Don’t the SAS already fly a couple of unique types in communication roles ? I seem to remember the Dauphin is one and the other something supposedly civilian and hence discrete ? Or has that now changed ?

They did definitely have a couple of civvie painted ones, not sure if they were actually civilian versions though for UK transport. I’d heard of at least one unique type in service for the SAS though, but I think it was just for UK transport. A full military spec helo of a new class that could be done by an existing class would be much sillier though.

Why did the RAF feel the need to issue a statement saying ‘it was a “light-hearted moment” and insisted the crew had not endangered the aircraft.’?
Surely they hadn’t received a complaint from a member of the public who thought holding a piece of paper was dangerous? 😮

I think they’re covering themselves. From the sounds of the Tabloid articles it sounds as if they’re waiting to see which way public sentiment would shift so they can write the next inevitable piece showing outrage at the RAF’s unprofessionalism, or laugh it off.

Anyone who thinks it endangers the aircraft immediately betrays their complete ignorance though. Its nice to see a sense of humour for once too, it’s a valuable part of being an officer (from the mouth of a Lt-Col. I met a few weeks back).

What is going on, first a program on Daring and now one on Astute? Are the government preparing us for a massive Navy spending spree so they’re pumping out lots of propaganda on the subject?

….I really wish they were.

What has this got to do with future UK defence policy?

Well it can tell us what kind of conflict we are likely to face and what we should prepare for.

I was rather miffed about the culling of the Forgemasters loan.

At a cost of no jobs? They were planning on creating 200 jobs for £80mn, that’s 400 grand per job!

Nice to see the things that would have eaten our defence budget for the next 25 years being reviewed at least.

I have been dying to ask this question for a while – Fifth Gen fighters are in part defined by there stealth abilities, and I get how a UCAV as a smaller platform would be as stealthy if not more stealthy that Fifth Gen fighters but surely a UCAV will degrade its stealth capabilities as soon as they uplink to their base stations for updates on the target – or would the narrow beam comms be difficult to detect? Also, how truly autonomous can something like Taranis really be, I know it is meant to be able to defend itself, but how would it make complex decisions?

UCAVs can easily be more stealthy than manned fighters. For one the cockpit (a nightmare for stealth) is not there. The engine intake can be placed wherever (often on top) in order to hid the intake from ground based radar. The comms are not a massive problem, the latest generation of UCAVs can act with a great degree of automity (sp?), any other updates required can be sent through Satcomms to a base station anywhere in the world, making them pretty hard to intercept from the ground. Finally, thanks to the intake and lack of cockpit, the range of shapes that can be used increases, so shaping the airframe into a stealthy shape is much easier. Oh and makes it easier for internal weapons carriage.

The defence bit is more complicated, i’m sure with a decent radar and a decent A2A missile, they could engage an enemy aircraft just as well as a manned fighter in BVR. Dogfighting might be more tricky. It’s probably towards the bottom of the list of abilities that UCAVs will get. They can be made to deal with a lot of other situations though, which will only increase with time.

The Israelis are really good at creating a remote site for temporarily supporting an operation. Out of sight out of mind. It’s all about appearances with their neighbors. Quite frankly the Iranians can’t get hit too hard or you create a vaccuum that’s far worse than the remedy.

Indeed. Trying to hit targets outside of nuclear facilities would be a bad idea long term and it’d over-extend the Israeli attack. And based on past Israeli attacks they seem happy to a let a hostile regime continue once the nuclear facility has been destroyed and they’ve demonstrated how easily they can do it.

What sort RCS will the QE have? If the RCS still on the scale of an aircraft carrier then surely the enemy attack planes are going to guess the flotilla of small ships around the carrier are the escorting Type-45 and Type-26 destroyers (I assume the Type 26 will have a massively reduced radar cross section)

I think it’ll have been reduced somewhat as well, the only think to really disguise is the control towers and radar masts, the hull is already shaped to deflect waves. So it might look more like a fleet of fishing boats around a larger boat, or if the enemy has sense, some minor war vessels and a frigate – that’d be a nasty surprise in the making at least.

But keep in mind the CVF would be a lot further away with pickets some distance between the enemy and it, so it might be hard for them to pick it up, because land based radar would be too far away and aircraft would stumble on the “fishing boat” picket with Sea Viper instead of nets.