Cameron getting a hard time at Northwood regarding the Harrier retirement, question came form a RN Lt.CMR Kris Ward – is that Sharky’s son?

Hardly a difficult question:

As the Press Association reports, he faced at least one difficult question.

One Harrier jet pilot, Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander Kris Ward, 37, said: “I am a Harrier pilot and I have flown 140 odd missions in Afghanistan, and I am now potentially facing unemployment. How am I supposed to feel about that, please, sir?”

Maybe if he’d asked something pertinent to the Harrier, as opposed to the rather self centred and selfish one perhaps (mmm, seen that before). He’ll be looking for a new job along with several thousand other service personnel (including aircrew of all three services), and of course those who’ve already been caught up in the downturn.

Either leaving at an option point, or being made redundant as an experienced Lt Cdr, I suspect a fair proportion of the population of the UK would more than happily accept his pension (and any gratuity/redundancy package).

Rather an insensitive question to ask IMO, and rather pointless at that.

I reckon air tanker are pretty miffed that the defence systems weren’t procured and so they can’t offer as much support in combat environments as they would like to. Just a guess like 😉

To be honest, the stories that appeared in the press about the aircraft’t lack of defence systems is probably a red herring in terms of AAR capability. Admittedly, if the contract was to be re-written with 20:20 hindsight the last decade of ops, then it probably would feature.

Air Tanker won’t be miffed at all; it was they who’ve bought the aircraft to spec!

The ships, due to enter service in 2014 and 2016, will operate with no jets until 2018,

Being a controversial British procurement project, the carriers are bound to be late. The JSF/F-18, being effectively off the shelf by that point, have a chance of arriving in 2018.

So it should work out perfectly!:D

leaving a gaping hole in Britain’s military firepower and potentially putting the Falkland Islands at the mercy of a fresh Argentinian invasion.

I don’t like to think the Argentine leadership are that stupid. It’s not as though the South Atlantic Islands are as poorly defended as they were in 1982.

You’d also hope our intelligence systems are sophisticated enough to give decent warning, and of course, Argentina isn’t in a wonderful financial state itself.

What bad press? The VC-10 has, and continues to, provide stirling service as a tanker – never heard bad press within the RAF and I work with the 10s.

The bad press has mainly been associated with the pressure on the TriStar fleet brought about by the Afghan air-bridge. Look at any Army based forum though and you’ll see Crab-Air’s customers aren’t always particularly happy with the service (although they very rarely see the whole picture). VC10 issues tend not to be as high profile, and of course if a AAR trip is lost to unserviceability or otherwise, or a transport leg delayed, it will attract no attention at all outside of the service. But it would be wrong to say it doesn’t happen.

I really don’t get how building a new airliner based tanker can be frought with so many delays, both Victor and VC-10 (Tristar also?) were comparatively straight-forward and very useful conversions.

The building of a new tanker hasn’t been delayed at all, in fact I think it was just over a year from the (brand spanking new – a change for the RAF) donor A330 arriving at Getafe to it re-emerging as a KC-30. The delays have all been in the negotiation and signing of contracts – a downside of the procurement method. That said, as we’ve seen from KC-X in the States, there’s no guarantee that wouldn’t have happened with a direct purchase from EADS. In the meantime, the infrastructure built at Brize by the service provider is second to none, and on time IIRC.

What is the current time-line now with the tanker deal?

First aircraft delivered to Brize this time next year.:)

A fairly good reason for the CAA not allowing a Harrier to operate on the civilian register. I know the flying would be far different to that in service, but…

RAF Harrier ejections and losses

I haven’t counted, but I think “quite a lot” sums it up.

A good option might be to have two tankers for every group of aircraft, one to tank them mid way there, and another to tank them mid way back.

It wouldn’t quite be that simple…

Actually it was quite an achievement as they flew from the UK direct to Falklands without stopping IIRC, which is pretty good going. This is going from Ascension to Falkland, much shorter distance, but its a return trip!

There were at least two, if not more, stops en route.

To be honest, I doubt the “air superiority” issue is much of a problem, seeing the assets already in theatre, and the state of the Argentine finances.