pppYou are talking about UK search and rescue, military and Maritime and Coastguard Agency? This is not “breaking news” as such if it’s the same thing. Search and Rescue – Helicopter (SAR-H) was put in place by the last government as a 25-year PFI starting in 2012. Soteria (CHC, Thales UK and the Royal Bank of Scotland) was selected as preferred bidders by the MoD and the DfT to provide SAR services using 24 S92 helicopters (if I recall Soteria even released pictures of the S92 in their proposed colours). Then the new government came in and suspended the programme, reviewing it as a matter of urgency. No contract was signed for Soteria to actually provide the service, however. Sounds more like it’s back on.
The government having a PFI financed by a bank that is majority owned by the government 🙂
pppIts a shame they don’t keep one as a museum ship.
pppYour link says content is unavailable.
Also, you may find this interesting 🙂
US using British atomic weapons factory for its nuclear programme
• Joint warhead research carried out at Aldermaston
• Work breaches nuclear treaty, campaigners warn
Monday 9 February 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/09/us-uk-atomic-weapons-nuclear-power
pppdelete
pppI stated that UAVs are life savers, you asked me why, I answered. feel free to start a new topic; at least you’ll agree that UAVs save both money and lives?
and on those pro’s/con’s, repetition is the basis of any fact, say something often enough and it becomes the truth. unless someone disagrees, that would be me 😉 don’t tell me you believe everything they say on tv?
lol, you do realize they’re “wasting untold zillions” on stuff like the F-35 and the LCS? 🙂 and on the FCS if it hadn’t been killed, because tanks and artillery are going to defeat the Taliban 😉
like you say, the best way to fight insurgents is information. and the best way to get information is with UAVs, the same UAVs that the USAF and the USN thought were a waste of money up to 2001, so now soldiers are dying because there are not enough UAVs to give all squads cover, and manned aircraft are way to expensive in this rolewhy make it so complicated?
all you need to do is tell the UCAV the enemy position, and order it to fire. AMRAAM does the rest. at worst the enemy gets close enough for a dogfight, but than you fly away, shooting AMRAAMs as you do (like the F-35 would) or have another UCAV shoot AMRAAMs from a distance. so all you really need is:1. enemy location
2. AMRAAMs
3. AMRAAMs
4. AMRAAMsthis wouldn’t work if the enemy target is stealth, like say the T-50. but in that case the $200+ million F-35 is outclassed too, and a $30 million UCAV would be a much cheaper solution, without the loss of life
No, I did not ask you why UAVs are life savers, are you just inventing your own questions to answer?
As for F35 it provides a low risk option compared to unmanned UCAV fighter planes which are completely unproven.
It needs to be complicated because it needs to provide exactly the same functionality as a manned fighter, bar nothing, or it won’t be approved, its simple as that. Air defence is primarily visual IDs of airliners ect = bandwidth, and it needs to have a very low latency. The main reason UAVs are used in A’stan is persistence, but this isn’t particularly important in air defence applications relative to the other factors. UAVs don’t really offer much else in the air to air field other than a higher agility and the option to have the pilot on the ground. Higher agility isn’t worth the effort to obtain, its cheaper to improve the missiles if that were a concern, which it isn’t. Pilot safety is a non-issue, if we are ok with civilians in the hundreds going in airliners then a single pilot in an F22 isn’t a major concern in comparison. Sure, all the problems can eventually be solved, but they haven’t been, and won’t be for quite a while. Until they are, we will be using F35, F22 ect, or in your dream air force we’d be using nothing for 10 to 15 years until they make the damn things work.
Also, where do you figure the manned component adds a whopping $170 million to the $200 million cost of an F35? Also, good to see you went with the highest possible F35 you could get away with, and the lowest possible figure for the UCAV. Well, I suppose the space shuttle with soon be worth a few thousand in scrap, so maybe we should scrap the UCAV and buy a million space shuttles for the same money?
pppI think that manned aircraft should not be used, period, negating the need for using them on training missions. the majority of military manned flights are training flights, and the fewer of these that are done, the lower the cost and the smaller the chance of accidents happening
UAV pilots don’t need to fly as many training missions, because their work load is much lower and they don’t need to get used to G-forces and such. real flying and similator flying is pretty much the same for them, and as computers do more and more of the actual flying, operator training will focus more on the mission and less on the control of the aircraft. a computer can fly an aircraft better than a human, but still can’t tell the difference between a boy with a toy gun and a soldier
I appreciate your love for a specific aircraft, but this is a serious topic: people are dying needlessly, and will continue to do so in the future, because those like yourself make wrong assumptions. the USAF insists that it wants the best for its people, yet not at the cost of careers and egos (and if it cost billions more, than that’s us tax payers who get the bill)
lol, good one
back in 1999, at the end of the Kosovo war, there were suggestions to arm the Predator. the Air Force declined, saying it would be too costly and ineffective. ironically 10 year later the Predator is the USAFs main attack aircraft
the price paid for this mistake in judgement is a lot of money (seeing that a UAV is dirt cheap compared to a jet fighter or bomber) and possibly Osama Bin Laden escaping because the drones that found him had to wait for manned aircraft to attackand in 2002, a Predator fired a Stinger at a Mig-27
so the question is not if a can drone can fight A2A combat, but rather why no one has tried it AMRAAMs yet. answer: because it would make manned A2A obsolete. and thrust me, no general wants to tell his men they’re out of a job
I don’t mean to be rude, but if you looked at the related topics on UAVs then you’d see that most people here already know the basics of the pro’s/con’s of a fighter UCAV, so there’s little point repeating them for us, especially common sense ones. You’ve also missed out a few of the cons.
I also think you are a bit prejudgemental trying to brand me as a manned aircraft fan boy that hates UAVs though, which is slightly wide of the mark, given I have hundreds of technical documents relating to unmanned aerial systems and their technologies (in fact I was reading such a document only an hour of so back). Futhermore, most of what I do is directed towards UAVs. Manned aircraft fanboy = me? Nah, definately not.
As for a pilots life, all of the forces lives are equal, and so rather than wasting untold zillions trying to make a fighter UCAV before the time is ready for them, we should invest the money into saving soldiers lives. Strike aircraft pilots lives are under much greater threat than fighter pilots, so any investment into remote/autonomous UAS is made it should be soley for strike aircraft.
pppactually, Predators and Reapers started replacing manned aircraft back in 2003. the percentage of unmanned aircraft in the Air Force, Navy and Army is to rise exponentially over the comming years, by definition replacing manned aircraft. and the way the F-35 is messing up, they’ll need them too
and it’s hard to say that UCAV A2A can’t work work, since it has never been tested. just like the English refused to test the Blitzkrieg concept when one of their own came up with it
a) I was actually referring to the air patrol mission of defending Alaska. but to answer your question, since most training for UAV pilots is done with simulators and the computer do most of the actual flying, there are fewer training flights, and thus fewer accidents
b) you are seriously asking why people who are being paid to fly the coolest airplanes in the world might be averse to the idea of being replaced by robots? I think the USAF takes UAVs extremely seriously, but more as a threat than as an opportunity
minimizing the number of deaths and PoWs is kind of the whole point of modern western military doctrine, yes. was that unclear to you? or are you saying you’d rather see more people die than less?
So you think manned combat aircraft shouldn’t go on training missions, and that training missions should be done using a UAVs instead? :rolleyes:
As for the bit about them wanting to keep flying the coolest aircraft in the world that is clearly not the case, as very few of them will have had the chance to fly the Eurofighter Typhoon!
As for UCAVs doing A2A, the fact that it’s not been done does not mean it is feasible as you imply, but rather that its not very feasible else they would be doing it.
pppWhile a bit strange with today’s simulation tools, things like that do happen sometimes. On the other hand it shows how far the aircraft is from being finished. Instead of tweaking software bits, LM are still striving to get this bird flying allright.
Thats a long way to be out in their calculations though. There could be other factors though, perhaps the materials they used weren’t as good as they thought or perhaps the part had some manufacturing defects. Another issue could be that when they did the weight reduction exercise they went a bit too far…
pppgeogen, it sounds like what you are proposing is an F-16 shell with all new systems. This would likely cost just as much as an F-35 if not more. Its all the electronics that cost money in modern fighter aircraft.
The ballpark most people give is 1/3 aircraft, 1/3 electronics, 1/3 propulsion (and presumably hydraulics ect). Whilst the electronics have gotten a lot more capable, the prices of the components has dropped massively, though admittedly the military spec stuff is more expensive than the civilian grade stuff 🙂
pppWe still have the ASW helicopters so its not as if we have no air based ASW.
pppIt all depends on whether he ejected and how seriously injured he is.
pppDoesn’t the Atlantic/Atlantique 2 use British engines in any event? Add some local avionics and equipment and you’re halfway there…..
So we have upgraded some MR2 to MR4 then scrapped it halfway through, so now we should import a different MPA and begin a new upgrade programme for those instead?
Was that your actual suggestion :confused:
I would have thought a better solution would be some ex US P3 Orions.
Plenty of other European operators Germany, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Norway and the same engines as the C130Ks.
Except a P3 would probably be inferior to the Nimrod MR2!
pppWell, why not used in combination with ultra long range OTH radars, CELLDAR, acoustic sensors and the like for rough location, OTH radars being too far away for attack, the others being passive as well.
OTH radars reflect off the sky and the earth and bounce to the target and back. IRSTs need the target to be in line of sight, this is much the same with normal radars though they can see slightly over the horizon.
ppp[QUOTE=mrmalaya;1664662]
An increase in numbers to what? 180? 232?
QUOTE]
Well chief of the airstaff is quoted in Flightglobal today as saying this:
“Dalton says the Typhoon force will meanwhile be grown “as quickly as practicable to become the core of our defensive and offensive combat capability”.
You tell me what that means? It looks like a growth of the typhoon fleet, but they could just mean they will get Tranche 3A. It seems to rule out losing Tranche 1 airframes though, because thats not a growth in anyones books is it!
You’re probably right in that it will be T3A + T2 + T1 🙂
ppper, where did you get the “not even 200 planes” number? :confused:
until now there are 180 ordered, I’ve not seen any official statement thaht it’s over yet…
Where did we say they had made a final decision? But the DGA have been discussing ending the Rafale buy to 180, and its quite reasonable IMO.
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