BGT claim it has a long range, & it looks aerodynamic, but I agree, 99 miles (presumably converted from 160 km) does seem very long, even launched at high altitude & speed.

Even if we take a launch height of 10 miles that is still needing to glide 10 miles forward for every one mile dropped. And i guess for the last mile you would want to be gaining as much speed as possible seeing as it is a penetrator so this would only give you 9 miles. Also as most combat will probably be from medium altitude it gives less range.

Not that i am knocking the missile/bomb it looks good and hopefully does it’s role well. The main thing i would be trying to do is get the cost down for these bombs. Paveway and JDam seem very expensive for what they are. Basically a tomtom strapped to a bomb lol. I know there is more to it than that but still. i’ve heard anywhere between $70,000 to £100,000+ for each bomb launched.

Could it have been HOPE or HOSBO?

http://www.diehl-bgt-defence.de/index.php?id=563&L=1 – scroll down.

It could well have been this missile. I will need to check when i get home and look at the magazine again. I have found pictures of the missile but not of it on any aircraft.
I think this is HOPE (HOchleistungs-PEnetrator = High Performance Penetrator)

and this is Hosbo (HOchleistungs-Spreng-BOmbe = High Performance Explosive Bomb)

The information on Wiki says that the HOPE glibe bomb will have a range of 99 miles! I find that a little hard to belive it seems such a long distance to glide with out any power. Can this be a realstic distance or has Wiki got it wrong once again?

I’ve been looking at some photos on Airliners.net and have found some interesting pictures of the Tornado pods. Here is one that appears to have 2 ECM pods. I looks like the Boz pod is missing.

Does anyone else think this looks like an odd GR4? Maybe just the angle its been taken from.

I was looking through an old copy of (the most difficult magazine to find in the shops) AirForce Monthly (probably 2008) and i came across a picture of a luftwaffe Tornado (maybe ECR) and it had a paragraph taking about a new missile/bomb that was being introduced. I can’t remember the name of it or what it was for but from what was written it seemed like it was going to be a usful addition to the Tornado.
Does anyone have any idea of what this missile could of been? It was a Air to Surface missile and it was on the fusealge pylon. (it wasn’t Taurus)
Are there any other weapons going to be integrated onto any of the countries Tornado’s in the near future. I think the RAF is all done with its new weapons but maybe from experience in Afganistan they may find a need for something.
I noticed while reading the magazine that the RAAF has a new glide bomb on there F111. I guess there must be a big advantage in having these glide bombs instead of using the oridinary paveway?

Something else i saw while browing old issues was a picture of a GR4 carrying the RAPTOR pod but what was interesting was that the Tornado had what looked like a second flare pod on the wing instead of Sky Shadow. First i thought maybe it was some kind of flash pod for the rec pod but surely they don’t use them anymore? Any idea’s?

Also while browsing through pictures i saw what looks like a mini sky shadow stuck on the the outside of the original big Sky Shadow pod. There is so little information out there about the counter measure pods. This may be a picture of it but it’s hard to tell from the angle.

I read somewhere the other day that mentioned the UK has about 20 Helicopters in Afghanistan. I notice someone said earlier that there are Ok only around 16 are deployed to Afghanistan but only about 4 to 6 are available on a day to day basis. I fond this really hard to believe last i thought there were 6 deployed. I am hoping this number has increased with troop numbers but i very much doubt it.

Number i have seen banded about are:
5-9 Chinooks deployed
6+ Apaches
4-12 Lynxes
4-6 seakings (commando version) with Carson blades

Now as far as finding our about what will be deployed in the future that is a harder question. I heard someone from the RAF on the radio saying that “we are working as hard as we can to get the merlins that came back from Iraq ready to go out to Afghanistan”. he didn’t give a time scale though.
Here are some upgrades which may or may not be accurate.
15 Chinooks to get more powerful engines
22 AH9 Lynx’s to get new wildcat engines
Puma fleet to get upgraded (waste of time if you ask me)
Commando Seakings?

Anyone know more about this Apache upgrade someone was talking about? They said they will all need to come out of theatre. (crazy if you ask me) As far as i was concerned the Apache was performing its mission brilliantly. Why upgrade something that is needed and working. Surely they could wait or do it when aircraft are on rotation. KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID.

With having 28 ( i think) merlins how many of them do we need for training? i would think since pilots already would be trained on the Griffons and other training types they wouldn’t take much extra to get them on the merlin.
Does anyone know how much extra training does it take in timescales and flying hours? I would think that leaving 6 merlins in the UK would be enough to keep new pilots and current pilots trained up.
Also how easy would it be to carry out all the necessary maintenance at say Kandahar instead of bringing them back to the UK every 6 months. If the transporting of them back is not an issue and doing maintenance at Kandahar doesn’t save time/money them probably best keeping it as it is. Since the UK is estimating we are in Afghanistan for the long haul (20+ years) it is better to think in the long term.
One last thing is most of the training roughly the same for the RN merlins and RAF merlins? My thought being could some of the RAF training be done on RN merlins so less of the RAF fleet is required to be in the UK.

We buy all the military equipment for war and not to use it for such tasks is just stupid. It’s the UK is scared of getting it’s shining expensive equipment dirty or shot at. Crazy!