I understood from the coverage on the Today programme that it was done to demonstrate the level of planning in place for the games after the US voiced its disquiet….?

I didn’t hear that.

Q How will you defend against aircraft at the Olympics
A Stick a warship in the Thames
Q Gosh, what advanced and sophisticated planning

Doesn’t quite cut it for me but its believable for politicians

My only concern at the moment is where the navy is going with the main gun in my opinion the RN needs a precision and extended range munitions and that means a new gun.

Trouble is that no matter how accurate your gun, you need to get incredibly accurate and timely position and orientation information to make use of it, unless you have guioded munitions.

If you are into the expense of guided munitions, I would love us (unrealistically given cost constraints) to go for a navalised GMLRS.
– commonality across army & navy and thus shared logistics
– excellent range and precision
– could they be stuffed into the already planned silo as an option when you need them and thus keep the gun for anti-shipping use and less exacting tasks

{dreams}

It is a shame that they generally restrict themselves to previous names, otherwise just as we had names like Vengeance for SSBNs, we could name them appropriately for their role

HMS Workhorse
HMS Faraway
HMS Distant
HMS Godforsaken
HMS Token Effort
etc

I think part of the problem with this debate is that some people are talking about small cheap UAVs, and some are talking about high-end UCAVs, and thus people are questioning and answering from different viewpoints. Naturally there will be (indeed already are) both.

Some of these will be remote controlled, some will be more autonomous

I guess if the offer is like that its curtains for it in India as well.

Not necessarily, in India they knew they had a competition. They might have thought that they were onto a sure thing in UAE. presumablythey have now been disabused of that notion and will negotiate.

Nevertheless it would kind of fit with EF having dropped their price and so the prices were close, implying that Dassault had not dropped theris. It would also fit with the statement that was mentioned and then forgotten that implied Dassault would submit their bid and then look to negotiate Indian work-share etc. That would imply an immense arrogance in negotiations that i find hard to believ but everything is possible

as for sense and avoid algorithms.
Is there inherently anything new from a fighterbomber that can fly itself in a canyon at 200ft agl or a atc algorithm that auto directs aircraft to avoid each other?

Yes, lots, and I really do mean lots. if you can’t see that there is probably no point me trying to explain, but to pick 2 aspects
1) canyons do not move or alter course; other aircraft do
2) Aircraft are directed by ATC but with safety of the aircraft still ultimately the pilots responsibility. How do you propose ATC directs a UAV whilst still provide autonomy of reacting to maintain safety in circumstances where there is no time for ATC to react

as for target location and Id.
what would be the fundamental different from a manned fighter’s (let’s say F-35’s) integrated battle management software? where essentially the raw sensors are filtered and the most important threats are id’ed and displayed. with may be even weapons launching parameter continuously computed and fed into the weapon with out pilot lifting a finger. ?

Again lots, e.g. how the pilot then directs the aircraft movement to reach optimum firing position and/or evade enemy response.
And the question is also far too limited as it skips lots of the steps of what to do to identify & classify the track, interpret the ROEs, protect friendly aircraft etc etc.

There is a choice of two autonomy modes for the three highest control loops, the “Mother, may I?” mode and the “Do it, but keep me informed” mode. There is no mode which allows the UAV to operate without human oversight.

“Do it, but keep me informed” requires all the functionality of a system that operates without human oversight, at least in the military world because of the potential for comms to be jammed or lost, whereupon the UAV would continue on its merry way.

And building such a system that is UCAV capable of detecting, classifying and engaging targets of all types is challenging

Those technology exist today,

you can pretty much fly a civil airliner today, with out pilot’s intervention.

pilot’s flying would limit to…

pushing back from the gates, steer it onto the runway, powerup, push, rotate and hit V2.

rest of time a competently designed system can fly the waypoints via ATC management, all the way down to glidepath capture, autoflare and roll out, all can be flown by the aircraft system with out pilot intervention.

care to guess what are these same people who designed these systems doing on the military side?

vehicle technology wise there is nothing new.

There is a hell of a difference between a fully autonomous military aircraft and a civil airliner auto-pilot.