So, realistically, the 4 stored could be returned to service?

Type 41 air defense frigate - Cat class (Puma etc) 2 x 2 x4.5"
Type 42 air defense - Sheffield etc

Type 61 radar picket frigate - Cathedral class (Salisbury etc) double array 965 radar

I do not know but may the high endurance Zephyr drones provide a similar facility. The electronics package is clearly far smaller but with modern electronics advancing wonder what its synthetic aperture radar performance would be?

I believe the current QE flight deck is essentially the same parallel layout as CVA01 and seems much better than the angled deck for a "wide" carrier. Originally the outstanding advantage of the angled deck was that it left the front of the carrier to park aircraft while landing on without...

If I remember correctly the last single shaft frigate was the Type 14 Blackwood class. The other reference could be the US Oliver Perry, which is single shaft.

I presume the 34 comes from the MoD statement that the design basis of the CVF was 36 JSF (+ helos). I believe that the Invincibles had a planeguard helo airbourne during launch and recovery. It is of interest that the design basis of the CVS/SHAR was for them to carry 5 (4 + 1 spare?) whereas in th...

Sorry for my ignorance but when is the "Land Ceptor" coming into service? It will be great to see the land forces regain a decent air defence system for the first time since Thunderbird's were withdrawn.

The 'Ram' looks interesting!

shark bait wrote: Everyone apart from the Americans have a flawed amphibious strategy, doing little to address the vulnerability of a landing force in the middle of a manoeuvre.

It worked quite well in San Carlos Bay in 1982.

wirralpete wrote: http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/barrow/Ea ... 8386d44b07

Those flank sonar arrays are massive!

Alrosa, a Kilo class submarine of the russian northern fleet, uses a pump-jet but that does not seem to have continued with the most recent Kilo builds. The new super-SSK for Australia will have pump-jets, maybe. Some images had it, some not. I did not know of the Kilo fitment, but I doubt the real...

Thought it was more obstructions to the cooling water intake for the reactor, hence why a ssk can sit on the bottom......? IIRC the biggest theoretical problem of sitting an SSN on the seabed was its completely round hull, with very real concerns about rolling. Certainly one of the safety concerns ...

Submarines that have pump jet propulsion ,have been reported to have difficulties with seaweed clogging, any comments The UKs Swftsure class onwards had pump jets and I never heard of any "foreign object" issues (certainly not in my personal experience in 2nd Submarine Squadron from 1977-...

You cannot compare the Baltic now to the 1980s. In those days East Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia were either part of the USSR or fully allied with it. The current view of the NATO team appears to be that any flight between two parts of the Russian Federation (St Petersburg and Kalin...

But given how many times Sea Skua has actually been used should be instructive. As far as I'm aware no combat use of Penguin,Sea Eagle ever, and no use of Maverick or Exocet from helos in combat. I may be wrong but I suspect that more Sea Skua missiles have been fired in anger than any other anti-s...

To my knowledge, the only SSN to have had its reactor changed was USS Seawolf in the 1950s. It was the second US nuclear submarine design and had a sodium cooled reactor, which was not a success, so it was removed (and dumped at sea) and replaced by a PWR. What was standard was the refuelling of sub...

I may be reading the Sea Ceptor specs wrong but if it can achieve 25+km in anti-air mode it is logical that it could reach more than that in the surface mode (less terminal manoeuvrability required) and it has a low radar cross section (it is the same as ASRAAM, which has a low observability in exte...

What is interesting is to compare the amount of undisturbed parking area on each design. By undisturbed I mean the are not affected by lifts, launch area and angled deck. I think that the QE has more space than a Nimitz, which would mean less a/c movements for a given tempo of activity. Looking at t...

Having been in the RN during the Falklands there are a few interesting things to note The only heavy ship killing was done by a 1930s designed (and 1940s built) torpedo. No SSM was fired from any warship (RN or ARA) Systems that were still in testing were put into service very effectively (Sea Skua)...

In terms of weapons effectively used the "missile gap" is the Sea Skua vs. Sea Venom, and the need to get Sea Venom fitted to Merlins! A much more usefull weapon than Harpoon.

Spear 3 from 50k ft would have a range of 140km(?), an even bigger challenge for anything but a top flight SAM system.

Does this mean that a Aegis/Standard combination failed in the area defence (or even point defence) mode against an old Soviet style SSM?

If one assumes a Falkland 2 scenario then the two CVFs will both be there. Their overload a/c load is above 60, so one could imagine a load out of 120 F35B! One plans ones military for the unexpected, not the expected. Every deployment of RAF fast jets since the fall of the USSR has been away from U...

If this Brimstone 2 integration happens it will be interesting in a naval environment. As I understand the missile range from a 50k ft launch should be 40-60km? So if a naval unit cannot engage 50k ft target at 50km it will be vunerable to a salvo of 12 missiles. Interesting?

The RN policy of all a/c being stored in the hanger came from the 1930s when it was belived the way to handle air attacks on the carrier was to store all the a/c below the armoured flight deck and use the AA guns to fight off the attack. That was clearly a flawed view and rapidly revised during WW2....