I'm not here to defend the freakshow, but who needs 0.9M when you can do your job from the airfield overhead?
Sentinel's GMTI is extremely flawed as I am sure you know if involved with it. And don't even mention the Bulge on top:rolleyes:

Tourist

There is more to NATO (and indeed UK) mil ops in Ghanners than the small area of Helmandshire occupied by TFH. Not even the mighty bag can cover all of the areas of interest from Bastion.

True, but you can get an awful lot of bags (shudder) for the kind of money that Sentinel costs.

That would be an awfully big logs footprint (just from the Ghanners perspective from the V(AC) Sqn product that my organization used out there).

US Battlefield Airborne Communications Node perhaps?

Bombardier Global Express 700-1A10 N901GX Battle Field Airborne Communication Node before and after conversion comparisons Miramar Air Show 2007 and 2008 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The North Spin - News: Battlefield Airborne Communications Node Testing Continues

Recently seen passing through Mildenhall

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Can't let that one go.

In what way is it 'flawed' - I am very involved with it and it works extremely well, has a significantly larger coverage area than the bag, much better Radar and an on station time of ass numbing proportions.
The Bag wins on the mission kit, which is fantastic thanks to having been designed with embedded operator input and with rapid software changes. However, the Sentinel kit is still fairly good and will be even better after the next software release.

The 'Bulge on top' is not really used anymore, but still works fine.

As for the future, what could we do with a modern, long endurance, high altitude, high speed jet equipped with an extensive comms suite and a state-of-the-art Radar that tracks ships just as well as it does vehicles? Hmm...

Tourist!
 

It would appear that Tourist knows as much about ISTAR/ASTOR as he does about AD (see F3 thread)!

Tourist, make the effort old boy to google or look on the MoD Website and gain information before making ill-informed comments about subject matter that is clearly out-of-your depth!

MarkRAFIAM - do you have 'a bit of an axe to grind' regarding Raytheon/ASTOR, do tell!

BlackadderIA - good to see someone making a balanced and informed comment and posing an interesting question for our lords and masters!!

My 'tuppence worth' - just think of the benefits of this type of system for anti-piracy ops, survey ops in and around Japan (civil support), support to New Zealand after their earthquake - not quite an 'old cold-war' relic!!

'Let the sparring commence'!

I rarely post, but I sadly built a lot of the what was bough as COTS IT equipment used........

I wont go into details, but archaic dont describe it.

Bearing in mind where we are now with Libya and the middle east, isn't Sentinel one of the most relevant capabilities the UK has for many years to come?

Can't get my head around scrapping it. I don't know the finer points of what it does or how good it's kit actually is, but GMTI is surely a good tool for the toolset?

Unchecked.

Yes, it is very good. Ergo, it is stupid to scrap it.

However, as we've seen lately, this is no reason to assume it won't be scrapped in 2015. :ugh:

Hopefully, common sense will prevail at that point, and 5(AC) with the Sentinel System will be allowed to get on with their very useful job.

S41

Unchecked

This morning on the Beeb News site was a photo slideshow of NATO assets in use one of which was the Sentinal. So perhaps?

Agreed. I couldn't believe my ears when our Staish announced it's fate back in October, but the fact it's now being employed in 2 theatres surely demonstrates that it is something that is both necessary and useful.