Leon, iRaven

Are you both aware that the 8 MRA4 aircraft have already been paid for by you and I??

I fail to understand why you are so hell bent on just throwing away the thick end of £3 billion and starting a fresh with UAVs.

I can perhaps see a role for the UAV in future ASW/MAROPS perhaps, but we don't have them yet, we don't have any money to buy them yet, however we do have 8 MRA4's ready to go now.

As for all this about You have to stop thinking about 1x RPAS servicing a single sub; you could use 10x RPAS and all the support for the cost of single MRA4 targetting that same sub What are we going to do when we have more than a single sub to prosecute Leon?? call up more RPAS?

WE DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY TO BUY RPAS, don't you get it? What we do have are a bunch of MPAs that are probably going to be scrapped, at a ridiculous cost to us all. It is stupidity beyond belief, and all of your drum-banging about RPAS is great, but we can't afford them now.

Don't worry you can now share a few Atlantic MPA's with your new best friend from across the channel....:\

Ares: More About Landmark 50-year Anglo-French Defense Treaties

Adding detail to Bill's post Entente Cordiale, Meet Special Relationship here, in a nutshell, are the main elements of the “Declaration on Defense and Security Co-operation” signed today by British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

There are 17 points of agreement which include:......

UAVs - Joint development of a new Medium Altitude Long Endurance combat unmanned air vehicle to come into service between 2015-2020 and longer term research into the next generation of such vehicles.......

One wonders whether development of a new MALE UAV is stricly necessary, given that there are several suitable frame types available, and that capability is, by and large, dictated by the sensor fit.

Still, more cash for BAES/Dassault. What could possibly go wrong with the former's track record.

As well as the natural distrust of Brit Aerospace, should they fetaure in the propsed new UAV... in which case they'll first have to find an old UAV to reuse the fuselage...that quote re the new UAV being in service 2015-20 should ring alarm bells. At the very least, even if the new UAV could conduct ASW from the word go, that's several years of capability gap that I still don't believe we can afford.

Other UAV based solutions fall at the same fence in my view - their in service date would be similarly far off, and the cost would be high. Not as high as the cost of developing Nimrod from scratch, but then it's already paid for and whilst I'll admit I'm no expert on the cost side of thing I doubt you'll get a fleet of UAV ASW platforms for anything you could consider non eye watering.... You need:

UAVs with a sizeable sonobuoy load, there is no point in a loing loiter time if you have no stores to drop, subs tend to move out of buoy patterns fairly quickly.

The ability to take the data uplink, fire it reliably to a geostationary satellite, which can retransmit to land where suitably analysis equipment and operators are colocated with tactical staff, ie replicating the Nimrod tac area. This replication makes sense because Nim crews proved repeatedly they were extremely good at this difficult role, only an idiot plays with a effective system. The bandwidth would be quite large, you want to be able to monitor several dozen buoys simultaneously.

These two requirements suggest to me multiple UAVs per target, you'd have to look at the buoy load and dispensing capabilities to decide how many buoys you could fly per UAV, buoy setting would need to be dealt with but if you can get the rest to work then I doubt that'd be a problem.

You would probably also want a radar, you'd feel really stupid if the acoustics guys suggested the target had surfaced to fire or something and you had no way to check that.

You'd probably also want a torpedo capability, as that's the final leg of the game and there's no point having a peacetime only system.

Buoy loads, torpedo load etc - I'd be guessing, but my guess would be that you'd need several UAV's per contact, allowing for turnround etc I think the fleet would have to be a couple of dozen to replace the MRA4 on ASW.

Now we need to design and develop it, get the sensors to work on it as advertised etc.... that sounds like a long job to me. On the other hand MRA4 would (allegedly) be flying by Feb 2011, and buying a different MPA if you are allergic to Nimrod would, I think, give us our capability back rather faster than developing an ASW UAV would.

My main gripe about UAVs is that people are describing as yet imaginary systems as if they exist and are proven.... and I have yet to read any of the linked 'adverts' about UAVs that describe HAVING a capability - they all say 'are hoping to develop' or 'intend to develop' etc.

Dave

That was a near-earth orbit ASAT shot (865km away), the Ku sats are in geo-stationary (35,000km away). To shoot down a geo-stationary you would need to perform a Hohmann Transfer Orbit ...

A Hohmann trajectory is the minimum energy path needed to attain a higher orbit. It's not the necessary path.

... that would give the defending satellite about 1/2 a days' notice that it's coming. You then just manoeuvre the satellite after the ASAT missile is on its way and it misses by miles.

Only if the target satellite can maneuver, and the anti-satellite device cannot. And only if the operators of the target satellite know that something is coming.

By the way, most ASAT missions will commit fraticide of one's own capability as well. Also, if you go for an exo-atmospheric nuke then it would probably quickly escalate to about 20-30 minutes of "exchanges" and then the Cockroaches would inherit the Earth. :ugh:

Neither the USA nor its likely opponents in space would have to use nukes to attack each other's orbital platforms.

ASAT against anything above LEO just isn't a viable tactic in my opinion without risking all-out war.

You think that shooting down an opponent's low Earth orbit satellites would merit only a diplomatic protest, or what?

Worth reading:

Technology Opens Military Space


Nov 2, 2010

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?channel=defense&id=news/dti/2010/11/01/DT_11_01_2010_p34-262431.xml&headline=null&next=10

"The only known hardware to emerge from this effort is the Boeing X-37B, which is still on orbit as this issue goes to press (DTI October, p. 30), and which Cheng said is causing “conniptions” among Chinese space bloggers."

DaveJB
 

You make the point far more elegantly than I could.

I have no doubt that RPAS is a significant part of the future, it is inevitable. But they are largely unproven in the MPA roles and whilst I am sure they will prove their worth one day, we simply do not have the resources at the moment to develop that capability.
LJ.

I have been southside often, I also know several of the team rather well. We are still some way from any sort of capability.

Theoretical physics is one thing, practical application another. None of the Nimrods worked out of the box. They worked but it took the ingenuity of the crews get them to work in an optimal manner.

Besides the crews there was another essential feature - the ocean and targets. You need to get your sensors into the working environment and you need submarines so that you can prove they work. To do that you need an airframe. Unless you have some form of trials platform then you are limited to sequential development which would stretch the timeframe even more.

Now where could we get a suitable trials platform at a low cost and short timescale?

The effects that summer and winter operations can have on the expenditure of sonobuoys is quite dramatic.
The presence of a temperature decrease (thermocline) during the summertime in the top 300ft can make the cat and mouse localisation and tracking of a submarine very difficult. The subsequent increased expenditure in sonobuoys would be a major problem for UAVs.

Working in industry, it really is pie in the sky to make bold statements about capability, which only exists on a bit of paper. If the managers say 5 years for a system, you can double it and add a bit, unless of course, you throw vast amounts of money at it, as the US have done in the past.
Not sure whether they will be doing that soon, as their budget deficit is just about to hit industry over there as well.

PS It feels that my time spent on Nimrods was sort of wasted, by a decision to scrap the capability. Something in me feels empty, in the decision to close Kinloss, and I wish all the best to the folks up there. Sad sad times.

Small Spinner:
Exactly how I feel. Even those of us who have seen ISK in our rear-view mirrors for the last time feel a deep affinity for a place and time which set the foundations of what we subsequently became. A couple of tours on Maritime were essential to knock the rough edges off a newly-qualified AEOp, and it's pretty obvious that those who haven't done it, or weren't very good at it, didn't develop as professionally as their compatriots in the rear-crew world (no offence, Shep!).

Winco,

we didnt have Jack until MRA4 had a release to service.

until that point, we had a parly proven experimental aircraft.

BAE ahould hang their heads in shame over the entire project.

Interested to hear why you think that...?

Starters for 10:

"Nimrod 2000"

Original project cost vs what we have paid up to now?

Why did it not have a release to service?

Why did we bolt modern wings on a 50 year old fuselage?

Interesting listening to the House of Commons debate on the SDSR today. Without exception, none of the MPs taking part in the debate supported the Governments decision to remove the capability. They were all united in the desire to see the capability maintained and they were all aware of the risks that were being taken through that bad decision. The Government's man - Nick Harvey - said the decisions were 'coherent': but he would say that wouldn't he? He also forgot to add the 'in' prefix.

Would its swift endung have some thing to do with this:

Safety Issue Suspends MR4A...

S

Sometimes you get what you ask for... much of the problem lies with the Defence procurement and funding systems and an inability to set a requirement and stick to it!

Or perhaps BAE were more than happy to take valuable defence expenditure on a project they botched.

I don't think Nimrod has been a 'cash cow' somehow.

Sumps

The writer of your article is Tim Ripley, who I believe was at the Press Day at the Air Combat Power Visit at RAF Waddington for Advanced Staff College students this October. I suspect that his story has come from that event due to the timing of the article and the date of the Press event. There were lots of questions about "where is MRA4?" which was conspicuous by its absence!

From what I read, he looks like he is "on the money" and that is similar to what I've heard.

LJ