Navy May Cap the Ford Class at 4 Carriers.

Harlock

I should have expected that really
I don't think they should scrap the supercarriers, not at all, but I do really think several cheaper ships alongside those big ships would be a good idea.

Look at ISIS, if the US wanted to bomb them it has to send a 100,000 ton ship surrounded by appropriate escorts in order to drop maybe 4-5 bombs per day, often less. Thats a massive expenditure of money and gross overkill. It's also both risking a major asset for a fairly unimportant task and taking a premium ship away from its main job of dominating the sea lanes.

We don't even have to look theoretically, in WWII CVE and CVL classes were often assigned to support ground troops while the fleet carriers roamed off shore hunting for Japanese warships. They could do each others jobs of course but the whole idea of a CVL is to free up better ships for their primary role.
You can also look at Vietnam where you have bigger carriers projecting power while smaller ships were on call for close air support. You could and did have ships like Enterprise offering support, but a modernised Essex could and did fulfil that role just as well.

So that is sort of what I'm looking at, define what you want your ships to do and then send the best design for it. A Supercarrier is there for power projection, to seize control of ocean routes from a viable enemy navy and then attack enemy territory. A smaller carrier wouldn't do that job as effectively, so there is a role for these big sticks.

But carriers have other jobs. With the advent of helicopters carriers were tasked as helicopter assault platforms. They still can do that task but it would be a waste to deploy a Ford for that job, so the USN made ships specifically for that task.
Carriers also conduct large scale ASW missions and do so very well, but again you send a CVN to hunt subs it is a huge waste, and risky, so you use smaller custom made ships. Well, technically you get NATO allies to do it instead with their dainty Cold War carriers with secondary Harrier capacity, or those Japanese 'destroyers'.
Carriers are also there to support allied ground forces in low intensity wars, but again if you are only dropping a few bombs per day and you are tied to a shoreline that's a waste of your big ships. LPH's have a limited air support role to cover some of this, but the USN has already scaled back on this in its next set of assault ships leaving a potential gap in ability.

So for set piece battles and power projection, a Supercarrier is great, but for all the other jobs a carrier needs to do especially as those roles become more common and important in the future a giant ship is very inefficient. I'd say there is definitely a niche for a multirole ship bigger than a LHA but smaller than a Ford.
 

Bacle

When the effort is no longer profitable...
Founder
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What if they go the QE route and make them conventionally powered?

I know there's that stupid law about capital surface combatants having to be nuclear powered, but what if they dodged that the same way the Japanese dodge Article 9 by labelling the hulls as 'aviation destroyers/cruisers'?

Would that work-around be a way to equip the fleet with some smaller CVs for actions that don't need an entire CVN?

With the new process that creates jet fuel out of water, a hybrid gas/electric mix on a smaller hull seems workable, from a laymans's perspective.
 

Bacle

When the effort is no longer profitable...
Founder
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Hmm, 75% of CVN costs; that puts the question in a different perspective.

How much would it cost to just buy some Izumo's from Japan and modify them for CATOBAR, instead of building the hulls domestically and tying up yard-space?

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Hmm, didn't realize the CVN's had serious opponents, outside the Air Force.

What would the equations look like if the contracts were offered to older naval shipyard that can't do CVNs anymore, but have space for smaller hulls that could be CVL equivalents?

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How about pebble-bed reactors instead of the normal ones, or modifying designs to accept Small Modular Reactor cores? Or just adding some small renewable power generation (solar, wind, and tidal seems best suited for this) to existing designs to make up for the power shortage so the process becomes useful on more than CVNs?
 

Harlock

I should have expected that really
The QE carriers cost $9.2 billion USD for both of them, so $4.6 billion each vs $13 billion for one Ford (Production version, Ford herself costs more)
However that is the basic Ski jump version, stick another half billion each on for cats and traps. They aren't cheap but it is still less than 50% the cost of a Ford
 

Harlock

I should have expected that really
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As far as I can see it is the full budget for building including development but not including crew or airwing. Or any refits. I did use 2014 dollars though so I dunno if inflation has altered that substantially. Figures sourced from the SecDef at the time who gave that number in Parliament.
They were originally budgeted at 3 billion for the pair, so the actual price did double due to delays and issues. From what I can see apart from the hull and flight systems everything else is off the shelf which is probably why it is relatively cheap
 

Tyzuris

Primarch to your glory& the glory of him on Earth!
They've already deployed with F-35Bs though.

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Yeah they can carry 20 F-35b in fighter carrier role.

Considering how potent the F-35b is, that's a respectable amount of airpower there. Enough to fuck over a lot of countries. Especially those with a lot older aircraft like many third world nations.

Heck outside of Brazil, 20 F-35b would make one's air force in Latin America the most potent one.
 

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