Many people have said it and its true, stop using lift helos for other roles. Lets have a cheap COMR platform which the company provide the best DAS for and get going. If money is in short supply lets get rid of half of those very expensive grey Merlins. Rather than lose their capability lets just put money where it is needed.....as I heard the other day "funding will only be provided for current operations and not future projects".
Wonder how many EC635 we could buy for 20 grey merlin??.....**** loads I think!.

Food for thought

Convert 20 Merlin HM1 to a troop carrying configuration. It hasn't got a rear ramp but it will still do the job of releasing those Lifters that are doing other jobs and not doing what they were built for.

As of this month, 39 Merlin HM1s with 11 in maintenance/storage(? if it's to be believed). Do we need that many ASW platforms? With the amount of ships we are mothballing now the helicopters could be used elsewhere...

You have the Merlin HM1 complimenting the Lynx (or the other way round) in both the ASW and ASurW, in all a great deal more than what we need, surely?

RAZOR61 et al
 

Chaps,

It may have escaped your notice but the Grey Merlin does actually have a role outside of short-sighted land component issues which are being addressed through very well publicised procurement routes - and the redeployment of some RN personnel to Benson.

If you bothered to check up on the strategic long term threats to both the UK, its allies and the 90% of trade that comes by sea, you would know that a very real ASW threat is out there and continuing to grow. Just how do you think we resupply or deploy our vehicles and kit to far away places - by air!!

A US or Israeli attack on Iran would create a very credible ASW threat in hours few to the 75% of world oil that flows through the straights of Hormuz. And by the way the Iranians are no amateurs in that regard.

You also forget that Mr Putin has sortied much Maritime Hardware - by sea and air - towards our country for which The Sun front page is the mere tip of an iceberg.

And just to be precise the tailcone of a Merlin can be taken off by undoing the 32 bolts.

Open your minds, think of the comprehensive approach and look further than the end of your nose and the messy COIN ops that our mate TB got us into.

Si Clik

Trouble is when someone is shooting at the end of that nose you tend to prioritise a little bit differently!!:(:(



Shaun

Hmmm, tricky, we can't afford financially to think beyond our current ops, but we can't afford strategically (or politically) to ignore what might happen should we mess up our foreign policy even more....

Personally I am with timex and would go with supporting what we know, the insurance policy will have to lapse....

A favourite pastime on this forum is taking potshots at “procurers” (when what you actually mean is “acquirers” – i.e. the various people who manage the acquisition cycle from Concept to Disposal). Some of the criticism is justified.

But if you step back and look at the plethora of excellent, but conflicting, points that have been made here I hope some appreciation of the problems faced by DEC and DE&S emerges. They have so little money to play with, and so many issues to consider, they don’t know if they’re full-bored or countersunk. (And the fact many don’t understand the phrase is one of the problems).

“Helicopter replacement” programmes have been many and various over the last two decades. I’m struggling to recall one that has actually been delivered. Merlin ASW/SH was set in concrete by 1985 (when I saw fully working integration rigs for the first time). Various iterations of Lynx have fallen by the wayside – I think they went round the same bouy half a dozen times. SABR was the most mind numbing experience for all that worked on it – cancellation after 7 or 8 completely wasted years forced some very good people, both Service and civvy, into early retirement.

I suppose most here that criticise haven’t had the misfortune to be an SO3/2/1 in DEC. If you do get such a punishment posting, remember one thing – excellence can be the enemy of the very good. The 90% solution can be very good. To put it bluntly – stop faffing around, make a decision, give your reasons and move on. Most of all, give your reasons. Explain to the users why you made the decision and people will more readily accept the 90%. If you faff around, and see out your two year tour, the next guy hasn’t got much of a benchmark to live up to, has he? He’ll just do the same. And therein lies the reason for most delays.

PS But don't be like one DEC officer I know. When asked to choose what he didn't want, due to lack of funding, he said "safety and training". I ignored him, but there are some who would not.

Grey Merlin could be excellent in overwatch and as an ISTAR platform, which in a way I suppose it already is...maybe move some of the kit to improve hot and high performance?

Does anyone know what the state of play with the Mk3 fix to field is? Any firm dates for 'frame availability yet?

For Mk3 F2F read "Mk3 Reversion"

I can't find the link, but it's public knowledge that F2F is cancelled and that they are retrograding them back in time to the Mk2 Mod standard. The Topdeck cockpit is dead, for now....

So: More Heavy Lift for Green Army; no increase in HL for SF who will continue to be supported by NEP aircraft (ouch).

PS - They did have a nice coherent plan for Chinook common cockpits in the future. They DID, but this has gone AWOL with F2F being cancelled.

Tacumseh makes some very valid points. It has been very difficuly for the RW community to cope with the ever decreasing amount of money allocated to it. As an example, we were supposed to have £4.5Bn for SABR & SABR-SAR. Then "Buff" makes great play of sitting in an Apache and trumpeting the same money...except it's now £1.5Bn less and includes Merlin Mk1 CSP...
This is the problem. Given the correct resource SABR would be, shortly, delivering exactly the ac we need to be fighting these two very RW-intensive wars. We're not getting he ac because the RW "piggy-bank" is continually raided at Options time because Helos are not "core" business for ANY of the three services, and a very "fat cat" in the Land TLB.
It's disheartening to see a new generation of Civil Servants / SO2s grapple with exactly the same issues that SABR dealt with; repeating work, coming to the same conclusions, but this time hampered by yet another roadblock-the DIS.
The consequence of the SABR fiasco is embaressment; as everyone else is migrating to new RW systems (MV-22/NH-90/CH-47F/Ch-53K etc etc ...) we're left with life-extending our current stock because the RW money is a long way away in the EP and even if we had the money, we've missed the bus for buying new aircraft ('cos everyone else has)

Mr-AEO,

NEP, sir?

I'm unfamiliar with that acronym, or it's gone walkabout in Atlanta!

Sorry, J.

Night Enhancement Package.

Thank you, Mr AEO,

What a clot I am!