Our Gallic chums showed us the way; use up Super Etendards and their flight hours and stock of parts; leave the new shiny replacement frames with as much life in them as possible. Unfortunately the concept of learning from what other people do well is anathema to the UK.

For our next trick, let’s build two flat tops at excessively and unnecessarily high costs, mothball one; not make use of the expensive restructuring of construction facilities and end up having to pay over the odds for the next ship programme. Maybe we can bin some other resources with life left in the, before we have a replacement as well?

Dammit, you’ve been reading my mind. 😀

A P-1 with BR710s

Now in Al-world it goes further than that

It’s all about the offsets; we buy 48 (see below before MCI) and Japan uses marinised BR710s on theirs.
The only bad news leaking out about the P1 programme is with the engine. Use BR710 instead. Ta da 3 problems solved in one

Okay now the issue of 48 units
1 that’s how many Nimrods we had
2 that would give 4 squadrons (subject to the caveat of a squadron can be as big as you want it to be) 2 in N and 2 in S
3 We take the Canadian Aurora/Arcturus approach
2 squadrons (1N and 1S) are all-singing, all-dancing, FAA crewed ASW and ASuW assets
2 squadrons (1N and 1S) come without the ASW kit; these are used for crew training, launching Storm Shadow, SAR and coastal surface patrol

Ok another person who doesn’t understand what this thread is about…. well done… very impressive advert! woooweee

Go and then smart **** tell me is this a photo or a painting? Coz I can read it either way; and am intrigued by this ‘B1R before there was a B1R‘ idea

This touches on a real world issue that we seldom discuss here. Frankly coz it is not as exciting as kinematics, weapons load or signature or or or.

The Merlin may be the RN’s flying frigate but was (possibly still is but I am well out of the loop) a maintenance nightmare and so the (on paper) less capable Lynx much more popular as a rotary winged asset (coz it would actually be available).

likewise Tonka was far more capable in gulf war 1 than Jaguar but was fairly infamous for having a flight computer which generated a simple go-no go signal and any 4 Tonkas on the runway likely to generate a maximum of 2 or 3 actual take offs.

Son of Taranis?

Repackaged tyffie in a stealth shell?

You do know that Poland Ukraine and Uk signed a tripartite defence pact in 94?

My understanding, which is pretty much just based on Wikipedia so I am happy to be corrected, is that the US2 is fitted for SAR only. Whilst. It’s predecessor came in two flavours the latest has no military utility.

The confusion may come from the fact that some MPAs can to ASW and top cover SAR, however I do not think that this applies to either of the planes India is buying.

Big jets are expensive. And obvious and obviously expensive.

Submarines are very scary and some attempt at countering them is attractive to politicians (although not apparently here in the UK any more) so MPAs seem far more likely to be funded than bombers.

the US and Russia have big proper bombers and so would have no/minimal need to use an MPA to deliver ordnance ashore. For other nations putting stand off weapons on an MPA is the only option for getting numbers of long range weapons aloft on a platform with range and endurance.

Long range missiles now seem to come with a dual use built in.

I liked the idea of fitting Stormshadow to Nimrod (until it became obvious how few platforms we were going to have and how much damage carrying Stormshadow was going to do to those airframes) I like the idea of having some P1s fitted for Stormshadow (or even better the affordable weapon system, remember that?) for the RN. But then I like the idea of just having an MPA in service with RN or RAF, and that does not look very likely either.

Swerve, you forget the socialists and communists within the United States call themselves liberal, I call them leftists.

(Fixed for Al.’s sake.)

And much appreciated it is too.