Retiring Trident

Retiring Trident
Under this paper’s proposals, the F-35C aircraft would be common, with
common maintenance procedures and standard and RAF / FAA weapon
fits tailored to their operational requirements. Indeed, cycling airframes
between land-based and carrier-based operations is essential to evening
out the greater fatigue inherent in carrier operations across the fleet.
Beyond common core F-35C training, however, RAF and FAA operations
would be quite distinct, reflecting their different operating environments
and tasking requirements. 182
It is unclear from the SDSR10 papers how the FAA intended to train aircrew
in conventional carrier landings when the decision to convert the
Queen Elizabeth-class carriers to CATOBAR configuration was made.
Two possible routes suggest themselves: first, copying the practice of
the French Navy, to send trainees to the USN for advanced training and
carrier-landing training 183 ; second, to acquire a carrier-capable jet trainer
such as the Boeing / BAE Systems T-45C Goshawk 184 and conduct the
training in the UK. The lack of clarity from MoD in SDSR10 suggests that
this decision had not been taken, but given the capital costs of T-45Cs
and the small number of steady-state trainees, this paper assumes training
would be contracted to the USN.
Given the Queen Elizabeth-class’s nominal capacity of 36 F-35Cs, it
would be reasonable to project an FAA establishment of 60 airframes (48
frontline), leaving 78 airframes (62 frontline) for the RAF. 185 Given the
historic differences in fast-jet squadron sizes between the RAF and the
FAA, these allocations would be sufficient for both the RAF and FAA to
form five operational squadrons and a training unit. 186
41