Project Ark Royal - QE CATOBAR conversion.

[FourWheelDrift]

Future plans for the Royal Navy along with unmanned aircraft like Vixen, Vampire, Proteus, Peregrine and Panther "The RN has initiated project ARK ROYAL to study how the QEC carriers could be adapted to support future aircraft. FMAF development will be incremental, moving from VSTOL-only to STOL platforms and then potentially significantly modifying the flight deck to support STOBAR and CATOBAR flight profiles.

Still retaining the ski jump, one emals to the right of it and one on an extended angled deck. Not a massive rebuild.

https://www.navylookout.com/the-royal-navy-has-amb...

[LotusOmega375D]

My head started to hurt when I got to:

“providing a much more flexible and scaleable low-high end capability,”

[GliderRider]

Wasn't the cost of having CATOBAR considered prohibitive, hence the reason we went for the F-35B in the first place?

Given how drones can be accurately controlled to hold position with other aircraft, then catching them in flight with the ship's helicopters and plonking them on the deck with no forward movement would save a great deal of extra hardware.

Maybe its time to revisit the Second World War 'Brodie system' using a trapeze to one side of the ship to launch and recover aircraft. This could be fitted with an accelerator/decelerator with a bit of thought.

Brodie Aircraft Launch & Recovery System

[FourWheelDrift]

GliderRider said:

Wasn't the cost of having CATOBAR considered prohibitive, hence the reason we went for the F-35B in the first place?

They are going to be using F-35B with the ski ramp, just launching drones with the electric catapults and recovering them with arrestor gear.

[e30ftw]

We were always gonna end up with 35b so we can share development cost with the USMC, they might have pretended there was an option but murica would have strong armed us to get the B.

Hence RAF gonna be operating B as well, when A or C are more capable.

[GliderRider]

FourWheelDrift said:

GliderRider said:

Wasn't the cost of having CATOBAR considered prohibitive, hence the reason we went for the F-35B in the first place?

They are going to be using F-35B with the ski ramp, just launching drones with the electric catapults and recovering them with arrestor gear.

Thanks FourWheel Drift, I gathered the article was about lauching and recovering the UAVs, but I should have read it before commenting!

The next logical step is unmanned fixed wing Carrier Onboard Delivery (COD) for personnel. I wonder how the Navy will take to getting catapulted and arrestered, without a couple of Fleet Air Arm bods putting their necks on the line as well?

[aeropilot]

e30ftw said:

Hence RAF gonna be operating B as well, when A or C are more capable.

All the B's are all RAF aircraft anyway.

[Boom78]

I don’t get the whole anti F35B thing, it maybe slightly less capable than an A but it like saying an aventador S isn’t as good as an Ultimae which is true, but it’s still way better than anything we’ve got (FGR4) and most importantly, millions times better than anything the ruskies or Chinese have. Bonus kudos points to the B that it’s like a transformer on take off and landing