Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Contains threads on Royal Air Force equipment of the past, present and future.
SW1
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by SW1 »

The problem will be one of capacity within alternative facilities and how quickly that capacity can cover the Turkish supply chain being withdrawn. It will add more chaos to an already chaotic system.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

Gabriele wrote: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?

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.
It's a pity the UK never went for an engine facility. With the USAF F-35A at Lakenheath and the UK F-35B it was always going to be the largest concentration of F-35 in Europe.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by dmereifield »

Timmymagic wrote:
Gabriele wrote: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?

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.
It's a pity the UK never went for an engine facility. With the USAF F-35A at Lakenheath and the UK F-35B it was always going to be the largest concentration of F-35 in Europe.
Why didn't they?

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ArmChairCivvy
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by ArmChairCivvy »

A 15% share of the build is good enough (a deal)
... it isn't always worth "stretching it"
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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shark bait wrote: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.
I've always got the feeling that Spectra is the Rafale's 'plasma stealth'. It seems to be Rafale fan's trump card that is pulled when it is compared with other aircraft. Lacking speed or altitude performance? Spectra! Lacking conformal carry and 2 way data links? Spectra! Lacking a large AESA? Spectra! Struggling to sell overseas? Spectra! Stealth? Spectra!

Truth is we know little about real world performance of EW systems. Everyone tends to agree that the Israeli and Swedish systems are good. The French tend to make reasonably good kit as well. But....the same people who say it's amazing also seem to think it is vastly superior to any other systems. Which given the amount of money the US spends on these things seems to be, shall we say, rather unbelievable....If the French are so good at podded gear and avionics why does no-one buy the gear unless they operate French aircraft? The Damocles pod has hardly set the world alight, the Talios seems to be trying for performance that Sniper XR and Litening hit over 5-10 years ago.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by jonas »

A bit of an update on the programmes current aims :-

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/artic ... la-458870/

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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"This would avoid repeating the UK’s experience as a member of the four-nation Eurofighter consortium, where he argues “preservation of the purity of the workshare arrangements sometimes seemed to be the main aim of the programme”."

Thats the key part and its where Tempest has a massive advantage over FCAS. Workshare, Requirements and Politics are going to be an absolute nightmare for the FCAS.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Timmymagic wrote:"This would avoid repeating the UK’s experience as a member of the four-nation Eurofighter consortium, where he argues “preservation of the purity of the workshare arrangements sometimes seemed to be the main aim of the programme”."

Thats the key part and its where Tempest has a massive advantage over FCAS. Workshare, Requirements and Politics are going to be an absolute nightmare for the FCAS.
You say that, but workshare issues are a fundamental and priced in part of that programme. With Tempest it'll be a no less long and complex process of negotiation for workshare and the like with potential partners, but it'll be on an ad-hoc basis that will likely end up pleasing nobody.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Cooper »

Pseudo wrote: You say that, but workshare issues are a fundamental and priced in part of that programme. With Tempest it'll be a no less long and complex process of negotiation for workshare and the like with potential partners, but it'll be on an ad-hoc basis that will likely end up pleasing nobody.
Yes but without the French it will be a lot easier to come to an agreement...without the French involved in any project, its always easier.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

Pseudo wrote:You say that, but workshare issues are a fundamental and priced in part of that programme. With Tempest it'll be a no less long and complex process of negotiation for workshare and the like with potential partners, but it'll be on an ad-hoc basis that will likely end up pleasing nobody.
For Tempest there is a lead nation.
For FCAS there are two...

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Frenchie »

Timmymagic wrote:
Pseudo wrote:You say that, but workshare issues are a fundamental and priced in part of that programme. With Tempest it'll be a no less long and complex process of negotiation for workshare and the like with potential partners, but it'll be on an ad-hoc basis that will likely end up pleasing nobody.
For Tempest there is a lead nation.
For FCAS there are two...
Not quite, Dassault is the prime contractor of the project, the problem is the transfer of technology to Germany, which will become a rival in the future. For the moment they do not have the knowledge to make an aircraft that is efficient.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

Looks like the French and Germans are gearing up with a retaliatory mock up of FCAS/NGF at Le Bourget. Should be revealed tomorrow..

In the CGI it appears that the FCAS will have tails after all, but the stand model doesn't appear to, can't tell from the full sized mock-up photos seen so far. It is of course, like Tempest, not a finalised design.

Meteor shown as launched and presumably Perseus/FCASW as well..lots of other goodies from MBDA apparently being shown...







Compare and contrast to BAE's Tempest cockpit.




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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

On the stands the Neuron style flying wing is next to the still covered FCAS.

But it looks like Dassault have a number of other Loyal Wingmen concepts outside...


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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

And the reveal...

From the front its an F-22/23 mashup (canted tails). Can't see the planform though..




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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

Seems to be a little less 'chunky' than Tempest



Loyal Wingman and another MBDA Remote Carrier next to FCAS/NGF


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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

More on the Loyal Wingman and Remote Carrier's.
Airbus going all in on their products....A330 AWACS, A330 MRTT, Euromale UAV, Zephyr HAPS, A400M launching Loyal Wingmen




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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by cky7 »

Much Prefer the looks of the dassault mock up to the tempest one for whatever very little that means

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Jensy »

I appreciate that the Dassairbus is basically a plastic fantasy at this stage, but I can't imagine it will be fun to land on a carrier with that nose/canopy.

Feel a tad sorry for the French as the Turks seem to have ruined their big reveal event with their own giant Airfix kit, which apparently had far better music and landing gear.... :roll:

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SW1
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by SW1 »

Jensy wrote: I appreciate that the Dassairbus is basically a plastic fantasy at this stage, but I can't imagine it will be fun to land on a carrier with that nose/canopy.
That’s also the first thing I thought when I saw it. The other think I thought is all these design concepts look big. Not a bad thing but in aerospace big is expensive. The platform looks a lot like a cranked arrow which is interesting.


The area I find most interesting is the loyal wingman concepts and the weapons thinking, more simplistic single mission, configurable, modular and could be introduced sooner and be integrated with current aircraft to move things only greatly in the cost capability arena. While there being shown with fighter would be interesting to test the concept in lower intensity operations with things like shadow/sentinel.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by inch »

Looking like the French changing the nose to accommodate a larger radar than tempest , maybe lessons learned with rafale . someone said looking like a cranked arrow wing which I have no idea what that does or doesn't do for flight compared to tempest ,can't tell if larger or smaller than tempest it's all early stages ATM

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by RetroSicotte »

Definitely is too early to be comparing their contents.

Although there was murmurings of Tempest using "developed technology" from Typhoon, so a nose large enough for a Captor-E seems highlighted. What kind of size of the French model is to that I dunno. Captor-E is about 1,500 t/r modules in scope, F-22 was about 1,700 to 1,800 I think, so a little bigger. Rafale being about 1,000 based on some estimates. How this new thing goes to those sizes or not, I dunno.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by inch »

Yes don't know who more up in the tech spec between dassault or bae designs tbh ,both have their own design take I quess but looking at the back end jet of both designs doesn't look that stealthy to me with big engines nozzles out the back even if design of plane is stealthy

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by SW1 »

Inch

A cranked arrow first appeared with what was called the f16 xl. It was testing a number of thing aerodynamically and how it affected the noise profile particularly in and around airfields relating to supersonic transport ideas. The idea with the planform is to transit at high transonic speed with a large fuel fraction and load for a given size this is much like a delta planform but we’re the cranked arrow differs is it attempts to overcome some of the more nasty traits of deltas at slower speeds particularly around landing and higher aoa without resorting to canards and the like. This is important because low observability is enhanced a lot by reducing control surfaces to a minimum. The down side is the configuration has historically been heavy for it size but perhaps modern materials choices could help.

The take I have in comparing the options is there both very similar in concept a manned platform controlling swarms of uavs and more standoff munitions taking performance requirements off the manned platform. While this isn’t a popular view I live in hope there is a dose of common sense breaking out at the top of the tree and common ground can be found for a common manned and uav airframe with perhaps national sensor and engine options. I fear were heading again for two similar designs competing for a ever smaller number of orders that would have produced a better result if we worked together than against each other.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

SW1 wrote:The area I find most interesting is the loyal wingman concepts and the weapons thinking, more simplistic single mission, configurable, modular and could be introduced sooner and be integrated with current aircraft to move things only greatly in the cost capability arena. While there being shown with fighter would be interesting to test the concept in lower intensity operations with things like shadow/sentinel.
The mockup isn't that interesting at all to be honest, as someone on Twitter said 'Siri, show me a generic 6th generation stealth fighter design'....

But the surrounding vision is the interesting part (although almost comically Airbus centric). Turns out US studies from the 90's and the UK FOAS and CASOM were bang on...The video of Airbus products was interesting for the Zephyr and A400 deployment and Euromale, but as it was Airbus completely neglected to have a NeURON or Taranis style UCAV alongside

But the MBDA Remote Carriers are, I think, the least interesting part. The 2 shown by MBDA are more like MALD/JSOW type units for modular payloads. They either need to be dirt, dirt cheap, incredibly long legged (and I think they're not due to propulsion) or re-usable. They looked none of those things to be honest...Airbus' larger Loyal Wingman was also a little underwhelming, a Kratos lookalike with folding wings but seemingly no way of landing...

Basically, put the Dassault bits, including a NeURON style drone with all of the Airbus bits and you'd have a coherent whole (with perhaps a loitering munition being absent) but if the French and Germans only procure the fighter and their bits and pieces they'll end up with only part of the picture. Loving the A330 AWACS and A320NEO AEW&C that they've shown...they'll never see the light of day though..

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Timmymagic »

RetroSicotte wrote:Although there was murmurings of Tempest using "developed technology" from Typhoon, so a nose large enough for a Captor-E seems highlighted. What kind of size of the French model is to that I dunno. Captor-E is about 1,500 t/r modules in scope, F-22 was about 1,700 to 1,800 I think, so a little bigger. Rafale being about 1,000 based on some estimates. How this new thing goes to those sizes or not, I dunno.
The French won't make the mistake of a small nose again, Tempests certainly looked huge enough. But by the time any of these see the light of day distributed conformal arrays will be very prevalent so the size of the nose may not be as important as it once was.

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