Well then.
Expect the UK to be successfully invaded by Dastardly and Muttley & Co when these are in place.
UK will buy 138 F-35s
Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier confirmed today that the UK will be making a full buy of 138 F-35 fighter jets as planned. The Chief of the Air Staff made his remarks during a keynote speech at the Royal Aeronautical Society's Air Power conference at the RAF Museum Hendon this morning. RAF in future - 2 extra Typhoon …
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Thursday 29th September 2016 12:04 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: Well then.
Dastardly and Muttley & Co - maybe not.
RAF getting their arse handed to them on a plate by any 2nd world air power in possession of a recent batch of Russian or Chinese aircraft and Russian or Chinese AA - quite likely.
140 aircraft at standard maintenance, training, purchase schedules equates to < 100 combat ready units which in turn (assuming half stays at home) is < 50 deployable. Most countries with modern AA and recently modernized air-force can deal with that.
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Thursday 29th September 2016 11:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Colonisation by those characters with snow on their boots
Only if the Russkies are unsporting enough to invade before we're ready, in 2023.
If the UK was serious about the Defence of the Realm, then we wouldn't have scrapped our entire fixed wing maritime patrol aircraft fleet five years ago. The UK defence strategy can be summarised as "get the Americans to bail us out". Even the much lauded nuclear deterrent is totally reliant upon missiles that are owned and maintained by the US.
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Thursday 29th September 2016 15:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Colonisation by those characters with snow on their boots
>If the UK was serious about the Defence of the Realm, then we wouldn't have scrapped our entire fixed wing maritime patrol aircraft fleet five years ago.
Unfortunately the Nimrods were literally falling apart as the airframes and equipment had been flogged to death. They needed withdrawing before they killed any further aircrew.
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Friday 30th September 2016 13:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Colonisation by those characters with snow on their boots
Unfortunately the Nimrods were literally falling apart as the airframes and equipment had been flogged to death. They needed withdrawing before they killed any further aircrew.
Regardless of the details, an island nation needs maritime patrol aircraft.
If they were "literally falling apart", perhaps the Government should have replaced them instead of deciding to spend $3.5 billion upgrading them in the first place. When costs of the upgrade programme escalated, the Government then scrapped them, and without bothering with a replacement. Now, when required to search for shipwreck survivors, or Russian submarines, the RAF has to use a Hercules transport carrying an airman with a pair of binoculars.
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Thursday 29th September 2016 14:55 GMT Nick Collingridge
Pathetic - the F35Bs are wrong in so many ways. Excessively expensive (and that's an understatement) and their much-vaunted "stealth" capability pretty much redundant using IR detection which is the new standard for long-range detection.
The only reason we're buying the B variant which is much less capable than the A (land) or C (ship) is because the MOD totally screwed up the carrier purchases by not ensuring that they really were cat/trap capable which had always been part of the spec. So we have to buy the B variant because otherwise they would not be able to operate from the carriers.
As far as the RAF purchases are concerned we would be much better off just using the Typhoon which is just as capable, much faster and a much better dogfighter than the F35 will ever be.
A monumental screw-up and a vast waste of public money. And it leaves us worse protected than we would be if we had instead specified the carriers with cats/traps, bought the Rafale (or added hooks to the Typhoon), and bought more Typhoon for the RAF.
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Thursday 29th September 2016 19:58 GMT Sandtitz
"Typhoon which is just as capable, much faster and a much better dogfighter than the F35 will ever be."
Is dogfighting still a thing? I though modern dogfighting would be to fire the missiles beyond visual range at 100+ km away (or whatever the range of AA missiles these days) and resume watching the radar for next blip or let the AWACS planes and ground systems help in finding targets.
This is an honest question, I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong there.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
