Foch Adriatic problems cast long shadow

Sea Power, Aug 1999

The French Navy's 30,000-ton aircraft carrier Foch was forced to withdraw in early June from the Adriatic, where she had been supporting NATO's Operation Allied Force against the Milosevic regime in Yugoslavia.

The Foch, which had been at sea for four months-her longest deployment in 36 years of service-underwent an eight-week overhaul at Toulon to repair problems in her catapult system and other breakdowns, but the French government immediately offered to replace her 16 Super Etendard strike aircraft and Etendard reconnaissance aircraft with 16 replacement aircraft to be stationed in Italy.

Although it had no effect on the success of the U.S./NATO air campaign against Slobodan Milosevic, the incident demonstrates the risks faced by the French Navy in relying on only one carrier. The Foch is scheduled to be decommissioned and sold for scrap when the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle becomes fully operational next year. This has pushed the subject of a second carrier into the public arena, and there is now talk of "hard choices" having to be made between a second new carrier and other programs.

The excessive cost of and the time it has taken to build the Charles de Gaulle make it virtually certain that a second carrier, if it is funded, will not be nuclear-powered. French officials have publicly admitted interest in pooling resources with the British to build a third carrier to the CV(F) design in a French shipyard, but the Horizon frigate fiasco will make the Royal Navy extremely wary of being trapped in another bureaucratic swamp.

Another obvious stumbling block will be the almost inevitable French attempt to insist on a common (i.e., French) combat-management system, and yet another is the type of aircraft to be embarked. The British are committed to the short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) variant of the U.S. Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), whereas the French have always turned their backs on STOVL, preferring to use the Dassault company's conventional designs, currently the Rafale-M fighter. Any Anglo-French carrier deal, it is obvious, would have to solve numerous complex political as well as operational problems.

Related Note: Capt. Patrick Herbrard, staff project officer for the carrier aviation element of France's Marine Nationale, has provided details on the modifications to be made to the flight deck of the CVN Charles de Gaulle, the present maneuvering area of which is regarded as insufficient if an E-2C Hawkeye were to land a few degrees off-axis at the same time that failures occurred in the primary and secondary damping of the third arrestor wire. If a pilot has any doubt about the safety of the third wire, Herbrard pointed out, he will be tempted to catch either the first or second wire, and in the Charles de Gaulle this would bring him in dangerously low onto a short foredeck. For that reason, according to Herbrard, the design bureau's project director, Frederick Rouge, has approved the 28-ton deck extension that will add 4.4 meters (14 ft. 3 inches) to the length of the carrier's angled deck.