UK Defence Forum

Whilst interesting and I've no doubt that QinetiQ are good at what they do the key takeaway from that is that they were given 3 weeks to assess Mk.54's capability. Sounds like someone forgot to book the work sooner or there was a change in plans....

Timmymagic wrote:Whilst interesting and I've no doubt that QinetiQ are good at what they do the key takeaway from that is that they were given 3 weeks to assess Mk.54's capability. Sounds like someone forgot to book the work sooner or there was a change in plans....

I wonder if they given the answer first to help them along

Sort of along the lines of "We are going with the Mk54 for the P-8A unless you can find something major that would stop us from doing so".

We need to add air to air missiles to our own planes ,just like the NIMROD mk2 during the Falklands.
It seems the Russians have said a P8 was controlling drones which attcak thier air base in Syria.
Cute a shooting down of a P8 by the Syrians (Russians) on the cards

Adding AAMs to a MPA like we did in the Falklands was only designed to counter the oppositions MPAs if they ever met up. If a SU-27 or SU-30 wants to shoot down a MPA it will if the target is within range. Saying that shooting down a USN P-8 in international airspace is something that cannot be spun as an accident and such like so even Russia or Syria are not that stupid.

Lord Jim wrote:Adding AAMs to a MPA like we did in the Falklands was only designed to counter the oppositions MPAs if they ever met up. If a SU-27 or SU-30 wants to shoot down a MPA it will if the target is within range. Saying that shooting down a USN P-8 in international airspace is somekthing that cannot be spun as an accident and such like so even Russia or Syria are not that stupid.

Iam not saying it would be an accident,I am saying that they already saying that P8 are controlling drones and are now looking as hostile targets when the next time it seems drones are attacking their airfield.

cyrilranch wrote:Iam not saying it would be an accident,I am saying that they already saying that P8 are controlling drones and are now looking as hostile targets when the next time it seems drones are attacking their airfield.

If the Syrians (Russians) wanted to shoot down a P-8 orbiting over the Mediterranean to rapidly halt a drone attack on their airfield that it is apparently orchestrating they’d likely use a salvo of long range SAMs (S-400). A couple of ASRAAM wouldn’t help as much as a comprehensive jamming suite against that threat. The act of firing on a NATO aircraft in international airspace could also rapidly lead down the path to World War III. Hopefully that last fact alone would provide sufficient deterrent to stop any sane Russian commander from pulling the trigger and also sufficient deterrent to stop any NATO P-8 user from doing anything silly with drones over Russian airbases.

Anyway I wouldn’t worry about it. It sounds to me just like the usual Russian bluster.

A P-8 can, in principal, control or more likely co-ordinate drones from hundreds of miles away. If a Syrian SAM Battery of Fighter attacked a P-8 in international air space it would result in pretty swift retaliation as there can be no excuse for this sort of deliberate act. If you are referring to the use of Cruise Missiles to attack the sources of the Chemical Weapons attacks, well the targets were notified in advance to avoid casualties, and Drones were used for surveillance and battle damage assessment, not to carry out the attack.

Can say the same for AEW and the tankers, they all have been identified as a 'soft' target for a defending force. However adding air to air missiles does almost nothing to counter that threat, the tanker/MPA/AEW will never be in a position to fire first so the missile has little deterrent effect.

cyrilranch wrote:
they already saying that P8 are controlling drones

The Russians are saying that but the Russians don't actually believe that. They are just annoyed that they have to keep firing expensive missiles at drones worth a few hundred dollars each without being able to prevent the attacks happening (and quite possibly without being able to identify exactly which rebel group(s) are responsible). They are probably also pretty annoyed that the US is presumably gathering information from how they respond to the drone attacks. Much easier for them to blame the US than admit they are stumped by low-cost asymmetric warfare employed by Syrian rebels.

That said the attacks on their airbase have stopped for now since the Idlib ceasefire although they may resume before long as the Syrian regime's forces have resumed daily shelling of rebel held areas.

Dec 19 France successfully launched the 3.5t CSO-1, the first of three new generation spy/reconnaissance satellites which will provide 800 extremely high resolution black and white / colour / infrared images per day, images will be downloadable every 90 minutes which will considerably shorten the time lapse between a request being issued and the image being received, the satellite’s image-taking program can be modified in real time to meet an urgent request.

The new telescopes mean photos of a particular geographical zone can be taken at a variety of different angles as the satellite passes over the area, capable of 3D imagery which helps with precision targeting.

CSO is a component of Europe’s €1.75 billion MUSIS, or Multinational Space-based Imaging System. This initiative, born at the end of 2006 and involving Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain, Germany is developing the SARah radar system, synthetic aperture radar, for CSO-3 (F-35 SAR mode radar originally spec'd for Block 3F cut due to problems, now pushed back to Block 4).

From <https://www.defensenews.com/space/2018/ ... it-can-do/>

P-8 should also be one of the smoothest entry's to service ever. Apparently there are numerous complete RAF crews who have over 1,000 hours on type from serving with the USN as part of the Seedcorn initiative.

I guess 120 should clear some space for next years Fincastle silverware then☺

The USN announced $2.46 billion contract award to Boeing yesterday for 19 P-8As, 10 for the USN, 5 for Norway and 4 for the UK. The UK $507M, Norway $695M.

At today's exchange rates that's just shy of £100 million each...quite cheap no? I thought they were costing more than double that

dmereifield wrote:At today's exchange rates that's just shy of £100 million each...quite cheap no? I thought they were costing more than double that

That is probably the airframe and integration of the electronics? I suspect there are seperate contracts for all the other bits supplied to Boeing for installation.

dmereifield wrote:At today's exchange rates that's just shy of £100 million each...quite cheap no? I thought they were costing more than double that

Yet another illustration that taking a contract and dividing by the number of hardware deliverables to get a unit price is a crock of shit.

Leads to such claims that the T26's "cost" 1.2 billion each.

Yet repeatedly done on this board by a few individuals to suit their agendas.

So we have sufficient trained and actually experienced air crew ready for the P-8, what about maintainers and infrastructure, do we have sufficient of the former and the latter in place yet?

Ron5 wrote:

dmereifield wrote:At today's exchange rates that's just shy of £100 million each...quite cheap no? I thought they were costing more than double that

Yet another illustration that taking a contract and dividing by the number of hardware deliverables to get a unit price is a crock of shit.

Leads to such claims that the T26's "cost" 1.2 billion each.

Yet repeatedly done on this board by a few individuals to suit their agendas.

From Wikipedia...

"On 11 July 2016, Boeing announced that the signing of a procurement contract with the Royal Air Force for nine P-8 aircraft and support infrastructure at a cost of $3.87 billion (£3 billion). Manufacture will be spread across three production lots over a ten-year period, with deliveries commencing in 2019"

$3.87bn divided by nine aircraft = $430 million

NickC wrote:The USN announced $2.46 billion contract award to Boeing yesterday for 19 P-8As, 10 for the USN, 5 for Norway and 4 for the UK. The UK $507M, Norway $695M.

$507m divided by four aircraft = $127 million

These two simple sums illustrate why this is no way to correctly estimate unit price. The $3.87bn deal also covers training, maintenance and support. These also cost a lot.

Aethulwulf wrote:These two simple sums illustrate why this is no way to correctly estimate unit price. The $3.87bn deal also covers training, maintenance and support. These also cost a lot.

And the follow-on question is......
Is it worth doing one (buying the aircraft) without doing the other (paying for the training and support)? I would suggest "no". Which makes the "T26's cost £1.2b" statement more accurate, overall. Unit cost is unit cost, program cost is far greater. The only similarity is that it all comes out of a limited budget, so one more correctly reflects the impact than the other.

Caribbean wrote:

Aethulwulf wrote:These two simple sums illustrate why this is no way to correctly estimate unit price. The $3.87bn deal also covers training, maintenance and support. These also cost a lot.

And the follow-on question is......
Is it worth doing one (buying the aircraft) without doing the other (paying for the training and support)? I would suggest "no". Which makes the "T26's cost £1.2b" statement more accurate, overall. Unit cost is unit cost, program cost is far greater. The only similarity is that it all comes out of a limited budget, so one more correctly reflects the impact than the other.

yes you are correct, training and support is an ongoing cost, hence why when the ADF release figure its usually for a 10 year period, also if you have more units the numbers are amortize to a lower unit cost so yes both have to be looked at depending the argument

With the uk procurement of p8 allegedly running nearly .5 billion over budget interesting times ahead or maybe that’s were the extra special payment the mod got was going.

Lord Jim wrote:So we have sufficient trained and actually experienced air crew ready for the P-8, what about maintainers and infrastructure, do we have sufficient of the former and the latter in place yet?

No this is the first set of groundcrew out on training and (i believe) that infrastructure build is still ongoing. However it'll be a couple of years yet before we can start in house training.

Regardless of how the costs are calculated the fact remains that we aren't ordering enough P8's.

We really need another order for a further 6 or 7 asap.