In general the Aerospace magazines are fairly moderate and even handed. AFM did a couple of issues last year with a public Q&A about the UK need for carrier along with a rather partisan article by a well known Typhoon supporter but in general carrier aviation does get reasonable coverage.

If you want to see proper intervice rivalry and VERY partisan reporting try “Warship IFR” http://www.warshipsifr.com/ most of their reporting consists of polemics from different people about the death of the Royal Navy rather then reports or technical information about actual warships! They are utterly against land based airpower and the editorial from Odin is rabidly anti RAF usually consisting of talk about how the RAF should be cut out of any future defence discussions and disbanded! Then if you add in the paranoia about every other nation that has any kind of naval power, for example the latest issue has a two page report about the possible strategic naval threat of Brazil to the UK! – (YES REALLY!:confused:) Further looking at the latest issue they have 16 pages of articles, polemics and editorial about the SDSR, death of the navy and general attacks on the other two services (especially the RAF) yet only 3 pages about actual in service vessels. Of those three pages two are taken up with a report about a small unarmed 45ft (unless you count shotguns and rifles) utility boat.

I like reading magazines but these day I like to filter the information through forums like this one.

Inept moron is probably a bit strong we don’t know the circumstances in which they were captured. Marines tend be the best trained troops a nation has to offer. If they were armed with some small arms/rifles and a Gadaffi loyalist technical jumps them with a DShK not much they can do really!

When the UK talked about sharing with the French after SDSR and the defence pact pooling the Hawkeye was a logical idea to my mind. RN personel and their family living in Toulon isn’t going to have the same burden as those personel who live in America to fly the Predator drones. It doesn’t take long for people to fly domestic back to the UK and I think many families would rather like living in the south of France. The Aeronavale has always wanted an extra airframe this way they get more, also their cost burden goes down as the UK is paying into keeping the pool going. For the UK the barrier of setting up the logisics backend and base for Hawkeye is taken away by using the French facilities. Again its just a case of ensuring enough trained personel to be able to forward deploy. Logically you would set up a NAS for book keeping reasons and so you can put suitable markings on the UK owned aircraft in the pool…possibly 849NAS. Ideally you would really need three airframes just in case one was in deep maintenance during a big crisis but nevertheless operating in a pooled arangement has significant benefits.

To be honest for most air policing operations the UK and France are not going to have any problem operating a pooled aircraft off their carrier. Only a serious war would be an issue and that is why you ensure you own at least a couple of airframes to swap onto the ready carrier with enough trained personel to fly and operate them.

The main issue I see is the matter of the airframes to purchase, ideally the UK would buy E2D but that would offer less commonality with the E2 2000 operated by the Aeronavale but I don’t see that as an insurmountable issue.

You need engagement with ground targets only if the no-fly zone is contested. That engagement would be prolonged only if whoever contests it has a significant operational AD network.

All indications are that very little of the Libyan AD system is functional. It was in a poor state before the rebellion, & now the majority of the land area, & the AD weapons & sensors in it, are out of government hands. The air force is hardly functioning. It’s bombed the large arms depot in rebel hands at Ajdabiya four times in 12 days, for example, dropping one or two bombs (all of which have missed by a mile) each time. A large proportion of the aircraft which were operational before the rebellion are now grounded in rebel territory. Pilots seem to have little or no enthusiasm to fight, with at least four of those sent to attack rebels having defected. I suspect that it’s hard for Gadhafi to find pilots he dares to allow at the controls of an aircraft.

An NFZ would take a lot of aircraft, but that’s because of the area to be covered, not the effectiveness of the opposition. There’s very little on the ground to bomb, as far as I can see.

I would add to that, the second there was a NFZ the pilots he has left would probably point blank refuse to fly unless he put a gun to their heads. Even then they would probably take off and bail out as quick as possible!

An interesting note but the Arab league has talked about establishing a NFZ themselves, certainly they have the capabilty but I wonder if they have balls to do it without the Americans.

I would think if you’re moving to an F-35 centric fleet then you’d want something single-engined and uses a similar cockpit layout. An EODAS should be considered at some point. And the program should naturally evolve into an F-5 replacement program for export. It makes sense to use the three-barrel 20MM like they use on T-50. (or was it F-CK-1?) and it makes sense for an AESA since it’s the least maintenance intensive solution. And it makes sense for an internal bay for one 1000-class dumb bomb complete with a smart attachment. The internal bay should also be able to drop multiple smaller bombs, but certification should focus on the single large bomb and practice bombs. The internal bay should also be both AIM-9X and AIM-120C compatible so trainees can perform live releases in them, but this would also factor into use as a LWF. Keep it simple. Don’t skimp to the point it’s pointless. Aim for Mach 2. No stealth. Streamlined. Ultra conservative maintenance costs. And keep it affordable by keeping it light, perhaps target under 20K pound MToW class.

Sorry MadRat but that is kind of mad! Unless your joking?!:confused:

A mach 2 capable, single engine trainer with radar and internal weapons bays is neither going to be simple or cheap!

There is a question mark if you even need Supersonic for an AJT, many airforces get on perfectly well without it but lets say you want it Mach 2 capability brings significant cost to the program. Mach 1.2 – 1.4 is far more reasonable. Internal weapons bay is totally unnecessary weight and complexity for a trainer that doesn’t need stealth. Whilst Sidewinder isn’t a bad idea forget AMRAAM! Its a trainer, trainees don’t need to fire the real very expensive missile when it can be done using synthetic training aids which also kills the need for a radar. Pretty much all AJT (and many basic and intermediate – http://www.grob-aircraft.eu/cockpit-avionic.html or http://www.pilatus-aircraft.com/00-def/main/scripts/ckfinder/userfiles/files/Downloads/Brochures/Pilatus%20Aircraft%20Ltd%20-%20PC-21%20Brochure.pdf) offer the capability to simulate radar and weapons firing. Also why fit an internal cannon when an external cannon pod is perfectly reasonable, how many airforces operate a trainer with internal cannon? Its just not needed for the primary role and adds weight and complexity. Those airforces that do want a secondary cannon capability add a cannon pod.

Back to the drawingboard for you!:D

Thats a good sight to see, once its in place they can get on with serious assembly work.