I found a public source for the 11 hrs,
time at 3 min
P8 Poseidon interview with James Detwiler from Boeing - YouTube

While this thread discusses a possible future MPA, there is a deafening silence on the question of whether a replacement Replacement Maritime Patrol Aircraft (!) :( would actually be managed any better, given the nature of the MAJOR failures noted by the audit report which directly preceded cancellation of N2000/RMPA/MRA4.

If you study the MAJORs, and even the MINORS (some of which are actually showstoppers, so I would query the definitions used), every single one of them was identified and notified on the 1990s. :ugh: Some use more recent terminology, but all have direct links to mandated policies from the 90s and beyond. Over 12 years later, these remained outstanding. There is no doubt whatsoever why MRA4 was cancelled.

The point here is that the MAA are not addressing the root failures, especially the elephant in the room that is the consistent ruling that most of these mandated regulations can be regarded as OPTIONAL, if their implementation affects Time or Cost.

In MoD(PE) and then DPA, this ruling was made by Director General Air Systems 2 / Executive Director 1, :mad: who just happened to be the Nimrod (and Chinook) 2 Star, and the predecessor of the 2 Star mentioned in the report. To this day, his rulings are vigourously upheld and endorsed by his successors, including the MAA. :\ Also, in writing, by the last six Ministers for the Armed Forces and the current Head of the Civil Service.




http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/c...ps33e7cc5c.jpg

http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/c...psdf699569.jpg

http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/c...psb8a8d31f.jpg

http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/c...psebc1a2d8.jpg

...or we could just buy the P-8...!

If you need to strap wings to a torpedo to get it to the splash down point I think you are in the wrong platform.
The only time I would like to be loitering a long way from home on two engines, is when numbers 1 and 4 have been shutdown to save gas. :E

the Don

Maybe we can do an excocet-type mod and strap one of these to a C295 ;)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...50px-Ikara.JPG

This REALLY is worth a read...

http://ukarmedforcescommentary.*****...nd-uk.html?m=1

Betty, your link doesn't work. You need to telll us what w e b s i t e it is hosted on as PPRuNe doesn't like alternative forums!!:uhoh:

It is worth a read and 'blog spot' [one word]

Ok. Not giving up yet! I can't even PM this link for some "reason". So, if you are inclined, I'll type it in two bits. If you take those two bits, insert a "." and join up, it should work. (Is it 2013??!!)

http://ukarmedforcescommentary.********.co

"."

uk/2013/01/the-p8-poseidon-and-uk.html

...and the last attempt.....

replace ***** with blog spot (but join up the two words)

Phew!!!

BS,

Mate, I know it's a big article but you could always cut 'n' paste the whole lot for ease of readership?

Now waiting for a C295 blog to come along for comparison purposes! :8

Oxenos

There is no such thing a British Waterways Board any more, killed off in the cull of the quangos and morphed into The Canal & River Trust, a registered charity. Haven't heard anything about them being in the UAV business.

It's true - honest

PA....it's huge; I find that articles that are huge, and posted on here, loose the impact that they deserve. I'm hoping the link (joined up!) works.
Cheers,
BS

Cheers, Betty!

Duncs:ok:

Tucumseh,

Always enjoy reading your posts.

I believe the design and systems engineers responsible for the MRA4 air vehicle systems returned their salaries each month to safeguard their amateur status!

Amongst other 'system interoperability" issues; Imagine forgetting about PFCUs requirements when initially focusing on the mission system requirements and then wondering why not a lot worked properly with aircraft stability/controllability once remembered? Oh and then trying to introduce obsolete MR2 systems to mitigate these issues... brilliant.

But, having little or no Systems Safety Assessment training (thus oversight) within the group responsible for managing the project is just unforgivable and crass.

Thank goodness it was cancelled; for the sake of the crews.

(I have my 2 Sep memory chip in...)

Here's an easily clickable link to the article mentioned by Betty above: UK Armed Forces Commentary: The P8 Poseidon and the UK

Avtur, you rightly praise tucumseh for the breadth and depth of knowledge that he brings to this forum. You might also rightly comment on the consistent way that what he says is generally ignored here.
The usual gripe is one of "thread drift", whereby those who post merely want to wallow in a Boys Own fest of pages from the Bumper Book of Weird and Wonderful Aeroplanes and are not interested in the uncomfortable testimony from tuc that any one of them would fail at the first hurdle because GB plc has lost the ability to put them into UK military service without making a complete Horlicks of it.
Never mind, out with the Ian Allen Observers Book of Aircraft again. Oh look, that's a good one on p52...

Chug,

Good point, but you should also mention whether UK plc can afford to buy the latest Boys Own toy.

What exactly would a fleet of 5-8 P-8s cost, along with spares, support, infrastructure, Sqns, aircrew etc? £1-2 Bn plus as a minimum I would suggest...

Where is that money going to come from? Especially when one considers there is another thread running on this forum discussing a £1-2 Bn cost overrun on the carriers for the UK, and the very real prospect of a substantial cost overrun (possibly offset by a reduced numbers buy?) for the JSFs to fly off them.

By the way, have you seen the one on page 84!!!

Seems we are in violent agreement Biggus, for the ever rising costs of which you speak are merely enhanced by the very illegality, malevolence, and incompetence of which tuc constantly reminds us. The two carriers are a shining example of that, especially as there is a possibility that neither will enter RN service, let alone operate with the JSFs that they were designed for, and redesigned for, and re-redesigned, etc etc.

If only that nice Mr Broon knew of the scandal. Oh, he does? Ever on the ball then, as witness his comment about the Ministry of Waste. There at least he put his finger on the nub of it all. Like everything else that followed Earl Mountbatten getting a good idea, this creature has turned into a catastrophe and is perhaps the greatest foe confronting the UK Armed Forces.

What's to be done about that? Not my job mate. What is our job though is Flight Safety. That includes the provision of airworthy aircraft to HM Forces and the retention of that airworthiness. That requires an effective Airworthiness Authority and Air Accident Investigator. That requires that the MAA and the MAAIB be separated from and made independent of the MOD and of each other. Only then can we confidently pore over the glossy catalogues and brochures.

Yes, P84 is a stunner isn't it? Do they do easy payments?

Following the highly optimistic tone set by Biggus, perhaps we should have a hands up of who thinks a new MPA/MMA will get any form of mention in SDSR 15?

My guess?

Norfolk and Chance! :sad:

Thanks Davey Boy. Spot on!

Betty: That's why we're the Geek Squad up here ;-)

Party Animal: I'll bet you 5p that it gets a mention!

Tuc

re the document. The review date is Apr 2010 but the date at the bottom of each page is Sept 2005. Could you explain please.

avtur


That's certainly what struck me.


As for the dates, the way I read it the previous audit was 2005 and this is the follow-up. 5 years later sufficient "major" failures remain to warrant cancellation.

P-8 Costs

31 July 2013, Boeing received a $2.04 billion contract to build 13 P-8A Poseidons as part of the fourth low-rate initial production lot

4 January 2009, India signed an agreement with Boeing for the supply of eight P-8Is at a total cost of US$2.1 billion.

so somewhere around $ 170 - $ 260 mm each

I think you will find that the $170 is the URF and the $260 is the FMS full package with pilot and crew training etc
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/logistic...DEC%202011.pdf

Still money we don't have....

What price our Homeland Defence?!

Maybe so, but there's still no sign of an inquiry into the MRA4 fiasco and £4Billion pissed down the drain. The report posted earlier must narrow the responsibility down considerably and I'd like to know those fools aren't still working in MoD. Something tells me they are. If MoD don't get a grip on this, the powers that be will always be reluctant to throw good money after bad.

I've posted this before and even an existing serviceman could not get their head round it (not you Betty) which is extraordinary given all the budget lectures they will go through in training.

The cost of procuring the aircraft - expensive as it will be - is not the main the cost.

The main cost will be - as is always is - the cost of the people to fly, fix and operate it. This will require a real and sizeable change in the Local Unit Establishment (LUE) of whoever gets it (RAF, RN or most likely Joint) which in turn will require a real increase in the defence budget in percentage terms.

That folks is not going to happen (for all sorts of political, democratic and socio-economic reasons).

So if it is coming back, it is coming back at the expense of something else, and that something else will have to be pretty big. Getting rid of the Reds for example would not come remotely close to covering it.

Getting rid of those two carriers might, or maybe scrapping the IND? Of course such things are important for homeland defence too, are they not? As is everything else in the inventory...I'm not aware that the armed forces have kept superfluous capabilities at any time in our recent history.

None of this is an argument for not having an MPA BTW. It is merely a pragmatic view of how hard it will be to ever get one back, which is why this old timer is so mightly p1ssed of at the total SNAFU we made of the one we used to have.

And a great many people, wearing all sorts of uniforms and suits, bear responsibility for that.

PS Just seen dervish's post...

Nobody would love to see a public enquiry into the MRA4 fiasco more than me...I would go to watch and I would go to give evidence. But it would not achieve anything, it would cost a bucketload and it's not going to happen :{

I believe there will be further pressure on the Defence budget to absorb some capabilities that were bought for Afghanistan as UORs (and therefore don't have long term funding) into the core spending arena.

However, as someone nowhere near the procurement empire, I don't know if these costs have already been allowed for in the core Defence budget post 2015...

TOFO,

You're right but it has already been announced that Sentinel will go post 2015 (I know the decision may be reversed). 5 Sqn is already joint and huge, so just need to swap Army for RN and aircraft type to MAA and you're good to go!

Unless the savings from the removal of Sentinel have already been spent on Typhoon updates? Are we keeping 2 Reaper sqns post 2015?

PA,

I thought Reaper was some of the UOR hardware I had just referred to.

Biggus,

I believe both Reaper and Shadow came in under UORs and like you, I do not know how or what is planned or budgeted for post 2015.

Anyone have the definitive?

Funnily enough I talked about this very thing with my mate (ex service like me) and my son as we strolled up a mountain just two days ago (he asked me who's going to pay for all the hardware we might be about to use up)

I can't give you chapter and verse (somebody on here will be able to for sure) but sometime in the last 10-20 years (around the time of foot and mouth???) I believe we changed the way we paid for all this overseas intervention stuff (or "wars", as we used to call them).

In a nutshell, they didn't used to come out the defence budget...now they do.

I'm not sure how accurate that is, I'm old (hence increasingly Mr Thicko) and suffering Post Lagavulin Stress Disorder, but I believe there to be an element of fact in that statement.

Which roughly translates to...

Here is X amount of money. Spend it on what you want (wars included) and when its gone, its gone.

More than happy to stand corrected though.

And PA, that's a good input...maybe some reason for optimism. One can but hope.

PS That beast was not (completely) in service when I left in 2003. And now it's going :ugh::ugh: That stinks to high heaven as well. WTFIGO!

TOFO

I'm sure we will both be corrected if wrong, but IIRC your statement is incorrect. We have the core defence budget which we spend as we see fit. It covers pay, new equipment, maintenance, infrastructure, exercises and consumables (fuel/weapons etc) etc. The stuff that you can plan for and programme on a peacetime basis.

If the govt of the day send us off on ops then much of the additional money comes from HMT reserve - this includes UOR kit (the stuff we have to buy because we couldn't foresee a particular requirement for the area we end up operating in), replenishment of used war stocks of ammo etc and it can be used to fund increased usage of spares ie if you are burning up engines for a particular asset because you did not plan to use that asset as much under peacetime rates as you are actually doing on ops. Some of it though, will still come from the core budget so there will be an increased drain on the core budget as well.

Bringing good new "stuff" into core is the issue. Manpower liabilities to operate a new piece of kit on a UOR has to be taken from the core budget - hence if you stand up a new unit for the length of a UOR funded op you find the manpower from elsewhere but within your current cap. Bring it into core at the end of the op and you have to fund the necessary manpower and maintenence from within the existing budget/manpower cap unless you can get an enhancement option through the planning process that agrees an uplift in funding/manpower. Clear? As mud!!

I think :}

Edited to add:

Any manpower for a UOR is assumed to be released back to "core" roles at the end of a UOR, thus if Sentinel is not brought back in to core then those personnel on the Sentinel programme will be posted to other types. Given the lead time on aircrew training, running Sentinel on beyond 15 might not be viable, as those personnel currently on type will already be pencilled in to fill other core jobs - Voyager, A400, RJ etc etc.

RP,

Is Sentinel a UOR?? I thought it was core already. We were talking about needing the capability immediately after GW1!

PA

I am not certain. It is correct that Sent was a properly funded core programme (albeit late in delivery). My understanding was that it was/is due to exit service after AFG ops (this from 2010). Under normal circumstances that would have meant it would already be drawing down - think VC10 or C130 or MR2 - a slow drawn out decline in capability and manning as aircraft are withdrawn and personnel are posted out. To ensure that R1 could make it to the (significantly brought forward) OSD it is, I believe, subject to some sort of UOR funding. But then memory is a fickle thing.

Edited to add:

PA

I may be wrong, see here Maybe the memory is on the way out!!