(UK) Strategic Defense and Security Review

[Cecelia5578]

As tempting as it is to consider buying a couple CVN's from Newport News, I see a few problems:

1. Even more expensive than the QE class (CVN-78 was, IIRC, priced at $8.4 billion)
2. No increase in jobs for the UK defense industry, which the loony lefties in the cabinet must be pining for
3. I don't think we actually have a harbour that can hold those big carriers. When I was a boy my dad took me down to see USS Harry S Truman when it moored in the Solent. It wouldn't fit in Porstmouth.
4. I don't know about the maintenance costs for those carriers, but I suspect it's a lot higher than the projected maintenance cost for the QE class
5. The RN has no experience with nuclear-powered supercarriers

Which is why I think the UK should've gone for a variant of the America class LHA. Heck, they could even build them in British yards, just like some of the Perrys were built overseas. Its a proven design, almost as big as the QEs, and can also do the amphib thing. The only problem being that they would be limited to F-35Bs rather than -Cs.

[Stuart]

Which is why I think the UK should've gone for a variant of the America class LHA. Heck, they could even build them in British yards, just like some of the Perrys were built overseas. Its a proven design, almost as big as the QEs, and can also do the amphib thing. The only problem being that they would be limited to F-35Bs rather than -Cs.

Because the LHA-6 didn't exist when the decisions were made. The available design then was the LHD-1 which was too much amphib and didn't have the strike capability. I actually had BMT run up a carrier version of LHD-1 and it was quite impressive but it didn;t have the moxie the RN was looking for. Ironically it could handle the airgroup now proposed just fine.

[Phantasee]

Wait a minute, QE class isn't nuke powered? What the fuck are you people doing?

[Pelranius]

Wait a minute, QE class isn't nuke powered? What the fuck are you people doing?

Had to do with projected costs. The British though nuclear reactors would be more expensive of that size.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Wait a minute, QE class isn't nuke powered? What the fuck are you people doing?

Essentially, the Brits want to a lot with very little, and they are running up the wall right now.

Somehow, I am not too optimistic as to whether the QE class would last even half as long as the Nimitz class.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Wait a minute, QE class isn't nuke powered? What the fuck are you people doing?

Looks to me like the RN is being run into the ground... or the shore as the case may be.

[Starglider]

Somehow, I am not too optimistic as to whether the QE class would last even half as long as the Nimitz class.

That's not an inherent problem with conventionally powered carriers, the Kitty Hawk was in commission for 48 years.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Somehow, I am not too optimistic as to whether the QE class would last even half as long as the Nimitz class.

That's not an inherent problem with conventionally powered carriers, the Kitty Hawk was in commission for 48 years.

It didn't stop the Ocean and the Ark Royal from being turned into a wreck.

[Ritterin Sophia]

That's not an inherent problem with conventionally powered carriers, the Kitty Hawk was in commission for 48 years.

But it does make her logistics train about a hundred times more complex than 'refuel once every thirty years which can conveniently be scheduled to coincide with a refit'. Sure there's a larger initial investment, but it's ameliorated over time since you no longer need justify operating the additional oilers you would need to operate a conventional carrier or the crew thereof.

Also, in the Ocean's defence, she was made to civilian standard to cut costs, you get what you pay for.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The idea that the RN is being slowly squished out of existence is painful to me. But that appears to be the inevitable result of thi defence review and the trends it represents

More news of RN fuckups, Apparently HMS Astute, our fancy new SSN, has run aground off the Isle of Skye. Our armed forces have become a joke

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Sounds like someone was sleeping on the wheel when it happened.

[Stuart]

Apparently HMS Astute, our fancy new SSN, has run aground off the Isle of Skye. Our armed forces have become a joke

You don't understand; what this proves is how good the Astute sensor system is. They managed to find a rock nobody else had noticed in the middle of one of the best-charted and most heavily-travelled areas of water around the United Kingdom.

You can write to commend the captain on this achievement at his new posting here.

C/O Royal Navy Recruiting Office
Rockall
North Atlantic.

[Stuart]

That's not an inherent problem with conventionally powered carriers, the Kitty Hawk was in commission for 48 years.

But her condition at the end of that 48 years . . . . . They didn't call her Shitty Kitty for nothing. She wasn't as bad as JFK but she was pretty grim. Also, the U.S. Navy build their ships a lot tougher than the R.N. does. The George H.W. Bush and Gerald R Ford are being designed for 60 year hull lives.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Oh that is priceless Stuart. That's gonna keep me grinning all night

[Pelranius]

I just hope the birds don't eat too much asparagus at Rockall.

Speaking of military ships built to civilian specs, that doesn't make me very confident about the service lifetimes of a lot of JSDFM ships.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

That's not an inherent problem with conventionally powered carriers, the Kitty Hawk was in commission for 48 years.

But her condition at the end of that 48 years . . . . . They didn't call her Shitty Kitty for nothing. She wasn't as bad as JFK but she was pretty grim. Also, the U.S. Navy build their ships a lot tougher than the R.N. does. The George H.W. Bush and Gerald R Ford are being designed for 60 year hull lives.

There's another factor I wonder about, which in fact came to the fore yesterday when I was discussing with Alexia the details of the loss of the Prince of Wales. In my engineering mindset, I could immediately think of a couple of ways to design the shafts to take the required power to drive the ship and the resulting thrust force, while at the same to shear off well aft to prevent the massive damage which caused her loss. But thinking more about it--the British, never having encountered damage like that before, would have never seen the need to design the shafts to fail under shear stress at a point well aft. But I wouldn't be surprised if Bismarck had such a feature--and yet her entire stern was blown off in a fashion that would have never happened to a Royal Navy ship.

The longer I thought about it the more it seemed that the Royal Navy had always approached ship design as shipwrights. The Germans approached it as engineers, and the famous resilience of the German schlachtkreuzers at Jutland was because they had been designed to stand up to sustained heavy firing and to survive damage--they were engineered to do so. But on the other hand they were weakly built by British standards and couldn't hold up to sustained long-term service like the old British ships of the era, or to sustained rough usage. The Germans lacked the experience, the British lacked the systematized engineering approach to design.

It seems the US system of multiple boards in designing capital ships was crucial to how our ships inexplicably to many inexperienced people seem to be better than those of all other nations--both experiential and engineering design processes were fairly harmoniously fused in that era of USN shipbuilding.

It also occurs to me that in relationship to the collapse of the Royal Navy's ability to maintain itself, that the RN tried to adopt modern engineering design practices to save money by reducing the overbuilt nature of Royal Navy ships. In the process, however, they gave up their own experiential body of knowledge and had institutional resistance to the new practices besides. The result, certainly caused a decline in the quality of British yards which worked together with conscious decisions about ship life and the general decay of the British shipbuilding industry to effectively cause the total collapse of the quality in British shipbuilding which had led to ships like SS Persia which remained in service for 80 years after being built.

[Stuart]

Speaking of military ships built to civilian specs, that doesn't make me very confident about the service lifetimes of a lot of JSDFM ships.

There's a lot of misunderstanding about this "civilian standards" bit. Basically, what it means is that the ships are built in compliance with Lloyds Register or De Norske Veritas standards, mostly for insurance purposes. OK, now why does one want to insure one's warships? Will Lloyds of London pay up if a ship in a firefight does the big firework? Actually, it's for pollution and accidental damage reasons.

Now, in the '60s and '70s warships were built with very thin plating indeed (3/16 steel wasn't unknown) but with the frames and ribs closely spaced. The result was a light, flexible hull that would yield with shockwaves and ride out their impact when a more rigid hull would rupture and sink. This caused something called a "hungry horse" effect where the plating actually bowed inwards between the frames and ribs. Unfortunately, this steel made the ships vulnerable to collision damage and corrosion. In the Cod War, the British paid badly for that light structure.



This picture shows hungry horse very clearly

Commercial standards are much more concerned with collision and maintenance issues so they specify hulls that use much thicker steel (13/16 or 15/16ths isn't unknown) combined with much more spaced out ribs and frames. The result is actually a stronger hull but one that is much less flexible. So, if a ship gets nuked, it won't ride out the blast and shock waves so well.

Commerical standards also affects things like access to compartments, damage control facilities and so on. It's not necessarily worse, its different. For example, firefighting ability is predicated around a disastrous accident, not a direct hit. So, if a ship just catches fire, she's better off, if somebody clobbers her with something, not so good.

Building to commercial standards isn't necessarily a bad thing but it does mean one has to think about maintenance and refit issues more carefully.

[Pelranius]

Ah, many thanks. Makes me wonder how that affects the lives, daily routine and training of the enlisted men and junior officers in say the JSDF-M as opposed to our USN. Something to ponder.