Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.
Eh, carrier landing isn't something you just randomly train on. While it's possible to shift services, landing on a carrier is something you need to do constantly - and even the pilots in the Navy often fail or are returned to the RAG due to an inability to land on the boat. While it's "feasible" it's not a real likely scenario. Perhaps in a desperate time of war if you had a bunch of spare AF pilots you could try to send them off for training, but no one is awash in spare pilots.
Add in night time, pitching deck, etc...and it becomes more insane. My father was a RIO and often flew with his squadron commander. Landing on the deck at night in pitching seas in the North Atlantic one night, he said to my father afterwards "______, I've been in combat, been shot at, and I've never been that scared in an airplane." And his squadron commander was a MiG killer from Vietnam. Failure to carrier qualify is a huge deal and is something that does still happen often. It's obviously going to be easier today with automated systems, but it's still no walk in the park.
While we're on the subject, this is a video worth watching for any carrier aviation fans:
Short Description:Marine pilot in an A6 loses one of his landing gear and does not have enough fuel to make it to a land-based air strip. Because of the lack of landing gear he'll have precisely one chance to land on the carrier deck. He's talked in by one of the most respected LSO's.
This is an example of tremendous professionalism and is a good example of doing your damn job. Stressful, but very cool video.
Two things to bear in mind with the UK carriers: 1) it won’t be any old RAF squadron deployed, they are specifically identified for carrier ops and will train and work up before deployment and 2) they’re operating STOVL aircraft, which are much more forgiving for carrier operations (I’m NOT suggesting “easy” by any stretch, but plonking down from a hover is easIER than hitting 4 wires at 140kts)
Zed wrote: *All statements reflect my opinion at this moment. if some sort of pretty new model gets released (or if I change my mind at random) I reserve the right to jump on any bandwagon at will.
If we went to war with Russia or China, our carriers would be gone within a week. I think we know that. Hell, most of our aviation assets would be destroyed within a month.
Russia is an iffy question on that. Definitely during the height of the Cold War, but now its probably not the case. Russia has far less functional military hardware in reality than they have on paper. They couldn't take out our carriers that easily.
China is definitely not capable of doing that right now. They simply don't have the range on their aircraft or missiles to take out US carriers, since unlike Russia they don't have global power projection. US carriers can sit quite safely just out of range of China's attempts to attack them. This is why China is tying to expand these capabilities, they don't exist right now. China is like this with the US right now.
Aircraft overall though would rapidly disappear in any type of conflict. Carriers would be able to stay safe, but the planes launching from them would rapidly dwindle to the point where they could no longer be used for offensive operations unless we began producing older cheaper planes to launch from the carriers. Which in one way would take the Carriers out, if a carrier has no planes it might as well be sunk.
More likely is that we'd get in a situation where all the Carriers would be recalled because they no longer have operational air wings and we're left with only ground forces to prosecute whatever war is going on. And every now and then planes would make a cameo appearance as we were able to make some more, but be largely irrelevant as they could not be produced in numbers to make a difference as they'd all get shot down. Pilots would also be a problem as every plane shot down is probably a lost pilot since its over enemy territory.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/08/01 17:06:06
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
That would depend entirely on how and when the conflict started. My point is that carriers are big, slow and plenty vulnerable in the modern age. If we threw down with China or Russia, there are strong chances it'd go nuclear anyway, and no surface vessel group is protected from a nuclear weapon - so it becomes a little pointless.
My point of view has always been "everything will go worse than you expect", but that's probably my LEO background speaking. I'm not concerned about stuff on paper, but rather when gak happens, it goes quick and unexpected and nothing will work as planned. Even if it's just a rogue Bear popping off some ASMs, something will get through.
If we went to war with Russia or China, our carriers would be gone within a week. I think we know that. Hell, most of our aviation assets would be destroyed within a month.
Russia is an iffy question on that. Definitely during the height of the Cold War, but now its probably not the case. Russia has far less functional military hardware in reality than they have on paper. They couldn't take out our carriers that easily.
China is definitely not capable of doing that right now. They simply don't have the range on their aircraft or missiles to take out US carriers, since unlike Russia they don't have global power projection. US carriers can sit quite safely just out of range of China's attempts to attack them. This is why China is tying to expand these capabilities, they don't exist right now. China is like this with the US right now.
Aircraft overall though would rapidly disappear in any type of conflict. Carriers would be able to stay safe, but the planes launching from them would rapidly dwindle to the point where they could no longer be used for offensive operations unless we began producing older cheaper planes to launch from the carriers. Which in one way would take the Carriers out, if a carrier has no planes it might as well be sunk.
More likely is that we'd get in a situation where all the Carriers would be recalled because they no longer have operational air wings and we're left with only ground forces to prosecute whatever war is going on. And every now and then planes would make a cameo appearance as we were able to make some more, but be largely irrelevant as they could not be produced in numbers to make a difference as they'd all get shot down. Pilots would also be a problem as every plane shot down is probably a lost pilot since its over enemy territory.
So you have forgoten that one wargame 2003?
Or the recent Nato training were subs were able to just hide under the carriers?
No capital ships are at an endpoint imo.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
In aviation it isn't enough to learn to do something once, you have to keep doing it to maintain proficiency or the skills decay and you end up in a dangerous (and potentially fatal) situation.
Why would you assume i think that people only need to do something once to train in aviation. Everyone needs to practice, military pilots more than most.
At best a "give air force pilots a few carrier landings" program could create a wartime reserve that could rapidly boost numbers in a situation where it's WWIII and it doesn't matter if you lose 20% of your pilots to accidents every day because everyone dies anyway as soon as the ICBMs launch.
The military training is poiintless because nukes argument. That can best and only be described as ignorant.
And yes, you could give those air force pilots carriers to train on and regular carrier time to maintain their skills. Great, now you just expanded your pool of navy pilots in all but name, with all of the accompanying costs and other difficulties of expanding the pool of navy pilots.
actually no, you miss the change in doctrine. these arent Navy pilots. Navy pilots are permanently ship bound or based in work of naval aviation. Organisation will vary widely. The Soviet naval bomber fleet was part of the Navy, Specifically Soviet Naval Aviation. Meanwhile similar roles were carried out by the RAF not the RN with Vulcan and Buccaneer.
The emerging doctrine is not to tie airgroups to carrier assets but to have them 'floating' mind the pun. If the air groups have carrier training they can operate from an airfield and use a carrier as a return stopover for missions, or for forward staging. This can be achieved with tactical flexibility.
While this does go against US doctrine, and UK until recently ironically this was not always the case. One of the best examples of flexible forward deployment was done by the USAF using the US navy, for the Doolittle raid. This was the first retaliatiory raid on Tokyo, mostly a token gesture or retaliation for Pearl Harbor. The strike force was launched from carriers in forward position but were ferried there from land bases.
What it appears the UK is doing, and likely China, is using this flexibility on a permanent basis.
You really can't. Landing on a short runway marked off at an air force base is not in any way the same as landing on a short runway on a ship moving at 30mph and pitching and rolling in all axes as you approach.
You really can. Quote the full text so you understand what was written. Its a transitional arrangment:
There are plenty of opportunities to train carrier crews from off site aviation, its cheaper too as you can train logistical crews i artificially compact environments such as bordered off areas of air bases and then transfer trained crews over to carriers later building up to capacity.
Part of the problems of training carrier crews is the compact nature of the carrier combined with the high intensity work. With a carrier working in tandem with an airbase you can build up to capacity slowly. You transfer some of the crews over for hands on work on the carrier while others work under confinement simulation on shore. As confidence grows you transfer a higher proportion of the assets to the carrier.
Once you have a trained crew new crew can be trained in rotation which is different.
Now you can multiply this by having the air group flexibly assigned on top of this. a carrier can run 3x aircraft, but runs x while a shorebase runs 2x, ordinary flight training can cycle assets between stations.
Expecting to build carrier crews without training on real carriers is how you end up crashing a jet into the carrier and desperately hoping it doesn't chain reaction into sinking the ship. Trust me on this.
If you cant read the thread properly why should I trust you on what you say. You are compounding error again.
I can land my (much slower) plane on a carrier-length spot of pavement pretty easily, but if I tried to land on a real carrier in anything but the absolute calmest sea conditions the only question would be just which form of fatal crash it would turn into.
Sure but you are a private light aircraft pilot? These people are not.
That's an immense "if". We're nowhere near the point of being able to hand off the job to drones. Will we get there eventually? Sure. But it's not a question that is terribly relevant to the subject of China's current naval and political ambitions.
Actually its an immense yes, because its already being done. Token link:
Correction: a few years ago quadcopters had no reason to exist. The sole reason for a quadcopter to exist at all is to make as cheap a platform as possible.
No they didn't work, there was always a need for them. Attempts at quads both rotor and jet were briefly made in the 60's they were deathtraps. Some were retained as extreme training vehicles for NASA, ultimately the Lunar lander was a quad rocket when in maneuver mode.
A conventional helicopter is better for anything other than toy-size toys and camera platforms because of inherent advantages of single large rotors over multiple small electric motors. The only advantage a quadcopter offers is the fact that you can omit the extremely complicated rotor control system of a helicopter and make 95% of it out of cheap injection molded plastic. It's a niche concept that was sitting around waiting for inertial measurement chips to become cheap enough to go in a toy, and as soon as smartphones drove the cost of that technology down enough we pretty quickly proceeded to exactly what we have now.
Think what you are saying here. Quadcopter tech did not start as toys, but for military purposes. toys came later, so the coasts were not as a relevant as you think.
PS: the first successful quadcopter was flown in 1922. It just never went anywhere because it cost more than $20 to build one.
If ordinary joes can now do formation drone flying think what a military can do.
You know what we call ordinary pilots trying to do formation flying without extensive training? Dead.
You know what we call pilots trying to do formation flying with extensive training? Aerobatic display teams. There have been around a while, and yes they train extensively. Red Arrows has the best reputation, and are noted for exceptionally close passes and formations.
Again I have no idea where you get the idea that anyone would assume military pilots from developed armed forces would skimp on essential training. Cut the strawman please.
Telling a cheap toy drone to hover in formation with some other cheap toys is not in any way the same as formation flying in real aircraft.
however in all this you missed the point. for drones the flight dynamics and reliability for the automated piloting has developed so far that toy drones can do formation flying. As this is the case what can military drones do? At an absolute minimum the queueing and timed landing and launches of carrier flight operations could be successfully automated given adequate coding.
Its complicated to land a squadron of aircraft on a carrier while launching another squadron in the same time window. However drones doing the same task could realistically be queued through a centralised control computer. Point here is that carrier operations may well become greatly simplified from a point of air group control, either now or in the near future. Simplified enough that an emerging navy like China has about as much chance of being cutting edge as a western navy with an established carrier force. Mosre so if there isnt a vested interest in maintaining current technologies for reasons of budget allocation.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Jadenim wrote: Two things to bear in mind with the UK carriers: 1) it won’t be any old RAF squadron deployed, they are specifically identified for carrier ops and will train and work up before deployment and 2) they’re operating STOVL aircraft, which are much more forgiving for carrier operations (I’m NOT suggesting “easy” by any stretch, but plonking down from a hover is easIER than hitting 4 wires at 140kts)
There is no such thing as any old RAF squadron, with exception for logistical transport. RAF combat pilot standards are second to none, this is not just their opinion, but of other pilots who meet them..
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/08/01 17:42:06
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
If we went to war with Russia or China, our carriers would be gone within a week. I think we know that. Hell, most of our aviation assets would be destroyed within a month.
Russia is an iffy question on that. Definitely during the height of the Cold War, but now its probably not the case. Russia has far less functional military hardware in reality than they have on paper. They couldn't take out our carriers that easily.
China is definitely not capable of doing that right now. They simply don't have the range on their aircraft or missiles to take out US carriers, since unlike Russia they don't have global power projection. US carriers can sit quite safely just out of range of China's attempts to attack them. This is why China is tying to expand these capabilities, they don't exist right now. China is like this with the US right now.
Aircraft overall though would rapidly disappear in any type of conflict. Carriers would be able to stay safe, but the planes launching from them would rapidly dwindle to the point where they could no longer be used for offensive operations unless we began producing older cheaper planes to launch from the carriers. Which in one way would take the Carriers out, if a carrier has no planes it might as well be sunk.
More likely is that we'd get in a situation where all the Carriers would be recalled because they no longer have operational air wings and we're left with only ground forces to prosecute whatever war is going on. And every now and then planes would make a cameo appearance as we were able to make some more, but be largely irrelevant as they could not be produced in numbers to make a difference as they'd all get shot down. Pilots would also be a problem as every plane shot down is probably a lost pilot since its over enemy territory.
So you have forgoten that one wargame 2003?
Or the recent Nato training were subs were able to just hide under the carriers?
No capital ships are at an endpoint imo.
No, but from what I know China's submarines are quite primitive. They wouldn't be able to pull a maneuver like that off.
Russia would be a different story, but again they've fallen from grace a bit.
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
If we went to war with Russia or China, our carriers would be gone within a week. I think we know that. Hell, most of our aviation assets would be destroyed within a month.
Russia is an iffy question on that. Definitely during the height of the Cold War, but now its probably not the case. Russia has far less functional military hardware in reality than they have on paper. They couldn't take out our carriers that easily.
China is definitely not capable of doing that right now. They simply don't have the range on their aircraft or missiles to take out US carriers, since unlike Russia they don't have global power projection. US carriers can sit quite safely just out of range of China's attempts to attack them. This is why China is tying to expand these capabilities, they don't exist right now. China is like this with the US right now.
Aircraft overall though would rapidly disappear in any type of conflict. Carriers would be able to stay safe, but the planes launching from them would rapidly dwindle to the point where they could no longer be used for offensive operations unless we began producing older cheaper planes to launch from the carriers. Which in one way would take the Carriers out, if a carrier has no planes it might as well be sunk.
More likely is that we'd get in a situation where all the Carriers would be recalled because they no longer have operational air wings and we're left with only ground forces to prosecute whatever war is going on. And every now and then planes would make a cameo appearance as we were able to make some more, but be largely irrelevant as they could not be produced in numbers to make a difference as they'd all get shot down. Pilots would also be a problem as every plane shot down is probably a lost pilot since its over enemy territory.
So you have forgoten that one wargame 2003?
Or the recent Nato training were subs were able to just hide under the carriers?
No capital ships are at an endpoint imo.
No, but from what I know China's submarines are quite primitive. They wouldn't be able to pull a maneuver like that off.
Russia would be a different story, but again they've fallen from grace a bit.
Issue is, submarine and cyber arm are still as capable as ever. (mostly because comparatively cheap and easy to maintain.
Also remember, the wargame i am thinking off was against Iran, a far more primitive enemy then China.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/08/01 17:58:21
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
Orlanth wrote: One other consideration is that carriers can host air wings rather than have them integrally.
And then you get to find out how many aircraft and/or carriers you can lose to accidents involving poorly trained pilots. Carrier aviation is dangerous, you don't put normal land-based pilots on a carrier unless it's an act of desperation.
Or you have an idiotproof carrier, meaning a huge carrier, which also makes for an easy target.
I'm not sure anything smaller than Project Habukuk would be 'idiotproof'. And even then... do you have any idea how many pilots screw up landings at your typical civil aviation airport? And those a) are generally not subject to at-sea conditions, b) do not move at all, much less in three dimensions, and c) don't add the stress of having no other place to land for thousands of miles....
Orlanth wrote: One other consideration is that carriers can host air wings rather than have them integrally.
And then you get to find out how many aircraft and/or carriers you can lose to accidents involving poorly trained pilots. Carrier aviation is dangerous, you don't put normal land-based pilots on a carrier unless it's an act of desperation.
Or you have an idiotproof carrier, meaning a huge carrier, which also makes for an easy target.
I'm not sure anything smaller than Project Habukuk would be 'idiotproof'. And even then... do you have any idea how many pilots screw up landings at your typical civil aviation airport? And those a) are generally not subject to at-sea conditions, b) do not move at all, much less in three dimensions, and c) don't add the stress of having no other place to land for thousands of miles....
1. Carrier compatible aircraft pilots are being cross trained in some air forces such as the RAF.
2. Drones do not require this training, just coding, and unlike a human pilot can auto adjust for sea conditions of the landing deck. Its one more variable to feed into a decent computer.
I have few problems believing that a competent air force can have cross trained combat pilots for carrier operations.
I have even less problems if newer naval aircraft have a 'docking computer' for pilot assist.
I have no problems at all believing you can get a drone to land on a carrier, and believe that with computer tech being what it is nowadays you should be able to sequence this quickly and automatically.
We know the cross training and flexible air groups are being done with the RAF/RN based on earlier press reports plus the deployment of the UK carrier without an air group.
I can only suspect China is doing something similar, but this is the obvious way forward, and China needs shortcuts to kickstart its naval aviation force properly. Drone carriers are the way forward ultimately..
That being said Habukuk would be cool Some designs for tax haven/city ships are very similar.
Interesting idea, airport operations are the least of its problems though, but I have no doubt that if something like this ever existed the super rich utilising it could afford ex-navy pilots anyway.
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
I'm basing this on the fact that you're talking about training a large pool of non-naval pilots and then allocating them to to-be-built-later carriers. It doesn't matter if the country has a carrier because that carrier already has pilots using it. Likewise, those non-naval pilots already have duties not involving carriers and probably don't have time to add more training.
Why would you assume i think that people only need to do something once to train in aviation. Everyone needs to practice, military pilots more than most.
Well yes, that's the entire point! Having a trained and capable pool of carrier pilots means investing in the entire infrastructure to maintain them, having part-time pilots is going to be of marginal value at best.
The military training is poiintless because nukes argument. That can best and only be described as ignorant.
Lolwut? You missed the point entirely there. My point is that an inadequately trained reserve force is pointless because in any situation where you'd be willing to accept the appalling accident rates the world is probably rapidly approaching nuclear annihilation. A well trained conventional force is of value because you can use them in everyday operations without worrying about how to justify killing half of them in accidents.
Navy pilots are permanently ship bound or based in work of naval aviation.
Yes, exactly, and the point is that the training commitment required to have safe and effective carrier pilots is close to "permanently ship bound".
While this does go against US doctrine, and UK until recently ironically this was not always the case. One of the best examples of flexible forward deployment was done by the USAF using the US navy, for the Doolittle raid. This was the first retaliatiory raid on Tokyo, mostly a token gesture or retaliation for Pearl Harbor. The strike force was launched from carriers in forward position but were ferried there from land bases.
That's not a very good comparison. The Doolittle raid happened in the context of total war and was effectively a one-way suicide mission. If you're willing to accept the extreme risks of hoping your bombers manage to reach some hypothetical potential landing site in contested territory and meet up with friendly ground forces to escape then you're probably not concerned about, say, a pilot misjudging the motion of the ship, clipping the island with a wingtip, and crashing. Just push the wreckage off the deck and launch the next bomber. If you tried to do the things we did in WWII in the modern era the politicians responsible for all those accidental deaths would be lucky to survive the impeachment threats long enough to lose the next election.
Actually its an immense yes, because its already being done. Token link:
Note that this is a project that has not even flown yet, not a completed system, and it is only attempting the very easiest non-combat role. And I'd like to see how this thing performs in a real war, not just bombing "military age males" from far above any possible threat. I'll bet the military finds drones a lot less interesting once someone switches on the GPS jamming (or blows the satellites out of space) and the radio beacons that are the only alternative for autonomous landing create a giant "direct missile here" sign for any threat in a 20+ mile radius.
No they didn't work, there was always a need for them.
There really wasn't. As I said, conventional helicopters have massive advantages once you get above toy scale and take over any conceivable role. The only advantage a quadcopter has is that you can make 95% of the airframe out of cheap injection molded plastic and minimize the repair costs of the cheap toy when its idiot owner inevitably crashes it. And that advantage was meaningless until IMU chips came down sufficiently in price. It doesn't matter how cheap and easily replaceable the rotors are if the autopilot system costs $5k or more.
Again I have no idea where you get the idea that anyone would assume military pilots from developed armed forces would skimp on essential training.
You're the one trying to defend the idea that you can get carrier pilots on some discount program without developing full-scale carrier operations and dedicated naval pilots.
however in all this you missed the point. for drones the flight dynamics and reliability for the automated piloting has developed so far that toy drones can do formation flying.
Again, you're not getting it. The difficulty with drones was not flight dynamics or automated piloting, it was getting IMU chips down in price (driven by cheap commercial phones/video games/etc) to a point where making a toy drone capable of formation flight was possible. If you wanted to spend $100k each on a set of drones you could have done it much earlier. But with no market for it nobody was bothering to push development.
As this is the case what can military drones do? At an absolute minimum the queueing and timed landing and launches of carrier flight operations could be successfully automated given adequate coding.
Well sure, but queue management is only a tiny part of the problem. The difficult part is getting a plane to pass through a tiny volume of space that is moving forward at 30+ mph and pitching and rolling in all three axes simultaneously in unpredictable ways, and doing so with 100% reliability because even small errors quickly lead to crashes. And don't forget the poor conditions, the drone needs to do all of this in low visibility and gusty winds while its GPS accuracy is degraded by jamming. Is it a solvable problem? I'm sure. But it's an immensely difficult one and I don't see drones taking over from human pilots for a long time.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/08/02 03:51:07
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
I'm basing this on the fact that you're talking about training a large pool of non-naval pilots and then allocating them to to-be-built-later carriers. It doesn't matter if the country has a carrier because that carrier already has pilots using it. Likewise, those non-naval pilots already have duties not involving carriers and probably don't have time to add more training.
Its entirely possible to simply rotate the pilots through the carrier. They have luxury of solely devoting its time to conducting training exercises with a larger than necessary pool of pilots. Its hardly a waste if China is planning on making more Carriers, and given the size of China's army they could easily have a lot of pilots training on carrier operations without being detrimental to their overall airforce.
Its not like the Liaoning being devoted solely to training is detrimental to China's navy. If anything, its the best possible use for it. And if we're talking about just getting pilots used to landing and taking off, China does own a few other decommissioned carrier hulls. You can have pilots practice on those.
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
I'm basing this on the fact that you're talking about training a large pool of non-naval pilots and then allocating them to to-be-built-later carriers. It doesn't matter if the country has a carrier because that carrier already has pilots using it. Likewise, those non-naval pilots already have duties not involving carriers and probably don't have time to add more training.
Read more carefully then. You are still compounding error.
If the PRN builds many carriers they are likely to be drone carriers.
Not every combat pilot in the Chinese air force needs carrier training.
Meanwhile with the UK you have a far smaller air force and a cadre of elite pilots and two carriers.
Well yes, that's the entire point! Having a trained and capable pool of carrier pilots means investing in the entire infrastructure to maintain them, having part-time pilots is going to be of marginal value at best.
You are not thinking this through. The main cost is in maintaining full carrier air wings, by ferrying pilots to and from you get the exp without the main stress of maintaining a permanent air wing. Finally with a cadre of existing elite pilots much can be done to make matters easier with adequate simulation time plus landing assist computers. This isn't the 80's anymore, the UK has long been into automation on its carrier fleet. The Queen Elizabeth class carrier has a capacity crew of 1600, for an operation air wing of 40, though it can reportedly carry far more aircraft than that. That crew is tiny compared to a US carrier, and proportionately far more efficient in terms of crew per operable aircraft. Both UK and US carriers require about the same compliment of navigation and engineering crew to run this ship.
The military training is poiintless because nukes argument. That can best and only be described as ignorant.
Lolwut? You missed the point entirely there. My point is that an inadequately trained reserve force is pointless because in any situation where you'd be willing to accept the appalling accident rates the world is probably rapidly approaching nuclear annihilation. A well trained conventional force is of value because you can use them in everyday operations without worrying about how to justify killing half of them in accidents..
Nope. Try thinking through.
1. The colossal accident rates you are assuming wont happen because the air forces currently doing this (notably the RAF) didn't get their flight credentials by collecting enough coupons.
2. Military technology is not flat. What may be true of carrier operations in previous generations might no longer be true today in an age where advanced piloting assist is a common reality. If this generation can develop a driverless car we can develop an autopilot to provide competent landing assist for a regular pilot landing for the first time on a carrier. Note here that the pilots are well trained anyway on top of this. Modern combat pilots are used to operating special technologies that lock controls briefly at point of operation, some weapon systems already do this. Modern combat pilot are also used to computer assisted piloting, modern combat aircraft are built to be aerodynamically unstable, either due to accommodating stealth characteristics or because super-maneuverability is desired. The F-117 and other first generation stealth aircraft were notoriously unstable in flight but smoothed due to full autopilot assist on small vanes providing stability. This is normal now, if a computer is needed to keep a plane 'neutral' so it responds to the pilot alone, even in level flight, its merely an additional algorithm to add compensation to landing on a carrier.
3. You may recognise that conventional deployments have to be considered under government budget. The US throws money at its carrier fleet that other nations cannot afford, UK under austerity in particular. Have you considered how much cheaper it would be to keep and empty carrier and fly in assets when needed? It doesn't require an apocalyptic scenario to suddenly need a large number of carrier air assets. The opposite in fact, the smaller the war the more likely it is not in immediate reach.
That's not a very good comparison. The Doolittle raid happened in the context of total war and was effectively a one-way suicide mission.
Its a good comparison because they did it, it worked and it was not a suicide mission because the air crews didnt die.
It was very much an expediency though.
However its proof of concept for better circumstances. Doolittle raid did not have mid air refuelling and prexisting air bases in ferry range. Take another hypotehietical scenario for the current day. Say the Uk wanted to bomb Iran. they could moblise RAF assets from the UK and fly them to Akrotiri in Cyprus. Let us assume they are not in range from there, from Akrotiri they could fly to a carrier and use that as a stop over for the mission and carry fuel from the mission to take a long leg back to Akrotiri. Alternately light refuelling aircraft could fly from the carrier meet the strike wing and give it the range to hit its target and return to Akrotiri.
This is a good choice for the UK as the UK has a large number of disparate air bases to utilise as relics from prior colonies and can use a carrier to fill caps in the net.
Note that this is a project that has not even flown yet, not a completed system, and it is only attempting the very easiest non-combat role. And I'd like to see how this thing performs in a real war, not just bombing "military age males" from far above any possible threat. I'll bet the military finds drones a lot less interesting once someone switches on the GPS jamming (or blows the satellites out of space) and the radio beacons that are the only alternative for autonomous landing create a giant "direct missile here" sign for any threat in a 20+ mile radius.
One of the nice things about drone technology is that you don't need to advertise it. You don't need a lot of practice above deck. So a lot more can be obfuscated. I really think the public is only only dimly aware of what combat drones currently do. People on YouTube joke at the UK having a carrier with no air wing, but Russia today doesnt, and they have motive to because they called it a missile target, and China made similar noises.
I cant tell you that the Queen Elizabeth is full of something similar to Taranis drones, I don't know, but I suspect it may be, either that or it will get a hot shift of RAF assets at point of need. Nobody will know until someone kicks the beehive.
What I can do is give a similar example.
Do you remember the 1981 first launch of the space shuttle? Very big event, delayed a lot stopped and reastarted until it finally happened. Generated a lot of hype. The 'replacement' X-37 completed a long mission in orbit and not revealed publically until it had already landed. Why? Because it was a drone shuttle. No pilots, no egos, no training, no fanfare.
There really wasn't. As I said, conventional helicopters have massive advantages once you get above toy scale and take over any conceivable role. The only advantage a quadcopter has is that you can make 95% of the airframe out of cheap injection molded plastic and minimize the repair costs of the cheap toy when its idiot owner inevitably crashes it. And that advantage was meaningless until IMU chips came down sufficiently in price. It doesn't matter how cheap and easily replaceable the rotors are if the autopilot system costs $5k or more.
That drone tech that no longer costs $5k wasn't developed for toys, toys are a spin off application (sic). Drones were and are needed for aerial reconnaissance and surveillance, hover is an important part of that, as is miniaturisation. Cost savings is a fringe benefit and one not applicable to military spending for the most part.
You're the one trying to defend the idea that you can get carrier pilots on some discount program without developing full-scale carrier operations and dedicated naval pilots.
The RAF is not a discount program. China isn't short of military spending either. Try again.
The needed savings are logistical, not material, though maintenance at sea is significantly more expensive.
However up to a point I will defend a 'discount' armed services at least to the point of defending the logic behind it. The UK is heavily invested in mothballing expensive military hardware to minimise running costs. There may be a price to this, but unless totally unaware of a looming war something can be done. IIRC nearly all the UK's tanks are in mothballs. This shaves off a lot of maintenance costs and the few remaining tanks are rotated for crew training. This works so long as you have time to deploy them when needed.
Again, you're not getting it. The difficulty with drones was not flight dynamics or automated piloting, it was getting IMU chips down in price (driven by cheap commercial phones/video games/etc) to a point where making a toy drone capable of formation flight was possible. If you wanted to spend $100k each on a set of drones you could have done it much earlier. But with no market for it nobody was bothering to push development.
We know that China, Russia and the UK are heavily invested in drone militarisation, amongst others, we see snippets of what these drones can do. US drone use is more overt. All predate the current trend in consumer electronics. Primitive drones were used in Vietnam, Israel used them in volume in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the first large scale open use. Drones were heavily developed in the 80's at the tail end of the cold war for naval forces. Now these drones would cost a lot and government would pay.
Well sure, but queue management is only a tiny part of the problem. The difficult part is getting a plane to pass through a tiny volume of space that is moving forward at 30+ mph and pitching and rolling in all three axes simultaneously in unpredictable ways, and doing so with 100% reliability because even small errors quickly lead to crashes. And don't forget the poor conditions, the drone needs to do all of this in low visibility and gusty winds while its GPS accuracy is degraded by jamming. Is it a solvable problem? I'm sure.
Queue management is the only thing needed to be added, military drones already had the rest covered. Precision flight, check, poor weather adaption, check, jamming resistance, cant call on that one but I will check it because its military robotics 101.
But it's an immensely difficult one and I don't see drones taking over from human pilots for a long time.
They already have. A human pilot cannot fly current generation fighter aircraft without continued and automatic computer support. In short the flight stick tells the aircraft where the pilot wants to go, the computer actually gets the airframe to do it. To some extent even the most hands on balls of steel veteran pilot has no choice but to select a landing cycle for an autopilot of flying a fifth generation fighter because the aircraft will tumble from the skies if the computer is off. Now these are not drones, but its an automatic of the relevant portion of the aircrafts use for the purposes of the thread i.e. the automation threshold includes carrier launch and flight recovery.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/08/02 15:03:05
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
You really can't. Landing on a short runway marked off at an air force base is not in any way the same as landing on a short runway on a ship moving at 30mph and pitching and rolling in all axes as you approach. Expecting to build carrier crews without training on real carriers is how you end up crashing a jet into the carrier and desperately hoping it doesn't chain reaction into sinking the ship. Trust me on this. I can land my (much slower) plane on a carrier-length spot of pavement pretty easily, but if I tried to land on a real carrier in anything but the absolute calmest sea conditions the only question would be just which form of fatal crash it would turn into.
This was guy's first time landing on a carrier:
During Norwegian Campaign, RAF pilots landed their Gladiators and Hurricanes on HMS Glorious without major incidents. Obviously conditions were good and involved approach speeds much slower than with jets.
Every carrier air arm has started from a situation where they have planes and pilots but no real carriers - otherwise nobody would have any qualified carrier pilots!
Building the skillset for actually operating from a carrier, as opposed from merely performing a random landing or takeoff in good conditions, is of course not a trivial matter or something which could be instilled in few weeks training.
There is more to this story. It was during the evacuation of Saigon and the 'bird dog was overloaded, Major Buang-Ly had his wife and five children on board. His radio was out so he could only receive and had to drop a note on the deck to ask to land. The flight deck was crowded wuth Hueys and due to helicopter operations was unable to make speed to make the short landing safe. a Cessna has no carrier arrestor gear and was too underpowered to land safely on a ship in any notable wind.. Nevertheless Buang-Ly made a perfect landing.
Every carrier air arm has started from a situation where they have planes and pilots but no real carriers - otherwise nobody would have any qualified carrier pilots!
But, but, they must have taken skaven-like casualties getting there because you are unlikely to survive your first landing!!!!!!!!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/08/02 15:14:21
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
Naval pilot programs take a long time to establish. Carrier qualified pilots are a very rare asset. Assuming they can just be whipped up and that carrier operations can begin on sjort order is...blindingly optimistic. Russia's latest active naval deployment of a carrier to a battlezone against an enemy completely incapable of striking back left it minus a two or three of its 24 fixed wing aircraft due to...landing accidents.
Just because there are instances of people making landings on carriers without such training doesn't mean much.
Yeah, you can attempt a hail mary attempt in a STOL aircraft and land on a carrier when your intention is only survival and not reuse of the aircraft. In daylight, with good weather, a flight deck going out of its way to accomodate you, and navigation *to* the carrier (one of the biggest challenges) not being an issue since its so close to land. One will notice however that not every such attempt was successful during the fall of Saigon, and more importantly that sort of landing is a very different thing than a professional carrier pilot landing a much larger and more powerful aircraft and for decades of use across every conceivable environmental condition set.
Going back to drone carriers, again, these still wont be put out quickly, will still require landing training (modern drones are still landed or at least monitored by human pilots, and we're going to need a lot more time before that changes), and are going to face most of the same cons as current carriers do, and there's no evidence China is any further in that road than anyone else.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/08/02 17:02:47
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
Vaktathi wrote: Naval pilot programs take a long time to establish. Carrier qualified pilots are a very rare asset. Assuming they can just be whipped up and that carrier operations can begin on sjort order is...blindingly optimistic.
Last time anyone tried that, US Navy went from 164 aircraft operated from 2 carriers in 1942 to 2612 aircraft operated from 34 carriers in 1945 (and that's just counting main line, big ships, not escort/light carriers, as while they had a lot smaller air wings there were over 110+ of them, so the above aircraft number should be doubled, really). That was from economy orders of magnitude smaller than modern one, thought to be fair modern aircraft are also much more complicated so just let's call that a wash and call the above pretty much normal numbers for big power actively trying to raise these numbers. Blindingly optimistic?
If we went to war with Russia or China, our carriers would be gone within a week. I think we know that.
We actually have absolutely no idea of that. Admirals would pay top coin to know that.
Missiles and drones are usually the sort of thing espoused by people thinking about these sorts of things, but those people forget some very key facts.
1. In a war against the powers mentioned above, satellites guiding your drones/missiles are going to be blown out of orbit within about a day. There will be no GPS to lend a hand.
2. Drones are easy to beat by deploying jammers on the fleet around a carrier. Your signal is going to be infinitely stronger than someone trying to guide/direct drones from a distance, and you can easily hook up jammers to radar so that the drones are detected and jammed long before they're capable of hurting you. On a ground target you can try and pinpoint the position so that the drone keeps on at it even after the signal is cut off, but at sea, this doesn't work due to ships maneouvring.
3. The last and most important point is that nobody really knows until the chips are down just how good your ECW is against your opponent's hardware. If you have a way of confusing the means by which a missile or drone locks onto the target that the other guy didn't think of? That's it. You're invulnerable until they can work it out and come up with a counter. These are long range largely automated weapons. There's no human on site to make last second corrections. On the other hand, if they can't stop you? Boom, there goes the carrier fleet. Unless they can jury rig an alternative or defensive mechanism in short order.
China's much vaunted carrier-killer missiles might end up being the Exocet to the Galahad as far as the American carrier fleets are concerned, or they might turn out to be very expensive ways to surprise fish instead. Until the gak hits the fan, I don't know, the Americans don't know, the Chinese don't know, and nobody on the internet knows either. The Americans might find half the fleets sunk in 24 hours by some insane barrage of precision missiles, or those precision missiles may find that the Americans have a reliable ECW method of redirecting/negating them altogether.
Vaktathi wrote: Naval pilot programs take a long time to establish. Carrier qualified pilots are a very rare asset. Assuming they can just be whipped up and that carrier operations can begin on sjort order is...blindingly optimistic.
Last time anyone tried that, US Navy went from 164 aircraft operated from 2 carriers in 1942 to 2612 aircraft operated from 34 carriers in 1945 (and that's just counting main line, big ships, not escort/light carriers, as while they had a lot smaller air wings there were over 110+ of them, so the above aircraft number should be doubled, really). That was from economy orders of magnitude smaller than modern one, thought to be fair modern aircraft are also much more complicated so just let's call that a wash and call the above pretty much normal numbers for big power actively trying to raise these numbers. Blindingly optimistic?
That feat was accomplished in WW2, but as noted this was when literally everything involved was orders of magnitude less complex and capable, the equipment and systems significantly more rube-goldberg-ey, a lot less was expected of the equipment and pilots (air operations weren't being conducted in all weather conditions or at night in anything near the same way, ships weren't out on continuous cruise for 9 months, etc) and there was a significantly higher tolerance for losses in accidents and training than exists today.
The training involved in WW2 was generall around 16 weeks of airtime training before going off to combat, now a pilot doesnt even get to be a nugget until they're 2 years in. Everything involved just requires a lot more training and knowledge. The same is true of the equipment, vehicles, and munitions, except moreso.
So, I'll revise the statement, it's blindingly optimistic if we want the equipment and people to perform with anything even remotely approaching the capability of current assets. We've seen this in previous wars as well, but I expect it will be a dramatically more stark issue in a future conventional conflict that somehow avoids going nuclear.
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
Vaktathi wrote: Just because there are instances of people making landings on carriers without such training doesn't mean much.
Yeah, you can attempt a hail mary attempt in a STOL aircraft and land on a carrier when your intention is only survival and not reuse of the aircraft. In daylight, with good weather, a flight deck going out of its way to accomodate you, and navigation *to* the carrier (one of the biggest challenges) not being an issue since its so close to land. One will notice however that not every such attempt was successful during the fall of Saigon, and more importantly that sort of landing is a very different thing than a professional carrier pilot landing a much larger and more powerful aircraft and for decades of use across every conceivable environmental condition set.
This. In that picture I see no rain, no darkness, and a pretty level deck. Good luck making that landing in rain so heavy you can't even see the carrier half a mile out, gusty wind, and a rolling deck. There's a reason that a lot of naval pilots consider carrier landings in poor conditions scarier than getting shot at over hostile territory.
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
The training involved in WW2 was generall around 16 weeks of airtime training before going off to combat, now a pilot doesnt even get to be a nugget until they're 2 years in. Everything involved just requires a lot more training and knowledge. The same is true of the equipment, vehicles, and munitions, except moreso.
I know I've mentioned my own service time in the Army on these forums, however I've never really gone into detail of what I did. . . The short version is: I fixed anything that carried an electrical current within the Intel field. This preface is related to the quoted bit because of this: My job schooling in the army was often hailed as the longest single course in the army, at 47 weeks and 4 days (when I went through. . . and, the important bit there is "in the army" because yes, linguists and EOD each have just as long, if not longer schooling, however those are joint DoD schools).
After graduating my school (at least when I went through) even the worst of us could solder any circuit board, make/repair fiber optic cable, do full linux command line work, extremely deep level Windows stuff including networking. All of this backed up by solid theoretical foundations (ie, learning the basic maths, Kirchoff's Voltage Loop Law, some hex/binary translations, etc). . . If you apply army logic to naval aviation maintenance, the depth and technicality that one needs to train maintenance crews is much greater now than it was in WW2 (its also why, as I understand it via having an ex-AF aircraft maintainer for a neighbor, there is a lot more specialization in that field today)
Russia is an iffy question on that. Definitely during the height of the Cold War, but now its probably not the case. Russia has far less functional military hardware in reality than they have on paper. They couldn't take out our carriers that easily.
China is definitely not capable of doing that right now. They simply don't have the range on their aircraft or missiles to take out US carriers, since unlike Russia they don't have global power projection. US carriers can sit quite safely just out of range of China's attempts to attack them. This is why China is tying to expand these capabilities, they don't exist right now. China is like this with the US right now.
Actually the big Chinese anti-ship missiles outrange not only American missiles but also American missiles launched from Carrier based Aircraft at the edge of their combat radius. This is due to America not being allowed to build missiles in the 500-1000km range and 1000-5500km range because of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia.
China is definitely not capable of doing that right now. They simply don't have the range on their aircraft or missiles to take out US carriers, since unlike Russia they don't have global power projection. US carriers can sit quite safely just out of range of China's attempts to attack them. This is why China is tying to expand these capabilities, they don't exist right now. China is like this with the US right now.
So you have forgoten that one wargame 2003?
Or the recent Nato training were subs were able to just hide under the carriers?
No capital ships are at an endpoint imo.
No, but from what I know China's submarines are quite primitive. They wouldn't be able to pull a maneuver like that off.
Russia would be a different story, but again they've fallen from grace a bit.
Did you hear about that time a 13 years ago when a Chinese sub surfaced undetected in the middile of an American Carrier group exercise off Okinawa and freaked them the feth out?
The one on the sub kind of buried the lede though...
Also, an incident very similar to the one that happened in 2006 was reported on 24th of October, 2015, when a Chinese submarine tailed the nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Ronald Reagan off the coast of Japan. On this occasion, Pacific Fleet and Pacific Command refused to comment the event but didn’t deny that it happened.
Support Blood and Spectacles Publishing:
https://www.patreon.com/Bloodandspectaclespublishing
The one on the sub kind of buried the lede though...
Also, an incident very similar to the one that happened in 2006 was reported on 24th of October, 2015, when a Chinese submarine tailed the nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Ronald Reagan off the coast of Japan. On this occasion, Pacific Fleet and Pacific Command refused to comment the event but didn’t deny that it happened.
I am unable read the article at work, but being a former submariner, the diesel/electric boats of yesteryear can actually be scarily quiet.
A lot of the subs used by smaller nations, or nations that haven't developed their own nuclear sub fleet, use older Russian diesel/electric boats that they retrofit with slightly more modern equipment (China included although they have more modern boats of their own design too). When these boats transit on the surface under diesel power (or at periscope depth with the snorkel) they are incredibly loud and our sonar can pick them up from miles away just like any other ship, although sometimes further as the diesel engine is below the waterline and sound travels further under water. When they go full electric power (and slow) is a whole different story. Generally, unless someone knows there is possibly a sub in the area, they go unnoticed. The downside to this is obviously they have limited range on battery power and the faster they go the louder they typically end up being due to screw noise/cavitation or just general boat noises from the stresses of pushing all that water out of the way. Our ships would have no idea they were there unless they made/are making some sort of noise (a dropped toilet lid can be heard from nearly 10 miles away under water) or if for some reason we began pinging active sonar. We typically don't do the latter (it paints a nice picture of everything in the water for everyone that can hear it, friendly or not, so its not typically something that's randomly done) and the former are pretty rare unless some careless crewman drops something.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/08/14 19:52:23
From wiki regarding the Kilo class, which i think IronWarLeg is most likely talking about here.
Operators
The first submarine entered service in the Soviet Navy in 1980, and the class remains in use with the Russian Navy today. As of September 2011, 17 vessels were believed to still be in active service with the Russian Navy, while 7 vessels were thought to be in reserve. 40 vessels have been exported to several countries:
Algeria: 4 Original Kilo (Project 877), 4 Improved Kilo (Project 636)
People's Republic of China: 2 Original Kilo (Project 877), 10 Improved Kilo (Project 636).
India: 10 Original Kilo (Project 877), 1 sustained major casualty; – Designated as the Sindhughosh class
Myanmar: one boat will transfer from India end of 2019.
Poland: 1 Original Kilo (Project 877) – ORP Orzeł.
Iran: 3 Original Kilo (Project 877).
Romania: 1 Original Kilo (Project 877) – Romanian submarine Delfinul.[citation needed]
Russia: 22 Original Kilo (Project 877), 6 Improved Kilo (Project 636.3) and additional 6 Improved Kilo on order (636.3) for Pacific fleet to be delivered 2019–2021.
Vietnam: 6 Improved Kilo (Project 636). Includes Vietnamese submarine Hồ Chí Minh City.
Iran having them seems relevant right now, as well as China from the point of view of the thread.
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
Orlanth, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I continue to vastly disagree with your ideas about how easy it is to mass-deploy newly qualified carrier based pilots. If you communicated with actual naval aviators you'd quickly appreciate that just training someone to land on a carrier isn't how you suddenly transform a pilot into a carrier-ready pilot.
Even with the modern assistance of advanced avionics and computer-assisted slopes, etc...it's still an incredibly difficult task even in perfect conditions. To even stay qualified you need to be practicing and "doing it" frequently. Even after a medical leave, etc., a pilot returning to the ship will have to re-qualify, etc. It's not something you just do when necessary, or qualify once every six months. This is perhaps worth a read:
The Daily Life of a Navy RIO (1970’s) You are awakened in your stateroom on your 65,000 ton nuclear aircraft carrier at 0430 for a 0700 launch.
You get up, shave, and then dress in your Nomex (fire resistant) flight suit and steel-toed flight boots. Because you are in the senior fighter squadron of the carrier airwing, you wear a long-sleeved red turtleneck under your flight suit.
Breakfast this morning is in the “dirty shirt” wardroom (or officer’s dining room) because you are in flight gear and not properly dressed for the regular wardroom.
You then report to your “Ready Room”, located deep in the ship, for your mission planning and briefing. If you are the Mission Commander - that is the officer in command of the mission and responsible for its successful completion and all operation decisions during the mission - you will have arrived particularly early to study the mission.
At the specified briefing time, the aircrews assigned to that “event” will take their seats and the Mission Commander will begin his briefing. The assigned mission will be described, along with procedures to be followed for each stage of the flight. Daily radio call signs will be reviewed, tanker information for in-flight refueling will be issued and emergency procedures will be reviewed. Rules of engagement in the event of hostile action will be discussed. A detailed weather briefing will be presented by the carrier’s weather staff via closed circuit TV.
Pilots and RIOs then sit down as crews and cover their individual briefing items. In operational fighter squadrons, pilots and RIOs are “crewed” and the same guys always fly together. This way you get to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and also develop a high level of teamwork in the airplane. An inexperienced pilot will be normally crewed with an experienced RIO and vice versa, raising the level of overall experience in the aircraft.
About 45 minutes prior to launch, the aircrews will proceed to the “paraloft” or flight equipment room located in the rear of the ready room. Here they will take their individual flight equipment from their locker and check it over as they put it on. If it is winter time, the first thing you’ll put on over your long underwear is the uncomfortable and constricting rubber “dry suit”. If you eject and go into the sea during the winter months without it, you will die within a few minutes. If you parachute into the sea with it, you will probably survive if you are picked up within 25 minutes. On top of your flight suit, you will next put on your “speed slacks” or G-suit. This is a fabric covered series of bladders that cover your legs and abdomen and which automatically inflate when you “pull G’s” in the jet. The G-suit squeezes your legs and abdomen in an attempt to force blood back up into your brain so that you can remain conscious as long as possible in a dogfight. Pulling g’s is a painful experience.
Next comes your LPA, or life preserver assembly, and the harness which connects to the ejection seat in the cockpit and also contains an inflatable life preserver, first aid pouch, miniature flare gun, pistol, water, signal mirror, shroud line cutter, flashlight and other useful things. You tighten the harness as tight as you can stand it to reduce the risk of being injured when the parachute opens after an ejection. Finally, you attach your oxygen mask hose to the harness.
Then you put on your beanie, a cloth skullcap designed to gather sweat and protect the inside of your helmet. You walk to the front of the ready room and grab the maintenance handbook for your assigned aircraft. You carefully note the problems the aircraft has experienced in the last several flights and what maintenance has been done to try and fix it. You pay close attention to this, especially if they were serious or “downing gripes” because it can always happen again. You call maintenance control on the intercom and ask where 103 is spotted on deck. (It is a law of nature that you will almost never fly the airplane with your name on it!) You then don your form-fitted flight helmet and put down the visor. The flight deck of a carrier is the most dangerous place in the world and perhaps the noisiest. Men are run over, sucked into engine intakes, blown overboard or killed by propellers during every deployment. The helmet will protect your hearing on the way to the jet and also keep you from hitting your head on the under-wing pylon. You keep the visor down to protect your eyes from debris that can be blown down the flight deck by jet exhausts.
You pick up your flight bag, which contains your kneeboard, checklist, chart and approach plates and ride the escalator up to the deck below the flight deck. (Why an escalator? You are wearing about 65 lbs. of flight gear.) You climb out onto the catwalk, look carefully around and then step up onto the flight deck itself. It is a beehive of activity. There may be up to 50 aircraft on deck at any one time. 30 of these may be “turning”, that is, have their engines running or their propellers turning. The ship is steaming into the wind at about 28 to 30 mph and to this is added the force of the natural wind. It is always extremely windy and difficult to walk.
You know where your aircraft should be “spotted” on the deck, and you look for it. You proceed very carefully to your aircraft and hang your flight bag on the retractable aircraft ladder. You spend the next 10 minutes carefully conducting a pre-flight inspection of your aircraft. This gets your full attention, because if you miss something on your preflight it could cost you your life. Sometimes your jet is parked “tail over water” which means that everything behind the main wheels is hanging off the flight deck. In that case, you can’t really check the rear half of the aircraft and have to hope that everything back there is in order. Once satisfied that everything appears to be okay, you climb into your cockpit and “strap in”. Your plane captain climbs up and helps you – for all the world like a squire preparing his knight for battle. Before seating yourself in the ejection seat, you spend about two minutes inspecting it. You never neglect this, as this is what you will rely on to save your life in case of an accident or other emergency. You settle in your seat and attach your shoulder harness and lap belts. You then put on and connect the four leg restraints, which are anchored to the floor of the cockpit and designed to slam your legs back against the seat when the ejection seat fires, thus keeping you from losing a foot or leg against the cockpit edges. Next, you connect the oxygen fitting and radio lead and, lastly, the G-suit connection. You are now connected to the jet in 10 places and you give a thumbs-up to the plane captain, who climbs down. Now it’s time to run through your cockpit checks, setting switches properly for engine start.
You close the canopy as soon as possible to cut out the noise and wind. Once the engines have been started, you bring the aircraft’s communications, navigation and weapons systems on-line and check their operation. This must be done quickly, as there is pressure to move quickly forward to the catapult. Once you determine that your jet is functioning properly, you give your maintenance guys a thumbs-up. The deck crew breaks your aircraft down – meaning they remove the chocks and chains that have been securing you to the flight deck as it pitches and rolls. Now you are relying on your brakes and are ready to taxi. Plane directors signal you to move forward and configure your aircraft for launch. Wings are spread and flaps are lowered as you move up the flight deck towards the catapults. As you approach the catapult, a weight board is shown to the RIO. This is the launch weight of your aircraft as computed by the catapult crew. The RIO checks this carefully, because if it is wrong, you won’t be flying when your each the end of your catapult shot. By using hand signals, the RIO directs the adjustment of the weight up or down as needed until it is correct and then gives a thumbs-up. By this time, the aircraft is in place and secured to the catapult. The massive jet blast deflector (JBD) has been raised behind your aircraft to protect the men and aircraft behind you.
You run quickly through the takeoff checklist. The pilots wipes out the controls and goes to afterburner on the throttles. A quick salute to the catapult officer tells him that you are ready for the cat shot. You place your head back firmly in the headrest and sit up as straight as possible to protect your back in case it is necessary to eject. You have already decided that if you feel anything less than the full force of a normal catapult shot, you will initiate immediate ejection. If this becomes necessary, there is an even chance you will out of the survival ejection envelope even if you react as fast as humanly possible. The pilot has one hand on the throttles and one hand on the control stick. In the rear cockpit the RIO has one hand on the lower ejection handle. If disaster strikes and you are to have any chance at all of getting out of the airplane, his reaction will have to be instantaneous. There will be no time for communication and you don’t want to ride an aircraft, which is not flying, into the water in front of the ship with the added pleasure of having the carrier run over you.
When the catapult fires, your aircraft is propelled down the catapult track and flung into the air off the bow of the carrier. You accelerate from zero to perhaps 185 mph in about 2.2 seconds. You find yourself 65 feet off the water and 8-10 mph above stalling speed. The force of the catapult is such that it takes a second or two before you are able to re-focus your eyes on your instruments.
If there are no master caution or warning lights lighting up the cockpit, the landing gear and flaps come up and you begin the rapid climb to your refueling altitude overhead the ship. You take your first look at your navigation and weapons systems, because sometimes the shock of the cat shot will cause them to fail. If the radar is working, the RIO will be looking for the tanker aircraft.
You climb up to your tanking altitude, scanning the sky in all directions to avoid other aircraft. With luck, you’ll spot the tanker on the radar and that will make for an easy rendezvous. You position your aircraft on the tanker’s left wing and wait for the signal that he’s ready to begin. When the tanker pilot gives you a thumbs-up you maneuver behind the tanker and extend the refueling probe. A fuel hose with a canvas covered metal basket about 18 inches in diameter is trailing from an under-wing fuel tank on the tanker aircraft. You stabilize your position relative to the basket and then move forward, attempting to insert the probe into the basket. This is tricky under ideal conditions and a major challenge at night and in bad weather. Once the probe seats in the basket, the indicator on the basket turns green and fuel starts to flow into your jet. You take about 1500 pounds of fuel and then back out of the basket and take position on your tanker’s starboard (right) wing to wait for the remaining aircraft in your flight to tank.
Once everyone has tanked, you turn away and accelerate, taking up the heading to your Combat Air Patrol station. The lead RIO switches the flight radios to check in with the Airborne Controller in the E-2C Hawkeye early warning aircraft. This powerful radar aircraft is normally positioned several hundred miles from the carrier and a typical CAP station may be also. Once arriving at your CAP station, you will investigate all targets that could be threats to the task force and be sent to identify any unidentified contacts detected by the Hawkeye.
Soon it is time to return to the carrier for recovery. You say goodbye to the Hawkeye and head back to the ship’s intended location. This is more interesting than it sounds, because the ship is constantly moving and often you will only have a vague idea of where the ship will be at recovery time. As a naval aviator, you must develop a sixth sense of where to the look for the carrier at the conclusion of every mission.
If you have developed this sense, you will lead your flight back overhead the ship. As Mission Commander of the senior flight squadron, you are responsible for leading all air-wing aircraft in your event into the traffic pattern precisely on time to land within 15 seconds of a ready deck. With tail hook lowered, you orbit overhead the ship at 2,000 feet, watching the flight deck, judging when to bring the stack of aircraft above you down into the traffic pattern. Miscalculate and you could be responsible for forcing jets which are low on fuel into critical situations.
As you see the last few aircraft of the next event being positioned on the catapults below, and the other aircraft being removed from the landing area, you lead your flight down. With your flight in echelon formation to the right, you streak past the carrier at 350 knots. A few seconds beyond the ship you kiss your wingman off and execute a 3.5G “break” to the left. As the aircraft slows to 250 knots and you roll out on your downwind leg, you drop the gear and flaps. As you get the aircraft on speed you quickly run through the before-landing-checklist and upon reaching 400 feet and passing the Landing Signal Officer’s platform you start your left turn. You stay in your left turn and just before you roll out behind the ship, you pick up the “meatball” or optical landing system.
The Landing Signal Officer (LSO) is a pilot or RIO who is specially trained to observe and assist pilots landing aboard the ship in a particular type of aircraft. When you roll out on final approach, and about three quarters of a mile behind the ship, the LSO will direct you to “Call the Ball”. If the optical landing system is in sight, the RIO will make a radio call such as “103…Phantom…Ball…3.8”. This gives the LSO the aircraft side number (103), the aircraft type (F-4 Phantom), that the optical system is seen (Ball) and the aircraft’s fuel state (3.8 = 3800 lbs. of fuel).
The final approach to the carrier is the most demanding part of the flight. (At night or in bad weather, it can be so scary that your knees will be shaking as you climb out of the jet. During the Vietnam War a study was made of navy fighter aircrews who were given bio sensors similar to those worn by astronauts. It was found that the stress levels on aviators were higher while landing on the ship at night than while in actual combat.)
It is said that to be on glide slope and to see a “centered ball” on the optical landing system, your head must be in a space of approximately 18” three quarters of a mile behind the ship. This is exacting flying. Constant corrections of aircraft attitude and throttle are required during final approach to the carrier. Because you are attempting to land on a landing area that is both angled and in motion away from you as you approach it, you must make constant small corrections to the right for line up. Just before touchdown, you fly through the “burble” – a disturbance in the air just behind the ship caused by the island’s (superstructure) passage through the air.
No matter how well you are flying your approach, an incident on the flight deck or a problem with the aircraft landing ahead of you can create a “foul deck” which will necessitate the LSO give you a “wave off” by flashing the lights of the optical landing system at you and calling “wave it off” over the radio. Then, whether you are low on fuel or not, you must add power and fly the aircraft back into the landing pattern for another approach.
If your approach is a good one, and not impeded, your aircraft will slam down on the deck of the carrier. As soon as you touchdown, you will go full power, so that if your arresting hook doesn’t catch on one of the wires, you will have flying speed when you leave the carrier’s angled deck. If your hook catches a wire, you will come to a violent and sudden stop. As the wire pulls your aircraft backwards, you fold your wings, raise your hook and engage the nose wheel steering while preparing to follow the instructions of the flight deck director, who will taxi you clear of the landing area. During daylight flight operations, aircraft is expected to touch down every 15 seconds during the recovery, so there is no time for mistakes. If you screw up, you hurt the guy behind you, who may not have the fuel to go around again. There is no room for error. As you clear the landing area, the RIO will use hand signals to tell the squadron maintenance guys whether the aircraft is “up” or “down” and the same for the weapons system. This will determine where the aircraft will be “spotted” or parked on deck. As you taxi on deck, the RIO’s head is on a swivel, making sure that you are clear of other aircraft, vehicles, and other objects.
Once you reach your assigned spot, the flight deck crew chocks the wheels and chains the aircraft to pad-eyes in the deck surface. The pilot holds the brakes and shuts down the port (left) engine while the RIO opens the canopy and “safes” his ejection seat. The RIO then un-straps and climbs down from the cockpit, checking visually that the aircraft is properly secured. With a thumbs-up from the RIO, the pilot shuts down the starboard (right) engine and releases the brakes. Once the crew is on deck, they take the shortest way off of the flight deck and head for Maintenance Control, where they write up problems encountered during the flight and log their flight time.
Once they have returned to their ready room and stowed their flight gear, the crews that flew the mission meet for a debriefing. They analyze how the mission went, identify any problems and try and learn from the experience. The LSO visits each ready room and grades each pilot’s carrier landing. Landing grades are recorded on a large chart at the back of the ready room and give a quick visual picture of the carrier landing effectiveness of every pilot.
A typical fighter pilot or RIO will normally fly twice a day – once during the day and once during the night. In addition to his flying responsibilities, he will also have a ground job, often as a division officer, responsible for perhaps 25-30 sailors.
This is a career which is considered to be the most demanding anywhere. You must be at your very best every time that you man your aircraft. Your survival demands it. If you have a bad day flying in the Navy jet around the ship, it is very likely to be your last. The status accorded to the Navy’s carrier aviators is legendary, and it is earned. The road that ends with you actually standing on the flight deck of a carrier at sea is an exceptionally long and arduous one. Only the most adventurous and dedicated should undertake it.
If you're that interested I highly recommend you actively seek out a modern naval aviator and have a chat with them. It might be rather enlightening. While the above is from the 70's, it's about 95% the same today as it was then. It's just a little safer.
Elbows wrote: Orlanth, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I continue to vastly disagree with your ideas about how easy it is to mass-deploy newly qualified carrier based pilots. If you communicated with actual naval aviators
Ok, stop you there. Don't assume I havent. I have plenty of connections to the Uk military past and present, some indirectly to the US military.
you'd quickly appreciate that just training someone to land on a carrier isn't how you suddenly transform a pilot into a carrier-ready pilot.
This was appreciated and explained.
You don't train every military pilot as a carrier pilot, you train enough according to your measure.
Now before you say 'impossible' or even 'unlikely', let me explain, again, that there is evidence at least one country is already doing this. Or at the very least has made steps in that direction.
Let me break it down even simpler, carrier pilots exist, and have for some time, and while the number of nation states to ever operate an aircraft carrier is a small fraction of those with a navicable coastline the technologies are well established. It is no more difficult to train Air Force pilots to fly from carriers that naval pilots processes are similar and are as difficult as the technologies chosen. Simpler in many ways in the 1940's than in the jet age, and simpler once more in the computer age.
How big were computers in the 1970's, pretty big and even the best of them had less processing power than your phone. Things have changed telemetry from a carrier to an aircraft is relatively simple, carrier landings are greatly automated nowadays, or at least can be.
About 45 minutes prior to launch, the aircrews will proceed to the “paraloft” or flight equipment room located in the rear of the ready room. Here they will take their individual flight equipment from their locker and check it over as they put it on. If it is winter time, the first thing you’ll put on over your long underwear is the uncomfortable and constricting rubber “dry suit”. If you eject and go into the sea during the winter months without it, you will die within a few minutes. If you parachute into the sea with it, you will probably survive if you are picked up within 25 minutes.
Standard for bomber crews also. Your route might not take you over water that day, but your standard equipment assumes it might.
On top of your flight suit, you will next put on your “speed slacks” or G-suit. This is a fabric covered series of bladders that cover your legs and abdomen and which automatically inflate when you “pull G’s” in the jet. The G-suit squeezes your legs and abdomen in an attempt to force blood back up into your brain so that you can remain conscious as long as possible in a dogfight. Pulling g’s is a painful experience.......
You call maintenance control on the intercom and ask where 103 is spotted on deck. (It is a law of nature that you will almost never fly the airplane with your name on it!) You then don your form-fitted flight helmet and put down the visor. The flight deck of a carrier is the most dangerous place in the world and perhaps the noisiest. Men are run over, sucked into engine intakes, blown overboard or killed by propellers during every deployment. The helmet will protect your hearing on the way to the jet and also keep you from hitting your head on the under-wing pylon. You keep the visor down to protect your eyes from debris that can be blown down the flight deck by jet exhausts.
I dont know what it is about US carriers but the guy who flew F-4 Phantoms of Ark Royal in the early 70s didnt have these problems. This was the last UK full sized flat top and this pilot flew until his ride was scrapped and he became a maths teacher. Accidents can happen I remember cine film of Ark Royal and the flight deck was not crowded, things were handled differently. It doesnt appear to be the Royal navy way later either, decks are kept as clear as possible and recovered aircraft and aircraft in flight prep are kept clear.
You know where your aircraft should be “spotted” on the deck, and you look for it. You proceed very carefully to your aircraft and hang your flight bag on the retractable aircraft ladder. You spend the next 10 minutes carefully conducting a pre-flight inspection of your aircraft. This gets your full attention, because if you miss something on your preflight it could cost you your life. Sometimes your jet is parked “tail over water” which means that everything behind the main wheels is hanging off the flight deck.
Excessive, most other carrier operators don't do this unless they have to. The reason, sea spray. The US Navy's budget for combating rust is larger than the NASA budget.
The RIO checks this carefully, because if it is wrong, you won’t be flying when your each the end of your catapult shot. By using hand signals, the RIO directs the adjustment of the weight up or down as needed until it is correct and then gives a thumbs-up. By this time, the aircraft is in place and secured to the catapult. The massive jet blast deflector (JBD) has been raised behind your aircraft to protect the men and aircraft behind you.
Interesting. Is this the F-14? AFAIK the Tornado the pilot alone can double eject, the weapons operator can only eject himself. Pilot always has his own choice to save the crate or not, the RAF has its own bs. Though this is from memory of conversations nearly thirty years ago., sop if anyone knows better.
Soon it is time to return to the carrier for recovery. You say goodbye to the Hawkeye and head back to the ship’s intended location. This is more interesting than it sounds, because the ship is constantly moving and often you will only have a vague idea of where the ship will be at recovery time. As a naval aviator, you must develop a sixth sense of where to the look for the carrier at the conclusion of every mission.
You can do this in the 1940's flying a Swordfish which only flew at about three times the speed of its own carrier, and had far more basic controls and few swordfish were ever lost due to navigation error.
As you see the last few aircraft of the next event being positioned on the catapults below, and the other aircraft being removed from the landing area, you lead your flight down. With your flight in echelon formation to the right, you streak past the carrier at 350 knots. A few seconds beyond the ship you kiss your wingman off and execute a 3.5G “break” to the left. As the aircraft slows to 250 knots and you roll out on your downwind leg, you drop the gear and flaps. As you get the aircraft on speed you quickly run through the before-landing-checklist and upon reaching 400 feet and passing the Landing Signal Officer’s platform you start your left turn. You stay in your left turn and just before you roll out behind the ship, you pick up the “meatball” or optical landing system.
Now this is admittedly fairly impressive, but its nothing especially problematic, and is compounded by the choice of aircraft used. The US Navy often made the wrong choices for carrier based avaition, huge monster aircraft best used on shore. Had the F-16 been accepted for thge US Navy things would be a whole lot easier, its a far lighter and more nimble airframe..
The final approach to the carrier is the most demanding part of the flight. (At night or in bad weather, it can be so scary that your knees will be shaking as you climb out of the jet. During the Vietnam War a study was made of navy fighter aircrews who were given bio sensors similar to those worn by astronauts. It was found that the stress levels on aviators were higher while landing on the ship at night than while in actual combat.)
This does not surprise me, in combat mistakes are immediate you live through them or don't. You can only land an aircraft one way and if you fail even if momentarily and without much consequence you humiliate yourself in front of your peers.
The LSO visits each ready room and grades each pilot’s carrier landing. Landing grades are recorded on a large chart at the back of the ready room and give a quick visual picture of the carrier landing effectiveness of every pilot.
This is a career which is considered to be the most demanding anywhere. You must be at your very best every time that you man your aircraft. Your survival demands it. If you have a bad day flying in the Navy jet around the ship, it is very likely to be your last. The status accorded to the Navy’s carrier aviators is legendary, and it is earned. The road that ends with you actually standing on the flight deck of a carrier at sea is an exceptionally long and arduous one. Only the most adventurous and dedicated should undertake it.
Ok, these are brave men and heavily trained, but, got to lover the chest beating at the end. This was the 70's right. As puffed up as the Top Gun 'best in the world' bullcrap/hubris. Thing are a bit different now there is a tech discrepancy between US and most other NATO forces, but back then, and for a long time afterwards these most demanding job heroes would get regularly trounced in exercises. If you dont believe me, go ask on the quiet what really happens.
Lessons from this and why it is different nowadays especially on non-US carriers. US carriers have a business-as-usual ideology, they overfill carriers with oversized aircraft, run the flight deck like an ants nest that has been kicked and are stuck in the past for carrier doctine for the most part.
Starting with the UK and Soviet Union every other carrier operator is moving to or has moved to STOL aircraft, usually with ski ramp launch, a lower density of aircraft on standard operation, though with the promise of compacting assets in on a short term basis at point of need.
UK, Chinese and Russian aircraft (I cannot speak for the French here) all do a VTOL landing which shaves off most of the issues mentioned above, that does require more fuel but can allow multiple aircraft landing or on close approach at once and is safer under heavier wind or sea conditions.
Far far more is automated. The new British carriers have a total complement of 1600 men of a carrier of broadly similar volume and two thirds the air group, making the carrier considerably more efficient in terms of air assets per crew, and on par by air assets by tonnage. From what I have gleaned Russian and Chinese carriers are similar in orientation and doctrine. Things are considerably facilitated from the story above, computerisation greatly facilitates landing with both shop and aircraft datalinked together with flight assist and actively stabilised navigation of the parent vessel. Reduced aircraft desnity by volume, differnt design philosophy for launch and recovery operations all make things easier.
The US has a taste of this itself with the 'carrier' vessels operated by the US Marine corps, which themselves have reduced density of air assets on large carrier vessels, use STOL/VTOL aircraft.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2019/08/16 01:57:49
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
Orlanth wrote: The US Navy often made the wrong choices for carrier based avaition, huge monster aircraft best used on shore. Had the F-16 been accepted for thge US Navy things would be a whole lot easier, its a far lighter and more nimble airframe..
Not this nonsense again. The F-16 couldn't carry the radar or long-range missiles of the F-14, didn't have the range/endurance to act as a screen for the carrier group or attack targets from a safe distance, and had a single engine that would be a death sentence for the pilot if that one engine failed. "Light and nimble" doesn't mean anything if you can't get the job done.
Lessons from this and why it is different nowadays especially on non-US carriers. US carriers have a business-as-usual ideology, they overfill carriers with oversized aircraft, run the flight deck like an ants nest that has been kicked and are stuck in the past for carrier doctine for the most part.
Starting with the UK and Soviet Union every other carrier operator is moving to or has moved to STOL aircraft, usually with ski ramp launch, a lower density of aircraft on standard operation, though with the promise of compacting assets in on a short term basis at point of need.
UK, Chinese and Russian aircraft (I cannot speak for the French here) all do a VTOL landing which shaves off most of the issues mentioned above, that does require more fuel but can allow multiple aircraft landing or on close approach at once and is safer under heavier wind or sea conditions.
IOW, non-US carriers are much less capable in several ways and depend on "compacting at need" that is almost guaranteed to produce heavy losses to accidents because the crews aren't experienced with high-density operations. US carriers, on the other hand, carry larger squadrons of more capable aircraft and regularly train their crews on full-capacity operations so that when a carrier's maximum potential is needed it's just business as usual for everyone involved. I'm not really seeing how the US is on the wrong side here...
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/08/16 03:23:43
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
The F-16 couldn't carry the radar or long-range missiles of the F-14,
The F-14 had an ordnance limit of 6000kg, the F-16 had an ordnance limit of 7600kg. You are making the error of thinking that because the F-16 didnt carry ordnance designed for naval operations it could not do so. That is BS used to justify the F-14 program. the F-16 was designed from the start to work as a carrier based aircraft, arrestor hook attachments were available on every airframe sold.
The one point I will concede is the radar system on the F-14, it was very good, though rather redundant however it was itself overshadowed by the naval AWACS and not strictly necessary. F-14's were good at tracking third world airforces from rogue states, but in practicality was not used for that. When F-14's were used in action such as against Libya in the 80's they were guided to target by RAF Troodos or US fleet AWACS not by their own radar systems. The primary purpose of the F-14 though was to intercept Backfire and Badger bombers at long range. If it got to the point that then needed their own radar to detect Soviet Naval aviation bombers it was already too late.
The only real use of the F-14 radar was by Iran, who had no access to actual AWACS and found the F-14 as a very good long range sensor aircraft in the Iran Iraq war. However this was basically a well funded bush war, the US would not need such capabilities unless something was very wrong. That being said the F-16 detection system was by no means backwards, and more relevant it could b tracked in my naval AWACS and shore based installations just as the F-14 could.
didn't have the range/endurance to act as a screen for the carrier group or attack targets from a safe distance,
Again misinformation. The combat ranger of the F-14 was 500 nautical miles, the F-16 just under 295. However that was combat range with full loadout, and therefore combat range with loadout for the purpose to which is was put i.e long range naval intercept vs front line air superiority fighter. Absolute (ferry) range was rather different 1500 nautical miles tor the F-14 and 2250 for the F-16. There was far more wiggle room on an F-16 and thus more opportunity to assemble a long range intercept package.
Now that is only part of the picture we need to add speed, altitude and climb rate also. From public information maximum ceiling for both aircraft is the same and presumably adequate for purpose. Soviet bombers could fly higher but the difference was not enough to damage missile effectiveness. F-14 is admittedly faster on max afterburn, Mach 2.34 vs Mach 2.0 which is fair factor in its favour, but from what I have gleaned has a lower cruising speed. However the F-16 had a proportionately faster climb speed and the Falcon could in all probability reach a combat ready altitude faster than the Fatcat.
and had a single engine that would be a death sentence for the pilot if that one engine failed.
That bollocks again. Ye this was used a political excuse, however in realirty the F-16 had a very good engine service record, better than the F-14 in fact. Loss of engine power accidents were rare, and single engine aircraft were a staple for the US carrier fleet in the past without this being an issue. Situations that would result in a single engine failure without causing multiple engine failures are themselves rare unless the engines are seperated which they are not in the case of the F-14. The F-14 has two engines not for safety but so that it can propel a large airframe very fast to high speed intercepts. redundancy was bs added to justify the F-14 program. F-35 is single engine, as is the T-45, and both are currently used as carrier based aircraft, the US has plenty of opportunity to eschew single engine aircraft from carrier or navy service and don't seem to be in any hurry to do so.
IOW, non-US carriers are much less capable in several ways and depend on "compacting at need" that is almost guaranteed to produce heavy losses to accidents because the crews aren't experienced with high-density operations.
Thinking the Royal Navy are amateur monkeys, not a good call. The RN is the only military that has operated carriers in anything other than a turkey shoot since WW2. While there was combat losses in the Falklands war not one was due to problems with compacting of air assets. Assets were heavily compacted for the Falkands war on both RN carriers used, and further compacting resulted in container ships being converted into escort carriers. It all worked rather well, and this was in areas of the South atlantic where the weather was almost always against you. Intercept rates were as good as could be expected allowing for the aircraft the Royal Navy had available. Harrier was an effective interceptor but subsonic.
It can be done, it has been done. So no I do not share your fears, and neither apparently does the Royal Navy. UK pioneered the carrier doctrines used outside the US (and maybe France), have tested them in battle and the model has been adopted or mimiced in some way by every other carrier operator except the US Navy (and maybe France).
US carriers, on the other hand, carry larger squadrons of more capable aircraft and regularly train their crews on full-capacity operations so that when a carrier's maximum potential is needed it's just business as usual for everyone involved. I'm not really seeing how the US is on the wrong side here...
Smoke em if you got em. US Navy carrier doctrine is mighty indeed, not saying otherwise, but it is woefully inefficient and haemorrages money. US carrier doctrine is not replicated elsewhere, I think there is good reason for this.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I think I can sum up US carrier policy thus:
It is visually impressive, it can definitely get the job done, is a vital part of current power projection policy and it is well established.
The US can do much to improve it but the cost in political will will be too high. The US has more than almost any other nation been more of a servant to its military industrial complex and cost efficiency is not what the power that be have in mind. Its a lot of money to a lot of lobbyists, a lot of profits to a lot of important people, and a lot of government jobs in states with senators who will fight to keep hold of them.
Therefore: US carrier doctrine works, and if were not broke, don't fix it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/08/16 15:57:41
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
