Red Arrows for the Chop?
 

I've just had a wander over to UKAR and the latest buzz is a story in the Daily Mirror that the Red Arrows are now in Cameron's sights?

Mind you I don't think that Tory ex-Public School Types get along too famously with the Daily Mirror. A bit like a Neanderthal's Guardian or Independent really!:ouch:

FB:)

Aren't we about due the statutory 'Victory for [name of tabloid] as Red Arrows saved' campaign based upon someone seeing/claiming to have seen a document for the next PR? The Express won that campaign in the latter days of the Blair government, then again when Brown was PM, and then handed the baton over to the Mail, who failed miserably to claim victory in a story so badly handled (Reds banned from flying over Olympics because they'll upset illegal immigrants who've driven house prices down, or something like that) that it died a death very quickly.

I assume that after the Mail's inability to carry a made up story through to a successful conclusion, the cabal of tabloid editors stripped them of their right to have a second attempt and passed it on to the Mirror instead. I look forward to learning via these means that their campaign has been successful in due course and learning which organ has been tasked with fighting this essential campaign in the 2015 'crap defence related stories' season.

This rumour happens every year without fail.

Am I the only one who thinks that the move to chop might have more legs this year than in the past?

I mean, if you were one of Their Airships and you were given the choice - the Arrows or something operational had to go, (as surely must be the case that's being put to them with the depth of the cuts being made), putting emotions aside for one moment - as you'd have to - what would you choose?

I hate to say it, but for the sake of the people in the field, I hope the answer would be an easy one.

A compromise might be one that works for other countries - maintain the Arrows, but in a part time capacity, with the members made up of pilots whose day job is instructing.

Not that I have an inside edge, but as BAE Systems is a front runner with its Hawk AJT for the U.S. Air Force’s Advanced Pilot Training Platform, the winner of which will be chosen just next year and worth some $7bn, I would have thought it unlikely that the Red Arrows would be given the chop before a decision is made.

Any plans for a Stateside tour in the next 18-months per chance?

Don't worry chaps ...

38 Squadron are doing a work up :E


Just love that horizontal "figure of eight" :D

Coff.

That's brilliant, but slightly spooky, Coff.

I seem to recall, from my considerable time at HQ1 Gp, having to answer questions every year about why we shouldn't scrap the Arrows and why we needed to keep 100 Sqn and so forth. Same question each time. Same answer each time. Same outcome each time. So I suppose it could be said that the headline is true. Every time.

Red Arrows/Leuchars Airshow
 

I hope they are bloody staying just got my wee nephew mad about Red Arrows and he wants to see them he will never forgive me, secondly the best chance he will get to see them is at RAF Leuchars so slight thread drift any word about that airshow this year??

NM

There's no date yey, so not looking good at all. Glad I went last year.

Most talk is about the Typhoons leaving.

Hope I'm wrong, but I think it's all over.

You know a rumour like this has some credibility as they have just completed a JRs accom upgrade and work has just started on resurfacing the rwy at Scampton............!

About time
 

You can only sell the Crown Jewels once but these are not the Crown Jewels. I would hate to be the one to write up the Business Case for this. The Cost Benefit analysis would be very contentious. I have never understood how the RAFAT contributes to Defence. Is it really such a necessary recruiting tool? and would Waste of Space not sell other sharp pointy wizz jets if the tax payer did not fund the red stuff. Even if Waste of Space did adopt the team with 100% sponsorship the tax payer would still foot the bit through the overhead recovery element of their priceing structure.

In these austere times my vote would be to get rid!

If a choice had to be made between RAFAT and BBMF. it would be BBMF for me everytime.

Re: USAF Advanced Jet Trainer competition...

Using ~40 year old T1/T1As doing display routines to sell T2s to the US? You'd be better off sending BBMF with a Lancaster, Hurricane and Spitfire!

The T2 must have made its final sale? With the T-50 being offered by KAI and Lockheed Martin:

http://www.flightglobal.com/Assets/G...x?ItemID=20282

And the Machi M-346 being offered as the T100:

http://www.flightglobal.com/Assets/G...x?ItemID=34688

I really can't see how the Hawk T2 is going to 'tickle the USAF's fancy'? I know the USN have the T-45 Goshawk but that was bought to train a different generation of pilots for the previous generation F-14 and F-18 and not today's F-15, F-16, F-22 and F-35 jockeys.

The US aren't stupid and sending the Red Arrows to the US on BAE's behalf would not make one jot of difference in my opinion.

The B Word

At the risk of upsetting folks....sending the Red's to the USA would just be a Warm Up Act for the Blues and T-Birds. Frontline aircraft with Afterburners get folks revved up.....classic trainers are well......uh.....old hat.

The Red's do a good show....but so do every other Team in the business.

Sending the BBMF would be a huge Smash Hit if done with the War Bird folks who show off the B-17, B-24, B-25's, 40's, 47's, 51's, 86's!

There is something about the sound of all those Merlins purring....but when them big piston radials go to barking.....we are talking Woody Time!

SASless ...

It's only a question of time mate ... :ok:

http://i1004.photobucket.com/albums/...Red_Arrows.jpg

© Clavework Graphics

Coff.

The airshow website still reads, as it has since shortly after the last one:

"A formal decision is yet to be taken on whether there will be an RAF Leuchars Airshow in 2013. We will provide more information as we have it."

As someone else has commented, this doesn't look good... If you are Scottish based, then your nephew's next best chance might be the East Fortune Airshow, where the Red Arrows have sometimes appared (but sometimes not) in recent years:
East Fortune Airshow Feature Page on Undiscovered Scotland

More likely.....


http://hsfeatures.com/features04/ima...efb31bg_27.jpg

The Reds have a problem with aircraft attrition and not all of them are 'smokers' which is essential to their script. They are also flying legacy aircraft rather than front line contemporary so they are hardly flying the flag for the best of british these days. FWIW I think that air shows and display teams are the vital link between Joe Public; his family, and the Armed Forces. This year has seen Hawk, King Air, Tornado pulled from the air show circuit and Tutor is hanging on by a thread. The signal being sent from on high is that there is no appetite for public displays and it is reasonable to assume that RAFAT & BBMF are also highlighted on the austerity radar. Logic may suggest that they should go, but I suspect that the majority of the general public (and therefore taxpayers) would wish for them to stay. The Blue Eagles have gone and I believe The Army Historic Flight also; I suspect that at a time in the foreseeable future, display survival will depend totally on sponsorship and this is a rare commodity nowadays.

How many flying hours are the norm including training/positioning /display?

GGR

Courtney,

Sounds like you're the chap to ask.

Every time this raises its head the argument gets bogged down mainly in myth and rumour. As the expert from Group can you give a data burst on how much the reds actually cost?

At about this time in the argument we usually get told that BAE pay for them, sponsors pay for them, defence sales pay for them...but no-one ever backs this up with any fact.

I'm thinking that fuel, actuals, LSA must be significant for the team as is pay, flying pay etc...which surely we still do pay for? How big a unit is RAFAT? Could we close a tower or airfield if we got rid of them, i.e. are there related costs as well?

I quite like the reds but I have to agree with SASless to be honest. Having watched a few Blue Angels displays recently - and the Thunderbirds last week - I certainly prefer the grunt of Hornets and Vipers to the reds' (perfect,elegant, flawless) airborne ballet.

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reques...Arrows%20u.pdf

FOI question answer some of your questions as above

As much as the Arrows have been a part of the furniture for 45 odd years, I'm not sure theres sufficient an airshow industry left to support a full time team, let alone one flying out of date a/c that can't be seen as an industry promotion any longer.

In a much reduced RAF and with the demise of the USAFE base shows and even all but one RAF Battle of Britain at Home show, in my view you be better off axing the Arrows and reverting back to the old days of sharing it around the front line sqns as back in the early sixties.

A part time 4/5-ship Tiffie display worked up for just the remaining handful of big UK displays and the odd overseas display would be something new for the public and allow industry sponsorship possibly because of possible Tiffie sales pitch.
Rotate the team through the front line sqns each year, with some nice painted tails etc for a bit of bling, like the old Lightning Firebirds and Blue Diamonds schemes.

I think you'd find it hard to justify aircraft hours and fuel burn for a Typhoon team. I think your idea has legs if a training unit could do something with the Hawk though - a fourship perhaps?

One thing's for sure though, once they've gone - they've gone - so defensible or not I for one am glad the reds are still knocking about.

It may not be the aircraft or the cost of fuel etc that's the driver in this case, it's the aircrew! Guess what? After SDSR the RAF is short of aircrew, esp fast jet pilots. There are front line and a lot of instructional posts that cannot be filled at the moment with potentially 10 'spare' aircrew based at Scampton.

Is that really true? Have more people had enough of things and left than were anticipated?

How do you obtain replacements? Trawl amongst the QFI world - oh, hang on, that's virtually collapsed now. Train more pilots? Well, first you need to find the non-existent QFIs, then wait for about 3 years until the ab initios make it from RAFC to the front line....

A bit like closing aerodromes. It might be an easy short term cost saving to further some multi-starred air wheel's chances of 'the third and the K', but becomes incredibly expensive when some dumb decision of the past has to be reversed and the aerodrome re-opened.

Why does today's RAF remind me so much of this:


:uhoh:

I wouldn't necessarily agree with that; the RW world is hurting after the sustained Op Tempo and departure rates are ever growing. The ME world is down because of fleet extensions to C-130K, VC-10 and Tri* needing crews where there were none planned, on top of increase exit rates - it's only the state of the airlines preventing a total collapse.

I know of several FJ guys who can't find a seat right now and are stuck in desk jobs whilst the stream sorts itself out post-SDSR and Harrier's demise.

My personal view is that the "10 spare" aircrew wouldn't make any difference in the wider scheme of things.

This is one of thsoe stories that "leaks" just before any cut-backs

The RAF will offer up the Red Arrows knowing it's not something any politician wants to cut - when they are saved its "Well Minister of course we need more cash as You stopped us from making savings"

oldest trick in the Sir Humphrey Appleby Book of Sensible Government

Orca,


Sorry I missed your question yesterday, but it seems to have been answered by the FOI post. I think the point is that it is, in my view, not that much in the big scheme of things. Compare that with cost of trying to do it with a number of Typhoons (and that's ignoring the incredible waste of front line assets) and it really has been a drop in the ocean.

To be honest, the bigger problem was (and I'm not having a dig here) that the team became dominated by Harrier pilots at a time when that force was getting a bit short - a relatively small force constantly tapped for pilots to go to RAFAT, CFS, etc. There was a lot of resistance to use more pilots from other forces; I was once told by one of the brethren that "If you start using Tornado pilots, you'll start having a lot of crashes."

We also had a bit of a dearth of Hawks elsewhere, but RAFAT was deemed such an important asset that the other Hawk fleets were always tapped for a replacement jet whenever needed - no matter how congested the training pipeline had become.

The one thing we could never measure was the effect on recruiting (not such a big deal at the moment) and (bigger) public image. No one can reasonably deny that the PR effect is huge - interestingly for all three services, not just the RAF.

My point is that money wasn't really the kicker - probably isn't the be-all etc of the argument now. But the team was a sacred cow to the chiefs so was repeatedly preserved.

Have things changed so much? I wouldn't think so, but we live in strange times. If it all goes wrong, we can always start a "Decision to axe the Arrows was Bonkers" thread and keep feeding it for the next 10 years.

Courtney

Wise words, old chum. However, money is tight and I personally don't believe the Reds meet the required 'value for money' mantra anymore. During my time on BBMF it always was a source of amusement that we were 1/3rd the cost and serviced over 3 times as many airshows, families'/at-home days, fetes, etc... In terms of "PR bang for Buck" the BBMF wins hands down (and I choose those words carefully as a FJ mate).

There must be a cheaper way to do what the Reds do and if it could be made more cost effective then I suspect the axe-sharpening would not take place every year. How about moving them to Leeming to blob up with the Tatty Ton? Or moving the Tatty Ton to Scampton and shutting Leeming's runway? Or something else? There has to be a way to make this cheaper (save for buying them some Cessna Aerobats equipped with smoke cannisters! :E). The idea of moving to Waddington was madness as it is rammed and thus needed a new-build HQ (and we all know that DIO get ripped off by their Regional Prime Contractors by at least 40% over the market rate!).

Here's a really 'off the wall' solution - why not put the Blades on contract to do something with some cheaper jest like L39s? :}

I also believe that BEagle's JENGA simale works as well. We are at crtitical mass in certain areas, although the use of FTRS QFIs or Sponsored Reserves under MFTS could plug the gap for a while to come. It's also cheaper, too.

LJ

If you'll allow another simile, that's like burning your furniture to keep warm....

A process needs to be sustainable. Using FTRS and SR mercenaries is not - whence cometh the next generation?

BEags

I agree, but it would give us time to come up with the "sustainable plan". In future, if we retained the majority of those that used to go to the airlines in FTRS/SR jobs instead, then it might just work? If they got rid of the stupid pension abatement rules, I'm sure it would attract others?

Just like the Reds, we need to think of better ways of doing things.

LJ

Low flier

AAR and weapons firing might be interesting, but other than that, I like it! :ok:

LJ

Beagle,
Spot on. The plugging of gaps by FTRS only keeps you going for so long - enough for a couple of tour lengths (to enable the upwardly mobile to move on and up by delivering more for less....) but it cannot be self sustaining. It bites you down the line when the training providers can't recruit a plentiful supply of QFI/QHI types so salaries increase and guess who pays for that eventually......

You're so right, BEags.

LF, I always wondered if the big jets were wasted on Tremblers! :ok:

This is a very emotive topic. The simple question is, when money is so tight, why should the RAF keep the Reds? Well, here are the views of a Pongo.

Their costs seem to be the main argument for axing them. However, even in the current financial situation, the £6 million or so a year including personnel costs, quoted by HQ Air Command a couple of years ago as the annual budget for RAFAT, is a drop in the ocean. They attract considerable commercial sponsorship and public event organisers are happy to pay the going rate to attract them. Axing the Reds would make no noticeable difference to the MoD’s liquidity or effectiveness in the short term and would certainly bring no longer term financial benefit for the RAF.

So do the Reds provide value for money to the RAF? From reading the posts on PPRuNe, one must regrettably conclude that many Crabs think that they don’t. Why do they express that view? There are certainly some posters who have a chip on their shoulder and do so from envy and a dislike of a perceived elitism in the Red Arrows. Their views are irrelevant. Many more balanced posters find it impossible to justify spending scarce bucks in times of conflict on things that don’t actually go bang. Their views are valid and worth considering. What is the Reds’ PR value to the RAF? Probaly considerable, but does that translate into value for money? Impossible to quantify. What is their recruiting value to the RAF? Probably significant, especially to those interested in a flying career, but difficult to quantify and certainly not critical. Are there any other benefits to the RAF, such as encouraging professionalism, pushing boundaries etc? Probably to some degree but unlikely to be significant.

So do the Reds provide value for money to the country? This is actually the key question. The Reds had an unusually high profile nationally last year following the two tragic fatal accidents and with the Jubilee celebrations and the Olympics. No one who watched the spontaneous reaction of the public to the immaculately flown and timed, noisy and colourful flypasts by the Team thoughout the UK can doubt the huge esteem and affection they are held in. The displays flown at airshows were almost of secondary significance in their impact for the public.

That is the real significance of the Team. The RAF operate them but do not really own them. The Red Arrows are a national asset. They are loved, admired, held in reverance by, bring pride and pleasure to millions of our countrymen and at a time when we do not seem to have a lot to be proud of. That is real value. They are also enjoyed and admired by millions of foreigners whose perception and opinion of our nation’s qualities is thereby enhanced. That is of incalculable value.

As I have already said, I am a Pongo and an old and crusty one at that. But I have followed, loved, admired, enjoyed and envied the Reds for most of my adult life. I am sure that the public believe they are worth keeping. To hell with the bean-counters. It is not within the remit of their Airships to axe them. I hope that our publicity aware political leaders realise that.

Clockwork

Nicely put.

For what it's worth I agree with you.

Got it in a nutshell CM. With you 100%.

... just 5 I think. T1s just about sustainable 'til then, and a final final display for the 100th Birthday - or maybe RAF funeral.....:(

Extremely well put Clockwork Mouse big impact for small bucks. The senior Teeterette (despite her upbringing, a very non-service brat) was in T-Square when the success of the London Olympic bid was announced, and 'phoned me with the news. I heard the Reds overfly, and said senior daughter was talking about it for weeks - despite the overshadowing tragedy of the following day .... :(

Just putting it out there, but why don't we recomission the Might SHAR to do the job for us - that way we'd not only have 'new' planes, but we might, for once, shut WEBF up :E

A sense of humour can be a dangerous thing, David Cameron learned after teasing hacks on board his plane during his North Africa tour.
Rebuking one paper for claiming the SAS faced the chop, he said: ‘It’s total rot. I suppose tomorrow there’ll be a headline Red Arrows To Be Scrapped and the day after, Trooping The Colour Abandoned.’
Sure enough, when he landed in the UK yesterday, one front page screamed: Red Arrows Face Axe. Sighed Dave: ‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.’


Read more: Dave sees red at Arrows 'axe' | Mail Online
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