Tish!

The Falklands is not defenceless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_Falkland_Islands

Knowing BAE Systems...

... Yes, they probably have gotten rid of the tooling and sold it for scrap.

Why would they *need* to buy parts anytime soon? The Marines just got an entire boot full of spares, including airframes, which will see them in service for years and years - You surely don't expect BAE to keep tooling around for production lines which will sit idle whilst the Marines churn through the decade or more of spares they now have on hand, do you?

Err

How can he be anti RAF and anti RN when if he had his way the author seemingly would have these aircraft flying with said organisations?

Given their capabilities; and the fact we now need to rely upon the French of all people for carrier capability perhaps it's not the register that's anti RAF and RN; but the current government.

Brain Washing in evidence

Whilst, in my opinion, Lewis is very good for a defence correspondant, there are times when evidence of the RN intake course brain washing do appear.

There are a number of items in the article, that whilst true, and have been put out of context, and hence do not represent a balance apprasial.

For example the take off conditions apply to all fixed wing operations, from cessna to C-5 Galaxy. The problems become more pronounced at altitude and tempretature, especially in dry cliemts due to changes in air density.

Air Density is also an adverse factor in helo and VTOL ops as well.

Poor air density basically means your aircraft has to go faster and/or carry less in order to generate the required lift (i.e. lift greater than weight)

nope

"Forcing myself to look further than Lewis' traditional Light Blue/Dark Blue rant I found myself asking the question "Will the US Marines even bother to order off the initial production run of F-35s?"..."

No - they'll probably get obama to get cameron to buy the intial, very expensive, run so they can buy them cheaper in the 2020's...

Don't know if the US will sucker Britain, but they got Harper in Canada. Harper never met a military expenditure he didn't love, and his purchase of F-35's will cost Canada for decades to come.

Sure, but only a handful for testing purposes

instead of a heftier order for actual use.

Now if we can just get you guys to buy the initial run of F35s.....

Which part of "lock, stock and barrel" made you think it's about a conoisseur's selection?

What are the contract terms?

Given the effeciency of central stores, I expect in 10 years time, they will find enough Harrier parts to build at least ONE whole aircraft.

If truthful, we are likely to say, "here are all the bits we could find"., when we hand them over to USMC.

makes it interesting on whether we will be in breach of contract for that

Difference

As we non-flyers at Wittering used to say:

How do you tell the difference between an RN and an RAF Harrier?

The RAF one still whines when the engine's shut down.

The marines would never sit smugly.

They will of course give you a very loud Hooo-yaaaah! as they thank their lucky stars that for a change their second hand equipment is first rate quality.

Missing The Point (of no return)

The point here is that the runway IS short but we are forced to operate an aircraft that really requires a longer one at that altitude to take off safely, without endangering the airframe in the case of a late take-off abort.

We USED to have one designed specifically to take off on short runways, so ideal to operate from that strip in at least the close air support role...

Missing other bits

"We USED to have one designed specifically to take off on short runways, so ideal to operate from that strip in at least the close air support role.."

The harrier, as designed, in the CAS role was suppose to operate forward with the troops, we can't secure forward operating bases, due to lack of relevant troops, and frequently local topography.

The harrier goes slower, so it eventually turns up.

It carries a fraction of the payload, thus the totality of what can be delivered before crawling back to base, is less than any other aircraft we except a Hawk or Tucanno.

The harrier due to limited ordance capacity, therefore can not carry the range of muntion that a larger aircraft can, hence reducing the options available to the troops on the ground.

The harrier has one crew, the tornado has 2 crew, this means the guy on the ground gets to talk to somebody who only has to be concerned with hiting the right target, not overloaded with that and keeping his complex jet in the air, and not in the mountains.

That said the Harrier has it's place in a well rounded air capability, if the government chose to spend the money to maintain that capabiity.

yeah but...

...where were they when the goverment(s) ran up almost a trillion quid in debt?

Beancounter = incompetent muppets with a tenious grasp of the real world, if you ask me...

Beancounters wreck the world, one bean at a time, but Air Forces destroy (friendly) bags of beans at a time. The only common enemy is the Air Force., and that applies on both sides of the pond.

Since Great Britain is in effect a giant Aircraft Carrier, I don't understand why the RAF just doesn't get folded into the Royal Navy. (other than Politics and Air Force plays that better than Army and Navy everytime...) Unless there is a European war again, the RAF will be on the sidelines while the US, French, and Italian navies pick up the slack.

The US Air Force is just as bad, and stealing funds from Army and Navy, when the Army and Navy are first responders, and the Air Force has to fly halfway around the world to get anywhere. In the US's case, the Air Force needs folded BACK into the Army (which is who they actually work for) to stop the budgetary madness.

Re: operating air power via other arms.

"Since Great Britain is in effect a giant Aircraft Carrier, I don't understand why the RAF just doesn't get folded into the Royal Navy. "

Given the history of how the sea captain led navy consider air power, the decision in 1918 to create the RAF is why you don't speak german.

If the RN had been in charge we would of have entered WW2 with old out of date biplanes (what was on our carriers at the time?)

Given modern naval warfare, destroyers are targets, carriers are combat vessels, the RN chose to loose the carriers, and keep their career promotion prospects, by keeping more hulls in the form of useless destroyers and frigates, rather than a fewer number of useful carrier hulls.

beg pardon

but there were no 'old, out of date' biplanes aboard RN carriers in 1939-45. There were _new_ biplanes (Fairey Swordfish, and later, Fairey Albacore) torpedo bombers; the RN retired the last of its Gloster Sea Gladiator fighters just before the war. The RAF flew Gladiators in combat (Battle of Britain, and air defence of Malta; okay, Faith, Hope and Charity were Sea Gladiators, but were flown by RAF crews and were the sole air defence of Malta for a considerable time...) (here's a pic of Faith <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ZZZ_003915_E_Gladiator.jpg>) but the RN had all metal monoplane fighters (Blackburn Roc, Fairey Fulmar, so not very good fighters...) The Swordfish was speced in the mid 1930s, and actually performed well. It was the single number one best anti-dreadnought weapon in the ETO, killing several Italian battleships and damaging others at various points, mostly in Taranto harbour, and getting three hits on BISMARCK... two of which were inconsequential, and one of which jammed the rudders and doomed the ship. The primary anti-aircraft guns on BISMARCK, the twin 105-mm quick-firing guns, were controlled by the very best electro-mechanical computers then available (Hoo-rah! IT content!) which made them very accurate... except that someone on shore had figured that modern aircraft flew at 150 knots or better, and the fire-control computers couldn't track anything slower. The max speed of a Swordfish was 120 knots (if someone got out and pushed) so they literally flew too slowly to be shot at by the 105s. The hand-held 37-mm and 20-mm guns were much less accurate.

When the Swordfish stopped being a front-line torpedo-bomber (partially due to the shortage of German or Italian major surface combatants to torpedo...) they did excellent anti-submarine work, again thanks to their very low speed. The Albacore, which was supposed to replace the Swordfish, had an enclosed cockpit and was faster... and much less liked, and was phased out in favor of... the Swordfish. (The less said about the Barracuda, the better.) Swordfish were still flying anti-submarine and air-sea-rescue operations at the end of the war. (Just not doing it where there was any chance of encountering hostile aircraft...)

Please don't disparage some of the best British aircraft of the 1939-45 war.

Swordfish? It was just luck.

The Swordfish was able to attack German and Italian ships only because of the total lack of air protection of those ships. If German or Italy had something like Japan had, Swordfish would have been destroyed on their ships decks, and not one would had dropped a torpedo against a target. Look at what happened to the torpedo bombers at Midway, while approaching heavily protected ships without figther protection.

While Japan was able to sink two british battle ship using planes alone, the Swordfish was just able to damage the Bismark in daylight combat. Taranto was a better strike, but it required the night and surprise to keep planes safe enough. Probably it was the right plane to conduct such an attack. That's why it was also a good anti-submarine plane. It has to fly lolw and slow, and submarines don't have CAPs. Anyway, Italian "maiali" was able to inflict more or less the same damage to British battleships with even less resources, just I would not call them great weapons, just the lucky ones in a surprise attack.

Out of date tech and the consequences

The swordfish was designed with 1920's tech and delivered in the mid-30's, in a period of technical change in combat aircraft where last year's design was a coffin with wings.

The achievments of the RN using the swordfish say more about the igenuity of certain commanders, the skill and courage of the crews, the operating environment, and some serious amounts of luck. (such as with the bismark)

To see what we could have had on carriers, one can look at the USN's Dauntless, japan's Nakajima B5N.

the following is the citation for Lieutenant Commander Esmonde's VC

""On 12 February 1942 in the Straits of Dover, off England, Lieutenant Commander Esmonde led his squadron of six Swordfish to the attack of two German battle cruisers the Scharnhorst and the cruiser Prinz Eugen, which were entering the Straits strongly escorted by surface craft. Detached from their escorting fighters (just 10 in number) by enemy fighters, all the aircraft of the squadron were damaged, but even after Lieutenant-Commander Esmonde's plane sustained a direct hit he still continued the run-in towards his target until it burst into flames and crashed into the sea. The squadron went on to launch a gallant attack, but none of the six aircraft returned".

this kind tells you what the swordfish's operational chances where when the other side where prepared, and the sheer guts it took to go anyway.