It will be a license produced GE F404

Old ladies are getting upgrades:

In addition to the sensor upgrade,

052 already got 2x Type-730 CIWS
051B getting 2x Type-1130 CIWS and up to 32x HHQ-16 VLS tubes
Sovremenny 136 & 137 are getting the biggest upgrade. 2x Type-1130 CIWS , up to 32x HHQ-16 VLS tubes, 24x round FL-3000N launcher, and possibly an unknown anti-ship missiles replacing the 8x Moskit.

Well the Chinese are certainly Waste Not Want Not when it comes to their vessels, not entirely surprised by the 052 but the Orphan 051B and Sovremenny are an interesting surprise. We knew the Sovremenny were getting an upgrade but I was expecting something far more conservative retaining more Russian kit!

The Chinese have clearly decided that now they have a perfected range of modernised gun and missile systems that removing the Russian gear and standardising the fleet is a worthwhile exercise.

How many hundred thousand bucks to decide how many coffee machines it should carry?

No Nic, that might sound witty to you but again this is no White Tail for an airline. The definition stage will require detailed work to map out all the changes required, start the R&D and associated design work.

Anybody who thinks something like Airforce 1 can be knocked together cheaply is delusional. Boeing didn’t actually make any money on the current VC-25A once development costs had been sunk into the program. They don’t expect to make money on the replacement, it is a prestige project for them and it is a time limited offer! Boeing is ramping back production of the 747-8 in favour of the more lucrative 737 MAX and 787. If the DOD leave it too long then there might not be a 747-8 available to buy new off the line and converting a pair of second hand airframes would be a non-starter. The presidential plane in effect has to be redesigned from the ground up and then built around those changes. I realise that you have certain biases against big corporate especially those that are American but as it stands the figures so far stated around the VC-25A replacement program are not reasonable are in keeping with what most experts in the field are expecting. As it stands Boeing is getting $170million to develop the aircraft and the Air Force has budget $1.65billion for the program. Considering the price escalation on the Marine 1 Contract I am expecting it to cost more than projected but $4billion would be at the upper end of that cost escalation.

But after that quote the deal will come under scrutiny & boeing won’t be able to milk the US taxpayer as they usually do.

Nic

Evidence Nic? US defence procurement is under significant scrutiny so I fail to see how your statement that Boeing is somehow habitually milking the US tax payer is accurate.

$4billion for two replacement Air Force 1 seems a pretty fair estimate and actually in the grand scheme of the US defence budget small all things considered.

That’s gotta cost…. What do you think? Economically written off? Or still worthwhile to salvage?

I suppose that depends on how much they need the hull back in service, I would lean towards right off. Water ingress, hull buckling, damage to machinery and electronics.

The early retirement of the U.K. jag force was a travesty, they were cheap and easy to operate requiring less support to operate, with the RAF taking on the design authority as such, they were free to update and modernise the fleet in house at a reduced cost. Personally I felt the withdrawal of the fleet from operations in the likes of Afghanistan was a ploy to make the jet appear to be redundant to the public and more palatable when the end came, after all you can justify it better if it is not seen to be an operational asset.
The one thing it needed was a power increase that would have been possible with the later up rated engines that RR tested on a jag at Cosford to prove the concept to the Indians.

RAF Jaguar GR3A has already received a power upgrade in the form of the MK106 which offered 25% more power than the MK104.

Retirement of the Jaguar was down to pure cold economics, it might well of been cheap to run and useful but the Treasury were demanding significant cuts from the MOD. The best way to give significant savings is to cut an entire type from service, that means you can remove the logistics and support as well as the training streams. When looking at they types available there was the Choice of Tornado GR4, Harrier GR7/9 or Jaguar GR3A. Out of the three types the RAF sacrificed the lease capabilities by dropping Jaguar, the remaining types could carry everything the Jaguar could as well as offer other unique capabilities.

No (read BlackArcher post – we have also extensively debated the upgrade here before). When was the last time the 2K-d had a sensible system upgrade?

@Fedakin: you might be too busy in RL as you clearly have read other posts and
especially post 1 and subsequent much too fast to notice details that will have answered your remarks.
The 2 squad are leased. All sustainent chain is from India. Only pilots are from each respective nation. Training is done in country, either with a couple of spare or via-pilot exchange. Think that with the new all-electric generation of pilot how good it will be to fly a demanding platform as the Jag. Security is achieved via med alt.

Lease cover only time and amount of airframe needed and can include some discontinuities at the request of each party (this is why you trim down and don’t swap or phase out (read further down)). There are no aircraft induction in each respective countries.
Cash flow at equivalent or superior effectiveness should be immediate. Spare Budget is then inserted in notional platform and fleet trimed down slightly to support the quick induction requested with the big Indian contract (quick fleet induction via leasing – full time – Uk/Ger/Ita lease T1, Fr lease upgraded M2K, Sweden lease Grip C).

Where I was wrong was the deletion of the canons (read BlackArcher – Thank you b/w 😉 ). I wasn’t sure and squared the angle.

Nonsense, I read your idea perfectly well, gave it consideration and dismissed it as unworkable and silly.

It is a solution seeking a problem and this further clarification from yourself is frankly an exercise in the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

1) India has no spare Jaguar to lease, they are suffering a fleet numbers crisis at the moment where with the draw down of their Mig-21 and 27 in their fleet

2) Even if the sustainment chain is in India there will still need to be support services based in those respective countries which will sap funding from other programs

3) I will say again, there are a limited number of pilots available in countries like the UK. Diverting them from Tornado, Typhoon and F-35 hinders those programs

4) I don’t agree it will give the cost savings you seem to think it will, barring a few small areas Air Forces are not revenue generating meaning every spent on those leased Jaguars is taking funding away from more important programs

Leasing only works if it is a capability that an Air Force lacks so for example the UK leased the C17 (then purchased them) to provide heavy airlift and does the same for Tankers. Jaguar would be overlapping already in service types that perform the exact roles that it does.

I find thought experiments interesting but have the humility to take reasoned criticism on the chin.

Not the first hull I would have picked for the job to be fair Yama, but, they have the reach for it. The carrier group did anchor up after getting round the Iberian peninsula for a while also. Wouldn’t have been difficult to get ahead of the group and let it catch up.

The detect at 20k yards is an interesting snippet as well. That’s a very long way in not very deep water where they are…bit far for a ship set. Sounds like someone has tried to breach a buoy line and gotten caught red handed!. As I said the Dutch seem to be playing some games….wonder why the Russians showed their hand like this?.

Usual practise here, if you have a track, is to act like you don’t!. Better that the opposition doesn’t know what you can really do if they ever want to try it for real.

It is possible that the Dutch pulled back from the trail to run up the Diesels to charge the batteries and as you said tripped a passive sonar buoy line, or the Submarine could have popped up a comms mast to send some intel home and the Russians picked up the transmission allowing them to triangulate and send out ASW helicopter. Either way pretty bad luck considering how shallow and noisy with ships the Med is!

Then again the dutch might have dropped the trail to come home, surfaced and an ASW helicopter sweep spotted it! Considering the Russians identified the type that is not an entirely unreasonable speculation. Considering like most NATO navies the Dutch don’t comment on their submarine operations the actual truth will probably never come out.

What you can guarantee is the Russian press and its “RUSSIA STRONK! NATO WEAK!” narrative when this kind of thing happens. Frankly they shouldn’t be crowing too much about it, 20km is uncomfortably close for a modern submarine to a Carrier. That is comfortably within the range of Sub Harpoon and the MK48 torpedo. The Russian carrier group are probably pumping out a significant amount of electrons into the air, so if that sub was really fighty they could shove up their ESM/ELINT mast and calculate a shot.

Which is the irony of all this, whilst the Western and Russian press have been making much about this Russian trip to the Med NATO has had the opportunity to hoover all sorts of ELINT and COMINT which is exactly what those Submarines have been tasked to find out.