Rafale?

Waylander

Defense Professional
Verified Defense Pro
Dumb idea.
First we phase out our naval attack wing and than some people begin to think about carrier jets... :rolleyes:
As if we would have enough money for something like that.
 

TrangleC

New Member
Well, you know how it is...
The "we want to do our part for international security too"-attitude is all over Berlin, so to say.
If they would have the money, they might even build their own carrier now. Just joining in on the british-french thing like this would at least be a much cheaper alternative.
And the idea sounds like something the french would like too. After all they would have the same capabilities but pay less for it if some of the aircraft would be german.

And that is why i think it's stupid. What is the point of having a naval airforce when it can only go and do to where and what the french send their carrier.
Since the french will buy new carriers anyway and most likely use them only with a european backed UN mandate, installing a german naval airforce there would only mean to fund and to subsidize the french navy and not to enhance the german defence capabilities, since this aircraft could only go where the french send the carrier and only do what normally french aircraft would have done.

It would be much better to use that money for buying more F124 frigates and Type 212 submarines that could contribute to a naval european defence force by escorting the french carriers if neccessary and still be of use without those carriers.

Or we just could skip the era of aircraft carriers and build our own arsenal ship. That can't be too complicated and expensive. All you need is a cruiser sized ship with a lot of vertical launching tubes for cruise missiles and stuff like this.
Hell, just take the trunk of a container ship, ad some military improvements to it, put the radar and self defence systems of a modern anti-air frigate like the F124 on top and use the rest of the free space for vertical launching tubes. Then give it some stealth-coating and viola, you got your big and powerful arsenal ship that could match the offensive capabilities of a big aircraft carrier. After all it's the whole aircraft-infrastructure that makes them so expensive and complicated. The arsenal ship is a good idea because with sophisticated guiding systems for your cruise missiles, you can just cut the mediator and let the bombs fly directly from the ship to the target without having them put beneath the wings of an aircraft first.

However, buying Rafale or JSF and renting space for them on a foreign carrier would be really stupid.
But let's not freak out as long as there are no real news and details about this rumor.
 
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perfectgeneral

New Member
A CVF would be very cheap on the tail of an order of four. Rafales are pretty cheap too. You might get the CVF and 60 Rafale(M)s for under 6 billion euros. Germany has contributed very little (1.5% of GDP) to EU defence in recent years. With the greater demand for expeditionary capability this purchase would be highly appropriate.
 

TrangleC

New Member
I guess you are right, but that surely won't happen.
That arsenal ship thing i mentioned neither.

The german public barely accepted the transformation of the army into a intervention force and only because of all those cute fairitales about helping poor people somewhere and soldiers building schools and digging wells and stuff like that. Hell would break loose here if the gouvernment would declare plans to buy or build a big warship that doesn't build schools or diggs wells or escorts feministic activists from home to their office, but only can blow up things.

They even had to tell the public that the new submarines are meant for surveillance and to track the movements of terrorist boats and not for really shooting torpedoes at somebody or anything awful like that, to be able to buy them without masses of pacifists and old hippies storming the gouvernment buildings.

It really is a wonder that they are buying some Eurofighters after all. But i guess that was all the ignorance towards public opinion the gouvernment was able to bring up for a few decades. He he he.

Another thing is the nuclear powerplant of the CVF... also politically impossible in Germany.

Germany will never have a aircraft carrier or anything as big and exclusively offensive like that - well, at least not as long as all those old hippies and left wing activists from the 70ies are not too old to cuff themselves to anything, to throw stones and to hijack the political system.

Sorry, won't go that far off topic anymore from now on.
 

Whiskyjack

Honorary Moderator / Defense Professional / Analys
Verified Defense Pro
TrangleC said:
Another thing is the nuclear powerplant of the CVF... also politically impossible in Germany.
What nuclear power plant? I didn't think nuclear was an option.

Sorry I know its off topic.
 

TrangleC

New Member
One last time being off-topic. Sorry again.

The new british-french carrier is not to have a nuclear powered engine? That would be astonishing news to me.
The old carriers were powered nuclear, at least the french ones - not totally sure about the british, but i think they too.

Or may it be we are just talking about different things here and i misunderstood you?
 

Whiskyjack

Honorary Moderator / Defense Professional / Analys
Verified Defense Pro
TrangleC said:
One last time being off-topic. Sorry again.

The new british-french carrier is not to have a nuclear powered engine? That would be astonishing news to me.
The old carriers were powered nuclear, at least the french ones - not totally sure about the british, but i think they too.

Or may it be we are just talking about different things here and i misunderstood you?
I think you will find the French are moving away from nuclear due to experiance and cost, only the new carrier is nuke none of the others have been. The British have never had a surface warship that is nuclear powered and well I am sure it has been considered I don't think it will be a nuke as I think the new electric options are prefered as in the Type 45.
 

swerve

Super Moderator
TrangleC said:
One last time being off-topic. Sorry again.

The new british-french carrier is not to have a nuclear powered engine? That would be astonishing news to me.
The old carriers were powered nuclear, at least the french ones - not totally sure about the british, but i think they too.

Or may it be we are just talking about different things here and i misunderstood you?
Whiskyjack is right. The UK ruled out nuclear power for CVF very early on. The French navy is far more keen on commonality with the RN ships than it is on nuclear power*, so happy to adopt the British conventional-powered design.

Charles de Gaulle is the only nuclear-powered surface ship France has ever built, & it hasn't been a happy experience.

*For several reasons, including -
Cost - such a ship would need a newly-designed, one-off, powerplant. Very expensive. Or it would have to be a copy of CdG, which is considered unsatisfactory.
Adopting a common design makes it harder for politicians to force them to shrink the ship, since they can credibly argue that starting a new design process, losing the shared elements, & the delay caused by having to start again will cancel out any cost saving from building a smaller ship.
 

Waylander

Defense Professional
Verified Defense Pro
BTW, we would never buy a Rafale after the French left the EF program. It is a question of pride (Ok we don't have much pride here in germany ;) ) and a question of local jobs.
 

Whiskyjack

Honorary Moderator / Defense Professional / Analys
Verified Defense Pro
Twix101 said:
Ok, so we will instal a factory in Germany to build them, like Dassault did several times.
Which will probably mean paying 50%-100% more for each aircraft!
 

Sea Toby

New Member
I can see Germany acquiring a LHD, something similar to the French Mistral or Spanish LHD design, except built in Germany. LHDs are very popular in humanitarian missions, providing a base for supply laden helicopters. Germany may even reorganize a commando unit to deploy from a LHD.

Great Britian, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands will have similar capabilities, why not Germany too?
 

TrangleC

New Member
There were plans and even pretty much complete designs for a big, advanced helicopter carrier and socalled "commando ship" cancelled a few years ago.
Can't see that coming back soon.
Maybe the german politicians don't really want too much intervention capabilities. I suspect they want to keep it simple so the force can only be send somewhere where the situation is already stable enough so you don't need stuff like such ships to do the job. Kind of a "We would like to help, but unfortunatelly we don't have the equipment to do the hard jobs, so we'll just join you later when the situation is clear enough to airlift our police-work-stuff there."-policy.
They deliberately keep the equipment to a low capability level that suits and fits the internal political climate with that extreme pacifistic public opinion. But that is just a suspicion of mine.
 

Waylander

Defense Professional
Verified Defense Pro
It is just too expensive.
With the money you save there you are able to support thousands of army soldiers with good equipment and it's the army who is by far the most used part of the Bundeswehr in our oversea missions.
 

contedicavour

New Member
Twix101 said:
Ok, so we will instal a factory in Germany to build them, like Dassault did several times.
Pardon me, but why should Germany waste money buying 2 competing jets with similar roles ???
If Typhoon Batch 3 were to suffer delays or cancellations, then the issue of replacing Tornado IDS would appear. However I would bet on F-35s in that case.
European collaboration is key to lower costs and I am very supportive of it when country specifications coincide (Horizon, FREMM, NH-90, U212A, Tiger, FLA Airbus, EFA Typhoon and before it Tornado .......). Rafale, with its delays, was probably a mistake in cost-efficiency terms, since Typhoon would have done the job perfectly for the Armée de l'Air. Other solutions could have been envisaged for the Aéronavale (adaptation of Typhoon, F18E/F, etc) without forcing the Armée de l'Air to abandon the EFA consortium. :rolleyes:

cheers
 

contedicavour

New Member
Waylander said:
It is just too expensive.
With the money you save there you are able to support thousands of army soldiers with good equipment and it's the army who is by far the most used part of the Bundeswehr in our oversea missions.
Agree, and besides, we can share roles & responsibilities among EU countries. If Germany lacks a big LPD, the Netherlands or the UK will help within EU or UN missions.
In absence of budgets, some degree of specialization will be needed :( .

cheers
 

Twix101

New Member
contedicavour said:
Other solutions could have been envisaged for the Aéronavale (adaptation of Typhoon, F18E/F, etc) without forcing the Armée de l'Air to abandon the EFA consortium. :rolleyes:

cheers
So, the Other Europeans countries doesn't wanted to have this eventuality and French government wanted a multirole plane at the beginning and the rest of the team only a air superiority fighter.b Totally uncompatible with the Future.
 

contedicavour

New Member
Twix101 said:
So, the Other Europeans countries doesn't wanted to have this eventuality and French government wanted a multirole plane at the beginning and the rest of the team only a air superiority fighter.b Totally uncompatible with the Future.
The EFA Typhoon was supposed to be a multi-role plane from the very beginning. Even the Batch 1 planes can launch Paveways, JDAMs and Storm Shadow...
If France had remained in the programme these capabilities (already sufficient to replace the Jaguars and Mirage F-1 of the Armée de l'Air) would have been enhanced. France knows very well how to negotiate in international procurements programmes.

cheers
 
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