The slow running issue is being addressed by Air-Britain, but this will take longer to fix. The number of images on ABPIC is well over 400,000 and the application, now several years old, was never designed for such volumes, so alternative, affordable options are being considered.
G-APDK

I don’t think the number of photos is relevant ( 400k is peanuts, frankly ).

Just loading the home page, at 07:50 on a weekday, took 34 seconds, without accessing the actual image gallery; just seven small static thumbnails on a basic HTML page. Edit: that’s on an 80 Mbps connection.

The metric we use at work is that each one-second delay in page loading costs 10% of visitors to abandon. By 20 seconds, we’d be out of business.

Do let me know if you’d like any profiling assistance.

Swerve, do you think this will be the point where BAE decide to go back to the drawing board and update the airframe of the Hawk – if they want to continue to build aircraft, the trainer/light fighter market has to be competed in? Cant let the South Koreans and Italians have it all?

Obviously I’m not Swerve, but…

The Hawk airframe is at its aerodynamic limit, perhaps a little beyond. It is a botch of hacks and fixes ( vortex generators, SMURFs, strakes ) all of which were added to make handling acceptable for the role but add drag.

Compare to the Alpha Jet airframe; a similar vintage, but aerodynamically clean and apparently handles beautifully.

There’s no capacity really left to ‘redesign’ in the Hawk airframe, short of redrawing it entirely. But as Swerve pointed-out up-thread BAE aren’t in the airframe business anymore, they do ‘systems’. So I expect they’ll drop the Hawk and go forward for export sales with Northrop-Grumman, should they win T-X. Otherwise exit the trainer market.

There’s something very suspicious about the MoD’s haste in this matter.

The Block I-and-a-bit to which the WAH is similar will indeed be technically obsolete by 2017, with the US Army sitting on Block II and starting upgrades to Block III ( which will take 10 years ).

But interestingly, other than the Netherlands no other AH-64 users are moving to upgrade to Block II. Not even Israel, that could do it for ‘free’ through FMS. In fact they’re still operating some plain-jane 64As!

The MoD ruled-out an upgrade as too expensive, at £10 million per airframe. Better to buy new at twice the price and then add the UK bits again… plus marinisation.

I suspect there is a deeper undisclosed issue; perhaps the WAHs are truly knackered after 15 years of cannibalisation. Or the MoD wants to gradually cut AW out of the support chain.

Seems you can apply for a free licence http://www.trademark.af.mil/usagerules/

Interestingly, it appears that the star-and-bar(s) isn’t trademarked… see page 22:

http://www.trademark.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-120213-033.pdf

See page 8 for the symbols that are trademarked; mostly twee except for the command and ANG shields.

The -30s have slightly lower drag than both shorty lengths ( the basic military length and the civil -20 ).

Not enough to account for the discrepancy but enough that Lockeed documented it.

I am amazed that these were able/allowed to get through multiple European airspaces.

What do you propose that the NATO interceptors do? Open fire on aircraft in international airspace? Ram them?

These particular Bears passed just over 20 miles off the southern coasts, well outside national airspace. They caused some consternation to air traffic control but aren’t anything more than a nuisance. Certainly less dangerous than the reconaissance ballons that the CIA used to send over Eastern Europe by the thousand.

I heard on the radio today that it was normal for the Bears to fly west of Scotland & then south over the Irish sea during the cold war. Absolute rubbish! They would not have got that far.

Of course they did, they used to plod down through the GIUK and wait until the Icelandic F-15s or Leuchars Tornados fell-back. And then they’d keep trucking onwards. There was no way to prevent them from doing so.

Aren’t you aware that the Falklands task force was followed all the way from the Bay of Biscay to the South Atlantic by Tu-142s…?

I shouldn’t really say this, but it’s great to hear the combat air patrols back in the evenings.

Keeping you safe from the latest threat that the Government tells you to fear…?

The real question is why the MoD is so keen play-up these routine missions and why the RAF keeps wasting money ‘intercepting’ them, when all they do is tag alongside the Bears and burn fuel. Ah yes, there’s a UK Strategic Defence Review due this year…

Both Canada and Turkey seriously considered buying outright the Iranian F-14 fleet after the Revolution; the aicraft, spares and weapons were all up for sale

It would have made a much more sensisble interceptor for Canada, Australia, and the UK RAF than the compromises they eventually received ( though without Phoenix of course, much too pricey ).

The F-14 proposal to the USAF was as a replacement for the F-106 with Air Defense Command, not F-X for TAC.

Two completely different roles for two different Commands; there was no suggestion that the F-14 would have been bought instead of the ’15 for TAC.