Ron5 wrote:Lockheed Martin contractually commits to reduce F-35A running costs to $30k an hour in two years. Good news.

And presumably that will mean they're still on track for $25k in 2025 as well, which many thought they'd never reach.

Doesn’t really make a huge amount of sense to be honest, a aircraft develop program would need considerately larger numbers than 14 to have a business case for a production contract. It doesn't really stack up at all...their business model could make sense but they need substantial investment, whic...

HMS Glasgow mast craned on...

Maybe they are playing them down as both are not fully cleared for ops Thats possible, but they did make a point of them being available and deployed on CSG21...which wasn't playing it down. Going from that position to total silence is a little odd... Sea Venom, is a new system and may not yet been...

Thanks, didn't realise we had to wait that long for the 2nd.... Programatically it's longer than that when you add in aircraft availability. By the end of 2025 we'll have 45 'Combat Capable' F-35B and 3 Test F-35B at Edwards AFB. But....and its a big but...13 of those will only have been delivered ...

Just had a thought....we've had lots and lots of pictures from CSG21...but... To my knowledge we've seen none of Merlin Crowsnest or of Wildcat with Sea Venom...both of which were supposed to be present. Bit unusual for the RN not to highlight them....hopefully not because things might not be going ...

Not been able to keep up with a lot of news lately... what's the UK F-35 numbers currently? At present its still 21 total. 3 x ITF aircraft at Edwards (all non-combat capable), 8 x a/c on Queen Elizabeth, 4 x a/c on Prince of Wales. With 6 remaining at Marham. There should be another 6 delivered in...

The problem I see with FCASW is that the RN and the MN have different requirements. The MN doesn’t need a long range land attack missile, because MdCN entered service recently, so they’re done until 2040 at least. They need to replace Exocet with a canister-launched FCASW and have decided they want...

donald_of_tokyo wrote:NSM and/or LRASM is NOT in the same league as Harpoon. So, maybe 8 will work.

LRASM? It's the same length as Harpoon but each missile weighs 3 times as much....

Hat tip to Navy Lookout for tweeting about this.. https://twitter.com/NavyLookout/status/1427537850178940952 https://www.f35.com/f35/news-and-features/planning-a-historic-deployment-how-lighting-team-uk-prepared-for-csg.html Also confirms that 6 x F-35 will be going to sea later this year on HMS Pri...

RAF awarded contract to Spanish company Indra last week for one of their Lanza Long Tactical Range 25 radars, max. range ~ 210 to 240nm, to be delivered before year end. The LTR-25 is a L-band (frequency range of ~1-2GHz with a wavelength range of ~30-15cm) solid-state 3D long range radar, planar a...

The Lake class were disposed of in the early 90's. Built in the UK, they were particularly unsuitable for the NZ sea conditions and used to roll around like pigs. The current (laid up) boats are Protector IPV's, taken out of service due to manning issues. Should never have been bought as concentrat...

Looks like the Irish Naval Service are seriously looking at the two laid up Lake Class IPV's. http://nighthawk.nz/index.php/news/defence/4868-irish-department-of-defence-looking-to-buy-new-zealand-naval-ships I notice in the article where the article says "The Royal New Zealand Navy was suppli...

A bit left field, but a fantastic article about the rationale behind the shootdown of the USA-193 Spy Satellite by SM-3 in 2008. https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4198/1 The website above is fantastic, particularly articles about Spy satellites....you could get lost in there for days... In part...

Interesting, Eurodrone seems to raise its head from time to time but with relatively little information. Given several European States have already bought General Atomics Predator/ Reaper/ Protector in various forms it'll be interesting to see what extra Eurodrone offers operationally and tacticall...

Great thread from Gabi. Looks like the road-map for upgrading the UK's F-35 fleet to Block IV capability will be proved by the USMC. The reason why this is great news is that if the USMC price it and prove it then it is likely the UK will move to the same standard. Not only for reasons of commonalit...

Ron5 wrote:Try that on your CATOBARs !!!

Its the 5 ship RAS we all want to see...

Part of me hopes that Brimstone will be integrated onto the Apache Guardian at a later date to give the platform more options. I believe Brimstone 3 has a more capable seeker combo that the US Missile, and someone somewhere has got to realise that we already have Brimstone in service with the RAF a...

Is it just me being suspicios about how well will UAVs fly over the North Atlantic? Propellor driven aircraft have been flying over the N Atlantic for 100 years...it's not an issue. Personally I think the failure to develop the larger, twin engined, UK built BAE Mantis was a massive error. It's cap...

Isn't the block 4 software split into 4 sections? From memory the Meteor was in section 4. Yes its delivered incrementally, it doesn't drop all in 1 go. What everyone also needs to be aware of is that even when Meteor is integrated to F-35 in general, there may be a significant part of the UK's F-3...

Interestingly the South Korean Navy's frontrunner for their replacement programme for their Goalkeeper CIWS appears to be an upgraded Goalkeeper...

http://alert5.com/2021/07/26/lig-nex1-i ... i-program/

Seen elsewhere...hopefully the MoD can shake the piggy bank and find some small change for a number of these..at 7.5 ft it will fit in F-35B (PWIV is 8.5 ft.) http://www.kihomac.virtualtsb.com/atp/#slide-03-39a2d428 Now with video...hopefully the price isn't that outrageous for a carbon fibre tube ...

sunstersun wrote:The EW on the F-35 is better than the Growler.

It really isn't...when it comes to EW power and size mean a hell of a lot. The different varieties of NHJ will be far more powerful than anything the F-35 can mount internally.

It would appear there is some level of commonality, enough to bring it out as a plus-point with respect to cost savings at least (dated 2017) Italian involvement in CAMM (surface launched) is the RF seeker, and for CAMM-ER, the larger rocket motor (and the seeker). But for legacy Asraam and Asraam ...

I'm struggling to think of a component of ASRAAM that is both common with CAMM and made in Italy. Surely, Meteor integration would be the most likely to interest Italy? I'm also a tad surprised the ASRAAM CSP requires integration above and beyond that done already. But I suppose there are H&S i...