Posted on 02/11/2008 1:54:12 PM PST by Rikstir
The start of an investment project to modify the dockyard at Rosyth, in preparation for the assembly of the two Royal Navy super carriers was witnessed today, 11 February 2008, by Defence Secretary Des Browne.
The two 65,000 tonne aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, are to be constructed in sections in shipyards at Portsmouth and Barrow-in-Furness, Glasgow, with final assembly at Babcock's Rosyth in Scotland.
Des Browne witnessed the signing of a £35m contract today by Babcock Engineering Services with Glasgow-based subcontractors Edmund Nuttall Limited to modify the docks in order to accommodate the building of the carriers and widen its direct entrance.
(Excerpt) Read more at mod.uk ...
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How do these proposed Royal Navy carriers compare to ours, such as the Reagan?
Glad to see the Brits still want to invest in their defence, unlike the rest of the Euroweenies.
Um, no offense to our British friends but a supercarrier starts at 75,000 ton displacement.
What became of the angle deck ?
280 meters to our 332.85 meters.
65,000 tonnes to our 97,000 tons.
And 40 aircraft to our 85.
Well these will be 75,000 fully loaded. In any event the Queen Elizabeth class carriers will be a lot closer to the Nimitz class then to the Invincible class their replacing.
It could also be that they’re using better materials to lighten the load.
Have the Brits ever had an angled deck?
They have. I think they were for use when the Harrier was the seagoing jet of choice for the Brits.
Closer, but no Sea-gar
He’s speaking of the Ski Jump deck I think.
If this project comes to pass, it will be a good thing for the Royal Navy, but I doubt they will have the finances to sustain it in the long run.
A big carrier will give them a larger stick to wield in the world community. I would venture a guess that the only reason theyre building these is the emerging threat from the Chinese.
Given the relative size of our country compared to yours and the difference in GDP and defence expenditure I would argue that these represent the best outside the US. No other nation besides the US, UK (and possibly China and Russia) are embarking on such an advanced carrier to take their navies into the 21st century.
It is said that the QE class is will embark as many combat aircraft as did Operation Granby in 1991. And as been noted by others here, composite structures will reduce the weight of the vessel to what it is proposed to be. If it were built 20+ years back the vessel would probably weigh 1,000,000 tonnes!
Harrier still is the seagoing choice of jet for the RN. The GR9 is going to be flown from the QE Class until the F35 is sorted.
I believe that the lack of an angled deck is related to the plane of choice. The F35B is the STOVL variant, and they intend to take off via the ramp, and land vertically on the tail.
The angled deck is intended to allow simultaneous takeoff and landing operations, so that if a plane which is landing has a problem/has to abort, the angled landing trajectory will carry it away from the planes which are taking off from the forward part of the (straight) deck.
Due to STOVL, this shouldn’t be necessary, as planes which are landing vertically will not be carrying enough velocity to require the angled deck. Or arrestor cables for that matter.
Just a thought...
Probably right. Is the F-35 VTOL ?
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