Aircraft Carriers II (Closed to posting)

delft said:

£70million per year? Do we believe him?

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Air Force Brat said:

Of Course he's Obi Wan, he doesn't tell stories! brat

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Navy Today said:

Set against a sunset backdrop in the Red Sea an MV-22 Osprey landed on the flight deck of HMS Illustrious. The world’s first tilt-rotor aircraft, the Osprey has a unique vertical take-off and landing capability, and arrived on the Gulf-bound warship as she passed the USS Kearsarge which has 12 on board.

Flown by the United States Marine Corps and U.S. Air Force, it is mainly a heavy lift troop carrier, and has been deployed in both combat and rescue operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Six years ago HMS Illustrious became the first non-US ship to fly an Osprey and was pleased to welcome one back on board with it completing a total of four deck landings.

Piloting the US Marine Corp aircraft as it landed at dusk was a Royal Navy Lieutenant – Alan Wootton – a former Army Air Corps pilot who transferred to the Royal Navy as a Lynx pilot.

Al is on a three year exchange with the US Marine Corps and flew with co-pilot Captain Goudy of the United States Marine Corps.

Lieutenant Commander Nigel Terry, deputy head of HMS Illustrious’ Flight Department was also on board when the Osprey visited in 2007.

He said: ”Opportunities like this present an invaluable opportunity to continue to grow our ability to work together with other nations. This is absolutely essential in modern naval operations.

“It allows us to grow our understanding of our different procedures as well as providing valuable training for our deck crews.”

The visit gave the Osprey’s crew an opportunity to demonstrate the aircraft’s flexibility as well as being a good example of the strong relationship between Britain and the United States.

While there are no current plans for the Royal Navy to operate the MV-22, close co-operation and training of this kind is vital to support operations in a coalition environment.

HMS Illustrious is currently part of the Response Force Task Group deployed on Cougar 13 operating in the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Horn of Africa. It involves exercising with partner nations, and will show the UK Armed Forces’ capacity to project an effective maritime component anywhere in the world as part of the Royal Navy’s Response Force Task Group as commanded by Commodore Paddy McAlpine.

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Royal Navy said:

The flight deck of the first of the Navy's new aircraft carriers is now finished, with the last 2 sections added to HMS Queen Elizabeth.

The sponsons, each weighing just under 500 tonnes, roughly the same as a Sandown Class minehunter, have been carefully inched into place in Rosyth in Scotland.

The mighty Goliath crane lifted the sponsons – the sections protruding from the hull which give an aircraft carrier its unique shape – to join the remainder of the ship in her dry dock.

By the standards of the Queen Elizabeth, the segments are relatively small; the larger sections weighed in at more than 10,000 tonnes (heavier than a Type 45 destroyer).

Now physically complete the flight deck is the size of 60 tennis courts or just a bit smaller than 3 football pitches.

To accommodate the F-35 Lightning II jets, which will land and take off from the ship, a ski ramp will be installed next month – mirroring the feature which propelled the Harrier skywards on the Invincible Class of carriers.

The Queen Elizabeth Class project is probably at the peak of effort, with around 10,000 people involved in building the 2 leviathans, or providing equipment and systems to be installed on them.

While almost all the media attention is focused on the future flagship, there’s also an all-out effort across the land to build her younger sister, the Prince of Wales, which is around 2 years behind Queen Elizabeth.

Sections of 3-quarters of the Prince of Wales’s hull are under construction in Portsmouth, Govan, Merseyside and Tyneside.

The 65,000-tonne Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers will be based in Portsmouth and will be the centrepiece of the UK’s military capability.

HMS Queen Elizabeth is due to begin sea trials in 2017 and flight trials from her deck using Lightning II fast jets in 2018.

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asif iqbal said:

Ok let's get the second one going!

F35 coming soon

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Aircraft Carrier Alliance said:

On HMS Prince of Wales, all the major block sections are now in build, along with several sponson sections. The teams are working hard to pull in lessons learned from the first ship.

This month also saw the first propulsion motor fitted to HMS Prince of Wales by teams at Govan.

Head of Ship two, David Shepherd, said: “We’re working hard to make the very most of all the detail we gathered during the construction stages of ship one."

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