BAe has absorbed the VT shipbuilding division (VT exercised its rights to sell its share of BVT to BAe), this leaves BAe as the only company to operate warships construction yards in the UK.

Well yes I suppose! But I meant the shot showed a CVF with two darings, an astute and a Wave AOR. It was a being built/just built by BAE only task force!

It sounds like you think BAE employs idiots since they think they can get Taranis and Mantis to work. Maybe you should phone Richard Olver and tell him what a fool he is.

An F3 UCAV would be cued by the radar at Fylindales just as manned F3s are today. A flight profile at an altitude of 7500m allows use of a high bandwidth line-of-sight datalink in excess of 400 nautical miles from an airborne communications node at a similar altitude. There are data compression techniques in common use for satellite communications, so overwhelming the bandwidth isn’t and issue for a UCAV with radar, IRST, ESM and F-35 style Distributed Aperture System. After all, if Northrop can get the Global Hawk sensor suite to work, why do you think BAE cannot do the same for an F3 UCAV?

Operationally, at least 2 F3 UCAVs would be sortied per intercept (same as manned F3). The F3 UCAVs would be linked via and IFDL possibly with a silent “shooter” forward and “looker” in a mutually supporting position.

The bottom line is the technology exists. The issue is retrofitting it to F3.

You could of course just save all that money and effort and use an in-service manned fighter, say something like…..a Typhoon FGR 4????

It also depends what you want in an aircraft. Most nations want an F16 style multirole bomb truck, which is what the F35 is. If you want an air superiority fighter you shop elsewhere.

Most nations in Europe want something US compatible, good at attack/strike with a secondary half decent air-defence capability. The Italians, Spainish, UK all want a carrier capable type as well, which limits it to certain types and then it depends on your type of ship and what you want to do with your aircraft, so only the F35 will do for each of those.

LM don’t have to market too hard, F35 is what the people want, just like the F16 before it. A knack the yanks have always had is building the right product for the mass market.

I’m kind of struggling to grasp why the UK needs modern defensive aids on helicopters to go to afganistan. last i heard they don’t work against RPG’s. Is there actually a threat out there?

Of course there is. The Taliban were given a whole bag of SAMs by the west to fight the Russians and I am sure they are still in the process of acquiring them. They have a recent stated aim in one of their latest corporate video releases of wanting to bring down an RAF Chinook. Go without Def Aids and then see what happens to public opinion when a helicopeter is brought down full of troops….

By the way we also have Sea King HC4+ already deployed to Helmand, so its not just the Chinooks and Lynx.

If the US can deploy 120 Chinooks with no problems why do we struggle so much with spares and all the other excuses we here as to why we can’t deploy more.

There is no way on earth that the US have 120 Chiooks in Afghan. There are approximately 390 Chinooks in the US inventory. A deployment of 120 would pretty much tie up all of them in terms of servicing, training and rotation. I think the figures I have seen in recent days mean that the US has 120 Helicopters in Helmand. This would include all types such a Blackhawk, Apache, CH53s etc. Still much better than the UK.

The main problem with the UK rotary fleet is that for its size it is old and diverse. In the cold war days the diverse nature (Chinook, Puma, Wessex, Sea King, Lynx, Gazelle, Scout) was a strength. But now with distant expeditions the many small fleets are a hinderence. The UK desperately needs to focus on fewer types in order to deploy larger numbers, instead of penny packets of various types.

Imagine if all the Pumas and seakings had been replaced with Merlins. Would give Uk forces 6 squadrons (+OCU) of a single type with something like 70-80 airframes, would make deployments so much easier. The UK does not necessarily need a larger rotary fleet per say, it needs less diversification.

I thought I was having bouts of Deja vu, untill I looked back through past issues and noticed the same:D

BTW I can see the same things, articles that seem to blend into each other issue after issue. I know it’s not easy producing a monthly magazine, but does there need to be articles covering a lot of the same stuff (UK defence problems, PAF stories, top 5 such and such) that seem to pop up more and more lately.:confused:

I have awaited the Indian Air Force coverage of the same level for the balance…

Also there are not 67 Apaches in service yet. Many are stored awaiting the activation of the third regiment, which has been delayed because of Afghan commintments.

according to channel 5’s air force afghanistan the pod on the belly is a sniper targetting pod? Whats the things with the gun you mention, i beleived they still had one canon?

Nope, the 25mm ADEN was a disaster, far too heavy and was dropped leaving the Kettle with no bang stick. Never understood why they didn’t just go back to the old ADEN, given that the SHAR used it until retirement, or when afghan started they didn’t beg, borrow, steal some GAU-12s from the USMC.