At least Boeing knew where to mount ze engines... ;)

As for the 'special relationship', want a lot of s, h, one t. It is and always will be one way, which has been repeated several time in history. We have just scraped one old bird to buy another this is maddiness and as for the on time, on budget, trust me the Yanks will recover any charges via the "change control" process just as much as BAe systems would have done. :ugh:

One more lost capability....

And another reason to add to this sorry list is the loss of the tanker contract to Boeing despite a better solution being offered by EADS.

Rant mode off.... Have a nice Christmas or as the Yanks say have a nice holiday.

£5 says with the advent of the MAA that thing will never be granted Airworthiness. TSR2, MR4A, Rivetjoint - and it won't be the last!

Tony, sorry to disappoint, but, no they weren't!

How do the USAF RC-135s fly in UK airspace given this logic?

LDF,

In what way am I wrong?

I have seen pictures of 49 on a lo-loader going to Cosford, definately looks Air Defence blue or as near as dulux could get it.


PT

Photos: Hawker Siddeley Nimrod R1 (801) Aircraft Pictures | Airliners.net


Picture of 49 at Cosford recently.



SGC

Zero1

No it isn't. Have a look at this UKUSA Agreement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and then if you're really bored go to the links at the bottom for the detail on the original agreement. There's also lots of background in the Wiki references.

There are also lots of books on how the UK has benefitted the USA for intelligence in the past and not so distant past. Of course, you will not get an 'official line' for at least 50 years!

iRaven

brickhistory
That would be because USAF RC-135s are US registered, whereas Airseeker will have to be UK registered, unless there is a lot of jiggery pokery, and they somehow register it as a US a/c, service it as a US a/c but fly it with UK crews. Can't see it myself, and being able to trace all the airworthiness aspects of a 40+ year old a/c that has sat in a desert for years is nigh on impossible. This is something the MAA or MOD has never done before, and will surely be interesting to watch unfold.:hmm:

As per Sir GC's link, the final Nimrod colours were, i think, camouflage grey, or is it barley grey? Certainly not even remotely blue...

Photos: Hawker Siddeley Nimrod R1 (801) Aircraft Pictures | Airliners.net

-RP

small spanner, thanks for that.

"they somehow register it as a US a/c, service it as a US a/c but fly it with UK crews"

When the purchase decision was first announced, that is exactly how some of the newspapers described the deal. The implication was that the UK was simply funding three extra airframes for a joint pool.
Now I can't remember where I read that, but at the time the impression was clear. These would be UK financed USA aircraft with UK crews - according to those press reports

Not sure from a governance viewpoint how that would work MM. The MAA have to be responsible for the safety of a UK crew, and therefore under their rule set, it would have to be UK registered. As I said this has not been done before, and I am not sure they really know the implications of any one particular route.
What happens if there was a UK only operation, that the US disagreed with, could we use the capability? etc. etc.

This is the nub of the problem. It doesn’t matter that the aircraft are of foreign origin etc. The rules are well known, albeit MoD cancelled the relevant Def Stan a few years ago without bothering to replace it, and no longer have a complete copy (!) Essentially, the aircraft and their equipment are designated Category 5 or 6 (in my opinion 5, but no doubt MoD will try to save money at the expense of safety), and you follow the regs. (A different “Cat 5” to the one most here recognise).


The issue here is the audit trail, or more specifically, how to manage without one. The MAA has a real problem here, not of their making. They referred to it at the recent MAA Conference, but the speaker couldn’t elaborate, not least because to do so in any detail would have exposed the lies (or incompetence) of other speakers. That is, the MAA owe their every existence to past senior staffs ruling that the mandated audit trail is not necessary, and making no compensatory provision to manage the inevitable outcome. This was exposed in the 1992 CHART report (Chinook, Puma & Wessex), but the MAA can’t mention this because it would mean acknowledging the Haddon-Cave lie that the problems only commenced in 1998. In this case, they must be seen to do something or it calls their existence into question; it may be this is the case which forces them to acknowledge the truth.




Zero 1, you mentioned “change control”, which is one component of the overarching process which delivers a maintained Safety Case. You are correct that it is an area of MoD’s business that is poorly controlled, and hence ripe for overcharging and unnecessary work. The underlying reason is the same as above. The RAF Chief Engineer’s organisation issued an edict 20 odd years ago to rundown this entire area and, since then, MoD has not had a trained cadre of specialists to manage it effectively. (The last team was disbanded in June 1993). And, as I said, the Def Stan has been cancelled without replacement. The MAA has tried to reinvent this wheel, but the part of their new suite of documents that tries to deal it has been written by someone who has not a single clue and has obviously never bothered to speak to anyone who has. As Small Spinner says, it will be interesting......

Make it £20.

Hmm. Multi million $/£ aircraft surrounded by piles of shyte and not a single piece of racking or component storage in sight.

QA Heaven :E

Hmm, big filters on doors perhaps....

Only senior officers and tossers, be they not the same, will call it airseeker.

:D I thought it was called 'adding value'.