Variety of extended footage of logistics plus the Gao air landing and Tombouctou drop in this video stream edited by Pascal Dupont.

Cougars and CN.235s in theatre. An-12 moving Chadian vehicles.

JT3D-engined white-with-blue 707 here.

“Hello mum. I’m on a Transall heading up to Gao. Decent flight but the cabin crew are a bit surly.”

i would say the Boeing P-8 Poseidon/Neptune, in my eyes its the only logical choice, at least for the UK.

But even the P-8 isn’t truly off-the-shelf; just look at the technology changes for the Indian P-8Is. All that has to be re-qualified.

Tactical systems would have to be modified to UK standards, and then set-up a separate maintenance and logistics organisation to support, what, 6 aircraft? Engine is not directly compatible with the ’56 on the Sentry or Air Seeker, either.

The P-8 is a mongrel of 737-700 / 800 airframes so I don’t know if civil operators are qualified to work on it.

In contrast, Global Express:

the P-8 is the only machine that has future growth potential and isn’t relying on legacy airframes.

Well, pedantically, it will be a legacy airframe by the time it achieves service. The 737NG airframe and engine variant are at the end of their development life.

Once the P-8s have been delivered to the US Navy that production line in Renton is being taken off main-flow; it will produce only military-ordered 737s ad hoc. It will be idle between production and will remain segregated from the rest of the facility for ITAR reasons.

Meanwhile, three other lines will spin-up to produce the 737 MAX at a rate of three per day. No more NGs will be produced.

While the P-8 is probably going to be a good MPA (have they improved the low level flying abilities, I heard it wasn’t as good as 1950’s nimrod) but cost may prohibit purchase.

The mid-1960s Nimrod MR.1, shurely…? The Nimrod was fortunate in benefiting from a low-sweep wing of low aspect ratio with engines near the centreline, which made it a decent low-level performer, but it still had quite a low wing loading so a bit choppy in turbulence.

The P-8 is blessed / cursed with an inherited wing designed to cruise at FL410, which isn’t so good for running down an Akula sub but is marvellous for high-level transit and loitering.

Interestingly the Nimrod MRA.4 wing was extended in area by 25% to provide better transit and loitering performance, so I think that argument won.

My preference for MPA: Global Express airframe, with systems by anyone other than BAE ( edit: or Lockheed ).

Whenever I read any statement beginning with, “The information regarding [fill in Russian programme name here] has improved since the collapse of the USSR…”, it gives me a violent headache.

I don’t doubt that data existed in the factory and OKB archives, but it was inaccessible to researchers as a result of State policy.

In some cases the State ordered the destruction of data, such as the Kusnetsov NK-33 engines. All artifacts, jigs and engines were to be destroyed. Thankfully the OKB had foresight and courage to ignore tis. Now we have information about the programme.

There were no “conspiracies” in the USSR to “hide” information concerning historical aviation

Without access to raw data, information cannot exist.

So in that regard I would say that yes, there was a State policy to inhibit the flow of information by making data unavailable.

And the information available has improved massively since the fall of the USSR, because the policies that deliberately hid data have fallen-away. Otherwise, can you point to a thriving indigenous aviation press in the era of Soviet Union?

All B737s are on the same type certificate. I think that alone makes them all “Boeing 737s”.

But one needs to hold separate engineering licenses for the “Classics” and 737NGs to work on them.

And pilots need separate type ratings.

737, A320 etc are just marketing terms these days.

I’d keep it simple Ken, and define anything as a DC-3 as being called, a ‘DC-3’. Similarly with the 737. Ultimately, whichever is called the same name the most, in addition to being made in prodigious quantities, wins.

The keep-the-name trick is an old technique much loved by manufacturers to keep type certification simple. Fokker were particularly adept at it, with such contrived designations as F.28 Mark 100 and F.27 Mark 050 ( F.100 and F.50 in the brochures ).

So basically the name means nothing.

There is no commonality between a 737-100 and a 737-900 except a few fuselage frames and that horrid, noisy windscreen.

The 100 / 200 and 300 to 500 series could be considered one type, but the 737NG is as different as the DC-3 was from the DC-2.

Edit: discussing this in the office, one comment made was that modern type names such as “737” really now mean as little as “iPhone” or “BMW 3 Series”. The are brandings to identify market niche, not actual model designations.

I think the 737 and the 319 belong on the commercial forum until they are going into museums

Muesum of Flight 737-100 🙂