Lybid said:
I hear the UK C-17s have exceeded their expensive lease hours and are now presumably in the 'even more expensive' category so the MOD is following the most cost-effective airlift solution for Afghanistan and chartering An124s..... Hmmmmm..
You hear wrong; the C17 has not exceeded the lease hours yet - even the RAF contract team couldn't have bought so few hours that we could burn 5 years' worth in a year! UK PLC is still well within the hours already bought on the lease. However, it is true to say that they are operating well over their target because demand for their capability is so high and, that as a result, the bought hours are not going to last anywhere near the five years of the lease. Not even close.
The number of hours burnt also has nothing to do with the decision to charter An-124s. That call is because the total tonnage of frt needed to sustain so many peacekeepers, an increasingly significant war fighting force and maintain APOD/FMBs for ourselves and other nations - remember that we are still the lead nation - is so high that there is no way that the 4 ac of 99 Sqn could achieve it. In fact, with more personnel, 99 Sqn could increase the flow rate and PJHQ would gladly take the additional lift at the expense of the charter companies who are charging a fortune - more than the C-17 costs per kg delivered!
Also:
Would be interested to know just how many sorties and with what payload the C-17 has operated?
The other interesting issue was that when the RAF was only prepared to operate into the area with C130 K with full DAS, they were chartering An124's and asking those untrustworthy Ukrainians and Russians who are such a political risk to put their lives and aeroplanes on the line operating into the same destinations.
And a grand job they have made of it too....
Unfortunately, whilst I know the answers to both of those questions only too well, I have not yet seen them in the public domain and so can't share them with you. If I see the figures accurately reported somewhere, I will be only too happy to cross-post to here. However, the bulk of the UK deployment has not been by An-124, but by a variety of RAF AT, C-17 included. Please remember that a lot of the An-124 flights in to theatre have been for other ISAF contributing nations. I'd happily believe that the bulk of the total airlift has been by An-124, but I KNOW that this is not the case for the UK kit.
As for the DAS issue - the charter companies are commercial concerns and both hiked their prices through the roof for this job, figuring the risk to their employees is worth the profit to their bosses. Also, because of the most adavanced nav kit on the charter An-124s over Afghanistan being a window, they demanded day slots so that they could find the airfield, as did a number of the other nations. The night slots were all that the UK was left with for a time and unsurprisingly, the ac with the best nav kit are also the ones with DAS. Further than that I'm not willing to discuss on an open forum.