Hacker News Reader

Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

I fear we will come to bitterly regret building the QE class without cats and traps, or without nuclear power. I mean even more so than every sane taxpayer in the UK does already.

A US carrier battlegroup contains the carrier itself, and a cruiser and two destroyers to protect it. We will have two carriers and a grand total of 6 destroyers, no cruisers. So the choices are abandon all other commitments and use the entire rest of the Royal Navy for force protection for the carriers, or leave the carriers as sitting ducks. Yes I know only one carrier will be at sea at a time. All six destroyers won't be at sea at the same time either!

Did I mention no cats and traps? That means we are forced to rely on rotary wing for AEW - a decision that cost dearly in the Falklands. Helicopters simply don't have the altitude or endurance for that mission. So we have a fleet that can't see, can't fight, and can't stay at sea for very long. And there's no money left.

View on HN

I wish our government would make something of Rolls Royce's suggestion [1] from last year of developing small scale nuclear reactors for general usage, with an eye to utilising more of them in shipping, merchant and military.

Particularly since I read the other day that the Americans have over 140 nuclear-powered vessels (!!) [2].

But no, let's not capitalise on our capabilities — much better to squander them and instead outsource, wasting [credited-] billions and losing potential.

We really are a hopeless little country when it comes to self-belief sometimes.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/03/19/rolls-royce-c...

[2] http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-n...

The French used the same nuclear reactors in their aircraft carrier as is used in their (many) nuclear submarines, and have had many problems with the system. Making a CVN is not easy.

They used 2 submarine reactors and the ship was underpowered. They could easily have used 3 or even 4. The original CVN USS Enterprise had 8 reactors.

That is hilarious and depressing in equal measure. One of the much trumpeted features of the QE class is they were going to be modular and upgradable to cats and traps for little cost. When new govt tried to exercise that option turns out the upgrade would increase the cost of a ship by about a third or thereabouts.

It's also depressing how little we learned from the air war over the Falklands. Presumably because it was the Fleet Air Arm rather than the RAF. RAF contribution was the Vulcan raid which was a) ludicrous and b) needed our entire tanker fleet airborne to get one (ONE!) Vulcan, equipped with a 1948 design bomb sight, there.

Meanwhile the Harriers turned out to be rather good dogfighters as they could essentially be put in reverse (viffing [1]). Rather than selling them off to the USMC we should have kept them, and worked on modern replacements. There was even a supersonic Harrier design produced at the same time Hawker were flying the Harrier prototype.

Meant the Harrier was the most impressive display aircraft ever. Flying sideways, check. Bowing to the crowd, check.

[1] http://jalopnik.com/5715656/the-eeriness-of-viffing-a-harrie...

The video that should be in the article can be seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcPEvwHWu4g

One of the much trumpeted features of the QE class is they were going to be modular and upgradable to cats and traps for little cost

Realistically that was never going to happen. We were never going to have steam catapults because a) where would we get the steam with no reactor (and no-one uses conventional steam turbines anymore) and b) steam catapults aren't reliable in arctic waters, which is why previous British and Russian carriers used ski-jumps. And we weren't going to have EMALS either because again, with no nuke where would we get the electrical power?

But the REAL reason is that British Aerospace is involved in the F35 programme and couldn't take the risk that we might shop elsewhere, say Dassault, so they fucked up the design entirely deliberately. Someone should be in jail for that, or at least lose their final-salary pension.

Quite. The smell was strong from the very first announcement. Didn't stop the media proudly telling us how wonderful and flexible this was. Frankly the whole thing stank and you can be fairly sure the navy wanted cats. Sandy Woodward and Alan West certainly did.

No matter we were going to have 150 F35s by 2012. We've got what, five so far?

The advantage to having a carrier without the support ships is if the security situation seems to be getting dicey you can build out the rest of the fleet a whole lot more quickly than you can build a carrier. It will have taken China a good three decades to field an operational modern carrier with trained crew and air wing, so that's not a capability the UK should give up lightly.

Yeah, the lack of CATOBAR is less than ideal, but you do what you can with the money you have.

You can't build modern warships and recruit and train crews for them without a lot of lead time. It would take a decade or more to rebuild the RN to its size of the 80s.

You could build destroyers and train crews in four or five years. That's a fraction of the time it takes for an aircraft carrier, particularly if you haven't been building them.

You absolutely could not. The POs and CPOs on an RN ship have 10-20 years experience! And unlike WW2 where there was rapid expansion, there isn't the civilian population to start from anymore - people in civilian life aren't doing comparable jobs anymore. You would be literally starting from scratch.

I would guess that at this point, the notion is that in any serious conflict the US would be involved. Those gaps could be easily filled in that context.

One of the main goals of the RN's aircraft carrier program is presumably to help out in any Falklands War II, and the US stayed out of it last time (for reasons I've never understood -- wtf Ronnie?)

Maintaining the remaining tattered shreds of the British Empire was less important to US interests that not annoying their South American client states.

That's true, but do you really think we'd stay neutral again? The "Special Relationship" has only been more emphasized over the last decades, and we probably owe some for co-opting their PM and dragging them into Iraq.

You're right, the major war prior to the Falklands was Vietnam, and the British didn't help out in that one, so I guess there was no reason the US felt obliged to help out a decade later in the Falklands.

I guess it really depends on US-Argentina relations, and also whether the UK looks like they actually need any help.

The US could at least help out covertly. "Whoops, the entire Argentinian Navy just exploded at once! I guess the British must have more submarines down there than we thought!"

Realistically from what I've read, Argentina is so militarily depleted nowadays, and the UK has learned so much from the previous war, that Argentina couldn't even win a war against the British forces garrisoned in the Falklands, let alone the reinforcements. There is no chance of a serious war... although when I went to Argentina last year I found there's still freaking road signs by the side of the road with a map of the Falklands and proclaiming "Las Malvinas son Argentinas" (or whatever the correct Spanish is)

You're right, the major war prior to the Falklands was Vietnam, and the British didn't help out in that one

Guess you've forgotten the British contribution to the Korean war?

Then again I guess we forgot the US stabbing us in the back in Suez.

Argentina couldn't even win a war against the British forces garrisoned in the Falklands, let alone the reinforcements

It does boggle the mind that 4 Typhoons and an Infantry company is enough these days.

> The US could at least help out covertly

There were a heck of a lot of USAF C-141s on Ascension Island during the conflict. We haven't even been told half of what went on, even the crews transiting southbound weren't privy to what was in them ( and I've asked a few ).

Over 100 AIM-9L missiles were delivered to the UK forces from the US production lines, and in some cases from USAF fighter units, within 48 hours of the request. The all-apect-seeking '9L was critical in achieving air superiority as the '9G model in UK service was basically tail-chase only.

Satellite imagery was also made available on a daily basis.

Mr Reagan also, apparently, personally offered a CVN for general support duties in the Atlantic ( SAR, refuelling etc ) though I haven't seen any official confirmation of that.

  the major war prior to the Falklands was Vietnam, and the British didn't help out in that one

Technically, that war was between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, not against America, which means there was no NATO obligation to join.

Conversely, Trump has been talking about reducing NATO commitments and that Europe doesn't "pay its own way". Difficult to know which way it would go.

Trump has been specifically talking about the countries which fail to spend the 2% of GDP on military which is (apparently) mandated by the treaty. The UK is fine in this regard (along with only four other NATO powers though).

President Trump isn't really interested in dismantling NATO, just in making sure that the US doesn't have to continue to shoulder quite such a large fraction of the costs.

The U.S. was concerned about improving Argentinan-Soviet ties. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War#Position_of_thir...

The UK now has a serious combat airfield [0] on the Falklands with Typhoons [1] permanently based there, and a much larger garrison. If this doesn't deter aggression against the islands, a remote carrier wouldn't.

Personally, I doubt that Falklands II will ever happen because the Argentinians never substantially rebuilt their airforce.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Mount_Pleasant [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._1312_Flight_RAF

Chile had a key role in helping out the Brits in the Falklands.

The US, or more specifically Reagan, offered Thatcher use of a carrier or two if one of ours was lost. Supposedly it was going to be navy to navy with as little involvement of politics as possible. Oh, and they sold us a bunch of extra sidewinders at zero notice.

We had been cultivating Argentina to help deal with communist insurgencies in South and Central America. For the US the right ending was you to win without the Argentinian public seeing us as an enemy.

So we helped by delivering missiles early and even supposedly offered to lend you a carrier (which would be crewed by the UK), but didn't get involved directly. I doubt the Argentinians were much happier than they'd have been if we started dropping bombs, but that was the thinking.

And what happens when the US doesn't come along?

Err no they couldn't. There is zero interoperability between an RN carrier and any fixed-wing in a US fleet carrier's air group. They can't land on a QE (no trap) and even if they could, can't take off again either (no cat).

I wasn't thinking that we'd loan them aircraft, I was thinking we could send a carrier group of our own.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com