What a load of absolute political crap. 12 JSF wow and routinely that sounds amazingly like – one in a blue moon

Funny isn’t it? I kept throwing this figure in over the past couple of days and most of the people on here evidently thought I was bonkers…

Routinely…very important word. As in, day to day, in peace time, any normal day of the week. Routine does not mean crisis or war. But then we all read what we want in these things don’t we? Easy to misquote people eh?

Very interesting that the army is going down to a single deployable division HQ, big kick in teeth for them.

Sentinel is a real suprise. I think between us we predicted almost all of the things listed but that one came out of no where, especially since they are canning Nimrod….

I think you are confusing F3 and GR4. F3 is a fighter, GR4 is a strike aircraft. GR4 is a much superior strike aircraft to Harrier, goes further, faster with more stores and has radar and a much superior recce set up. It also has a gun which the harrier doesn’t.

The Harrier can land on our current carriers and can operate less solubrious locations, but if it comes down to a choice on land based assests Tonka very time.

Ideally we have both, but times are hard.

While I love the concept of Taranis, I’m not totally sold on it’s application as a deep strike platform in the next 15 years at least. That’s assuming the programme survives today, it might not, and if it does it might simply be temrinated or drip fed puny funds once it’s int he air in 2011. Also, in order to get ‘son of Taranis’ to some form of operational use, won’t we have to overhaul huge amounts of our communications infrastructure, form ground stations to satellites? In this brave new world, I can see that getting an **** kicking.

All the signs are that intel and comms will be getting a boost. As it happens Taranis should not need sat coms like a reaper. It is being designed to be autonomous and AI, its a UK solution, there is no point us building a system that requires something we haven’t got so BAE have gone down the AI route.

I would have thought that as we pass 2020 and proceed down that decade we will see Tornado replaced by a combination of F35 and son of Taranis.

As for B vs C, since B is already a huge improvement on the Harrier, does the longer legs of the C matter so much? What of the contract we signed for the 3 B test craft?

Maybe a mix buy is best. The long legs means less tankers or a carrier hitting targets futher away.

I’m more a B man myself, but C has longer legs so is more bang for buck, if thats what they go for. Also you forget taranis, the son of which is probably the future land based strike platform.

Oh quite agree, just throwing in some perspective for discussion.