Bager1968Except that it is the 4 T22B3s that are to be decommissioned, with all the current RN T23s remaining until they are replaced by T26.
Bager1968See Lockheed’s previous “purpose-built tanker”.
You know, the one that “won” the 1954/55 USAF competition to replace the old piston-engine-powered tankers?
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,1348.0.html
(further replies in the thread have drawings & specs of the Lockheed tanker)
The development was expected to take so long that the USAF bought 29 KC-135s (the “losing” entry, based on an existing, flying aircraft) to provide “interim capability”… which was followed by a second order for 88, then a third for 169… before the Lockheed tanker was finally cancelled altogether.
Bager1968I’m not that knowlegable about American service aircraft in British forces, but I was under the impression that all lend-lease stuff had to go back to the States and anything brought had to be scrapped.
No… the provision was that anything NOT returned or scrapped had to be paid for, but was then the property of the UK, to be used as the UK saw fit.
Anything returned or “rendered unfit for further use” was “free of charge”.
As the UK was basically broke after WW2, the vast majority of Lend/Lease items were returned or scrapped to avoid having to be paid for.
The question is whether the odd aircraft or two that were kept were paid for or if they had disappeared from the records (listed destroyed or missing in action), only to be “found” after the accounting period was over?
Bager1968It will increase the total cost… but reduce the cost-per-year… which is the “important” part.
:rolleyes:
Bager1968How many F-35Cs do we think will be ordered then? The document reveals it will be less than the 138 previously predicted, but then again who was expecting it to remain as such?
The initial purchase will be much less than 138… but then the initial purchase was always planned to be less than 50. It is whether there are follow-on purchases that is important… and that decision won’t come until 2015 at the earliest.
As long as the production line is open (at least 2030, from current projections) there can be follow-on orders.
Bager1968and no one even knows if EMALS will work correctly.
Well, EMALS is due to be installed in CVN-78 Ford by 2015, so we will know soon thereafter (planned commissioning date is still in 2015, but may slip to 2016)… however all components have passed their land-based tests, and full-scale testing of a completed land-based system has begun… including launching trials for F/A-18F… so we’ll have a darned good idea well before 2015.
I guess this doesn’t really matter because they are getting rid of the harriers anyway so no aircover and of course Ark Royal is getting the axe.
Well, the RN didn’t really have any air-cover since March 2006, so what’s the difference?
The GR.9 Harriers, which is all that have been around the RN/UK since the FA.2 Sea Harrier retired, has no A-A radar, and the two AIM-9s they carry are purely for “self-defense”, so they didn’t provide “air-cover”.
The Apaches carry “self-defense AAMs” (or can, at least in the US Army versions), so they can take up the slack, eh?
Bager19684 extra years to fit cat and trap, the hull is going to be in the water for 5 years before handover then?
I suspect that the work slowdown will begin at once, thus also delaying the “hull-in-water” date some.
To bad the U.S. cant lend them f-18c for a few years.
Why? The RN has no ship the F/A-18C can operate from, and by the time they do, it will be 2020 and their first F-35Cs should be showing up.
Bager1968China bought the Democratic Party in the mid-1990s under President Clinton… so no surprise here.
Bager1968If this was on the cards I wonder why we just funded SRVL integrationlast week?
You don’t list your location on your profile, but considering the widespread belief that it was the UK that funded the research, I’ll assume that you were referring to the UK when you said “we just funded SRVL integration last week”.
In actuality, the funding came from the U.S. Navy, but the work will be performed on behalf of the United Kingdom*.
* Note the last part of the article:
The US Marine Corps has also shown interest in potentially using the SRVL technique with its own F-35B fleet.
That is why the USN funded the research… and why it will go forward despite the UK’s switch to F-35C.
Bager1968Completion of QE is to be delayed to fit “cat & trap” (page 23 of the SDR)… her pre-SDR ISD was 2016 (POW 2018), and her new ISD will be 2020.
Thus, she won’t be “retrofitted” at all… she will be finished with it.
And, the first F-35C should arrive around the same time, so QE won’t be without fighters much if any time at all.
The RN, however, has been without fighters since the Sea Harrier FA.2 was retired in March 2006… all they have had are “ground-attack only” Harrier GR.9s (no A-A radar, two AIM-9s for “self-defense only”). It is these last that they are to lose.
Since Apache (at least the US Army versions) have their own “self-defense only” AAMs, the RN can deploy them aboard the remaining flat-top (illustrious or Ocean, depending on the study results) and have almost the same “fighter” capability as they now have.
Bager1968Actually, the plan is that both QE and POW are to be pushed back 4 years, and QE will get the full gear*.
Which would make sense… the push-back, while increasing the overall cost of both ships, will reduce the per-year cost (by spreading it over more years)… which is the important part to Treasury… as is pushing back the signing of the purchase contract for F-35 another 2 years.
Stretching out the builds also extends the employment of the shipyard work-forces… not a small electorial consideration.
From the RN’s viewpoint, if QE is the one to receive EMALS/EMCAT, then by the time POW is well underway, the 2015 SDR & spending review might well be able to scrape together the funds for the second EMALS/EMCAT set to be installed during the last part of her build. This would be cheaper than putting a ramped QE back into the yard to remove the ramp and fit the whole EMALS/EMCAT set-up into a completed ship.
The 2015 SDR & spending review may well find that the economy has improved enough to allow for more F-35C as well, and for POW & QE to both be used more than the current plan calls for.
Not expecting that… just pointing out that there are options for later… this SDR didn’t close as many doors as it might have.
Page 23…
As currently designed, the Queen Elizabeth will not be fully interoperable with key allies, since their naval jets could not land on it. Pursuit of closer partnership is a core strategic principle for the Strategic Defence and Security Review because it is clear that the UK will in most circumstances act militarily as part of a wider coalition. We will therefore install catapult and arrestor gear. This will delay the in-service date of the new carrier from 2016 to around 2020.
QE planned ISD was 2016, POW planned ISD was 2018**, thus this can only be a reference to QE receiving the “catapult and arrestor gear”.
**
In December 2008, the UK MoD announced that the originally planned in-service dates of the carriers, 2014 and 2016, would be set back by about two years (2016 and 2018) to match the entry into service of the joint combat aircraft, the F-35B.
Bager1968This “researcher” also takes advantage of the fact that Europeans are used to rather smaller distances between cities.
Capone’s area of influence was centered in Chicago… over 1,000 air miles from the area where he claims the aircraft came down!
Yes, Capone vacationed in the area, but bootlegging operations in the area were run by the New York and Boston mafias… both of which had rebuffed advances by Capone, who they considered as a “street thug”, due to his lack of connection with any real mafioso “family”.
Thus, Capone’s cross-border smuggling was focused on the Minnesota/Michigan-Canada land crossings and the water crossings over the rivers & lakes between Canada and the mid-west.
As for the Coast Guard archives… there were “sightings” of “White Bird” reported as far west as the Mississippi river (west of Chicago), and as far south as Florida… so that there would be an unconfirmed report of a “pair of white wings drifting in waters off Boston” (with nothing actually recovered) is not remarkable at all… just think of how many “sightings” of Amelia Earhart’s plane (and of “wreckage/artifacts”) have shown up over the years… none of which have been proven correct.
Any famous disappearance generates dozens (if not hundreds) of false sightings and reports… the most outrageous and non-credible of which are later removed from the records to reduce the file size to something manageable for storage when the case “turns cold”.
Thus, the comment “Parts of the archives had been curiously removed” is actually to be expected, and not necessarily suspect… but from just such “massaging” of a limited number of facts and far more speculation are created grand conspiracy theories.
Bager1968In the report you just quoted, it says she recently finished her refit.
Bager1968Nor did Britain NEED to join in WW1… they were fulfilling their treaty obligation to defend Belgium when they declared war on Germany when Germany had not declared war on them!
Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany carefully avoided attacking any British assets or forces until after Britain declared war on Germany, and would have not attacked any British holdings or ships if Britain had remained neutral.
Bager1968Refer back to my earlier post (#15) in this thread with the extract from the pilots notes.
Which refers to jettisoning in “straight & level flight” as part of normal procedures.
It is quite understandable that overwing tanks containing fuel would not separate cleanly in straight & level flight, and thus could seriously damage the aircraft.
My question was if, in an emergency, it was POSSIBLE to jettison overwing tanks containing fuel by inverting the aircraft.
See the difference?
Salad fingers… while I mentioned combat, I was meaning any emergency situation where there was not time to properly dump the fuel from the tanks according to standard procedures.
Sign In
