Shipbucket

im working on a royal navy au where they continued with a catobar queen elizebeth but im undecided on what fighter to use. iv narrowed it down the rafale, super hornet, navalised eurofighter or the f35c but i dont know which to choose so any help would be appreciated.

thanks mike

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MIKE50

Firstly, I think this might be better off in the general area, secondly I would say either Super Hornet or F-35C would seem the best choices. Sea Typhoon Gripen are both compromise solutions that require a pot of gold to get working and Rafale is well, French and regardless of the current entente I can't see happening, at least not with the Typhoon in RAF service...

~Mark.

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what blackbuck says would not apply if the RN actually had wanted an carrier typhoon from the beginning, thus the rafale would not exist and the typhoon would end up a different aircraft then it is IRL.

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what ace says is entirly true, had the RN continued with conventional carriers then the Eurofighter Typhoon from the out set would have been designed wth naval operation in mind and the french would not have pulled out of the ECA programme early on and gone solo, Typhoon would have been a 5 nation enterprise not 4 and Rafale wouldnt exsist, an aircraft encompasing the best of both designs was probably likly,
for the RN to continue with conventional carrier though you'd need an interim aircraft between Bucanner/Phantom till the Typhoon/Rafalle type was ready......

Which would almost certainly be the FA-18, I've seen it speculated on other forums that if CVA-01 was built the RN would have kept operating the Phantom/Buccaneer combo until the early 1990's, just as the RAF did. If the Hornet was only to have been a stop gap then a force of FA-18C's may just have been leased and gone into service as "Hornet FGR.1."

But if they buy the F/A-18 then there's no need for the Typhoon to be carrier capable.

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

The French would still be in the ECA so yes Typhoon or Whatever it would have been called would be carrier capable... french involvement in ECA went back into the 1970's. its fair to assume had the British and French requirements not differed (mainly due to Britain notrequiring a carrier aircraft) forcing france to go alone and Britain then to team up with Germany then ECA would not have become ECF and would probably bee ready earlier for not only the RAF and FAA but also the Arm D'La Air and French Navy. Germany, Italy and Spain would probably still have jioned as would probably the Netherlands (they were involved at first but soon pulled out). so not only are you altering the British carrier history but France too....

Leasing not buying F/A18C's isnt an unreasonable assumption....

i think a more prudent question is what AEW and ASW aircraft, Hawker had designs for both....

Why? The F-18 will be brand new when Tiffy development begins and if we follow the original timeline they'll only be around ten-fifteen years old when the Tiffy enters service. By the time the F-18 is ripe for replacement we're talking 2015 or so, just as the F-35 enters service.

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

i think that an Anglo/French Typhoon/rafale type would enter service in the late 80's early 90's there'd be no delays due to project seperation. the French Navy and Royal Navy would operate on simlar grounds.

then from 2019 F35C could start to replace or suplement the Typhoon/Rafale type....

There would undoubtedly be pressure to go for the cheaper option, it will all depend on the political context in this AU. Perhaps Britain is less Eurosceptic and sees this as a way of deepening defence links across Europe and especially with France? Also not having an interim aircraft has its own risks as you have to keep obsolete aircraft in frontline service until the 21st Century, the Phantom, with an ICE style upgrade could conceivably manage it, but it's difficult to see how the Buccaneer could have been kept going for that long.

If there's enough political will, diplomatic considerations and lobbying by industry in support of this hypothetical aircraft then it will probably go into service, getting all that together is of course another matter.