unnecessary future carriers
Since hearing that Britain will build two supercarriers by at least 2018 about two years ago I haven't since figured out a proper reason for them.
Planned to have a deck configuration of 36 F-35 Lightning II STOVL fighters, costing nearly £4 billion.
You could certainly argue that even though there is no war for them today maybe in the mere future Britain could have another war like the Falklands or might need to conduct air operations in a region without land bases, but it's still a stretch considering the Royal Navy still have a handful of their ASW carriers such as the HMS Ocean and Invincible.
The French are putting forward a similar ambitious program for two carriers around the same size, these of which are to consist of the excellent Dassault Rafale fighters.
Nice!
My first thoughts of this was these would be perfect for protecting French supply ships or merchant navies against hostile navies far overseas, since the Rafale could fire the deadly Exocet missile, a fleet of them would surely destroy any attacking forces!
But this just isn't a plausible way to go, not only would the carrier have to be in that particular region, wouldn't it not be smarter to develop a STOVL jet that could serve as an Exocet platform, a couple of those put on container ships that may have to operate near states at war or hostile towards France would probably be enough of a defense instead of dashing out over two billion for a ship that can only be in one place at any one time!
So what about our American friends?
America has the largest carrier fleet in the world, the Russians are only operating the Admiral Kuznetsov while the US are operating over 11 Nimitz carriers, on top of these massive naval logistics is a further two ordered 'CVN-21' carriers.
They will be the largest warships ever built!
Like the Nimitz class carriers the CVN-21 carriers will have a variety of fixed wing aircraft, more than most countries would have in their entire air forces in its inventory.
They are unnecessary considering how the Nimitz class carriers have pretty much come unmatched in the past 30 years.
Both in quality and quantity!
Related:
Jeff Head: CVN-21 specs
Defence and Freedom: The Cost of Carrier Aviation
Gizmodo: Britain Building Next-Generation Aircraft Carriers for F-35 Fighters
Planned to have a deck configuration of 36 F-35 Lightning II STOVL fighters, costing nearly £4 billion.
You could certainly argue that even though there is no war for them today maybe in the mere future Britain could have another war like the Falklands or might need to conduct air operations in a region without land bases, but it's still a stretch considering the Royal Navy still have a handful of their ASW carriers such as the HMS Ocean and Invincible.
The French are putting forward a similar ambitious program for two carriers around the same size, these of which are to consist of the excellent Dassault Rafale fighters.
Nice!
My first thoughts of this was these would be perfect for protecting French supply ships or merchant navies against hostile navies far overseas, since the Rafale could fire the deadly Exocet missile, a fleet of them would surely destroy any attacking forces!
But this just isn't a plausible way to go, not only would the carrier have to be in that particular region, wouldn't it not be smarter to develop a STOVL jet that could serve as an Exocet platform, a couple of those put on container ships that may have to operate near states at war or hostile towards France would probably be enough of a defense instead of dashing out over two billion for a ship that can only be in one place at any one time!
So what about our American friends?
America has the largest carrier fleet in the world, the Russians are only operating the Admiral Kuznetsov while the US are operating over 11 Nimitz carriers, on top of these massive naval logistics is a further two ordered 'CVN-21' carriers.
They will be the largest warships ever built!
Like the Nimitz class carriers the CVN-21 carriers will have a variety of fixed wing aircraft, more than most countries would have in their entire air forces in its inventory.
They are unnecessary considering how the Nimitz class carriers have pretty much come unmatched in the past 30 years.
Both in quality and quantity!
Related:
Jeff Head: CVN-21 specs
Defence and Freedom: The Cost of Carrier Aviation
Gizmodo: Britain Building Next-Generation Aircraft Carriers for F-35 Fighters
Labels: aircraft carriers, cvn-21, falklands war, french navy, queen elizabeth class
posted by Paul Iddon @ 8:33 PM
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