Originally Posted by
muppetofthenorth
I standby to be corrected, but I think I remember reading somewhere of an out of service date of 2021 for the Vikings, by which point they'll be 36/37 years old.
I'm not sure whether they've had any substantial work completed on them to give another 10 years of life.
I thought the original OSD was based on the expected Fatigue Life. On the basis that the fatigue life has been hardly used, and the fact that all the returned airframes have had in depth inspections I think it's not an unreasonable expectation that the OSD might move back 10 years to 2029.
The sensible play now would be to order K-21's on a basis of 5 - 8 a year and re-equip 1 school per year on a rolling programme. My choice would be the ASK21Mi which could be winch launched and then used for extended training but also later on only for the circuit phase.
It'll never happen of course.
Arc