Given the current economic and political climate, such a proposal would be so obviously doomed that either SecDef or the White House would drop the idea before even got to Congress.

Just a general point: the US sells a lot of military aircraft to other countries – is this always going to be a one-way street? Why can’t the US make some significant purchases from Europe sometimes, to balance up the trade equation?

That’s interesting, I heard there also is a slightly larger (90 m long) version of the Piloto Pardo class on the drawing boards, but I can’t find any data on it.

Do somebody knows where I could find some ? Thank you. 😎

http://www.fassmer.de/english/unternehmen/aktuelles/pressemitteilungen/presse_2008_07.html

Scroll down and you’ll see the specs for the OPV90.

DATE:19/02/10
SOURCE:Flight International
EADS: USAF can buy 118 A400Ms with savings from C-130, C-5 retirements
By Stephen Trimble

EADS North America has offered a plan for the US Air Force to purchase 118 Airbus A400Ms using savings from retiring most Lockheed Martin C-130Hs and all C-5As. The EADS proposal was submitted last year to the Air Mobility Command (AMC) upon their request, says Neil F. Smith, director of A400M programme for EADS NA. The concept proposes to stand-up about eight squadrons of A400Ms within the US mobility force structure, Smith says. “We get a very good reception” at AMC, Smith says.

EADS has been seeking to introduce the A400M in the US market for several years, arguing that the increasing size of ground vehicles has out-grown the box size of Lockheed’s C-130. The A400M features a 3.96m (13ft) cabin diameter, versus the C-130 family’s 2.74m-wide cargo bay. The size difference would allow the army to load an armoured Stryker vehicle on the A400M, Smith says…..

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/02/19/338623/eads-usaf-can-buy-118-a400ms-with-savings-from-c-130-c-5.html

Should be significantly cheaper. The Thales sensor mast on the Dutch Holland class OPVs is more capable, & more expensive, than would seem likely for TSFKAC3. They’re also significantly larger than anything I saw mentioned by the RN in the context of C3.

IIRC, the first four Spanish BAM are costing about 85mn euros each, for a 2500 ton ship with 76mm main gun, hangar big enough for NH90, & a reasonable (but less than the Holland class) sensor suite. P-41 Meteoro being launched

And you can get OPVs for a lot less again: the Chilean/Argentinian/Colombian OPV cost in the region of €25 million.

And before someone says it doesn’t meet the specs, bear in mind that the UK is in deep financial doo-da, and will be for years to come, so the RN should maybe settle for a decent number of Ford Mondeos rather than just one or two Rolls-Royces.:)

You can pretty much bet that the Boeing supporters have a similar chart with criteria selected or shaded to favor them. For example, instead of “fuel load from a 7,000 foot runway”, they might use “number that can be parked on a standard ramp” (the 767 needing less space and can use narrower taxiways and turn areas), which favors them. For the undefined terms “Fleet Effectiveness Value or “Aerial Refueling Mission Effectiveness” they might define those by how many booms you can put in the air for a given price.

That’s why it’s called “PR”.

As to why the development, USAF, needing a lot of tankers, can afford to have certain customizations that a country that only needs 3 to 6 would find cost prohibitive. Also, USAF needs to fill its bombers and cargo planes, most of which can receive fuel at a faster rate than most international fighters, so they may need different capabilities in their boom. Again, feasible if you’re buying bunches.

The definitions of those terms are (from the website mentioned on the graphic):

“Fleet Effectiveness Value is the primary metric the Air Force developed to measure the capability of each competitor. This metric is a combination of mission effectiveness and fleet availability. To determine mission effectiveness, the USAF specified a multi-conflict global scenario that compares the number of KC-135Rs, KC-30s, or KC-767s required to meet refueling demand. The scenario focuses on a broad range of refueling missions and reflects challenging assumptions concerning the parking capacity, runway length and bearing capacity at supporting airfields. USAF models were used in conjunction with the Tanker Analysis Tool and other supporting models to determine the number of full mission-capable aircraft required to meet refueling demands. To factor in fleet availability, the total fleet requirement was obtained by applying mission capability, depot, and training rates. Dividing the resulting number of KC-135s by the number of KC-30s or KC-767s required to do the same job yields the Fleet Effectiveness Value.

Aerial Refueling Mission Effectiveness is a key metric that reflects the inherent refueling capability of each full mission-capable platform. Dividing the number of full mission-capable KC-135s by the number of KC-30s or KC-767s yields this metric, which is also known as KC-135R equivalency. The RAND Corp. used KC-135R equivalency to estimate tanker performance in its Tanker Analysis of Alternatives.”

This SAR deal doesn’t sound so great to me, halving the amount of airframes almost, purchasing s-92’s instead of British built merlins or even aw149’s, i don’t know this companies record, but i can well imagine them not doing some of the missions that RAF/RN SAR do.

I had hoped that the Coastguard would just take over all UK SAR with a new fleet, maybe also having their aircraft fleet upped for longer range SAR, fisheries protection and other task aircraft. Well maybe this will see them using Manston as a base again, so we can rely less on belgium helo’s for rescue in the dover straights.

Any one know what will happen with RAF sar aircraft in the falklands and cyprus?

The Merlin-based proposal was withdrawn from the competition in 2008. It was between the S-92 and the EC225. CHC are already operating SAR S-92s as part of the current contract with the Coastguard.

Oh agreed. We need to decide what is the UKs place in the world. We still have not quite made our mind ups since we handed the keys back on the old empire. We flit around between world policemen, americas best friend, in EU, out EU, support UN, ignore UN, love France, hate France, etc etc A definative decision is required and from that what the UK armed forces should then be designed to do. Cost unfortunately will play a role, what we can afford to do in the world will be an important part of the decision.

The old SDRs expectation of “two Bosnias” or a “Gulf War and a Bosnia” is far too ambitious for the forces we have at present, perhaps always was even in the Halcyon days of 1998 (who would have thought we would say that!).

Well said, this has to be the start point, and people have to be realistic: what level/type of defence is needed/can be afforded? Defending against extreme worst case scenarios is simply not feasible OR it can only be done through some form of alliance. At the moment, British forces are little more than minor add-ons to various American military forces. Would Britain be better off being part of a more integrated European defence alliance, however much this might infuriate the Col. Blimps?