JackonickoForce commanders in Afghanistan didn’t think the Canberra’s CAPABILITIES were outdated. The aircraft might have been increasingly unsupportable, but a manned platform with the same performance/payload characteristics would still be a better, more flexible, more versatile replacement than Global Hawk.
Dull, persistent, routine search missions (ASW, SAR, minehunting) are perfect for UAVs, so are missions in contaminated air (Nuclear accident response, etc.), and so are dangerous missions in heavily defended airspace.
But UAVs have huge limitations.
Both the UK and France have got it BADLY wrong. What is needed is a combination of manned and unmanned platforms (U-2S and Global Hawk, for example) for the ‘strat’ purposes, and a mix of UAVs and DEDICATED Tac R fast jets for tactical recce.
Jackonicko“If you had understood what i wrote, if you had only an idea of where it comes from, my friend, ‘old chum’, i’m sure you would feel sorry for having used those words.”
Not at all. Not remotely sorry.
And I don’t care where it came from, because it’s utter, utter nonsense. I’ve seldom seen such bol.locks, and I’ve read through pages of posts by Gegene, Fonk and the rest. Words cannot express what tosh you repeated.
Let’s repeat what you wrote.
“when asked about the lack of such an helmet, Rafale pilots’ concerns are more about the fact that they loose the navigation data when they don’t look straight in front of them (HUD). Why ? Because in modern conflicts, for AdA, there are not many “opportunity” targets, due to RoE, that would be treated better with an HMS. L16 is enough. And HMS isn’t a priority.”
This sounds like the newly modified F-117Ks purchased by the Irish Air Corps. The visual signature reduction measures reduce the aircraft’s visual signature sufficiently to allow unrestricted daylight ops. But the addition of a Klingon cloaking device comes with a disadvantage, in that the signature starts to increase whenever the pilot loses eye contact with the small pixie who sits cross legged in front of the HUD……. That might not be strictly true, but it’s about as sensible as what you wrote, TMor.
Marry your contact, TMor, or if you’re squeamish about man-love, make him marry your sister. He will soon be dead, so you will inherit all of his money and property. And if Dassault listen to him, he’ll be rich as a result of the Rafale F3 cost reductions. Replacing those expensive perspex canopies with aluminium, and reducing the windscreen to the size of the HUD will certainly save a Euro or two. Why bother with a cockpit at all? A simple porthole, or periscope should be ample.
Rafale pilots’ concerns are more about the fact that they loose the navigation data when they don’t look straight in front of them (HUD).
OK.
1) If they had a Gen 3 helmet, they’d have the nav data wherever they looked.
2) If they had a Gen 1 HMSS they’d still only have to look away from the HUD briefly to designate a target (air or ground), update the nav system, etc. And they wouldn’t have to dive and point the nose at a ground target to designate it or update the kit, and they wouldn’t have to grunt and strain and try to get the enemy aircraft slap bang in the HUD to loose off a short range missile…..
But if you’re seriously saying that Rafale pilots sit there, looking straight ahead, then I want to know why they haven’t had a couple of dozen air-to-air collisions, and why young Jim Luke only managed to shoot down one of the bug.gers. If they don’t ever look away from the HUD, even briefly, anything less than ten Rafale kills per sortie is a bit of a disgrace.
“Because in modern conflicts, for AdA, there are not many “opportunity” targets, due to RoE, that would be treated better with an HMS.”
Debateable, since even a simple cueing device will help in both BVR and close in combat. Simply better to have it than not. But even if you ignore air to air applications, a helmet (even a cheap-as-chips, integrate it at station level, basic HMSS) is still a MUST HAVE, as the Jag helmet stuff above demonstrates. It’s simply the best, quickest way of achieving what you need to achieve, whether that’s cueing your stuff onto the target, or having the aircraft cue your eye onto the target.
As soon as you fly with a helmet, it’s obvious. Truly revelatory.
One of the most compelling criticisms of Typhoon is that they are waiting for the full Striker helmet, instead of going ahead integrating an interim helmet years ago. The fact that Typhoons will deploy to Helmand next year less well equipped (in the helmet sense) than the Jaguar is a complete disgrace.
They’ll have L16. They’ll have a bloody marvellous HUD. They’ll have Litening III. They’ll have superb SA. But they’d be better still with a helmet.
Even a noddy one.
“L16 is enough. And HMS isn’t a priority.”
No-one who understands what you can achieve with the simplest helmet would say that, unless they were lying to justify a budgetary decision, or covering up a technical problem.
One begins to wonder whether (like the F-22 team) the Rafale blokes found some insoluble problem in mapping the cockpit that makes integrating a proper helmet problematic. But even if that’s the case, a simple HMSS would be a huge improvement – with absolutely NO downside.
JackonickoYou could usefully categorise helmet sights by ‘generation’.
MiG-29/Su-27 etc.: FIRST GENERATION – basically a simple cueing system that tells the missile seeker where to look.
Jaguar HMSS, JHMCS: SECOND GENERATION – Still monocular, but with expanded symbology, allowing the helmet to tell the pilot where to look, as well as allowing the pilot to tell missile seekers (or the LDP) where to look or to update the nav kit using the helmet sightline.
Typhoon (Striker)/Gripen (Cobra): THIRD GENERATION – Binocular, with full raster and cursive (virtual HUD) symbology, night vision, video imagery from sensors, often with laser eye protection, etc. Lower latency, higher accuracy head tracking, etc.
F-35: Will be FOURTH GENERATION if it actually delivers the step change in reliability required to be a full replacement for a HUD. This is a hell of a challenge for an item plugged in and unplugged every flight. LCD-based (not LED, not CRT), with wider FoV, sensor fused display.
I’d call Gerfaut and TopFlite/Top Owl 2.5 Gen……. or better.
JackonickoTyphoon will have a full Helmet Mounted Display, not just a cueing system.
TMor, You’re swallowing apologist’s propaganda. It’s UTTER nonsense. Even a simple HMSS is better than not having one, as the RAF’s Jag force found out. For air-to-ground as much as for air-to-air.
NOTHING IS QUICKER THAN LOOKING AT A POINT OF INTEREST TO LOAD IT INTO YOUR SYSTEM.
NOTHING is quicker than looking at a target to fire a weapon at it. Even if it’s within your HUD!
“The Jaguar’s combination of a Helmet Mounted Sighting System (HMSS) with the IDM (Improved Data Modem) data-link provided the aircraft’s most useful and unique capability.
The helmet was even more useful in the air-ground role than for designating off-boresight targets for AAMs (a capability which saw Flight Lieutenant Jim Luke ‘down’ a Rafale during a recent NATO TLP exercise). Using the helmet made it much quicker to find a target, and to accurately determine its position.
With a known target position, the pilot simply plugs the coordinates into the navigation system, and then follows the HMS cueing to get ‘eyes-on’ to a target, confirming with the FAC that he is looking at the right target. Medium-level CAS used to take upwards of 20 minutes trying to get ‘eyes-on’, depending upon the terrain and the FAC’s ability to describe the target. It still does for every other air-to-ground platform. I estimate that we are typically hot on target in under 5 minutes. No one else can do that. During recent exercises in the UAE the Jaguars proved able to find a target and strike it with four aircraft within three minutes – something that might take more than five times as long with a formation of Harriers or Tornados.”
Alternatively a Jaguar pilot could search for targets of opportunity, targets of unknown location or Time Sensitive Targets and, once found, instantly generate accurate coordinates using the HMS sightline, loading the co-ordinates into the nav attack system with a single stick-top button press, with no need to overfly the target or to point the aircraft’s nose at the target (‘nose-point’) to position it in the head up display. This meant that the aircraft could remain non-escalatory (not pointing directly at the intended target), avoiding warning the enemy, and avoiding having to dive and risk exposure to enemy MANPADS. The alternative, of using TIALD or Litening to locate and fix a target is much more long-winded, searching for the target via the pod’s much smaller field of view.
Target coordinates generated via the HMSS sightline could then be transmitted to the rest of the formation, or to a Forward Air Controller on the ground, via the datalink, allowing much more rapid engagement of time sensitive targets.
Receiving aircraft get a HUD message, make 2 stick top selections to view it on the AMLCD and can then, with one single button press, drop the coordinates into the IN and simultaneously send an ‘accept’ message back to the leader. Two further stick-top selections bring up steering to the target and weapon aiming.”
Jackonicko1) You can put your GIES anywhere – wherever you base your recce aircraft, for example, since from 60K ft, datalink range isn’t a problem.
2) Trained eyes in the PR9 proved so useful in Afghanistan that the aircraft was preferred over all other recce platforms (manned and unmanned, including U-2S) in theatre.
3) No experienced UAV operators pretend that a UAV can have the panoramic SA of a manned platform. All recent operational experience has shown that (even against fixed, pre-briefed targets) the UAV has usually needed to be cued from off-board.
There are still massive airspace problems for UAVs – especially in peacetime, peace-enforcement scenarios.
The loss rate for UAVs remains eye-wateringly expensive.
For dirty, dull and dangerous tasks, the UAV has applications, but for proper recce, manned is best.
4) With a recce pod and tanks – and especially with the Raptor – Tornado cannot get anywhere close to its operational ceiling. 24,000 ft and the jet struggles. Nor does it have the ability to rapidly re-role to carry other sensors, nor to carry wet film survey cameras, nor to accept very long focal length sensors.
The loss of the Canberra PR9 has represented a really significant loss in capability for the RAF, and recce capability has been further eroded by the loss of the Jaguar – which has been described as the ‘last bastion of real recce in the RAF’. The Jaguar was not a major loss from a platform point of view, nor from the point of view of its sensors, but rather because of its integration of mission-planner/pod/helmet/nav kit, and because it had a recce-trained mentality, with pilots who had trained brains and trained eyes.
You may notice that the French are sensible enough to be retaining their equally antiquated Mirage F1CRs, since they clearly have some grasp as to how useful they are. I suggest you go and talk to ER33 about the usefulness of UAVs…..
JackonickoEven a simple helmet mounted cueing system is more useful than not having one, not just for air-to-air but for air-to-ground missions as well.
But then if your chosen helmet solution doesn’t work, or is dropped for budgetary reasons, you’re almost bound to justify the decision by pretending that it “wasn’t useful anyway.”
JackonickoSo you need a GIES co-located with a regional CAOC. Not a major problem.
Or you uplink to satellite.
But the human in the cockpit gives you an ability to FIND the target, rapidly and efficiently, using its panoramic sensor (the eyes) and then to use its unrivalled processor (the human brain) to assess and analyse the situation. A UAV, controlled remotely by an operator who will only ever have a very partial view of the outside world, will NEVER have that level of capability.
UAVs are useful for some roles, of course – and are arguably better for some of them than a manned platform would be. But for many applications, manned will always be superior.
And Tornado is NOT A HIGH LEVEL PLATFORM struggling above 24,000 ft with a RAPTOR and tanks.
JackonickoI’d be surprised if the costs of ownership of the GEx weren’t much lower. I’d be just as surprised if the costs of acuisistion were not much higher.
I’d also be astonished if the GEx didn’t end up diverted to other tasks far too often!
There’s also the question of whether our friends would provide the latest sensor package (as they did with System III and later SYERS (oops! RADEOS) for the Canberra) for an airframe that didn’t offer PR-9 levels of airframe performance.
JackonickoCapability like that doesn’t come cheap!
Refurbished WB-57Fs would give ‘better than U-2S’ capability at lower cost.
Jackonicko“Not unkown, but the data-link via !!!!! is the bottle-neck. – Non denies it, but that kind of missions are not to find high-up.”
I haven’t a clue what you’re trying to say.
If you’re saying that high level recce is irrelevant, then you’re simply wrong.
If you’re saying that datalinking EO imagery to a GIES is a problem, then you’re wrong.
As for Tornado, Raptor really hasn’t been an outstanding success, and even when it is working as advertised, the Tornado can’t get high enough to fully exploit it. Tornado isn’t a Mirage F1, and it certainly isn’t a PR9.
JackonickoInaccurate and out-of-date thinking, on your part, Sens.
Since RADEOS was fitted in place of System III, the PR.Mk 9 has had a datalink for use with EO, meaning that you could have a PR.Mk 9 over the Isle of White, taking a picture of the front page of the newspaper in front of the Houses of Parliament and datalinking it in real time to a CAOC in Wales.
No need to ‘wait an hour’. No need to put up with crappy imagery.
But you could, when required, replace RADEOS with proper wet film survey kit. Still no need to wait an hour, ‘cos your human crew can visrep anyway.
Or you could have both IR/EO and wet film sensors…..
And because the manned recce aircraft has humans in the cockpit, with recce trained eyes and brains, its sensors can be cued using a man’s excellent panoramic vision and onboard (mental) processing and analysis capability, rather than using a relatively low res screen and a sodastraw view of the world.
Operational analysis has already shown the limitations of the UAV for tactical and strategic recce.
And that’s why when US force commanders asked the Brits for specific UK assets, they always asked for Nimrod R, Canberra PR.Mk 9 and tankers.
There are plenty of tasks where the UAV is better/cheaper/safer (the dull, dirty and dangerous tasks) – finding the head of a survivor bobbing in the briny, for example, or flying through NBC conditions, or going where you wouldn’t risk a manned platform, but there are still roles where manned recce is unequalled.
And it’s not an either/or choice. The well balanced air force would have manned and unmanned recce platforms – though if one was forced to make a choice, manned gives a greater degree of flexibility and versatility.
JackonickoASTOR replaces parts of PR9 capability, but not all. There are still roles for which high resolution SAR doesn’t do what EO/wet film could.
RAPTOR can’t get high enough to get the EO sensor range that Canberra could, nor can it avoid ‘graze’ in mountainous terrain.
UAVs need sensor cueing from off-board.
UK recce capabilities have taken a HUGE knock with the withdrawal of RADEOS, Canberra PR9, and Jaguar.
To answer the question, I’d buy four of the RB-57Fs from the boneyard, four C-141s for their engines (giving plenty of spares), and pay NASA to bring them to the same standard as their WB-57Fs.
JackonickoThe problem with Camel as a nickname is that it’s actually a really good proper name.
The original Camel was a great and agile fighter with air-to-air and air-to-ground capability, used from shore bases and (IIRC) afloat, and certainly used by the US, and by the RNAS, RFC and RAF.
And the name is, as LO says, appropriate for an aircraft that might spend much of its time in the Middle East.
And yet its a name whose re-use would not have provoked the outrage that Spitfire II or Lightning II would have done.
(And shouldn’t it really be Lightning III?)
and the nay-sayers could then have asked whether the UK had been sold a pup……!
JackonickoIt’s seven years until the Dave will have any opportunity to demonstrate usefulness to the UK forces…..
Plenty of time to poke fun.
JackonickoIt’s VERY widely used in the RAF, now, thanks (I suspect) to the constant repetition on PPRuNe.
It began in about May 2006, in this
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=226765
and other threads.
I think there’s a blandness/boredom connotation, as well as a mis-placed reference to the film (it should be called the ‘Hal’ to reflect its sophistication). It’s enduring popularity owes a great deal to the widespread distaste for the Lightning name – many still remember the Lightning with great fondness, and using its name for an air-to-ground aeroplane has gone down like a bucket of cold sick.
There have been some superb alternative suggestions on Prune. Even better than the ‘Dave’.
The Prescott – because:
1) JSF is a completely compromised, overweight, very expensive, overpriced penetrator that makes a lot of noise as it goes up and down, has only a tiny weapon (-load), has already cost us far more than it’s worth, while no-one is quite sure what it’s for, or whether it can do anything useful, but anyone with any sense would expect it to be ****-canned.
2) nobody wants it in their backyard (hence the reason it is going to Lossie).
3) It does the work of two Jags.
4) It’s very noisy to little efect.
Lark – because
The name has to be suitable for fighter pilots so how about the ‘Lark’?
Just like its feathered relative, it makes a noise totally out of proportion to its size; when it is in the overhead, you’ll know it is there but you cannot see it. It gets airborne when it likes and spends the whole time aloft yelling at the top of its voice: ‘me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me’.
Battle II (after the Fairy Battle) – because
It’s a magnificently over-hyped, chronically under-powered bomb truck, with an undersized internal weapons bay and just one engine.
F-35 Marmite – because
You either love it, or you hate it
F-35 Sodomite – because
Only a pervert would love it……
JOATMON
Jack of all trades, master of none, which it surely will be by the time it arrives.
‘MENSTRUAL’ – because
it will bleed the RAF for years.
The YF-35
“Why F-35”. Because that’s what everyone is already saying!
Dawn French? because
She’s a well known White Elephant.
The Doris
Delayed
Over-budget
Reverse-engineered
Inefficient
Surplus-to-requirement
‘Cuckoo’ because
It can lay its ‘eggs’ in other peoples countries.
We would be cuckoo to buy it
And if you think it will ever work properly, you are in cloud cuckoo land.
My favorite is ‘Blenheim II’ – another aircraft with great promise and unequalled hype on launch, but over-reliant on a single technological advantage, and handicapped by inadequate performance, and by a too-small internal weapons bay.
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