No Aircraft Carrier with Aircraft for 9 years

Wookster

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

The Admirals? Who planned on replacing the existing Invinicble Class carrier plus Harrier with Queen Elizabeth Class Carrier plus F-35B?

Yes, what utter idiots designing a platform for an aircraft they were planning on buying.

Have you ever heard of a thing called the Harrier? Successful thing - British designed and built fighter aircraft that we were able to flog to other nations due to its rather unique design. For some reason the Navy wanted to replace both the carrier and the plane with updated versions. Perhaps they only planned to do so because Bob Ainsworth told them to?

I love how you labour type try and justify the most stupid of things.

1984ReturnsForReal_2

Wookster wrote: »

I love how you labour type try and justify the most stupid of things.

Like not building a ship abroad & keeping all them billions away circulating in the UK as opposed to !!!!ing all the money up the wall by building them abroad?

Andy_L

Wookster wrote: »

Who's idea was it to build an aircraft carrier without a catapult?

I can't hear you?

Say it again...


Labour

No, that was an RAF/RN decision as F35-B made more sense as a joint aircraft.
Just as well the design included space for future installation of a catapault, providing someone gets an electro-magnetic one to work as there isn't enough steam production for a steam catapault

FTBFun

Wookster wrote: »

I love how you labour type try and justify the most stupid of things.

Not sure how this has got in a political argument, but the Tories haven't covered themselves in glory with their procurement decisions - pre-1997 or at present.

mitchaa

No need for aircraft carriers for the falkland isles when we have fighter aircraft already based there

Arcaine

Are they needed? Not sure I can answer that in an unbiased way as the company I work for is a supplier to the project. Just a point to put things into a little perspective. They are not due to be operational I would imagine for at least 2-3 years for the first carrier and maybe longer for the second, so in actual fact there not going to be 9 year gap between carrier delivery and aircraft delivery. I am wondering whether they will slow down the build process of them at the moment, however each year adds to the cost of carriers overall.

tomterm8

What the OP means is that because they are scrapping at least one of the current aircraft carriers (using the second as a helecopter base) and all our sea harriers, there will be no aircraft carriers with fixed wing capacity for 9 years, until the second super aircraft carrier goes into active service...

tomterm8

It is the nimrod spy plane that I am particularly resentful for, and that was a Labour debacle. They spent three times the money for the endevor space mission on it, and we have had nowt back. We could have gone to Mars for the money we've already spent on a total waste of time.

FTBFun

tomterm8 wrote: »

It is the nimrod spy plane that I am particularly resentful for, and that was a Labour debacle. They spent three times the money for the endevor space mission on it, and we have had nowt back. We could have gone to Mars for the money we've already spent on a total waste of time.

Indeed. All Governments for the past several decades, be them Red, Blue or Blue/Yellow, Red/Yellow have absolutely awful defence procurement decisions - mainly a way of subsidising BAE systems to provide shockingly awful equipment.

dori2o

FTBFun wrote: »

Indeed. All Governments for the past several decades, be them Red, Blue or Blue/Yellow, Red/Yellow have absolutely awful defence procurement decisions - mainly a way of subsidising BAE systems to provide shockingly awful equipment.

The problem with the Nimrod was that it should never have been chosen for MRA4 upgrade. The original Nimrods were hand built, not one of the Nimrods is exactly the same as the other, can't remember the exact dimensions, but there was something like 9ft difference between the longest and shortest planes. The problem came when they then tried to fit Jig produced upgrades to them, they didn't fit. This caused major trouble with Non Destructive, and Destructive testing. It also meant the wieght ratio of each craft was different.

The whole scheme was a farce, it would have been cheaper, and more efficient to build an entire new craft, or adapt an Airbus, similar to the way the VC10 was adapted.