Not trying to be funny but shouldn’t this thread be in the commercial aviation section, since it was a commercial flight? That way people can examine the failures in civil aviation that led to its downing.

The flaw being the labelling of the Ukrainian govt as neo-fascist. Just look at who supports its opponents: a roll call of Europe’s neo-fascist organisations.

Yeah right. Ukrainians may have sided with the Nazis in WWII because they hated Russians but that doesn’t explain why they made a 10% contribution to the Jewish holocaust. Or why the first thing the new government did was ban Russian and Greek as official languages, or why one MP called for the eradication of ethnic Russian and native Russian speakers. Or why 2,000 Eastern Ukrainian civilians have been killed with nearly 300,000 displaced.

2. Long term- The QEC will lose the ability to operate the UCAVs that are on the drawing board. This is a considerable sacrifice. People seem to be fixating on the AEW aspect. If this was a serious consideration for the RAF, the Boeing has already been pushing a AEW version of the V-22 with the Thales Cerberus mission system & searchwater radar on a pallet (with possible refueling pallet also available). The F-35B will also have to stay relevant for CAP and interception duties for the 30-45 year life expectancy of the carriers, which may be a tall order with the USN already pursuing a sixth-gen fighter.

That’s a valid point. However UCAVs are lighter than regular fighters and have a relatively huge wing area, so perhaps some kind of STOBAR system will work, or it may be that in 15 years time we revisit the cats and cables question having saved a lot of money in the interim. Maybe we’ll see a STOBAR Mantis AEW.

I’m hundred percent with you on this. So, why build 2 Carriers and buy F-35 ?

Falklands, contribution to NATO, ad hoc conflict zones against tin-potters, sea war against none carrier equipped navies, anti-pirate duties etc.

depends, ship born AEW is not essential if the ambition is to strike colonies,
but it is if you are going up against China/Russia, or any other potent OPFOR,
your saving grace in Falklands was that Argentina almost only had iron bombs vs ships

Actually they had Exocets if I remember correctly. Such a scenario would be dealt with by flying land-based AEW sorties from Ascension Island and/or flying regular CAP sorties.

Russia/China – this is where you have to be realistic:

1) We’re not likely to be invading them;

2) Any realistic scenario would be a NATO matter;

3) Any realistic scenario would be centred around places where there are nearby land bases, e.g. Eastern Europe, Middle-East, East Asia. Obviously I’m making assumptions about South Korea and Japan etc. being on our side in the matter;

4) Russia and China have only one carrier each.

I guess it’s a case of whether you’re planning based on defending interests or global domination. The latter would require octupling the defence budget, so it’s not really realistic and there are obviously some moral issues too.

How’s the car theft going over there in the North West?

None existent.

;):highly_amused:;):highly_amused:

Last time I checked, Liverpool and Manchester were in the North West.

@lukos: if the ship uses its radar, -as it has to without an AEW,
then it follows that the MPA can detect and pinpoint the location of that ship passively far out of range of the ships radar,
and possibly out of range of interceptors even.
these MPA arent the attackers, they then direct assets with the info.

In most cases for aircraft vs aircraft that would apply both theoretically and in practice. But the truth is that naval radars are so frickin’ large that it’s only a theoretical advantage. It’s a theoretical advantage that the curvature of the Earth and practical conflict ranges will null into uselessness in practice. I’ve heard it said that either Artisan or S1850 (I forget which) can theoretically detect a 747 over New York from anchor in Plymouth.

As regards pinpointing, pin-pointing, or even localising AESA isn’t easy. I’d wager that the complexity of the the number of waveforms naval AESA can throw out would vastly overwhelm most MPA ELINT systems. Taking Spectra’s so called ‘pin-pointing’ as an example, it is 0.5deg, which is about +/-1km left or right at 100km. At 1,000km, it’s +/-10km. Not really any good for targeting, assuming you even have AShMs with that range and aren’t intercepted by then.

Here, some information on MPA ESM.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmdfence/110/110vw10.htm

3.8 Shipping Surveillance (ASuW)

3.8.1 In this role wide-area surveillance is carried out to build up a picture of surface vessels. The main sensors used are the radar and ESM. A UAV can fly a pre-determined route to gather data to build up a surface picture, but the data-gathering is only the first part of the process.

3.8.2 To make use of ESM data in real time requires constant manipulation of tracks (see figure 1) by the Operator in order to filter out the many spurious tracks that are produced and to direct the ESM search strategy. This is the case for all ESM systems in use world-wide. A massive amount of data would need to be transferred from the UAV for use by the remote Operator. Commands for the change in mode of the ESM would need to be sent back to the UAV in a timely manner.

3.8.3 An example of the picture that is typically seen by the ESM operator is shown in figure 1. There are just 3 radar targets, but there are many tracks and location fixes seen on the Operators screen. The experienced Operator can look at the parameters associated with each track to make sense of the situation.

Figure 1

TYPICAL PICTURE SEEN BY ESM OPERATOR

If OTOH the carrier came with AEW, so the ship can stay silent,
then the MPA has to get comparatively on top of the frickin ship while using search radar,
meaning easy prey for interceptors

It comes with 40-50 F-35s with APG-81 that has a detection range of several hundred km against 1m^2 targets. I’m guessing detection range against an MPA would be so frickin’ high that it renders AEW pointless and together they can cover so much sky, that again, the money naval AEW would cost can be better spent, especially when you have long-range land-based AEW to cover you in times of need and OTH radar and satellites for early detection.

How small do you think a carrier is? It doesn’t do particularly well at hiding from detection even when passive, it’s like trying to hide a town.

As regards UK MPAs, you may have read that we have shed loads of helicopters. Whilst relatively short ranged, you can carry 2 on each destroyer and 1 (2 on future Type 26) on each frigate, as well as dozens on helicopter carriers and aircraft carriers, which kind of makes up for it. The only thing extra that the Nimrod would definitely have brought is the potential to be used as a strategic bomber, which wasn’t discussed very much.

I am aware of the use of OTH, which is why I pointed out it wont pinpoint anything.
Perhaps it wasn’t your intention to imply that the ship would pinpoint the MPA using OTH. It is however how I read it.

My point was only that modern LOS ship radar will pinpoint an MPA as soon as the MPA can see it. MPAs aren’t small and ship radars typically have huge power and huge aperture. As soon as an MPA sees an aircraft carrier it will already have fighters on the way out to greet it. It’s not really a great move using MPAs against aircraft carriers. Submarines on the other hand, fair enough.

Carrier AEW may be smaller and may be less capable, however it is still a valued asset don’t forget it is expected to operate in a different environment (I don’t just mean at sea) to land based AEW.

It’s a nice to have definitely but the only reason I don’t see it as essential is that you can buy more, larger, longer-ranged land-based AEW and use them to fill the gap with the money saved. And/or run more fighter flights – the APG-81 is obviously very capable. There is also a huge question over the effectiveness of AEW against stealth fighters, when compared to the larger longer wavelength ship-bourne radars.

MRA4 would have been fantastic if it was based on a different airframe (say perhaps a B737). New build Nimrods would have still required massive redesign to bring them up to modern airworthiness standards, one hopes somebody would have had the foresight to lengthen it as well. The biggest scandal regarding MRA4 is that it wasn’t chopped circa 2005 (or earlier)

Maybe but the Comet design did actually have some advantages in the sub-hunting roll. The wing-housed engines were extremely quiet relative to a 737 and less likely to be detected by a submarine. I’m not sure why making it longer would help. If they took the intended fuselage design and built the aircraft from scratch based on that one design, I don’t foresee any issues. The only thing I would probably change is the IFR probe setup – that was a bad job. A VC-10 could also be a candidate.