Originally Posted by
betty swallox
Jackonicko
Why are you "less and less impressed"?
1) Cost
2) the inability to use anything but Size A buoys
3) Lack of MAD - still a useful confirmation sensor
4) Comparing the OEW with MTOW makes me suspect that payload/range will not be as impressive as the brochure suspects
5) I wonder whether the emphasis on (unproven) high altitude delivery of weapons and buoys is a matter of choice or whether it has been forced on the USN by platform limitations - fuel consumption, a relatively wide turn radius, fatigue, engine placement, etc.?
6) Lack of a 360 degree radar
7) Programmatically - the failure to integrate U.K. Weapon and buoy stocks - especially Stingray.
8) will demand massive investment in airfield infrastructure
9) fleet size. Two carriers, four SSBNs and a major maritime trading nation, with vital fisheries and EEZs and we're getting 9.Nine. Japan plans to get 70 P-1s.
10) I remain profoundly sceptical that one can accurately put a pattern of buoys in the water from FL nosebleed
I am sure that the P-8 will be a great maritime ISR platform, which is after all 90% of what the aircraft will do. In peacetime.
But I hear that a very senior Purple fellow revealed that the P-8 was not placed first in terms of ASW capability when the UK assessed competing MPAs.
And someone expressed the view that for ASW, alone and unafraid, he'd take an MRA4 over the P-8, while others aver that the P-8 "simply isn't an improvement over Nimrod...."