'Thumbs Up' for what it did ... but
" ... ... that's exactly what we bought it for - WP Tanks on the German plains, Iraqi tanks in the desert! ... ..."
Hi 'Tom',
by the time the first one became operational (2008) the threat of hordes of Soviet tanks in the Northwest German plain had diminished.
It had to wait three years to find a job in Afghanistan assisting the mantra of ‘Pattern of Life’ being used as a cue for targetting persistent UAV surveillance.
Was it ‘vital’? It may have been, but this was also a case of ‘we have this, it’s not exactly what it was designed for but it will help’. I know it worked well, thankfully that situation is now behind us.
In Libya I gather that it was able to follow the movement of the battle fairly well.
But without any visual backup – the product was always just a ‘probable’ at best.
Anyway, with the Storm Shadows being programmed in the UK, by the time the jets got to their mobile targets – it wasn’t there.
A bit disappointing but at least they were able to tell the jets not to hit an empty space.
I get what it can do (I know many Int Analysts) I also know what it can’t do.
One problem with it was that the aircraft was too small for the kit.
We needed either lighter kit, fewer racks of kit or a bigger ‘plane.
It would have been an absolutely fabulous system if it had some sort of long range EO capability to make sense of the dots of MTI or the sketchy images of the SAR.
Interestingly the current SAAB GlobalEye has an EO sensor alongside the Maritime radar, which rather confirms the point.
There may be more similarly equipped aircraft in the future.
So when it goes we will lose the capability of broad area radar coverage of large areas of reasonably flat landscapes.
Well I guess the vastly reduced force we now find ourselves will have to learn to live with that.
We may find that some of our allies’ space-based systems will fill some of the capability gap if required.
The Sentinel is going because it is now considered obsolete. It certainly wasn’t useless but it wasn’t perfect either.
If there is to be a new system at some time in the future one hopes that the Operational Requirement will be drawn up by people who fully understand the limits of a radar only aircraft.
I offer my best wishes and good luck to all those who will move on from V(AC) Sqn.
Last edited by HAS59; 3rd Jun 2020 at 15:38.