Thanks for the advice

Well unfortunately it is simple math, unless it is a regional airliner travelling low and slow a Hawk hasn’t got a chance of doing a visual intercept on a transiting airliner when you look at the relative performance. A Hawk has a straight and level top speed of Mach 0.84 and a ceiling of approximately 45 thousand feet, a Boeing 777 will cruise at 35 thousand feet at Mach 0.84. A Hawk can’t climb at Mach 0.84 so when the call comes in a Hawk has no chance of getting out of the Q shed, off the runway and up to 35 thousand feet before the airliner is long gone. Other airliners like the 747 have even faster cruise speeds, there is no way a subsonic jet can hope to catch with an airliner unless they have warning and can get ahead of the flight profile which is rather unlikely. There have been a few recent incidents where Typhoon have been scrambled to do visual intercept of airliners that were not transmitting or where there was a worrying passenger on-board. In each case the Typhoon had to request permission to go supersonic over land to catch up with the airliner in question. In an air to air scenario the Hawk can at best be a point defence fighter operating over its launch airfield and awaiting targets to come to it. People often think airliners are slow bus like things but actually when they are operating at cruise altitude they are pretty fast, in theory many could actually break the sound barrier in a shallow dive if allowed. The Douglas DC-8 has even broken the sound barrier and is the first civil airliner to do it beating the Tu-144 and Concord! (Still waiting for that nugget to come up in a pub quiz :very_drunk:) Picture below is of the Canadian Pacific DC-8 that did it with an F-104 piloted by Chuck Yeager as the chase plane!

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/I-Was-There-Boeing-Will-Never-Try-It.html#

Ah OK I hadn’t appreciated that constraint thanks for the explanation.

Im confused as to why it is being suggested a hawk couldnt intercept an airliner could you expand on why that might be the case.
As you identified my question was based on the premise that this is in fact a model previously used based on things that i have read so its an interesting suggestion this may not have been the case

Okay, here are some major flaws that should put this Hawk 200 thing to sleep. Installing a radar from the Harrier FA2, Blue Vixen, would be a technological nightmare! There’d be two options: 1) Completely redesign the entire nose and possibly the whole front fuselage section to accommodate the radar, very expensive! Or 2) Redesign the radar to make it fit into the Hawk 200 which would have issues all on it’s own, less range, less power, less capable. If costs are an important issue, then that idea is in the bin.

The upgraded Adours from the Jaguar fleet… Now you see… Those ‘used’ engines were near, or at, the end of their life when the aircraft retired in 2007. What kind of costs will arise in upgrading a kaput engine? It’s silly!

For the kind of asymmetric warfare you mention, you need a lot of fuel, range, endurance, a very good weapons load which needs to be versatile, the ability to get from A to B at such a short notice for CAS amongst other benefits. The Hawk is a great little aeroplane, it would make a very good COIN aircraft but what you’re asking of it is rather silly and optimistic, even narrow minded.

EELightning

Sorry I was under the impression this was a discussion forum – which means both parties may have differing views, it doesn’t mean yours is 100% right and mine is 100% wrong so making comments that I am narrow minded to me is completely and utterly out of order, as is being called silly.

I trust you will do the polite thing and apologise for these sort of comments when someone offers a different view to the one you hold.

Now the engines from the Jags may well be end of lifed, however surely an analysis as to the costs of relifing those engines rather than procuring additional assets would be worth evaluation.

I accept that the radar profile of the Sea Vixen may well not fit the Hawk fuselage, and that this may lead to a need to change the antenna with the reduction in range that this results in – however in my view that fits with the premise of this being a low end solution.

I dont see how fleet of Typhoon and F35 could in anyway be seen in the seen in the same hi-lo mix that mff was meant to be i would suggest both aircraft are high value assets.
Not sure why hawk 200 would be seen as such a poor asset am i missing something?

The choices of f35 wasnt really my point it was whether the raf should add a set of updated hawk 200s to increase fleet numbers to deal with contingencies

Yes i agree that sdsr15 is coming soon but im just cant believe a fleet of 100 aircraft is sufficient to be a credible force for the uk. Unlike the 1940s it isnt ggoing to be the case that if a problem occurs we are going to be able to not only produce new fighters extremely quickly but pilot training wont be done in 8 hours of type training as it was in BoB