation.
I'm not sure if I need primary source data when I am posting fact.
***And so am I. But our facts collide, so we need to revert to primary source material. And why do you avoid certain questions? What about the gold standard question? What about the posted kill ratios?
You certainly haven't needed it when you are posting absolute fiction.
***Where is the fiction, if I'm wrong I'll withdraw it, just as I have done so in the past. You conveniently omitted the "find out about the kill ratios" stuff in that sentence, which is what I said that caused me to get onto your tail in the first place. Why are you avoiding this primary source material?
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