Does anyone know what officially or really the safety problem was that grounded the MR4A recently? Was it such problem that it was a good reason to not deploy the fleet or was it more akin to the mess fire on HMS Victorious that was used to justify her scrapping?

Or was it just a “cover” story until the demise of the fleet was officially announced yesterday. If it was, it shows how close the decision was.

Pagen, as for mothballing, I quite agree. It’d be nice to think we could put them away for 5 years and the reassess the situation, but the reality is by then the skill sets and infrastructure will have been mostly lost, and again, I’m sure BAE Systems would happily charge 2 arms and 2 legs to get it up and running again; a major factor in its disposal now.

What is going to happen to the aircraft, we’ve paid for them, they’re being delivered, and no way in hell is anyone going to buy them.

Are they going to get the Chinook treatment and spenda few years in climate controlled hangers?

To be decided. So potentially, they could be. That would be a sensible conclusion – so bound not to happen!

Getting rid of the last great British aircraft, the Harrier, despite the nostalgia it’s still a mistake.

Er, hello, the VC10’s still going strong!:D

4/ Early retirement of VC-10 and C-130K using civvie Omega in the short term.

The VC10 is pretty much paid for up to OSD, so the savings would be minimal, if any at all. I’m not sure how well it would go down asking sending a civvy company to do the operational AAR in the Stan too.

I’d be interested to see the level of training Omega’s AAR crews receive compared to that of RAF tanker chaps too. I know they’ve done one AAR trail for the RAF to the US, but I don’t think they’ve done one since.

Wouldn’t keeping Witt for ground use only be a waste of resources/money though, even if the land can’t be sold?

Wittering for some time has been earmarked as the RAF’s “expeditionary logistics” hub, and was always planned to be a non flying station post Harrier (I doubt it’s really equipped to be a front line station in the 21st century). Some would probably go as far to say that for the last 5 years or so, the Harrier force has almost been a lodger unit.

There’s quite a lot based there:

No 42 (Expeditionary Support) Wing

No 71 (Inspection and Repair) Squadron
No 93 (Expeditionary Armament) Squadron
No 5001 Squadron
No 5131 (Bomb Disposal) Squadron

85 (Expeditionary Logistics) Wing

Headquarters Squadron
No 1 (Expeditionary Logistics) Squadron
No 2 (Mechanical Transport) Squadron
No 3 (Mobile Catering) Squadron
Joint Aircraft Recovery and Transportation Squadron

http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafwittering/

So what was wrong with the MR4 ??
Is it an innocent victim of an astoundingly short sighted defence cut ?
Or does it have some severe problems ?
Serious question on my part !

I think a lot has to do with the name, post Haddon-Cave. Nimrod isn’t something the powers that be want to be associated with, however tenuous the links.

Think you might be confusing it with the Shadow… Sentinel is the final outcome of experiments that started with the CASTOR Islander in the 80’s…

Zeb

No confusion; I know my Sentinels and Shadows apart. I heard it from the horses mouth from a former colleague several weeks ago that they fully expected to disappear for that very reason post Herrick. Result of CASTOR it may have been, but it seems it was funded from the Afghanistan war chest – hence what you see today.

Shame. Great aeroplane. Great capability.

4. Puma up-date

What is the point? Afghanistan has to end in next years, one way or the other. Spending money to get de decade more live out of those aging airframes seems pointless.

Perhaps to retain an SH capability should we required it at some point outside of the desert without pressurising the Chinook and Merlin fleets? Only a guess, but possible.

Thing is, they won’t save that much money on the running costs and base in the short term surely? Not over one parliament anyway, which is still the coalition benchmark.

I would have thought not either. There’s a reason there somewhere. I’d hate it to be because, as stated in my last post, “it’s a Nimrod”.

You can’t blame the Beeb for that, some prat within MoD/Treasury has obviously got an inside line to them somewhere

I know, but I will anyway to try and keep a smile on my face.:o:)