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RAF Reaper Drones to be controlled from the UK

Stabbed Cats to become RPAS squadron

13 and 39 recce squadrons again...

Quote:

13 May 2011

News articles by date

RAF Announces New Reaper Squadron

The Chief of the Air Staff announced today that a new Reaper Squadron will form at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, which will mean the aircraft over Afghanistan will be controlled from the UK for the first time.

Speaking at the disbandment of Number XIII Tornado Squadron at RAF Marham, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton announced that the Squadron number will transfer to a second Reaper Squadron next year. The remotely piloted aircraft will continue to be based in Afghanistan.

With its array of high tech sensors and precision guided weapons, Reaper can carry out a wide range of missions that are currently controlled by 39 Squadron crews on the other side of the world at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. Reaper can use its sensors day and night to spy on insurgent activity for hours at a time and at a range where they are undetectable from the ground.

Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton, said:

“The Royal Air Force is today delivering air power operations in Afghanistan, Libya and the Falkland Islands and, as XIII Squadron’s Tornados have shown, making a fantastic contribution to the very positive progress in the military campaigns in all these locations. I am confident that XIII Squadron’s reputation and distinguished history will be carried forward as it transitions to be a part of our Remotely Piloted Force employing the Reaper over Afghanistan.

He added:

“This transition will see us bring Reaper mission control to the UK, make more efficient and effective use of our resources in exploiting this growing capability and enable the operation of significantly more Combat Intelligence Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance aircraft over Afghanistan 24 hours a day.”

Defence Secretary, Dr Liam Fox, said:

“Reaper aircraft are providing valuable support to our front-line troops in Afghanistan. We are committed to providing the best available equipment to our Armed Forces. The formation of this new Squadron follows our doubling of the Reaper capability to ten aircraft, which represents an increased investment of £135M. This extra Squadron will help us get the best out of this valuable armed reconnaissance aircraft.”

XIII Squadron was formed in 1915 and has continued its long and distinguished record through both world wars and Operations over Iraq and Afghanistan. Notably, in 2009 XIII Squadron conducted the last Tornado sortie over Iraq in support of Operation TELIC. In the summer of 2010, XIII Squadron deployed on Operation HERRICK in Afghanistan providing Close Air Support and Combat Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance during a very busy fighting season. Finally, just a few weeks from disbandment, XIII Squadron were at the very fore of Operations over Libya, delivering deep strike with the RAF’s Stormshadow missile.

A bit late on the scene....

Merge the threads?

XIII and 39 Sqn together again? How about RAF Luqa next?

http://www.asisbiz.com/images/0-RAF-...a-Crest-0S.jpg

:ok:

http://i452.photobucket.com/albums/q...PR9_13Sq-1.jpg

http://i452.photobucket.com/albums/q...R9_39Sqdn_.jpg

Fantastic news and a great Photo Recce (PR) heritage too - also both armed recce too :D

Cpl Clott

may be controlled from the UK, but whose satellite bandwidth will they be using? Last time I looked we didn't have a lot of domestic military satellite comms capability

I think you'll find that about 80% of the US military SATCOM is commercially sourced plus the UK MOD use Paradigm under a PFI for Skynet (which is used to pipe the UK's picture - see link Skynet 5 | PPP Forum ).

So what's your point? I'd rather be a hidden signal amongst a bunch of commercial transponders than being beamed from a military satellite that stands out like a dog's doo-dah!

So please, do tell us your concerns...

Cpl Clott

simple: lack of control, lack of bandwidth. The fact we're having to send King Airs into Afghanistan to do the job of the drones due to lack of satellite bandwidth should be enough to make you ask questions

Good God, when did we put PW and Hellfire on a King Air?:E

dunno if they're armed or not, but there are four of them (at least) used in place of the drones for surveillance This gives the background - and a photo of a USA one US, UK deploy manned unmanned aircraft to save bandwidth ? The Register
In UK parlance an FLKA = Shadow R1
Hawker Beechcraft advert for them at Hawker Beechcraft Military and Special Mission: Surveillance

Theres more background in relation to todays news report at
UK's Reaper flying hunter-killer fleet 'to double' ? The Register Seems the RAF is to double its number reapers from five to ten.

James

So what bandwidth would that be then? The KAs use different bandwidth, but bandwidth all the same. And the UK didn't buy modified KA350s to save bandwidth, they bought them at the same time as Reaper as they didn't know how effective either would be to replace the Nimrod in an overland ISR role.

Nice bit of fact fishing by you though...;)

Cpl Clott

PS You're link to the Hawker Beechcraft site shows a dual SATCOM datalink function on the aircraft anyway :ugh:

James

You're so called "background info" has a picture of an RC12 GUARDRAIL which is a SIGINT bird only - hence the enormous amount of antennae!

As Corporal Clott says - you're obviously fishing :=

The B Word

Fishing and King Airs aren't unusual in Canada, eh?

http://www.provincialaerospace.com/P...ada_header.jpg

Fisheries and Ocean Patrol is done by 4 modified special mission King Airs...

:ok:

Great news - :ok::ok::ok:

Excellent news (even if most of it is pretty old).

James, if you take your military info / thought processes from the register you have some serious issues. Has it occured to you that they a. Have a pretty clear agenda and b. Have a habit of not worrying too much about facts on their website? By all means read it, but read other stuff as well and think for yourself, especially before posting here where at least some posters know what they are talking about (not many mind, don't trust them either!)

Wonder how many crews are going to stay on the Sqn???!!!???

And if those Crews would rather be at Creech or Waddo?:rolleyes:

thanks for the kudos of accusing me of fishing, but I'm sure that if my intentions were that oriented I would have asked some questions!.

To answer some of the points aimed at me
1) I'm sure the picture was just a convenient stock "funny looking King Air" which happened to be available
2) Of course the King Airs will have a satellite uplink: its a data backup in case they get shot down. BUT its a backup - its not a realtime data processing link
3) Satellite bandwidth is satellite bandwidth. Frequency / polarisation / waveband / location are all irrelevant. All that matters is the data transmission rate available on the bird, and the ability of the groundstation to talk to it. And if you are timesharing on a commercial platform (as Corporall Clott implied) then you're **** out of luck if the commercial needs outweigh the meagre spending ability of the military

James

Quote:

Of course the King Airs will have a satellite uplink: its a data backup in case they get shot down. BUT its a backup - its not a realtime data processing link

A datalink in case they get shot down - what a load of hoop! Some of the King Airs datalink real time FMV in the same way as Predator/Reaper/Global Hawk at anywhere between 1-3 megabits per second - try googling Project Liberty. Other King Airs are line of sight only but still use frequency spectrum to reach back their picture in the same way as Hermes450/RQ-7 Shadow/Scan Eagle/Desert Hawk.

The only difference is that unmanned systems need a control datalink at somewhere between 100-200 kilobits per second. So here is the comparison to disrobe your argument:

A. Datalink for manned/unmanned systems to reachback their picture is 1-3,000,000 bits per second.

B. Datalink to control unmanned system is 100-200,000 bits per second.

In other words for every dissemination link you can have 10-20 control links for unmanned systems. Thus the bandwidth argument is as true for manned as it is for unmanned - the reachback of the picture is the problem.

I hope that helps you get around the untruths spread by ill informed pieces like The Register.

Cpl Clott :ok:

Perhaps slightly off topic, but do the controlling crews qualify for "1000 Hour" type patches?

1000hr patch?

Yes and its logged in a flying log book as normal - the Ground Control Station for Reaper has a conventional stick, throttle, rudder pedals and HoTAS for things like flaps/weapons/engine kill switch plus a gear lowering lever. The pilot is flying "fly by wire", it's just that the wire is 8000 miles long!!! That is why they are called Remotely Piloted Air Systems - not drones or robots or UAVs, because they're flown by humans with pilot skills.

Nuff said...