Their Lordships would love to get their hands on the E-2D I’m sure, it out performs the ASaC 7 (sacrilege I know ;)) and in many areas the E3D Sentry as well. Its also backed up by a potentially huge USN purchase…I would think the main opponents would be the treasury and the the Air Vice Marshalships…

I think the French, Dassault and Aeronavale would leap at it…they have already been making positive noises. Even if the chance is only moderate of the UK keeping them beyond a lease it would be significant coup!

As for airframes the logical choice would be the 9 ones that were always going to be brought up to the latest standard. It wouldn’t require much in planning changes to loan them to the FAA instead. The refit to current standard could be performed well before the first cat equipped carrier is ready and it would involve three more airframes then the UK planned to start carrier operations with.

Then again the FAA by all accounts would much prefer the Super Hornet as an interim measure. I think we really have to watch for is if any personnel from 854 or 857 NAS do an exchange with Flotille 4F of the Aeronavale. The whole ASaC 7 replacement has been buzzing around in the specialist press recently in respect of partnerships with the French. I can see the Sea Lords being more interested in what possibilities there are in operating a shared capability with the French. The interesting question being could the E-2C operated by the French be upgraded or retrofitted to E-2D configuration along with a limited UK purchase of say two or three new airframes.

I presume it can or it wouldn’t of been declared ready for service in UK QRA.

They like to believe that Typhoon will not have those capabilities by 2018. The usual lot are too dense to tell the difference between that and not being fully developed until 2018.

You forgot Conformal Fuel Tanks. You might need more than 1,000 litres of external fuel on board if you want to carry 2,000lb class weapons. (Paveway III might fit onto the inner pylons (stations 7 & 8), however. They’re perfectly capable of carrying the weight. 2,800+lb each)

The RAF seem to be the only ones that want a lot of these capabilities integrated quite soon, the RSAF too for that matter, where as the other three Consortium Members seem to be dragging their ar$es a bit. Whats interesting though, as I just said the RSAF seem to be pushing too, in a lot of areas more so than the RAF, so if the RSAF want most, if not all, the capabilities the RAF will have then this could but pressure on the others to get a move on. Who knows…

Personally, I’d rather the RAF & RSAF work more closely together since they seem the ones that have, or will have, very similar weapons integrations. Bar ASRAAM, IRS-T, Litening III & few other things.

Ah well that is the weird and wonderful world of Saudi defence procurement…lets buy something new to replace the perfectly good, barely used and fairly new in its own right piece of equipment because we can!

I do wonder how quickly they will implode as a nation when the oil runs out, considering any attempt at industrialising the nation or entering sectors like banking or electronics have pretty much failed and the vast majority of people who do actual work are immigrant workers what will follow will be interesting (scary!!!:eek:). Throw in the vast amounts of defence equipment and it must make some people wake up at night with a cold sweat.

its not unreasonable at all. You need to look on the opposite end of the coin.. and what we have is a member who feels entitled because of his or her status. Take note that the person basically bumped up his thread and ranted against Russian aviation fans because he or she wasn’t getting the answer they wanted.. that’s entitlement right there.

Obviously a dedicated thread wasn’t working so Martinez and I suggested two very reasonable options.. ask the Russian aviation thread, or google it.

He made a gentle poke made in jest…your behaviour was out of order.

You just need the Rafale to support ASRAAM on the wingtip rails and AIM-120C7 and you’re all set.

If it was a lease of Rafale M then UK would stick to the French standard fit of MICA with METEOR being added when it enters Aeronavale service.

I didn’t notice that! Utterly unbelievable! It was Labour who cut it to eight in 2003 and Labour who cut it to six in 2008! How can he possibly think it is OK to attack the current government about halving the Type 45 order and driving up costs when the decision was made under his government…Arrrghhhh my blood boils with rage! The only reason the carriers even got through main gate in 2007 was because Gordon Brown got concerned that if he lost the next election (as if that was ever in doubt) Rosyth (close to his constituency) would lose out on the work.

Stores ship.