Just using this to demonstrate some of the issues, rather than "having a go"...

BUT - it will still have an RCS the size of a house relative to an LO cab and therefore be more vulnerable to a range of modern threats, most of the time.

Fixing that would mean changing the airframe (and engine intakes / tailpipes) which may affect controllability and flight envelope.

Would you choose to manufacture a jet milled from solid metal again, with hydraulic FCS. Is it the most cost-effective to build and/or maintain? Is the fatigue design index the same?

Not in anyway knocking the Bucc - can you imagine a Bucc with A6E avionics on UK and US decks in the 80s/90s? Same goes for the Buff - but notice that the yanks aren't trying to build new ones, they're just trying to keep the remaining (reducing) fleet relevant, supportable and survivable, because they know they can't afford a replacement (see B1 and B2 for details).

The Russ are trying to refurbish Blackjacks and Backfires simply because they have no money (and possibly remaining expertise) to do anything else. The "new-build" Blackjack project appears to have gone quietly right since the initial announcement. How much is down to that nice Mr Putin waving his genitalia remains to be seen.

Aircraft-based deterrents might be cheaper, but definitely far from survivable, which ultimately means cheaper but not credible....

Tourist,

I think you've captured what I've been trying to say..................we know what existing designs offer in terms of flying characteristics, and we know we can a) stuff more shiny new kit in them and b) extract better performance from new engines etc......................if your not looking for bleeding edge performance why take the risk on a blank sheet design?

Don't get me started, TSR2 is my favourite aircraft, but I was (you'll be surprised to hear) trying to be realistic!

'

If the premise is a platform for launching long range cruise missiles, where does the LO come into it?

And to be frank I think we're going to find the F35's a) stealth a bit of a myth and b) lack of range distinctly inhibiting!

Great plane if we want to stealthily bomb the French!

If rebuilding an old aircraft design 60 years later is such a good idea, perhaps you could explain why this has never ever happened in the history of any airforce or commercial airline?

Its not a conspiracy, its because it genuinely does not make any sense. We may have a fond hankering for what looks good or sounds good, but that doesnt mean it makes the slightest bit of operational or financial sense.

Sorry to sound blunt but it really isnt a non starter for a long list of exceptionally good reasons.

Exactly.

Name an area where the Tornado GR is superior to the Buccaneer.....

I was thinking about the Bucc-a-like in that context and not specifically an F35. Let's not turn this into another Fanboy vs Pte Fraser thread! However, long-range cruise still have a stand-off range from counter action based on the distance from ADIZ from the target and the missile range. Best counter to a long-range A/L missile threat is still kill the bomber, which means long-range radar and interceptors*. Which means you still need to think about your signatures.

Personally I'd rather colonise than bomb France. Oh, wait, we already are......


* Although destroying the launch base is the obviously the absolute best option......

Perhaps if we had a 2~3,000 Km range cruise missile the LO wouldn't such a factor (evidently the Iranians have one), then maybe we could also submarine and ground-launch them.................and keep the Buccs for bombing ISIS!

Do they really...........fuelled with unobtanium I suppose?

Resurrecting an older type ?
 

A possible high cost item in the way of resurrecting an older type and fitting it with new kit, is that of fastener thread standards. Yes, I know it sounds trivial, but back in the day my tool boxes had Whitworth, Unified, and Metric gear. Imagine the cost of changing all the drawings and related design details to suit present day commercially available materials or parts.

Another feature of old versus new is in aerodynamic fashion.

Swept wing replaced straight.

Delta was tried over swept B58, F102/106,A4

Then variable geometry replacing delta. Fitter C, Fencer

Then canard and delta replacing VG, Flanker, Fulcrum

I suppose they are all attempt to minimise the disadvantages or earlier designs.

With respect, neither the Flanker nor Fulcrum have a delta wing nor canards.

Gripen, Rafale, Typhoon, and J-10 have a delta wing with canard configuration. Su-35 has canards, but no delta wing.

Well, they are developing Meshkat, and even if they struggled during sanctions that may accelerate now they are being lifted 'All' they have to do is copy the dozen ~2,500 km range Kh-55s they got from Ukraine.

Earlier this year Iran revealed a "2,000 km" ground launched cruise missile named Soumar.

Nuclear Threat Initiative: Iran

Not really. Aerodynamics were pretty much 'nailed' by the mid 40s. All that has happened is that advancing materials and computing technology have allowed for ever more ideal solutions.

Erm, do you mind if you don't?

The French
 

Thinking of Courtney's friends the French, how many aircraft do they have on nuclear alert at any one time? Both actually ready to go in minutes and dedicated to the task?

Thinking that this resource, to deliver a supersonic cruise missile with a nuclear tip is above and beyond the MAD solution guaranteed by the submarines of the MN.

Might give a very low baseline for what sort of resources, delivery aircraft, tankers, etc that would be needed, if it was thought to an appropriate route to follow, that personally I don't see, if the RAF was to take over the role.

So assuming they've managed to be able to mass-produce the trick turbofan that is the key to it and assuming they can access GLONASS or equivalent for targeting they can launch from say 1000km stand-off. Bunch of LR interceptors (back to Tonka F3 and/or F14+AIM54) please and weapons free on the bombers.

More to the point, 2000+km at 400kts gives you the best part of three hours flight time to either intercept the inbounds (not easy@300ft but do-able) and more importantly relocate the leadership (those that you really want to deter).

Deterrence is about certainty, the certainty that you can't stop a significant proportion of what will be coming your way (personally) if you don't behave yourself. For a variety of reasons, a cruise-based deterrent can never give you that at an affordable scale.

How "long" is "long range"? A really long range cruise missile is both large and heavy and requires a pretty big airplane to carry it. Would such an aircraft be affordable?

Separately, Tomahawk is nuke capable and fairly long range. And it can be launched by UK's submarines. Submarines armed with cruise missiles are arguably much more survivable than bombers with cruise missiles. So if a long range cruise missile is the best weapon (and there are many arguments why it is not), then a submarine may again be the best launch platform for that weapon. In addition, Type 45 destroyers are reportedly Tomahawk capable. What all this means is that there are already multiple cruise missile launch platforms in the UK inventory. So it would appear that an expensive development program can be avoided.

And Ken, as has already been pointed out, if you launch a Cruise Missile how does the potential adversary know whether its conventional or nuclear armed. What is their response likely to be?

They may assume worst case and go nuclear themselves, even if you have only launched a conventional TLAM.

Not so much deterrence, but certainly MAD.

Not much use as a deterrent weapon.

Nuhhh............solar powered!!! :rolleyes:

The question was I guess there are those of us for whom the question is academic. It's SSBN or nothing. And then there are those of us proffering options.

Cruise missiles seem to be within the technological reach of a wide range of nations, and we have previously built medium and long-range aircraft capable of getting them within reach of a fair number of targets, so for me the answer is possibly...............whether it is better than SSBNs is another question.

For this question it turns on whether it is cheaper, not whether it is technologically possible (it seems it is) or better (not part of the original question). And as for cheaper, no idea!

Posted by Courtney Mil I really wouldn't want to, just can't help thinking that with the F35B (short, fat, ugly plane edition) that's all we can reach!

Actually, the question turns not on whether it is "better" than an SLBM, but whether it can be considered anything like "equivalent".

If your criterion of successful deterrence is to be able to deliver a bucket of sunshine to an unspecified target, without much consideration of defences or potential vulnerability of that deterrent to an attack, that's one thing. Many describe that as the flatten Tehran / Pyongyang / Paris:} option. If on the other hand you consider deterrence to be against a much more capable threat, the old Moscow criterion (particularly given current trends) is rather hard to argue against.

It's only a limited to a question of cost if you compare like with like.....

It seems to me that "cheaper" can be defined many ways. It would certainly by MUCH cheaper financially to abandon a nuclear deterrent altogether. But is this financial benefit worth the cost in national security? I would think not. Similarly, is the financial benefit of a cruise missile based nuclear deterrent worth the cost in national security and international stability? Cruise missiles have been shown to be (generally) inherently destabilizing.

Going to have to completely disagree with you there. Cheaper is cheaper regardless of any comparisons..................whether cheaper is good enough is still up for question.

However if you are only going to consider cost if you are comparing like with like then you're both narrowing the debate incredibly, and probably being rather unrealistic.

The question remains would an RAF based deterrent offer sufficient deterrence regardless of whether it is as much of a deterrent as Trident, whilst costing less. Refusing to consider non like for like options is ignoring the question.

And one has to wonder whether not having an independent nuclear deterrent is much of a deterrent at all..............................

Land(ish) based?
 

Just a thought, which will almost certainly be pooh-poohed, but still worthy of brief consideration:

In light of the fact that the UK has horrendous debts, and really can't afford to do anything expensive, new delivery mechanisms for these weapons are more likely to succeed politically if they are cheaper.

How about putting the missiles in land-based silos? The missiles have a 7000km range, I believe, so that's enough to reach pretty much anyone that might feasibly need a nuclear spanking from the UK. No need to target any of the Americas, I don't see any of those states becoming nuclear-armed and belligerent during the remaining life of the Trident D5. Surely land based silos are much cheaper than nuclear submarines. The even cheaper option would be to just park the existing boats in dockyards and fire them from there, if technically feasible.

Of course they would be vulnerable to sabotage or a surprise first strike, but then so is a submarine to some extent. If they are geographically dispersed, an enemy would need to take all of them out simultaneously. The Russians, Americans, Indians, Pakistanis and Chinese all have land-based long-range missiles. Even though all of those countries are much larger than the UK (and hence can hide the missiles somewhat better), UK has a fairly wide spread of sovereign territory around the world that most of the others don't have.

The UK's atomic weapons are now of a strategic nature only, and either will trigger a massive retaliation if used, or are themselves a massive retaliation. Once the missiles in the submarine(s) currently on patrol have been launched, that's yer lot. It's not like they'll tootle off to King's Bay to be re-armed. They are therefore a deterrent weapon. Would a potential aggressor really be able to wipe out say 4 locations simultaneously? Hell of a gamble to make, both ways. Fail to take them all out and you will be annihilated. Fail to prevent them all being taken out, and the UK will be annihilated.

But annihilation is pretty much guaranteed anyway.

May I very strongly suggest anyone interested in this reads the paper from 2006 when the replacement for Trident was first mooted.

Annex B in the paper sets out the alternatives (TLAM, air launched, sea launched and land based) and talks through the reasons why SSBN remains the preferred option. It may be worth reading it in detail? Its worth looking particularly at the graphic showing the size of just one USAF ICBM field compared to the size of the UK as a whole.

https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...006_Cm6994.pdf

Edit to add the Trident alternatives review too which says much the same but in more detail. Again well worth a read.

https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...ives_Study.pdf

Jimlad,

I think most people here understand the obvious advantages of SLBMs, so me real need to set us homework. Again, the exam question here was COULD not SHOULD. It's not necessarily about what the strategically superior option is, it's also about a number of interesting factors in the fiscal and political arenas.

No one is trying to take away the RN's ownership of this important role, just enjoying considering the question.

Thank you for the links, though. I suspect the Government will want to ask the questions again; a lot changes in ten years - not least the answer they may want from a review.

NAB,

I would hope we only fire nukes at SPECIFIED targets.

COULD unfortunately has to account for the risk of the capability being compromised, or not able to reach the target for X reason, and thus trips lightly into SHOULD before any of us could say "Boo."

Thank you Jim, good reading. Thank Christ I live in the US :)

Not a terribly convincing government papper from Blair and his mates in 2006. It raised a lot of questions in my mind. Just a couple for now.

The big elephant is the statement made in 06 that it would take 17 years to field and the extant system would be out of service in the early 2020s. Why didn't they do anything about it then before it was too late - especially considering the statement that life extensions were unlikely to be effective or for particularly long. We now have fewer that 10 years to decide upon a system and get it into service.

The whole thing was clearly written to support only one option and to discount the others on cost and effectiveness grounds. SSBN is the obvious answer, but the other choices cited were so obviously flawed. The air option, for example, was 20 airliners carrying nukes, with the attached claim that they're easy to shoot down. Really?

Whilst they include the costs of building bases for the air option, they have omitted to include the cost of emptying, cleaning and then rebuilding Faslane and Coleport. Oops.

Way to much political spin in there to be convincing.

LoneWolf,

I agree 100%. I was just establishing the exam question, not supporting the posit.

...

Those two lines couldn't possibly be connected, could they?

"I think most people here understand the obvious advantages of SLBMs, so me real need to set us homework. "

I'm not setting homework, I'm offering links to information that helps explain the HMG view on the case. This is a view thats not changed in over 50 years by the way, so its clearly got some legs!

If you think its homework, you don't have to do it, but you can have detention and write 'I am a naughty crab' 617 times before you can go home. :E

Roadster,

I see it now. Thank you. :ok:



Jimlad,

The conclusions are undoubtedly correct, the vehicle for getting the correct political answer is clearly as bent as an Aussie fast ball.

I'll do my lines tomorrow. Honest. :cool:

Perhaps I've missed it by scanning this thread too quickly - but has no one mentioned TASM? A huge amount of work was devoted to the development of TASM in the 1990s to replace WE 177 as a free-fall weapon.

they have done something. About £1B has been spent since the paper in various lead-in design and pre-production contracts. You can find details if you google it - they just haven't made a song and dance about it.

e.g.........


Defence secretary publishes update on progress with Trident replacement | Nuclear Information Service

See pages 19-21....

http://researchbriefings.files.parli...26/SN06526.pdf

Oh absolutely. I was just pointing out that for some of the supporters of an A/L option, the approach appeared to be strap the bucket on the cab and jobza guddun, hey presto credible deterrent, rather than any consideration of value, time criticality, defences, vulnerability and so forth.

https://flavorwire.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/bomb.jpg

An initial quick scan, I read £18, thought that's about right.

Roadster, you haven't considered land prices in UK nor the cost of the public enquiry. We have yet to publish the GW 2 report.