The French, now increasingly associated with CVF project, have also expressed concerns about the UK's modular superblock construction approach:  “They want to build their ships on [small] sites ..... Thus, Govan will manufacture aircraft carrier blocks on an inclined slipway! ” one French engineer exclaimed in 2006, perhaps forgetting that slips were have been used for warship construction for centuries.

Anglo-French Common Carrier

A consortium consisting of Thales Naval France and Direction des Constructions Navales (DCN) will build the French Navy's second aircraft carrier (PA2). 

Plans revealed during 2004 indicated that the hull of national Romeo (later Juliete) design would probably be built by the Alstom (now Akers) Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyard at Saint Nazaire, and fitted out  by DCN at its Brest shipyard.  Chantiers de l'Atlantique is able to build much larger ships than a CVF, e.g. in 2003 they completed the 345m long Queen Mary 2 - just two years after first steel was cut!   Thus a "whole ship" rather than superblock construction technique could be adopted,  which is cheaper, less risky and almost certainly quicker than the superblock method for a small number of large ships.

In June 2005 the possibility of collaboration with the French on a common aircraft carrier project publicly re-remerged, with press reports suggesting that about one third of each ship could be fabricated in French ships yards.  In December 2005 it was announced that France would indeed utilise an adapted variant of the CVF design for its second aircraft carrier, but construction will be separate from the UK. 

France is now (June 2006) undecided as to how and where it will actually build and fit-out its new carrier, but is concerned that manufacturing decisions already made by the UK have limited scope for co-operation and costs savings.   A desire to reduce costs to an affordable level is leading the MOPA2 and DGA  to consider building blocks in an Eastern European (probably Polish) shipyard.  They are also looking at the option of building the French CVF in the UK as part of a three-ship production line - but there are serious French doubts about the cost base of UK shipyards; their size, facilities, capacity and capabilities; and continuing deep concerns about the risks associated with the UK's proposed superblock approach.

It's expected that PA2 will be ordered in the second half of 2007, construction work will start in 2009, sea trials commence in 2013, and the ship will enter service by early 2015.  The French rightly consider this to be a very aggressive timescale.

UK Content

Thales Naval promised that if it won the CVF order, the design, shipbuilding, outfitting and part of the ships equipment would remain in Britain, valuing these contracts at around 50% of the total. The rest of the contracts, covering systems from combat management to radars, were expected to go overseas.  Given the high foreign participation in the winning BAE Systems team (Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Alenia Marconi) it seems unlikely that BAE would have been able to deliver much greater UK content than Thales was offering - and notably when towards the end of Assessment Phase BAE Systems tried to wrap itself in the Union Jack, it failed to seize the opportunity to claim a higher UK content for its bid than Thales   The combined Aircraft Carrier Alliance and the Aircraft Carrier Team have also so far failed to give any indication of likely UK content.

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