Originally Posted by
XL189
I've heard it has a lot of "repurposed" old kit from the Sea King. Just how much life can you expect to squeeze out of kit that is 30+ years old?
While the RN only endorsed a quite minor upgrade to the AEW Mk2 (with Fleet embodiment planned over a single week-end, with no training necessary), what became the AEW Mk7 and then ASaC Mk7 went way beyond this. I'd be more worried about the older and less capable kit that's retained from Merlin. Many tend to think of 'ASaC Mk7' as being the radar (which is indeed old but it was a political decision to retain it), but that was actually a quite minor part of the programme, both in technical and financial terms. What I'd be most concerned about is the (reported) failure to appreciate systems integration (and hence functional safety) is quite important. My view is that if any company seeks to extracate itself from this obligation (as happened on Mk7), they should be struck from the list of approved contractors. Thank goodness Westland and GEC-Marconi were around to do the work.