IAn Invincible class ASW carrier could allow them to (finally) retire their even older steampowered ex-Dutch De Zeven Provinciën-class cruiser BAP Almirante Grau (CLM-81), which dates from 1973.

March 1973 in Peruvian service… she was laid down September 5, 1939, launched December 19, 1941, and (after being suspended during the rest of WW2, then re-designed), completed November 18, 1953, serving in the Royal Netherlands Navy until her sale to Peru.

The one advantage the Lockheed proposal has is that it could use the 8 non-ramp-equipped HM1s that are not going to be upgraded to HM2, thus avoiding the cost of either new airframes or reducing availability of the current Merlin fleet.

The Thales proposal requires either using existing HC3s (and thus reducing the number of those available for their primary troop-carrying role), or buying new ramp-equipped Merlins to maintain fleet numbers.

The main question is, is there money available to maintain fleet numbers (for either the more expensive Lockheed electronics or the extra ramped Merlins), or will the budget force an addition of the ASaC role without providing more aircraft to carry out that new role.

I strongly suspect the latter, which will see Thales win, and the RN lose (by having to “dual-role” some HC3s)!

How on earth do you work that out, includes anything that is old and prefferably not in service anymore, civil, military, prop or jet.
Even a thread on the F-117 on there at the moment.
I hate this idea that people that are into historics like Spitfires, and anything else is not for them.
I seem to remember that the F-100 thread got similar amount of replies on both forums.

Ummm… checking the threads, the one in Historic got only 15 replies, and only 7 posters replying. One of those later replies was Pagen01, and all he said was “Now I’m confussed, I’ve been answering this same thread in Modern military!!“, so there were only 14 actual replies and 6 actual posters.

In Modern Mil, it got 36 replies, and even if you remove the 5 relating to the Mod’s question, that leaves 31 (still over twice as many. Also note that there were 12 different repliers (14 counting the mod or the poster who only replied to the mod).

So, in Mod-Mil, it got twice as many contributing responses, from twice as many contributing posters, generated more discussion, got nice pics, and provided more useful info.

Case shown.

Yes, Historic does discuss jets, but almost entirely limited to either:
UK-produced aircraft,
none-UK aircraft types that had been stationed in the UK,
examples of none-UK types that are preserved in the UK, or
those that are somehow WW2-related or earlier.

The argument is that the USAF has a large fleet of older C-130s which will need replacing in the medium-term, & that neither the C-130J nor C-17 (which, BTW, is coming to the end of production unless more are ordered) is a suitable replacement.

The C-17 can’t get into all the places those C-130s can, & the increasing size & weight of equipment (e.g. AFVs) means that the proportion of kit which can’t be transported by C-130J is increasing rapidly.

In the current economic and political climate in the US, there is no way Congress will authorize purchase of a 100% foreign-built aircraft (that will then get some avionics changed out with US-standard models), when Lockheed will push for a wide-body “C-130XL” to fill the role!

Lockheed Explores Niche For Widebody C-130

The 62,000 lb payload variant (31 short tons) can use the same engines & main wing as the C-130J (42,000 lb payload), which would save cost and increase commonality… and would take care of the “capability gap”… which is expected to be around 10% of theater needs by 2025.

The added selling point will be that “it is just another version of the C-130, an existing aircraft”… not technically true, but Congress is rather gullible that way*.

However, current studies are for a true STOL (1,000-2,000 foot run, USAF) or even VTOL (US Army) transport to replace the older C-130s (-H & earlier), something the A400M cannot do.

If that program “takes off”, it will cost enough that neither the rather expensive A400M nor the C-130XL will even be considered, and the C-17 will get the chance to prove its claimed “tactical transport capability”.

* the AB-8B+, which had about a 65% new airframe (85% new content overall), was sold to Congress as an “upgrade of existing AV-8Bs” (not as a new model, hence it not being designated AV-8D, as it should have been), and about half the production run was of existing aircraft that had the landing gear, main wing, & tail removed and installed on the new fuselage.

That only works if the incoming aircraft are radiating in the radar frequency ranges.

If they are “running silent”, than the ship depending on the passive system is blind.

That’s why the USN built the E-1 Tracer and then replaced it with the E-2 Hawkeye… they fly scores of miles away from the carrier and do the volume-search mission, while the carrier shuts off all its radars.

The E-2 sends a data-stream to the carrier allowing them to see everything the E-2 sees, but the carrier itself is not transmitting anything, and is therefore much harder to find, while still seeing everything that is going on!

Ummm… since you provided basically no info on what you are talking about, I tried Google.

The only entries I could find were about a UK “trance-music band”, a 1952 movie (about Col Tibbetts, pilot of the B-29 that dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima), a 2007 movie (about the setting up of the Newfoundland>Greenland>UK aircraft ferry route in WW2), a Gay/Lesbian tour agency, and an Alaskan tour agency.

Adding the word “Space”, brings us to the 1995-96 TV series “Space, Above and Beyond”, which is a Sci-Fi series about a future war in space which started in 2063.

So, exactly what are you watching?

The tailhook is controlled separately from the landing gear, so it is certain that the Su-33 has it lowered (where is it obscured from view by the engine & tailplane), while the J-15 has it stowed in flight position.

That difference in the pics is irrelevant.