P7
 

Zedder

You may well be right about SR(A)420, but is it not true that we and Germany had already signed up to the P7, only to have the rug pulled when the USN could not afford it. SR(A) 420 was a response to the loss of our planned future MPA programme to US defence cuts.

CS:)

What Mra4
 

After todays news in the Telegraph all Nimrods, GR4's and loads of other assets won't be here in the future, so what lies ahead for RAF Scotland?

airpolice

2018
UK identify source of device (unique chemical signature), only states have the ability to produce plutonium/ enriched uranium for nuclear device. 37+ buckets of sunshine delivered. Would any state risk this?

WarmandDry, there is about 300kg of Plutonium 239 (the weapons grade stuff) unaccounted for from Los Alomos. I couldn't find a similar public report for the UK or France, but they may have similar issues.
BTW you only need approx 4kg of Pu 239/Pu 240 to make a nasty dirty weapon.

If the Atlantique isn't viable, what do the French use to protect their SSBNs then?

It wasn't & still isn't viable for RAF requirements because it didn't meet the criteria either of range or endurance. In my many years of cold war MPA operations our best way of protecting our deterrent was knowing constantly the whereabouts of the opposition. As I said previously I don't recollect French Atlantique operations out at 30W. I doubt that they rarely left LFD 18 or the Med. Oh yes, and the odd jolly to Kinloss & St Mawgan & their ex colonial outposts.

I'm not knocking their overall capabilities. I've fallen over many times on dets to Nimes & Lanbhioue (sp) as a result of their excellent hospitality.:O

If this project is binned will the airframes be chopped up or would it be worth storing them for when we are less broke.

By the time we are less broke we'll have another Labour government & then they'll be no chance for our Armed Forces!

K of K/Fin 84....
Nimrods, traditionally, are (allegedly) part of the delousing effort when SSBNs go on patrol (if needed), they were (allegedly) available as a rapid response force should an SSBN wish to exit/enter the UK and a sov be suspected/detected in our waters, and in the event of sov SSN's deploying anywhere we didn't want them to then a Nimrod (or more often a long, rather boring stream of Nimrods) could go do that sanitisng stuff....often for rather longer than us dry men wanted (so I am told):bored:

The Atlantique could have done that stuff, provided it all took place overhead Faslane. I don't know for sure, but I don't think the Atlantique was the ac for extended flights at 20 to 30 W, which was where Nimrods sometimes (apparently) had to fly as part of the SSBN protection process.

I can see a new model P3 in that role, and to be honest I think something like that would be the optimal answer - I don't think a refurb 737 or Atlantique cuts it, the USA has the industrial depth (for want of a better term) to develop an effective MPA these days, individual European nations don't have the cash reserves to develop such complex platforms.

We could, perhaps, reopen the Sunderland production line...
Dave

Not logical.......Jim

We could, perhaps, reopen the Sunderland production line...

Now thats an interesting thought....There are still a few barnacle encrusted exponents of the art available for consultation:ok:

When doing Tucano groundschool in the late 90s, we were told that the cockpit lighting rheostats were so remarkably large because they had been taken from the Sunderland spares bin lurking somewhere at Shorts factory. When MFTS comes in, one could perhaps save on the development costs of 'Sunderland 2100' by robbing said rheostats from retired Tin Cans and redistributing them to our new MPA...and yes it would take till 2100 to re-invent that venerable wheel...

What about the new Japanese MPA? It looks, to my entirely uneducated eye, rather like a turbofan powered P3.

Green_Flash:

££££££££££s... we haven't any.

CC

Yes, sorry, that's taken as read. I meant, from a techno point of view? Is it capable and if so should/could we have gone down that road? I mean, I've had Jap bikes for years and whilst not being mind bendingly awesome they a) worked, b) got the job done and c) I could afford them. As a matter of interest is there anything from the Land of Nippon that is/was in service with Brit Mil? (XR250's spring to mind but that's all I can think of)

I think the Japanese are at the same point they were with cars when they brought out the Nissan Cherry. They're not what they're cracked-up to be, or rather they are....

Forgive me if I’m out of date, but the last time I managed ASW related projects, I was subject to the unofficial policy of “Buy British”. Unofficial, in that you had to run a lengthy competition at great expense to both MoD and Bidders, and delay to the Services, but if the answer wasn’t, for example, GEC-Marconi, go away and think again. Think AQS-901. Even if you ran “blind” trials at JTAC and Operators picked the non-British kit every time, it was not the required answer.

This didn’t apply to all technologies; for example we sourced EW mainly from the US for many years. The Defence Technology Strategy is probably the latest source of such guidance, but even then it is unlikely to say it outright. If this is still extant policy or practice, then the non-UK platforms mentioned here would only be bought as “air vehicles” and then populated with UK kit. That task itself would be lengthy and expensive.

tucumseh
 

Always interesting to hear you posts. At the risk of thread drift, as this is applicable to all government spending on defence hardware, your thoughts on a generic question would be valued.

If the government were to say spend £1Bn on a defence contract for some new hardware (say some new SAR helos) and it is built in Britain, from suppliers who pay UK taxes etc. what sort of percentage comes back in taxes to the Treasury?

What with corporation tax, business rates, income tax, stamp duty, VAT, not to mention CGT and IHT my guess that around 95% will either stay in the economy or come back as taxes. Then if on the back of such a contact the suppliers can win some export orders (like the Merlins for Algeria) the govt can pocket even more in tax.

HMRC have got to some kind of model or formula for this. The QE & PoW carriers must be another example and if we end up with a contract to build one for India or Australia then that's got to be good news....unless we flog then off cheap and don't get to keep the first two......:ugh:

What am I missing here?

MB

Well, it's been done before - didn't the AN/APS-20 radars in the Shackleton AEW.2s start off in Skyraiders, before being robbed for the AEW Gannets, then scavenged again for the Shacks?

Madbob

Not a lot really, but I'm no financial expert or Treasury insider! I'd mention two things.

VAT is variable, depending on aircraft tonnage. Up to 17.5% is a huge overspend or underspend (bonus) if you get this wrong up front.

If MoD own some or all of the Intellectual Property Rights, we claw back a percentage of any non-MoD contract value through agreed Commercial Exploitation Rates. The last time I agreed this rate (long long ago!), we got about 1.5% back on a design we owned about 20% of. The company simply added this 1.5% to the price they charged their other customer, to maintain profit margins. (As an engineering project manager, I would agree the latter figure as it is a purely technical assessment of the design, Commercial negotiate the former. But the last time I mentioned it to an IPT, when a company announced sales of MoD owned designs they managed, I got a blank look, so it is entirely possible MoD don't bother with this anymore).