Grim90124 Typhoons and 12 Block 52s.
Why? Thats overkill for Yeman surely and they are not planning to take on Saudi right?
This will increase RAFO capability massively.
Jobs for the (BAE) boys?
As Swerve has said, Iran has become the major threat in the region and most of the Gulf states, Oman included seemed to be arming with an eye towards them. It’s bound to happen when Iran sees itself as the leader of the region and no one else really likes it.
In your expert opinion, what should Oman have?
Grim901is there much other concrete policy from the conservatives on defence?
when i read the story about the conservatives proposing an ABM system in tandem with submarine launched ballistic missiles deterrent i wasn’t sure if they would shrink the submarines and warheads and ballance this with ABM systems.
I would suggest that the ship based system is the only one available for “cheap”….
It’s hard to say what is concrete policy with the Tories at the moment, they contradict themselves over time and shadow cabinet members contradict each other, Osborne being especially bad, especially at destroying the glimpses of hope that come from Liam Fox.
Grim901so this will be 20 odd aircraft ? they won’t replace jaguar with Typhoon on a 1 for 1 basis will they?
I am very pessimistic about the current governments treatment of this, but if Brown says it will help secure british jobs, then perhaps these aren’t RAF allocated aircraft?
This is a stupid question, but is the Indian MRCA deal to replace Jaguar (amongst others) too?
That would be 2 Jaguar operators that had replaced Jaguar with Typhoon, which could be a factor in Typhoon’s favour in india (although a small one i admit).
The number being thrown around since the first inkling of this deal appeared over a year ago has been 24.
Hard to speculate on what planes they’ll get though. It probably won’t have much effect on MRCA in my honest opinion. I’m not very hopeful for Typhoon there, not because it may not be selected, but because the Indian Treasury seems to have veto power on anything and everything, and that means the US or Russia will undercut Typhoon with a cheaper and/or less capable aircraft.
Grim901Sorry slip of the tongue guys, I meant if by 2012 it hasn’t been cancelled, not ordered.
@Obi Wan: I didn’t realise they’d go straight onto PoW parts, I was under the impression that PoW won’t be laid down (blocks being built) until 2012, with just long lead items being ordered.
Grim90190infirst –
T45 including R&D is ca £1000 million each, but R&D is a big chunk of that, & PAAMS R&D is the bulk of R&D. Take that away, & you get Obi Wan Russels £700 mn each. Take out PAAMS (Aster, Sampson, S1850M & the associated expensive C&C) & the cost plummets. Adding in design costs for T26 doesn’t add much: £127 million for design, spread over even 10 units, is only £12.7 mn each. Weapons, sensors & C&C system will be much cheaper than T45.
And to add to that lets keep in mind a lot of systems will come off T23’s.
Grim901It depends on the LHD class, there’s more than one.
You’d also have to define STOL. Some cargo aircraft are labelled STOL (C27J is I think) but that isn’t taking off an LHD anytime soon. I can’t think of any fighters that are really known as STOL, rather than STOVL or VTOL.
Grim901Dear god not this again, I’ll state this one last time for the true idiots
BOTH CVFs WILL BE BUILT
The contract is signed for both, their is only a single payment shedule covering both and the fee to cancel either would be massive negating any saving, and as for this 50-60 F35 BS, that would essentially only cover 2 front line Sqs with near zero rotational reserve, the training infrastructure and maintainance deals would cost more than the aircraft.
Dear god some people need to grow up, this so called defence black hole is nothing but a press concoction, £36 billion includes Trident replacement (already approved for funding OUTSIDE the normal defence budget) and a lot of other bull****.
Nice to see some sense. (I didn’t realise Trident would be funded completely outside the budget, I assume that includes the bombers? – Makes sense since they could cripple the shipbuilding budget otherwise – like the USN is worried about).
The real worst case is that they are built only to be sold on to a different navy.
Who? That discussion has been had, with no likely customers being the outcome.
Argentina needs a new carrier.:D
Ha, that’d be funny. It’d probably make sense too, we make some money off them, then if they ever tried to use it against us we could still send Astute down to make it go away.
In all honesty I think that the initial F35 buy will be reduced, but they’ll buy more later as long as PoW is ordered (which I think it will, by 2012 when it’s laid down this finance thing will have blown over and/or been sorted, remember it’s on a 20 year or so cycle, so for it to be crashing for over 5 years means capitalism has really stopped working).
Grim901Actually, it seem very clear that the Type 26 will feature only a very small VLS solely for the CAMM missile.
CAMM is the Sea Wolf replacement, and with quad packed cells, will require very little cubic capacity – so there’s no need for the large Sylver A50 VLS of the Type 45, let along a MK41 or A70 capable of accommodating cruise missiles.
The Type 26 is simply a new platform for updated Type 23 systems. That should be a hint that not even the RN believes there will be 10 Type 26s.
Have you read nothing on the C1 concept? Some of the emphasis has shifted to land attack, with several options requiring a larger VLS than CAAM requires. Serious consideration is going into adding Tomahawk or SCALP-N.
I think you’ve been doing too much mescaline, so only 20 ships to replace 17 frigates, 18 minehunters, 3 river class, HMS clyde etc, you do realise that this is a 25 year+ procurement plan
Some people are too blinded by pessimism. It gets really dull listening to it on these internet forums. Too many people think back to “their day” or the Cold War and decide the world has gone to the dogs and they may as well moan as much as they can.
Grim901SH was pulled out by Boeing who cited that the requirements for this F-5 replacement were too easy and they felt that the SH was overkill and consequently wouldn’t be chosen. The 3 contenders who were evaluated were the Typhoon, Rafale and Gripen D.
Basically the planes flown by Switzerlands neighbours? Why the Swiss with their neutral ways still see the need for fighters is beyond me. Their neighbours aren’t exactly going to invade any time soon, nor could handful of ANY of the fighters stop them if they wanted to.
/offtopic.
Someone on another forum mentioned that the Oman order is likely to involve UK T1 aircraft. So it’ll actually strengthen the UK need for T3B :D. Might even mean it needs to be increased (fantasy I know, but it depends on how Eurofighter see it).
Grim901Prince of Wales is not yet under construction, it remains very uncertain….(to be keel laid down in 2011)
I was talking about QE. I clearly indicated later in my post that I knew PoW wasn’t under construction yet. I was addressing your strong suspicion that the whole program will be cancelled now.
With a £ 36 billion black hole for the british defense budget over the next 10 years…:rolleyes:
Yes we’ll see. The £5bn or so of the QE class spread over about a decade being cancelled (and incurring all of those cancellation costs) is unlikely to make much difference, most people acknowledge this. The F35’s are what are crippling the program right now. I have no doubt our order will be substantially less than 138. It only takes about 50 to have a full ships load available. And again that’d be spread over several years. We can always get more later, it’d be much easier than realising later we need to not only buy jets but also a nice big ship to fly them off.
WAITING & SEE after the british general election & defense review (july 2010-spring 2011)…;)
🙁
Alright you think what you want, but i’ll eat my own **** if the QE doesn’t float, even if there is nothing to fly off it. Without knowing the contract it’s a lot harder to speculate on PoW and the relative stupidity of Cameron/Osborne.
Grim901There is some (doubtfull) hope for the hms queen elizabeth
but personally, I have no more to the prince of wales (only a dream)
A 130-160 million $ (?200?) piece for the F-35, the british will never have enough money to buy 50-70 aircraft.We are heading toward 25/35 aircraft … and 1 aircraft carrier … in the best case….
As for the entire cancellation of the program, it is still possible, expecting the end of 2010 :rolleyes:
Do you have any idea how badly the next govt would be chewed out for cancelling a ship so far gone in construction? They can’t exactly reuse those already constructed blocks on anything.
And by the time PoW is laid down everyone will have forgotten about the financial crisis and people will be sick of hearing about cuts, it’d probably just be best to keep quiet about PoW for a few years and no one will question trying to fight it out with BAE over cancellation costs.
At least try and cut back on the pessimism a bit. I doubt many people see QE being cancelled at the very least at this point.
Grim901I suppose they’re to be taken from UK’s planned orders? Good thing anyways. Every deal like that will make it more probable that eventually all initially planned orders are to be fulfilled. Hopefully something similar can be achieved with Switzerland.
Are there any news on MRCA yet? The threads about Indian AF are a bit difficult to follow. 😉
Probably, but if it is then it implies that the UK govt. still acknowledges that they have to buy tranche 3B, which is good because we might actually get a few more jets that can’t be met with exports. At the very least it’ll keep the production line busy.
I doubt the Swiss will take UK jets as SA and Oman will, remember there are 4 nations that could sell them on, more likely to be the Germans or Italians in a Swiss deal, and the Spanish could stand to keep their numbers down too.
The fact that almost all the exports have come through the UK though does suggest a pretty strong correlation between global clout and export orders though. Perhaps Eurofighter shouldn’t have let different nations take the lead in each competition. Might have changed export outcomes. (Just a random thought and suggestion, no need to eat me alive for it).
Grim901Sad thing is I’d really like to see them do it.
It’d restrict where they can fly though. Harriers aren’t allowed over central London due to their nasty habit of crashing.
Grim901It’s actually getting somewhere –
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4559339&c=EUR&s=AIR
A contract for Fireshadow, with deployment maybe by 2012, & the 50kg SPEAR weapon, which seems to be (as expected) a Brimstone derivative.
SPEAR Capability 3 looks interesting.
Will SPEAR 3 be another configuration of Brimstone? It’s being touted as a mini-cruise missile with long range for use on the JSF. It’d certainly be useful, especially if it was internally carried and/or cheaper than Storm Shadow. But it also depends on how they define “long range.”
In other news, MBDA seem to be hopeful that their next offering for the French mid-range anti-tank weapon will get a long range variant through cooperation with Britain and incorporating tech from the the Sea Skua replacement that’s being worked on. Sounds good.
Grim901How many airframe hours do the current Lynx’s have left though?
Airframe hours are not a major issue with helicopters as the major stress components are transmission and Engines which can both be replaced.
Thats the reason why so many airforces, navies and armies keep helicopters in service for such a long time. The main reason for introducing new helicopters is a requirement for improved performance or a lack of affordable spares.
Indeed. Performance isn’t even a total issue in some cases. When you look at the US and see the UH-1’s and AH-1’s still operating (heavily upgraded of course) it does show how long these airframes can go on for and what they are still capable of. Or look at the Chinook and compare original specs with current specs. That’s not to say we should do that all the time, the Pumas shouldn’t be getting it, they have a nasty habit of doing the opposite of flying.
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