Navy drops cherished dream of nuclear-powered aircraft carrier

The way forward is smaller carriers. Even USN in its latest study has asked for more number of small carriers which can carry larger number of optimised aircraft than bigger ones..
The finest deck based aircraft from any carrier till date has been A-4Skyhawk. That cud have operated freely from STOBAR with full payload with reheat.

 

The study result from GAO was basically. No, large carriers are still the future.

 

I read that and it was more about survivability than being targeted. That study is completely flawed. In Battle of midway, The Jap carriers got sunk for being bigger in size and that remains the case even today in the age of DF-21 carrier destroyer missiles. A smaller ship can turn faster in much small circle and avoid lot of incoing stuff.

 

Steam Catapults went out of production a long time ago. So there's no question of a future carrier having them, unless we build them ourselves which I doubt.

Nuclear EMALS is twice the cost of a conventional STOVL carrier. But costs a lot less to operate. It is an investment for the future. STO aircraft will always suffer in performance to CAT. A lot of space for aircraft and stores would be lost due to massive fuel dumps for the giant turbines which will need to be replenished constantly. Is that what we want?

Nuclear carrier travel faster - more wind on deck. And if we are going to have Catapults (which we should) nuclear is necessary.

The ONLY question now is can we afford it?

 

no that's negative plain and simple... it's easy to find drawbacks and problems... the hard part is solving them and working consistently for it... you opt for easy way.

 

Totally agree with that part, but the first step of solving problems, is admitting them! We have a tendency to ignore, divert and distract instead and that doesn't help to fix problems, nor to get better for the future.
So pointing out that bad planing and project management is a core problem for us, has nothing to do with being negativ, but with realising where the issues are to get better.

Anyway, anyway that's another topic and if you have a more appropriate thread, we can continue there.

 

For USN maybe, but when they scale down from Supercarriers, they still land in the 60.000+ category, since even their LHAs are in the size of our current aircraft carriers.
More importantly however, we have to get away to copy USN and look to out own requirements, which are fairly different. They might be able to afford to get into a carrier arms race with China, we can't! There is no way we can keep up with the planned PLAN carrier, let alone their subs fleet on a 1 on 1 basis, so we have to look at the most efficient fleet to counter the threats, in our region.

 

you're just sticking on to a poit because you took it. I think it is pretty reasonable (even essential) to runa program that over more than a decade can deliver a reactor of this class. This one is just as important as the projects you have mentioned.

 

He is right. NOw I dont think these are the exact words the mysterious admiral used. But Subs nuke was financed secretly through PMO. Even now Nuke subs budgets are separately funded by PMO independent of the Navy's budget.

I think the news is bit fabricated. BARC dont have a cash balance to make an experimental reactor for a navy spread over 20 years. Navy can as Aircraft carriers are under its budget.
However I always want us to develop the next carrier to be conventionally powered as it will help us master the basic carrier building tech. Even if they want to replicate 45000 ton ship it will save us lot of time. Nuke will simply become another IAC 1 with 20 launch ceremonies.

 

We can afford a 70000T carrier with nuclear propulsion, but we can't afford the aircraft that can operate from it. The same if it's a 45000T Stobar carrier. Even such a carrier requires 50+ Rafale class aircraft, something we can't afford at all. We will be lucky to be able to afford 57 Rafale class for the MRCBF tender alone, forget an entire air wing for a 3rd carrier.

The carrier also requires escort ships, we don't have those also. While the Chinese are building 3 destroyers every year, we are taking 10 years for just 4 destroyers. There is a huge mismatch in policy and funding.

We should start working on a 3rd carrier only in 2030. The entire lot of time and money from now until 2030 will be used up only for the IA and IAF's modernization. The IN should just focus on subs, helicopters, MRCBF and the LHDs until then. Once the IAF is back on track, only then should the IN's air wing explode in numbers. Operating 2 carriers is good enough until then anyway.

 

Or wait for our economy to explode. The Chinese imported heavily till 2009/10 as their economy allowed imports of billions every year. U r right. After IAC 1 and its aircraft we should follow soviet policy for sometime. More conventional and nuclear subs.

Secondly I have no idea why the govt or navy orders frigates and destroyers in freakish small numbers. They always order 3 or 4 first and go for more after few years. The Chinese always go for a minimum of 7 of one type in a single order. It saves time. Even the new frigates ordered from Russia is 4. (2 in Russia, 2 in India). New Destroyers ordered is 4.

 

I doubt that. When I say sea denial and list out the the six choke points, it is with a view to negate and counter PLAN & PLA/PLAAF assets out of Djibouti and also in the Persian Gulf region, dissuasive posture against Chinese intentions in Maldives and elsewhere, inclusive of Myanmar and not limited to it (They have an excellent road leading right till Myanmar coast that can be used with or without Myanmar's permission), and of course, preventing any PLAN assets from moving into the Bay of Bengal/Arabian Sea from elsewhere.

And my (and GoI's) assertion in the six choke points is precisely that. We secure our own SLOCs, threaten/disrupt the adversary's and maintain a dissuasive posture with overwhelming force levels in order to ensure that the choke points remain exactly choked, thereby preventing any other wannabe cop from intervening in our business.

When am talking of CBG, we need to have force projection in terms of aerial assets also, as the threats to our assets on these choke points may not necessarily be sea based exclusively.

 

make one dear and we will do it.

 

According to the opening article, the navy dropped the idea, therefore no nuclear propulsion is needed. Wasting time and money for something that is not needed, can't be the aim of a developing country.

 

We also did not develop a dedicated reactor for the GDG, we preferred to take two SNLE reactor. And if we had developed a 65000 t aircraft carrier we would have taken three.