I'm probably just being an old pessimist!Jensy wrote: ↑05 Jul 2023, 00:08I'm not unsympathetic to your point of view, but:mrclark303 wrote: ↑04 Jul 2023, 23:53All that money, years of waiting and effort for a handful of AESA tranche 3 machines, tranche 1 to be withdrawn, trance 2 no funded integration and they won't....Jensy wrote: ↑04 Jul 2023, 14:12Also Iran, who the Germans have been happy to sell all manner of tech and dual use equipment to.SD67 wrote: ↑03 Jul 2023, 11:10 It's more than a little irritating considering Corporate Germany's 20 year bromance with the Putin regime. China as well is full of German engineers and consultants selling their expertise to a future rival / enemy. The government needs to grow a pair - France by now would have put Boxer on hold pending resolution of all outstanding issues
Funny how they only seem to discover a moral conscience when there's not a juicy export opportunity...
Meanwhile, in welcome news:
https://raf.mod.uk/news/articles/advanc ... ring-jobs/
Why bother really, a handful of exquisite kit, fleets within fleets, hollowed out with absolutely no mass whatsoever.
- 40 upgraded airframes gives us a serious benefit in A2A capability alongside EW and more
- Hopefully this will prove tech for GCAP
- Only funding stands in the way of a fleet-wide upgrade (Tranche 1 required hardware)
You make a good point, but waiting years as funding was drip fed for a handful of airframes is
(unfortunately exactly what I expected), small fleets within fleets again.....
What we should have done was (at the very least) replaced the 24 outgoing Tranche 1 machines with 24 Trance 4, new radar, cockpit displays etc and brought all Tranche 2 and 3 airframes to the same build standard.
That way you can at least effectively utilise a small fleet, have a capable machine to operate alongside Tempest and 'hopefully' have a viable airframe to sell off on the international market as Tempest deliveries gather in tempo in the 2030's.