I’ve just come across a ratheer intersting article about UCAVs in Live magazine (My flatmates, i’d never read it before), specifically about Mantis and Taranis.

According to the article, Taranis is now set to take flight “next year” (The article came out May 2nd 2010). The Mantis however currently has 2 drones being tested “in a combat zone”, but the BAE execs being questioned were vague about where that was (no prizes for guessing where the UK might be combat testing a UCAV).

Apparently the Mantis also has some rather nifty SIGINT gear, which I wasn’t aware of before now. BAE claim it can do the job of 3 Nimrods. Not only that, it’s apparently due to enter full service in 2015, no idea whether that means that is when it’ll be ready or if the government have forgotten to announce that they’re actually buying the system.

It clearly isn’t a decent military publication (They still think Taranis is a black project, even as they get a briefing on it – The MSM always make me laugh) but these little hints (largely from BAE) just seemed quite interesting. Oh and there is a rather cool picture of Pred-C on a runway too, which i’ve just found elsewhere:

And just to make this entire post pointless i’ve just found the whole article online:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1269282/The-rise-robo-fighters-Britains-new-pilotless-air-force.html

buy french Rafales and get the french to buy a CVF from us. They get a major sale of jets and we build them a new carrier for it every one’s a winner.

we order 100 of the jets – cost close to 6 bill – we build them a carrier – 3 bill we get a better fighter and they get to say they got the better deal. Maybe get them to buy AW159 Lynx Wildcat’s in the order something 25-30 of those then we are getting some where.

Or have them agree to use Mantis and Taranis as the base platform for those join UAV projects we’ve been talking about.

The Super Tucano has a cruising speed not far short of that of an A-10. It can also loiter for a lot longer than any fast jet – without the need for enormously expensive air-to-air refuelling – carrying up to 1,500 kg of guns, rockets, missiles and bombs. (In COIN ops like Afghanistan, precision hits and minimising “collateral damage” are the main concerns, not bunker-busting or taking out columns of tanks, so small and smart is the order of the day, not big bangs.)

I’d much rather we had A10’s, they’ve proven themselves in just about every situation the US has thrown them into, amazing birds. It is a very different aircraft to a Tuc though, so that slow speed in other conflicts isn’t such a problem because it the thing is so armoured, however a Tuc would be mincemeat flying at that speed in anything but the most benign environment.

Out of interest which can loiter for longer an A10 or a Tuc? My guess would be the A10, because they had to compensate for it’s slow speed somehow, which the Super Tuc can’t.

And you missed my point on weapons, modern fast jets CAN do the precision hits with a range of weapons, as precise as a Tuc can, but with a greater load allowing more targets to be hit whilst the aircraft is up. I didn’t mean the greater load out means more weapons used one the same target for overkill.

Again out of interest, how much longer can a Super Tuc stay airborne with that 1,500kg load compared to a fast jet with the same load? And can’t fast jets usually carry much more fuel externally to boot? And AAR may be expensive but it does mean a plane can stay up longer when necessary, which a Tuc CAN’T do and would run out of ordnance quicker anyway. Couple that with its slow speed and in each sortie it is going to get a lot less done.

That’s a much bigger question you’ve raised: what will the nature of future conflicts be? Personally I can’t see the UK being involved in any high-end combat in the foreseeable future, but maybe your crystal ball is better than mine.

The lessons being learned in Afghanistan are not new: some of the experiences and conclusions are similar to those of previous conflicts – e.g. Vietnam – while others should be a lot fresher in UK military minds, like “IEDs” – e.g. Northern Ireland? So personally I wouldn’t accept the argument that acquiring COIN aircraft would be a waste because they’ll never be used again.

Alright fair enough, we can’t see the future. But we can try and predict public opinion. With the opinion in the UK towards Afghanistan and Iraq, will the UK really stand for a government taking us into another long term war that isn’t absolutely necessary? If the UK hadn’t put so many troops in country in 2006, and just stepped back and said that “to ensure national security we don’t actually have to rebuild this country, we just need to keep the terrorists there at bay, we can use Tomahawks, air power and Special forces to do that” I think there would be a lot fewer issues with public opinion.

And it’s funny how quickly people forget about the other conflicts the UK has faced in recent times. The Iraq War (the war not the insurgency afterwards) was a conventional conflict, the Gulf war also was. Then there has been Sierra Leone, that took a few paratroopers a few weeks to end a 20 years civil war. Before that was the Falklands. Northern Ireland was probably the only unavoidable COIN operation Britain has had to face in recent times and that is over and done with. My point is that we can avoid others like it in future and this new government will probably try to so the public doesn’t turn on them. The larger more conventional conflicts are usually ones we can’t avoid.

Finally, yes some lessons will need to be taken away, IEDs are likely to be a problem in some conflicts, but i’m talking about Tucs here only, and they can’t fight IEDs. The number of potential conflicts Britain may have to face that requires a CAS platform that can only operate in benign environments and where we are totally unwilling to use fast jets just seems incredibly unlikely.

Grim901,

Please calm down.

This is just an internet forum.

I think you’re reading far too much anger into what I typed, i’m perfectly calm, but silly ideas need to be stopped.

The air war in Afghanistan is being fought with the aircraft and weapons that Western air forces already had available. They weren’t designed for that conflict, and IMHO they are extremely expensive overkill. There is no opposing air force, no SAMs except for a rare MANPAD, and the only significant AAA is an occasional Dushka. They’re largely Cold War designs operating in a primitive COIN environment.

In this conflict, where the weapons are smart and the AA threat negligible, the most efficient combat aircraft would indeed be something along the lines of a Super Tucano or an AT-6B. It should be no surprise that by far the most popular and successful combat aircraft in Afghanistan is the A-10, a slow bomb truck. A cheap, reliable basic platform, with long loiter time, good sensors and comms, and a mix of cannon, rockets and small warhead guided missiles and bombs, would be the most effective and efficient solution, provided there were enough of them.

But there are a lot of vested interests involved in maintaining the high speed hi-tech air forces. Good to see someone like Gates willing to take them on.

All true, but there are other factors. Tucanos are much slower than fast jets, thus slowing response time considerably compared to a fast jet, they also cannot loiter as a UAV can since endurance is low and they lack any AAR ability. They also generally have a lighter bomb load than fast jets. With advances in targeting, PGMs and rocket equipped fast jets there really is little advantage to the attack profile of a Tucano over a fast jet now either.

Even ignoring all that, for Afghanistan the Tucano, properly modified, may be enough to do the job, but the big point for me comes down to this: What utility do these aircraft have in almost ANY other conflict type. I’m of the opinion that Britain is unlikely to allow itself to be dragged into this type of conflict again in the near future, so it buying equipment for this conflict (who’s capabilities can already be covered by current assets) is a waste of money, especially when you look at expected time scales for British military operations there. If we were there for another 20 years then maybe go ahead and buy them, but by the time these Tuc’s came in it’d probably be about time to pull out anyway.

This link may be of some use:

http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2010/01/is-the-super-tucano-a-practical-option-for-the-raf/

Oh god not this again. It isn’t a new idea by any measure and the number of arguments against the idea are massive which eventually leads to most people realising it’s a silly idea.

Yes now that they have been deployed to Afghanistan and proven their worth for the Army, they’re getting rid of them.

Hopefully more will be ordered since the RN don’t have enough to replace the Junglies and ASAC’s.

And logically with the carriers safe we should at least get some F35’s, we can always buy more later when the Army is out of Afghanistan and shuts the hell up about it being the only conflict we’re ever going to fight now.