Is there any confirmation that they are keeping both titles? Key have both Airforces Monthly and Combat Aircraft Monthly which seem identical titles to me, so there is precedent.

I thought they were supposed to be using “state of the art” Raptor pods, the ones I’ve seen on the BBC news were using Litening pods?

Doesn’t look good for RIAT

Does anyone know what ship the Russians have sent to the region to ‘mediate’?

Anyone got a link to a plan/drawing of the 787 that might show what is in that area of the aircraft?

I’ve seen a couple of cutaways to indicate a crew rest is around that position.

I can see both sides of the argument and forgive me, I was using uniforms and paint as an example. The cost is having a completely disparate force structure not because they necessarily need to be (unless FAA staff are somehow genetically different to RAF staff), but because tradition dictates it. Come to think of it, navy types probably do have extra chromosomes 🙂

E-SCAN simply means electronic scanning, which is the same as phased array or ESA (Electronically Scanned Array). Add a P for passive or an A for active and you got it. Why Eurofighter settled with the E-SCAN term is beyond me, but I would guess it’s somewhat easier to pronounce. The essential part is that when Eurofighter representatives talk about the E-SCAN radar they mean the AESA radar and when they talk about the M-SCAN radar they mean the current one with the mechanically scanned planar array.

WRT the rest, CAESAR was an industry funded technology demonstrator ran in parallel to the government funded CECAR programme. Both were concluded around late 2008 and formed the base for the development of Captor-E. The E is the logical letter in the sequence, but coincides with “Electronic”. That’s why they often call the original Captor-C/D radars the Captor-M (M for mechanical).

Bright Adder was launched as a UK only programme and is sponsored by the UK MoD. The goal of Bright Adder was to accelerate the development of an AESA radar for the Typhoon. When Selex was awarded with the contract in February 2010 it was regarded as a backup plan, as the quadri national Captor-E development programme wasn’t formally launched. It was always the intention the Bright Adder would feed into a quadri national AESA programme if it materializes, but the UK pursued it to have a plan B in case the Captor-E would not be developed as a 4 nation programme. It will certainly be used for developmental testing of some capabilities specifically required by the UK.

The 4-nation Captor-E development was formally launched in July 2010 and runs in parallel to bright adder. The later will feed into the 4-nation programme, not to say that it will directly support it. As of now development activities are solely funded by industry in hope that the investment can be recovered later when orders are placed by the core customers as well as potential export customers.

Captor-E development will be split into multiple phases starting with “radar 1”. Radar 1 will establish the initial hardware base and it will be developed into two versions, the first targeted for export customers that require early delivery of an AESA capbility and the second for an operational assessment by the core customers. Radar 2 will start with the 3rd version that will introduce new hardware options and introduce additional software capabilities. The 4th version will be a future variant that might be called radar 3 or not and which will introduce further hardware and software enhancements. The Captor-E development programme thus takes a phased approach with different “modules” being developed and integrated at various stages. The customers will be able to choose which hardware options they want, while the new hardware will always be backwards compatible, but specific software capabilities will be developed for the new hardware baseline, i.e. you can use the new hardware with the old software or with the new software. To what extend the radars will distinguish is dependent on individual customer requirements, but the modular approach is meant to ensure that there is a common development stream and that there is compatibility. It will be possible to upgrade older radars to the newer standard and a range of new hardware options will be developed including a new multichannel reciever and a new antenna, among other things.

Hope that clears up any confusion and doesn’t create any new confusion.:highly_amused:

Regards

Sounds like the same committee that mapped out airframe development is in charge of CAPTOR-E development. I must send them some new crayons.