The list is endless....Didnt the Harriers all have extensive upgrades just before the defence review of 2010 binned them, and sold them off cheap as spares for the USMC?

Nimrod MRA4? An admitedly expensive overrun that was just coming good...

At this rate, come 2030, the F35s will be "long in the tooth" and "expensive to upgrade", so they will be cut up for scrap, so we can buy a few Tempests...

The early tranche F-35Bs we bought are already too expensive to upgrade. All the reports indicate it’s cheaper to just buy replacements.

At least the Typhoon F2 has lasted longer than the Tornado F2…

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...e-of-its-f-35s

Weren't the Tornado F2s simply upgraded to F3s, rather than being scrapped?

It is interesting that the two Eurofighter FCAS partners, Germany and Spain, have opted to retain some upgraded Tranche 1s and/or replace Tranche 1s with the latest Tranche 4/5s, while the two Eurofighter Tempest partners, Italy and the UK, are offloading their Tranche 1s with no replacement. Worth noting that the Italy and the UK also have the F-35, which it seems they see as their bridge through to Tempest.

No,most of their centre fuselages were used to rebuild the F3s that the contractor (Airwork?) buggered up by using the wrong tools.One survived at Boscombe as the TIARA aircraft

back in 2015 when the decision was made to upgrade Sentry, I suspect the decision makers were quite unaware of the state of the RAF E3D fleet. Woeful mismanagement and underinvestment had left them in a very poor state. The ‘pause’ of Sentry operations (grounding) at the start of 2017 (?) was part of that. Some of the fleet management and decision making in the years leading up to 2015 probably bordered on utter incompetence.

And yes, for Chug, directly relating to safety and airworthiness.

And yes, those responsible got their promotions!

Are 1435flt T1 birds? If so what will be replacing them?

I remain curious about this question:

4) It was explained to me that Tranche 1 aircraft would not be viable post 2025, in that they would not be in line with regulatory requirements post 2025, as the RAF thinks they need to be able to operate from civil airports and in civil airspace when necessary.

Yet why would the Tranche 1 aircraft be unable to do this? Don’t they have the NG LN-251 INU/GPS, and isn’t that RNAV-5 compliant? The VOR/ILS network isn’t being switched off so you don’t have to do a GPS PBA when landing at a civil aerodrome, do you?

I think I would call bull**** on that Jacko. Can’t help but feel that someone is being very selective. Which reg’s are they referring too, UK, or perhaps EU. If the latter, I wonder how many various other fleets of FJ around European nations meet whatever reg’s are being cited.

Yes they are. Presumably they'll get four of the 107 remaining T2/T3 jets.

Leaving 103 for seven frontline squadrons, the TES, the OCU, and sustainment...... For the next 20 years.

I strongly suspect that you're right. I'd just like to make sure.

RVSM compliance et al - if you are shepherding an airliner or just intercepting one it is best if you don't break the congested & carefully choreographed airspace by introducing a non-compliant aircraft to the mix.

As for 1435 Flt they were not Tranche 1 jets in my time, even from the start of the transition from F3. It could have happened since of course but it was never the plan.

Nothing to do with Tr1 vs RVSM compliance.

So let's break this down further noting that the total is 104 as BS37 (Tranche 2) was Cat 3 and Qty 2 are with BAE for their Test Fleet (Tranche 3). Applying the DT's standard 70/30 approach between forward and sustainment fleets gives a notional 73/31 split. So now remove Qty 6 UK QRA (to enable Q1 thru 3 at both locations) and Qty 4 BFSAI, then the forward fleet is down to say Qty 63 aircraft. On historic trends let us presume 29 Sqn (OCU) utilises Qty 11 ac (reduced due to T1 twin seats scrapped and move of sorties to the sim) and 41 Sqn Qty 4 ac. That leaves just 48 ac for the remaining 7 FLSs (1, II(AC), 3(F), 6, IX, XI, and 12) with say Qty 7-8 ac each. Now factor in both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance which gives us what, say 4-6 ac AVAILABLE per day per squadron. We must not forget that all Qty 40 of the T3 jets will be flowing through the ECRSmk2 upgrade over the coming 4+ years and that both sustained op commitments (SHADER) and Air Policing will drive this number down further.

The question that should be asked is whether the money to fund the ECRSmk2 upgrade is coming out of TyTAN and whether it is that that which was factored in for T1 sustainment until its much later OSD? If not where has that money from within TyTAN gone? Again, I'd expect zero transparency from neither MOD nor industry as they'll hide behind commercial-in-confidence. They then wonder why NOBODY trusts them with public money, even more so when they don't publish the value or details of 9 figure single source contracts awarded by the Air TLB.

Come on folks, it’s been ever thus in our aircraft and engineering environment for years. Achieve a certain rank, come up with some half baked money saving plan that will dazzle the MOD who will then drive it through. Get promoted and then leave your successor or the one after to pick up the pieces and take the blame for not managing it correctly. I’m surprised it’s not a module a staff college.

They were originally Tranche 2s, and they were still Tranche 2s in 2014, but they've been Tranche 1s for some time.

Are the Tranche 1s NOT RVSM compliant?

Sorry, NM, missed your post and hence late on parade. There seems to be a continual list of premature fleet retirements at the moment, and the Sentry was not alone in being caused by lack of airworthiness. As to the Typhoon Tr 1's, as Foghorn Leghorn helpfully explains,

What is worse, an ever vanishing air force, one still riddled with unairworthiness, or both? Of course, one might be minded to set about reforming Military Air Regulation and Air Accident Investigation, but that would mean lifting the lid on the subversion and its cover up of UK Military Air Safety by RAF VSOs, and that seemingly is the worse of all options...

Only four jets with the TES, DD? They had six in 2014, and ten in 2019.

Is RVSM even relevant in the vast open space of the South Atlantic? I suspect not. The rationale for scrapping T1s when other nations still consider them valuable seems very weak. In fact they should send a bunch more T1s to the Falklands and use them as a source of spare parts for the remaining aircraft.

With the 80:20 plan I wonder if QRA and Shader etc might just be done on the sim?

There is a long established precedent in public spending that what you've spent in the past is of no relevance to budgeting - only what you might have to spend in the future.Hence airfields getting multi-miliion pound upgrades only to be closed as you can make a saving that way. Harrier was the same - the money spent on upgrades was gone, the only concern was that we couldn't afford three fast jet types,so one had to go. Same with MRA4, the question wasn't 'How much have we spent?' but 'How much do we have to spend to get it operational?' - when the answer to that was 'we don't know', it's fate was sealed.