Essex v. Kusnetsov - Is a reactivated Essex class carrier a better buy than a new Kusnetsov?

EwenS · Jun 16, 2022

MikeMeech said:
Hi
A summary of the Type 45 problems from page 30 of 'British Warships & Auxiliaries 2022' below:
View attachment 673904
It appears that Northrop Grumman was a major contributor to the problem.

Mike

The problem with Diamond was not the Northrop Grumman intercooler. She suffered from a gas turbine failure that meant replacement of the whole engine. Nothing new. It happens from time to time. I think it was Illustrious that had to replace an Olympus while at sea off the Falklands back in the 1980s. Quite an engineering feat at the time.

Details of HMS Diamond’s maintenance in Taranto revealed

Vice Admiral Chris Gardner has confirmed that "it was a propulsion problem".

ukdefencejournal.org.uk

Reluctant Poster · Jun 17, 2022

Admiral Beez said:
Given how the entire Type 45 class had to have their machinery replaced within a year or so of active service, it's not just Russian machinery to watch out for.

They didnt replace the entire propulsion system.

SaparotRob · Jun 17, 2022

Perhaps they should have. Maybe some more roubles for dry dock maintenance as well.

Tkdog · Jun 18, 2022

A better modern contest might be with USS America.

SaparotRob · Jun 18, 2022

I agree. I was just wondering how an old model carrier, built by a nation with a (good) naval tradition, would fare against Kusnetsov.

Glider · Jun 19, 2022

If we are going down the fantasy route I would either:-

Dust down the Invincible design and make changes to carry the F35 and not the Harrier. Shouldn't be too difficult as the F35 is a remarkable small aircraft, the Invincible was a very reliable warship, it would be cheaper and you could have more of them.
Take the new QE class and go for the option where it carried non vertical F35. Most of the design work will be unchanged apart from the arrester gear. It could interact with the USN and the French Navy and the aircraft itself would be lighter and have a longer range

SaparotRob · Jun 19, 2022

Glider said:
If we are going down the fantasy route I would either:-

Dust down the Invincible design and make changes to carry the F35 and not the Harrier. Shouldn't be too difficult as the F35 is a remarkable small aircraft, the Invincible was a very reliable warship, it would be cheaper and you could have more of them.

Take the new QE class and go for the option where it carried non vertical F35. Most of the design work will be unchanged apart from the arrester gear. It could interact with the USN and the French Navy and the aircraft itself would be lighter and have a longer range

Now we're talking!

Macandy · Jun 20, 2022

Admiral Beez said:
Given how the entire Type 45 class had to have their machinery replaced within a year or so of active service, it's not just Russian machinery to watch out for.

Except machinery wasn't replaced.

Macandy · Jun 20, 2022

Glider said:
If we are going down the fantasy route I would either:-

Dust down the Invincible design and make changes to carry the F35 and not the Harrier. Shouldn't be too difficult as the F35 is a remarkable small aircraft, the Invincible was a very reliable warship, it would be cheaper and you could have more of them.

Take the new QE class and go for the option where it carried non vertical F35. Most of the design work will be unchanged apart from the arrester gear. It could interact with the USN and the French Navy and the aircraft itself would be lighter and have a longer range

1. Even with a 100ft hull stretch, the Invincible design can only fit 5 x F-35

2. Uh no, it would require very substantial refit and design work to fit cats and traps to achieve a lower sortie rate.
The argument about 'lighter aircraft with longer range' is utter nonsense.
Did you miss the fact HMS Queen Elizabeth has 'interacted' perfectly with the USN and even the French

EwenS · Jun 20, 2022

Macandy said:
1. Even with a 100ft hull stretch, the Invincible design can only fit 5 x F-35

2. Uh no, it would require very substantial refit and design work to fit cats and traps to achieve a lower sortie rate.
The argument about 'lighter aircraft with longer range' is utter nonsense.
Did you miss the fact HMS Queen Elizabeth has 'interacted' perfectly with the USN and even the French

Invincible needs bigger lifts to handle F-35B.

Or chop about 2 feet off each wingtip! Kinda like an extreme version of the modification to FAA Corsairs in WW2.

Macandy · Jun 20, 2022

EwenS said:
Invincible needs bigger lifts to handle F-35B.

Or chop about 2 feet off each wingtip! Kinda like an extreme version of the modification to FAA Corsairs in WW2.

Yes, that too, but the limiting factor was the tiny hanger. It really is properly narrow and fairly short. It runs less than half the length of the deck.
You can see in the phots from the scrapping of HMS Ark Royal how small the hanger actually its

Glider · Jun 20, 2022

Macandy said:
1. Even with a 100ft hull stretch, the Invincible design can only fit 5 x F-35

2. Uh no, it would require very substantial refit and design work to fit cats and traps to achieve a lower sortie rate.
The argument about 'lighter aircraft with longer range' is utter nonsense.
Did you miss the fact HMS Queen Elizabeth has 'interacted' perfectly with the USN and even the French

Clearly we disagree on some fundamentals

1 I admit to not understanding this. The Sea Harrier is about 46ft Long and the Invincible carried 21 aircraft. Normally 9 Sea Harriers, 9 ASW helicopters and 3 ASW helicopters plus additional deck parking for a few more aircraft when they removed the Sea Dart. Clearly they could easily swap out some of the ASW Sea Kings for Harriers if needed.
The F35 is about 52ft long. Can I ask how you can support your statement that with a 100ft stretch (which no doubt would be welcome) you can only carry 5 x F35?

2 The cats and traps design work was already done, It was a political decision to limit the final build to the F35B. In addition the main part of the ships design pretty much everything below the hanger decks has already been built and the bugs wrung out of it.
During the development there was one point where the UK were very seriously thinking of pulling out of the F35 because the US decided that we couldn't have access to some of the core code. One option was a naval version of the Typhoon.
Your comment The argument about 'lighter aircraft with longer range' is utter nonsense I believe to be incorrect. The F35B carries a lot less fuel and consequently has a lot less range and it can pull less G which is a problem in air combat. It is also more maintenance intensive simply because of the lift engines which in turn require more spare parts, which I assure you as an ex Fleet Air Arm Artificer is a problem on a ship with limited storage space.

2B Clearly I didn't make myself better understood. The current QE class cannot operate the traditional fixed wing aircraft operated by the US and French navies. In that sense they cannot interact with other navies, although they can, and have operated with the US Marines.

Does that clarify the situation?

GreenKnight121 · Jun 21, 2022

Sea Harrier FA.2 wingspan: 27' 3"; length 46' 6" (42' 10.25" with nose folded)

F-35B wingspan: 35'; length 51' 2.4"

Invincible class hangar was 500 ft (150 m) long, with width varying between 74 and 40 ft (23 and 12 m) and a height of 20 ft (6.1 m).

Here is the layout, and a proposed "stretched Invincible" design by VSEL (~70' longer):

Note the wider hangar... although the lifts are still too small for F-35B:

That stretched CVS would have been about the size of Hermes (744' long, 144' wide (90' hull), 24,900 tons vs Invincible's 686' long, 118' wide (90' hull), 22,000 tons).

Above all, there would have to be NEW NON-SCISSORS-TYPE LIFTS!

The lifts on the Invincible class were a complex mess... and every so often would collapse spectacularly!

I really should make a post with the full set of images & drawings, and the text of the 1987 MOD report on the lifts.

PFVA63 · Jun 21, 2022

Glider said:
...

"2 The cats and traps design work was already done, ..."
...

Hi,
It was my understanding that the a bove statement is incorrect. Specifically, because there was initially a degree of uncertainty over when EMALS would be available, although the QECs were notionally designed to be convertable at some future stage for CATOBAR operations, no decision was made during the design of the ships on whether the catapults used would be Steam, EMAL, or some other potential future type of catapult (including potential alternate non-EMALS electromagnetic catapults.) As such, it was not really possible to do any specific design work for the fitting of catapults, until the specific type of catapults was chosen. In addition, since EMALS was under development at the time that the QECs were being designed, alot of specifics about the requirements of the EMALS system were still not fully known.

As such, in the early stages of the decision to perhaps cancel the F-35B order and make at least one of the QECs into a CATOBAR vessel, it is my understanding that the very early stage/preliminary estimates done by the government were base on an assumed number ofcompartments that would be impacted based on some previous assessements done for steam catapults, and that when more accurate estimates were provided, based on the latest info for the EMALS system, it turned out that the number of compartments that would be impacted was much higher than previously expected.

It is also my understanding that the revised cost estimates included delaying construction of the ship while detail design of theeffectedcompartments and systems were being undertaken, which would further delay the ship, and hence add some additional costs as well.

As such, I don't think that it is correct to say that the "cats and traps design work was already done".

Regards

Pat

EwenS · Jun 22, 2022

I've linked below 2 articles on the early development of the QE class and the subsequent decisions in 2010-12 about the possibility of switching horses mid-race to obtain CATOBAR. It seems that in reality the possibility of easy conversion to CATOBAR went out the window in 2002 when the decision was taken to acquire F-35B i.e. long before these ships were even laid down.

Had a decision been taken in 2010-12 to switch to CATOBAR it could probably only have been applied to PoW (laid down May 2011) which says a lot about the extent of the changes required and how deep in the ship they would have needed to have been applied. The result? More cost, both initial and ongoing, more delay, two entirely different an incompatible carriers, more continuing training time for air and ground crew etc etc. It is nowhere near as easy to maintain a CATOBAR capability. And it seems that we would still be waiting for it to enter service even if the whole project had survived subsequent defence cutbacks.

Development of the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier – a design history | Navy Lookout

www.navylookout.com

Cats, traps and claptrap. Why the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carriers operate VSTOL aircraft | Navy Lookout

www.navylookout.com

And an article about the latest proposed possibility of fitting them for the operation of UAVs.

Cats, traps and UAS – the Royal Navy considers options for carrier-launched drones | Navy Lookout

www.navylookout.com

southjn1982 · Jun 22, 2022

The Kutesnov is significantly bigger than an Essex and has significantly more upgrade potential and could have a much better airwing, however that itself may cause issues and there maybe issues about equipping such a force but assuming we could get all the refits done to bring an old non-nuclear carrier up to a reasonable combat capability for modern day. I'd pick neither and depending on my operational budget go with either a Midway or a Kittyhawk (if all the Forestalls weren't scrapped they would be a great option and while Kittyhawk and JFK were sold for scrapping last October JFK hasn't been scrapped yet) for a large Fleet carrier but if I wanted to have a light carrier as I'm a small country and I simply can't afford to operate a large Carrier I would have wanted to go with something from the British 1942 light carrier like the Majestics (the fact that they remaindered in service for over 50 years is a testament to the good initial design) however the last ones were scrapped 5 years ago.

southjn1982 · Jun 22, 2022

SaparotRob said:
Now we're talking!

The Invincibles can't handle the F-35 one of the reasons for their retirement was the deck wasn't strong enough to take the F-35

EwenS · Jun 22, 2022

Invincible class hangar with Sea harrier FRS 1 in foreground and Sea King in background.

Compare that with Hermes hangar in 1982

SaparotRob · Jun 22, 2022

I've decided you're all wrong. An Essex (or Yorktown or even HMS Argus) is a better value. I was trolling a Russian on the News Radio channel in the comments of a Sarmat II broadcast.
For the record, a 1982 Ford Taurus has more safety features than a 2022 Lada. Just play along,okay?

GreenKnight121 · Jul 8, 2022

Kuznetsov hangar dimensions: 502' (153m) x 85' (26m) x 23' 7" (7.2m)
Essex class hangar dimensions: 654' (199.4m) x 70' (21.3m) x 17' 6" (5.3m)

Essex v. Kusnetsov - Is a reactivated Essex class carrier a better buy than a new Kusnetsov?

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