Only one problem PPP and Swerve, I never gave a list of equipment – I suggested that the £50 billion be spent on new frigates and new army vehicles. While it might be hard to build new frigates while building carriers its not impossible (though I accept it might push build time and cost of both unacceptably to the right), and we came close to agreeing FRES UV based on Piranha V, and we could do so again.

As I said earlier I am NOT talking about the super hornet, instead I want to sort out the completely screwed up situation with regard to support helicopters. We are likely going to end up life extending the Sea Kings for SAR, we are going to life extend the Puma, we are going to convert Merlin’s to replace CHF Sea King’s and we may or may not buy extra Chinook’s. They kicked into touch a new medium helicopter purchase a while ago, but as more time goes on, the more it seems we need to buy a decent number of new medium helicopters to replace the Sea King’s and Puma, and the current plans are just a way of pushing the decision and expenditure into the future.

Quite frankly with regard to carriers, for a while now I have been swayed by Jonesy’s argument with regard STOL carriers, and I think moving from the F-35B was a mistake, and I while I like the Super Hornet, I think it is a poor choice for the UK (it deserves a big export order however, just not to us).

Treasury – “Here you are, MoD. £50 billion. You can give repay it at £2.5 billion a year plus interest at the current bank rate.”
MoD – “Thank you very much. Of course, you’ll have to add the loan repayments to what you give us each year.”
Treasury – “Why would we do that?”
MoD – “Because otherwise we won’t have any money to repay you with. You’re our only source of the stuff.”
Treasury – “Damn! We didn’t think of that.”

MoD- “However thanks to your loan we can save £4 billion a year on operating costs, so we can just afford to repay you”
Treasury – “Sign here on the dotted line then….”

To save you responding Swerve, I will make a guess on what you next post would read like:

10 years later

MoD – “Oh no, interest rates are sky high, that £4 billion a year we could afford to give up has become £10 billion a year, and we need another £20 billion for mid-life upgrades and were skint, we going to have sell of some of new kit just to service our loan repayments…”

But why would Brazil pay several billion for a carrier that they could easily build with some assistance for half the price?

Hopefully the specialist skills of the Merlin acoustic sensor operators will translate to any FAA operated MPA, and I am sure the FAA are already practiced in multi-platform ASW from coordinating their ASW operations with the MR2’s and Type 23’s.

While I know that there is no chance of it happening, but I do hope that the FAA gets an MPA, and that they actually manage to get an RFP written in the 2011/12 budget year, and look to start contract negotiations late 2011/12 early 2012/13 with delivery no later than the beginning of 2014/15. Also I hope that FAA do not get seduced by the idea of having the best piece of kit, instead go for good enough and buy one of the options mentioned above.

To be fair it did look like they only missed by a few yards, which if you where firing on frigate or a destroyer would likely still be a hit.

Plus presumably there is some sort of radar based gun director and it’s not going to be much use detecting a small fibreglass boat.

Don’t worry not looking for an argument:D

Its an interesting line of thinking.

I came to the conclusion, that if crewing allowed it then you were right, the CN-235MPA made more sense. Like you I would have preferred the MRA4, but understand why it was cancelled, and I think that if the money could be found that instead of waiting five years before even starting to procure a replacement they should basically work out an off the shelf spec for both the CN-235MPA and the ATR-72 ASW and send out a request for proposal to both companies ASAP. I think that in performance the CN-235MPA would be better but the ATR-72 ASW would be cheaper to buy, and we could share training costs with Italy and Turkey.

I hope that in the next few weeks as part of PR11 the NSC see’s the requirement of MPA as a core requirement, rather than a nice to have requirement we can gap until 2020ish. Of course I also hope that they do not cut the number of frigates, and if they do, they at least consider a small purchase of OPV’s or corvette’s for stationing in the Mediterranean as I think we are looking at a decade of trouble from North Africa and the Middle East.

Thanks Fedaykin,

I for one hope the find a new role for the Harrier pilots and I think that we need a new MPA as soon as possible.

The S-3 requires either 3 or 4 crew depending upon if it has a MAD fitted, and a Merlin ASW helicopter needs 4 crew. Looking at the P-8, which is obviously a lot bigger than the CN-235MPA so should have a larger crew, it can be seen from the P-8 cutaway http://www.flightglobal.com/airspace/media/militaryaviation1946-2006cutaways/images/72467/boeing-poseidon-p-8-cutaway-poster.jpg that the P-8 has five workstations plus a pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit (and looking at the rest of the cutaway the ability to carry additional crew), suggesting that the smaller CN-235MPA would need more 3 or 4 crew, this is why I am keen on the S-3, as if we fitted similar systems to the Merlin’s we could move the observer and the acoustic surveillance systems operator between the platforms easily.

Totally understand your point with regard to the need to upgrade the S-3 before bringing it into service, I expect it would need all its wiring looms checked, new fully digital cockpit, new signal processor, new radar, new sensor turret, and its engines checked we need to be either replaced or totally rebuilt and we would need to qualify new weapons for use on it, and I imagine we would need to integrate new sonar buoy’s as well. I am guessing that this is something like $20 million a plane, plus the cost of acquiring the S-3’s.

Is the S-3 more expensive to operate than the CN-235MPA because we would need more of them to cover the same territory, as otherwise I would the lower crewing requirements to favour the S-3?

Finally, as we want MPA there is not much commonality as all three example of the MPA version of the CN-235 have completely different sensor fits, and the version offered by CASA which is standardised does not have any ASW capabilities. If we want commonality then I would go for refurbished P-3’s