The QE is much bigger and has far more capabilities than the CDG, there's more to a carrier than whether it's CATOBAR or not. We are also launching F-35's, not F-18's. They are designed for STVL. And we'll have 2 carriers rather than 1.
Queen Elizabeth Aircraft Carrier sets sail tonight
- Thread starter Big Spender
- Start date
The QE is much bigger and has far more capabilities than the CDG, there's more to a carrier than whether it's CATOBAR or not. We are also launching F-35's, not F-18's. They are designed for STVL. And we'll have 2 carriers rather than 1.
Oh there is of course, but as a general rule CATOBAR > STOBAR > STOVL, that's been time proven. Going for the cheaper less capable option just limits your capabilities and future options.
If it were up to me we'd spend another £15bn on defence each year and have 2 nuclear powered carriers with another in reserve, but I think we've got the best of what our budget allows.
There was a US admiral which said they maybe should have gone in with us on the QE project instead of building their own. As it's much better value for money and a newer design
Plus cheaper to replace when they've crashed them into a merchant ship.
To be fair they operate 4,000 ships, statistically they're likely to have the odd accident
Soldato
The oil tanker collisions smack of either a massive amount of arrogance or a massive amount of stupidity!Yes, but they have had 4 just this year and 2 were running in to 1km long oil tankers
Soldato
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- 8 Jan 2009
- Posts
- 4,472
The US Navy when deployed is overworked and understaffed. They work insane hours with few hours sleep where it just repeats all again and if they complain they are fatigued, then one of their mates will have to cover them and work extra hours, so none of them want to do it.
I averaged 3 hours of sleep a night on my DDG and CG. Sometimes I'd go days, 48-36 hours, depending on scheduling, before I could catch more than a 90 minute nap over lunch in my shop.
Quarters is at 07. Work goes until 1700, give or take until 2000 if there's a big project going on.
Watch was port and starboard, so, 0600-1200, and then six hours off, and then 1800-2400. After three months we got someone qualified and we jumped to three section, which was worse: five hours of watch followed by ten hours off, followed by five hours of watch. Keep in mind that work, PT, your current qualifications, and meals must all fit into this schedule.
Then, I was on flight quarters. We pretty much ran helo ops from 2000-04, maybe 0500 every night.
Break this down for you, this is what my day looked like.
0600-1200, watch.
12-1230, lunch
1230-1600 work.
1600-1800, dinner/quals/gym.
1800-0000, watch. If we were at flight quarters, I'd get relieved by another watchstander and I'd go man up the flight deck.
Flight quarters would go until 0400. I'd be lucky to catch two hours of sleep before assuming the watch again at 0600. I often showered and would nap in my shop.
If we were in five-and-dimes, my day would look like this:
0600--Breakfast. Which I wouldn't get up for, because that's an extra hour of sleep.
0700--quarters, work until 0800 when I would assume the watch.
0800-1200, watch.
1200-1230, lunch.
1230-1600, work.
1600-1800, dinner/gym/quals/personal time to decompress. IF we we had a huge project, I'd be back at work from 1800-2000.
Flight quarters would man up....give or take their schedule was usually at 2000, sometimes earlier, sometimes later.
Watch again at 2200-0300. Again, if at flight quarters, someone else had to fill that in. If not, I'd get to go back to sleep until the next day.
Same schedule, but this time my next watch would be 12-17 and 02-08.
(watch blocks on five and dime look like 07-12, 12-17, 17-22, 22-02, 02-07.....watch for five, off for ten hours. Repeat. It's awful. Even if you don't have flight quarters and you get broken sleep with that rotating schedule, what ends up happening is you have a sleep deficiency of hours, it eventually adds up to you being so tired that you're hallucinating. NPC did a sleep study and found that after a week on a rotating watch schedule you basically are operating as if you'd been two beers (or more) deep. Here's the solution the Navy developed, but nobody wants to implement, in order to fix this problem: https://my.nps.edu/web/crewendurance/index
So. I don't know what the other guy is saying about "being run ragged" is an exaggeration, but I have personally gone without sleep for so long that I have seen and heard things that weren't there. I've witnessed accidents that could have been avoided because the person was so tired they had no right to be operating heavy machinery, including an incident in which someone got descalped and someone else almost losing a finger. I've been off sea duty for about six months and my sleep schedule is so ****** I can't go more than about four hours without jolting awake and having to basically go through a relaxation process to get myself to go fall back asleep. Past experience has shown it'll take me another 6 months to a year to get out of the just enough sleep to function" phase and then I'll be up for sea duty again, anyway.
I'm not bitching about my underway work schedule, I'm stating it as a fact: It's ******, and I'm not happy about it.
Edit: and don't even get me started on drills.
Edit2: I woke up this morning to my kid brother younger brother (who is an Army combat vet; he'll always be my "kid brother" though) texting to tell me I hit bestof, and this has garnered a lot more attention than I was ever expecting. I am reading every response even if I don't reply--I'm stationed in Japan so it's the middle of my work day now and I can't skate off on my phone for long stretches to reply to everyone. Also, to everyone who had worse sleep schedules, I don't envy you, to everyone who had it better, I know, I should've gone aviation like my husband. He gets that blessed "crew rest" on deployment.
And thank you for the gold
Edit 3: Twice gilded, wow. If ya'll really want to put your money to good use (not that supporting Reddit server time isn't great), please consider donating to the Navy Marine Corps Relief Society. They really took care of the sailors onboard the USS Fitzgerald and I know they're going to do the same for the Big Bad John. They've also personally helped me and my sailors deal with family emergencies and other life-problems like wrecked cars, flooded houses, tree-damaged roofing and general budgeting and short-term loans. Also NMCRS is tax-deductible.
https://www.reddit.com/r/navy/comments/6uz5hj/uss_john_mccain_collides_with_merchant_ship/dlx2esb/
This isn't the first time someone has said this, many other posts in the years have said the same in r/military and r/navy
It seems to be very bad in the 7th fleet.
Associate
It wou
Would be interesting to see the RN equivalent's opinion, since the QE class get criticised in US circles for the aggresively low crew size achieved through automation. E.G. excluding air crew QE (65kt) has a crew size of 679 vs Gerald Ford (100kt) with a crew size of 2600 (down from 3200 in Nimitz class) since they say the extra crew provides redundancy and increased damage control. Of course the RN crew size is a necessity since we can't recruit and keep enough people to man what we have, but I am surprised the USN is able to man their fleet if the conditions are widely as described.
Would be interesting to see the RN equivalent's opinion, since the QE class get criticised in US circles for the aggresively low crew size achieved through automation. E.G. excluding air crew QE (65kt) has a crew size of 679 vs Gerald Ford (100kt) with a crew size of 2600 (down from 3200 in Nimitz class) since they say the extra crew provides redundancy and increased damage control. Of course the RN crew size is a necessity since we can't recruit and keep enough people to man what we have, but I am surprised the USN is able to man their fleet if the conditions are widely as described.
Associate
NB this is also a massive argument against a Nuclear option, manpower issues. CDG is 2/3 of the size of QE but has twice the complement. Regardless of the through life cost this implies, the RN has simply not shown the ability to recruit and retain enough personnel to get close to operatring that kind of complement these days. Sure the obvious answer is we need to pay more to attract people but where is the money going to come from?, there's no way there is the public will for the increase in the defence budget it would entail. Same goes with escort & SSN numbers, argrument is way beyond hull numbers.
I see this said a lot and don't really have any other reference to go on - but we get a fair churn through where I work of people who are waiting to go into the armed forces many of them navy - often their intake gets put back and put back - quite a few either end up pursuing another career or end up with us permanently if positions come up, etc. I can't really say exactly what is going on but most of these are healthy and skilled people who I can't see any reason would have any problems getting into the forces.
Then again I guess its probably that typical British thing, struggling for man power and then arse backwards recruitment processes that exacerbate the problem or something.
Associate
Well i guess part of it is the specific occupations, they have to bring in engineers from outside the UK since they can't get enough in the UK. But overall there is a 4% shortfall in manpower according to their official statistics, accross a wide range of positions, although engineers are particularly short.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa..._RN_RM_Monthly_Situation_Report__rounded_.pdf
STOVL carriers require less staff than STOBAR carriers which require less staff than CATOBAR carriers. The longer it takes to recover/launch aircraft and the less fuel/weapons they can carry then the less work is involved for the staff when operating at high availability.
Soldato
I follow the Royal Navy on Twitter and it turns out they have a superawesome photo archive, including the new F35 landing on the new carrier, high quality photos and videos, literally hundreds of them for anyone who likes that sort of thing!
http://195.166.153.124/
Certainly plenty of desktop wallpaper contenders that you can't just search for on Google. High enough quality too.
http://195.166.153.124/
Certainly plenty of desktop wallpaper contenders that you can't just search for on Google. High enough quality too.
Caporegime
"this folder does not contain any files"
Soldato
Sorry, corrected it!
You can run through it by upload date, or just search "astute" of "F35" etc.
Caporegime
Saw this was planned, then when it popped up about an F-35 crash I was like. But it was completely separate - a US one went down but the pilot ejected and there aren't any casualties.
Same.
Soldato
- Joined
- 25 Nov 2005
- Posts
- 12,451
Let's hope she's run better than the USS Fitzgerald
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your...erald-probe-the-navy-doesnt-want-you-to-read/
A CIC filled with bottles of pee, broken radar controls and crew manned on the controls who don't even know how to operate radar
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your...erald-probe-the-navy-doesnt-want-you-to-read/
A CIC filled with bottles of pee, broken radar controls and crew manned on the controls who don't even know how to operate radar