Cutbacks, the Silver Lining
 

Surely its not all bad?

1. More Reapers - Good
2. More Helicopters - Good
3. Improved "close combat equipment package" with "state of the art" body armour and night vision goggles being made available to 50% more troops. - Good
4. More Bowman tactical radios for troops and £80m for special forces communications - Good
5. Improvements to the defensive and support arrangements for the RAF Hercules heavy-lift fleet - Not sure what this means but sounds good.
6. More C_IED detection equipment - Good
7. Another C-17 - Good

Isn't this focus on the guys in the field getting shot at exactly what we have all been asking for? We have no money so we need to spend it as best we can.

Hopefully most of the redundancy's will come from AbbeyWood.

You missed one.

Lots of MOD CS non-jobs soon to be looking for work.

Not so sure a cut in current capabilities is what we need, especially as we need to be preparing for tommorrows war and not todays distraction.

Abbey Wood or any of the over manned, bureaucratic PTs inc. MB

Unfortunately...
 

This is the C17 that Bob has elected to buy:)YouTube - Very good model C-17 in action

As usual, the devil will be in the detail. For instance, how much of this shopping list, whilst being funded by MOD core, will come in under the UOR process? The existing Reapers are a UOR programme for Afghanistan, with all the implications that brings for support and long term use outside of Afghan ops.

If this list is being funded as a UOR, then it isn't quite as good as first seems. But which ever way you define at this 'force re-balancing', it is still a reduction in capability brought about by a failure to properly resource, fund and procure capability/

I'd far rather have a sqn of these providing armed air cover over me in Helmand:

http://www.yannone.org/BlogPics/Reaper.jpg

Than a sqn of Harriers (less persistance, less weapons effect and less boasting!). :ok:

While it would be churlish not to say good, we’re getting more kit, it should be recognised that quite a lot are barely recognisable remnants of long overdue programmes that have been frozen and/or cut to the bone. Remember the £1.2Bn “savings” from a couple of years ago? In particular, I recognise one old programme whose ISD was 2000. Another, 2007.

Other parts simply sound like attrition replacements (see the Gray report when discussing BOWMAN and lack of asset accounting).

In other words, some routine, low level work is being spun and delayed for political expediency.

Leon,

I'll give you persistence but weapons effect, are you sure? Just have a quick count from the photos. Then ask what weapons those are. As for boasting, a little cruel.

As a complete aside we're ace.

Just off to talk about me for a little while.

On the negative side, a 2 yr gap in ASW and MR/ISTAR role, with the early retirement of MR2 and delay to MRA4. Minimal savings as we are tied into a maintenance and support contract until 2012.

Frm the announcement ( my bold ):- "We intend to withdraw the Nimrod MR2 force 12 months early and slow the introduction of the MRA4 force. This will have an impact on our use of RAF Kinloss, but there is no change to our assumptions on the future basing of the MRA4 force at this stage. The decision to withdraw MR2 has been taken for financial reasons and is unconnected to the report by Mr Haddon Cave into the circumstances that led to the tragic loss of Nimrod XV230 in Afghanistan: Mr Haddon Cave was very clear in his report that the aircraft remains safe to fly. I will be making a further statement to the House in respect of Mr Haddon-Cave's report tomorrow

Clearly leaving room to manoeuvre, in true Sir Humphrey fashion.

In the words of Cpl. Fraser, "We're all doomed...."

FWIW

In 2008 the RAF were under-manned and had to recruit 4559 individuals to achieve manning balance by 2011. There was a massive recruiting effort that was so successful it exceeded this number within 12 months. :D. Interesting then to read courtesy of the MOD website that;

The number of Service personnel, who are not critical to current operations, will be reduced by 2,500. This will be achieved by slowing recruitment:ugh:

I know this will not be all light-blue but it will feel like a kick in the teeth for all AFCO recruiters who were beaten with the '4559' stick. :mad:

manxcat

Silver lining? Silver tarnishes!

Orca..... MQ-9 Weapns

Quote: =

Available stores include the GBU-12, EGBU-12, and GBU-38 500 lb Joint Direct Attack Munition. The MQ-9 was designed to haul over 3,000 pounds of external ordnance to include the GBU-12, GBU-38, AIM-9 missiles and Small Diameter Bombs and 4 Hellfires

The public domain web is here:

MQ-9 Reaper / Predator B

VinRouge Wrote:

Quote:

---

Not so sure a cut in current capabilities is what we need, especially as we need to be preparing for tomorrows war and not today’s distraction.

---

So far this distraction has killed 239 of our comrades, more than in Iraq, nearly as many as in the Falklands.
Coalition deaths in Afghanistan by country (from BBC website)
USA: 864*
UK: 239
Canada: 132*
Germany: 40
France: 36
Denmark: 30
Spain: 26
Italy: 22
Netherlands: 21
Poland: 15
Australia: 11
Romania: 11
Estonia: 7
Norway: 4
Czech Republic: 3
Latvia: 3
Hungary: 2
Portugal: 2
South Korea: 2
Sweden: 2
Turkey: 2
Belgium: 1
Finland: 1
Lithuania: 1
TOTAL: 1,477

I agree, quite distracting and likely to continue to be a distraction for many more years.

manxcat Wrote:

Quote:

---

I know this will not be all light-blue but it will feel like a kick in the teeth for all AFCO recruiters who were beaten with the '4559' stick.

---

Ah bless, all those Capt Darlings feeling unloved .

I'm obviously in the minority here as, not withstanding the issues raised by Melchett01, I think this is a good direction to be going in. MR2 is broken, MRA4 will not have a capability for the Afghan campaign. In my opinion ISTAR is the key in the C-IED. Comms, armour and helo's are what’s needed as loads and loads of posts on this website have been saying for years. To remain relevant the RAF needs to be able to support the SF and greens and make an impact in trying to reduce the threats that they are facing.

We are not the USAF, we don't have the cash or people to develop everything. Of course we need Maritime, Strike, Helo's, AT, ISTAR etc, and have industry working on the future to all of these, but we are skint.

But what sort of Chinooks?
 

LJR,

Thanks old chap. As an operator of one, that looked at the other on a daily basis you will forgive me. In Reaper you have a machine that can carry a 500lb class LGB, or GPS guided weapon, or hellfire. Security implications prevent me from fleshing this out, but i never felt my loadout was inferior when i was sat at the hold watching what they could haul airborne.

Airborne 'top trumps' and reality are subtley different. Why buy PW4 when GBU-12 and it's kids are available? Well, the answer is simply 'weapon effects'.

Who is going to fly them?

With regards to the MR2-MR4 gap, lets just hope there are no long range incidents at sea that require the MR2 guiding on the SAR heli's to the incident. The MR2 going out of service early with no immediate replacement (in the MR4) is to me, the government toying with lives. Although Ainsworth seems confident that other platforms can bridge the gap.

"As usual, the devil will be in the detail. For instance, how much of this shopping list, whilst being funded by MOD core, will come in under the UOR process? The existing Reapers are a UOR programme for Afghanistan, with all the implications that brings for support and long term use outside of Afghan ops. "

Meltchett - that is an extremely good point. Having dealt with Reaper in a previous existence, I don't believe it has gone into core. Therefore MOD isn't paying for these extra airframes, but we do get to find the money to stick it into core when HERRICK ends. Lucky us, we get to make more cuts in a few years time to pay for a capability we're getting now...

Of course the other question not being answered here is "are we doubling the Reaper frames, or the Reaper task lines" - significant capability difference there.

Ex Harrier, GR4 and Nimrod pilots?

No oven, no catering, no heating, and the blades fly round in circles not the aircraft. Cant really see it.