Fixed wing for ASW has been overtaken by rotary with the shift to the littoral. FLASH dipping sonar has given even top drawer SSN’s nightmares under NATO testing at AUTEC. Multistatic LFA sonobuoy capability is out there now, but, it is no substitute for the tactical flexibility of a hunting pair of pinger choppers.

I am puzzled, mostly my own fault for shifting the topic to ASW and being unable to disconnect the ASW role from fixed wing SAR C&C and surveillance aircraft, which I am fairly confident we could agree are still very useful (that is a SAR/surveillance aircraft). While I agree that the future threat for the UK are SSK’s operating in littoral waters, what I am puzzled by is why everyone else is spending money on MPA’s, is simply a case they want the SAR/surveillance aircraft and that if does not cost to much extra to add ASW capabilities to your SAR/surveillance aircraft?

While I might be inclined to agree that there is no money, I think that the MoD’s going to be told to focus on UAV and UCAV’s as the way forward.

So I fully expect in the next five years to see something unusual come out of the MoD’s R&D funding.

Firstly an open question, when the Vanguard’s exit Faslane, at what point are they safe in their transit. The reason I ask is I am wondering if 6 or so land based Merlin’s or Wildcats could cover them as it seems the RN is going to end up with many more Wildcats than escorts to operate them 😡

At the most, the RN can offer ONE merlin based on ONE frigate, trading a current standing commitment with the North Sea.
AKA: we retire from… say, drug patrols in the caribean, and provide a frigate to the security of the vital garden of the country and to Trident protection instead.

No, what is most likely to happen is that the Trident will move around on its own, with no overlook.

Unless of course France really uses old Atlantic planes to “cover” Uk-relevant waters…

As to the long range SAR, there’s an international treaty that in theory binds nations to provide a coverage.

I think its the International Convention of Maritime Search and Rescue (I wait to be corrected as I am 99% likely to be wrong about which of the IMO treaty’s covers this) obligates the UK a very large area with the map on page 16 of this link giving an idea of the range: http://www.mcga.gov.uk/c4mca/mcga-uk_sar_framework_document.pdf

1) “we have had to rely on US P-3’s to track a Russian sub for us”

Russian subs arent tracked by anyones aircraft. They are localised and prosecuted by aircraft…they are tracked by SURTASS, SOSUS and SSN’s. In the endurance game the aircraft always loses out against a competent sub. NATO can track subs in deep water just fine without any kind of MPA. If they want to do something about them quickly then you need the aircraft.

Thanks Jonesy for the correction – but beyond the sour grapes in the press from “sources” at Kinloss, do you know why the US decided to operate two P-3 from Kinloss after a recent exercise ended for at three days and possibly as much as week after the exercise ended.

Also I am interested in your take on how well the UK will cope without a dedicated MPA.

I must say that I find some of the comments on this forum intresting…..

All RN carriers to be scrapped not even mothballed, all aircraft scrapped immediatly, merlins to be retained by RAF for current use so nothing to fly off the sole surviving LPH, so guess how long that will last after the next SDR

CVF only to be built according to Osborn and camclegg because they can’t get out of doing so and the idiots want to sell one as soon as possible, remember neither of these three wanted any carrier built

The outlook for the RN is extremly serious and it is more than likely they won’t survive the next SDR in any form currently recognisable to us. If they get the carriers and enough aircraft to be meaningfull than that will cost the navy the bulk of the surface fleet to pay for them.

It would be nice to discuss serious options and time lines to achieve them.

I think you are making some unfounded assumptions – 1) that the next SDSR will seen a further large reduction in the overall budget, while I for one doubt it will increase, you only have to look at Canada to see a country which is re-investing in its military after making massive cuts to get out of debt crisis, and 2) that the cuts will mainly fall on the RN, when if the Army is out of Afghanistan, politically we are going to be looking at ways to make it impossible to ever be dragged into a similar campaign in the future – easiest way is to cut the Army and then cut the Army some more.

So I fully expect that 2015 the SDSR will see cuts of around 20% to the Army, but the RAF and Navy to get budget increases, just not enough to really make a difference. Obviously most of the Navy’s money will be spent on Trident, and the RAF’s on F-35C but there should be some spent on cheap bits of other kit, and a off the shelf LHD for example will likely cost the same as one T26.

Of course the Army has some massive re-capitalisation to undergo between 2015 – 2020, new bases, warrior upgrade, FRES Scout, FRES Utility, they will likely have to bring forward the replacement of the SA80.

Hi Liger (and anyone else interested),

Just been reading on PPRUNE this thread http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/431233-future-faa.html, makes depressing reading as it sounds like there is little chance of either Merlin MaSC or the FAA owning any Merlin’s in the future :eek::mad::(.

The S-3B has a very good surface search radar, so the ASW/SAR mission is covered… but the addition of a volume-area-air search radar would indeed be required if you want to have it act as an AEW aircraft.

The S-3 already has a FLIR… but since it is a late-1970s (updated in the mid-1980s) design, replacing it wouldn’t hurt anything but Treasury’s feelings.

Thanks Bager – Jonesy has mentioned in the past that the S-3B was looked at in the past as a possible MASC platform, however I am not clear if the space needed for Searchwater would displace the sonarbouys, MAD and internally carried weapons, and at least for MRA4 it have both air and surface search capabilities, & sonorbouys. I really meant something more capable than FLIR but for the life of me I cannot think of the acroynm for the type wide angled IR/Vis sensor system that seems to be increasingly common for reconnicance part of the MRA role. EDIT its an electro-optical surveillance and detection system.

However, I think it is still a pipe dream as in order to get 20 S-3B’s for free, we would likely have to place the contract for SLEPing them in the US, and we would end up spending a lot of money re-wiring and re-conditioning them, adding a glass cockpit, adding night vision if they do not have it (I know 40 S-3B’s do), intergrating Searchwater, possibly replacing the surface search radar with one of the Selex’s AESA maritime radars (such as the Sea Spray), and optical sensors. My guess is you would need to spend about £300 million to get 20 SLEPed S-3B’s and that would be with using spare Searchwater’s and those in the Nimrod, along with recycling the electro-optical sensor system.

EDIT: Also I am not sure that Searchwater on a Sea King is the same system as the Searchwater on the Nimrod, as I think the latter might be optimised for surface search.

The text is rather weird – the original plan that was in the public domain was for 150 F-35B’s, and now appears to be switched to unknown number of F-35C’s, but the way it was written suggests along the way the decided to go for a mix of F-35A’s and B’s and that plan while never public has been cancelled.