RAF "Utterly, Utterly, Useless" in Afghanistan
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Hello chaps-
I'm nought but a lowly civilian pilot whose only military experience is having an RAF careers officer explain that there was no way for me to fly one of Her Majesty's pointy things with my atrocious vision back in 1992. However, as a proud British expat and avid student of recent military history I read this forum frequently.
When I'm not out slogging from point A to point B, one of my hobbies is "What-If?" scale aircraft modelling. While this may come across as a bit of an infantile hobby (not least to my wife!), I'll post a model I built earlier this year just to see the response:
This is a Fokker F27, which in my little world is armed with a GAU-12, 2x25mm Bushmaster, and Bofors 40mm guns.
Now, while I realise that the F27 is getting a bit long in the tooth, my question is this: Is there a non-budgetary reason why a modern turboprop airliner such as the Fokker 50, Bombardier Q400, or ATR72 could not be converted to a small gunship that would be cheaper to procure and operate than an AC-130, yet capable or providing similar support in the kind of battles seen in Afghanistan?
All have decent speed and could probably loiter for a decent time. The Q400 also has reasonable short-field performance. As previously admitted, I have no military experience, and if this is just a childish pipe dream, feel free to tell me so.
Thanks for listening to a civilian who has the greatest admiration for the work HM Forces are trying to do over there!
I'm nought but a lowly civilian pilot whose only military experience is having an RAF careers officer explain that there was no way for me to fly one of Her Majesty's pointy things with my atrocious vision back in 1992. However, as a proud British expat and avid student of recent military history I read this forum frequently.
When I'm not out slogging from point A to point B, one of my hobbies is "What-If?" scale aircraft modelling. While this may come across as a bit of an infantile hobby (not least to my wife!), I'll post a model I built earlier this year just to see the response:
This is a Fokker F27, which in my little world is armed with a GAU-12, 2x25mm Bushmaster, and Bofors 40mm guns.
Now, while I realise that the F27 is getting a bit long in the tooth, my question is this: Is there a non-budgetary reason why a modern turboprop airliner such as the Fokker 50, Bombardier Q400, or ATR72 could not be converted to a small gunship that would be cheaper to procure and operate than an AC-130, yet capable or providing similar support in the kind of battles seen in Afghanistan?
All have decent speed and could probably loiter for a decent time. The Q400 also has reasonable short-field performance. As previously admitted, I have no military experience, and if this is just a childish pipe dream, feel free to tell me so.
Thanks for listening to a civilian who has the greatest admiration for the work HM Forces are trying to do over there!
Red On, Green On
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The AC-130 is not being used in Iraq and AFG because of hand-held SAM, not because it is expensive to run/procure. Cheaper aircraft with a similar capability operating in a similar envelope will still be brought down.
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Or an unmanned aircraft capable of firing Helfires, or GBU-12s, or Small Smart Bombs, or even JDAMs or EPWs. Lets make it capable of loitering for a day and make it stealthy and give it an engine that allows it to operate up to 50000'.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
Nice articles in the Sunday Torygraph today. GR7s mentioned including bombs dropped, sortie rates and alert status. Aircraft in AFG are 7 x GR7, Chinook, C130, Lynx and Apache.
Nice picture os a helicopter, not one of those above, in the background.
Don't you just love joined up editing. Good articles however.
Nice picture os a helicopter, not one of those above, in the background.
Don't you just love joined up editing. Good articles however.
The article Pont Nav refers to is at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...01/wafg101.xml
I have just fired off a brisk letter to the STel ed, text below:
Sir
In an otherwise fairly balanced article on air operations in Afghanistan, Tim Ripley and Gethin Chamberlain perpetuate a myth (RAF bombing campaign is fiercest since Iraq invasion, 1 October). They quote, without contradiction, Major Loden’s statement that "a female Harrier pilot ..... strafed our perimeter, missing the enemy by 200 yards". This cannot be true, since the Harrier GR-7 carries no gun, either internally or in an external pod.
I don't regularly see said paper, and will in any case be enjoying the fun at Duxford's last show of the season next Sunday, so if anyone sees this published, perhaps they could let me know?
airsound
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...01/wafg101.xml
I have just fired off a brisk letter to the STel ed, text below:
Sir
In an otherwise fairly balanced article on air operations in Afghanistan, Tim Ripley and Gethin Chamberlain perpetuate a myth (RAF bombing campaign is fiercest since Iraq invasion, 1 October). They quote, without contradiction, Major Loden’s statement that "a female Harrier pilot ..... strafed our perimeter, missing the enemy by 200 yards". This cannot be true, since the Harrier GR-7 carries no gun, either internally or in an external pod.
I don't regularly see said paper, and will in any case be enjoying the fun at Duxford's last show of the season next Sunday, so if anyone sees this published, perhaps they could let me know?
airsound
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From the Mail on Sunday
The performance of the Royal Air Force is also called into question by the ground troops. This follows the claim by Para Major James Loden last week that the RAF was 'utterly useless'.
Describing the failure to re-supply troops trapped in a compound in the war-torn village of Sangin, a Para NCO said: "A dz [>drop zone] was marked, under fire and at night. It was extremely obvious where it was. The Hercules came and totally ignored it.
"They dropped it straight into one of the Taliban strongholds about 100 metres from our camp. We heard a big cheer from the Taliban. It was a massive blow to us. We had been expecting it for two days. We were cheering when it came in. Then we watched it sail away into Taliban hands."
Describing the failure to re-supply troops trapped in a compound in the war-torn village of Sangin, a Para NCO said: "A dz [>drop zone] was marked, under fire and at night. It was extremely obvious where it was. The Hercules came and totally ignored it.
"They dropped it straight into one of the Taliban strongholds about 100 metres from our camp. We heard a big cheer from the Taliban. It was a massive blow to us. We had been expecting it for two days. We were cheering when it came in. Then we watched it sail away into Taliban hands."
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Unless I am mistaken Ratty, his point was that another soldier is unimpressed with the service they are getting from the RAF in that they cannot hit a well marked dz.
Seemed self explanatory to me.
But then so do well marked dzs
Seemed self explanatory to me.
But then so do well marked dzs
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Ratty - my point is that I have no point to make - just thought that it might be of interest that it isn't just the CAS that was being moaned about.
But then if it is of no interest then I will delete it.
But then if it is of no interest then I will delete it.
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Telegraph:
Figures obtained by The Sunday Telegraph show that the RAF unleashed nearly 500 bombs
I think they've got their figures wrong as well
'500lbs'- they've dropped one bomb then!
Figures obtained by The Sunday Telegraph show that the RAF unleashed nearly 500 bombs
I think they've got their figures wrong as well
'500lbs'- they've dropped one bomb then!
Some cracking comments from Jeremy Clarkson in today's Sunday Times:
Ever since man discovered he had a penchant for war, there has been rivalry between the services. This is all to do with pride and tribalism and, generally speaking, it’s a good thing.
However, when a leaked e-mail from an army officer describes the RAF as “utterly, utterly useless”, you get the distinct impression that this is far beyond good-natured teasing.
You have visions of him lying in a ditch desperately calling for air support and hearing nothing over the radio but the sound of a Harrier’s starter motor whirring uselessly.
The problem, of course, has nothing to do with the people who fly or service the planes. And everything to do with those grinning buffoons in Westminster who’ve spent the past five years unable to see what’s going on due to the fact they’re all deep inside George Bush’s bottom.
You read about billions being shaved from the budget and squadrons being merged to cut costs and, frankly, it doesn’t mean anything at all. Not when you’ve just been startled out of your skin by a Tornado that has flown between your chimney pots at 4m knots.
However, I’ve done a bit of checking and it seems the RAF can field five strike attack squadrons that must share 60 Tornados. Then there are the offensive squadrons, which have 26 Harriers and some Jaguars, which may as well be Sopwith Camels. And that’s it.
In total, with the air defence Tornados, they have just 150 aeroplanes that can actually do fighting. The Luftwaffe has more than twice that. So do the cheese-eating surrender monkeys. In an air war we’d struggle to beat the Bubbles. Of course 150 fighting planes is fine when all we have to worry about are a handful of mad Irishmen, but since Mr Blair realised that his retirement fund relied on being popular in the land of the brave, we’re now fighting what seems like half the world.
It is an extraordinary scandal and what makes it just so shiversomely hideous is that Blair and Brown and all the other useless fools who preside over our wellbeing know full well they can get away with it.
Strip the NHS of funds and pretty soon you’ll have a bunch of nurses on television sobbing. Decimate the fire brigade and immediately the streets will be full of men in donkey jackets, standing round braziers. But the forces? You can squeeze their gonads until their eyes pop out and still they won’t moan.
When asked recently if the British Army could cope, its new top man General Sir Richard Dannatt replied: “Just”. He can’t come out and say: “Are you joking?” Because this is not the army way. Even though he’s waging war on two fronts using US helicopters that shoot themselves down and Sea Kings that have a top speed of four if it gets hotter than 57C — which it does in Iraq, a lot — he still has to stiffen his upper lip and tell the world that everything is tickety boo.
It’s not just the top brass, either. Back at home, quietly, soldiers may tell their loved ones that things are pretty bleak. But have you ever heard one say so publicly? Were they at the Trades Union Congress in their apple-green short-sleeved nylon shirts banging on the tables demanding more money and better equipment? No they weren’t. They were out there, far from the television cameras, in a ****-awful part of Afghanistan fighting with pointed sticks.
I do hope Blair can sleep easily at night knowing that his lecture tour pension fund is being paid for by the blood of a thousand British soldiers and airmen. And I hope, too, he realises that if the RAF really is “utterly, utterly useless”, it’s all his fault.
It makes you wonder how on earth a bona fide lunatic managed to achieve such a position of power and influence but, actually, lunacy these days is all around us. It sits in the editor’s chair at the Daily Mail. It runs the United States. And I found a shining example of it only the other day as I stopped in a petrol station to fuel an Audi Q7.
“Ooh,” said the man at the next pump, “I’ve just ordered one of those. It comes next week. What do you think?” I could have been kind. I could have made his day. But I wasn’t in the mood, so I told him straight: “It’s one of the three worst cars I’ve ever driven.”
Well, he was flabbergasted. But not as flabbergasted as me when he went on to say that he was buying the Audi as a replacement for his Aston Martin V8 Vantage, which had broken down.
I see. So you bought an Aston and you were “surprised” when it wasn’t quite as reliable as granite. That makes you mad. And now you’ve replaced it with something that could be nailed to the side of a cathedral to ward off evil spirits. That makes you a swivel-eyed loony.
I first encountered this gargoyle of a car earlier in the year as we were filming the Top Gear winter olympics, and though it felt pretty nasty I decided to withhold judgment, since doing a biathlon in a car isn’t terribly representative of how it might be used in, say, Driffield.
Well, I’ve now used it in London, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey and Hampshire and can reveal it’s no better in any of these places either. It’s far too big to fit comfortably on any road other than an American interstate, but inside it’s surprisingly cramped. Think of it as an Aga. As big as a post office van but stumped when presented with a Christmas turkey.
Certainly you get a lot more room in a cheaper and much better looking Volvo XC90. You get more of everything even in the new Ford S-Max.
And then there’s the question of “feel”. The Q7 feels just like a normal Audi. And that’s fine in a normal Audi. But it’s a big SUV and it should give off a sense that the Tonka toy exterior styling is in some way replicated on the inside, so that when your children fight and bite and kick, none of the fixtures and fittings will be damaged.
The Q7 really is “utterly, utterly useless” and I was all set to keep on kicking it until all the available space on these pages was used up. But then, lo and behold, I was presented with a car that is even worse. The Chrysler 300C diesel estate.
Worryingly, it looks rather good. There’s a huge radiator grille that puts you in mind of a Bentley Arnage, and the squared-off muscly body sits on tall tyres that hint at not only a great deal of power but a comfy, cosseting ride. A decent salesman could make a fairly good fist of whipping up your enthusiasm on the inside as well. The back seats fold down easily, the load opening at the back is cavernous, there’s a separate storage area under the boot floor away from muddy paws, and there’s lots of standard equipment.
For £27,275 this looks like the bargain of the century and a brief test drive will do little to dispel that notion. The diesel engine is so unclattery that I had to get out to check the badge. And despite the size it’s terribly easy to drive. The only thing that might put you off is the limited rear visibility, but apart from this you’d be hard pressed to find anything wrong. Don’t worry, though. I have. Lots.
You need to think of this car as one of those home-brand council house stereos that you find in department stores. It’s cheap, but it’s cheap for a reason, which becomes abundantly clear when you turn it on. It’s rubbish. So it goes with the 300C. Chrysler, which is owned by Mercedes these days, is at pains to point out that this car is not — as I’ve previously claimed — based on the old Mercedes E-class. They say they considered this idea but dismissed it.
Pity. Basing it on a well-proven car would have been a better idea than basing it on a crème brûlée. God, it’s a wallowy old hector. You have absolutely no sense that you’re connected to the road in any way. Imagine, somehow, fitting an engine to your duvet and you start to get the picture. Of course this might not bother you but the ride comfort will. Despite the wallow-matic suspension and the tall tyres, it crashes and jolts where a normal, proper European car glides and hangs on.
Then there’s the sat nav screen, which is so bright it’s like driving into a second world war searchlight, and the difficulty you’ll have while parking and the sheer ghastliness of the half-timbered steering wheel.
Yes, it’s cheap, but so’s the RAF these days. And that doesn’t work either.
Ever since man discovered he had a penchant for war, there has been rivalry between the services. This is all to do with pride and tribalism and, generally speaking, it’s a good thing.
However, when a leaked e-mail from an army officer describes the RAF as “utterly, utterly useless”, you get the distinct impression that this is far beyond good-natured teasing.
You have visions of him lying in a ditch desperately calling for air support and hearing nothing over the radio but the sound of a Harrier’s starter motor whirring uselessly.
The problem, of course, has nothing to do with the people who fly or service the planes. And everything to do with those grinning buffoons in Westminster who’ve spent the past five years unable to see what’s going on due to the fact they’re all deep inside George Bush’s bottom.
You read about billions being shaved from the budget and squadrons being merged to cut costs and, frankly, it doesn’t mean anything at all. Not when you’ve just been startled out of your skin by a Tornado that has flown between your chimney pots at 4m knots.
However, I’ve done a bit of checking and it seems the RAF can field five strike attack squadrons that must share 60 Tornados. Then there are the offensive squadrons, which have 26 Harriers and some Jaguars, which may as well be Sopwith Camels. And that’s it.
In total, with the air defence Tornados, they have just 150 aeroplanes that can actually do fighting. The Luftwaffe has more than twice that. So do the cheese-eating surrender monkeys. In an air war we’d struggle to beat the Bubbles. Of course 150 fighting planes is fine when all we have to worry about are a handful of mad Irishmen, but since Mr Blair realised that his retirement fund relied on being popular in the land of the brave, we’re now fighting what seems like half the world.
It is an extraordinary scandal and what makes it just so shiversomely hideous is that Blair and Brown and all the other useless fools who preside over our wellbeing know full well they can get away with it.
Strip the NHS of funds and pretty soon you’ll have a bunch of nurses on television sobbing. Decimate the fire brigade and immediately the streets will be full of men in donkey jackets, standing round braziers. But the forces? You can squeeze their gonads until their eyes pop out and still they won’t moan.
When asked recently if the British Army could cope, its new top man General Sir Richard Dannatt replied: “Just”. He can’t come out and say: “Are you joking?” Because this is not the army way. Even though he’s waging war on two fronts using US helicopters that shoot themselves down and Sea Kings that have a top speed of four if it gets hotter than 57C — which it does in Iraq, a lot — he still has to stiffen his upper lip and tell the world that everything is tickety boo.
It’s not just the top brass, either. Back at home, quietly, soldiers may tell their loved ones that things are pretty bleak. But have you ever heard one say so publicly? Were they at the Trades Union Congress in their apple-green short-sleeved nylon shirts banging on the tables demanding more money and better equipment? No they weren’t. They were out there, far from the television cameras, in a ****-awful part of Afghanistan fighting with pointed sticks.
I do hope Blair can sleep easily at night knowing that his lecture tour pension fund is being paid for by the blood of a thousand British soldiers and airmen. And I hope, too, he realises that if the RAF really is “utterly, utterly useless”, it’s all his fault.
It makes you wonder how on earth a bona fide lunatic managed to achieve such a position of power and influence but, actually, lunacy these days is all around us. It sits in the editor’s chair at the Daily Mail. It runs the United States. And I found a shining example of it only the other day as I stopped in a petrol station to fuel an Audi Q7.
“Ooh,” said the man at the next pump, “I’ve just ordered one of those. It comes next week. What do you think?” I could have been kind. I could have made his day. But I wasn’t in the mood, so I told him straight: “It’s one of the three worst cars I’ve ever driven.”
Well, he was flabbergasted. But not as flabbergasted as me when he went on to say that he was buying the Audi as a replacement for his Aston Martin V8 Vantage, which had broken down.
I see. So you bought an Aston and you were “surprised” when it wasn’t quite as reliable as granite. That makes you mad. And now you’ve replaced it with something that could be nailed to the side of a cathedral to ward off evil spirits. That makes you a swivel-eyed loony.
I first encountered this gargoyle of a car earlier in the year as we were filming the Top Gear winter olympics, and though it felt pretty nasty I decided to withhold judgment, since doing a biathlon in a car isn’t terribly representative of how it might be used in, say, Driffield.
Well, I’ve now used it in London, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey and Hampshire and can reveal it’s no better in any of these places either. It’s far too big to fit comfortably on any road other than an American interstate, but inside it’s surprisingly cramped. Think of it as an Aga. As big as a post office van but stumped when presented with a Christmas turkey.
Certainly you get a lot more room in a cheaper and much better looking Volvo XC90. You get more of everything even in the new Ford S-Max.
And then there’s the question of “feel”. The Q7 feels just like a normal Audi. And that’s fine in a normal Audi. But it’s a big SUV and it should give off a sense that the Tonka toy exterior styling is in some way replicated on the inside, so that when your children fight and bite and kick, none of the fixtures and fittings will be damaged.
The Q7 really is “utterly, utterly useless” and I was all set to keep on kicking it until all the available space on these pages was used up. But then, lo and behold, I was presented with a car that is even worse. The Chrysler 300C diesel estate.
Worryingly, it looks rather good. There’s a huge radiator grille that puts you in mind of a Bentley Arnage, and the squared-off muscly body sits on tall tyres that hint at not only a great deal of power but a comfy, cosseting ride. A decent salesman could make a fairly good fist of whipping up your enthusiasm on the inside as well. The back seats fold down easily, the load opening at the back is cavernous, there’s a separate storage area under the boot floor away from muddy paws, and there’s lots of standard equipment.
For £27,275 this looks like the bargain of the century and a brief test drive will do little to dispel that notion. The diesel engine is so unclattery that I had to get out to check the badge. And despite the size it’s terribly easy to drive. The only thing that might put you off is the limited rear visibility, but apart from this you’d be hard pressed to find anything wrong. Don’t worry, though. I have. Lots.
You need to think of this car as one of those home-brand council house stereos that you find in department stores. It’s cheap, but it’s cheap for a reason, which becomes abundantly clear when you turn it on. It’s rubbish. So it goes with the 300C. Chrysler, which is owned by Mercedes these days, is at pains to point out that this car is not — as I’ve previously claimed — based on the old Mercedes E-class. They say they considered this idea but dismissed it.
Pity. Basing it on a well-proven car would have been a better idea than basing it on a crème brûlée. God, it’s a wallowy old hector. You have absolutely no sense that you’re connected to the road in any way. Imagine, somehow, fitting an engine to your duvet and you start to get the picture. Of course this might not bother you but the ride comfort will. Despite the wallow-matic suspension and the tall tyres, it crashes and jolts where a normal, proper European car glides and hangs on.
Then there’s the sat nav screen, which is so bright it’s like driving into a second world war searchlight, and the difficulty you’ll have while parking and the sheer ghastliness of the half-timbered steering wheel.
Yes, it’s cheap, but so’s the RAF these days. And that doesn’t work either.
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I'm just a humble lowly duvet technician but this
had the alarm bells sounding. Is it common procedure to expect a Herc to perform a nice, predictable approach to a DZ that is under fire? Would the quoted solider approach the said same DZ in a four ton truck in a nice straight line?
Yeah, flying fixed wing a/c must be p1!ss easy, so easy in fact that they don't let the RN or AAC play with proper fixed wing aircraft anymore on their own.
"A dz [>drop zone] was marked, under fire and at night. It was extremely obvious where it was.
Yeah, flying fixed wing a/c must be p1!ss easy, so easy in fact that they don't let the RN or AAC play with proper fixed wing aircraft anymore on their own.
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If I had gotten the airdrop to within 100 yards of the target on a climbing delivery under fire I would have been chuffed to f**k. Good effort to whoever did the drop. Maybe next time, the Army will not bow to political requests to place British troops in platoon houses, with no means of ordinary resupply, whose only purpose appears to act as target practice for local Muj/Talib.
I still don't blame the Army for the moaning, unfortunately it is they who are hitting the wrong targets....
I still don't blame the Army for the moaning, unfortunately it is they who are hitting the wrong targets....
Last edited by nigegilb; 1st Oct 2006 at 17:33.
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You said "P1ss easy!"
Do you gauge that on your 1000 hours on microsoft simulator?
Like all three services, you can only fly what's provided to fly in. Flying a Herc in such a volatile and inhospitable area whilst under fire must be extremely difficult. To expect the crew to drop onto a pinpoint location regardless of conditions is naive, but only to the uneducated. One thing that will transpire from all of this is a much better understanding of each of our strengths and weaknesses. Im sure that as soon as 3 Para have the chance to take stock of the past few months they will come to realise that all of the support given to them was given in as professional a manner as possible
Whats needed now is a tad of honesty by those in the high chairs at MOD. Tell it like it is, we have an Armed Forces that are still predomonantly armed for the Cold War and don't have the necessary equipment to fight a sustained campaign in one let alone two areas of low scale War.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
Mutley, did you mis-read THS's message? I think he was being sarcastic. I think he was saying that 100 yards was pretty damn good, just unfortunate that the margin for error was zero but that a straight in p!ss easy approach was not possible.
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Just to educate those who ought to know better, within 50 metres of the IP on an airdrop is considered a 'bullseye'. Within 100m is good - on a permisive DZ! Airdropping is not an exact science.
If you want resupplying by air, then don't 'mark out' a DZ that's 100yds from an enemy position.
If you want resupplying by air, then don't 'mark out' a DZ that's 100yds from an enemy position.
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Yes PN and my point is what does he know about the ability of the RN or the AAC to fly a fixed wing aircraft? I appreciate he may be sticking up for the Air Force but he really doesnt need to. We in the whole are aviators on these pages and thus don't need to bitch about each others service (banter is different).
I have backed the RAF on this thread and agree that you are performing as well as everyone else, often without the necessary equipment. What I am tired of is that a Para Major says something a little ill thought and the whole British Army gets the blame.
Come on guys, lets get together on this one, we all of us need to move forward and look at ways that this mess can be addressed. We have to better educate those on the ground as to what they can expect of us in real terms and not based on the usual Salisbury Plain exercise.
I have backed the RAF on this thread and agree that you are performing as well as everyone else, often without the necessary equipment. What I am tired of is that a Para Major says something a little ill thought and the whole British Army gets the blame.
Come on guys, lets get together on this one, we all of us need to move forward and look at ways that this mess can be addressed. We have to better educate those on the ground as to what they can expect of us in real terms and not based on the usual Salisbury Plain exercise.