A direct hit? That is pretty impressive even against a drone.

QB-47!!!!, that’s got to be the biggest unmanned aircraft ever flown. The biggest the British ever flew was the Canberra. Info on QB-47 Here Impressive pilotless aircraft or what? 😮

They were running out of fatigue life and were incredibly costly to maintain. The threat from the Soviet block was also deminishing so the purpose of having a short endurance point defender had evaporated.

The aircraft was a flying Fuel/OM-15 leak as well by the 1980’s 😮 I was at Binbrook on a Camp in 1982 and spent a morning in the 5 sqn Hanger sealing the heatshilding on the Aden packs with a two part sealing compound to stop Avtur and OM-15 from leaking into cannon bays (which would explode if there was fuel vapour in there when the guns were fired).

It is exactly capability what Hawks are lacking.. Ask any guy at AEEE (Boscombe Down) about his opinion about Hawk after they have bought Alpha Jets. Anyone there will agree that with maintenance costs aside, the Alpha is one league better at flying characteristics. How good the Yak-130/M-346 is we only can guess, but shouldn’t be worse than that, IMHO.

How come the Hawk is still in production and the Alpha Jet is not if that is the case.

The reason the Hawk is still going is that its flying characteristics are more than good enough to do its task. As you have stated the maintenance costs are higher for the Alpha Jet because of the twin engines, and your most likely right on flying characteristics as the Alpha can most likely do things like Stall turns, which a Hawk can not (it will depart if you try).

The original Hawk T1 was inferior to the Alpha in load carrying ability as well (by a big margin). However, the later models of Hawk Pi@@ all over the Alpha jet in that regard.

On top of that, I’d love to see how you could fit an APG 66 radar into a single seat Alpha without modifying the complete fuselage forward of the wing trailing edge and the complete spine (the main changes on the Hawk 200 were just forward of the wing leading edge).

But we all know that if you could strap a seat to a certain ramjet powered surface to air missile that is what you would really want :diablo:

— Very off topic —

Already been done as attached photo showns, However does not come in a trainer version 😮 . (Bloodhound 2 of 25 Sqn at North Coates at a Village Fate some were in Lincolnshire in 1964. Warhead bay modified so that kids could be photographed as ‘Bloodhound Pilots’. 😎 ).

Can missiles be fired effectively from over 70,000 feet? Yes they can! 😀

And here’s a video!

http://mrdata.com/~blakef/mystery-aircraft/mystery.mov

Super Falcon (AIM-47) from a YF-12 by any chance??? 😀 😀 😀

i do not like the 2 bit after the name.. too American for me.. i hope the RAF will soon buy there C-17s so they can have a decent name.. we dont only not make aircraft enymore, we dont even name them… why are they called Globmaster 3s in RAF service.. i dont recall them having 1s or 2s… GOD.. CANT WE MAKE AND NAME OUR OWN AIRCRAFT ENYMORE… :dev2:

That’s because the USAF name for the aircraft is Globemaster III, and they did operate the Globemaster I and Globemaster II. The RAF name will be Globemaster C1 (Most people in the RAF just call it the C-17 anyway). The RAF tended to use the American names for their US built aircraft with only a few exceptions (B-17 was just the Fortress, B-29 – Washington, T-6 – Harvard, P-51 – Mustang (The original USAAF name for the attack version was Apache, if memory serves) and of course C-47 Skytrain – Dakota. The Royal Navy renamed all of their US supplied aircraft until 1944, when they reverted to the original US names to avoid confusion in mission planning with the US pacific fleet in operation against the Japs.

Why do we not build our own aircraft any more? Simple – NO MONEY for the massive amount of R+D required. (However we still build the best jet trainer in the world). In the UK it is thanks to all of the cancelled projects over the years (Its a well known fact to most intelligent people (I don’t count politicians in that group), that if you stop building things, you forget how to build them. To try and start again years later is very expensive and very difficult).

That would be 360 Sqn with the Canberra T.17s at Wyton. They ceased trading in the mid 90s I believe.

Role was taken over by FRA (civilain contract) with Falcon 20 fitted with up to 4 jammer pods under the wings. They are better as ECM platforms than the T17’s (I should know, I’ve played against both with a T94 radar in the 1990’s).

What about F-35 “Raider” or F-35 “Terminator”??

What happened to the F-25, F-26, F-27 etc..??? Why the massive jump from F-22 to F-35??

No F-24 to F-34??? That’s what happens when you make the X-35 Technology Demonstrator into a fighter bomber called the JSF.