they do... they do...... ;)

You can hardly call the Tristar -500 a 70s jet. It's first flight was 1978 and it didn't entry service (with BA) until 1979.

I suppose, if Voyager worked as advertised when it was advertised to work, no one would have a problem (however, you are reading the words of someone who PVR'd rather than accept a posting to Voyager).

Although I did quite fancy the Viva GT in 1968, the point under debate is that concern has been expressed about an air platform being retired somewhat prematurely. Not as bad as the total abandonment of VTOL, MPA, strategic bombing or strategic reconnaissance (apart from a few drones), but worrying nontheless.

In 1996 we were assured at the Brize Norton AT/AAR conference:

• VC10 and TriStar would be replaced by 2006.
• The replacement would be 25-30 'MRTT' aircraft, such as the A310MRTT.
• The In-Service Date for the 'FLA' (now known as A400M 'Atlas') would be 2004.

Whereas the actual situation 17 years later is:

• VC10 had to stagger on until 2013, which it did magnificently.
• TriStar will be retired in 2014, even though it is still a capable air platform.
• The RAF doesn't even own the VC10 / TriStar replacement - instead it pays £1M+ per day to hire ⅓ the number of replacement Voyager aircraft from a civilian service provider.
• Voyager doesn't yet have a working Mission System, the centreline FRU hasn't yet been approved for use and the high-speed variable-drag drogues don't yet work within the specification requirement.
• A400M isn't yet in service to replace C130K capability, but might be...soon...ish. Probably.

:uhoh:

I remember well those dates being proposed ....I even still have my TTSC mug when the old BA 767s were a bidder...probably worth 20p now on ebay

And do you also remember the MoD civil serpent who confidently stated "The FSTA programme will not slip!".....:\

What a pillock! Did his father work for the White Star Line, circa 1912?

Ŵell if you had been quick you could have picked up some refuelling pods, they were a snip at


Harrier, Tornado,Phantom, helicopter sales at Hixon

As a taxpayer I share your frustration at those delays. But none of the issues are because of the platform. Let's say we indulge vasco and somehow acquire KC10's before they are converted to coke cans. Is there any certainty the project would be run any better? And on top of existing issues you then have to keep 30plus year old machinery going. Some contributors seem to have no idea how difficult and expensive it is to keep old birds in service.

Which is why the likes of Ryan Air bin their fleets at about every 5 years, the warranty expires and the maintenance costs climb, they also hold a decent trade in price when negotiating, though the likes of Easy jet recently broke some 737's up that were about 7 years old I believe, as they are worth more as a sum of their parts than complete.

Hanging on to airliners for thirty odd years is barking, but unlike the Ten that was built like a brick sh*thouse, an A330 is built to be light and I think they will struggle to keep those going for twenty. I believe Lufty were suffering corrosion problems on theirs that were only a few years old.

KC10
 

Shot one as said before-RTFQ

What I said was that we had the chance to buy the KC10 on 2 occasions namely at the time we chose the VC10 conversion in the late 70s and again when we had the Tristar foisted on us. Had we gone for say 10 KC10s c78-9 we could have scrapped the Victor fleet much earlier, not spent the money on the VC10 conversion programmes (x2) and not gone down the v expensive PFI route. Incidentally , the OSD for the USAF KC10 fleet is 2047 which is later than Voyager if my maths are correct. If you think about the Falklands episode, 3 KC10s could have supported 2 Vulcans on a Black buck raid for example. F**k me we might even have had a tanker that could refuel Air Seeker.

Well, that depends upon your definition of 'the platform'! As a big, grey people carrier, surprise surprise, the Voyager works very well.

However, whether the same can be said of the AiM MRTT modifications is open to some doubt....

vasco is entirely correct about the KC-10. If the RAF had acquired such aircraft in the early 1980s, the taxpayer wouldn't now be paying £1M per day for a service which has yet to meet the user requirement.

And I'm pretty sure that the KC-10A upgrade programme will be more successful than the ZD949 scandal was. However, mutterings about the USAF wishing to scrap the KC-10A due to sequestration have yet to be refuted. No doubt it would suit ol' bubba Boeing's yet-to-fly KC-46A Frankentanker programme were they to do so - but it would be crazy indeed to scrap such a valuable tanker / freighter aircraft.

Actually, the initial trials report of the KC10 hose/drogue system highlighted the inherent design flaw that was also seen on the TriStar; inasmuch that the outlet rollers significantly attenuated the feedback to the hose/drum unit. The VC10 and the Victor, although also having a roller system (but of a differing design), didn't attenuate the feedback quite so vociferously. I'm somewhat surprised that Airbus Military hadn't picked up on this particular design flaw because Voyager is now displaying the very same characteristics that besieged the TriStar and the KC10.

Valuable lesson's haven't been learned!

TCF

You hit the nail on the head, beagle in as much as this goes back to decisions taken (or not taken!) in the 1980's. The TriStar refit was always bonkers. But even had we gone for KC 10's back then we would still be facing tough decisions now and how could you possibly know whether their hypothetical upgrade would run smoothly? And how's your viva running?

Vasco, aside from your rude manner (why don't you read fxx question yourself?) does resolving a 2013 problem by stating what you would have done 35 years ago really contribute anything?. Was I married to you once?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing though. Take yourself back to the late 70s, when the VC10 plan was brought in. The need wasn't for a replacement for the Victor, but a supplement - we needed the ability to get MORE hoses in the air, to enable more of our strike aircraft to make the trip to the USSR and our AD aircraft to defend for longer and further. Buying 10 KC10s and scrapping the 20-odd Victors wouldn't have given us that.

No-one was anticipating the sort of out of area operation that ate into the Victor hours, nor that we would need long range strategic transport (The KC10 is an avowed dual role aircraft) - it was only a couple of years since the RAF had scrapped the majority of it's long range transport fleet.

Fast forward to the time after the Falklands when the Tristar was obtained, the real alternative wasn't KC10s but ex-airline DC10s (Laker IIRC?). In hindsight, those might have been a better bet (Omega have shown the DC10 can carry wing mounted HDU pods) but politics kicked in and we got the Tristar. Either way I doubt we would have fitted a boom to those anyway.

I do have a memory of 1980-ish proposal that the on-order BA 757s (and 767s?) should have IFR piping fitted for use in national emergencies, so other proposals were considered.

The current situation is entirely down to Gordon Brown's desire to keep the capital cost of new tanker transports off the balance sheet by going down the PFI route, and the ridiculous length of time that took to negotiate. If we had ordered the A310MRTT in 1997/8/9, we'd have 10 years of service from them now.

Of course all of this is conjecture, as back in the 80's no one would or could have foreseen the Country being embroiled in several wars, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan etc that will have systematically eaten up the fleet hours across the board faster than was originally foreseen, add to that the defence cuts that withdrew individual platforms early and that has to have a serious knock on effect to the hours of those fleets still operating....
It must be a bit of a juggling act at the moment as they see hours and fatigue lives dwindling on not just the transport / tanker fleets, but also the fighter squadrons, with nothing planned to come into service to take up the slack in the short time.
Didn't a similar occurrence not happen during the Falklands War which brought forward the demise of the Vulcan and Victor fleets earlier than planned?

It would also appear that AirTanker missed a very lucrative seasonal contract this year :E

http://i1004.photobucket.com/albums/...psacb9d894.jpg

Seasons greetings all ...

Thanks, Coff!

Rgds SOS

Nah, every Christmas families flight Captain knows that Santa lands on the roof;).

OAP

Mate, if you actually knew vasco, you'd realise that the comments he aimed at you were pretty restrained....

Well that makes it alright then. :D