Grim901If the Israelis can’t handle SA-2’s then the Iranians would rip them to shreds in any attack.
…And almost no NATO airforce would survive any conflict with a modern rival.
My main point is that these things are old and obsolete.
Grim901No indeed.
The new aircraft are not the eight HC3s at Boscombe, they are new aircraft, yet to be built.
Grim is only partly right, however.
The HC.Mk 3s have flown at Boscombe Down, but have never entered operational service.
Sorry, skipped over a bit of it. I should have said they’ve never flown operationally.
The HC3s have been ‘reverted’ to HC2 standard (pre-Julius) in terms of cockpit displays and avionics. Two aircraft have been completed. Work is underway on the remainder.
They retain their pointy noses (though without the associated kit) and the big tanks.
They retain the big engines (being fitted fleetwide to the HC2s alongside the Julius avionics).
Why more Chinooks and not Merlins?
Joe Public has heard of Chinook, and Ross Kemp has raved about them. In this morally bankrupt Government’s opinion, then ticking the ‘Daily Mail/Sun’ approval box is more important than military requirements.
We do probably need a few more Chinooks, but another ten (say) would have replaced attrition and bulked up the existing three-squadron force, and would still have left money for perhaps another 18-20 Merlins.
Those could have replaced the Pumas (which are too small and too underpowered to be useful, and whose upgrade does not represent value for money). The money saved on the upgrade could have bought another 12-15 Merlins.
Then all you need to do is replace Sea King 4 with new-build Merlins with folding blades and tails (like the MMI SF aircraft) and you have a balanced helicopter fleet with:
3 squadrons with c.60 Chinooks
4 squadrons with c.60 Merlins
3 Commando squadrons with c.40 marinised Merlinsplus Apache, plus Wildcat, plus Merlin HM2/ASaCs.
That’s four basic helicopter types, instead of seven at present (Chinook, Merlin, Puma, Sea King, Lynx, Apache, Gazelle). And you get rid of the Puma and Sea King, both of which are past their prime.
In some ways the new arangements do make sense. With the RN concentrating on Merlin and WildCat, the Army on Apache and Wildcat and the RAF on Chinook. It should stop all the arguements about who does what.
The RN quite clearly has the marinised stuff, Merlin always being foremost a craft designed for RN ships, the Army has the Tactical airframes and the RAF sticks to bulk transport. Many people forget that the Chinook in the RAF is actually the descendent of the Tactical Transports in the Dakota/Valetta/Argosy/Andover lineage and operates in much the same way, hence why they should be in the RAF.
It never made complete sense why the RAF operated smaller stuff like Puma. If the Army gets the promised extra Wildcats (some sources say 12-18) + the AH9As which are being kept then they have a nice Utility force they will do much of the Pumas small team work at a reduced cost.
There is far too much sense being spoken here.
Grim901The customer. You don’t sell everything to everyone, & one has to think about MTCR.
Note that the USA flatly refused to sell the UAE a cruise missile, & banned LM from integrating SCALP – or even Black Shahine – on F-16E, officially because it had too long a range.
Hmm, i’d consider the UAE fairly trustworthy. Weren’t the US going to sell it Patriots?
Grim901I’ve seen reports that it’s range-limited to keep it below 300km.
What would be the point in that?
Grim901Am I the only one who thinks that things are moving too slow? Understand that everything has to come from outside. An AWACS station 24/7 to replace the demolished ATC, a couple of UAV as com-relay for the relieve teams and security assistance troops and to back-up ground based ad-hoc com networks (the question is how long the remaining cellular system will stay online, as their batteries only last so long), another couple of UAV to get an overview of the situation. Till the ship with heavy engineering equipment, &c &c arrive from up north it takes time. Understood. But where are the air drops? The helicopter detachment on Vinson is just a drop of water onto a hot stone. Are there any air drops done by C-130 as primary response? Water, food, bivvies, medicine? Things don’t seem to go fast enough.
This is probably one of the fastest and largest disaster responses in history, bear that in mind. There is only so much the world can do, and it is trying bloody hard right now.
Grim901The ones that have just started flying are not brand new airframes no, they were purchased several years ago but have never flown thanks to a procurement balls up. They’ve just managaed to get them ready for service now by rebuilding the cockpits.
They weren’t paid for by a base closure though, that will have been the 10 airframes ordered a couple of weeks back that aren’t due in service until 2012.
Grim901Indeed. Utterly different from JSOW.
And JSOW isn’t comparable with AASM, either. AASM is a set of guidance & range extension (rocket booster) bolt-on modules for free-fall bomb bodies from 125 kg to 1000 kg. JSOW is a 500kg glide bomb with one of two built-in warheads. Totally different – and a few times the price of AASM.
So AASM would equate more to a JDAM?
Grim901How much coal is left in Wales?
:diablo:
Huh, thought they’d forgotten to pace themselves and had dug it all out by now.
Back to the nuclear thing, the CVFs have 110MW installed capacity, so 2-3 of these “shed sized” reactors would be necessary based on the particular design output.
Grim901Astute 8 is almost a certainty with a sensible defence staff as any gap in sub procurement will mean a skill loss which will cost more money to set right and the first vanguard replacement wont be cutting steel in time, 3B will have to happen as the contracts are to tight to get out of, and as for a single fast jet type, are you mad, the RAF has already lost more than half it’s strength over the last decade or so, no way they’ll stand for anymore.
First off, the 3B contract will be wriggled out of, most of the nations are fine with it anyway, no one can afford more. And I wasn’t suggesting a drop in numbers for the RAF, just a change to one fast jet type, which with enough money put in could be pretty good anyway.
Grim901Don’t bring up thatcher’s cuts without mentioning the labour morons who bankrupted the country, and guess what, they’ve gone and done it again, however, under the tories I’ll go out on a limb and bet we get astute boat 8, eurofighter tranche 3B, the carrier will not get binned (no matter how much some people on here seem to hope they will) and Trident will be replaced with 4 hulls, FRES will get binned for a far less stupid programme, and we will go back to a sensible Reserve manning level and I have heard whispers about re-raising 41 commando
Personally I can’t really see any hope for Typhoon Tranche 3b or an 8th Astute.
I’m with Kev on this one, almost all hope has withered and died with me. The last glimmer was when they said they were only using 3 hulls to replace the Vanguards, which i hoped meant a push back in ISDs for the new class, which meant another Astute would have to be bought to stop a gap appearing in the Barrow order books, but I doubt the Tories care any more than Labour.
3B I could only see happening if the RAF were willing to settle for a single type fast jet fleet, ditching F35 numbers (and giving them entirely to the navy) in return for 3B and the funding to properly upgrade Typhoon. That’ll never happen either 🙁
Grim901F35b, please start paragraphing, it makes your fantasies much eaiser to read.
Grim901I see where you’re coming from but most people wouldn’t of thought John Major to be a particularly strong leader in 1991.
To be honest we won’t know if Dave is as middle ground as he makes out until he’s been in office for a few years, I suspect he’s not, he’s already made lots of noises about getting people off benefits and being assessed to see what, if any work those on incapacity benefit are capable of.
Going as part of a major coalition in a UN sanctioned mission is a little different from say the Falklands or the more recent Iraq war. Those are the decisions that require a strong leader.
Grim901I would agree that the Torygraph is probably the best of the bunch on defence reporting.
I think a temporary respite is closer to the mark, the Tory’s will be quite happy to play peacekeeper/global police when they want to.
I ignore the mainstream media completely when it comes to defence matters, they simply can’t get it right.
And I doubt the Tories will be as happy as you think with Dave in charge, pushing his party ever closer to the centre to the point where Labour and the Tories only differ on fox hunting and hooded youths. Neither party will have the balls for it any more, especially since neither side has any semblance of a strong leader (Dave, Gordon/whoever replaces him). Say what you like about Blair, when he wanted something done, he did it.
Grim901a container size power plant for the CVf would be attractive thoguh would it not especially it its sealed and requires no input. Im just thinking of 10-20 years time when we think can we change this about a bit?
Oh definitely, as long as costs could be kept down. It’d require a few crew members specifically trained though (probably to the same standards as the sub crews using PWR’s), more than a commercial reactor would need, in case of battle damage etc and the lack of technicians who can simply arrive when needed.
Given the French experience with trying an unconventional nuclear approach to powering their carrier I doubt the RN would be able to sensibly de-risk any other option apart from conventional turbines.
I think the main point was to use a slightly modified civilian reactor, once the technology matures a bit and oil becomes v. expensive again. It’d basically be a COTS type thing.
Grim901Damn right! When one sees guided missiles designed for killing tanks being used, in effect, as suppressive fire against dispersed, under cover, infantry, one comes near to despair. A thousand rounds of machine gun fire would probably have a better effect, & would be cheaper. The only excuse I can think of for that is using up nearly time-expired rounds.
You mean like the 1000 or so Javelin rounds that the British Army are sending to Afghanistan to replace the ones that have been fired off. How much does a mortar bomb cost? Or possibly one of the LAW’s style rocket launchers?
The difference being that Javelin is a guided weapon that’ll do the job in one nice clean shot, making sure the Taliban don’t put down their guns (ROE’s are a bitch) away to plant IEDs somewhere else. On top of that the range of the Javelin has come in useful apparently. I’ve certainly heard of instances where the entire plan has hinged on using the Javelins in this way (specific example being one of Michael Yon’s reports from Iraq back in 2007).
There simply isn’t a proper alternative at the moment, but I agree it is a pricey way of doing things. They really should be working on a cheaper version that doesn’t need all of Javelin’s capabilities, maybe they can make it cheaper if they cut out the anti-tank stuff and go straight for anti-personnel (without losing the guided ability or the range). What would really be useful at this point would be a smaller anti-personnel missile that can be used in place of the AT missile on the Javelin system.
/pipe dreams.
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