As the Australian who'd been working on FSTA with the civil serpents at Shabby Wood allegedly remarked upon her return to Oz: "PFI? Poms are F*****g Idiots!",

Having spoken to AirTanker on the subject they tell me it is not a major undertaking to fit booms to the Voyager. That said, we might want additional tankers to cover the additional receivers, perhaps.

mw-dont know who you spoke to but another individual told me we had missed the boat for that part of the contract change. We should n't need additional tankers since the numbers were based on a much larger no of receivers anyway. As for keeping some ac grey only-what affect does/would that have on ac rotation throughout the contract period ?

Easy-cant see why the Dutch would want a 2 pt probe and drogue tanker since their FJ fleet is boom. The one nation that I did hear spoken about was Spain but that seems to have gone quiet. From what I gather it is all too late without a lot of dosh being spent (contact renewal, mods etc, additional training etc) and I cant see that happening anytime soon.

Bottom line as far as I can see is that we are stuck in our present situation and no government is going to auth the extra dosh to rectify things (except comrade Jeremy who has promised to bring PFI's back into public ownership).

E-7A designation origin
 

Excellent news.
 

Sadly the demise of the E-3D fleet commenced a long time ago, poor decisions over many years and under investment meant that the only option was to buy new.
Wedgetail seems to be the ideal solution, let's just hope there aren't significant delays with it entering service with the RAF.

I haven't read your procurement process. I assume you looked at everything else available. You have had embedded or exchange crew on the E-7a for 6 months. You are going in with your eyes open. Although I think our pie warmer was the deciding factor.

There has been a lot of work done over the past 2 years or so ensuring wedgetail is right for the RAF. Going to open-market sometimes isn't the right option and with it, inevitably comes delays.
I know Saab were a bit, let's just say, less than happy with the way they went about the procurement but when money like this is involved someone is always going to end up feeling hard done by.
Given the state of the government in the UK at the moment, the treasury must 100%on side as getting them to part with ~$2 billion must have been a challenge!

• Single pool of flight crew.
• Same flight simulator,
• Maintenance commonality.

Perhaps this factor will create enough space at Waddington to have a bearing on the RAFAT basing?

[QUOTE][/QUOTE]I thought the usual UK method was to rip out all the perfectly good equipment, give loads of money to BAE to integrate an untested, questionable, mix of gear to get it to the proper level of UK content....



I understand the flight deck is being extended to fit in a navigator and flight engineer. Helps to give the bus drivers extra SA and capacity and keeps the TD in check when he suggests some absolutely stupid operation of the aircraft! ;-)

Buy American.....Buy Boeing!


Love it!

I assume that even with a change of platform, the RAF is to continue to be a direct contributor to the NATO AEW&C Force?

Don't be so sure...

Talking about the NATO E-3s are there any plan for their replacement? Similarly the French?

I knew the NATO E-3s were being cycled through a MLU, seemingly to Block 40/45 standard - Nato E-3 MLU

And a little bit of Google research says the French are doing something similar - French E-3 MLU

I suspect I'm with many others in thinking that only the gross mis-management of our fleet has got us to the point where the newest E-3's in the world are the first to be scrapped...

They'd invested in upgrades

E-7 was originally reserved for what became the EC-18 (Another 707 variant with a different designation - it ran through A to F subvariants.)

I wonder if there is a USAF type with as many differing designations as the 707 (C-137, E-3, C-18, E-6, E-8, CT-49)

Even taking into account the MLU the E-3 fleets are falling behind technologically. A mech scan radar on your C2 asset will only get you so far, and despite the bigger fleets of A/C/G, they are suffering the same rates of servicability. I think the RAF have been lucky rather than good here and managed to come out of a mismanaged programme with a better capability than most of our allies.