The British had no problem to fetch the real price for all services and some profit.
Basic operation cost of the F3 did double that of the F-104S from the start, when the later F-16 was similar to the F-104S.

I don’t want to point out some obvious points (but I will)…

F3 is a two engined, two man airframe so thats twice the engine and crew equipment costs right off the bat. I would have thought that would have been obvious?

For the same number of aircraft you have double the crew and double the engines so of course increased ground personnel to deal with that. The italians operate Tornado IDS, how could this have shocked them?

It also has twice as many missile rails as an F104, is swing wing, carries more fuel, has a more complex avionics suite… This all costs, how can the Italians possibly have been suprised by higher costs of F3 over F104? :confused:

Oi! Enough of the Westcountry bashing.

eyes married to a wet c’untry gurl so eyes can’t.

I think Bristol would be perfect, it was after all the home of the original School of Navigation.

Move Dartmouth to Weston-Super-mud, that would be a real test of character.

What’s this?

F3?
F3a?
F4a?
F5?

Read my post above the picture. It was an F3 modified in house by 11 Sqn, called unofficially the EF3. Proved to be a great platform in the few exercises it was used in before being scrapped. Was ear marked for GW2 but rumour has it the GR community got tetsy at the F3 community turning up with a more useful platform.

here you go.

That’s why the army is mostly based around Aldershot. If all that was wanted was cheap land for large-scale training (the official reason for setting up the camp in the 1850s), there were many better places, but they were all too far from London for ossifers to commute, or visit their clubs in the evenings. 🙁

And it’s not so different today….Perhaps if we moved the MOD, or at least the ‘admiralty’ to lets say Bristol, we would get a different and (by inference)better class of officer to run the Navy?

You might just get away with the VT 100M ship concept, but at 3,000 tons your not going to get numbers.

I am confused why the invicible class would have taken such a battering in 1982, seeing as she was operating pretty close to where she was designed to be, was it something to do with not being fully fitted outwhen sailing?

The seas of the N Atlantic are bad at times, but the South atlantic is far worse, stonger currents, bigger waves and weather with far more attitude. Through Deck Cruisers were designed to do Halifax and back, not chug all the way down south and stay at sea for best part of a year.

And in the alternate universe where the Republicans win the last election and the EU decides for the good of the world its time for a regime change…..

So UK puts three Invincibles to sea, along with Argus and Ocean- That would be a minimum of 100 A/c berths . Spain joins with Principd’A, Italy joins with GariB and rushes Cavour into service, that would add another 50-60 A/c, then France throws in the jewel of the EU strike fleet, CDG with its 40 A/c complement, decides to attach the Mistral and Tonnnnnnnerrrrre to the Dutch and German fleets as ASW carriers and offers Jean D’Arc to Scandanavians.

So that would be something like 100 strike/fighter, 100 odd ASW Helos and 20 odd AEW a/c…. then throw in escorts, Auxilaries with their organic air…

Subs -6SSN from FN, lets say 8SSN from UK backed up by 4 German U212a and the plethora of costal subs acting as back stops….

I think that might see the USN in difficulties in the North Atlantic….especailly if we do a deal with China to get all feisty in the Pacific.

Of course the heat might be getting to me…. :p