Engines, thanks so much for you posts. Curious on your insights on the nuances of the Sea Harrier fleet, especially notoriously "good" or "bad" airframes? As with other smallish fleets, it seems some airframes had distinct personalities. I believe I recall #2, now with Art Nalls was always a bugger as it had some extra testing wiring.


Were the aircraft that were converted to FA2 more difficult to maintain than the new builds?


Appreciate any stories as I pull up a barstool. - Dave

I think we all appreciate Engines thoughtful and informed contributions

My problem with any uk specific work on the F35 is who would do it...

LM would charge millions, BAe ....
we might be better off ordering a third carrier with cats'n traps....

Looks like a Navy led question to me.

HH,

Thank you for the compliment - although it is wholly undeserved. I just try to help the threads along, is all.

If there were UK specific work on the F-35, it would certainly be led by LM. They also had the design lead for the forward fuselage, so addition of any retractable probe to the F-35A would be their job. However, the lead man for the fuel system when I served on the programme was a Brit, fresh off the Typhoon programme, and damn good. I mean severely damn good.

I have some fairly well found suspicions that the Canadians asked for some preliminary work to be done on a probe equipped F-35A. I would certainly rate it as 'feasible' - to the best of my knowledge, the space required for the probe on the A model hasn't been allocated to any other A model systems, but bear in mind that my knowledge is now many years old.

Any decision on this issue would have to be a carefully taken one - I would struggle with spending millions (and I mean many millions) on adding booms (not at all a small job) to UK tankers, which could only be used on one of our aircraft.

Best regards as ever to anyone working this one out,

Engines

GARGLED it and this is wot was coughed up: :}

As would C-17!

Once the RN has sufficient aircrew, the F-35B should become 100% FAA operated and re-based to Yeovilton, with the RAF operating the F-35A from whichever land bases the MoD still has by then.....

Deliverance,

Good points, and thank you. Howeverrrr...

The discussion over any UK boom refuelling capability needs to be an informed one, not just 'oh, now we could do this'. The UK procured the RJs and the Sentry fleet without buying a boom capability, so any subsequent boom buy would need to be justified against the F-35A requirement. The problem there is that the best way to AAR an F-35A, as far as I have read, appears to be via probe and drogue. The boom system was driven by the need to transfer large amounts of fuel to large aircraft that might have problems hitting a drogue - and it's an insanely great system for those platforms. But for groups of smaller tactical aircraft that can't use the boom system's higher flow rates (and I don't believe that an F-35A can) then a multiple drogue system should be a better bet.

But then we get back to the costs of fitting the A model with the retractable drogue. I think (just my view) is that this will end up as a budget drill, rather than a 'needs based' assessment. What would be especially unfortunate is a situation where the F-35 'budget' ends up getting raided to update the RAF's tanker fleet.

Best regards as ever to all those crunching the numbers,

Engines

Beagle

What is the advantage of putting the f35B's Yeovilton rather than co-locate with the RAF?

Spares, maintenace etc better off shared surely?

Something that I have not seen discussed on here is the swing role of the F35 support teams.

If a Carrier is having a surge complement of F35s, will all the maintainers be FAA or will it be a mix of FAA and RAF? The subsidiary question here is what extra training will the RAF personnel have to equip them to be "safe" on a carrier?

Then of course there is the question about who owns the spares, particularly the B specific parts if there is a mixed buy, together with what level of spares will normally be aboard a deployable carrier?

I am not implying that any of these questions have not been thought through, I personally have not seen any discussion of them though.

Closer to the QE class home port, at the centre of naval aviation and the intangible asset of being located in Somerset rather than the wilds of Norfolk?

Assuming that F-35A is RAF operated and F-35B is RN operated also reduces the likelihood of -A spares and -B spares being mixed up.

Light blue personnel should only be seen as a start-up loan until the FAA can recover itself to 100% RN manning.

Boom vs Drogue
 

Deliverance

I suggest that the comparison you have made is not valid here. A Voyager could refuel 2 probe and drogue F35 at the same time (over 1000 kg/min each) so unless a boom version of the same ac could take fuel at over 2000kg /min (I don't know ) the probe system would be quicker.

I've tried to find it online, but maybe it was a book it was in....ageing brain cells can't remember :uhoh: but IIRC, there was a crew(s) group photo taken on the old Ark in the 70's, and there was quite a high proportion of light blue in both the Bucc and the F-4 crew group photos, so even back then crew make up wasn't all dark blue.......

There would be a reason for that. Something to do with the announcement in 72 that Ark would pay off without replacement and that the Buccs and Tooms would transfer to the RAF, perhaps? Following on from the cancellation of CVA01 in 66 and the progressive closure of RN training pipelines, drawdown of branch numbers?


Similar happened post formation of JFH, move away from VLN, disposal of SHAR and Tx of JFH from 3Grp to 1Grp STC - among other factors.


Context tends to be important in these things.

Deliverance, tanker offload rates using wing pods shoud be around 600 kg/min for the GR4, 800 kg/min for the F-18 and an even higher rate for Rafale.

But Typhoon is indeed rather slower...:\

Of course the receiver won't gain fuel at the same rate as the tanker offloads it, due to the receiver's own burn rate.

Deliverance

My point is that unless the boom F35 can take on fuel at twice the rate of the probe and drogue (and I can't see why ) then the probe and drogue system would get thru 2 pods a lot quicker than the boom thru its single point.

Thats not to say that the addition of boom would not be of great value (E3, RJ, P8 ).

"at the centre of naval aviation"

I thought it was mainly a Museum these days.............

Beegs - not Yeovilton pleeeeeeeas. We don't want all that noisy only partially useful stuff here. Now that the toy Harriers have gone it is quite quiet around here and no more whining from aircraft or crew.................:ok:

Huh?? Offload rate is dependent upon the capability of the receiver to take fuel (which is about the square root of cock all as far as a Typhoon is concerned) or the capability of the pod if that is more limiting. Pod capability should not be affected by 'single hose' operation unless something out of the ordinary has caused it, such as the loss of the ability to transfer tanker fuel to the relevant section of the pod gallery.

Slower overall rate for a 4-ship would depend upon disconnect to contact time and intra-formation receiver movement. But even in the worst case, burn rate for an in-contact receiver should only be about 10% of the normal pod offload rate.

Clever automated tanker trail planning (which Voyager does not have :mad:) allows for time for an assumed deceleration and/or descent from cruise IAS/Alt to AAR cruise/alt, an assumed manoeuvre time at refuelling consumption rate, the time in contact at refuelling consumption rate, an assumed manoeuvre time after disconnect at refuelling consumption rate and an assumed time to regain cruise IAS/Alt. The 'ring pucker time' assumed between making contact and reaching the abort point must also be considered. Many of these factors should be different for single hose operation as it should be considered to be an abnormal procedure.

Deliverance

Your initial comparison was between 2 different types which also used 2 different systems; this is not what we are comparing here. Your example reminds me of the F4/Lightning difference. Thanks to its wide bore pipes etc the F4 could take on fuel at a far greater rate than the Victor wing pods could give it. So much so that it was an advantage to refuel Phantoms sequentially on the HDU rather than 2 at a time on the pods.

My guess would be that a F35A with a probe or one that has the boom receptacle would have a similar if not identical onload rate (limited by ac pipes etc). So to my limited AAR experience the Boom formation (pair , 4 ship etc) would only be able to great thru the tanker quicker if the ac could refuel at twice the Voyager pod rate (1250 kgs/min). Even then there would be 3 changeovers on the boom with a 4 ship as opposed to one on the 2 point tanker.

At least 10 of the 24 x Phantom FG1 aircrew in the 892 NAS photo here from Sep 77 are RAF: Alexander, Bennett, Davies, Hewlett, Lotinga, MacCleod, Riley, Rodda, Tomlinson, Wright.


https://www.phantomf4k.org/892-squadron-photographs