Jeremy Clarkson's View on the Procurement of Typhoon!
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Jeremy Clarkson's View on the Procurement of Typhoon!
Just been reading, 'The World According To Jeremy Clarkson' and found this part well worth a read for a giggle:
Is It a Plane? No, It's a Flying Vegetable.
April 2001
So, the Bubbles have cancelled their order for 60 Eurofighters, saying they need the money to pay for the Olympic Games. Well, thanks Mr Polopolos thats just great.
Eurofighter could, and should, have been a shining example of Pan-European cooperation. One in the eye for Uncle Sam. The greatest ground-attack (eventually) ‘mud-mover’ the world has ever seen. But instead it will stand for ever more as a beacon, showing the world that a federal superstate can never work this side of the Atlantic.
The Idea for such a place was first hatched back in the early 70’s when Britain realised that it would soon need a land based fighter bomber to replace the Jaguar and Tornado F3. We couldn’t design such a machine by ourselves because we were on a three-day week at the time, so we went to see the French and the Germans.
The French said they already had a fighter, the Mirage, and therefore only needed a bomber which could be used on aircraft carriers. The Germans said they didn’t need a bomber since, for once, they weren’t planning on bombing anyone. They needed a fighter and they absolutely were not interested in this aircraft carrier business as they didn’t have any.
Obviously the whole thing was never going to work, so in the spirit of what was to come, the three countries did the sensible thing, signed a deal and went home to come up with the preliminary studies.
Now, to understand the hopelessness of the position, I would like you to imagine that they were not designing a warplane but a vegetable. So Britain came up with the potato, France designed a stick of celery and Germany did a lobster thermidor. The project was dead.
But not for long. From nowhere, the Italians and Spanish suddenly decided that they wanted a piece of the action and, flushed with the idea of these extra complications, a new contract was drawn up.
It was ever so straightforward. The amount of work, and therefore jobs, given to each country would depend on how many of the fighters they would buy. That was fair but, not to the French it wasn’t. The wanted one plane, fifty percent of the work and total control, and when they were told to get lost they did.
Then disaster, the Berlin wall fell over and all of a sudden European governments lost the will to spend trillions on a plane that would have nobody to fight. The Air forces also realised that a highly manoeuvrable, Mach 2, dogfighting jet would have no place in the new world order. So, it was agreed by everyone to keep going.
Germany and Britain were going to take 250 jets each, which is why they each had 33 percent of the workload. But in the recession on 1992 our government dropped it’s order to 232 jets and the Luftwaffe to just 140 but, the Germans insisted that it kept its share of the work. When everyone else kicked up a fuss, it threatened to pull out.
Fearful that the pack of cards was about to come tumbling down, the Italians and Spanish went to lunch and the British got tough, immediately giving in to the Germans.
However, the delay had thrown up a new problem, the name of the jet. All along it had been called Eurofighter 2000, but by 1994 it was obvious that it could be operational until 2001 at the earliest. So it became the Typhoon, which conjures up images of devastation and death.
Well, don’t get your hopes up. You see, Tony Blair recently decided that the plane’s missiles should be British rather than American. Good call, but the British weaponry won’t be available until eight years after the jet goes into service. So, what are the pilots supposed to do in the meantime, make rude gestures?
That said though, I have talked to various authoritative sources over the past year who have said that it is widely thought that the Typhoon will be become the worlds best fighter-bomber. It is desperately easy to fly and at £50 million a pop it is also cheap. To put that in perspective, each new USAF F22 Rapror will cost £115 million.
So Typhoon is something about which Europe can be justifiably proud. Should the Russians ever decide to invade, we will have exactly the right sort of fire power to hold them back.
However, for dealing with sundry world leaders in far-flung parts of the globe, what really need are aircraft carriers. Britain has just ordered 2 and there was talk of modifying Typhoon to become precisely what the French wanted 30 years ago. But presumably it was too much of an effort. So what have we done? Well, in a perfect spirit of European cooperation, we have teamed up with the Americans to build something called the Joint Strike Fighter [Dave]. Thank you, Europe and goodnight.
Is It a Plane? No, It's a Flying Vegetable.
April 2001
So, the Bubbles have cancelled their order for 60 Eurofighters, saying they need the money to pay for the Olympic Games. Well, thanks Mr Polopolos thats just great.
Eurofighter could, and should, have been a shining example of Pan-European cooperation. One in the eye for Uncle Sam. The greatest ground-attack (eventually) ‘mud-mover’ the world has ever seen. But instead it will stand for ever more as a beacon, showing the world that a federal superstate can never work this side of the Atlantic.
The Idea for such a place was first hatched back in the early 70’s when Britain realised that it would soon need a land based fighter bomber to replace the Jaguar and Tornado F3. We couldn’t design such a machine by ourselves because we were on a three-day week at the time, so we went to see the French and the Germans.
The French said they already had a fighter, the Mirage, and therefore only needed a bomber which could be used on aircraft carriers. The Germans said they didn’t need a bomber since, for once, they weren’t planning on bombing anyone. They needed a fighter and they absolutely were not interested in this aircraft carrier business as they didn’t have any.
Obviously the whole thing was never going to work, so in the spirit of what was to come, the three countries did the sensible thing, signed a deal and went home to come up with the preliminary studies.
Now, to understand the hopelessness of the position, I would like you to imagine that they were not designing a warplane but a vegetable. So Britain came up with the potato, France designed a stick of celery and Germany did a lobster thermidor. The project was dead.
But not for long. From nowhere, the Italians and Spanish suddenly decided that they wanted a piece of the action and, flushed with the idea of these extra complications, a new contract was drawn up.
It was ever so straightforward. The amount of work, and therefore jobs, given to each country would depend on how many of the fighters they would buy. That was fair but, not to the French it wasn’t. The wanted one plane, fifty percent of the work and total control, and when they were told to get lost they did.
Then disaster, the Berlin wall fell over and all of a sudden European governments lost the will to spend trillions on a plane that would have nobody to fight. The Air forces also realised that a highly manoeuvrable, Mach 2, dogfighting jet would have no place in the new world order. So, it was agreed by everyone to keep going.
Germany and Britain were going to take 250 jets each, which is why they each had 33 percent of the workload. But in the recession on 1992 our government dropped it’s order to 232 jets and the Luftwaffe to just 140 but, the Germans insisted that it kept its share of the work. When everyone else kicked up a fuss, it threatened to pull out.
Fearful that the pack of cards was about to come tumbling down, the Italians and Spanish went to lunch and the British got tough, immediately giving in to the Germans.
However, the delay had thrown up a new problem, the name of the jet. All along it had been called Eurofighter 2000, but by 1994 it was obvious that it could be operational until 2001 at the earliest. So it became the Typhoon, which conjures up images of devastation and death.
Well, don’t get your hopes up. You see, Tony Blair recently decided that the plane’s missiles should be British rather than American. Good call, but the British weaponry won’t be available until eight years after the jet goes into service. So, what are the pilots supposed to do in the meantime, make rude gestures?
That said though, I have talked to various authoritative sources over the past year who have said that it is widely thought that the Typhoon will be become the worlds best fighter-bomber. It is desperately easy to fly and at £50 million a pop it is also cheap. To put that in perspective, each new USAF F22 Rapror will cost £115 million.
So Typhoon is something about which Europe can be justifiably proud. Should the Russians ever decide to invade, we will have exactly the right sort of fire power to hold them back.
However, for dealing with sundry world leaders in far-flung parts of the globe, what really need are aircraft carriers. Britain has just ordered 2 and there was talk of modifying Typhoon to become precisely what the French wanted 30 years ago. But presumably it was too much of an effort. So what have we done? Well, in a perfect spirit of European cooperation, we have teamed up with the Americans to build something called the Joint Strike Fighter [Dave]. Thank you, Europe and goodnight.
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SFAIK the atom bomb went from an idea to an operational weapon dropped on Japan in less time than Eurofighter has taken to get into service and is it yet 'operational'? BTW 2 different types of atom were developed and dropped within 10 days of each other!
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Originally Posted by A2QFI
SFAIK the atom bomb went from an idea to an operational weapon dropped on Japan in less time than Eurofighter has taken to get into service and is it yet 'operational'? BTW 2 different types of atom were developed and dropped within 10 days of each other!
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Which just goes to show that what we need is a bl00dy big war so that the government will invest in more weapons of war so we can kill eachother even better and faster and in larger numbers
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Not really, considering the extortionate amount of money ploughed into this project which has now become the most expensive white elephant ever created! And it still isn't fully operational! Need i say anymore?
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It's not a bad book, but I found his style gets slightly repetitive as a series of 4/5 page articles (which is all the book is). It's a bit like his newspaper columns, fine to read one at a time, but you wouldn't read a whole newspaper by him.
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Typhoon v Atom Bomb
I do agree that there is an element of chalk and cheese in this discussion. However, the Typhoon is an aircraft and we have had them for 100 years. The atom bomb was a completely unknown concept and was developed from scratch. I agree that an all out war was a driving factor but wasn't the Typhoon conceived during the Cold War, a time of international fear and tension?
Last edited by A2QFI; 18th Jul 2006 at 18:38.
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I think the reason things get developed much quicker during war time, is because people are focused on that particular need. The team concerned only does what is required to get something into service with no embellishments, and very often with considerably less stringent safety requirements that would be needed for peace time.
I've done R&D, what happens is that you start with a simple focused concept which is accepted to go to development. While you're doing the development someone says "It would be very useful if it could do this as well" and then some one else says "If we're going to do that we might as well do this as well"
and you very soon change from a straight forward simple focused object to a very complex nightmare that bares no relation to the original what so ever, cost 10 times a much and doesn't do what it was originally intended to.
I've done R&D, what happens is that you start with a simple focused concept which is accepted to go to development. While you're doing the development someone says "It would be very useful if it could do this as well" and then some one else says "If we're going to do that we might as well do this as well"
and you very soon change from a straight forward simple focused object to a very complex nightmare that bares no relation to the original what so ever, cost 10 times a much and doesn't do what it was originally intended to.
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Originally Posted by Stringy
It's not a bad book, but I found his style gets slightly repetitive as a series of 4/5 page articles (which is all the book is). It's a bit like his newspaper columns, fine to read one at a time, but you wouldn't read a whole newspaper by him.
FW
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Originally Posted by foldingwings
That's what it says on the lid! They are his Sunday Times columns but republished in a book!
FW
FW
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It took me a while to read if for the very reason Stringy has mentioned. Still, when I could be bothered to get into it, in between reading 'Fighter Boys' by Patrick Bishop (a humbling read), I laughed my socks off.
On the subject of Clarkson, did anyone see Top Gear on Sunday featuring the trio on a caravaning trip? Hilarious, top TV.
On the subject of Clarkson, did anyone see Top Gear on Sunday featuring the trio on a caravaning trip? Hilarious, top TV.
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Originally Posted by Vatican69
Which just goes to show that what we need is a bl00dy big war so that the government will invest in more weapons of war so we can kill eachother even better and faster and in larger numbers
Oh thats right, we have less now than we've ever had. But I suppose the three infantry battalions the British Army now have can cover a continent each. (English, Welsh and Jock Battalions). Force Projection by way of a pamphlet and T-shirt campaign.
