Navy To Reduce To Smallest Size Ever To Save Carriers

[Flob]

I wonder if we will still have three services after the SDR - some talk of the RAF being split into land and maritime aviation (ie army and navy).

Next few months will be interesting times.

I thought this forum was about housing ?

[thod]

Carriers are utterly essential if you're ever going to have operations outside you home waters.

Britain's island status gave it a unique position in European warfare. Other countries had to maintain large armies to cover their land borders. Britain could get away with keeping a small army and using the money to build a big naval fleet instead. Other countries could not match this expenditure without weakening their armies, so Britannia ruled the waves. Since it could not be invaded, Britain's entire European strategy down the centuries was to ally with the underdog. This was to prevent any empire becoming so big it could build a navy to rival Britain's. Aircraft carriers have no role in this model since the coasts can be defended from land airfields. The role of the navy is largely obsolete since air power can sink invading ships better than naval forces. We could even do this with a fleet of cruise missiles and scrap both the navy and the air force.

Carriers are simply big slow moving targets and they are becoming ever easier for missiles to hit. A whole carrier group can be sunk by a single nuke. It doesn't even have to hit. The tsunami would roll over every ship in the carrier group. No carrier would survive the first few days of a full scale war. Sure they are nice to park off the gulf coast because they are not fighting tough opposition. Yet for such a fight we do not need carriers running multi million dollar flights to blow up some camels. Carriers are an attack weapon, not a defensive one. Small cheap submarines are what is needed. When they are nuked, it's no big loss because we have lots more. Submarines are now so quite they cannot be detected no matter how hard the navy tries. All such vehicles are simply reusable weapons delivery platforms. They allow you to get close to the target to fire your missiles and then return for reloading.

The type 45 destroyer can track 30 incoming aircraft and take them out. There goes every aircraft on your carrier, at that point it becomes a floating hotel.

[The Masked Tulip]

The only risk with intelligence is that it relies on a few key people thus putting more eggs in one basket so to speak and history shows spies have sometimes been turned for example.

You mean like from this?

To this perhaps?

[david m]

Two carriers are absolutely essential for the UK to be able to project power. The ability of the US to influence situations has been greatly aided over the years by being able to station a carrier battle group off the coast. Given that we are entering a period of currency wars likely to be followed by trade wars, the armed forces probably need to be increased not cut. That isn't possible givne budget considerations but we can't afford to not be able to operate militarily as a standalone operation.

The problem is the RN surface fleet, nuclear submarine fleet and amphibious forces cannot be sacrificed in the process.

If you take the escort fleet, the RN still (info may be out of date) has 7 standing commitments. NATO North Atlantic, NATO Med, Atalntic Northern Patrol, Atlantic South Patrol, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean/FarEast each requires an escort vessel. In addition if we assume 1 active carrier battle group and 1 active amphibious ready group, each requiring 3 or 4 escorts, you end up with a total of 13-15 ships needed for active duty. Add in pre/post op deployment, training, maintenance and refit cycles, then you can easily double that number to 26-30 ships. So the RN essentially can't meet its standing commitments right now, never mind after the cuts!

Also ony 6 or 7 new Astute class nuclear subs are going to be built, giving us typically only 3 on active deployment.

Frankly, the RN is already cut to the bone.

[Flob]

Britain's island status gave it a unique position in European warfare. Other countries had to maintain large armies to cover their land borders. Britain could get away with keeping a small army and using the money to build a big naval fleet instead. Other countries could not match this expenditure without weakening their armies, so Britannia ruled the waves. Since it could not be invaded, Britain's entire European strategy down the centuries was to ally with the underdog. This was to prevent any empire becoming so big it could build a navy to rival Britain's. Aircraft carriers have no role in this model since the coasts can be defended from land airfields. The role of the navy is largely obsolete since air power can sink invading ships better than naval forces. We could even do this with a fleet of cruise missiles and scrap both the navy and the air force.

Carriers are simply big slow moving targets and they are becoming ever easier for missiles to hit. A whole carrier group can be sunk by a single nuke. It doesn't even have to hit. The tsunami would roll over every ship in the carrier group. No carrier would survive the first few days of a full scale war. Sure they are nice to park off the gulf coast because they are not fighting tough opposition. Yet for such a fight we do not need carriers running multi million dollar flights to blow up some camels. Carriers are an attack weapon, not a defensive one. Small cheap submarines are what is needed. When they are nuked, it's no big loss because we have lots more. Submarines are now so quite they cannot be detected no matter how hard the navy tries. All such vehicles are simply reusable weapons delivery platforms. They allow you to get close to the target to fire your missiles and then return for reloading.

The type 45 destroyer can track 30 incoming aircraft and take them out. There goes every aircraft on your carrier, at that point it becomes a floating hotel.

The use of most of our equipment is predicated on gaining technological superiority on the battlefield, including air cover and electronic comms (GPS amongst others).

We are far too small to take on another power that has equally sophisticated equipment - we couldn't win in a war of attrition.

In this context carriers do make some sense in being platforms to project power against countries with less sophisticated weapons.

This is nothing new, we used to send in a gun boat to project power against non industrialised countries, the change is there are more players in the club with sophisticated weapons, better tread carefully Mr Haig.

[ken_ichikawa]

A final thought worth pondering is do human piloted aircraft have much of afuture in warfare at all.

If not why would you need big carriers to launch smaller drones

Drones have some big limitations and some big unseen costs. For example the US 2 years back ran out of secure encrypted bandwidth for their drones over Iraq and Afganistan, they started to buy bandwidth from private companies who charged them an arm and a leg.

Having to launch new satellites ain't cheap for bandwidth!

[ken_ichikawa]

Uh?

I think the usefulness of carriers was proven during the Falklands War, not disproven. No air cover and they would have been slaughtered.

Nope it was the wrong tactics used, the argentines should have gone after the harriers first we had 20 of them and therefore could not afford to lose any of them. Once the harrier force was stripped away you could spend all day bombing the British fleet, the troops landed would be unsupported and bombed into oblivion. Thatcher then would have armed the nuclear bombs aboard the invincible and the Ark Royal and taken out Buenos Aires.

[Flob]

Nope it was the wrong tactics used, the argentines should have gone after the harriers first we had 20 of them and therefore could not afford to lose any of them. Once the harrier force was stripped away you could spend all day bombing the British fleet, the troops landed would be unsupported and bombed into oblivion. Thatcher then would have armed the nuclear bombs aboard the invincible and the Ark Royal and taken out Buenos Aires.

If that had happened think of the development and off plan opportunities in Buenos Aires

[ken_ichikawa]

I agree. A navy with two aircraft carriers will wipe out another that lack air cover. This was comprehensive proven in WW2. The last Aircraft carrier sunk by enemy action was in 1945, with anti sub marine aircraft and other support ships, a carrier fleet is pretty invincible.

Carriers are far from invincible far from it powerful but not invincible. Note the US has not been in combat with anybody capable of fighting back.

US carrier battle groups have a fatal flaw which they made even worse with upgrades. They used to carry 96 anti missile missiles, X2 AEGIS carriers. the upgrade carries 88 missiles which means the carrier groups is safe from 176 missiles, every missile above 176 = a hit.

This means if you have 200 missiles and even with a 100% like the SeaRam upgrade claims to have 100% hit probability (impossible) the enemy fighting asymetrically can afford a hell of a lot more missiles than you can afford anti missiles. The USS Ronald Reagan under construction is supposed to cost 15bn+ 2006 dollars.

Various online sources say sunburn missiles cost $910,000 each.

So for a $15bn carrier (just the carrier) you can afford about 16000 anti ship missiles, Enough to send every ship in the battle group to the bottom of the sea and then some.

[spireite]

Nope it was the wrong tactics used, the argentines should have gone after the harriers first we had 20 of them and therefore could not afford to lose any of them. Once the harrier force was stripped away you could spend all day bombing the British fleet, the troops landed would be unsupported and bombed into oblivion. Thatcher then would have armed the nuclear bombs aboard the invincible and the Ark Royal and taken out Buenos Aires.

all the argies had to do was hit one of our ill equiped carriers with an exocet and we would have had to turn for home as we would have had insufficient air cover. the carriers were developed for hunting out soviet subs up over norway. the argies were frantically trying to buy more exocets from the french and the intelligence service were onto them, plus it has recently been said that thatcher told the french if one of your missiles sinks one of our carriers well nuke argentina.i think we had luck on our side in the falklands.many servicemen in that war wish wed had the old ark royal with them,much bigger ship and designed for that purpose

[stormymonday_2011]

I agree. A navy with two aircraft carriers will wipe out another that lack air cover. This was comprehensive proven in WW2. The last Aircraft carrier sunk by enemy action was in 1945, with anti sub marine aircraft and other support ships, a carrier fleet is pretty invincible. With air-cover you can shoot down incoming missiles and torpedoes. What was the higest scoring aircraft in the first iraq was? an Lynx ship destroyer.

I don't normally agree with Lewis Page, but he's spot on with this.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/08/carrier_struggle_torygraph_leaks/

Two carriers with electric catapults and F-18 aircraft would be an affordable and cheap way of projecting real power. The F-35 is a bit of a dud, VSTOL version especially too heavy and way too expensive and very late. As he says, we could buy the f-35 if it works when its cheaper and more reliable (its grounded again, BTW). 25 ships to support two carriers is more than enough.

Sorry but this idea of the UK projecting 'real power' is not only laughable and delusional but downright dangerous

What exactly is the purpose of this power and what are we supposed to be defending

Perhaps you mean the ability of multinational corporations based in Switzerland for tax purposes to offshore UK jobs or to import overseas IT workers while dumping their UK employees on the dole. In that case the Swiss and Indians should be paying for the f*cking carriers not us.

We are not an imperial power. We are not even a major industrial power that requires huge amounts of resources for its manufacturing sector. In fact for many Britons the most important thing is that Chinese container ships get through with white goods to fill the shops something which the Chinese navy has a big as interest in continuing as the MOD.

Edited October 8, 2010 by realcrookswearsuits

[thod]

The use of most of our equipment is predicated on gaining technological superiority on the battlefield, including air cover and electronic comms (GPS amongst others).

We are far too small to take on another power that has equally sophisticated equipment - we couldn't win in a war of attrition.

In this context carriers do make some sense in being platforms to project power against countries with less sophisticated weapons.

This is nothing new, we used to send in a gun boat to project power against non industrialised countries, the change is there are more players in the club with sophisticated weapons, better tread carefully Mr Haig.

They problem with generals is they are all schooled in the weapons and tactics of the last war. They observed the success of the German blitzkrieg model and attempt to replicate it. Thus the US maintains an outsize military in the hope that its initial attack will so devastate the enemy that he will lose either the will or capacity to make war. Should he not capitulate, the cruise missiles will soon run out and it will be back to the ships firing cheap artillery shells. The US military is big enough to pull this off against a small country but the UK military is not. We do not gain a useful defence force and we do not gain a credible attack force. The carrier based harriers cannot deliver enough ordnance to do more than annoy a country. So just as the Germans built excellently engineered military equipment for WW2 blitzkrieg, we do too. The problem is they ran into Russia who had a different model. Produce thousands of cheap tanks and send them in. They may have been of inferior quality, but zerging with quantity beat them.

What I see is admirals who are not taking their mandate to defend Britain seriously. Instead they want to be able to bring a fleet to whoever America attacks next. They want to be invited because it is the only action they may get. Sucks to retire as an admiral without ever having fought a battle.

[The Masked Tulip]

This means if you have 200 missiles and even with a 100% like the SeaRam upgrade claims to have 100% hit probability (impossible) the enemy fighting asymetrically can afford a hell of a lot more missiles than you can afford anti missiles. The USS Ronald Reagan under construction is supposed to cost 15bn+ 2006 dollars.

Last time I looked the USS Ronald Reagan was busy sailing around. Here is a picture of it;

[Nickolarge]

Britain's island status gave it a unique position in European warfare. Other countries had to maintain large armies to cover their land borders. Britain could get away with keeping a small army and using the money to build a big naval fleet instead. Other countries could not match this expenditure without weakening their armies, so Britannia ruled the waves. Since it could not be invaded, Britain's entire European strategy down the centuries was to ally with the underdog. This was to prevent any empire becoming so big it could build a navy to rival Britain's. Aircraft carriers have no role in this model since the coasts can be defended from land airfields. The role of the navy is largely obsolete since air power can sink invading ships better than naval forces. We could even do this with a fleet of cruise missiles and scrap both the navy and the air force.

Carriers are simply big slow moving targets and they are becoming ever easier for missiles to hit. A whole carrier group can be sunk by a single nuke. It doesn't even have to hit. The tsunami would roll over every ship in the carrier group. No carrier would survive the first few days of a full scale war. Sure they are nice to park off the gulf coast because they are not fighting tough opposition. Yet for such a fight we do not need carriers running multi million dollar flights to blow up some camels. Carriers are an attack weapon, not a defensive one. Small cheap submarines are what is needed. When they are nuked, it's no big loss because we have lots more. Submarines are now so quite they cannot be detected no matter how hard the navy tries. All such vehicles are simply reusable weapons delivery platforms. They allow you to get close to the target to fire your missiles and then return for reloading.

The type 45 destroyer can track 30 incoming aircraft and take them out. There goes every aircraft on your carrier, at that point it becomes a floating hotel.

And 95% of the above is negated by the following sentence.

We will not be fighting "tough" opposition and the fleet will not be nuked nor will we be engaging in what you call a full scale war.

You are suggesting that we build a navy to fit one massively unlikely nightmare scenario instead of meeting the needs of a day to day policing role which is what is actually happening.

[Nickolarge]

Thatcher then would have armed the nuclear bombs aboard the invincible and the Ark Royal and taken out Buenos Aires.

Sorry but I have to ask....are you on Crack?

[Nickolarge]

So just as the Germans built excellently engineered military equipment for WW2 blitzkrieg, we do too. The problem is they ran into Russia who had a different model. Produce thousands of cheap tanks and send them in. They may have been of inferior quality, but zerging with quantity beat them.

The problem was that the German tanks were too sophisticated and therefore expensive and difficult to maintain in the field. Many of them were also too big and heavy.

[ken_ichikawa]

all the argies had to do was hit one of our ill equiped carriers with an exocet and we would have had to turn for home as we would have had insufficient air cover. the carriers were developed for hunting out soviet subs up over norway. the argies were frantically trying to buy more exocets from the french and the intelligence service were onto them, plus it has recently been said that thatcher told the french if one of your missiles sinks one of our carriers well nuke argentina.i think we had luck on our side in the falklands.many servicemen in that war wish wed had the old ark royal with them,much bigger ship and designed for that purpose

And the problem was there were these pesky harriers in the way.... elimate those and the carriers would have been dog food.

[ken_ichikawa]

Last time I looked the USS Ronald Reagan was busy sailing around. Here is a picture of it;

Sorry I meant the Ford Class carriers, I knew it was named after a recent ex president got the wrong one.

[ken_ichikawa]

The problem was that the German tanks were too sophisticated and therefore expensive and difficult to maintain in the field. Many of them were also too big and heavy.

Joseph Stalin once said "Quantity has a quality all of its own."

[ken_ichikawa]

Sorry but I have to ask....are you on Crack?

Nah it was quite recently released into the public domain (and denied for years) that the carrier task force bought along some nuclear warheads just in case.

A quick search reveals that the MOD released this fact about a year ago why take nuclear bombs if you aren't going to use them?

[oracle]

Why do we need a large Navy anyway? What good is a Navy in defending us against anything other than sea-based threats? Are there wolf-packs of U-boats still prowling round the north Atlantic?

actually there are.

so the best solution for dealing with these is a reasonably large fleet of small-scale(armed) hunter-killer submersibles.

today we really don't need just a dozen or so fully-loaded polaris or astutes with a couple of hundred people on board,it's quite possible to have MORE capability with three or four dozen smaller vessels with half a dozen crew each.

armed with a few torpedo's to engage hostile seaborne threats,and small-scale ballistic missile capability(medium range 1000 miles or so armed with fuel-air or thermobaric ordnance to take out strategic targets)......it's far more threatening because there is greater coverage.

kill one standard nuclear sub like a typical polaris,or kursk....and you lose the capability to wage concentrated warfare in on region,but if major hostilities occurred you need to tie up as many of your enemies forces as possible trying to search for your craft.

[oracle]

Joseph Stalin once said "Quantity has a quality all of its own."

I wonder,maybe chavs DO have a purpose!

low quality expendible ordnance,mass produced thanks to NuLabour!

[jackalope]

New Chinese deng anti-ship missile does MACH 10 - unstoppable.

Where are you getting this crap from? The Chinese ASBM is the Dong Feng 21D not "deng" and its demonstrated capacity do anything so far is zero. Chinese pedigree on MaRV terminal guidance is not exactly stellar and you'd need it to be better than stellar to hit a ship with a conventional warhead at M10+.

The whole point of the carriers are to create jobs it doesn't matter if they have any military use or not so arguing the toss about what they can and can't do is irrelevant.

The reason we're getting the F-35B STOVL version is that the RAF is currently run by the Harrier Mafia who can't imagine a world without VTOL. The RN have to tag along on the 35B bandwagon or the RAF would block any FAA fixed wing aviation at all. The ships have had a lot of design compromises off the back of that decision and it's not clear they are going to be fast enough for long enough to get enough wind over the bow for sustained CATOBAR operations.

I assume one or possibly both of the QE2 and PoW will be reroled as an LHP to replace The Big O. If one carrier survives for fixed wing ops all it will get is occasional visits from the "JFL" wing based at Lossie on an expeditionary basis.

[Harry Monk]

The whole point of the carriers are to create jobs it doesn't matter if they have any military use or not so arguing the toss about what they can and can't do is irrelevant.

Isn't this what Germany did in the 1930''s? Surely we could create jobs improving our transport infrastructure?

[davidg]

all the argies had to do was hit one of our ill equiped carriers with an exocet and we would have had to turn for home as we would have had insufficient air cover

I thought the US had agreed to cover us with one of their carriers in that eventuality?