Oh Nicolas spare us the typical anti-Western rant…

If the West is so bad then add me to the bad guy list…

I’m a westerner too… and I strongly disagree with the policies of my gvt regarding Libya & Syria (and most our internal policies (provided we still have any)).

From whatever I read you post I would definately not say you’re a bad guy. You seem like a good guy, albeit I think you are VERY naive if you truely believe the motives of your (and my) governments for going into Irak, Libya, Syria etc…

I know most westerners have been brainwashed from a very early age by the school system & media… but there is a point when one should go and look for real information, crosscheck it, confirm that it makes sense, learn about history & think for ourselves instead of swallowing what the madia outlets spoonfeed us. Just look at who controls the media to realise that they definately are not unbiased.

Nic

I was thinking it was most probably a RF4 indeed.

Nic

Of course Nicky10 is entitled to his opinion…and some here are simply disagreeing with his conspiracy accusations.
Really, blaming the CIA for everything is getting rather old.

I think the majority here are more than willing to give him his right to speak his mind, even though the governments he seems to champion would not extend that courtesy to their own people.
I believe the English call that “a bit rich”.

lol :rolleyes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S880UldxB1o

Nic

Nicky10’s basic world view is that the only evil in the world is the USA, and the only evil acts are everything ever done by any American.

Nicky10 believes that, no matter how many of his own people Assad kills, as long as he opposes the USA then nothing he does is evil.

False, but thanks for trying to put words in my mouth.

The helicopters point has been more than adequately dealt with by Lightning. Planes parked elsewhere are fine and the conventional solution but you have to be aware that flying several hundred miles, loitering for a couple of hours, then flying x hundred miles back home sometimes to no purpose is hardly efficient. Airframes are limited in number these days and have finite flying hour lifespans. Smart weapons have airframe carry lives. Burning through them needlessly seems something that was easier afforded when strikefighter fleets were bigger and weapons stockpiles somewhat deeper than they are today.

I take your point about airframe hours and cost, but then again, if you don’t disperse yourself developing, buying and operating a STOVL fighter, you can use part of that money to increase your fleet of conventional fighters to take care of this mission, easing management of lifespans & logistics.

As for lengthening runways they were still building aprons to accomodate Tornado at Kandahar in 2009!. The Harrier moved in 5 years earlier!. It was 2006 before the first conventional fighters operated out of that field. At RAF Stanley the Phandet had to have arresting gear installed and a separate Harrier Det as backup and that was the case up til 1985 when MPA opened.
The carrier would have been on station for several months at the time. As it was we had two in theatre and the land basing was still the requirement. As stated the runway lengthening wouldnt (didnt in fact!) take ‘days’.

I take your point about the airfield, but I’ll counter that if the UK didn’t have some STOVL it could base there in the first place, the work to have a useable airfield would have been done long before.

Not necessarily. Thats only the case where support is from an established base in a nearby friendly country. If the choice is, like the UK deployment of Tornado GR4 in Libya, a long strip airbase in a distant friendly state you have the costs associated with AAR and in the Afghanistan case there is a cost to get fuel to the long strip airbase in country already. If the fuel is in country anyway the only extra cost is shuttling it 300 miles to the forward basing.

And if the fuel isn’t in country you have to bring it there, then transport it to the FOB, and set up the whole logistics chain to bring supplies there. Besides, unless in situations like in Afghanistan, your put the whole logistics chain at great risk.

F-35B has max internal fuel of 13000lbs which should be good for a few 50 mile hops?. Call the det 8 cabs with a target of 4 sorties per day per airframe your looking at what, about, 80 tons of fuel per day to support that?. A400M with cargo bay tanks is carrying 58 tons of fuel. So, less the fuel for the lifters 600 mile round trips, 80 tons is maybe 3 trips a day for a single A400M?. Doesn’t seem an absurdly onerous burden really. 1 single 30ton A400M load could bring in 240 SDB’s, crating densities allowing, which would be more than a days worth given 30 sorties with 6 SDB’s loadout per sortie and total weapons expenditure. Logistics for fuel and ordnance then is two airlifters making 2 trips.

As per wiki, one A400M takes off in 980m and lands in 700m. Still as per wiki, a Dassault Rafale takes off in 400m and lands in 450m. If you can land in A400Ms, there is no point operating a Harrier or a F35B, period.

You’d be better off bringing some good artillery, which will react MUCH faster than even your F35B, and a couple choppers, and have armed UAV’s to retain aerial persistence, and use jet fighters on a need to basis.

Gripen is the only other way to do the job and that may have limitations in the naval environment. Simply you have two choices if you want to undertake expeditionary operations and/or want to operate non-CATOBAR carriers. If you dont want Gripen you have to buy into STOVL. No-one is talking about forest clearings by the way. The idea is short field hard strips, like Stanley Airport, that cant take conventional strikers but can take STOL lifters and STOL/STOVL fastjets.

The crux of your paragraph is “and/or want to operate non catobar carriers”. If you are limiting yourself then sure, you’re going to end up with limited capabilities. But is it really the point?

I see the point about keeping the Harrier as it worked and was a good design, although once it was evident that it was nearing the end, I think it would have been wiser to not design an aircraft carrier for a concept where no plane actually exist yet, and be stuck with whatever the F35B turned out to become. Or with nothing had the US DOD canned it. Besides going for F35B leaves you NO option but to accept whatever the US will charge you for your F35s, especially once you’ve sold all your Harriers to them.

Would have been wiser to install cat & arresting wires, and at least have the choice to order the SH or Rafale, if only to get a better deal on the F35C.

Nic

The guts to leave your country in the hands of salafists financed by the CIA & Quatar? The guy has no spine.

Nic

…and from Kandahar for the couple of years until they improved the runway enough to get an F-16 det in.

You can have helicopters for very urgent needs, and planes parked elsewhere for general needs. No need to spend billions to develop a plane just for this. Besides I doubt lengthening an airfiled takes all that long.

….and the deployment to the then RAF Stanley after the Falklands before that runway was extended to allow F-4 ops

Same as above. An real carrier would have allowed F4 ops in the first place. A carrier or two would allow to protect the islands long enough for the few days it would take to lengthen the airfield.

STOVL remains an enabling technology for forward deployment and rapid forward deployment requirements are not diminishing. The logistics issues are commonly overstated for forward dets as fuel requirements etc have to go farther but are smaller due to the shorter flight times of the strikers. Why have planes burning fuel and airframe/weapon carry hours patrolling endlessly when they can be sat closer to the action and launch when called.

Your calculations about fuel is wrong as you must factor in the fuel needed to transport the fuel for the STOVL aircrafts and their weapons & equipement.

There are also a couple of nations who still face the challenge of maintaining flying operations with their big airbases less than guaranteed to be viable on the second day of the war.

Then go the way of the Gripen. You don’t need to dig a clear area in the woods to disperse your fighter fleet. You just have to base them around some pre-planned installations next to some adequate motorways.

Nic