That makes no sense? Why would a F35 fly into afganistan with no external ordinance? Thats right it would roll in loaded with external bombs as well… no need for stealth in that kinda war.

Nope. What you need is the beautiful (ahem) A10.

CDG has some inherent design flaws IMO (I’m still jealous that our nearest neighbour has a nuclear flat top in service and a proper AEW mind)

If the reactor, propulsion shafts, flight deck length (and in my view area of flight deck) could be solved. Then maybe. All this work to correct CDG might lead to our gallic chums buying a second one as well so that’s 4 full-size flat tops for the EU.

If we were buying (in Alternative World tm) two CDG then presumably we’d buy Marinised Rafael as well rather than F-18?

What offsets would we expect the French to buy from UK sources? Astutes?!

The technical superiority of OV10 have already been outlined (hence me being content with ‘plus one’)

As against the Tuccano or super Tuccano or mega Tuccano it ALSO has the advantage of being US owned and built. Firstly – in a recession you do not want to send government funds overseas and fund overseas jobs and profit. Secondly and linked to the above any decision to buy from overeas in current climate is going to be longer and costlier to defend and implement.

Marinised two-seat all-weather A10 please.

Although presumably the Indonesians think that dedicated ground-attack version of Hawk is good for COIN as that’s the plane they bought for killing their own people.

Every single Eurofighter fan will tell you their Sopwith Camel had 90% of the F-22s capabilities in 1918. After all…its British.

Good use of hyperbole and probably a valid point. However its not just us amateur (and in some cases, but not mine professional) fanboys who think that Typhoon is a bit more than Raptor-fodder.

I don’t think that ANYONE seriously says that they think that Raptor is bobbins or that they didn’t wish that it or an exact equivalent was available at a price which allowed THEIR air force to have them. But some us look at the price differential and capability differential and think ‘meh Typhoon’ll do for us‘

For myself I latch onto the programme problems with Raptor for one simple reason. It is the bigger, badder, streamlined and streamlined role brother to the warplane which is going to form the backbone of my nation’s airarms AND those of all of my nation’s allies. If Raptor has issues this infers that the MORE complex JSF has. And that is a BIG worry.

Again we come to differentials if JSF’s performance differential is based on technologies with (potential or realised) problems then would we do better to take a solution which is weaker on paper but significantly cheaper, more reliable, less reliant on flay technoogies and with lower maintenance overheads? (That last bit is a question not a taunt as I don’t know the answer)

This is just a question…don’t throw stuff…

Any chance (or logic) of abolishing the FAA to save money?
Since the fixed wing types seem to be RAF aircraft, why not do a “Canada” and merge the forces?

Its an interesting question in’t it? Especially as (in common with others) UK got an RAF as a planned merger of and successor to FAA and AAC.

Historically the crabfats have not taken either fleet aviation or Army support seriously being much more interested in big bomb dropping things (now sadly defunct) and small, shiny, fast things.

How many (current) generations of serving penguins would we have to retire before the RAF took their Army and Navy support roles seriously?

Aren’t FAA helicopters sub-marks of Army and RAF types?
Might save a few million in overhead a year.

I’ve never quite understood the logic in buying two very small orders of similar types rather than one small-medium order of an identical type. There seems to be an inbuilt flaw in politico and military circles to think that ‘just‘ fiddling with a design a little bit will provide huge savings which will massively outweigh the extra R+D, proving, testing and loss of economy of scale.

UK purchase of marinised AH64 struck me as a very rare spot of common sense. Doing so allows Bootnecks and pongoes to have access to the same pool of gunships AND allows pongoes to transport their gunships by sea without worrying about them rotting away.

If ALL medium utility helos, ALL heavy helos and ALL STOVL fast jets were a common design then the economies of scale and flexibility would I would have thought save big bucks as well. (On a similar note why did MN and AdA have TWO versions of Rafaele? A single common version potentially offers big savings in procurement, spares and other logistics. Even the mighty US suffers with this they are still procuring various models of UH60 in dribs and drabs and JSF is stretching teh definition of joint to breaking point).

Iran receive help from USSR, did they? I don’t think Iran got much from the USSR, relations between the two countries weren’t very good at the time.

Gosh I stand corrected. I was typing away under the burden of a rather large assumption. A quick phonecall to mate with rather more knowledge of the Middle East than me and am now armed with knowledge that if anything USSR in fact supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. Relations between Iraq and USSR ‘weren’t very good‘ indeed!