This is NOT the Aircraft Carrier you are looking for...

Originally posted by LeBombDiggity
reply to post by Zaphod58

 

Zaphod you're asking the same question over and over again ... what airplanes have they got or have they ordered, you're asking as if tomorrow is some undiscovered country we'll never visit together. I'm speculating in the affirmative that they'll put in a ski jump & buy F35B's. I don't know for a fact that they'll do it. But I doubt they'll have invested in a hull of that size if they weren't going to, once we are all happy campers with the idea of the Japanese Navy having aircraft carriers again.

So that's my position....Think of it that way

Your position is based on complete speculation about something that hasn't happened, not what is actually floating out there today. These "what if" scenarios can take you any place you want to go, but they are not backed by any solid information and facts. You can bounce all over the map with speculative possibilities that way, limited only by your imagination.

The fact is the ship does not presently have the capability of housing the F35 in any configuration it is built in. The capability is simply NOT THERE, hidden catapults and secret black projects notwithstanding. Even in its present configuration the ship is not ready for sea.

But you seem determined to speculate, so let's speculate. You ask what a Chinese destroyer captain would think if he saw 4 F35-ish attack aircraft launched from Japan's new "aircraft carrier" about to attack his ship. Here's what he would think:

"Japan is pretty stupid."

Why? Because the payback would be hell. That destroyer captain has the entire weight of the Chinese military machine behind him. Military operations don't take place in a vacuum. In order to be truly an "offensive capability" there has to be sustainability. It's not about one skirmish or one battle.

That's why there is a huge difference between a couple of CVN Strike Groups off your coast and one of these things. The CVNs are capable of sustained offensive and defensive operations. They will own the skies within 24 hours and whatever defensive and offensive weaponry you may have had will not be operational. You will be reduced to IEDs by the roadside. Ask Baghdad.

No matter what you do here you can't turn this baby LHD into a couple of CVNs. Put all the speculative gear you want to on it and you still can't. Why would you even try to argue something as nonsensical as this?

reply to post by schuyler


Actually, all you need to do is look at the schematics and framework of the hull as it was being built in order to figure out whether or not they plan on a retrofit.

Really.

img.abovetopsecret.com...

^ that shows rather more than 7 fixed wing craft, especially when one considers how the number of choppers could be reduced in favor of more jets.

It is much more beneficial to have multiple small carriers rather than one large super carrier.

This type of strategy was proven in WW2

en.wikipedia.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

"they were less expensive and could be built in less time."

en.wikipedia.org...

Sorry to use wikipedia, but I really don't feel like using a scanner for these books on naval design and strategy.



*Ketsu no ana no chisai yaro!"

So it's Japans fault China is laying claim to every resource rich area around them, whether they have a right to or not. And it's Japans fault China is pushing others, with better claims to the areas in question around.

Indeed, Zaph is right. I am running into this in my business arena's working with developing nations - where China is actually setting up rouge exploitation operations and taking mineral resources from countries who cannot defend themselves, sometimes by paying off local officials to look the other way. Sometimes even not.

If China sees that a weak government is, in their opinion, an artifice of the West, they will simply step around the government. In some nations, I have worked with the ministers to set up SAS and Navy Seal staffed security forces, with the authority of the nation in question, to detain the operations personnel, confiscate the rolling/drilling stock and processing equipment and deport the Chinese nationals.

Hard to believe that this happens in the modern age, but indeed it does.

Japan needs to rearm. The Chinese feel free to commit any crime they are allowed to commit in the furtherance of their global agenda of domination of strategic resources.

Originally posted by teachtaire
reply to post by schuyler

 

Actually, all you need to do is look at the schematics and framework of the hull as it was being built in order to figure out whether or not they plan on a retrofit.

Really.

img.abovetopsecret.com...

^ that shows rather more than 7 fixed wing craft, especially when one considers how the number of choppers could be reduced in favor of more jets.

You already posted that, and I thanked you for doing so. Indeed, it is revealing. It shows a ship based squarely on the LHD model, though half the displacement of the Bataan and similar ships. It's a very tight fit for anything other than what they say it was designed for. There is no "obvious" retrofitting of a ski jump for this ship at all. Indeed, this ship won't even be ready until Spring of 2015 and the second in its class has not even started yet. Considering they started this one in 2010 (or 2009, depending on what you read and what you count as "starting") So any ski jump mod is half a decade out.

The whole thing begs the question though. What are "we" trying to prove here? Even if you did manage to get some serious attack-style aircraft on board (and I'm saying this for the sake of argument, not anything anywhere near proven), what you wind up with is a very small LHD-type carrier that is not suited to any sort of "force projection" mission. I'm not claiming it does not have a sting--just that it isn't big enough to cause any serious concern, especially with regards to offensive capability against a power such as China.

Originally posted by teachtaire

It is much more beneficial to have multiple small carriers rather than one large super carrier.

This type of strategy was proven in WW2

en.wikipedia.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

"they were less expensive and could be built in less time."

en.wikipedia.org...

Sorry to use wikipedia, but I really don't feel like using a scanner for these books on naval design and strategy.

edit on 9-8-2013 by teachtaire because: more information

*Ketsu no ana no chisai yaro!"

edit on 9-8-2013 by teachtaire because: Esu shinai to yabai ze!

It's not necessarily better to have several small carriers vs one large one. It's better in certain circumstances, or for certain missions to have several carriers. If you're using them for ASW patrol or convoy escort, then you need lots of hulls, simply because you have to be in several places at once. If you're using them to ferry aircraft out to full-sized fleet carriers, likewise, you need numbers.

For other missions, larger is better, up to a rough operational limit of ~90 aircraft, at any rate. Norman Friedman devotes a fair amount of space in his "US Aircraft Carriers: An Illustrated Design History" to the "Large vs small" discussion, and it's a regular topic for articles in Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute.

For a practical look at the USN's view on the large vs small issue, just look at how quickly the escort carriers were removed from service post-war, while some of the fleet carriers continued to serve for decades. As aircraft get larger and more capable, smaller carriers become less and less attractive for front line service. (The escort carriers you link to were already having issues with this before the end of World War II).

Bringing this back to the new Japanese ships, as large as they are, they aren't big enough to operate a sizable, modern, fixed-wing air group. Regardless of how many can be spotted on deck, there has to be room to actually carry out operations with reasonable payloads, and at least in their current configuration, these ships don't have that amount of room, nor do they have the right equipment.

I think that if the JMSDF wanted a fleet carrier, they'd have one. It's not as though they don't have a history of building some fairly impressive ones, and my sense of irony would love it if a hypothetical Akagi were to escort a US fleet somewhere. :-D

Originally posted by Brother Stormhammer
For other missions, larger is better, up to a rough operational limit of ~90 aircraft, at any rate. Norman Friedman devotes a fair amount of space in his "US Aircraft Carriers: An Illustrated Design History" to the "Large vs small" discussion, and it's a regular topic for articles in Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute.

Good point. The WWII fleet carriers carried the same number of aircraft as the CVNs do today. It's just that the scale of everything has changed and gotten larger.

Also, fielding F/A type aircraft is more than just launching them. They need support. What kind? Well, start with command and control aircraft, electronic warfare aircraft, recovery "aircraft," etc. A CVN is comprised of many different types, not just F/A-18s. That issue is conspicuously lacking in this thread. F/A aircraft, and carriers, do not operate alone.

Dinner guests and the county fair. CU in a few days.

If Japan wanted a real aircraft carrier for there own carrier group why would they build these tiny things then spend all the money to refit them just so they could be a substandard light carrier?

If they really wanted a carrier they have the brains and money to build a real one not waste time with half mesures.

reply to post by crazyewok


Why in the world would you put all of your eggs in one basket?

Originally posted by teachtaire
reply to post by crazyewok

 

Why in the world would you put all of your eggs in one basket?

Erm cause 1 60,000 carrier is better than 3 20,000 converted assault ships.

You have to store ammo , fuel and spare parts ect bigger the ship the better.

Plus a 20,000 ton carrier still needs the same escort as a 60,000+ one. So you build 3 smaller ones and you got to build 3 battle group worth of escort ships. Cheaper to build one big one with 1 good escort fleet. And you get more fighter and helicopter support in that one fleet rather than have it spread over 3 crapy fleets.

Ask your self why does the USA have 10 super carriers when it could have 30 odd light carriers? Because the bigger carriers are more usefull.

reply to post by crazyewok

Synergy and redundancy.

How many defensive fire directors has it got?

Just looks like more antiquated missile-bait to me.

reply to post by schuyler


wow! what a long post! too bad I'll never read it, I bet it was pretty good!

Originally posted by teachtaire
Synergy and redundancy.

Neither of which apply nearly as well to aircraft carriers as you might think. I went back and checked Norman Friedman's "US Carriers: A Design History", my back issues of Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute" and some transcripts from the General Board's evaluation of USS Ranger (CV-4 was a purpose-built 'small carrier'). They all cover a lot of the same points, and come to similar conclusions.

A smaller carrier will be more limited in the types of aircraft it can carry, and in the ordnance those types can deliver. The problem is deck length. Shorter decks mean shorter takeoff runs and shorter catapults, either of which translate into the use of lighter (or at the least, more lightly loaded) aircraft, which, in turn, translates directly into vast reductions in capability.

A smaller carrier will operate fewer aircraft. A fairly obvious point, due to having less space.

A smaller carrier is more vulnerable to damage, and to weather effects. Bigger hulls, with their deeper beams and larger volumes, are intrinsically harder to sink, and more able to ride out rough seas.

Smaller carriers will be tremendously more expensive in operational costs for a given level of capability. There is a 'price of admission' to be paid by any warship. The cost of engines, hull, sensors, and minimal personnel all have to be covered for each hull. They do increase with hull size, but the increase is substantially less than linear. 3 x 20,000 ton ships wind up costing almost twice as much as a single 60,000 ton hull, and that's before accounting for three sets of escorts. The actual numbers get even worse when you look at actual numbers required, since for every carrier deployed, there's one being refurbished and refitted to relieve it on station...so to keep one 60,000 ton carrier constantly deployed requires two of them...or six 20,000 ton ships.

In other words, the synergies that you might expect to see get buried by the loss of capability in the individual platforms, and the redundancy is so expensive to obtain as to be impractical.

reply to post by Brother Stormhammer


They're all good points. And I'm confident the Japanese Navy knows all that.

But they're faced with the political reality that they can't "get away with" a 60,000 ton carrier with cats & traps. Public sentiment isn't yet with them on that. So they have to make do with this ship right now, make do until the mood changes.

Over the next few years we'll see this ship improved, modified ... and F35Bs flown off it. And after that's been done the Navy will report back to government in much the same way you describe the US Navy did with USS Ranger.

So I agree, I think the Japanese Navy wants the bigger ship you describe. They'll get it too, if the mood music changes.

Softly, softly catchee monkey.

Originally posted by Thunderheart
reply to post by schuyler

 

wow! what a long post! too bad I'll never read it, I bet it was pretty good!

Your post says a great deal about you. It is one of the frustrations of posting in a forum such as this one. Things that do not fit the Twitter sound bite get bypassed, and you remain more ignorant because of it. Even if you don't agree with something, reading it can teach you something, even if it is only to make your argument a better one. That seems to have eluded you.

reply to post by schuyler


Schuyler I think I learned more in that post than any other post in this thread so thank you for that!

Originally posted by teachtaire

Note all the jets lying around.

Sorry I can't give you schematics.

Or a roster of actual jets.

Not.

img.abovetopsecret.com...

edit on 8-8-2013 by teachtaire because: merde

There are 8 on deck in that picture. I said 7.

One thing that seems to be overlooked in the "you can add more planes" argument, is a pretty simple one that's going to seriously limit how many you can fit. Where are you going to park the ones that aren't taking off so you can launch? You can fit a few in the hangar deck, but the entire outer portion of the deck becomes useless as parking once you start to launch, so you need room to fit planes for parking somewhere. That seriously limits just how many planes you can carry.

reply to post by Brother Stormhammer


Which is exactly what I said.

Plus it dont matter if its a small 20,000 "light" carrier or a 100,000 super carrier you need to have the same escort ships.

So building 3 little 20,000 that carry little to nothing is stupid as way more expensive seeing as you have to pay for 3 times the escorts

Its just not cost effective.

Yes these new ships are proof that the Japanese Navy is modensing and moveing away from its foolish post war restrictions. Buts its not going to be launching a REAL carrier group for a while yet.

reply to post by crazyewok


There's actually a video that some company in Japan released that shows Japan "fighting" China, and includes launching F-35Cs from a full deck carrier. Of course, most of the planes used in it are F-3s, which won't even start development until 2016 or 2017, so it's a long way away.