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Navy aircraft UK carrier will be sold after three years, no jets.
the US is selling the cats for $500m, the '£2bn' figure suggests that it will require more engineering time to fit the cats into the carriers - for which they were designed - than it took to build the whole of HMS Invincible.
its remarkable - you might almost think that someone had pulled the figure out of their arse. or was lying...
For that price, surely the UK (who have the technical know how!) could build an indigenous cat and trap setup themselves?
"He is an enemy officer taken in battle and entitled to fair treatment."
"No, sir. He's a sergeant, and they don't deserve no respect at all, sir. I should know. They're cunning and artful, if they're any good. I wouldn't mind if he was an officer, sir. But sergeants are clever."
For that price, surely the UK (who have the technical know how!) could build an indigenous cat and trap setup themselves?
the '£2bn' figure is bollocks, its 20% of the build price of a 100,000ton, nuclear powered carrier with the same system. does that sound remotely realistic to you?
personally i'm convinced that this is BAEs at work - the C version of JSF is less valuable to them than the B - and while they are also building the carriers and would profit by the RN spending more on the carriers, they have a far bigger dog in F-35B than they have in the carriers, and if the RN were not to be customers for the B it stands a far higher chance of being cancelled all together. its too heavy, too compromised, and too expensive. only the fact that the USMC and RN want it is keeping it alive for political reasons.
BAE are scared - rightly so - that if we continued with cat and traps we'd eventually decide to cancel a F-35C buy and opt for the cheaper F/A-18F instead - and they have bog all to do with F/A-18F. the decision is nothing more than the government working for the benefit of BAE, and against the interests of the taxpayer and defence. disgusting.
So, to protect shareholders, the RN will end up with less capable carriers and aircraft, which cost far more to purchase and to operate, and (in the case of the carriers) are only interoperable with aircraft of less capable allies (even the French are CATOBAR after all). And on top of all of that, they run the very real risk of having the aircraft cancelled and the carriers left unable to operate any other modern fast jet. Brilliant.
Government in U-turn over F35-B fighter planes
The government has changed its mind over the type of fighter planes it is ordering for the Royal Navy's new aircraft carrier.
Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said the F35-C had hit development problems and it would be cheaper in the long term to order F35-B jump jets, as originally planned by Labour.
The cost of the U-turn will be at least £50m, he revealed.
Labour said it was an "omnishambles" which risked "international ridicule".
Mr Hammond said delays to the F-35C programme meant they would have not been operational until 2023 - three years later than planned.
"When the facts change, the responsible thing to do is to examine the decision made and be willing to change, however inconvenient that may be," said Mr Hammond.
'Facts have changed'
As part of its defence spending review in 2010, the government decided to "mothball" one of the two aircraft carriers ordered by Labour.
By abandoning the plan to fit "cats and traps" to one of the carriers while mothballing the other, he said it opened up the possibility that both HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Queen Elizabeth could eventually become operational.
"The 2010 SDSR decision on carriers was right at the time, but the facts have changed and therefore so too must our approach. This government will not blindly pursue projects and ignore cost growth and delays," said Mr Hammond.
"Carrier strike with 'cats and traps' using the carrier variant jet no longer represents the best way of delivering carrier strike and I am not prepared to tolerate a three-year further delay to reintroducing our carrier strike capability.
"This announcement means we remain on course to deliver carrier strike in 2020 as a key part of our Future Force 2020."
The estimated cost of fitting the "cats and traps" system to HMS Prince of Wales had risen from £950m to £2bn "with no guarantee that it will not rise further".
But, he revealed, the government had spent between £40m and £50m on design and assessment work and there would also be penalty costs associated with scrapping the F-35C deal.
'Incompetence'
But he told MPs the eventual cost of the U-turn would be "nowhere near" the £250m claimed by Labour.
Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said the government should never have scrapped its Harrier jump jets, which he said had been "sold off to America for a fraction of their value" - a decision he said risked "international ridicule".
He called on Prime Minister David Cameron to apologise for the government's "incompetence".
He said: "I know the advice the prime minister received which was that the Defence Review policy was high risk and high cost - but yet the prime minister over-ruled it.
"The Public Accounts Select Committee warned of rising costs. The National Audit Office said the government had an immature understanding of the costs.
"The Defence Select Committee warned against strategic shrinkage. The prime minister's decisions have cost British time, British money, British talent and British prestige."
He added: "The previous Labour government got it right and this government's policy has unravelled."
"Carrier strike with 'cats and traps' using the carrier variant jet no longer represents the best way of delivering carrier strike"
There is a pearl of wisdom that should be transmitted immediately to the USN, who persist in operating 11 of these plainly sub-optimal CATOBAR carriers. The French, Russians and Chinese should probably be told also that the best way of delivering naval air power is through overweight, over complex STOVL fighters that operate with lower t/w ratios, poorer payload/range and greater cost than their CATOBAR competitors.
For countries like Spain and Italy, with relatively small carriers, there is an argument for STOVL aircraft, but if you are going to the trouble of building a pair of 60,000t carriers, why would you deliberately restrict your operational ability? Strange days.
i can't believe we have ditched an aircraft which put it's single engine to good use in both forward flight and VTOL, for an aircraft that has 2 engines - one of which it has to carry around as absolute dead weight for the duration of the mission except take-off and landing.
we should have just bought some cheap siamese cats off the chinese and crude bear traps from the russians and ended up with carriers and aircraft fully interoperable with almost every other carrier nation.
this is feckin outrageous.
RGJ
...Once a Rifleman - Always a Rifleman...Celer et Audax
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