Oz42
OK, I'll expand my opinion further backed up by this recent announcement by IQPC (who get a lot of inside information at their conferences):
The U.K. MoD has recently launched its Scavenger ISTAR requirement with the aim of down-selecting a winning UAV design in 2012. The Scavenger UAV will be optimised for deep and persistent ISTAR beyond the UK’s existing General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper armed UAV. The down-select will, of course, depend on the outcome of the UK’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), which is due to be concluded by September 2010. Scavenger will be a sub-element of a wider ISTAR project, now known as Soloman, but previously entitled Dabinett and intended to improve the analysis and dissemination of intelligence.
BAE Systems plans to offer its Mantis autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for the Scavenger requirement. The sole example of the Mantis UAV has been returned to BAE’s Warton Aerodrome in Lancashire following a series of flight trials in Australia during 2009. BAE Systems is taking part in feasibility studies funded by the MoD into collaborative work on Mantis-class UAVs, with France and Italy as potential Scavenger contenders.
The next phase of Mantis will depend on the Scavenger down-select. It is unlikely that Mantis will fly again because the flight-test programme of the MoD-funded Advanced Concept and Technology Demonstrator (ACTD) project for the system is complete. The Mantis programme involved five mission-representative flights, including a “blind” search to test the system’s ability to find and identify targets at day and night, as well as its ability to track mobile targets. These flights showed that Mantis had the potential to fly missions of up to 36 hours’ endurance.
With the French tie-in I understand that politically the BAE-Dassault thing could effectively be a "done deal".
Great, so we reject all the technology that's available off the shelf and go for a platform that is currently line of sight only (ie. no proven satellite infrastructure), has no demonstrated weapons capability, uses the same engines as the underpowered BN Defender 4000 (RR Model 250s) and to all intents and purposes is no more than an ugly twin-engined Reaper that will probably cost more than twice as much, with half the capability and delivered 15 years after the US version.
I for one do
not want my taxpayers' money potentially propping this up in the same way as we were indirectly told by "Fat Boy Prescott" to buy Hawk 128 AJTs instead of the far more suitable and capable Aeromacchi M-346 - why? Because the aircraft's components were built in his Constituency.
I predict another disaster within the Equipment Program (EP) that will be underperforming, overbudget and late. The upshot of this will be a RAF of less than 25,000 past 2020 when we have to make more servicemen redundant to balance the "defence budgetary books" because we've been told to bail out UK jobs at the expense of our own in the Military. The majority of the bulge in the current EP has been made by cost overuns from Typhoon, MRA4, Type 45, Astute Class, QE/PoW CVFs, etc... (all with BAE written all over them). The net result of these is that UK servicemen will get redundancy notices soon (an estimated 3-5,000 in the RAF) just so that poor old BAE can get a guaranteed revenue stream from the cash-strapped MoD - BAE made a profit of £2.2Bn last year, so my sympathy stops between "sh!t and syphilis".
The thing that really grips me
if the above is true, is that we're paying them (I suspect £Ms) as indicated by the line "
BAE Systems is taking part in feasibility studies funded by the MoD into collaborative work on Mantis-class UAVs, with France", before we've even started or announced the winner of the "
down-select"!
Now compare that to General-Atomics:
“Our company has been uniquely successful in forecasting military needs and delivering extremely capable unmanned aircraft that are ready for near-term military use," says Thomas Cassidy Jr, GA-ASI president. "Just as the first Predator B aircraft were developed and flown on IRAD [Internal Research and Development] funding because we saw the need for this type of capability, likewise, Avenger was developed through foresight and significant company investment.”
Not a penny of US DoD funding has gone into either Predator B (Reaper) or Predator C before the US DoD become a "customer" - how about BAE showing some faith in their Mantis from their £2.2Bn profit? I don't think so!
Just an opinion, but I feel that history may be repeating itself once again...and I was hoping to draw that pension that is starting to look more and more unaffordable.
iRaven