[Gansan]

^^Sir, I am not saying aircraft carriers themselves are white elephants. Just wondering about this particular ship, and the ultimate price we had to pay for it. Actually the ship was supposed to be thrown in for free if we ordered 45 Mig 29Ks, and then we were supposed to pay only for the refit. But from what I have read during that time, the final price became a nightmare. She seems to be under some kind of repairs frequently, either out of action or under limited action. Neither do her air assets seem to be up to the mark. These are all layman observations from reading whatever is in public domain. I wish someone on the know will clarify the actual position.

She is rarely in the news. Actually if we search for Youtube videos about her, mostly old videos are thrown up, it is very difficult to find something new.

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Originally Posted by Gansan

^^Sir, I am not saying aircraft carriers themselves are white elephants. Just wondering about this particular ship, and the ultimate price we had to pay for it. Actually the ship was supposed to be thrown in for free if we ordered 45 Mig 29Ks, and then we were supposed to pay only for the refit. But from what I have read during that time, the final price became a nightmare. She seems to be under some kind of repairs frequently, either out of action or under limited action. Neither do her air assets seem to be up to the mark. These are all layman observations from reading whatever is in public domain. I wish someone on the know will clarify the actual position.

She is rarely in the news. Actually if we search for Youtube videos about her, mostly old videos are thrown up, it is very difficult to find something new.

I get where you're coming from Gansan. I've mooted before the possibility that if the second Vikrant class ship is put to sea, whether the Vikramaditya would then quietly be relegated to more of a training vessel (a la the Laioning), thereby reducing the strain on it's somewhat brittle systems (the frequent refit or repair work isn't promising right?). Or, you could see it shuffled out of service if a cost effective way to be done with it could be found - day by day the prospect of Russia wanting it back, zany as it sounds, can't be discounted. Obviously these are drastic solutions.

Granted Vikrant has barely been in service so there's no way of telling what sort of ship it will be and what sort of reliability it will have. All that being said Gansan I do agree that from a pure cost perspective, the IN got shafted somewhat with the Vikramaditya. However given the needs of the IN, it was a sunk cost that had to be borne, through gritted teeth or otherwise. The silver lining now is that with CSL having the ability to build a home grown carrier, you can start to postulate what can be done with the Vikramaditya should the calculus for that vessel change.

I don't think anything will change as such until the second Vikrant class boat is out, by which time the Vikrant will be somewhat of a known quantity. A more reasoned decision could be made by that point on how to proceed with the eldest of the 3.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by Gansan

^^Sir, I am not saying aircraft carriers themselves are white elephants. Just wondering about this particular ship, and the ultimate price we had to pay for it. Actually the ship was supposed to be thrown in for free if we ordered 45 Mig 29Ks, and then we were supposed to pay only for the refit. But from what I have read during that time, the final price became a nightmare. She seems to be under some kind of repairs frequently, either out of action or under limited action. Neither do her air assets seem to be up to the mark. These are all layman observations from reading whatever is in public domain. I wish someone on the know will clarify the actual position.

She is rarely in the news. Actually if we search for Youtube videos about her, mostly old videos are thrown up, it is very difficult to find something new.

Dear @ Gansan, all valid points in one way. Always pleased to try and address your questions.

Last point first. Videos of naval assets are made by the Navy and released when they need to and wish to. That cannot be a measure of a ships availability. Yes the MiG-29K's have been lower on availability than required from what one reads in the public domain. I presume what is put out in the public arena is correct and not misinformation from our side. The engines of INS Vikramaditya are high pressure high accelerating steam turbines. A complex design. They were introduced with the Kresta class cruisers in the Soviet Navy. These engines are probably the cause of its refits if indeed she is spending too much time in the dockyard hands {touched upon in post#342 on page 23}

Where costs went I believe 'the toss it in free' was a loss leader offer by the Russians in 1993 when we examined this ship the first time for purchase. Unfortunately due to our precarious economic situation and slow decision making it was over 10 years till we finally signed. The time to have bought the ship was 1993 when with only a few years of rebuilding she would have entered service with us within the 1990s. In ten years, to 2004, the ships material condition had deteriorated and so had the Russians attitude on the bargaining table. In 1993, the Russians needed us as they were broke and the glow of the Indo-Soviet era was still there. In 2004 we needed them as Viraat was on its last legs being over 45 years old and Russians had tasted commercialization. Even then we got it for less than $2.35 billion which is cheap compared to a C-17 Globemaster transport that costs us $412 million a piece. Hope this helps.

As @ads11 states a second incrementally improved Vikrant is the route we should take. It will be cheap if we factor in the money saved on Vikramaditya which will consume increasingly larger $ on maintenance as the vessel ages.

[ads11]

Hmm, looks like Boeing have played their now-or-never card with the Super Hornet

Boeing says that it expects to end production of new F/A-18E/F Super Hornets in 2025. It has left open the possibility that it could still be building Super Hornets two years after that for an unspecified "international customer," which is very likely a reference to a potential Indian Navy contract. No matter what, by all indications, the company is expecting to stop making new F/A-18E/F before the end of the decade.

The company announced its timeline for shuttering the F/A-18E/F production line, which is located within its facility in St. Louis, in a press release today. As it stands now, the only orders for Super Hornets that Boeing has left to fulfil are for the U.S. Navy. These jets, as well as examples of the EA-18G Growler electronic warfare derivative, are only currently in service with the Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force.

I guess the increasingly strong rumours that the Rafale M was essentially within grasping distance of the contract meant Boeing needed to respond somehow. Can't help but be reminded of a similar situation India was in when Boeing asked it, amongst other operators of course, to consider placing additional C-17 orders. In that instance, there really was no other equivalent to the C-17 so it really was a folly on the part of India and others to let Boeing shutter that production line. In this case the difference is that the Rafale M is a comparable alternative that should be available for some time to come (should the MoD decide to dither as per usual).

I still think giving the contract to the Rafale for the IN makes the most sense especially coupled with supplemental orders for the IAF. I do think, while admirable, it's a bit of a tangent for the IN to go down a fresh clean sheet design in the TEDBF. I can't help but think it makes more sense to focus monetary and development muscle to get the AMCA as swiftly over the line as possible and then navalise it later*, rather than dilute the focus with another parallel development effort with the TEDBF. In an ideal world I wish a re-engined Naval Tejas (with the GE-414) and Rafale M could form a low-high mix for the short and medium term for the IN's air arm.

*Granted navalising the AMCA is easier said than done. But even then, it has to be easier than a new airframe from scratch? I guess it depends on how much relative progress there is on both those programmes.

On another note, the linked article has a tweet linked to a RN presentation where they show an MQ-28 landing on the HMS QE (the MQ-28 being Boeing Australia's promising loyal wingman UAV programme for the RAAF that's now been opted into by the USAF). Which begs the question is the RN considering adding cats and traps to the QE class?

Some interesting configurations in this article. One of which (option 3) is to have the catapult ahead of the ramp, in a kind of hybrid approach where you push/pull the aircraft up to speed onto the ramp and then off it.

The reason I bring this up is because they posit some interesting design propositions right. While the QE is much bigger than the Vikrant, and did vacillate between a CATOBAR and STOBAR configuration in its development phase (meaning there's likely some accommodation for the former), it could inform a hypothetical conversion plan for the Vikrant class into a hybrid.

[V.Narayan]

Turkey to commissions this month its home built 27,000 tonne LPD - amphibious helicopter and fixed wing drone carrier

https://www.trtworld.com/turkey/tcg-...rier-66953/amp

Earlier this week the Turkish Navy commissioned into service its largest to date warship and the world's first dedicated drone carrier. This is a LHD - Landing Helicopter Dock - amphibious. A LHD is a ship with a through deck for aviation plus a dock for landing craft and hovercraft and of course a vehicle deck with ramps to carry the Army vehicles that need to be landed.

The additional feature here is that she is customized to operate large fixed wing drones in addition to helicopters making it a sort of UAV-cum-Helicopter carrier. This was a concept waiting to happen. That Turkey took it forward is a sign of the times. In terms of its ship & submarine construction capability I'd rate Turkey ahead of us and going about it in a thorough systematic way. This is of import to us a they have been consciously propping up our terrorist sponsoring Western neighbour.

This ship to be named TCG Anadolu is based on the Spanish Juan Carlos design.

Displacement: 29,000 tonnes full load;
Amphibious Lift: ~ 1 Mechanized Battalion;
Aviation capacity: - 4 Attack helicopters, 8 large transport helicopters, 2 ASW helicopters or 30 TB3 Attack UAVs; it can also operate STOVL jets such as Harrier II or Lighting F-35.
Flight deck: ~58,000 sq feet

TCG Anadolu


The TB3 attack drone.

[V.Narayan]

MiG-29K makes maiden night landing on INS Vikrant

A MiG-29K fighter jet on Wednesday made its maiden night landing on INS Vikrant.

Indian Navy’s twitter link with a short video on this night landing

https://twitter.com/indiannavy/statu...56930555924480

News link from Indian Express
https://indianexpress.com/article/in...krant-8628513/

This is not an unusual achievement on a stand alone basis given that we have been doing arrestor hook night landings on INS Vikramaditya. And of course the US Navy and French Navy have been doing this for decades. But this is a milestone in the process of integrating the air wing of INS Vikrant with the ship. Onwards and upwards. With the malacious China threat getting more sharp with each quarter I do hope we have the good sense to start work on an incrementally improved Vikrant- Mk 2 and not wait for another 20 years to develop a 65000 tonne carrier.

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Quick question: does the Vikrant use the 'meatball' arrangement of lights to help with carrier based landings?

Also looks like the IN has conducted their first MH-60R operations from the Vikrant as well not long after the maiden night landings with the Mig's.
https://twitter.com/livefist/status/...490910210?s=20

Coming back to the Turks and their LHD, as part of the whole tranche of military development related announcements Team Erdogan made in the run up to the election, one of their announcements was to have their fixed wing light combat fighter+trainer also operate off the Anadolu somehow.

The Turkish aviation sector has milestones coming thick and fast lately (a large part of which was definitely tied to boosting old Tayyip's election chances). There's some interesting concepts there that are worth watching. Some of the larger UAVs being touted for the Anadolu would give it a reasonable air wing.

Exploring the use of UAVs as force multipliers for your naval aviation wings is very much a rapidly evolving sector. I saw the RN gave the green light on a navalised Reaper drone. Sure it has a silly bolt on kit to give it bigger wings to maximise lift (impractical in reality but I figure it's very much an interim fix), but if you think about it, a STOL fixed wing long endurance drone like a MQ-9 could make an ideal platform for a persistent AEW capability or even aerial refuelling, without the need for a much larger platform that would necessitate a CATOBAR carrier. Something like that could instantly become a hugely valuable asset to IN carriers, if it all pans out. Given how cash strapped the Brits are, trust them to occasionally come up with clever cost effective solutions that could be worth exploring ourselves.

[Jeroen]

Out of interest, are there any other systems than the meat ball out there? Or would it just be a digital version of it perhaps?

Jeroen

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by ads11

Quick question: does the Vikrant use the 'meatball' arrangement of lights to help with carrier based landings?

Mirror landing sights, a British invention {like the angled flight deck & steam catapult!} are to best of my limited knowledge used by all navies that operate fixed wing carrier based jets. I do not know if it was needed for a Harrier landing vertically on a deck - I presume it was still needed to align the jump jet correctly on its approach before it got over the deck and transitioned from forward to hover to drop modes. But a fixed wing fast jet cannot do without it. Optical landing System is a USN term of modernized mirror landing systems. In fact outdated old me did not know it is referred to as the meat ball till I read your link. Oh! how this Amercian jargon is taking over.

[Reinhard]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

how this Amercian jargon is taking over.

So true! In fact - I learnt about "OLS" / "meatball" system - only some years ago, after watching too many Hollywood movies, where the naval aviators (all males back then) kept saying "I have the ball". Kept wondering why they have one but not two . Then learnt they are referring to the meatball lights and confirming that they can see it .

[ads11]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

In fact outdated old me did not know it is referred to as the meat ball till I read your link. Oh! how this Amercian jargon is taking over.

Originally Posted by Reinhard

So true! In fact - I learnt about "OLS" / "meatball" system - only some years ago, after watching too many Hollywood movies, where the naval aviators (all males back then) kept saying "I have the ball". Kept wondering why they have one but not two . Then learnt they are referring to the meatball lights and confirming that they can see it .

Ah, I thought meatball was always the term for the system going back to its first use by the USN. At least that's always been my understanding. Much more likely that sailors and airmen use the term meatball than the actual technical terminology.

Mirror landing sights, a British invention {like the angled flight deck & steam catapult!} are to best of my limited knowledge used by all navies that operate fixed wing carrier based jets.

To my surprise I found this Quora answer I'll quote below which seems to indicate that the British landing light system was very much derived from one used by the IJN!

The Japanese used a combination of technical and human guidance to help aircraft land on carriers.

The technical guidance was in the form of a system called chakkan shidoto - landing guidance lights.

First developed in 1932, this system was composed of 2 arrays of light: one red and one green. Each array consisted of 4 lights.

Those 2 arrays of red and green lights were disposed in the stern section of a carrier. They protruded outward at the at the level of flight deck. The array of green light was placed 10–15 meters in front of the array of red light (when viewed from astern). See the illustration below.


Image source: Google


Image source: Shattered Sword

The purpose of the chakkan shidoto was to help a pilot judge if the angle at which his aircraft was approaching a carrier was correct or not. The rule of thumb was that: he would have to make the lights line up such that the green light was immediately above the red line.

1/ If he could only see the red light, that meant he had fallen out of the cone of green light => his aircraft was approaching below the correct angle

2/ if he saw the red light above the green light, he was approaching too low and risk crashing into the stern.

3/ if he saw the green light far above the red light, his angle of approach was too high.

The angle of the light cone was adjusted for different types of aircraft: fighter, dive bomber, and torpedo/attack bomber.


Illustration of the use of chakkan shidoto on Japanese carrier to recover aircraft (Image source: Shattered Sword)

Straightforward and easy to imagine yes?

Recall that I mentioned at the beginning that the Japanese also used human guidance in the recovery of aircraft on their carriers. That guidance was delivered by a seibiin - signal officer. This man used red and white flags to tell the pilot in a descending aircraft what condition he was in. A red flag indicated that the pilot should abort this landing attempt, go around and try again. A red flag with an H indicated that the aircraft’s tail hook was not lowered. However, these signals were merely warning and recommendations, not strict order. The decision to land rested solely in the hand of a pilot.

Reference(s)

1/ Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway - Jonathan Parshall , Anthony Tully. This is the definitive book on the Battle of Midway and a must-read for any serious student of the Pacific War and Naval Warfare.

Wouldn't that be an interesting factoid. I've always known the RN to be the ones to have come up with the light based landing system aid.

@Jeroen, this might help - Out of curiosity, I could only find the following link on the system used by the QE class for landing:
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/pals...een-elizabeth/

This system is described by Raytheon in this video but it doesn't look to involve any lights or lenses as such:

https://youtu.be/RNm8N4vXWt0

BBC had a 3 part series on the QE class where I vaguely remember them showing the system used for the landings but I can't find the link to the video. I imagine they'd use a hybrid approach of the meatball array and whatever this JPALS system is, at least for their innovative shipborne rolling vertical landing (SRVL).

I guess for the IN's part, there must be a meatball type array in operation on both carriers.

[arijitkanrar]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Mirror landing sights, a British invention {like the angled flight deck & steam catapult!} are to best of my limited knowledge used by all navies that operate fixed wing carrier based jets. I do not know if it was needed for a Harrier landing vertically on a deck - I presume it was still needed to align the jump jet correctly on its approach before it got over the deck and transitioned from forward to hover to drop modes. But a fixed wing fast jet cannot do without it. Optical landing System is a USN term of modernized mirror landing systems. In fact outdated old me did not know it is referred to as the meat ball till I read your link. Oh! how this Amercian jargon is taking over.

Originally Posted by Reinhard

So true! In fact - I learnt about "OLS" / "meatball" system - only some years ago, after watching too many Hollywood movies, where the naval aviators (all males back then) kept saying "I have the ball". Kept wondering why they have one but not two . Then learnt they are referring to the meatball lights and confirming that they can see it .

I think all modern Optical Landing Systems have done away with mirrors and use Fresnel lenses instead.
In the USN, the optical landing system refers to the Fresnel Lens Optical Landing System.

Here is a video which shows how carrier landing aids came to be (including the origin of the term 'meatball') and developed into the fresnel lens systems in use today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_S8LWqu30Q

Here is a video explaining the fresnel lens system. It is far more nuanced and complex than what one might think. BTW I love these old school technical videos. They somehow explain things much more clearly than most modern day fancy animations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei5aBJl8SMM

[V.Narayan]

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other...d99b700b&ei=15

Looks like the F-18 is going to be on the table at the Biden-Modi meeting later this month. Given that it is going to be discussed at the very highest level there seems to be a likelihood that F-18 it will be. Things don't become discussion points at that level unless a great deal of spade work has gone behind this already and only the final ceremonial rubber stamp is pending. I wonder if the talks are about the original Hornet or the Super Hornet. It should be about the latter but I don't know.

Representative file photo of the Super Hornet of F/A - 18F

[skanchan95]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

I wonder if the talks are about the original Hornet or the Super Hornet. It should be about the latter but I don't know.

Sir,

If at all the F/A-18 is discussed**, it will the Super Hornet(E/F) and not the smaller "Legacy" Hornet (A/B/C/D) simply because :

1. All US Navy squadrons that operated legacy F/A-18C Hornet had long ago converted to F/A-18E/F (a few converted from the F-14). Some US Navy F/A-18E squadrons too have already started converting to the F-35C. The Legacy Hornet(C/D) is currently operational with only two US Marine Corps Squadrons. The rest have either been disestablished or are converting to the F-35B/C.

2. The Super Hornet is far more advanced, bigger and a generation ahead of the Legacy Hornet in terms of sensors, weapons package and capabilities.

3. While a few ex-USN Legacy Hornets can be pulled out of storage and offered to India but considering the fact that the US Navy demonstrated ski-jump compatibility of the Super Hornet at NAS Patuxent River and later at INS Hansa, it will be the Super Hornet that will be discussed.

**I say "if at all" because apparently as per some reports, the Navy has selected the Rafale M over the Super Hornet



Video of the Super Hornet Flight trails at INS Hansa:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8IUHwa7_4s

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I certainly agree with skanchan95. I highly doubt that if a Hornet is on offer, it will be anything but the Super Hornet. I just can't see the legacy Hornet being offered, even if they just offered the whole platform for India to do as it wants (just spit balling here). I mean comparatively speaking how would the Naval Tejas compare to the Legacy Hornet on various fronts? Equally say this was being offered, how much would inform the TEDBF programme? Have they fixed the design on the latter? Could the Legacy Hornet platform being offered fast track the TEDBF?

Anyway, thinking out loud aside, I do find it odd that after all that buzz that the Rafale M had all but won there's this chatter of not only the Super Hornet coming back into the picture in the driving seat but the IN brass shockingly saying that they might actually benefit from having a few Naval Tejas jets.

Oh forgot to add, in line with the earlier discussion, looks like the RN does want to progressively change their STOVL carriers to first STOL (using the Mojave drone that they're testing) to then adding traps to make it STOBAR and finally CATOBAR.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...rresting-wires

The Brits are as budgetarily stretched as the IN when it comes to not having enough money for all the things they want, so there's no knowing how far along they actually progress on these plans. But worth watching if they can reach part of these objectives for the obvious parallels with the INS Vikrant. If anything we're already at the STOBAR stage, but there's no harm in observing some of the work to allow assisted launch capability or the ability to operate MALE platforms to provide persistent AEW or ISR around the deployed CBG.

RN projects to watch include Project Ark Royal - testing the Mojave drone and increasingly larger ones (Project Vixen) for operations off the QE carriers. See https://www.navylookout.com/the-roya...viation-force/

Beyond already being in a STOBAR config, the Vikrant class has the angled deck critical for the concurrent launch and recovery operations key to CATOBAR that the RN doesn't have with the QE class design. That being said I did find it interesting that beyond the well known EMALS system, the UK has developed a comparable linear induction motor launch system: https://www.ge.com/news/press-releas...n-machine-core.

Thinking ahead, using the Vikrant hull form, it's not impossible to imagine (provided the below deck headroom and power generation surplus exists for these subsystems) to broadly have the same planform but replace the ramp with a flat bow with at least one full sized non-steam based catapult system and a parallel smaller scale catapult for some of these drones that might increasingly become a part of carrier air wings.