I take it the US considers 4 tubes to be enough while the UK has felt 5-6 are better. I don’t know anything about reload times of tubes so i presume if you can reload and fire them fast (60 seconds) it may not be such an issue.

To be honest if you’ve got a vls then I’d agree that 4 tubes would be enough.

It’s definitely a T23.

AgustaWestland has already won the production license for the new batch of CH-47F for the Italian Army (called ICH-47F)
I think production should start soon, possibly in the next 24 months.
Would it be economically and politically acceptable that the new Chinooks for the RAF will be produced in Italy? Could it bring advantages in terms of cost and delivery time?

Why wouldn’t it be? They’ve been our allies for more than 60 years now.

And then, what do we do if one day we need to fight a different war?

**** out of luck by the sounds of it.

I wondered what forumites make of this article in the current Spectator by Max Hastings – no stranger to defence matters.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator/5704518/the-tory-defence-policy-will-be-simple-cut-brutally.thtml

Sounds like he wants to reform the entire military around counter insurgency and that’s it, basicaly we’d end up with an army built to fight Afganistan and an air force and navy that can do next to nothing.

The SCALP-EG (french Storm Shadow) is given for 400km (source : french senate*).

I doubt than the English version cannot go to 400km either.

@+, Arka

*http://www.senat.fr/rap/a98-0697/a98-069710.html

English version? I thought the only difference was the name?

Astute 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.

There won’t be a gap because staff at Barrow have been working on slowing production down:

http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/delays_to_bae_systems_barrow_sub_astute_will_leave_frontline_short_1_650514?referrerPath=2.1823/home

Fair enough, to be honest I wouldn’t of thought that it made much sense for Tornados to be flying regularly with full racks as there probably isn’t the need.