Hi ORAC,
I was listening to a Parliamentary Select Committee meeting that raised the issue of carrier borne UAV's. A retired Air vice Marshall was advocating these aircrafct as the future but the Navy was saying to launch a UAV with anything like a decent payload will require catapult launch and arrestor wire recovery. Wed have neither.
The Air Marshall was adamant we can use drones for surveillance and i am sure he is correct but can we launch a UAV with enough fuel and the required payload from a ship and also recover it?
I have seen plenty of small UAV's launched from ships but these latest aircraft are huge and getting bigger. I have always maintained that this choice of carrier is and was bonkers, we cannot launch these larger UAV's and even with what we have, we will also not be able to recover them unless we use a crash net.
The RAF are adamant we can, they are adamanat we can cope without MPA, the Navy are saying we are overstretched and are in what appears to be total disagreement, they want MPA, they also wanted the conventional carrier.
My thoughts are that the Navy stars that are in disagreement will be replaced with folks that say the words that want to be heard.