According to the Oz, Kevin Rudd is about to announce a massive military build-up, including among other goodies a doubling of the submarine fleet and more and better warships. Webdiarist John Pratt thinks that we should be buying new aircraft carriers too:
The RAN needs aircraft carriers
by John Pratt
China's navy will develop a new generation of warships and aircraft to give it much longer-range capabilities, its commander-in-chief said in comments published Thursday April 16 2009. Admiral Wu Shengli told the state-run China Daily newspaper the Chinese navy wanted to develop hardware such as large combat warships, stealth submarines with abilities to travel further and supersonic cruise aircraft.
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The Canberra class LHDs would be able to embark and use F-35B Lightning IIs, thanks to their ski jump design.
ReplyDeleteAustralia needs the LHD capabilities as well, so it's a good compromise. The flip side is that the class is almost completely undefended. Service as an aircraft carrier would require CEAFAR/CEAMOUNT radar installation, and the addition of RIM-162 ESSM missiles and either a CIWS (Phalanx/Goalkeeper) or SeaRAM short range missile launcher for defense.
The writer of the article seems unaware of the Canberra Class and probably unaware that the Air Warfare Destroyers (to be built) provide much more anti-aircraft and anti-missile defence than HMAS Melbourne ever did.
ReplyDeleteAlso pure carriers are so expensive that the UK can only afford two QE Class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Queen_Elizabeth_(CVF) and that is below the normally accepted efficient minimum of three. Unless we get secondhand carriers like before cheap we (Australians) can't afford them.
So yes 2 or 3 Canberra Class each with 6 F-35B's sounds reasonable for likely scenerio's eg. ground attack against lightly defended targets.
Pete