Upgrade Sentinels - why bother?
You can’t blame Raytheon for touting for more defence cash –they are in business to make a profit. But Sentinel even with a ‘tweaked’ radar is still just a one sensor platform.
The parliamentary undersecretary of state for defence, Philip Dunne, said that a contract for the development and installation of the maritime-capable software upgrade aboard the Royal Air Force's (RAF's) five aircraft will be signed in spring (Q2) 2015.
I wish they wouldn’t bother, it is going to look as if we have Maritime capability, when in fact we will not.
His statement confirms that there will be no additional equipment saying, “… the upgrade would largely involve modifying the sensor'ssoftware rather than installing new hardware.”
Adding, “This upgrade should enable the Sentinel R.1 to detect surface vessels and potentially submarine periscopes.”
This would give, at best a limited detection capability not an identification of what it had detected.
Then there is the almost meaningless sentence, “Additional sensors could be fitted to further boost the platform's maritime surveillance capability.”
Given the jet’s apparent weight problems they might be able to carry a decent pair of binoculars provided the crew are all on the slim side.
The real value of the Sentinel squadron is that it keeps the manning level in the service ready to be replaced with the next generation of Maritime crews.
The joint Green/Light Blue nature of the squadron could change to a Dark Blue/Light Blue mix when we get whatever we’re getting.
There is no real value in keeping Sentinel after then equipped as it is. Despite all the propaganda, Sentinel is a radar only asset with its roots in an Army Staff Requirement from the 1970’s. It lacks the IR/EO sensor of the MQ-4C Triton, so it still fails in the identification of targets at sea.
We could ask Raytheon to take their radar out and fit amodern long range recce sensor in its place, airborne analysts could use that …but who’s going to pay to replace the Canberra type capability when we have Reaper/Peaper drone things?
There will be no need for a ‘Low-end’ Sentinel to complementany P-8A (or B?) Poseidon. Crowsnest Merlins would do the radar detection Maritime job so much better in areas where long range and persistence is not required.
I was there at the beginning with CASTOR, I wish now that they hadn't bothered ...
Last edited by HAS59; 28th Oct 2014 at 17:24.
Reason: Word spacing