Ditch it.

Your not the first and certainly not the last to join the chorus calling for this PFI project to be ditched and moved over to a traditional straight up purchase. As it is with the financial crisis the banks are not keen on making the loans available to purchase the aircraft for the PFI consortium meaning the government with have to step in with public money anyway.

Also Australia selected the a330mrtt after the UK selected it yet they are taking delivery whilst not a single nut or bolt has been screwed together in respect of the UK order. The Australian ones are to a much better spec as well with the boom.

Can all C-130s air to air refuel in RAF service?

None could at first, not sure now. I would think the remaining fleet of Kilo model as well as the Julliet have the capability.

On another note due to the stupid restrictions in the PFI contract we can’t buy the refueling pods for the Airbus a400 transport which would allow us to refuel the Merlin HC3. Also precludes us purchasing a refueling capability for our new carriers via the V22 Osprey. The US Marines are funding a palletised refueling rig for the V22 to support their F35b off the Assault ships. A V22 purchase would solve the range and payload issues with the RN F35 purchase as well as introduce a suitable COD and MASC type.

C-17 and the Sentinel are the 2 I am debating but I am unsure on either

See above in respect of Sentinel/ASTOR, the C17 were delivered with the extra long range tanks and so far haven’t needed the capability to tank in RAF service. Anyway to clear the C17 for probe operations would be highly expensive and complicated. It would be easier to add the boom to the a330mrtt on order.

Tornado
Eurofighter
Harrier
Nimrod
C-130
E-3
VC-10

Anything else in the British military capable of air to air refueling?

Add to the list Merlin HC3 and Boeing C17, neither types do air to air refueling in RAF service but are capable of it.

ASTOR had air to air refueling deleted from the specification.

Doc,

There is merit in what you say – of course there is – and in the utopian ideal something like that would probably happen. In reality though gunfights happen over who has what capability.

Take your Vulcan/UK global reach platform. What requirement would this fulfill?. Coercion force, as were not likely to get enough or be able to one-time deploy enough for saturation, precision capable and with an ability to penetrate defended airspace. RAF will say F/A-22 or a UCAV development of Taranis perhaps and point to the old FOAS requirement. RN will say ‘already got it, its TLAM Blk 4’ and ‘instead of inducting a new aircraft type with massive whole-life costs into the airforce, give us two more Astutes and a couple dozen more TLAM in the stockpile’. Then they’ll go on to show how useful the extra 2 SSN’s would be for high persistence intel gathering, chokepoint monitoring etc, etc.

The issue is that whoever is the arbiter of this kind of utopian defence requirement study would face an impossible challenge trying to referee all the viewpoints and competing proposals. Ultimately you’d simply have the same situation that exists today but without the funds spent on the review!.

As Scooter says some degree of competition and rivalry is good here as it fosters the service identity which can be vital. Where it goes wrong is when it turns into one service trying to get anothers projects cancelled in favour of their own without regard to the greater force mix. If we can stop THAT the thing will work just about as well as anyone elses.

Your certainly right Jonesy the navy does have it in respect of Tomahawk when it comes to global reach. On the other hand it takes time to get a sub on station if something blows up quick. The capability to conduct a quick global strike from the air would certainly be something of use to the UK. The thing is we don’t need to spend money buying a new platform as The Doc suggested, the RAF already has a platform coming into service (at great cost) that could do the job with only minor investment required. What I’m talking about is Nimrod MRA4 which could easily carry Pavewave 4 and Storm Shadow, the aircraft has a 1760 databus so we are talking about software integration.

Of course the RN would regard this as a threat to their spending and the RAF would regard it as an opportunity to pull a fast one on the RN with neither service seeming to realise that this could actually be a handy capability to have in our force mix. Just think if we had to send out a task force we could use Nimrod with Storm Shadow to operate well ahead of the fleet making sure that any enemy couldn’t dig in the kind of equipment that could be dangerous to the fleet followed up by our TLAM equipped Submarine when they get on station.

Dont the Malaysian Su30MKM use a South African RWR?

Austria has a weird spec mix if I’m not mistaken. They didn’t license the RWR libraries and they didn’t buy PIRATE if I recall correctly.

Different levels of support, ToT and platform configuration make comparisons pretty difficult.

Too right its weird in respect if the Austrian air force.

They are using an air superiority fighter with a significant BVR capability and radious of action as a point defence fighter with IR missiles and cannon.