Reply With QuoteYou're joking! There is a serious shortage of SQEP and problems filling the pipeline.Originally Posted by zippy
Yes, I was actually considering an engineering officer role in the RAF but decided against it in the end.
You're joking! There is a serious shortage of SQEP and problems filling the pipeline.
I am far from being as knowledgeable on those matters as other members here. Besides I was in the Air Force, not the Navy when I served, and the French one at that.
However I know that an aircraft carrier is extremely vulnerable on its own.
It may be armed with very sophisticated defence systems it is still, as the Russians put it, a very big target.
Hence the notion of Carrier Strike Group in the US, where the Carrier is escorted by a couple of destroyers or frigates, and regularly a submarine and a supply ship.
Without this support, the Carrier is of little use, if only because the risk of exposing it to enemy fire is too enormous, both financially and politically
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
As stated above. I don't doubt that for specialist roles. For general entry as a rating, the story is different. When you mean filling the pipeline, is that due to the Navy not putting enough recruits through basic training, or just not having enough recruits to fill the available places ?
It might take a year to get through the process but there's not a waiting list that I'm aware of, certainly not at the junior ranks level. The time it takes to train people is a concern and unfortunately for the MoD, for the nuclear qualified there is the draw of the private sector.
Unfortunately a lot of the RAF and Navy are now made up of specialist roles. With the economy picking up, the problem nowadays isn't so much recruiting folk, it's retaining SQEP personnel, and this isn't likely to change while the government refuse to give them a decent pay rise.
Not isolated to nuclear engineering, the pay needs to match or exceed industry to make it work properly.
This is exactly the problem. RAF-wise at least, personnel from different trades are paid according to rank and trade. However, an aircraft engineer doesn't make that much more than a person in HR. While that money is pretty damn good for paper-pusher, nowadays it's just not good enough for a fully qualified aircraft engineer - and civilian companies know it. Jaguar Landrover regularly park a big recruiting truck outside the gates of RAF Cosford and the oil companies can often be found outside the gates of the Scottish camps...
The Americans don't have that problem with theres so I wonder why we did, or was it the Sea Harrier your on an about rather than the one that served in the end. The SHAR radar was so good it could find things AWACS couldnt. The death knell of the Harrier was when the Navy put them on the RAF books to save money to get the carriers and the RAF scrapped them to keep the Tornado. Personally i think the carriers were built on the cheap and should have had proper cats and traps so they could accomodate a multitude of aircraft rather than a few very specialist ones that cant hold enough fuel to do much.the rate of attrition through failures was getting scary, they were just too old to be much use going forward (again the planes not the pilots). Militarily it would have been good to have kept them for another 10 years but at the rate of losing something like 1 a month to engine failure etc it wasn't a practical proposition unless you want to give all your pilots MB ties and bury a few
The first rule of Government is to protect the country, recently they seem to have forgotten that and are praying that if the shit does hit the fan the fairies will come and bring some kit and men.
The Americans do have a problem keeping their Harrier fleet going, why do you think they were so keen to purchase ours?
The fact that a lot of the cockpit tech was proprietary US kit helped limit the potential market for ours, and made the US an easy customer, helped of course.
The RAF assuming responsibility for all Harriers was much more to do with Military Airworthiness regulations and joint working than any attempt to save money.
It’s interesting to note that back in 1999 when the plan to merge the Navy and RAF jets was announced, press releases at the time mentioned that the Harrier would be retired and replaced with a new multi role aircraft in the future.
Now, it might have been a long time coming, and with a gap in capability for a while, but the MOD are doing exactly what they said they would.
Last edited by Tooks; 9th December 2017 at 10:12.
The American airframes are in many cases newer and much more comprehensively maintained, they were still being built in 2002 and is a substantial newer development. They can afford to keep them flying. It’s a bit like asking why we can’t fly Harriers when the yanks can keep f-18s in the air. I totally agree about CATOBAR for the carriers.
Last edited by Padders; 9th December 2017 at 10:23.
Harriers were binned because they were too expensive to maintain, as others have said. We had old airframes that follow a bathtub curve in terms of maintenance costs through life and the SHAR and GR9s were pretty much passing the plateau, the USMC bought them up as spares rather than putting them into use.
The fact is though that the carriers will give us a capability we do not have at present, which is always good, but remember we're still talking at least 5 years away for a full capability.
https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/u-...hor-1794046061
Still another 10 years with the marine corps
B
To call it the Widowmaker is a bit rich. It will never equal the outstanding record of the Lockheed F104 in that domain!
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
Yeah right - I remember at the time :
"How do you get your hands on a starfighter and all its avionics ?"
"You buy a field in germany and wait"
Not meant as a dis to all the pilots injured and more.
I should think the guys who flew or more often crashed the f-105 Thud would make an argument that the Starfighter was safer, though the NVA helped with that appalling loss rate.
Absolutely. How many crashes in the first month of ownership? I seem to remember it was close to 200! And Canada was the same.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
They started with downward firing ejector seats. Genius idea that.
If so many hadn't died or been maimed, it would be genuinely funny. It even almost killed Chuck Yeager
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
I think Chuck Yeager nearly killed Chuck Yeager. He was climbing near vertically at over 100 thou feet under rocket assist when he discovered the laws of fluid dynamics work less well in a near vacuum. Without permission to fly. Lunatic!
Last edited by Padders; 9th December 2017 at 13:23.
Chuck is the daddy!
I took a trip down to Pompey to see it arrive back from sea trials a couple of weeks ago, plenty of folk had the same idea, that was until we were told she wouldn't be attempting entering port because of strong winds, the mind boggles.
My understanding was that she was meant to go to the States before Xmas for more trials and pickup her aircraft, this has been put back until the new year because she is so far behind schedule.
For those interested she can be seen on this webcam http://www.hmswarrior.org/webcam along with the plethora of security boats bobbing around her 24/7.
That's pretty cool, thanks.
I'll be in Portsmouth harbour early Jan, so am hoping to see her close-up if she's still berthed up.
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
The Luftwaffe also turned it in to a low level strike aircraft.
Low level and downward firing ejector seats do not make good bed fellows.
For its original purpose (high altitude poinf intercepter) the downward firing seat made sense especially as seat technology was in its infancy and the pilot need to clear the T tail.
The F104 was an aircraft way ahead of its time in many ways but also obsolete as soon as it entered service with the USAF hence it being sold cheap to virtually every NATO country.
Back on topic I think carriers are an important stratigic platform, you can park it anywhere in the world and you have a operations base from which to operate. They also enable humanitarian missions to undertaken which is an equally important task often forgotten about.
The Russians are just jealous. Their carrier, the partly floating old unreliable junkpile Kuznetzov, is all but useless. It actually has an ocean going tug with in case it breaks down! Which it does regularly!
An aircraft carrier is a smaller target than any RAF airbase, which has the added convenience of being stationary and in a known position.
Ah but a land base can't be sunk by a submarine, against which we now have very little defence or even detection capability. Basically these days we are a tin pot piss poor Navy*. Our politicians need a good kick up the arse like they got in 1982 but they forgot that lesson all too quickly.
* Can I say that in G&D or should I redact?
Last edited by Padders; 9th December 2017 at 22:11.
Great ship, good news for the navy I think. Once operational will make a great base for operations.
Three cheers for the Senior Service.
This ^ notwithstanding of what you think of the ongoing cuts, procurement and SDSR shenanigans.
Fas est ab hoste doceri
Hear, Hear. If the defence budget hadn’t had a £34 billion hole in it when this mess had to be sorted out we’d be in a lot better shape now.
Fantastic vessel, when the aircraft deploy she’ll be world class.
So Chuck keeps telling us .....Chuck is the daddy!
Totally agree.
For anyone curious to know what happened, the details are here - http://www.kalimera.org/nf104/stories/stories_13.html
It was suggested to me that once the decision to go with the STOVL F35B we didn't need mega carriers, for the money we're now spending you could have accommodated all the planned aircraft on 5 Invincible class carriers which would have been more flexible in their abilities even if they would have needed more support craft
Wasn't it Tony Blair's decision to out do the French with their carrier?
I know what you mean, but still got to admire what he did.
This is a must see
Reminds me of the Mike Tyson quote “Everyone has a plan, right until they get punched in the face”.
Sent from my iPhone using TZ-UK mobile app
You’re quite right about the way that catapults were tested. Many years ago the MoD sold one of our carriers to the Indian Navy. Before its sale it was overhauled by Harland and Wolf in Belfast. It was just at the time that The City Council was disposing of the tram system in Belfast. The old trams were bought up cheaply and used for catapult testing as the ship transited back to India.
I have often imagined that in hundreds of years time marine archaeologists will discover Belfast trams littering the sea bed of the Indian Ocean and wondered what conclusions they would draw.
Sorry but this is nonsense. The USA has no operational input into the RN submarine flotilla except very occasionally when operating under a NATO umbrella.
I assume you are referring to the much quoted US control of the Trident missile system. This is largely misunderstood by the media. The USA provides the missiles and the launch systems - but not the warheads. The USA has no operational control of the system thereafter - and theoretically the UK could launch the missiles independently.
P.S. I worked in the UK nuclear submarine industry for 45 years including 15 years as a RN submariner. I was also ( briefly) the Commissioning Director on the QEC Carrier project.
Lovely - I'm not getting into a political argument in G&D, let's just say I don't dispute the theory of what you say one bit.
M
Apparently it is soon to become a submarine.
One of the prop shafts is leaking according to the news this morning.
Stern glands leak on new builds, shaft needs to bed in under load then you repack the gland and tadaaa!!
Mike
Problem shows up on 'sea trials' woop de woop!
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."
'Populism, the last refuge of a Tory scoundrel'.
Slow news day.
Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Normal snag, easily rectified. I am sure there are many others, and more will be discovered in the coming weeks. Nothing unusual.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
...." I name this ship Queen Eleakybeth, may God bless her and all who drown on her..."
Sent from my [device_name] using TZ-UK mobile app
Shhhhjt. Don´t point out the obvious which in this case is ignored bad news. The messenger bringing the latter is tradionally shot.
Leaking stern seal? No big deal. Probably a Simplex oil-filled system and a balance of internal oil pressure and external sea water pressure. Increasing seal oil pressure causes external oil leakage (and pollution). Allowing water ingress instead keeps the problem contained and the water can be removed from the system by decanting or separation. The seals can be routinely renewed afloat by ballasting fwd to clear the seal box or by divers using a mobdoc or cofferdam arrangement. Luckily the days of stern gland repacking are long gone. In 25 years at sea I've seen dozens of these seals repaired and the only time it required dry docking and tail shaft removal was due to shaft damage.
It must be a slooooow day in the MSM.
Dear old Liz herself is probably a bit leaky now, so it kind of works.. :)
Ha! That’s quality.
Err are you allowed to say that? Surely a least a week in the stocks!
Posting Permissions
