Australia Delays F-35 Order by 2 Years. I think they are holding off to see just how much more it's going to cost and how many more problems come up before the take the "Plunge". They have fulfilled their original commitment to buy 2 F-35 which have already been delivered for testing and if they don't want to don't have to buy any more. So it begins the Spiral of Death.
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20120503/DEFREG03/305030001/Australia-Delays-F-35-Order-by-2-Years?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE" target="_blank">link

Firstly the entire point is that the RN is going back to the F-35B because it's too expensive converting even a single carrier to operate conventional aircraft.  Secondly there is no Swedish carrier aircraft, it's merely a proposal and actually developing one would take many years and would not cost much less than the F-35C.  Finally if the there was a carrier Gripen available tomorrow and the RN was going to operate conventional aircraft the odds of going with the Gripen is zero.

 

 

Strategypage has a very interesting interpretation of "inactive and in reserve"

 

HMS Invincible in 2011:

 

http://i.dailymai link alt="" /> 

Dodgy Code:

Invincible at the breakers yard:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/06/15/article-2003673-0C6DF37C00000578-169_964x643.jpg ;

Does anyone really think that this project is going to move forward with the current price tag intact?  Costs only go one direction, and it's already beyond hideously expensive.  The US will never have 2400 of these planes.

 

Of course we are usually slow to understand these things, simply because we can have multi-year trillion dollar budget deficits unlike our friends in Canada and Australia, or the UK.

 

Chasing the last 5% of improvement always literally doubles the price of nearly anything.  Want 5% more performance than a Corvette?  Next step is a few hundred grand.  Want a 5% better bottle of wine than a $100 cab?  be prepared to spend a couple hundred.  Undoubtedly a few compromises in this craft could literally halve it's price.  We may have to start facing reality with this one, or make due with 1000, if that.

 

 

The U.S. Navy is facing massive reductions-in-force aimed at cutting levels of personnel.  The Enterprise (CVN-65) is scheduled to begin decommissioning in 2013, and while the Big "E" might not be suitable for takeover by the Royal Navy, how about giving them a lease on one of the Political Whore follow-ons in the Nimitz line of nuclear carriers?

 

Eisenhower was a complete suck-up when it came to the Brits, wasn't he?  They might like to add something named after him to Her Majesty's fleet, and one of those ships ought to fulfill all their requirements for a big-deck carrier. 

The RN CVF has a crew of less than 700 while a Ford class is around 3,000.  The crew size being more than four times larger alone  means operating a Ford or Nimitz by the RN is a non starter even if the carrier was free.

 

The RN designed a carrier for it's needs among which was a small crew and a very considerable ability to engage in sustained operations.  If anything given the current financial realities the ships are too large and instead of a max group of 36+ they might have been better served with a ship sized for 24+ and going with three carriers and two air wings so one carrier will always be available.  The original plan of operating two carriers and two wings seemed to miss the point that two carriers would not be available most of the time.  Of course the present plan is to operate just one with a normal compliment of 12 F-35's.  A bit of carrier design overkill for this requirement.

 

The only thing a USN carrier would do for the RN would be to bankrupt them.  A single USN carrier would require roughly 10% of total RN personnel.

Exactly. And we've already built substantial subsections of the QE's, ordered the larger chunk of the equipment including GT's etc. Both will be completed as it's contractually no cheaper to cancel them and after that we're just into the debate over STOVL vs CATOBAR. I'd sooner CATOBAR *but* it might be a stark choice between having two carriers with a decent size air wing with STOVL or a single CATOBAR carrier with a very diminished air wing for an extra decade until a full buy can be made.

 

Sea Gripen isn't happening. No idea why it keeps coming up, same for Sea Typhoon.

 

 

Ian