Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Contains threads on Royal Air Force equipment of the past, present and future.
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ArmChairCivvy
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by ArmChairCivvy »

shark bait wrote:As far as the pilot is concerned they should be interfacing with a single off board system.
pre -programmed... with some autonomy. Otherwise you will need the backseat driver?
SW1 wrote:A penetrating fighter, the Navy doesn’t have to do that.{>>>}Instead, the USN would conduct penetrating airstrikes against an advanced adversary with long-range standoff missiles or the mission would be deferred to the USAF
Yeah, we will defer, too. AS "The USN’s NGAD is also likely to share systems with the F-35B and F-35C, says Knappenberger."

Whereas German/ French thingy does have that PCA rqrmnt... not sure what Japan will go for?
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

An interesting walk round of the BAE Tempest concept.


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ArmChairCivvy
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by ArmChairCivvy »

Great! OK, Firefox with TopGun music to it would have been better still :)
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Lord Jim »

Reminds me of some of the proposals in a book I have, published in the 1980 and aimed to show where military aviation was heading at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

Seems to be a fairly relentless drip drip of Airbus nigh on begging the UK to come and play with FCAS. Not much from Dassault though...
Is this:

A) - A sensible idea, 1 has more chance than 2
B) - An attempt to get UK advanced tech into FCAS
C) - Just good manners
D) - The French have started to realise what an international sales risk German politics are,
E) - The Germans have realised what a pain the French are to work with..



Full Airbus release:
https://www.aerosociety.com/news/aviati ... olden-age/

Lord Jim
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Lord Jim »

Great when the French President believes that UK Defence Companies should be banned form bidding for or participating in future European Defence programmes after BREXIT and is pushing this idea Brussels. Seem they are not talking to each other over the ENGLISH Channel

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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French call it la Manche ("The Sleeve"), not English Channel.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Timmymagic wrote:Seems to be a fairly relentless drip drip of Airbus nigh on begging the UK to come and play with FCAS. Not much from Dassault though...
Is this:

A) - A sensible idea, 1 has more chance than 2
B) - An attempt to get UK advanced tech into FCAS
C) - Just good manners
D) - The French have started to realise what an international sales risk German politics are,
E) - The Germans have realised what a pain the French are to work with..



Full Airbus release:
https://www.aerosociety.com/news/aviati ... olden-age/
I’d say it’s a combination of B, D and E but after all the joint projects we’ve done with France and Germany I’d stay far away. The Italians, Swedish are much more reasonable to deal with and share our time scale much closer than the formers, if Japan and maybe Canada can be brought in then we’d be on to a winner.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Lord Jim »

SKB wrote:French call it la Manche ("The Sleeve"), not English Channel.
I know I was being patriotic. :D

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by SW1 »

Timmymagic wrote:Seems to be a fairly relentless drip drip of Airbus nigh on begging the UK to come and play with FCAS. Not much from Dassault though...
Is this:

A) - A sensible idea, 1 has more chance than 2
B) - An attempt to get UK advanced tech into FCAS
C) - Just good manners
D) - The French have started to realise what an international sales risk German politics are,
E) - The Germans have realised what a pain the French are to work with..



Full Airbus release:
https://www.aerosociety.com/news/aviati ... olden-age/
I would say A.

I would agree it was the biggest shame about typhoon and rafale. There isnt room finance or the like for 2 high end fighters to be manufacture by European countries to compete against each other and an American product. Developing a manned a/c with accompanying unmanned wingman plus future standoff and conventional weapon systems is a potentially exciting project that everyone can benefit from.

Lots talk about European countries stepping up in defence spending and for Trump he doesn’t really mind how much european countries spend provided there buying American hardware. If Europeans are to be serious about defence then they need to develop and field there own credible capabilities and not simply rely on the US.

Don’t know how you make the politics work and we could likely go round in circles trying, the biggest chance to make it happen was the airbus, bae merger plan. However the divide between the populations of Europe and the european political project and between countries has never wider.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Meriv9 »

I think it is realizing that Tempest has the tech advantage and less organizational problems (D/E options).
IMHO we can't avoid having two different fighters, not to compete against the US on international markets but because probably we are going to have a rationalization of EU aerospace industry, Leonardo/Airbus/SAAB/BAE/Dassault, plus it is clear there are unbalances. Thus we need a rationalization of the sector and IMHO Tempest vs FCAS is going to be the battlefield. Lets play it safely, we have the advantage for now, the ball is on their side of the field.

EDIT: The french dont let us even buy their bankrupted shipyards without making a mess imagine if we demand to cut a piece of Dassault.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Meriv9 wrote:Tempest has the tech advantage
What tech advantage?

The French are building jet's that's as good as Typhoon, and a Drone that has more flight hours than Taranis.

A Dassult led consortium has access to very similar tech to a BAE led consortium.
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

Looks like the Swedes are definitely getting on board. Doesn't look like any French/German approaches actually hit the right note either!




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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Meriv9 »

shark bait wrote:
Meriv9 wrote:Tempest has the tech advantage
What tech advantage?

The French are building jet's that's as good as Typhoon, and a Drone that has more flight hours than Taranis.

A Dassult led consortium has access to very similar tech to a BAE led consortium.

We both at least have put hands on a fifth generation like the F-35 they don't, or the billions spent by us both on it don't translate in any ToT at all?

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Good question, and I don't think there is much technology transfer to the F35 partners.
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by RetroSicotte »

On the US side stuff, yeah. But the UK certainly has more of an understanding of components involved in 5th generation type aircraft than any other nation in Europe. From manufacturing, all the way to being as simple as "We fly it, thus we know how to use it and what best supports it."

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Like what?

I don't think the difference is so clear. For example the French fly a more advanced radar and a more advanced EW suite on Rafale than the RAF do on Typhoon.
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by RetroSicotte »

shark bait wrote:Like what?
I don't think the difference is so clear. For example the French fly a more advanced radar and a more advanced EW suite on Rafale than the RAF do on Typhoon.
Captor-E is significantly more advanced than the RBE-2, for one. And the EW one is something we cannot compare in direct form. They have different approaches. Spectra being some godlike EW suite is more a marketing success than one rooted in fact. It's good, but the French have used insistent terminology to over-inflate it a little. (Somewhat similar to what the British did with "Chobham" armour, when it really wasn't that much different from other composite users of the time.) Remember that the French don't even have modern datalinks yet. They're still using single way only, incapable of receiving from munitions and deployed elements such as the Meteor missile. That's a huge factor in defining next generation information supremacy, which is the F-35s biggest asset.

The French are good, and they'll likely make it to their end, but it's downplaying the UKs experience in a huge way to imply they are ahead in that regard.

The UKs research into RCS is very high (Replica, Taranis, remember France was only one of a partner on Neuron), and have had direct hands on with manufacturing and designing parts of the F-35. No other nation with a significant aerospace group in Europe has done that. BAE also wrote a not inconsequential amount of the backline code for the F-35s system.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by ArmChairCivvy »

shark bait wrote: For example the French fly a more advanced radar [...] on Rafale than the RAF do on Typhoon.
Well, this was answered already :thumbup:
RetroSicotte wrote: They're still using single way only, incapable of receiving from munitions and deployed elements such as the Meteor missile.
F.4 funded, but will take years to convert the fleet to that std
RetroSicotte wrote: BAE also wrote a not inconsequential amount of the backline code for the F-35s system.
I wonder what that might? The helmet (e.g) was replaced by an Israeli design
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by RetroSicotte »

ArmChairCivvy wrote:F.4 funded, but will take years to convert the fleet to that std
I've heard conflicting information on that to be honest. Last I read said they were "updating" the datalink, but I saw no explicit confirmation of this meaning the upgrade contained a two-way system like Typhoon, Gripen, or F-35.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Lord Jim »

When we are talking about modern datalinks here are were talking more modern than Link-16?

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Meriv9 »

Put it toghether with the italian share and that if the turkish orders gets cancelled we don't know where the engine facility will end. We got at least a significant amount of tech and know how that the french dont have.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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RetroSicotte wrote: I've heard conflicting information on that to be honest. Last I read said they were "updating" the datalink, but I saw no explicit confirmation of this
Well, yes. Try to make sense of this (I would say - without the explicit mention being included - that they will get "there" in 2023):
"enhancements will be made to the Rafale’s sensor suite, including the RBE2 AESA radar, Talios targeting pod, and the OSF frontal sector optronics system. Likewise, the Spectra electronic warfare system will also receive improvements to maintain its ability to deter emerging threats. Weapons enhancements will be made through future developments of the ASMP-A nuclear missile, Scalp stand-off attack missile, MICA NG air-to-air missile, and a 1000-kg version of the AASM precision-guided weapon. In-service support and readiness will be improved through the adoption of processes such as fault diagnosis assistance, preventative maintenance, and the upgrading of the M88 engine’s computer. Overall, the aircraft’s architecture is to be made more capable of accepting new technology insertions as they become available.

Under current plans Standard F4 will be implemented in two increments, the first in 2023 and the second in 2025."
- in service to 2050.... makes the longevity 10 years more than what is envisaged (currently) for tiffies
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Put it toghether with the italian share and that if the turkish orders gets cancelled we don't know where the engine facility will end. We got at least a significant amount of tech and know how that the french dont have.
There are engine depots in the Netherlands and Norway. The "loss" of the engine depot in Turkey is next to unconsequential to all but perhaps the USAFE. UK has all but promised to send its engines to Norway in exchange for Norway buying into Marham maintenance and training suppport and i'll be very, very surprised if something changes there. Italy is sending its own engines to the Netherlands in exchange for the assembly of dutch aircraft in Cameri.
Israel, sending its engines to Turkey? :lol:

In truth, Turkey's "primary depot" for engines was always a lie. The USAFE was probably going to play along with it, but i don't anticipate big problems at all in going elsewhere. It probably makes a lot of people happy.
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by ArmChairCivvy »

A good one:
Gabriele wrote:The "loss" of the engine depot in Turkey is next to unconsequential to all but perhaps the USAFE. UK has all but promised to send its engines to Norway in exchange for Norway buying into Marham maintenance and training suppport and i'll be very, very surprised if something changes there. Italy is sending its own engines to the Netherlands in exchange for the assembly of dutch aircraft in Cameri.
Israel, sending its engines to Turkey? :lol:
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)

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