Jets & Planes but no UAV's here.

[Suhiir]

Guess I misread something when I looked them over, for some reason I thought they only carried 24 aircraft.

But at 55 there's no reason they can't carry F-35Cs. Yeah It's not an F-15 or F-22, but what that can land on a carrier is?

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

Well time for the NAVY to step in...
Prior to the Strategic Defense Review (SDR) of 2010 the plan was to scrap both the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales. However (Another economics lesson. ) this didn't prove a viable option to the British Government due to the contract obligations which, and you'll love this, would have made it more expensive to scrap them, then to finish building them at the stage in the construction the ships were in at the time. A fortune was already invested just in infrastructure and coordination of at least five major shipyards to "put the pieces together" not least of which included building the largest shipyard crane in the history of British shipbuilding. These carriers are the largest ships ever built in the long illustrious history of the Royal Navy.

All my respect to the RN and the then Soviet Navies as I have a pair of Submarine Dolphins from each in my "Shadow Box" for all the fun and sometimes white knuckle games we played that I've been involved with.

This situation is not unprecedented, for instance we saw the same with the MEADS Program which forced both the U.S and Italy to see the program through until it's operational testing and qualification status were completed. Germany was to back out as well, however, due to the contract environment it became favorable to stay in it and would in turn be the only country left standing that is operating the system with the possibility of Poland getting the system in the near future. The breaking of the contract for MEADS would've been in the hundreds of million dollars in penalties each for each country involved for what is considered the most advanced SAM in current use. The Carriers would've cost the UK in the billions of dollars if I remember correctly, to back out of the carriers.

The bottom-line is currently both carriers will be activated (When they realized they were stuck with both carriers, the Prince of Wales would've been "mothballed". And given the current world events this has turned out to be a most fortuitous decision.

I tried to get as close to a USN Carrier as possible, as us NAVY types like discussing these things in terms of "displacement" regarding a ships size. Also when noting aircraft capacity/or compliment it will do the reader well to realize this will include all types of aircraft such as EW, ASW, RECON, ATTACK etc. including fixed wing and rotor craft.

The Queen Elizabeth Class is designed as a multi-mission platform unlike our carriers since the RN doesn't have specialized ships for instance like our Amphibious landing ships (LHA) that'll carrying our F-35B (Which is the only one I see worthwhile to have.). With that in mind they'll carry Royal Marines with the air-wing to compliment that mission to include the APACHE helos. These ships are of the ideal size and configuration for this versatility in the multi-mission environments the modern Navies face in both the Anti-Terrorist and current Deterrence role due to the rise and resurgence of the Russian and now Chinese Navies. Also the UK still has issues in dealing with the Falklands question in particular.

A note of the FORRESTAL Class carriers the compliment of aircraft is 85 and the USS FORRESTAL (CVA-59) was the largest in displacement at 59,900 tons ((QE Class is 65,000 tons.) the rest of the class was something in the 56K and "something" range. The FORRESTAL Class is considered the first "Super Carrier" Class as well.

So next some articles and graphs/charts etc.
http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and...for-the-future
https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com...updated-01630/
https://news.usni.org/2015/09/17/dse...abeth-carriers

Prospective...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._chart.svg.png
http://www.military-today.com/navy/t...t_carriers.htm

Comparison...
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/nav_legacy.asp?id=64
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...scrapyard.html

You'll find earlier posts regarding this topic in this thread, though I did delve deeper into it here. Anyway anything on the surface is nothing but a "TARGET" anyway!?!

My job is done here so I can enjoy the start of my weekend with a little "shut eye" time-enjoy the rest of yours!!

Regards,
Pat

[IronDuke99]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

Guess I misread something when I looked them over, for some reason I thought they only carried 24 aircraft.

But at 55 there's no reason they can't carry F-35Cs. Yeah It's not an F-15 or F-22, but what that can land on a carrier is?

True in terms of size, but BAE gave a really crazily high quote to fit them with EMALS cats and traps, so they have a ski-jump and can only really operate F35B as a fixed wing aircraft (at least until they have a major refit and that is not going to happen this side of about 2035 ish).

24 F35B (plus helos) will be the normal peacetime air group.

In a major conflict situation this could go up to about 36 F35B -including RAF aircraft- plus helos, including airbourne early warning radar, in a strike role.

The idea being they will get tailoured air groups depending on the task. (as FASTBOAT TOUGH notes). The RN does have a number of Amphibious ships available for the Royal Marines, etc, but will lack a dedicated helicopter carrier for the time being.

The ships can carry and operate helos up to Chinook size and total aircraft capacity is said to be around 55 or so, although in an emergency Carriers can generally carry a few more aircraft than design compliment.

The first ship HMS Queen Elizabeth (named after Queen Elizabeth I) will be operational in 2019 and it is very widely expected that the second ship, Prince of Wales, will be renamed HMS Ark Royal.

Teamed with Type 45 air defence destroyers, frigates and perhaps a nuc hunter killer sub they will give the Royal Navy a formidable Carrier task force. But I wish they had a real fighter for CAP missions...

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

This for perspective only, but note this was published in 2014 since then the MINSTREL class landing ship deal between Russia and France did fail due to the UKRAINE crisis. France would end up paying a substantial amount of money to break the MINSTREL contract. France would recoup the losses with the recent sale to Egypt of both the MINSTREL ships to them which literally gave Egypt a quantum leap in conducting amphibious operations in their "neighborhood" as these are highly advanced purpose built ships.
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/mistral/

In my opinion given the failure of the MINSTREL deal to Russia (They were to get four of them.) and the current (But improving.) maintenance of their fleet, serious consideration has to be given to moving up the UK in swapping the two in their rankings.

Also Japan is in the process of redefining itself away from a "Self Defense Force" to a as yet undefined new role due to both the actions of N. Korea and China.

This next has the right music and is very much in line with MANY other sources online that like to rank this kind've of stuff. Note #1 and #2 have been interchangeable on the many I've seen. Everyone else seems inline with everyone elses assessment. What struck me though was how old some of these Marine Forces where.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKDBk-b-SNw

Regards,
Pat