The strategic role was not specified either in GOR.339 or in the subsequent OR343. If anything, the aircraft’s strategic role may have been downplayed initially:

“Much of 1957 was spent partly in making GOR.339 seem as unlike a fighter or a strategic bomber as possible”.
(Bill Gunston 1974)

But a strategic role as a low-level supplement to the V-force did appear in an August 1957 definition of the aircraft’s roles, and in a January 1958 introductory note to GOR.339.

“The history of TSR.2 is one of ever increasing demands by the customer service. Whereas in the 1957 draft outline it was put forward as a small tactical machine, by 1961 it had gradually developed into a strategic bomber to enable Britain to fulfil its supposed role as a great global power.”
(Bill Gunston 1974)

“Its strategic capability was endorsed when the British Nuclear Deterrent Study Group — having considered TSR.2 in the deterrent role at its 9 September 1960 meeting — at its 5 October meeting ‘invited the Air Ministry to prepare a paper on the use of the TSR.2 in the deterrent role’.”
(Humphrey Wynne 1994)

The sophistication of the subsystem that I worked on leaves me in little doubt that the aircraft was intended to operate in Soviet airspace.

How about 1,860nm with two free-falling nuclear bombs?

“A British nuclear lay-down nuclear weapon to OR.1177 was being developed at the time and TSR.2 could accommodate either two high yield or four low yield versions of it. With two OR.1177 weapons at the forward end of the bomb bay and additional fuel, a strike radius of 1860 nm (3447 km) was postulated. With take-off from UK or Cyprus, targets that could be covered included Moscow, Leningrad, Kirov and Kazan.”
(Derek Wood 1986)

Great Global power does not mean strategic bomber, debate between RAF and Navy regarding who was the power projection force in the UK, short term no one won, long term RN won (I would argue).

1860nm, barely and not really.

Consideration for deterrent duty does not mean Strategic and the MoD/air ministry etc issues requirements/ideas/papers etc etc all the time, especially in this period and again means very little.

Supplementing the V-force likely refers to the same role the Canberra undertook, V-force penetration, Canberras were to blast the frontier air defences in a small number of locations through which the V-force would pass.

Soviet airspace as far as the RAF were concerned in the 1950s/60s started at the inner German border and sophistication was a specialty of theirs.

The TSR-2 requirement is the keystone of the RAF’s argument that it had supplanted the navy for global power projection, hence the ridiculous OR. The V-force was the strategic asset and thats why it was to have skybolt, after its cancellation (indeed beforehand on the basis of suspicion) the TSR-2 was suggested to carry a variety of fantasy weapons to fulfill the role but it was never a true strategic bomber.

It was not a comment, it was a question and a perfectly reasonable one at that. I’d be interested to know the answer, but I’ll understand if you’d rather not provide one.

It obviously was and the answer is simple, a dead person is dead, there are not any variations.

Neither is blowing up a Remembrance Day parade or devastating the shopping district of a city at peak shopping time on a Saturday. What’s the difference, and what’s the difference between the scum that can do such things?

I never said such attacks were justifiable, although in the case of the remembrance day parade the issue becomes confused if the target is serving military personnel taking part in the parade.

I never said that was acceptable, of course the subject becomes more complex if those taking taking part are serving military personnel
Common ground at last! Do you accept, then, that such attacks can never be justified whoever the perpetrator and whatever the espoused reason?

You have completely missed the point. I never said such attack weres acceptable. My point was and is that the IRA’s efforts to maintain some sort of focus against military and establishment targets seperates them from the terrorists that the UK Islamic community has produced so far as they have not even attempted such a focus.

The Irish problem started with Religion, ended up as kill a brit for sport.
Replace Irish with Iraqi and Brit for yank.

There is so much wrong with that statement that I dont know where to start.

1) The US has not been attacked by a domestic Islamic terrorist, by all accounts the Islamic community in the US is well intigerated, prosperous, moderate and content……..very different from the UK.

2) The anti American insurgency in Iraq has very few roots in religion (the highly active AQ/AQI element being an obvious exception), that insurgency is related to US incompetence, to cut a long story short they took an oppressed state an turned it into a failed state. Understandably the people of that state got rather upset. Now the Sunni/Shia sectarian conflict is religious but was stirred up mostly by AQI and was not present to any great extent at the time of the invasion, again though it is down to US incompetence.

3) Now if you want your statement to hold any truth keep the Brit part and replace Irish with militant British Muslim.

That is your perception, not objective fact. Show me where I accused you of racism, please.

If it was not your intention then I apologise but it certainly came across that way.

Apart from a large number of individual murders, both military and civilian, Irish terrorists blew up private homes, crowded pubs, gas storage depots close to towns, Remembrance Day services, busy shopping centres and business districts. You do seem to have a rather strange concept of “conventional military operations”, if you don’t mind me saying so.

Free Derry, sniper operations against British troops and the killing of serving personnel, for better or worse all are conventional. Sure they did terrorism too but they attempted where they could to undertake conventional operations.

Were the victims of these atrocities, in your opinion, any less dead and the survivors any less traumatised, than those in the awful tube and bus bombings in London or the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon?

I deeply resent that comment.

If so, why? If not, then why do you persist in claiming that there is a difference?

Becouse to an extent there is, explained above.

No urban terrorism is legitimate. The various excuses and rationales expounded for such actions are, therefore, irrelevant.

Urban terrorism is not a legitimate phrase, it covers far too much ground. Now an insurgent who attacks a police station is arguably legitimate, I would still regard him as my enemy and seek to kill him as such but I would regard his actions as legitimate. However putting a bomb on underground train to kill a whole bunch of people for living under a government they probably never voted for is not legitimate. Now I will go further with this, there is of course a cut of point, if you are an oppressed mass in an authoritarian country (hypothetically Zimbabwe) then the attack on the police station is justifiable as it is the control aparatus of the state you are trying to remove. However if youlive in a true democracy (as the UK is) and you are opposed to a policy of that government you do not have a right to attack it. If you are opposed to a policy in a true democracy you vote against the party that supports it, if that party still wins it is your responsibility to accept that. Now the early motivations of the Irish troubles have justifiable motivations, after all there was a near apartheid social structure in place their. However attacks against UK civilians I would suggest were never acceptable.

Surely you do not believe that there are legitimate forms of urban terrorism? That there are circumstances in which it is acceptable or justified to kill and maim innocent civilians going about their daily business?

I cannot believe that this could be the case!

Explained above.

Wow! Straight to personal jibes and smears…… not surprising, really. :p

Who accused you of being a racist? Show me where I did so, and I will gladly apologise.

But – and correct me if I am wrong – it was you and not I that claimed there was a difference between Irish cowardly murders and UK Moslem cowardly murderers, was it not?

Now, you and I seldom see eye-to-eye. Neverthless, I like to think that we are equally contemptuous of the scum that perpetrate these crimes but I simply cannot and will not accept that there is any fundamental difference between one bunch of violent thugs and another.

Religion and politics are irrelevant in the sense that they are no more than excuses and convenient labels used by these psychopaths to coat their crimes with a veneer of spurious respectability.

Your post was clearly intended to insinuate that I held racist beliefs.:mad:

Irish terrorist at least attempted a veneer of military operations in the conventional (I regard Guerilla attacks as conventional) sense. The UK’s home based terrorists do not do this.

Religion here is vitally important, it is the foundation of the belief structure that legitimises and inspires Islamic terrorism.

Surely this contradicts your support to get the team back out there in uniform?
Our enemies will gain great kudos for kidnapping or killing an officer.
Also don’t forget that this is a country where teens telephone 999 just to get the fire engine out so they can stone it. Where a dad is murdered whilst trying to retrieve a football from next doors garden. Due to looney lefts and a general cowadice, anything military is seen as negative, baby killers etc.

Whilst all of us on this forum support our military in every which way possible, there is no need to put them in danger from the idiots which are allowed to exist here with impunity. That includes the present enemies, the feral chav thick scum which roam the streets and the enemies we make in 2008.

As for National Service, unfortunately the Forces no longer need cannon fodder, intellect is required these days at the foot soldier level. The ferals as mentioned are too thick for the lowest possible task in any modern force.

Not at all. The enemies the UK has amongst its own population make little if any distinction between civilians and service personnel, that was my point.

I shall overlook your accusations of anti-Americanism on the grounds of your obvious youth.

In any case, by now we are all well-used to your customary practice of hurling copious amounts of mud in the direction of those who have the sheer effrontery to disagree with you in the hope that at least some of it will stick. :rolleyes:

And, speaking as someone who, on 15 June 1996, was far too close to the explosion of a large terrorist bomb for comfort (my wife was closer still), I will say whatever the hell I LIKE about terrorism and terrorists, and I won’t be asking your permission first. OK? 😡

Now, if you believe that urban terrorists of any kind have anything even remotely resembling a sense of military honour, then I consider that by doing so you are committing a gross insult against the men and women of many nations who willingly don their country’s uniform and place their lives on the line.

You also seem to be of the view that there are degrees of wickedness, apparently based on religion and ethnicity, that differentiate between these criminals and their heinous acts.

I, on the other hand, say that all urban terrorists – whatever their religion and whatever the colour of their skin – are cowardly criminal scum who deserve nothing better than our contempt.

But perhaps you disagree?

Wow straight to aggressive ranting…….not surprising really.:mad:

I never said you needed my permission to talk about terrorism, just dont patronise me, I assure you we could spend all day informing each other about how close we have been to terrorists!:mad:

Do not try and make me out to be a racist:mad:

Fact, Islamic terrorists are Muslims. Those who resort to acts of violence usually do so becouse they hate their intended victims for not being Muslims. That is not to say that all Muslims are terrorists.

Typhoon and Rafale are both stealthy.

This thread is flawed becouse it makes the common false assumption that something is either stealth or it is not. In reality things have varying degrees of stealth with the Raptor being at the extreme. Even the Tu-160 was designed with RCS reduction in mind.