HMS Ark Royal to be scrapped

The Basket said:

Don't like the Harrier slagging. The Falklands showed the Harrier to be a very useful machine. It can also use some of the poor runways in Afghanistan. It representing the finest in British engineering when that phrase meant something.

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Basket,

If that comment is directed at me, I'm not slagging the Harrier - having deployed on operations with them I have a soft spot for the aircraft. And I agree the Pegasus engine is an engineering marvel. However, the Harrier's raison d'etre is long gone and even if it can use some of the poorer airfields in AF, that means you have to send more troops to defend that airfield, in addition to the troops required to defend a conventional airfield - this equals more cost, more personnel exposed to risk etc etc. I agree they were useful in the Falklands and, as I mentioned, I think taking them out of service in 2011 is a tad too soon but in the long run we don't need STOVL and the CTOL F-35 makes much more sense as a "replacement" on a conventional carrier design than all the preceding indecision and the ludicrous multi-mode "cataramp" carrier design .

Yee Haa,

The new carriers will operate the conventional take-off version of the F-35. The previous concept was a "flexible" carrier design that could be built either with a ski ramp for a STOVL F-35 or conventional catapults on a flat deck for the CTOL variant. Of course, this so-called flexibility (aka indecision) massively increased cost. The new carriers are likely to enter service just a year or two ahead of the F-35...and that's if the carriers arrive on time. Overall, the decision on the new carriers and F-35 makes sense. Removing the offensive air element of the existing carriers is more troubling.

Cheers,
Buffnut

vikingBerserker said:

I hate that the US carriers are becoming named after US Presidents, instead of famous battles, ships, or war heros. Some I understand like Lincoln, but the Gerald Ford Class? I'd take Prince of Wales over that any day

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comiso90 said:

I've often thought the same thing. I'd like to know the decision process behind that shift in thinking.

As long as the US has carriers, there should be a Lexington, Yorktown and Enterprise.

.

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renrich said:

VB and Comis, I agree 100%. The US carriers should be named, as they were in WW2, for former USN ships. Aside from tradition, naming carriers for presidents gets into politics which we need less of, not more.

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Was watching a program earlier this year about the next generation carriers, don't remember the class name or whatever that they had given them....
But, it was said that these ships (think that it 5 or 6) would be named like before after battles etc...
So, maybe in the future you'll see another aircraft carrier named USS Yorktown, USS Enterprise, USS Coral Sea, USS Midway etc.... 8)

On naming, I think Royal titles like Prince of Wales are appropriate for RN warships, but I wpould personally like to see the old dreadnought battleship names bought back into the fleet - Thunderer, Collingwood, Temeraire etc, as well as some of the famous names of the sail era like Agamenon, Captain, Elephant. Although I do like the idea of resurrecting the 'D' class names for the Type 45s, and thought that using the 'Town' names for the Type 42s was a nice touch as it made them the third generation of 'Town' class warships in a century.

On the carriers themselves, I firmly believe that the saving of these contracts is entirely political. Firstly, it will save jobs (naturally, a good thing during this recession). Secondly, like Trident the carriers will form a useful platform for Tory manhood projection in the face of increasing subordination to the US and EU. And finally, when the Labour govt signed for the carriers, they actually let BAE tell them that canceling the things would be more expensive than building them - the same mess they got into with Eurofighter!

I always thought this was a "strange decision". Why give up your only "ace" until your new deck is ready?