By all accounts there were still issues with the nimrods, which BAE claim a few hundred million more would resolve.

All this on an aircraft that is about 10yrs and how many billion over budget.
an aircraft that in order to pay for the overuns had been reduced to 9 airframes. Thats 9 unique airframes with little commonality with anything else, so at the nest upgrade quantity would fall to 6 (we can never afford to upgrade an entire fleet of anything).

I am opposed to cuts in the armed Forces i think they are at bare minimum now, however had the previous administraion not systematically reduced the defence budget whilst increasing commitments – maybe the black hole in the MOD budget may not be quite so large.

I firmly believe MR aircraft and a strong navy are vital to the UK. That said the axe had to fall somewhere and in the short term at least we can probably hopefully make do without Nimrod for a few years (especially if there were doubts as to its readiness)

lets hope come 2015 capabillities can be regenerated with something off the shelf and relativly low cost. Oh and PFI falls to the wayside (FSTA being bought after we paid for the aircraft 3 times over as we did the C17s)

Admittedly my aerodynamic theory is a bit shaky these days, but i thought the whole point of the Canard is that it doesnt stall being in front of the dead/ turbulent air from the wings at high angles of attack . ( t tails notoriously susceptable though).

Regarding Naval Typhoon – If there is an ounce of sense in the MOD thats a NON Nein Niet No Firkin way.

quite apart from the structural issues, its my understanding that the position of the canard is less than optimal for carrier landings to put it most gently.

wasnt it proposed that a fan blew air accross the deck allowing lower approach speeds & or angles.

I think enough can go wrong with carrier ops without that adding to the list .

Carrier aircarft make successful land based aircraft – it seldom if ever works tother way round

I dont know what the penalty is but I hope its bloody severe.

How many people really do check if their life jacket is really under their seat

Edit Safety cards is different nobody reads them anyway

my gut feeling is that sensors and missiles only take us so far.

I could be being naive, but both Dassault and SAAB have allowed work to appear on the net which references structural attempts to reduce the RCS of their delta canards.

The Asia Pacific area looks to be a hotbed of LO airframe activity, spurred on by the chinese stealth efforts.

Does sticking a stealth weapons pod on the Typhoon really cut the mustard?

I mean will the RAF of 2015-20 be relying on a reduced RCS airframe in a world where true radar LO is becoming more prevalent? They aren’t dumb. The idea that Russian and Chinese stealth designs will be commonplace by 2020 must have been in their thinking when they opted to have Typhoon as their primary A2A asset…

something doesn’t add up. Am i putting too much store in systems and missiles, or will the RAF really suck it and see in 10 years time? We are talking about a country (the UK) which knows it can build a stealth aircraft, and knows its got an excellent collection of systems in the Typhoon…

I think the Tiffy will do the job required of it ie limited strike and air defence, I suspect it may be at a disadvantage if used on offensive fighter sweeps if Lo aircraft come on line in a big way, (but then thats what the yanks and the f22 are for)

within its own network looking for LO strikers (who will not be looking for it or there emmisions give them away) and given adequate upgrades it, will do

Climbing toward medium level yes, but still it has to transit through the dangerous low level to reach medium level. Think about it.

The crucial thing is it was not intercepted on its low level ingress it was shot down at or near the target. At medium altitude it would not have made the target as it would have been in plain view.

You are interperating this as it was shot down at low level whereas my interperatation is it was shot down as it left (very) low level and climbed towards / reached medium altitude.

Being low limits the time in which you are above the radar horizon and thus the time you are exposed to the AD network Conversly you are more exposed to trash fire and whileI agree that every buger with an AK47 can and will have a pop its more of a nuicance than threat, at least statistically.

Regards

Do I read from this mostly useful set of posts ? …..

1. This wasn’t an emergency obviously by strict definition – an overweight aircraft deemed unsafe for take off.

No emergency at all, just an unfortunate incident as i believe it was resolved before the aircraft left the stand

2. The fuel once on the aircraft is the property of the airline. Therefore it cannot be returned to fuel trucks as they and the fuel in them (if they have any at all) are the property of the fuel owners.

In theory BP could buy it back, The problem is that the aircraft tanks are not for want of a better term sterile, so fuel that has been in them cannot be offloaded into a vessel that will be used to supply fuel to another aicraft

3. The fuel trucks are simply ‘pumping’ devices between underground fuel storage tanks and pipes with safety shut off valves and receiving aircraft.

In this case I personally dont know – it probably depends on the airport – i have seen plenty of tankers on smaller air fields

4. It’s better to give the passengers the ‘big e’ with meagre compensation (if any) rather than have a spare aircraft fly them to their destination ‘pronto’ (like BA used to do with their shuttle services for overflow passengers)

That I suppose depends on passenger numbers, availability of a spare aircraft and crew, if you can get a take off slot and equally a landing slot at the other end all that may be prohibitivly expensive or not possible.

LCA are definitely off my tolerance limits as this shows their attitude to passengers even though the overloading of fuel was most likely the airline’s fault.

Unfortunatly the aircraft going nowhere until weight is off loaded pax are the easiest option, how they were treated well no one will be happy in those circumstances – the level of compensation should reflect that and i hope an apology –

Aviation fuel if dumped (anywhere) in an emergency while in flight is okay

Its not ok as such but it is a necassery evil.

but in the situation that presented (non emergency on ground) there was no where to dump it without everyone being accused of pollution.

See above comment re storage and even dumping in an approved waste tank (if available) would be a waste of money.

Isn’t this a scenario that has surely presented before, and in one extreme case in point ended in a tragedy most of us in this forum lament?

There are several instances where overweight aircraft have been lost on/ shortly after take off. Africa is littered with examples (no pun intended) and many people (French investigators not withstanding) believe it was a contributory factor in the loss of Concorde.

hope my rambling helps

regards

I thought that’s what I said in a nutshell.

Moggy – Well yes you have a point 😉

possibly I missread slightly, but i was trying to add youd knacker a tanker as well short term.

I am not ‘playing with words’ but using the correct engineering terminology.

For example, the Wikipedia entry for ‘Secondary surveillance radar’ states:

“Unlike primary radar systems, which measure only the range and bearing of targets by detecting reflected radio signals, rather like seeing an object in a beam of light, SSR relies on its targets being equipped with a radar transponder, which replies to each interrogation signal by transmitting its own response containing encoded data.”

If you consult any aerospace dictionary or technical dictionary, you will see the terms ‘primary radar’ and ‘secondary radar’ defined in terms similar to those I used.

.

As an aircraft engineer I will confirm it isnt just wiki that makes that statement.

Does get messy though when you start veering away from civil aviation, and into areas where primary could be refering to main.