Any version of the F-35 could kill an SU-27 with ease.
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“A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures, whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?”

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Looking at the backdrop and the colour of that Osprey, the plan could be to lease them from Maersk.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk...186763.stm

Looks like we've been had - Torygraph lied, or at least massaged the facts

As you were



PS is anyone dissapointed by this? Seemed too good to be true... bah
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"It was natural enough: the young cornet or ensign in the Army, when he joined his regiment for the first time, entered a world of rigid formality and discipline, but here was this lad just out of his 'teens with a little floating kingdom all of his own, sent to fight slavers and pirates, chase smugglers, and shepherd pilgrims - and not a senior to turn to for advice, but only his own sense of judgement. Young Ballantyne couldn't follow orders, because hadn't any beyond a roving commission; his crew were all older than he was, but he must live with 'em and mess with 'em, share their hardships and dangers as one of 'em, and make them like and trust him because he was what he was, so that when he said 'Go!' they'd obey, even unto death..."

Mr Davies said: "There is no sense at all in which a decision has been taken. We are a long way from taking a decision.

(Translation: We are thinking about doing this)

"I haven't in my own mind reached any conclusions. I'm still in the process of examining the evidence, having conversations with people.

(Translation: We are still running the numbers to see how much money we can save)

"We will move to a decision over quite a lot of months. I'm sorry that all sorts of people may have been upset and agitated in Rolls-Royce from a completely false report."

(Translation: There's an election early next year and we don't want to lose Labour votes in the Midlands by spilling the beans on some more MOD cuts we're planning that will effect jobs in the Midlands.)
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“A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures, whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?”

Marcus Tullius Cicero

You cynic, you
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"It was natural enough: the young cornet or ensign in the Army, when he joined his regiment for the first time, entered a world of rigid formality and discipline, but here was this lad just out of his 'teens with a little floating kingdom all of his own, sent to fight slavers and pirates, chase smugglers, and shepherd pilgrims - and not a senior to turn to for advice, but only his own sense of judgement. Young Ballantyne couldn't follow orders, because hadn't any beyond a roving commission; his crew were all older than he was, but he must live with 'em and mess with 'em, share their hardships and dangers as one of 'em, and make them like and trust him because he was what he was, so that when he said 'Go!' they'd obey, even unto death..."

I wish, bring out that old and bold FDO L/T Shreeves AKA (Ten to Two ) for his open stance over the cat, bringing them on the rollers. Then green flag waving and that red one tucked behind, just incase !!!! and smooth hand signalling chockheads!

To my mind an 'EV-22' would be ideal for the RN. Good altitude, a decent transit speed, better capacity whilst retaining the excellent ASAC sensor. Moreover, it would serve as a basis for a number of CVF support roles such as ISR, COD (as you mentioned), AAR and EW.

The problem with the unfortunately named TOSS is that it will be VERY expensive to develop. The basic model is very pricy and the Osprey ASAC fuselage would then need to be strengthened to allow pressurised flight and modified for the sensors and mission system integration. The USMC are interested but I struggle to see how the USN E-2 community will allow it as it may divert funds from their E-2D procurement.

I still think Merlin ASAC will be the best you can hope for. Moreover, I would suggest it is adequate for the basic tasks. Any spare cash could better be allocated to CVF C4I and J2 facilities.

However, all this debate remains fairly pointless. Until the next government is in and their SDR published nothing is worth the paper it's written on. So I would suggest we're as well concentrating on justifying getting CVF/F-35 at all, much less which variant of the latter we want!

Regards,
MM
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For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.

— Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Last edited by Magic_Mushroom on Thu Aug 06, 2009 3:01 pm; edited 1 time in total

Moi?
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“A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures, whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?”

Marcus Tullius Cicero

I thought you were displaying a considerable grasp of realism.

Their C4I and J2 facilities will be fine..........
_________________
Life lesson#1 Being right is irrelevant!
Life lesson#2 Being promoted is no longer an option
Life lesson#3 Career Manager is an oxymoron

www.telegraph.co.uk/ne...ories.html

I hope so because without very significant outlay on the appropriate architecture, you'll be flying F-35 off the carrier in the same way as an FA2! The type will have enormous data requirements, both to ensure ops and to down load during and post mission.

The UK is dreadful at delivering assets without the appropriate support!

My concerns on the subject arose from chatting to several dark blue types who also harboured similar concerns. In fairness, the RN have not even had an N2 specialisation until recently. Hopefully the formation of that branch now will gradually overcome my areas of concern.

Regards,
MM
_________________
For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.

— Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Agreed MM - our current up/download speeds are terrible, only last month a CVF had to pause all email traffic for the ships company just to send back 80MB(!) of Merlin data. My big worry-bead is that C4I/J2 will just not be up to the job of maintaining a datalink between Mother and her children.

Great news if we are going "C" variant though from a cost, range, payload and interoperability perspective. I just wish still we had the expertise in cat/trap ops - perhaps we might have to set up a department of the RNSFDO in the States so they can teach us how to do it again.
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Royal Navy by choice, Fleet Air Arm by the Grace of God, Submarine Service by Mid-Life Crisis

The snag isn't the technology, the issue once again is cost - we're currently imposing a 20% reduction in SATCOMM availability just to keep the costs down to something sensible. We need to start looking at commercial satelltie broadband solutions with High Grade (IP) encryption. The technology is available buts its a spend to save and I just can't see anyone moving forwards quickly enough.

Another snag is that people want more and more services running concurrently and don't appreciate what that means in bandwidth terms. We didn't envisage these services, especially the coalition ones, and we are forced to cobble together adhoc solutions.

MM_ I agree about the general lack of a true RN N2 capability and even now I'm not certain that there will be a proper Int branch created, there is still a lot of debate, mostly because we don't have enough bodies as it is and you just can''t grow the branch overnight.

I deal with the guys looking at the CVF C4 systems quite often and I'm quite impressed by what they are designing - within the overal constraints they have been given.
_________________
Life lesson#1 Being right is irrelevant!
Life lesson#2 Being promoted is no longer an option
Life lesson#3 Career Manager is an oxymoron

If this order does actually go through, how many JSF's will the RN get? I mean out of the 138 for both the RN and RAF.