CVF Construction

By: Colombamike - 2nd April 2010 at 21:24 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Do you have any idea how badly the next govt would be chewed out for cancelling a ship so far gone in construction? They can't exactly reuse those already constructed blocks on anything.

Prince of Wales is not yet under construction, it remains very uncertain....(to be keel laid down in 2011)

And by the time PoW is laid down everyone will have forgotten about the financial crisis and people will be sick of hearing about cuts, it'd probably just be best to keep quiet about PoW for a few years and no one will question trying to fight it out with BAE over cancellation costs.

With a £ 36 billion black hole for the british defense budget over the next 10 years...:rolleyes:

At least try and cut back on the pessimism a bit. I doubt many people see QE being cancelled at the very least at this point.

WAITING & SEE after the british general election & defense review (july 2010-spring 2011)...;)
:(

By: Grim901 - 2nd April 2010 at 22:07 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Prince of Wales is not yet under construction, it remains very uncertain....(to be keel laid down in 2011)

I was talking about QE. I clearly indicated later in my post that I knew PoW wasn't under construction yet. I was addressing your strong suspicion that the whole program will be cancelled now.

With a £ 36 billion black hole for the british defense budget over the next 10 years...:rolleyes:

Yes we'll see. The £5bn or so of the QE class spread over about a decade being cancelled (and incurring all of those cancellation costs) is unlikely to make much difference, most people acknowledge this. The F35's are what are crippling the program right now. I have no doubt our order will be substantially less than 138. It only takes about 50 to have a full ships load available. And again that'd be spread over several years. We can always get more later, it'd be much easier than realising later we need to not only buy jets but also a nice big ship to fly them off.

WAITING & SEE after the british general election & defense review (july 2010-spring 2011)...;)
:(

Alright you think what you want, but i'll eat my own **** if the QE doesn't float, even if there is nothing to fly off it. Without knowing the contract it's a lot harder to speculate on PoW and the relative stupidity of Cameron/Osborne.

By: Fedaykin - 2nd April 2010 at 22:43 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Well its pretty well known that no more then about 12 F35 would operate off a CVF in peace time anyway.

50 to 60 F35 would allow 12 each to operate from both carriers if they did sail at the same time with a reserve to increase the size of the airgroup in a wartime operation. Remember during the Falklands war only 28 Sea Harriers and 10 Harrier GR3 deployed south with only the Sea Harrier initially available.

Two big decks allow you to be far more flexible with the aircraft you can deploy not forgetting the helicopters.

In effect the Royal Navy maintains two small sea focused squadrons of F35 with 800 and 801NAS. Each squadron rotating between land and carrier operations during peace time whilst the aircraft are in a common pool with the RAF. In the event of a war requiring the services of the carriers the RAF provides the surge capability, as proven during the Falklands war its not that difficult to get the RAF types to operate off the carrier. If anything it will be easier as they will operate from the same base with the Ski jump and deck training area and modern flight simulators which will allow them to practice the theory without having to focus on it.

I agree that whilst QE is pretty much a cert now I am a bit jumpy about PoW and will only be happy when I see her super blocks in construction, hopefully the contract clauses are too tight for any future government to have an attack of stupid and cancel her now.

Only matter now is maintaining the Ark Royal name plate, I wouldn't be surprised if a future replacement of Ocean gets it.

By: MisterQ - 2nd April 2010 at 23:39 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Dear god not this again, I'll state this one last time for the true idiots

BOTH CVFs WILL BE BUILT

The contract is signed for both, their is only a single payment shedule covering both and the fee to cancel either would be massive negating any saving, and as for this 50-60 F35 BS, that would essentially only cover 2 front line Sqs with near zero rotational reserve, the training infrastructure and maintainance deals would cost more than the aircraft.

Dear god some people need to grow up, this so called defence black hole is nothing but a press concoction, £36 billion includes Trident replacement (already approved for funding OUTSIDE the normal defence budget) and a lot of other bull****.

By: swerve - 3rd April 2010 at 12:07 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

We are heading toward 25/35 aircraft ... and 1 aircraft carrier ... in the best case....
As for the entire cancellation of the program, it is still possible, expecting the end of 2010 :rolleyes:

Best case? It'd almost certainly be cheaper to complete Queen Elizabeth than cancel the programme now, & by the end of 2010 it'll be further advanced, & even more expensive to cancel.

You're calling worst (& unlikely) case best.

By: Frosty - 3rd April 2010 at 13:39 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

The real worst case is that they are built only to be sold on to a different navy.

By: hawkdriver05 - 3rd April 2010 at 19:02 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Argentina needs a new carrier.:D

By: Grim901 - 3rd April 2010 at 19:12 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Dear god not this again, I'll state this one last time for the true idiots

BOTH CVFs WILL BE BUILT

The contract is signed for both, their is only a single payment shedule covering both and the fee to cancel either would be massive negating any saving, and as for this 50-60 F35 BS, that would essentially only cover 2 front line Sqs with near zero rotational reserve, the training infrastructure and maintainance deals would cost more than the aircraft.

Dear god some people need to grow up, this so called defence black hole is nothing but a press concoction, £36 billion includes Trident replacement (already approved for funding OUTSIDE the normal defence budget) and a lot of other bull****.

Nice to see some sense. (I didn't realise Trident would be funded completely outside the budget, I assume that includes the bombers? - Makes sense since they could cripple the shipbuilding budget otherwise - like the USN is worried about).

The real worst case is that they are built only to be sold on to a different navy.

Who? That discussion has been had, with no likely customers being the outcome.

Argentina needs a new carrier.:D

Ha, that'd be funny. It'd probably make sense too, we make some money off them, then if they ever tried to use it against us we could still send Astute down to make it go away.

In all honesty I think that the initial F35 buy will be reduced, but they'll buy more later as long as PoW is ordered (which I think it will, by 2012 when it's laid down this finance thing will have blown over and/or been sorted, remember it's on a 20 year or so cycle, so for it to be crashing for over 5 years means capitalism has really stopped working).

By: Obi Wan Russell - 3rd April 2010 at 22:04 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Grim said:
"In all honesty I think that the initial F35 buy will be reduced, but they'll buy more later as long as PoW is ordered (which I think it will, by 2012 when it's laid down this finance thing will have blown over and/or been sorted, remember it's on a 20 year or so cycle, so for it to be crashing for over 5 years means capitalism has really stopped working)."

Prince of Wales has been ordered, One contract,Two ships. For example, now that Appledore have finished the bulbous bow for HMS Queen Elizabeth, they will be starting work on the same units for HMS Prince of Wales. Completed components will be stored at Rosyth until needed as both ships will be assembled consecutively in the same drydock. The contract was to deliver Carrier strike capability, which has been determined to require two ships.

By: alertken - 3rd April 2010 at 22:30 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

All Govt. (not just MoD) procurement contracts include a clause permitting Termination for Customer Convenience. If, as here, some form of non-cost-plus pricing has been agreed, then the audited actual costs incurred up to Notice of Termination are recovered, plus non-risk profit, plus orderly run-down over, maybe 90 days, plus supplier/material irrevocable commitment. The Prime Contractor will additionally attempt to claim loss-of-profit, which is commonly disposed of by giving him some other job. If the contract has been badly written, all of that could exceed the agreed price-to-deliver, if, as with Nimrod MRA.4, Astute, A400M, actual costs have gone through the roof. But Buyer still avoids ongoing cost of ownership, such as creating 2 ship sets of matelots.

Do not grasp at straws. Chop is an option, more likely with a Tory Admin., who has no egg-on-face from inherited squander. Changed geo-politics since this Project was initiated include US/Russian reduction of nuclear inventories, cost/time drift on F-35, closer UK:France maritime collaboration...even dodgier Iran, N.Korea. It's a close call. If you care to think yourself into the comparable CVA-01/02/03 issue {AFVG+Buccaneer 2+WE177A(N), yet-to-be-bought AEW; shipyard jobs-sensitive; global policeman role East-of-Suez}, deja vu might cross your mind.

By: MisterQ - 3rd April 2010 at 23:40 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

CVA-01 wasn't already in build, the Tories have promised no defence cuts in 2010-2011 timescale at the minimum, by which time long lead items for PoW will have been bought and paid for (prop castings take along time), and as for France-UK maritime Co-Op, under a Tory government, are you mad.

By: Grim901 - 4th April 2010 at 00:00 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Sorry slip of the tongue guys, I meant if by 2012 it hasn't been cancelled, not ordered.

@Obi Wan: I didn't realise they'd go straight onto PoW parts, I was under the impression that PoW won't be laid down (blocks being built) until 2012, with just long lead items being ordered.

By: MisterQ - 4th April 2010 at 01:19 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

I can't find much info on which blocks they're building, only that they're due about 1 million man hours of work, they certainly can't build the block directly above the ones they've just completed, it's too large for their facility

By: kev 99 - 4th April 2010 at 13:09 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

All Govt. (not just MoD) procurement contracts include a clause permitting Termination for Customer Convenience. If, as here, some form of non-cost-plus pricing has been agreed, then the audited actual costs incurred up to Notice of Termination are recovered, plus non-risk profit, plus orderly run-down over, maybe 90 days, plus supplier/material irrevocable commitment. The Prime Contractor will additionally attempt to claim loss-of-profit, which is commonly disposed of by giving him some other job. If the contract has been badly written, all of that could exceed the agreed price-to-deliver, if, as with Nimrod MRA.4, Astute, A400M, actual costs have gone through the roof. But Buyer still avoids ongoing cost of ownership, such as creating 2 ship sets of matelots.

Do not grasp at straws. Chop is an option, more likely with a Tory Admin., who has no egg-on-face from inherited squander. Changed geo-politics since this Project was initiated include US/Russian reduction of nuclear inventories, cost/time drift on F-35, closer UK:France maritime collaboration...even dodgier Iran, N.Korea. It's a close call. If you care to think yourself into the comparable CVA-01/02/03 issue {AFVG+Buccaneer 2+WE177A(N), yet-to-be-bought AEW; shipyard jobs-sensitive; global policeman role East-of-Suez}, deja vu might cross your mind.

Who's grasping at straws here? all contracts have been placed for 2 ships and work has started on the first including the necessary infrastructure changes for the project. The entire military ship building capacity of the UK has been consoldiated around this contract, the government insisted upon the merger between BAE surface fleet and Vospers before the contract was signed, if you think the companies' in question would of gone through all that without a watertight contract guaranteeing the work or payment of hefty penalty clauses then there's no hope for you.

As for replacement work should the contract be signed there's nothing on the table that could currently replace CVF in the yards workbooks, T26 is still being designed and the price of T45s are too high to be used to keep people in jobs until the design that design work is complete.

By: hawkdriver05 - 4th April 2010 at 18:23 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

If theres any country in the world that could canl a contract thats come this far.....its the UK.:D

By: swerve - 24th June 2010 at 11:15 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

If theres any country in the world that could canl a contract thats come this far.....its the UK.:D

Maybe, but this government is on record as saying it won't, & that it'd be a waste of money to scrap it now. Too much work done, too much money committed. It's exactly the sort of thing, paying for stuff we don't get, that it's criticised the last lot for - and with good reason!

By: Jonesy - 24th June 2010 at 18:51 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Maybe, but this government is on record as saying it won't, & that it'd be a waste of money to scrap it now. Too much work done, too much money committed. It's exactly the sort of thing, paying for stuff we don't get, that it's criticised the last lot for - and with good reason!

Agreed. Not to mention that the just-released emergency budget, correctly imho, targetted the apparent bottomless social security spend that Labour magic'd up. Bit of an own goal for a government to underscore employment and then put a bullet through about 10,000 manufacturing jobs!.

By: Orion - 24th June 2010 at 18:55 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

I've never seen the virtues in the CVF. Time to let it go.

Regards