Actually, yes. Six months ago the plan was to stick EMALS on one and flog the second, hopefully to India or possibly even Brazil. Airgroup would be a single joint RAF / FAA of at most 24 F-35C's with a few AEW Merlins* thrown in for good measure. Now, there's significant pressure to retain the 2nd CVF and procure a much larger airgroup. All of which comes from operations over Libya. The RAF's Typhoon deplyment was, uh, problematic not least because of having to base out of Sicily and the logistic difficulties inherent with that. Having some RAF crewed jets sitting on a deck off the Libyan cost suddenly looks more attractive especially when fighting the usual Whitehall turf wars. Second was the political embarrassment for the UK in only being able to deploy a few attack helicopters off the Libyan coast, the kind of mission that the recently decommissioned Ark Royal and a dozen SHARs would have been perfect for. This gets compounded by France deploying the CdeG and it's Rafales. You can bet that David Cameron and co found this uncomfortable at the very least. Not that this will become apparent for the next year or two, wait for the next defence 're-balancing' or however it's presented. We'll see the Army facing the vast majority of the cuts, with a few cosmetic scraps cut off what's left of the RAF and RN by then.
*There's a long convoluted saga over the UK's continued inability to buy a few Hawkeye 2000s, the word clusterfuck doesn't even begin to cover it.
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Date: 2011-12-20 04:31 pm (UTC)Actually, yes. Six months ago the plan was to stick EMALS on one and flog the second, hopefully to India or possibly even Brazil. Airgroup would be a single joint RAF / FAA of at most 24 F-35C's with a few AEW Merlins* thrown in for good measure.
Now, there's significant pressure to retain the 2nd CVF and procure a much larger airgroup. All of which comes from operations over Libya. The RAF's Typhoon deplyment was, uh, problematic not least because of having to base out of Sicily and the logistic difficulties inherent with that. Having some RAF crewed jets sitting on a deck off the Libyan cost suddenly looks more attractive especially when fighting the usual Whitehall turf wars.
Second was the political embarrassment for the UK in only being able to deploy a few attack helicopters off the Libyan coast, the kind of mission that the recently decommissioned Ark Royal and a dozen SHARs would have been perfect for. This gets compounded by France deploying the CdeG and it's Rafales. You can bet that David Cameron and co found this uncomfortable at the very least.
Not that this will become apparent for the next year or two, wait for the next defence 're-balancing' or however it's presented. We'll see the Army facing the vast majority of the cuts, with a few cosmetic scraps cut off what's left of the RAF and RN by then.
*There's a long convoluted saga over the UK's continued inability to buy a few Hawkeye 2000s, the word clusterfuck doesn't even begin to cover it.