PA NG - next gen French Aircraft carrier program

Archibald said:
Budget cuts, "peace dividends". In his heydays De Gaulle insisted the defense budget shall be 3% of the GNP. This gradually shrunk to 2%, post Cold War. Yet before the 2015-2016 terror attacks that killed 273 people, President Hollande 2013 defense review would have shrunk the defense budget to merely 1%.
Since then it has been gradually augmented, presently hanging around 2% or a bit more. From memory, objective is 2.5%.

France independently produce world-class military systems but afterwards, procurement is only in peanut numbers. Think of the CAESAR guns when Ukraine asked more. Same for Rafale, for frigates... France military budgets are very tight.

30 years ago at the end of the Cold War, the AdA insisted on a non-negociable number of combat jets : 450. Since then the fleet, Aéronavale included, has been cut to 225 : Rafale final objective. Except that objective has recently been pushed to 2035.
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France has always had an export oriented military industrial base. Domestic procurement numbers for various Mirage variants always seem unimpressive in comparison to long term export sales. However, the core of the French military seems better funded and more operable than what you’d see across the English Channel. The RAF was getting half the annual flight hours on their Typhoons than the AdA were getting on their Rafales. Similarly, French SSNs get more sea days than any other SSNs in the entire world. Compare that to the RN’s Astute class.
 
TinWing said:
However, the core of the French military seems better funded and more operable than what you’d see across the English Channel. The RAF was getting half the annual flight hours on their Typhoons than the AdA were getting on their Rafales. Similarly, French SSNs get more sea days than any other SSNs in the entire world. Compare that to the RN’s Astute class.
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French SSN's have briefly got more sea days, due to the RN and USN's recent travails around maintenance. But it certainly hasn't been the case for many years before that. French SSN patrols were never that long...and never strayed too far from home. They hardly ever went north to play with the big boys...the Rubis Class just weren't up to it.

But....there is an element of 'all fur coat and no knickers' to the French Military....their munition stockpiles for example are pitiful across the board. You only have to look at purchases of complex weapons to see that (compare the French SCALP EG order to the UK's Storm Shadow order, F21 torpedo stockpile compared to Spearfish, AdA Meteor purchase to RAF, remember the RAF also has Amraam on top of that as well....and on and on...).
 
Please, try to avoid off-topic. This is the PA NG thread.

Thanks
 
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Hello people!
I'm new and don't know much about carriers and planes but I'm very curious :)
I know the design isn't final yet but does anyone know why the stern of the carrier is designed like that? I haven't seen carriers with sterns like that before.
screen 1.png

Also, why aren't they using this deck space like the newer carriers do? (circled in red)
Wouldn't that reduce the aircraft capacity?
screen 2.png
Sorry if these questions have already been answered in the thread.
 
Kurapika444 said:
Hello people!
I'm new and don't know much about carriers and planes but I'm very curious :)
I know the design isn't final yet but does anyone know why the stern of the carrier is designed like that? I haven't seen carriers with sterns like that before.
View attachment 745131
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Stretches the waterline, which reduces how much power it takes to go a given speed.



Kurapika444 said:
Also, why aren't they using this deck space like the newer carriers do? (circled in red)

Wouldn't that reduce the aircraft capacity?
View attachment 745133
Sorry if these questions have already been answered in the thread.
Click to expand...
It does, but even the Ford-class has a notch there. That's kinda a dead spot in terms of what you can do with it. If you build the deck out, all you can do is use it as parking for the waist catapult, which gets in the way of landing operations. The Ford-class basically uses it as a spot to put the port-side elevator. Without an elevator there, putting planes there blocks the landing pattern while the planes are in motion.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Stretches the waterline, which reduces how much power it takes to go a given speed.
Click to expand...
Ah thanks. It kind of makes it look like a big yacht haha
Any idea as to why other carriers aren't using the same trick? Could that indicate that the K22 reactors are somehow a bit underpowered?
It would be a shame if they didn't learn any lessons from the K15.

Scott Kenny said:
It does, but even the Ford-class has a notch there.
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Yeah the Ford and Fujian do have a notch but it seemed less dramatic than the PANG one.
The Queen Elizabeth has a square-ish deck with no notch though. Is that beacause the flight deck isn't angled and so it is less bothersome for the landing planes if you park planes there?

Personally, I think France will never have the budget to build a second one unless they find oil in the 2030s (although it seems they've commissionned a feasibility study for the end of this decade).
Hopefully they somehow manage to come up with 2 smaller and cheaper carriers to replace this 2nd PANG. That would offer them more flexibility. Maybe the replacement of their Mistral class can come with a carrier version for STOL planes (not amphibious, ski jump, bigger hangar than the LHD version) ?
 
It is more similar in layout to the Forrestal and Kitty Hawk classes
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