The last attempt by the UK's Royal Navy to launch a new class of purpose-built aircraft carriers floundered amid an inter-service battle in the late 1960s. The senior service is trying again and, with the help of industry, is attempting to persuade a cost-conscious Ministry of Defence (MoD) that a new class of carrier would offer the UK taxpayer value for money.
Given the pressure on the MoD budget, this will not be easy. There is also a serious question mark over whether the UK's slimmed-down shipbuilding industry could construct some of the designs being considered in the RN's concept and pre-feasibility studies.
As one of the pioneers of carrier aviation, the RN has long been interested in staying in the aircraft-carrier business. Its three Invincible-class vessels entered service between 1980 and 1984, but will need replacing in the second decade of the next century.
Whitehall provision
Quiet work within the corridors of Whitehall has secured provision for carrier aviation in the RN's long-term future equipment programme (Flight International, 19-25 March, P20). Some ú200 million ($320 million) has also been set aside to buy a stake in the US Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) programme as the aircraft element of the project. The RN's directors of naval architecture and future projects have awarded contracts for concept and pre-feasibility studies relating to naval air power to British Aerospace's naval-systems division, BAeSEMA, and Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering (VSEL). A price tag of several billion pounds is likely to prove the greatest hurdle to carrier supporters.
The dramatically changed strategic situation since the end of the Cold War is seen by the RN as the major justification for new purpose-built aircraft carriers. Rear Adm Richard Phillips, Assistant Chief of Defence Staff for Operational Requirements (Sea), speaking to the Centre for Defence and International Security Studies, said that carriers form one of his service's three core capabilities - the other two being amphibious forces and nuclear-powered submarines.
He says that aircraft carriers offer wide-ranging power-projection capability, from crisis management to all-out war. A carrier is a powerful and flexible asset, well suited to promote UK influence, free to operate offshore in international waters (without reliance on land bases) and capable of changing operational tempo. Its extensive command, control, communications and intelligence capability allows timely reaction to political direction in crisis management and conflict, says Phillips. Unlike the existing 20,000t Invincible-class carriers, which were built as anti-submarine-helicopter platforms for operations against the Soviet navy in the North Atlantic, any new carrier would be optimised for air defence and offensive air operations against shore targets.
The RN is stressing the multi-service nature of the carrier programme, to prevent a re-run of the disputes with the Royal Air Force in the 1960s over its last carrier programme. The new carrier could act as a forward base for RAF JSFs and support helicopters and Army Air Corps Westland WAH-64D attack helicopters.
Carrier OPTIONS
Malcolm Bird, of BAeSEMA's strategic-marketing carriers/warship prime-contracts office, says that running the RN's Invincible-class carriers beyond 2010 would start to result in diminishing returns as the cost of keeping the 1970s-vintage carriers in service escalates. The minimum is a service-life-extension programme, with new aircraft, says Bird. Such a programme would be risky because of the difficulty of assessing the fatigue life of the existing hulls and lengthening them by inserting an extra section. There is only one place to cut the hull of an Invincible-class carrier, he says.
Using converted container or cruise ships also presents problems, says Bird. They would be an "expensive compromise", only really viable in an emergency. Their big radar cross-section makes them vulnerable, and a container ship's hull would need to be filled with large amounts of concrete to ensure stability in high sea-states.
A new design offers more efficient use of volume, design flexibility, improved survivability, stealth and reduced through-life costs, says Bird. Phillips and Bird are considering options for 20-, 26-, 30- and 40-aircraft-capable carriers, operating short take-off and vertical-landing (STOVL), short take-off-but- arrested- landing (STOBAR) and conventional-take-off-and-landing (CTOL) aircraft (with catapult and arrester wires) and helicopters.
Although no decision has yet been made on these requirements, Phillips and Bird seem to indicate that a STOVL carrier looks the most likely choice. The need for offensive strike aircraft with heavy ordnance loads, so-called "bomb trucks", means that the project will be driven towards larger air groups, of between 26 and 40, to maximise the operational efficiency of the carrier.
Bird says that a STOVL ship with a 20-aircraft/helicopter air group, and a capability to surge to 30 airframes in a crisis, would have a displacement of 35,000t. A CTOL carrier, weighing in at 40,000t, with an angled deck, would embark a 26-airframe air group, which could surge to 40 aircraft for short periods.
Naval eurofighter?
If a CTOL or STOBAR option were selected, this would raise the prospect of, perhaps, a navalised Eurofighter EF2000 being embarked, but industry sources suggest that this could add up to one-third to its price. The RN, however, sees the STOVL version of the JSF as its preferred choice for the carrier's embarked Future Carrier-Borne Aircraft.
The in-service date of 2010 for the new carrier means that it will become operational at the same time as the UK's Fleet Air Arm's fixed-wing and the embarked airborne-early-warning (AEW) aircraft, allowing a "total system" to be designed and procured. The size and shape of the Future Organic AEW aircraft could well be a larger design driver than the strike aircraft, according to RN sources.
The Admiral says that a nuclear CTOL carrier in the US and French style is "simply not affordable" by the UK. A magnetic-rail catapult, which is one option to replace the steam versions now in use, is also not yet technologically mature.
Considerable space and manpower and, hence, cost, could be saved by using integrated full electric propulsion to allow the ship's powerplant to be positioned above the waterline, making expensive gearboxes unnecessary.
It may also be possible with this new technology to improve serviceability and availability. This would mean that, if only two carriers were built, the same levels of operational availability as those of three Invincible-class carriers would be retained .
COST projections
The RN and industry sources are not prepared to comment on the cost of the new carrier, but Nick Hooper, one of the UK's leading defence economists from the University of York, put the total cost of the project at around ú10 billion. Using the published costs of the Invincible-class carrier, the JSF, the Westland/Agusta EH101 Merlin helicopter and the British Aerospace Sea Harrier programmes as a base, plus inflation, he estimates that the procurement of three carriers, plus their air groups, would cost ú5 billion, plus life-cycle operating costs of a similar amount. This would mean that three carriers would cost 2.5% of the annual defence budget.
Hooper says that the project would not be in the Trident or EF2000 class, and that the ú20 billion defence budget could accommodate it. Industry commentators claim that improvements in ship designs and construction methods would make a new-build ship cheaper than Hooper's projections.
Costs could be kept down by building the carrier to civilian standards, as with the new helicopter carrier, HMS Ocean, but the RN is not keen to go too far down this road for a major surface combatant. One senior officer says that the carrier had to be "fully booted and spurred to go into harm's way".
PRIME CONTRACTOR
The new aircraft-carrier programme is likely to be a major test of the Government's competitive procurement policy, say industry and RN sources. The UK shipbuilding industry has contracted so much since the building of the Invincible class that only a handful of yards or companies could build a warship greater than 26,000t and two of them are in mothballs - Cammell Lairds in Birkenhead and Swan Hunter on Tyneside. After the staff target is endorsed, industry will be invited to tender for full feasibility studies and prime contractors would then be appointed.
Competition would be only a paper exercise, wasting Government's and industry's scarce resources to arrive at obvious conclusions - that the ships, or at least major parts of them, could be built only in certain places. The recent Trafalgar-class submarine competition is held up as the example of how not to proceed. This reputedly cost ú20 million and ended up with the winner - GEC Marine - planning to build the submarines at VSEL in Barrow, the original rival in the competition.
Many key industry sources have expressed a preference for the competition element to be managed by the prime contractor as a way of ensuring value for money. Bird says that there should be a short competition to pick the prime contractor during the feasibility stage - then an early shortlist, to give the prime contractor the time to conduct the risk management and trade-offs at an early stage.
BAe is keen to take on the project, says Bird. It seems likely that GEC would be a competitor, however, and the MoD might invite a foreign contender to enter the ring to meet the staff target requirement if it is issued later in the year.
Dr Martin Edmonds, Director of the Centre for Defence and International Security Studies, says that the building of a carrier bigger than 27,000t would pose serious problems for the UK shipbuilding industry.
It is unclear whether the next UK Government will share the RN's interest in carrier aviation, but, with the support of UK industry, the project will be difficult to ignore. The strategic rationale may take second stage to the number of jobs the carriers will bring to marginal constituencies. With a general election due to be held in the UK on 1 May, the main political parties are all acutely aware of a basic equation: aircraft carriers = jobs. Jobs = votes.
Source: Flight International
