While I have no doubt Israel can hit some of Iran’s nuclear facilities (I reckon they could get around 60% of them over 5 days or so, but a land invasion would be needed to get 100% of them, along with the 100’s of nuclear scientists and engineers) and Israel obviously has the better aircraft and ECM, and Iran could cause mischief in retaliation, surely the most likely consequence of what would have to be a public multi-day raid which would be in effect a declaration of war, would be for Russia and China to agree to supply better weapons to Iran. If that is the case then the raids would certainly backfire if after the raid you suddenly have Russia agreeing to supply S-300’s and China to supply JF-17 and other equipment.

While I agree joint operated Atlantique II’s are better than a Hercules without any special equipment, but can Atlantique’s from France reach far enough to cover all the area we need covered for long range SAR?

The UK needs something, and I suspect it will have to be fairly cheap in order for it to occur in this budget cycle. To be honest while a cutting edge platform would be preferable, all we actually need is a platform which has good loiter time, reasonable transit speed, has a reasonable radar able to detect life rafts, good IR/Vis camera system, and good comms, as it seems to me the priority is SAR, as I would be very surprised if the lack of long range SAR asset is not driving up the insurance of the North Sea oil rigs, commercial shipping and aircraft flying across the Atlantic. I would also not be surprised if this was the reason why the SAR PFI has ground to a halt.

It would therefore be a bonus if it carried a MAD, and could drop sonar buoys, and an even bigger bonus if it could carry harpoon and LGB’s.

Currently the suggestion from France is that the UK will undertake “exchanges” with French maritime patrol and fill slots on the crew of the Atlantiques, it therefore is a simple extrapolation to suggest that if there are any spare Atlantique II’s that UK use them. As far as I can tell France has 6 spare, but they may simply be reserve airframes or ones that are time expired and available for spares. I expect life extending the Italian Atlantics or any of the German ones not scrapped is a repeat of the Nimrod programme.

Kinloss follows, mainly on political grounds, as strong candidate for a piece.

I am seriously hoping that Kinloss does not follow, but instead is retained as an RAF base, as I understand from PPRUNE Military there are specialist ground stations for signal processing data from sonar buoys, and if we are serious about regenerating maritime patrol (and I still hope that they will either reverse the cancellation of Nimrod or at least buy some reconditioned Atlantiques or P-3’s) then we need Kinloss. My grasping at straws is the fact that they are not closing the runway at Kinloss until the end of July, or closing the station until March 2013, and if they where really closing Kinloss the runway would be closed a lot sooner.

http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafkinloss/

You cant really compare CVF to LHA. CVF as it was was a STOVL optimised strike carrier with secondary LPA capacity….

Is it too late yet to say that it is a bloody stupid idea to switch from the F-35B to F-35C for the CVF’s? I know they will need to fit cat & traps for future UCAV’s such at the Sea Avenger or equivalent, but since we had the announced changes in the SDSR, it is clear from information released to the press (and commented on in this forum) that RAF still intends to operate the F-35C like they would have for the B, only deploying them to the carriers as needed and shore basing as soon as they can.

Thanks Kev99 and Swerve,

I will concede that at the moment there appears to be little appetite for maritime strike (given that most of the threats we would face would find it difficult to deal with a combo of our Astute/Trafalgar subs and Lynx’s with Sea Skua).

However if it not going to cost a great deal to develop the capability it seems rather short sighted, (given that the Typhoons will get AESA radars which I understood will be able to operate in SAR and ISAR modes), not to develop the capability as it is better to have a decent anti-shipping missile and not to need it than the other way round.

I believe (or strongly suspect) that Boeing is integrating Brimstone on the Super Hornet as they are trying to market Brimstone.

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/missiles/brimstone/index.html

Personally I am a great fan of the AW149 (even though unless a deal was made, it would be be built in Italy), and therefore IMO it would have been a better option to buy as many as we could afford to replace the Puma’s, the Sea King HC4’s rather SLEP the Puma’s and convert the Merlin’s for use at sea, sure the AW149 is a little small to fill the same role as the HC’4 but it should work out as we intend to use QE as LHP anyway and can squeeze more helicopters on the QE than we could Ocean.

While I love some of the turbo prop CAS platforms like the old Bronco they appear to me as only really good for CAS in environment where your enemy does not have modern MANPADS.

If we could afford to operate three types of aircraft I would be all for either buying Gripen in the future or agreeing a programme with France to build a new version of the Jaguar with improved Ardour engine, AESA radar, helmet sight and all other mod cons, though the latter is more down to having a soft spot for mud movers like the Jaguar and the AMX.