The Royal Navy is back (thanks to the F-35 and two new aircraft carriers)
The Royal Navy is back (thanks to the F-35 and two new aircraft carriers)
On September 28, 2018, a Lightning II F-35B jump jet piloted by Cmdr. Nathan Gray floating down for a landing in the HMS Queen Elizabeth off the coast of Maryland: the first fighter to land on an aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy in eight years. It was followed by another F-35B piloted by a pilot of the Royal Air Force.
During the next eleven weeks, the United Kingdom and the United States will fly two pilots of F-35B test fuselages to make 500 more takeoffs and landings on the airline. the Queen Elizabeth It is expected to enter routine operational service in 2020 or 2021.
A little over a century ago, the Royal Navy deployed the first aircraft carrier with a flight deck from which the planes could take off and land, and in 1918 they sent six Sopwith Camels in the first carrier-based air attack in history, targeting the Zeppelin base in Tondern. In the following decades, the aircraft carriers of the Royal Navy played a critical role in the projection of British maritime power, particularly during the War of the Falklands of 1981 .
But the budget crisis of the Great Recession led the Royal Navy to prematurely withdraw its three Invincible- class carriers (two in 2010, the third in 2014), as well as the Harrier GR9 reactors that flew out of them, leaving the former maritime power of the world without any aircraft carrier with operational fighters.
Launched in 2014, the Queen Elizabeth it was the first of two large new replacements that raised three times the weight of the previous Invincible-close to 71,600 tons. In 2017 it was accompanied by the Prince of Wales , which narrowly avoided cancellation. The new class is distinguished by having two islands (elevated superstructures) on the starboard side of the deck of 280 meters long: the forward for the navigation of the ship, the stern for flight control. But until this September, the new carriers did not have planes to fly.
the QE class carriers are the largest warship ever built by the United Kingdom. In fact, they are the largest in service anywhere in the world today, except for two major exceptions: the Nimitz class and Gerald Ford. nuclear propulsion carriers of the Navy of the United States. While US supercarriers retain significant advantages over their British brothers, they have an important price: the new Gerald Ford class will cost between $ 10 and $ 14 billion each, while the two QE ships together cost the equivalent of $ 8 billion . QE haulers have a supplemented crew of 679 more people up to 1,000 in the carrier's air wing, less than a third of the required personnel for a US haulier. UU
The nuclear propulsion provides an almost unlimited range and allows high sustained cruising speeds of thirty knots, which, among other advantages, allows a carrier to overcome diesel-electric submarines, which rarely exceed twenty knots. However, nuclear propulsion would have added billions to the construction and operating costs of the British airline. Instead, they employ two gas turbines and four diesel engines to generate 110 megawatts to power ship systems and propel their propellers. The QE ships are only a little slower with twenty-five knots, and some reports suggest that can even more than thirty. While British ships will require refueling with a range of 10,000 nautical miles, the unlimited range of a nuclear operator is also limited by the need to replenish aviation fuel .
However, the value of a carrier ultimately comes from the plane it carries. The defense planners of the United Kingdom had to choose between providing the new airline with jet aircraft such as the Harriers deployed in the United States. Invincible- class, or the installation of a catapult assisted recovery and barrier assisted recovery system (CATOBAR) to launch higher performance fighters that carry heavier weapons and fuel loads.
The United Kingdom was an important partner for the US F-35 program, and conveniently, poaching came with the F-35B jump jet model and the CATOBAR F-35C takeoff variant. Originally, the Royal Navy intended to set up a carrier for each type. However, after calculating that a CATOBAR airline would cost an additional $ 2 billion, the defense ministry stayed with the reactors.
Although the F-35B has a shorter range or payload than other variants, it is still a very superior fighter compared to the Harrier. Radar's stealth radar cross sections allow you to penetrate deep into enemy airspace before being detected on the radar by opposing combatants or ground-air missile batteries. Despite being a bit slower than most fourth-generation combatants with a maximum speed of Mach 1.6, the F-35 is much faster than the subsonic Mach of the Harrier 0.86 to 0.95. British F-35Bs are also set to employ ASRAAM, a short-range heat search missile that outperforms its peers by 25 to 50 percent.
The F-35B usually perform a short distance takeoff using a ski jump ramp at the end of the The QE flight deck: when they return for landing, they switch to vertical lift mode. However, there is a fly in the jumping jet ointment: the temperatures of 1,500 degrees Celsius generated by the exhaust threaten to damage the carrier's decks. The operating time will be restricted until a special heat resistant paint is applied.
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SOURCE LINK ERESVIRAL.COM https://www.beviral.online
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