What is the longest range AAM the RAF have that could be fitted to Typhoon? Surely all they’d need to do is get airborne, lock onto tankers and shoot them down long range?

AMRAAM for now.

If the UK wants to take a shot at the tankers, they could just opt to spit Tomahawks at the tanker’s basing and infrastructure. The Argentine air force has very poor fighter capabilities, and so the strikers will be very vulnerable attacking the Falklands, so the RAF would probably be more effective attacking the incoming strike aircraft rather than the logistics trail. In this way the RAF fighters would also act as a deterrent, and would complicate sortie planning for the Argentines, beyond simply what is shot down.

Besides the shooting I’m actually surprised that they already allow civil visitors onto that brand new and I’d say sensitive boat. “… eleven children … due to board the submarine”. I’m really not using that word a lot on the internet, but what about OPSEC?? Also the involvement on civil police is kinda strange.

Not all of the submarine is sensitive. Even the areas that are sensitive, there’s not much to discover from simply looking aroud. Also, photography is probably prohibited, any the police take will likely need to be checked over before they will be allowed to use them.

With all the talk about UCAVs as the future of air power, doesnt it seem strange that the Tomahawk missile be destroyed when delivering its munitions instead of dropping them and fly back to be recovered? The Tomahawk missile, which is actually not a missile at all but a autonomously piloted aircraft powered by a turbofan engine, costs one million dollars a piece. It was originally designed in the cold war to carry a nuke into russia, and for that use I can see it as expendable. But now to use this missile for tactical strikes in regional conflicts, I cant really understand how it has not been modified to be recoverable since these engagements can last a long period of time. It would be easy to make it recoverable both in land and sea. By land it would be slowed down with a drogue chute and then a larger paraglider chute would deploy which would give it steerable landing. At see all that would be needed is to make systems compartments water tight, and a drogue chute to slow its impact into the sea.

Not worth the effort. If you want to drop bombs cheaply there are a lot of existing solutions for that requirement. If you want a highly capable cruise missile to strike targets, the use a TLAM. But making the TLAM into yet another cheap way to drop bombs is not a good idea! There is also no real incentive to use the TLAM design anyway, its a pretty poor airframe design for the role, and it would need a new flight control system.

Yesterday Dave the Tosser gave Pakistan £600 million, whilst telling them terribly sorry we were that everything in the world is our fault. Today we flog off part of our amphibious fleet on the cheap. This nation is ruled by idiots and must surely be doomed.

Seconded. All 3 parties are excellent making terrible decisions. I’m not against cuts, actually I am fully in favour, however I think we should start by cutting that that don’t provide any great benefit. The size of the Civil Service and a tax reform are the way forward, not ships and aircraft which do something useful. Sure, once the other waste is gone, then feel free to cut some ships, at least that way we can be sure the tax payer is getting the best result

And hopefully closer ties of partnership in ship programmes too, eg Global Combat Ship and OCPV – maybe the low price of this sale was a friendly gesture towards that end?

Anyway it’s gutting when this government gets rid of our ships; but much less so when Australia buys them!:)

It would certainly be a lovely and big-hearted gesture if you retained her name, in view of the posts above.

Warmest regards and enjoy your new ship!:)

The government is very good at making friendly gestures with tax payers money. Its all well and good, but there are much better uses of money.

wouldnt it be better to make a cheap version of the f-22 frame?
cheaper RAM, incorp. a “lighter” F35 avionics, no or cheaper thustvectoring etc.

This will also be what f-22 should have been in numbers..

F-15 in general is still extremly old platform and isnt a step forward…Silent Eagle exist only because F-22 didnt become bigger in numbers, exportrestricted and expensive..

The cost of the F22 is due to small numbers for the most part. Whatever way it goes, someone will have to foot the development bill. Changing the coating or fitting different avionics will make the cost of the aircraft go into rehead 😎

Ah, ok.
Anyway disagree with his assessment it takes high end to take down IADS,
why not make expendable Harpy like UAV swarms, and if you want to spice it up, make Meteor-ARM part of the system.
http://defense-update.com/directory/harpy.htm

Anyways UCAV is fundamentally a re-usable cruise missile, pre-planned targets makes up for 90% of all targets, so it would make sense that if it is re-used enough times without being lost, it would eventually start to profit vs non-reusable missiles, but what is the likelihood that a country is going to bomb so much that it finally makes economic sense ?

Fire Shadow?

Shame on me ! You’re totally right, I ought to check better next time…
The story about the screens number was nice, but then it was just a story, it seems. 😡

Thanks, swerve, for not letting this mistake spread. 🙂
Cheers
AZ

I was under the impression Mirage 2000-9 is the same type as Mirage 2000-5 mk2? So That would make the idea of the dash denoting number of screens unlikely. That and its unlikely any engineer would use a naming system related to the number of screens, since the screens are just peripherals, and 4 more screens would imply there are significant changes in the underlying systems.