... nownow noticed in Twitter
E-2C tactical command and control aircraft operating this week from USS GEORGE H W CVN77 while 's CHARLES DE GAULLE is in refit.
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related:cross-posting from
France Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
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Bravo aux marins et équipes de Naval Group et tous les sous-traitants, le Charles de Gaulle a retrouvé la mer aujourd’hui !
Translated from French by
Bravo to the sailors and Naval Group teams and all the subcontractors, Charles de Gaulle has found the sea today!
French Navy’s sole aircraft carrier FS Charles de Gaulle has entered the water again after spending over 14 months in the dry dock as part of her mid-life upgrade.
The aircraft carrier was refloated at the Toulon navy base on May 16 after entering the dry dock on February 8, 2017.
FS Charles de Gaulle will spend the next few months undergoing further modifications and fine tuning before starting sea trials in the fall. A return to the fleet is expected to take place in 2019.
Once completed, the 1.3 billion euro refit will allow the FS Charles de Gaulle to serve the Marine Nationale for another 20 years.
The undertaking is led by DGA (French armament procurement agency), the French Navy’s Fleet Support Department and the aircraft carrier’s crew in collaboration with shipbuilder Naval Group.
In addition to nuclear reactors inspection and fuel replacement, the ship will return to the fleet with a new combat system, improved IT networks and communications systems. Various changes to the sensors, early-warning radars, navigation radars, infrared sensors and optronic cameras are also on the list. The control room had to be refurbished to be able to house the SENIT combat management system.
FS Charles de Gaulle has also been adapted for the new carrier air wing, with a transition to “all-Rafale” operations after the modernised Super Etendard were withdrawn from service in March 2016.
While the FS Charles de Gaulle is undergoing her refit in Toulon, pilots from her carrier air wing are keeping their skills sharp aboard the US Navy aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush as part of a deployment dubbed
FS Charles de Gaulle leaves the dry dock at Toulon Navy base on May 16, 2018. Photo: French Navy
The first jets that will perform F-35 trials on-board HMS Queen Elizabeth will be mostly American owned aircraft but flown by British pilots.
The aircraft that will be landing on the supercarrier will belong to the Joint Operational Test team. The team’s mission is to build confidence in the aircraft towards helping clear the F-35 to make the legally mandated advance from Low Rate Initial Production to Full Rate Production. The RAF’s No 17 (Reserve) Test and Evaluation Squadron comprises ten percent of the test program in the JOTT we udnerstand.
The reason that most if not all of the aircraft to touch down will be American isn’t some scandalous outrage (just watch how some papers report this, though) but rather most of the F-35Bs in Joint Operational Test team are American.
After speaking to one of the pilots in the test programme, we understand that the UK only has three (BK1, 2 & 4) test jets that are “orange wired” to take data for post-flight analysis, the rest being operational aircraft. Therefore, it is highly likely that the jets to go on HMS Queen Elizabeth later this year will be “mostly, if not entirely, American but flown by UK pilots”.
We were told that the reason for this is that the JOT team dictate the availability of test jets out of a pool. Our contact said:
“It would be nothing more than symbolic to make UK jets available for the trials and that comes at a significant effort since all of them are based at Edwards AFB in California, not on the East Coast where the ship trial is due to take place.
Therefore, the most obvious and cheaper choice is to use the F-35B test jets based at Pax River, which are US ones. British test pilots like Andy Edgell, Nath Gray, will obviously fly them but there’ll be US pilots too because that’s how Joint Test works.”
A Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesman confirmed:
“As the US’s biggest partner in the F-35 programme, we jointly own test jets which are on track to fly off the deck of our new aircraft carrier later this year.
We will continue to work with our American allies on these trials, and plan for the first momentous landing on HMS Queen Elizabeth to be a British pilot.”
Just wait for this perfectly reasonable bit of trivia to become the subject of the next overblown and sensationalised headlines regarding the new aircraft carriers.
... now photo ops:now noticed in Twitter
E-2C tactical command and control aircraft operating this week from USS GEORGE H W CVN77 while 's CHARLES DE GAULLE is in refit.
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... and a short vidMonday at 9:19 PM
... now photo ops:
air wing joined with US 's Carrier Air Wing 8 in overflying USS GEORGE H W yesterday off US east coast after several days of flying operations. France's only carrier is in extended refit.
Published on May 17, 2018