Well if the most popular UK tabloid insists on whipping up Murdoch-inspired animosity against Russia with outrageous misrepresentation of the facts then why are we surprised if they are pissed off?

Maybe they were looking for '2 Jags' Prescott:zzz:

He might have Russian visitors in the night - No Secretary's :ugh:

I've a plan! So, the Russians are planning to becomes mates with the Venezuelan's. How about posting a couple of RAF Movers to Venezuela. That'll scupper 'em.

(Oh, tongue very much in cheek).




Anyone remember (oh 15-20 years ago?) when a whole mess of Bears crossed the line and then split into singletons on every heading known to man?

Coo, what fun! F3's, F-16's, F-15's, VC10-K's, KC-135'S, C-130's, a Nimrod and a USN Orion (don't ask how he got involved), all burning holes in the sky.

QRA at it's best. The Buchan Crystal Ball earned it's nickname that day! Well done, KL. A bloody good MC.

Did the P3 and 130 guys have to ask the Ruskies to slow up a bit?

No, not really, they did OK. The F3's struggled a bit though............:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

AFAIR we launched 3 in Kilo fit. A lot of prodding done that day!!

So, taxydual, the F3 struggled to keep up with what?? The aircraft may be lacking in manoeuvrability and a bit short of breath at altitude but don't let us cast aspersions at its capability to keep up - if M2.0/800kts is not enuff perhaps you might care to suggest what else you might call upon.

Back in the days when we had an air force (40 yrs ago), a 0815 arrival in ops could be greeted with “get your kit on you’re Q6”. There might be more Russian aircraft ‘incoming’ than we had in all of the air defense force – usually associated with US fleet movements.
But then the night Qs were gentlemanly affairs, where early notification of activity would be sufficient for a full mess dinner before raising the Q status.
Whilst the lack of official UK radar in the far north could be limiting, there was assistance from many quarters. Saxa etc were committed to NATO and could not provide formal fighter control, but their traffic avoidance service was fist rate, usually starting when 120 nm apart. Also, there were occasional reports from civil traffic crossing the Atlantic, which enabled DR estimates for an intercept, but most of these went to the US F4s flying out of Iceland as we lacked tankers – so did the US resulting in some diversions to the UK.

As fascinating as this trip down memory lane regarding QRF capabilities is, what about the real story?

1. Who in the MoD released this "news" item?
2. What is their agenda? - pro-Air Force mandarin underscoring a point about dangerously underfunded Defence capabilities, or anti-Air Force Mandarin emphasising the futility of the current interception strategy?
3. Who sanctioned this release to the press and why now?

Come on guys, don't let them manipulate the masses quite this easily, just ask yourself who stands to gain from all this and there you will find the man behind the mask.

who stands to gain from all this

It BAE wot dunnit.

I have a simple geography question for the panel, how far is it from "90 seconds from Hull" to the home of our all singing/all dancing Typhoon fleet, based between Lincoln and Boston?

And for bonus points, which is longer? The time taken to fly that distance in a Blackjack or the time taken to get one or more Typhoons airborne in a fit state to fight?

Ogre

Quote
No, not really, they did OK. The F3's struggled a bit though............:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Reply
Did the F3's have a good B'fast that morning. :zzz:

The frightening would have caught the coots.:D

Well you could go down 'Ermine St' to Conny?

A straight road I would say Hull - Conny is about 90 miles?

And the Typhoon can be airborne of the runway from brakes off in '6 seconds'

Time to play Typhoon QRA.

That was Polestar, not Saxa.

You should send that to OASC .... it could be one of those questions the boarding officers throw out during the problem solving phase of selection. Only this time, I doubt they'd have the answer either, so it might even things up a bit between board and candidate!

I didn't intend to cast any aspersions about the F3 at all (my Banter light was lit).

An unbelievably good platform at Low Level and did sterling work on Q. I do recall, however, a certain Sitrep coming over the Telebrief from the Buchan MC (describing 'difficulties' that Q1 had in getting to height) that was interrupted by an unknown voice saying "Send an F-16". (My Banter light is flickering).

Further. As for the C-130, he was 'hijacked' by Buchan inbound to Kinloss, ex Keflavic, and although it wasn't a true intercept, the crew got some cracking photo's as the Bear sailed by.

The P3 was mega p***ed off, as he was 'crystal balled' as a trail aircraft to the main Bear gaggle as he was seen to cross the line East to West too. He had Q2 sat on his wingtip for a few minutes giving his game away.

Happy days.

What North Lincs hills? Flat as a bl00dy saltmarsh. The wolds OTOH give a commanding view and IRC North Coates was on the coast and would not have had any problem firing into the threat sector.

Don't you guys have maps? 44.7 stm to Hull.

Brakes on-off, undercarriage up, gate, vector 050, Fox 1, RTB. Problem?

Not if you then remember to pop the gear down....:uhoh:

As nostalgic as some folk are about the point defence Lightning, you are clearly allowing emotion to cloud fact.

Its radar was pretty cr@p and the missiles weren't head sector capable for years. The highly skilled pilots worked like hell to get a good target solution before running out of fuel. Manoeuvrability? Easily outwitted by a Vulcan at 45000 ft plus provided you knew it was coming. But the F Mk 3 or F Mk 6 would eat an F4 for breakfast if it wasn't first taken out with a Fox 1! Old age and treachery and a 2 man crew, coupled with clever tactics, could often win the day before the merge though.

Tornado F3 goes like $hit off a red hot shovel at low level, and nowadays has pretty good radar and missiles, plus some clever third party targetting capabilities with L16. OK, it might be somewhat unmanoeuvrable, but it was primarily conceived as a long range Backfire / Blackjack killer.

The glaring problems resulting from the precipitate haste to slash costs after 'Options' :yuk: would seem to be:

1. Insufficient CRC and ADGE to provide a good threat picture. And who says the Russians would necessarily arrive from the North East and East?
2. Ever fewer fighter squadrons on the few remaining UK air bases.
3. All the money being spent in the Great Sandpit means that there's less than bugger-all left for Air Defence of the UK.

Some years ago I did one of those 'defector' exercises against Leuchars in a VC10K. Despite the station being on full alert, not a single F4 managed to find us until we were on short final..... Lots of silly questions from ATC were answered by yours truly in a thick mock-Russian accent as the poor girl read through the idiot list, but no-one managed to intercept and intervene....

"Hello. This Aeroflot XXXX. We want land Luckers"
"Station calling, squawk XXXX and recall me on XXX.XXX"
"No understand"
"Can you squawk?"
"No understand"
"Do you have IFF?"
"No understand"
"Please set your transponder to XXXX"
"OK, understand now. We do"
"Identified, recall me on (UHF)"
"What UHF? Not have UHF"
"Why are you coming to England?"
"Not want land England. Want land Scottishland"
"Sorry, Scotland. Why are you coming here?"
"We like your blue jeans, Beatles records and biro pens. Nothing to eat in Sovietski Soyuz except cabbage sandwich and potato and only vodka to drink. Want whisky!"
"Do you have any women on board?"
"If you had seen women at our airfield, you would not ask silly question. All mend tractors and have face like cow's bottom!!"

This comedy went on and on with us p*ssing ourselves with laughter as our amiable but not terribly helpful answers just tied them up in knots. And to add more fun, we insisted on flying at metric levels and asked for the altimeter setting in mm Hg and the wind velocity in metres per second. You could almost hear the tapping of calculators as they struggled to work it all out.....

Yet not a single F4 came anywhere near us!! Their Stn Cdr was hugely unimpressed by that, but had rather enjoyed the comedy of errors going on in the ATC tower!

Pontius Navigator,
Your quite right, North Coates eastern boundary is in fact a beach. It's about 8 miles south of Cleethorpes. Proteus6's mention of B Flt 85 Sqn brought all the memories flooding back. Best posting I ever had. Many a happy day spent sunbathing, I mean working, on top of a radar watching the ships go in and out of the Humber. Worst day ever, when in 1990, the guy from MOD turned up and told the Staish to turn it all off. Pity the camp has now been turned over to some sort of cult.
Having spent 3 years at North Coates followed by 6 years at Staxton Wold before I went aircrew, I think it is diabolical that the UKADGE system has been allowed to draw down to the state it is in now. There is now very little redundancy and very few radars. What was an effective multi layer system is now under manned, under equipped and under funded. It's funny how little governments have learnt over the last 100 years. You really can't go interfering in other people’s countries if you can't even defend your own.

Sounds like it is time to reopen those mothballed CRCs and CRPs, and bring back kit and people from the various sandpits, assuming they are still there. A manning solution would be to use the RAuxAF to fill weekend shifts.

There are surely plenty of ex-scopies out there who would volunteer to do TACRO/IDRO/WC duties over a weekend a couple of times a month plus a fortnight in the summer (JMC or ADEX) in return for beer tokens, the chance to have a pint in the Mess or NAAFI occasionally with old comrades, and generally to enjoy the job they once did without the accompanying nonsense of random postings, secondary duties, detatchments to FIADGE, dodgy overseas wars etc.

I know I would!

The challenge would be getting up to speed with current practice and maintaining the required currency.