I've seen that line of argument made before and i disagree more and more with it. Compared to a 70,000 tons ship a 40,000 tons one needs smaller/less powerful engines for the same speed, so less fuel needed, hence reducing purchase and operating costs. Not to mention the equivalent of the extra 30,000 tons displacement saved in steel, which WILL be a significant sum.
And pitifully despite the capacity to carry 36 F-35 (plus whatever number of helicopters, how many the QEs carry normally, 12 iirc? That's a huge amount of empty space and displacement hauled around at great epense for no reason (other than lunacy).
Just have a 40,000 tons ship carry say 24 VTOL planes and a few helos for much less purchase and operating costs, for much the same real-world capability as the QE hermaphrodites.
HMS Prince of Wales actually cost around £2.2bn to build....to say thats cheap for a 75,000 tonne, 32 knot carrier is understatement of the year...
The 35,000 tonne ITS Trieste has cost over £1bn to build (and isn't in service yet) and can carry and effectively operate 1/3rd of the aircraft on Prince of Wales, for a far shorter duration in terms of munitions, spares, aviation fuel carried etc etc. And Trieste is probably the best bang for buck LHD/small carrier built in recent years by a big margin...the, far more capable, at least in terms of aviation, but smaller Izumo Class cost around £1.5bn for a 26,000 tonne carrier.
The RN and USN believe (and the JMSDF as well), quite rightly, that a minimum of 8 ASW helos is required to maintain an effective screen around a CSG...now put 8 x Merlin on Trieste and see how many F-35 you can still operate, particularly at the same time....
And also wonder how the Marine Nationale plans to actually operate CdG in a high threat area with at most 3 ASW helos (1 NH-90 on the carrier and 2 on FREMM escorts...), let alone only 2 x E-2D...(whilst the USN seems to think 4, but preferably 5, E-2D are necessary for 24/7 coverage).
You think that 12x Phantoms and 14x Buccaneers plus 4x Gannett AEWs, is significantly less capable than 24x F-35Bs and 4-5x Merlin AEW?
Total max effort bombloads are comparable.
Only real advantage is the F-35s are stealthy, but that absolutely strangles their bombload down to 2x1000lbs (because -B models
UK F-35B's routinely operate from the QE Class with 6 x Paveway IV, the standard UK A2G munition....plus 2 Amraam and 2 Asraam...
And unlike Phantom and Buccaneer can actually deliver their bombload with precision...(Buccaneer only got Pave Spike and Paveway in the late 70's when fixed wing aviation on carriers was dead specifically for anti-ship strikes alongside Martel before the arrival of Sea Eagle a few years later, UK Phantoms never carried any designation gear). Buccaneer only carried 2 LGB's as well...as 1 pylon was reserved for Pave Spike, the other for a secondhand US AN/ALQ-101 jamming pod...that more often than not was on the fritz...its goes without saying that F-35B can carry 2 LGB's, jamming gear and designation equipment AND 2 Amraam whilst remaining LO (plus 2 Asraam for a small increase in its RCS)...
I don't think that anyone is saying anything other than F-35 available weapons are at present sub-optimal (people give Typhoon Tranche 1 stick for only carrying Amraam, Asraam and Paveway, but that is effectively what F-35 carries for the first 15 years in service...), and will remain so until Block IV delivers greater variety and, crucially, powered air to surface weapons...
Because it's objectively true that not having catapults IS a major limitation. Can't operate any big fixedwings, like a nice Hawkeye AEW plane. So you need to have 5x or more Merlin AEWs onboard instead of 3x Hawkeyes. Can't operate any fixed wing CODs, either.
All I can say is that it sure looks like an attempt by the admiralty to buy a pile of V-22s and force the UK to fund the solo development of an Osprey AEW variant.
At present there are 5 CATOBAR capable aircraft available for purchase. And during the time of CVF's development and build they've stayed the same....nothing else in build.
FA-18E/F Superhornet
Rafale
F-35C Lightning II
EA-18G Growler
E-2D Advanced Hawkeye
The first 3 occupy the same niche... Strike Fighter. F-35B is clearly superior to Rafale and Superhornet (and that production line is dead soon), Growler occupies a different niche and, arguably, is not as necessary if you operate, unlike the USN, an entirely LO airwing...F-35C is clearly superior to F-35B in terms of range and payload only. But once you take into account the fuel required as a reserve, landing cycles and for bolter situations the difference is not as big as the raw numbers suggest. F-35C's larger bomb bay would also have zero real effect for the UK based on UK munitions today or planned....you won't fit in more Spear in an F-35C bay than you will in F-35B, and FCASW is not going to fit in either variants bay.
I am leaving off the MQ-25 Stingray as that is not operational yet, and at the price it appears to be coming in at (>$150m per copy) and the need in the Pacific would never be purchased for the RN...
As you say the arguments for fixed wing COD have gone away with the slow demise of C-2 Greyhound and arrival of CMV-22. Fixed wing ASW having long departed with retirement of S-3 Viking...
So what you're left with is the E-2D...
Now there's no argument that E-2D is the best carrierborne AEW platform (at least until the Chinese get theirs operational). It is clearly superior to Crowsnest (but also massively inferior to land based AEW like E-7...and lets not talk about the failed Italian Merlin AEW...a real example of how not to do things on the cheap). But that comes at a significant cost...as PFJN notes below....
At least he didn't delve into the argument that seems to come up all too often that a CATOBAR solution would have provided the ability to operate more capable AEW assets while ignoring the added costs of such airplanes (which appears to be on the order of $3.135 Billion for a 9 plane E-2D order by Japan six years ago).
Japan paid $250m per E-2D just for the airframes, without including the spares, maintenance and support. For the UK that would mean a minimum purchase of 8 to provide 4-5 for the airwing. You could say that realistically to provide for both carriers, plus attrition, maintenance, training, trials etc that a more feasible buy would be 12. Thats $2-3bn right there for just the purchase of the airframes. Add in a maintenance and support package for a decent number of years and you've doubled that...then add in purchase of EMALS and AAG, plus spares, support, training etc and you've added another $2bn for a 2 ship set, and thats before you buy one for a land based training facility or a spare set...you'll also need a training pipeline for CATOBAR operations for aircrew and ground crew, you'll need an aircraft like Goshawk with all the costs associated for that training pipeline (unless you want, as the MN are, to be wholly dependent on the USN for training and could they even support the additional demands?). Now add in the additional personnel that you'll require for the 50 year lifetime of the ship to operate and maintain the EMALS and AAG....and this is just a general round up....the costs go on and on...
But congratulations...you've just spent >$10bn.....Here's the bad news....thats far more than the purchase cost of the entire CVF programme, including the 2 x Carriers, dockyard improvements, new tugs and barges and land based facilities at Glen Mallan, DM Gosport, HMNB Portsmouth, HMNB Gibraltar and Duqm etc have cost...in fact its likely you could include the cost of the 4 x Tide Class tankers and 2 x FSS and still have some change left over.....it's also more than the UK has spent to procure the initial 48 F-35B...
Some people will bring up AAR. But again with no danger of a fouled deck with STOVL the need primarily goes away for the limited buddy-buddy fueling solutions. Ultimately, usually even the USN needs land based AAR to help out (and MQ-25 will only change that situation marginally). When the USN needed tanking to get aircraft over Afghanistan from the Arabian Sea in 2001/2002 it wasn't buddy-buddy fueling that got them there....it was RAF VC-10 and TriStar who did the bulk of the work...
Crowsnest is clearly a capability that comes in at a price, both in terms of its affordability and lower capability. But if we had $10bn sloshing around the RN or indeed MoD would be prioritising a lot of other things ahead of E-2D...
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