Sea Toby said:
Once you place air force fighters or naval fighters upon these LHD's they cease to be amphibious ships and become light aircraft carriers, as you lose too many lane meters of cargo space to fighter maintenance and operational elements.
The American Marines Harriers provide excellent air support, but when it comes to air superiority, the Marines choose the Hornet flying off the large aircraft carriers. In the past even the Americans have left their Harriers behind to enhance the Marines landing force capabilites.
Obviously the Australians wish to build a LHD capable of carrying and landing up to 1,000 army personnel with helicopters. If the Australians were looking for a CVA sea control style vessel, they won't need as large a ship with a well dock. Although very capable, using the LHD in such a role as you have described will reduce the army trooplift capacity quite a bit.
All true, but the USMC still has the capability available to it if necessary. The RAN currenrtly doesn't. One of the benefits of the F-35B compared to Harrier, is the significantly greater air superiority capability. A small fleet of F-35B's will still provide a reasonable air defence capability. A similar force of harriers (even Sea Harriers) would not provide the same degree of capability.
Obviously the RAN would prefer it's assets protected by fixed wing aircraft from a supercarrier, or land based, however a necessary element of Australia's defence posture is the ability to conduct operations independant of anyone else's assistance, ie: self-reliance.
Obviously there are limits to this, but Australia has conducted operations beyond the reach of land based Australian airpower and without US Supercarrier "protection" in recent times. Granted these have been lower-level ops, without the need for integral air defence, but it shouldn't be taken for granted that this situation will always be the case.
The acquisition of these ships represents an opportunity to RAN to gain a genuine "at sea" air defence capability, besides that conferred by surface vessels. True the adoption of a light carrier role, may reduce the capability to conduct amphibious operations somewhat, however it will still be greater than at present AND provide the "light carrier" capability. In addition, I don't advocate using these vessels for this task on a permanent basis, but rather as required, dependant on the tactical situation. Deploying troops in the face of hostile fires from enemy aircraft is going to be beyond the capability of even the LHD's. AWD's will only carry so many SAM's afterall.
Also, as I mentioned in my previous post, it's been reported that the Navantia LHD can carry up to 29 aircraft. No details have emerged (that I'm aware of) as to whether it impinges on vehicle/cargo carrying capability. However it will make no difference to troop transport capability. The crew compartment and troop transport arrangements are completely separate from the vehicle/aircraft capability.
Also it seems ludicrous to assume that aircraft/helo's will be stored (when below decks) in normal vehicle lanes, as opposed to normal ship hangars. Given the size of the ship, it would not surprise me if the carrying capacity for aircraft was completely separate from the vehicle/troop transport capability... Meaning that any fixed wing aircraft carried would only be detrimental to the helo lift capacity. Up to 17 helo's (depending on the numbers of F-35's carried) is still a MASSIVE increase in capability over the 4 that our current LPA's carry.