Fasthawk / HyStrike?

If commonality is a concern, would it not make more sense for the RN to stick with the Aster 15 – since it’s already in use on the Type 45s – rather than introduce a new weapon system?

Too expensive.

Then buy the Mica VL. Or if your looking for an area air defence capability for land forces then you’re better off joining the MEADS or SAMP/T programs.

Export where? The Barak, Umkhonto and Mica VL are already proven systems that are probably cheaper than CAMM and have pretty much cornered the naval SHORADS market. Likewise with Tor-M1, Mica-VL, SPYDER and VL-IRIS-T for land forces.

Export same places Mica-VL might otherwise be exported.

Aren’t both CAMM and VL Mica made by the same company, MBDA?

Same group, but in different countries. Its all about where the work is done. When you import weapons, you export money to another country for it to circulate in their economy. When you buy weapons from your own country, the money continues to circulate internally. This should be factored in when considering the cost of a weapon, as it is treasury money, and the treasury collects its money from the economy.

It’ll be the distance from their whiskers to the tip of their tails.
Sorry…. I really couldn’t resist! :diablo:

LOL 10 out of 10 🙂

^^^

Nice one, sir!
You asked for it, PPP my old mate.:D

Good day all, Tay.

LOL tay, yea mate it was a good comment 🙂

What I find most interesting about it is the level of AI in Taranis compared to similar US projects, which is of course a recognition of the more limited satelite access the UK has, Son of Taranis is going to have to do a lot of thinking for itself. That said a boost in space is needed and it was interesting that this was mentioned in the “Entente Frugal” though not spotted by many.

The US uses commercial sats IIRC.

I think the big question is what weapons will the U.K. take the time and money to certify on the F-35C?

The U.K, could very well try and go cheap with just dumb bombs.
I know it sounds silly, but in this financial climate anything is possible.
They shouldn’t have to worry about AMRAAMs. But they will have to foot the bill on storm shadow and brimstone ect.

Nah they won’t go with dumb bombs, too much interest in reducing collateral damage. A paveway type would be the minimum IMO. Storm Shadows could just be kept for the exclusive use of the Typhoons and Tornadoes. Meteor would make sense given the existing investment and export potentials, plus then we would only need one medium range missile type in the inventory.

I didn’t realize it before, but since the USN/USAF will qualify the jassm they could let the Americans do all of the testing work. Jassm has a greater range than scalp any way.

But, JASSM costs money. Storm Shadow has already been paid for. Storm Shadow also puts money into British jobs and therefore the British treasury, JASSM does not.

But is there a Stormshadow-ER variant, as the JASSM-ER’s range is ~3x that of the standard JASSM?

One can make an ER version of a cruise missile much easier than one can make an unreliable missile into a reliable missile.

I won’t argue with the growing pains involved in this program(but a number of very effective systems had similar troubles in their infancy). The point is now that it works, it allows the pilot to attack targets further away than any Stormshadow variant. Imagine if you will, an F-35C flying 400-500nm inland, and then launching the JASSM-ER with a >600nm range. That gives a pretty good reach to a CVBG, while still remaining outside of any IADS range. Another scenario might be if the CVBG wanted to stay further away from shore for even greater surprise, it could remain ~1000nm away from shore, and still be able to strike targets >100nm inland.

But thats not the point, making a longer range missile is quite a simple task, the problem is its much harder to export missiles like that which exceed MTCR limits.

Is this including ground support ect? Hows about a weapons package?

I’m no expert, but I can say a little more than that.

It’ll have the ability to carry BVR AAMs, not just WVR for self defence. We can integrate Meteor, or use AIM-120. The radar should be pretty good, a reasonable sized AESA. It can therefore perform fleet air defence.

For strike, the payload depends on whether it needs to be stealthy. It can carry quite a lot externally.

But do we know the length of the cats yet?

to be honest i don’t think anybody really wants to on this thread either.

the UK will have Typhoon and F35 and has planned this for a long time so that they compliment each other.

history teaches us that we will need to develop our own UCAV capability and the only real question is what jobs that system will be asked to do.

will it be a SEAD specialistic, loitering striker or deap penetration specialist? I suppose that is partly framed by what the F35C will do (if we can now safely conclude that this is the manned part of the tornado replacement strategy).

Perhaps one of the F35 experts could provide a bit more information on what the C will be good at? (i’ve spent so long debating the merits of the B versus the C, i think i need a refresher course!)

2x 2000lb weapons and the AAMs for self defence right?

I don’t think F35C will be getting ALARM, in which case Typhoon by default will be the better option for SEAD. That said, depending on the situation, if there are no land bases, then it will be F35 or nothing.

We definately need the UCAV tech though of we want to safeguard our aerospace industry jobs!

My point is that we simply don’t know enough about the F-35’s performance, to say where the Typhoon is superior(aside from top speed).

Mod Edit: Leave moderation to the moderator team, please!