Providing the UK's carrier strike capability

Providing the UK's carrier strike capability PDF Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215038821
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
When the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) had started, the Department had contracts for two carriers with an estimated cost of £5.24 billion and delivery dates of 2016 and 2018. Decisions taken in the Review mean the UK will have no carrier aircraft capability from 2011-2020. While two carriers are still being built, only one will be converted to launch the planes that have now been selected, and the other will be mothballed. The UK will only have one operational carrier with a significantly reduced availability at sea when Carrier Strike capability is reintroduced in 2020. That carrier is being built according to the old design and will have to be modified to make it compatible with the requirements of the new aircraft: the cost of these modifications will not be known until 2012. The SDSR decision is forecast to save £3.4 billion, but only £600 million of this is cash savings while the remainder is simply deferring expenditure beyond the Department's 10 year planning horizon. The decision will lead to nine years without Carrier Strike and full capability will not be achieved until 2030. And more work will be needed to get the best and most flexible operational use from the carrier. The Committee is disappointed that the systemic issues that have appeared in its other recent defence reports continue to arise. The Committee has built on what has been said in past reports and focussed on two key areas: strategic decision-making and delivery of capabilities

Providing the UK's carrier strike capability

Providing the UK's carrier strike capability PDF Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215038821
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
When the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) had started, the Department had contracts for two carriers with an estimated cost of £5.24 billion and delivery dates of 2016 and 2018. Decisions taken in the Review mean the UK will have no carrier aircraft capability from 2011-2020. While two carriers are still being built, only one will be converted to launch the planes that have now been selected, and the other will be mothballed. The UK will only have one operational carrier with a significantly reduced availability at sea when Carrier Strike capability is reintroduced in 2020. That carrier is being built according to the old design and will have to be modified to make it compatible with the requirements of the new aircraft: the cost of these modifications will not be known until 2012. The SDSR decision is forecast to save £3.4 billion, but only £600 million of this is cash savings while the remainder is simply deferring expenditure beyond the Department's 10 year planning horizon. The decision will lead to nine years without Carrier Strike and full capability will not be achieved until 2030. And more work will be needed to get the best and most flexible operational use from the carrier. The Committee is disappointed that the systemic issues that have appeared in its other recent defence reports continue to arise. The Committee has built on what has been said in past reports and focussed on two key areas: strategic decision-making and delivery of capabilities

Persistent Engagement and Strategic Raiding

Persistent Engagement and Strategic Raiding PDF Author: Disharth Kaushal
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Aircraft carriers
Languages : en
Pages : 62

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Book Description
The imminent arrival to initial operating capability of the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers leaves the Royal Navy at an inflection point. While the strategic and operational environment prevailing at present is radically different from the environment in which the carriers were first conceived, the platforms retain the ability to evolve in a way that will provide policymakers with highly flexible capability in the coming decades. In order to do this, however, new concepts of employment and operations will need to be adopted to better match the strengths of the carriers to the changing operating environment while offsetting their weaknesses. The critical question that this paper answers is how the UK’s carrier strike capability can be leveraged to effect in an era of persistent competition. This will, in turn, drive a number of work strands for the Royal Navy in the coming years with respect to force design, procurement and the C4ISR architecture of the UK Strike Force. RUSI has conducted an analysis of the ways that the Navy can leverage the potential of its aircraft carriers in the context of a strategic environment characterised by persistent competition.

Carrier strike

Carrier strike PDF Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102981414
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
The Ministry of Defence acted quickly once it realized its 2010 decision to procure the carrier variant of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) had been based on flawed assumptions by reverting to procuring the short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) variant of the fighter. By February 2012, the estimated cost of converting the aircraft carrier for the carrier variant of the JSF had increased by 150 per cent: from £800 million to about £2 billion. The STOVL option would be around £1.2 billion cheaper. The carrier variant option could also not be delivered until 2023, three years later than the planned date of 2020. However delayed investment in Crowsnest, the helicopter based radar system making up the third element of Carrier Strike, means that the system is not now scheduled to be fully operational until 2022 in any case. The Department expects to write off £74 million but this cost could have been ten times higher if the reversion decision had been made after May 2012. The carrier variant of the JSF has a greater range and payload than the STOVL variant and would have provided a more effective strike capability. However, STOVL creates the option to operate Carrier Strike from two carriers, providing continuous capability. By contrast, the carrier variant could operate from only the one carrier installed with cats and traps and therefore could provide capability for only 70 per cent of the time. The highest risk phases of carrier construction and integration are yet to come and complicated negotiations with commercial partners yet to be concluded

Persistent Engagement and Strategic Raiding: Leveraging the UK's Future Carrier Strike Capability to Effect

Persistent Engagement and Strategic Raiding: Leveraging the UK's Future Carrier Strike Capability to Effect PDF Author: Sidharth Kaushal
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Carrier strike

Carrier strike PDF Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102969771
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
The National Audit Office expresses deep concern about risks to value for money from the changes to the aircraft carrier and associated Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft project made in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). The decision was for the MOD to build two carriers but operate only one, pending the next SDSR. This ship will be converted, using catapults and arrestor gear, to fly a different, more capable, version of the JSF to the one previously planned. This carrier will be available at sea only for an average of 150-200 days each year and fewer of the aircraft will operate from the carrier initially. The introduction of Carrier Strike will be delayed by two years, to 2020. Given the decision to retire the Harrier aircraft and the existing aircraft carrier immediately, there will be a decade-long gap without aircraft carrier capability. The changes will save some £3.4 billion over ten years. Today's report highlights the complex inter-relationship between the various cost, short-term affordability, military and industrial factors involved in the Carrier Strike decision. From the papers it saw, the National Audit Office could not understand how those factors were brought together to enable the MOD to reach a judgement on value for money. The NAO identifies two principal risks to value for money on Carrier Strike. First, the SDSR is unaffordable unless there is a real terms increase in defence funding from 2015 onwards. Secondly, the SDSR decision has introduced more technical, cost and schedule uncertainty.

Leveraging UK Carrier Capability

Leveraging UK Carrier Capability PDF Author: Tobias Ellwood
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Aircraft carriers
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
The Queen Elizabeth-class carriers offer the UK the opportunity to re-define both what carriers are used for and how they are used, a task which it is essential to complete before they become operational in 2020. With the two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers under construction, the immediate questions facing the current government include whether ultimately to operate both carriers or one and what mix of carrier-strike and expeditionary assets should be included. However, the ongoing discussion around what type of aircraft should be procured in order to fulfil the strike role is obscuring the need for a much broader, and more fundamental, debate about how the new class of carriers might be used. At 65,000 tons, the Queen Elizabeth class is larger than the UK's outgoing Invincible-class carriers and also has no equivalent in the US fleet. As such, the UK now has an opportunity to re-define the strategic role of aircraft carriers to meet the challenges that will prevail both in 2020, when the first carrier is to become operational, and in five decades' time, at the end of the carriers' expected service. In this paper, Tobias Ellwood MP argues that while it is impossible to predict the future, it is possible to ensure that the hardware, software and human resources incorporated into these ships have the built-in agility to adapt to evolving techniques, technology and likely tasks. As such, the UK must use the period before the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers become operational to develop their strategic role beyond carrier strike and littoral maneuver.

House of Commons - Committee of Public Accounts: Carrier Strike: The 2012 Reversion Decision - HC 113

House of Commons - Committee of Public Accounts: Carrier Strike: The 2012 Reversion Decision - HC 113 PDF Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215060907
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
The Carrier strike u-turn will cost the taxpayer at least £74 million. When this programme got the green light in 2007, we were supposed to get two aircraft carriers, available from 2016 and 2018, at a cost to the taxpayer of £3.65 billion. We are now on course to spend £5.5 billion and have no aircraft carrier capability for nearly a decade. The MOD rushed into a decision in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. Just 18 months later they were forced to admit they had got it wrong and revert to the original choice of aircraft. At the time of the SDSR the Department believed the cost of converting the carriers for the new aircraft would be between £500 million and £800 million. By May 2012 it had realised that the true cost would be as a high as £2 billion. Officials also made basic errors such as forgetting to include the costs of VAT and inflation. There are still concerns now. According to current plans, the early warning radar system essential for protecting the carrier will not be available for operation until 2022, two years after the first carrier and aircraft are delivered and initially operated. And the MOD does not yet have the funding to replace the shipping needed to support the new carrier. To avoid making the same mistakes again the MOD needs to start planning now for the next SDSR in 2015, including making sure that this time it has the right information on which to base decisions

The British Carrier Strike Fleet after 1945

The British Carrier Strike Fleet after 1945 PDF Author: David Hobbs
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 184832412X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
“A comprehensive study of the bittersweet post WWII history of British naval aviation . . . will become a standard reference for its subject.”—Firetrench In 1945 the most powerful fleet in the Royal Navy’s history was centered on nine aircraft carriers. This book charts the post-war fortunes of this potent strike force; its decline in the face of diminishing resources, its final fall at the hands of uncomprehending politicians, and its recent resurrection in the form of the Queen Elizabeth class carriers, the largest ships ever built for the Royal Navy. After 1945 “experts” prophesied that nuclear weapons would make conventional forces obsolete, but British carrier-borne aircraft were almost continuously employed in numerous conflicts as far apart as Korea, Egypt, the Persian Gulf, the South Atlantic, East Africa and the Far East, often giving successive British Governments options when no others were available. In the process the Royal Navy invented many of the techniques and devices crucial to modern carrier operations angled decks, steam catapults and deck-landing aids while also pioneering novel forms of warfare like helicopter-borne assault, and tactics for countering such modern plagues as insurgency and terrorism. This book combines narratives of these poorly understood operations with a clear analysis of the strategic and political background, benefiting from the author's personal experience of both carrier flying and the workings of Whitehall. It is an important but largely untold story, of renewed significance as Britain once again embraces carrier aviation. “Makes a timely and welcome appearance . . . will make compelling reading for those with serious concern for our naval affairs.”—St. Andrews in Focus

Carrier Enabled Power Projection

Carrier Enabled Power Projection PDF Author: Thomas J. Salberg
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Aircraft carriers
Languages : en
Pages : 49

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Book Description
"At the end of the decade the UK will realize a new carrier strike capability with the arrival into service of the first of two Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers and the Joint Strike Fighter, the F35B. As the largest ships ever built in Britain for the Royal Navy, the future carriers are at the heart of the British Government's aspirations for power projection and to exert the influence strategically, while tackling threats at distance and upstream. Delivered through a concept known as Carrier Enabled Power Projection (CEPP), the UK seeks to put the future carriers at the heart of a comprehensive air, sea, and land capability to meet the national aims. But, in a severely resource constrained environment, is too much emphasis being placed on the carriers to the detriment of the other capabilities that come together to make CEPP? Are the carriers being seen as a panacea for Defence's contribution to UK influence? CEPP, and specifically the future carriers, will never realize their full potential if the UK lacks the ability to effectively deliver ground forces and transition to land operations. The escalatory utility of the carrier strike within the CEPP concept is lost if the threat of force to win the clash of wills on the land lacks credibility. The UK must ensure sufficient investment is made in the amphibious navy and not rely solely on the carrier to be able to deliver all the elements of the CEPP concept sub-optimally rather than its specialist role well. Done correctly, the CEPP concept will deliver for Britain, offer a just return on the investment, and be a true statement of British power and influence."--Abstract

The Chinese Navy

The Chinese Navy PDF Author: Institute for National Strategic Studies
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN: 9780160897634
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Tells the story of the growing Chinese Navy - The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) - and its expanding capabilities, evolving roles and military implications for the USA. Divided into four thematic sections, this special collection of essays surveys and analyzes the most important aspects of China's navel modernization.