Got my holiday flights come through today. Same flight last year was an FCA flight number and this year its a TOM :rolleyes: Half expecting it to be the same old 757 as well, with maybe a few rebranding stickers on it.

Don’t worry guys, we Brits have a fall back position for generation 2 CVF if EMAL’s fails.

Ever at the cutting edge of inovation in its carrier fleet, BVT will be instructed by the government to start a Private finance iniative with a budget of about £500 to go out and procure some rather large Bungee cord :eek::diablo::cool::rolleyes:

Also, aren’t all legacy Nimrods currently banned from air to air refuelling due to the accidents that there have been ?

Not sure what the status is with the MRA4 ?

Exactly; Irtusk, if you could persuade the USAF to take your point of view and buy a few 777 freighters and trade in a good few C-17 for 50 cents in the dollar, be sure to ring Canada, Australia and first of all the UK, as they will happily take them off their hands at that sort of price.:D

You will notice though that other countries do kind of agree with you. The UK procures combi civilian stuff that can do a bit of everything. The new A-330 tankers will have good cargo and passenger capability as well as the ability to deliver fuel. The current Tristars and VC-10’s are similar jacks of all trade but are old and not good at everything.

Did the USAF ever fit cargo doors to th KC135’s. Couldn’t they do a limited roll like this ?

A French aquaintance tells me that AFP reported in France in the last couple of days that the French SSBN was also found to have damage to the Sail and to one of the fins once it got home. I have searched on the web but can’t see anything in English anywhere about additional damage.

Maybe Merlock could give us an update from the French perspective ?

Yes, but statistically the chances of them colliding rendomly are mighty close to zero even if they couldn’t hear each other. There must be more to this than meets the eye, still we will probably have to wait 30 years or so before they release the file. 🙁

Another BBC film of Type 45. A five minute tour including the very large Ops room and details of the bridge and accomodation

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7856247.stm