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Al.

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February 8, 2011 at 10:23 pm in reply to: Should the UK dump the F-35? #2349515

Al.
Participant

Yep.

And IIRC approach speed is quite a bit lower than Typhoon. For dispersed operations, SwAF pilots practice short landings, which I’ve heard described as ‘controlled crash’, with very rapid descent. The undercarriage & airframe are designed to withstand that.

IFF Sea Gripen ever happens it could become the scooter for the 21st Century. It’d be ace if they could fly off of the USS America and sisters.

Should the UK dump F35?

It all depends. Price HAS risen and some specifics of performance have yet to be proven (which doesn’t yet mean that they won’t) I’m not aware that the source code and operational sovereignty issues have been completely resolved one way or the other.

If price can be brought back under control and performance can be delivered and source code can be resolved then No. The UK should not dump JSF.

If those three things cannot be resolved then Sea Gripen or Rafaele M or Superhornet are all worth a serious look.

February 8, 2011 at 9:44 pm in reply to: F-35B – If it get's cancelled #2012254

Al.
Participant

Odd that search Youtube and there are plenty of F-35B verticals landing clips plus X-35 VTOL take off mislabelled as F-35B, but the aircraft is plainly the X-35. I may be wrong but not seen one as yet

Hmmm how annoying. You may well be correct (from a cursory trawl only you understand) so I’ve allowed myself to be misled somewhat eh? Of course the really annoying bit is having seemingly been caught out by taking something at face value I’m now going to have to spend (waste?) a chunk of time seeing if I CAN find any footage of F35b taking off vertically otherwise I’ve just repeated the error…………. 😡

Grrrrr

The key point is that Harrier didn’t/doesn’t really do vertical takeoffs operationally so moving to JSF doesn’t remove any great capability. But I’ll fess up that wasn’t the only point I was trying to make! 😮

February 7, 2011 at 6:23 pm in reply to: Options for MPA #2012354

Al.
Participant

I was chatting with someone who claimed to have worked at MoDPE (she may well have done and I’m not impugning truthfulness but I didn’t check ID card or owt so this is unattributed and gossip really)

Apparently MR4 came bottom of the pile of recommendations made by civil service. BELOW being launch customer for P8s and newest possible P3s. So assuming that nothing has really changed either of those. But PERSONALLY I’d like S3s so that Navy gets MPA and has something to land on the flat tops and we use the same airframe for AEW

February 6, 2011 at 2:12 pm in reply to: F-35B – If it get's cancelled #2012415

Al.
Participant

BTW the F-35B is STOVL aka Short Take Off Vertical Landing. Its not the Harrier and doesn’t have the ability to take off vertically, it can just land vertically.

It CAN take off vertically (unless all those you tube clips have been faked) but whether or not it can do so at sufficient weight to carry a useful fuel or weapon load I know not. But Harrier didn’t do vertical take off once short take offs (in some cases with skijump in others not) were solved and shown to be so much more useful.

February 6, 2011 at 9:46 am in reply to: What ifs.. in modern aviation. #2350682

Al.
Participant

well, if they did that, then the UK probably would not join Typhoid..

Quite possibly. There is an Australian website which not all agree with but I think that they summed EF up quite nicely as cramming an F15 into an F16 sized airframe.

That being said Jaguar et al also ‘needed’ replacing at the same time so UK may have entered into EF as a lighter airframe.

that would then probably make the Germans join the Rafale instead.

Would we then see a German flat top?

February 5, 2011 at 8:01 am in reply to: What ifs.. in modern aviation. #2351031

Al.
Participant

what would happen today, if:

1. Saab was able to sell the Viggen to India
2. If France and Dassault continued to produce Mirage 2000s instead of shutting down the line
3. If the Navy ordered more F-14Ds and decided to keep them longer
4. Britain never went ahead and developed the Tornado ADV series

feel free to speculate and also post your own “what ifs” 😀

1. AMRAAM never gets developed as the export market for BVR missiles to upgrade F16 capability just isn’t there. The swedes get to induct Skyflash 2 as they intended
2. Alongside 1 or instead of?
3. The USN would look awesome and some variation of AAAM comes online as Phoenix and Sparrow replacement in US service.
4. UK and Canada would buy F15s for Air Defence. USAF buys Tornados for interdiction

February 2, 2011 at 6:32 pm in reply to: Navies news from around the world -III #2012736

Al.
Participant

+1 in praise of diesels and modular design

Shame it so ugly and its got that garage and kennel hangar layout.

January 26, 2011 at 9:45 pm in reply to: aircraft carrier design question #2013288

Al.
Participant

I don’t think the risk of free surface effects is likely to be the, or even a, main consideration. If you’ve got significant quantities of water that high up, you’re already sinking.

You may very well be correct. However wet stuff can come in from the top AND wet stuff inside is often a side effect of firefighting on board. (To the point that there are (or were) Damage Control chappies who claim that the greatest risk posed by a fire onboard is sinking)

Compare to ferries and large ROROs. Airframes in the hangar aren’t going to impact on free surface – it’s still free flowing around them.

For sure, and that one was a bit tongue in cheek. The amount of floorspace taken up by relatively skinny tyres on flying things is fairly small.

LOL! :p

Brought that on myself really, eh? 🙂

January 26, 2011 at 12:42 pm in reply to: aircraft carrier design question #2013304

Al.
Participant

What you don’t want in any floaty thing is ‘free surface’.

If wet stuff gets inside it can start moving around and affecting the stability of the ship.

A list (leaning to one side) is a pain but usually not a disaster. A loll* (leaning one way and then leaning the other) is much worse.

The larger a single space is the more free surface one has and the greater the risk of ingress of water creating a loll as it sloshes around.

A hangar is a big open single space, the bigger it is the better for movement and maintenance of airframes but also the greater the risk of loll. I would hope and presume that the Naval Architects and fellow number crunchers have a maximum figure for free surface at that height above the wet stuff for that wetted volume of hull and so the hangar space cannot exceed that value.

Presumably the more airframes stored indoors the less free surface as they take up space. But there must be a happy medium between filling the hangar with metal not water and at the other end having room to move and maintain teh airframes and minimising flammables stored indoors in unsafe conditions

On top of this there are bits which need to be alongside the hanger deck (trunking for power, air, water, other fluids), stores, access, stairs, turbolifts (probably not that one), aircraft elevators, possibly trunking for air supply and exhaust from engines buried in the depths (dependent on how tis powered), and so on. At least some of these will need to pass through the hanger deck level up and down to other decks and so cannot be moved elsewhere.

* note number of ‘l’s before making smart ar$ed comments

January 20, 2011 at 8:14 pm in reply to: £5b Game #2013741

Al.
Participant

Sorry to bust the bubble, but, the Embraer P-99 MPA cannot carry any weapons for ASW or ASuW, its wing is just too close to the ground so there is simply no vertical clearance.

Oh yea of little vision this is a fantasy masked as pragmatism thread. Wingtip torpedo rails, overwing launchers, deploying out of doors, etc there’s a million and one (well half a dozen) ways to make this ‘work’.

Thanks for the info though.

January 18, 2011 at 1:09 pm in reply to: The future of the European fighter industry. #2360599

Al.
Participant

but still, the radome is too small.

It is IFF the pointy end is the only place the designers are going to put AESA elements. However if they decide to use other bits of the airframe for arrays then that tiny front end could be just dandy.

January 16, 2011 at 8:45 pm in reply to: £5b Game #2014034

Al.
Participant

That’s lots of information following my first idea so I’m going to take it at face value and have another stab.

There don’t seem to be hard numbers for new funky UAVs so I’m going to say that they clearly are important but I don’t have info to recommend. Also there is presumabky risk involved in new developments and I worry that that will add expense and delay (and cold feet by Dave and Co.

3 Astutes each at £700mn
SSNs provide ASUW and ASW warfighting capacity and a traditional deterrence (one down South to prevent future cost man and materiel of a second Falklands conflict and shows commitment to FI oil fields and Antarctic natural wealth). Plus 10 SSNs sounds like a nice scary round number

9 low-cost Maritime Patrol at £50mn each
Open tender to C-295 and to Embraer

3 E2Ds at £80mn each
Three is the minimum required to provide proper AEW coverage. In the brave new world we can work with France to pool and upgrade our AEW resources. If older, lower spec (and thus cheaper) E2 models are actually available buy more of them but to the same total cost. I do like the idea of using Vikings mind so again open tender, but anyone responded signs up to fixed price contract.

10 C3s at £140mn each
I take on board the comments raised about having existing patrol hulls. But they are expensive to run and take high end warships away from high end warship tasks. We also have to train our COs and other executive branch before giving them warship and watch.

Grand Total: £5bn on the button

January 14, 2011 at 7:45 am in reply to: counter stealth: the way forward for Europe? #2363788

Al.
Participant

a plane attacking the US is never going to use its radar to look for the F22s at the risk of being detected by its emissions, so what’s the point of making the F22 stealth in the first place? No wonder they stopped manufacturing the thing, as the thing is very expensive and useless.

Not so, the Raptor is not just (‘just’) a home defence fighter, although in the numbers which the USAF has ended up with it may be so costly/valuable that it ends up doing this role. It is an air dominance or air superiority fighter which is meant to go looking for trouble and provide superiority over hostile territory. Which is why I am surprised that the JASDF have looked at buying the Raptor it just doesn’t fit their role. Of course it would very cool in the JASDF colours and would have a deterrence effect (which is the more likely of the two to be reason for its desiribility.

January 13, 2011 at 4:03 pm in reply to: £5b Game #2014287

Al.
Participant

Now that the CAD problems have been nailed and manufacturing has been set up one should be able to nail BAE systems back on cost for another 3 Astutes. To give us 10 total. Another £2.55bn all in, same as the first three should have cost. This gives ConDems time to decide what they want to do about Trident replacement and keeps Barrow in business until that happens avoiding costly loss of capability (and making redundant a load of productive workers).

Sub-total £2.55bn

Agree with Stan Hyd on some P8s

7 at £146mn each

Sub-total £3.572bn

Also agree with him on some C3 corvettes

10 at £140mn each

Grand total £4.972bn

January 12, 2011 at 4:37 pm in reply to: The "plot" to kidnap Hitler… #1088794

Al.
Participant

Cheers Mr

The site plan is A3 so bit difficult to scan and post here.

Fairy Nuff. Home ICT seems to have standardised early and heavy on A4 (or US Letter or US Legal). Anything esle just gets harder and more annoying to deal with

It looks as if the longest runway available was around 2,000 yards.

So Historic buffs how much deck required to land a Condor?

Or even how much to crash land since we wouldn’t need to get the thing airborn again afterwards?
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