Why the raf can’t deliver the punch cameron wants in syria
WHY THE RAF CAN’T DELIVER THE PUNCH CAMERON WANTS IN SYRIA Posted on November 27, 2015 Contributed by Sharkey Ward Falklands War air ace and Harrier squadron commander |
Have I got time to pop out for some popcorn?
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This one is just as good :ok:
Sadly one is not able to post comments on the website. Probably a little scared his views would be revealed for the tripe they are. |
Good read, well up there with Dale Brown, or is that doing Dale a disservice?
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I needed a laugh, thanks for posting. I could question his logic line by line, but I think it sufficient merely to note that the RAF's contribution is numerically small but still greater than the Navy's.
One question did spring to mind reading his article though. He labels himself, or is labelled in the article an 'air ace'. I always thought the criteria for 'Ace' status was 5 kills and yet his own Wiki entry with his citation only notes 3; has the criteria been watered down or is he just a playing Walt? |
Mr.Ward's almost pathological hatred of the RAF is quite disturbing, it really must be eating away at him constantly, to enable him to come up with such diatribes... :uhoh:
-RP |
Perhaps we shoukd refurbish that Vulcan and the ones in museums
Pity that is not possible. |
Lord Haw Haw lives
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I would like to hazard the opinion that he has a point. Several in fact.
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Yes of course he has a point. But these are skewed due to his, as RP says, pathological hatred of the RAF. I believe he is right when he says the RN should have a nuclear-powered carrier force, that the carriers should be equipped with catapults and arrestor gear, that the Air Wing should include strike, fixed wing AEW, COD, AAR capability etc. He ignores the fact that all this was ditched by the Naval Staff.
I also think he still thinks of the world in terms of Mk1 Golf GTi's, Concorde, Kerry Packers cricket circus and women with big hair, shoulder pads and leg warmers. |
I also think he still thinks of the world in terms of Mk1 Golf GTi's, Concorde, Kerry Packers cricket circus and women with big hair, shoulder pads and leg warmers. |
Originally Posted by Kitbag
(Post 9194503)
I also think he still thinks of the world in terms of Mk1 Golf GTi's, Concorde, Kerry Packers cricket circus and women with . . . leg warmers.
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Sharkey relaxing as he remembers the good old days
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...CnnPF8F0c-4CHk |
Was ex Commnader Ward an RAF reject and has held a grudge ever since?
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Bending the truth a little to serve your own argument I can stomach but outright lies.....dishonourable at best.
Shame on ex-Lt Cdr Ward.....again! |
What a lot of pre amble purely in order to be able to say the last two sentences.
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Originally Posted by just another jocky
(Post 9194546)
but outright lies.....dishonourable at best.
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... and the best person he can get to publish his diatribe is a fiction writer and war-gamer. :hmm:
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Civvy perspective:
I assume both Tornado and Typhoon have some degree of EW capability that isn't entirely public. Pablo Mason's book mentions some degree of apprehension during Gulf 1 at the technique required to use JP-233. Hadn't realised the level of unhappiness was quite as severe as Ward makes out. Understood it was widely felt that Harrier was pretty crap at CAS too due to lack of guns. Fair to call current Tornado obsolete? P |
Wonder if it grates that he has the Air Force Cross?
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Phil_R
I can only presume this is correct: RAF - RAF Tornado Aircraft Losses 6 Tornado aircraft lost in operations, as opposed to the 8 mentioned in the article, although I know at least one was lost in training prior to the commencement of hostilities. Only one of the 6 appears to have been lost on a JP-233 mission, and that was on egress. Hope that is of some help. No doubt someone with more comprehensive knowledge on this issue will be along to correct me shortly!! |
Phil.....not at all. There is not a current fast jet in the world that has the capabilities of the Tornado. Despite its ageing design and airframe it performs the job incredibly well with some very up-to-date equipment.
Despite what that charlatan Ward claims, the Tornado did not require 24 hours notice of CAS missions in Afghan. I sat numerous GCAS (Ground Alert for CAS) and we were airborne in much less than 15 minutes from the alarm and I have HUD video of me at very low level too. I also flew it in Gulf War 1 and the losses were mainly because the Tornado was never envisaged as a medium level weapons platform hence we had nothing in the bag of tricks for that so went low level instead where the Iraqis had some capability & a little luck too. Its unique capabilities are needed in Syria where neither the French nor the Americans have one aircraft that combines the capabilities the Tornado does. Please don't listen to Mr Ward, he is renowned for talking out of his.......:mad: |
I'll give Sharkey (or "Starkey" in the web picture!) his dues - his consistent lack of knowledge and hysterical analyses show determination at the very least. Though I do think it's important to understand the context that fuels each stroke of his pen. In "Sharkey's World" there's so much money and resource that we've a smattering of nuclear carriers; hugely capable cat and trap aircraft, all fitted with 'wish'iles and wonder bombs; and we still have an Empire that looks lovingly upon a third of the globe. Rebuttals to this latest offering to replace my loo roll, are:
Unlike Libya, Typhoon (so named for ages now) carries Paveway 4 and a targeting pod. Tornado is old but not obsolete - the most mature and capable A-G platform UK has today. Putin "could" fire S400 at coalition pilots - assuming his pilots aren't in said coalition - but it's highly, highly unlikely. As likely as a Typhoon shooting down a Russian ac. Brimstone is awesome - US love it too and it's great for urban precision targeting (GR4 only ac currently carrying it but Typhoon get it in a few years). It's not called a Super Growler (but a girl in Alaska I once met probably should be - it is cold there I s'pose..). Hardly anyone's attacked targets at Low Level for ages Sharkey! GR4 scramble times for CAS in Afghanistan were as fast as Harrier - no such tales of (24hr+) tasking bureaucracy or is Sharkey confusing routine ASR with on-call ground alert or air alert CAS... The rest is Sharkey's typical RAF hatred. I also don't think he realises how many people and how much money you need to put all of your Air Force's ac into a Th at a moment's notice. It isn't partisan advice, it's reality - something Sharkey lost in the FIs along with his marbles and his homemade legend badge. Discrediting the fine men and women actually doing something for the UK's security is distasteful and betrays his kin. |
Well said MSCOS.
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And MSOCS :D
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He really is the PPrune version of the "Judean Popular Front"
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JP233 Thet bring back memories.
The company I worked for did some work for MOD and we tested some of the sub munitions. |
I don't recall the Tornado mutiny in Kuwait that he mentions. Did the Iraqi AF have Tornados?
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Sharkey
No matter what we say about him on here I bet he retires to his grubby little bunk at night and laughs himself to sleep about the furore he causes in this forum every time he spouts his usual cr@p.
I have the utmost respect for what he and the rest of the task force achieved in 1982 but whatever his motives now he needs to grow old a little more gracefully. Excuse the tangent here but I will explain myself so bear with me. Whenever people (laughably in my personal opinion) suggest the moon landings were a hoax I tell them that I believe it would have been harder to get several thousand people to commit to a lie for nearly 50 years of such epic proportions than it would have been to put a man on the moon. Here's why I make that point. I flew the Jaguar and never went on operations. I know many people who have flown the Harrier, Tornado and Typhoon on operations. Unless they have all committed to the same made up story I believe what they tell me. Despite some problems along the way all three platforms have provided a sterling service when required. I believe them over Sharkey Ward. It would appear that the mainstream media agree with me or we would undoubtedly hear more from him in much more high profile publications. BV:O |
[Tornado's] unique capabilities are needed in Syria Technologically unsophisticated bad guys more or less completely unable to oppose aircraft at anything other than shoulder-fired-missile range. Bombs available that go to a GPS coordinate. More or less any even-vaguely-modern ground attack aircraft, including drones, can do this, surely. P |
Originally Posted by barnstormer1968
(Post 9194547)
What a lot of pre amble purely in order to be able to say the last two sentences.
CG |
Phil R, laser guided Brimstone and RAPTOR.(and Paveway 4 and gun)
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" In the light of all the above (and the Tornado’s dreadful track record) is it not extraordinary that the Government’s Ministry of Defence has seen fit to appoint two Tornado officers to take charge of the new Royal Navy carriers and their air groups?
It hardly bodes well for the future of Britain’s global national security and defence." Far be it from me, a lowly erk of the junior service, but this bloke has obviously had the reality gene removed from his body. His obvious inability to accept modern military inter service cooperation shows his retarded thinking. With the greatest respect to your earlier exploits, in the days when what you thought actually matters Mr Sharky ....................../´¯/) ....................,/¯../ .................../..../ ............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`•¸ ........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\ ........('....(...(´.. ¯~/'...') .........\.................'...../ ..........\............... _.•´ ............\..............( ..............\.............\... Have a little ex harrier hover on that :eek: Smudge :ok: |
I gather many in the RN view him as a complete embarassment, and they would like him to stfu and quickly. His rambling letters to various ministers going on about raf transport command failures were a legend - he only sent them nearly 40 years after it was scrapped.
I think pity is the best i can muster for him - pity that a man can hate so much and for so little reason |
Hope that is of some help. No doubt someone with more comprehensive knowledge on this issue will be along to correct me shortly!! RAF - RAF Tornado Aircraft Losses |
Can't believe how this thread has taken on a life of its own.
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Well, yes, with all deference to his Falklands job, the guy's a prat.
But why is there apparently nobody prepared to publicly voice a reasoned and positive account for what the RAF's currently doing? |
Phil, ----- you re joking ----- arent you????
Fair to call current Tornado obsolete? When I was a schoolboy in1976, yes seventy six, the bloody thing was still called MRCA and was universally known to be obsolete then. Before it even entered service! Obsolete, now???? It's been a concrete-toting fuggen dinosaur for well over a quarter century! It's no doubt great fun (bwahahaha) and trendy to ridicule Sharkey Ward but he has consistently highlighted some of the daftest shortcomings of the UK defence system. Sure, he's been pretty outspoken with an unfashionable (big problem) though often militarily sound philosophy. As did Rickover, for instance, and who was right there? Lets not write him off altogether shall we? Anyone who proposes big carriers equipped with anything but cats and traps is simply delusional (or on a bung from Lockheed) and anyone who thinks we can't project our influence as we wish to without those big decks ditto. Sharkey may make a spectacle of himself from time to time by being too outspoken but more than often than not there is a sound point behind his rhetoric. His dislike of the RAF is soundly based on Strategic lines, there is little doubt that had the defence budget been spent more on Naval aviation than almost exclusively on the RAF then we would be far far better placed to respond to the global threats and challenges we see today. We still suffer from the insane delusions of the '60s defence reviews that said the RAF could supply air cover globally - if it couldn't do so then it can do it a hundred times less now. If we want to do tis now then we must have a credible Naval carrier force, there is simply no other way. By far the most useful military airfield we can possibly own is a seagoing one, each one is far more useful to us than any five in Lincolnshire for God's sake! Thanks Sharkey, keep shaking the complacent politicos and doubters up! But why is there apparently nobody prepared to publicly voice a reasoned and positive account for what the RAF's currently doing? Thanks for your reasoned and no doubt fully Professionally qualified opinion on one of our true war heroes, Sh!tNone. Not. Are you even fit to criticise the polish on his boots? Shame on you. |
Far easier to sink a seagoing one than five airfields in lincolnshire.
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"...far far better placed"?? With respect wageslave, I fundamentally disagree. Attempting to maintain all but the briefest air campaign from a carrier is likely to be very much less effective than from an airbase; the key point being, if we don't have one, or an ally prepared to let us use one within a reasonable distance, what the f*** are we doing there at all?
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