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: be a penetrating air superiority fighter.
Isn't that an oxymoron?
- in the good old days there were interceptors (think of Mig-31) and air superiority fighters (think of Typhoon Tr1)
- then there is "offensive anti-air"...
shark bait wrote:The EJ200 has some performance headroom left to be exploited, so it probably could survive another generation.
Turkey wanted it for their own... turkey (of generation 5)
shark bait wrote: worth designing in some wiggle room into the new platform so a new engine could be added mid life
Like was done with the F-35 by P&W?
bobp wrote: built in Electronic Warfare modes, possibly the version the RAF is
I know nothing about that (there was hype by the RAF when they selected F-35, and dropped all they had - not v much - in the SEAD/DEAD armoury)
shark bait wrote:likely be an export only option, with the RAF and I think Italy pushing for an incremental upgrade over the 'Kuwait standard', which will include greater EW capabilities.
- hard to interpret, but Mk1 not much of an upgrade over the (v good) mechanically scanned, and moving dish plate, version?
- Mk 2 = Kuwait std as in 'Kuwait standard' just like the 1000 Abrams made in Egypt (some exported) are not quite the 'thing'... nor the '000s of T-72s that some 'stuppidos' bought for good money
- Mk 3? I have not seen anything at all about it, but the claims of "in service" many years ago; then 66 of the previous issue getting an order (and not the other way round?)... yeah, sure, we will swallow anything (Thick of It has a translation for that, after flip-flopping; why is it :o that I always go back to the Brexit? Well, that 'documentary' was made before Brexit became to be the 'Thing')
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 shark bait »

Possibly a bit of an oxymoron, I may be guilty of spouting too many buzzwords in a sentence there! :angel:

What I was trying to refer to is an aircraft that can take the fight to the enemy, and will inside well defended airspace. I believe the USAF have called it 'penetrating counter air' as they also believe the F35 isn't up to that job.
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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shark bait wrote:they also believe the F35 isn't up to that job.
from the 2040s onwards (2035 has been 'sighted' in those docs)
- so no wonder, then, that we are looking into "what else" as the price sticker does not make sense, if it does not/ will not buy a Day1 capability
- you get (in the end ;) ) see the "real" price and there is sticker 'shock'... then, to the power of 2, when you see what it can do (as compared to 'what was advertised') and then... you will feel "Tasered". For no lawful reason, just for having been taken for "a ride" :)
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 serge750 »

Are not the Tiffies getting worked harder than the previous generation ? so could that be another reason why some people are suggesting a early production timescale? along with getting the better of the Franco-german project & keep our airospace industry going?

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Had a hard think on this subject and have revised my position dome what. Everybody seems to look at the F-35 especially the 'A' as a replacement for the F-16 and F-18 which h it is but that is no the whole story. It is designed to replace these platforms in US service and in the roles they use them. The US has a two punch capability both now and in the future with the F-15/F-22 and F-16/F-35. The former is a achieve air superiority/dominance, the latter A2G but of course has a secondary A2A role. So you have a package. Other nations have used the F-16 as a all in one platform and it does a pretty good job following the series of upgrades it has been put through. It is however never been a true air superiority platform.

Now post Cold War this was not an issue as most opponents had little in the way of an A2A threat and things were concentrated on A2G, plus of course the US were there just in case. Then we have the F-35 which has been design as an A2G platform but which can do A2A if required. But it is optimised for the former and if you are relying on it for air superiority it may come up short. But post Cold War this wasn't an issue, sure the opposition may have a respectable GBAD capability but the F-35 was built to counter that so everyone is happy to purchase the F-35, and being s it is the biggest game in town it should be affordable given how many are being built.

Enter the multitude of car salesmen from Lockheed and the fan boys eager to drive the latest sportscar from the US and the F-35 has become basically the only game in town and many air forces are gong to be solely equipped with the type, replacing their F-16s and F-18s. But the two latter were built up from fighters even though primarily used in the A2G role, the F-35 is the other way around.

Enter the rising threat(s) from the east with effective A2A capabilities. The West has rebuilt its Air power around a stealthy A2G platform optimised platform. Many nations will be using the F-35 as their primary or sole A2A platform. The low vis ability should give the reduced numbers of western aircraft some advantages but for how long with that last and it doesn't help with countering an opponent low viz platforms either.

The RAF is fortunate in that it has the Typhoon currently, as true A2A platform, but with growing A2G capabilities, to compliment the F-35. Its next platform will be the replacement for this and to keep costs down it really should be a platform not just optimised for A2A but be a specialist. Look at the idea of a next generation F-22, but having learned the lessons of the current generation of platforms, be smaller, more affordable and smarter. The Franco/German idea for their next platform being both manned and un-manned should be given serious consideration for being part of any UK programme from the beginning. The latter would be an ideal A2G platform with the space taken by the pilot in the former used for inbuilt systems tailored to A2G work.

The air battles of the future are going to be far more deadly than anything that has gone before. Nations have developed GBAD networks that are extremely capable and that may in future severely reduce the effectiveness of current stealth technology. To this future opponents may well have air platforms that match ours and even in some areas surpass them. This means we need to expand out capacity to conduct air operations by increasing the numbers of the platforms we operate, both manned and un-manned.

When the RAF actually get these next gen platform is the big question. Project Tempest may sow some of the seeds, but current investment levels re not sufficient for anything other that a demonstrator/proof of concept model, but then again we are nit sure what form this should take. We are in the same place the UK was when it was looking at the ACA in the early 1980s the programme that became the Typhoon 25 years later. I see a similar timeframe for our next platform.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Lord Jim wrote:as a replacement for the F-16 and F-18 [...] but that is no the whole story
Quite: accelerate like an F-16, carry the bomb load of an F-18 and...
Lord Jim wrote:the opposition may have a respectable GBAD capability but the F-35 was built to counter that so everyone is happy to purchase the F-35
penetrate like a NightHawk.
Lord Jim wrote: Look at the idea of a next generation F-22, but [...] be smaller, more affordable and smarter
That part deviates from the Franco-German thinking: penetrating counter-air platform; needs range; a small one cannot have that
Lord Jim wrote:we need to expand out capacity to conduct air operations by increasing the numbers of the platforms we operate, both manned and un-manned
... and that's the answer: the unmanned wingman, or two, or a swarm
Lord Jim wrote: the ACA in the early 1980s the programme that became the Typhoon 25 years later.
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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Lord Jim wrote: place the UK was when it was looking at the ACA in the early 1980s the programme that became the Typhoon 25 years later. I see a similar timeframe for our next platform
I did the range saftey for the inert drops and some live fire trials for the ACA programme for the typhoon even those with the modified Jaguar It was modified to be unstable to test the filght computer controls. (This was used to provided testing prior to the British Airospace E.A.P.). Project tempest is the early replacement programme for Typhoon. If it follows the Typhoon development programme we should have a very effective replacement. I only hope there is the political will to follow the development through. Tempest could be a E.A.P. aircraft. or modification to an existing aircraft as done with the S.T. Jaguar or Harrier V.A.A.C. Then the systems used on a future aircraft.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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serge750 wrote:Are not the Tiffies getting worked harder than the previous generation ? so could that be another reason why some people are suggesting a early production timescale? along with getting the better of the Franco-german project & keep our airospace industry going?
There’s a yes an no answer to this. When typhoon was starting to come in the forces growth was halted to save money and airframes diverted to Saudi this meant at that time the a/c were working hard this has dropped off to an extent as the whole force has come on line. They are supporting a number of comitments and will continue to do so particularly the nato qra’s and there off to,Iceland next year as well. This will place a burden on the ground crews and the maintenance and support people as service internals come up and spare used more.

The no bit comes from how you look and plan fatigue hours on a a/c. There weighted to certain flight regimes, for example low level flying will be more several that high level flying, high g dog fighting more than combat air patrol. So when there doing equivalenced flight hours in the ground rigs this is taken into account when working out how far ahead the rig is from the inservice fleet leader.

Typhoon has been flying more benign regimes than was the worse case consideration when she was designed that coupled with the fact composite structure is better at fatigue than metallic structure you have less worries there. So it’s swings and roundabouts (uk always used a factor of 3 to 1 for test to flight hours the US 2 to 1 so it always appeared US designs had longer life’s). The design life of any a/c is usually 25 years this is often extended but it comes with a cost as obselecance has to be addressed. In the civil world major airlines will start to discard a/c from the 15 year mark as there considered to maintenance intensive to continue.

The industrial side is a concern in that meaningful design work in the uk on f35 really wound down around 2006-2008 time frame and the teams started to split up some went onto what is now known as taranis and some left and headed to Sweden on gripen e and globaleye and some to other military projects in the uk. But your getting to the point now of skills starting to disappear as your a decade on and other project taking people you won’t get back or won’t want to go back.

I go back to this typhoon is a great airframe with lots of life and upgrade opportunities if you want to go that way, but it comes down to how much weight you place on the a/c’s signature in a future manned design.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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I was thinking smaller than an F-22 which is a big platform for a single seater. I also intended the un-manned variants to be the primary A2G platform with the manned providing top cover and in the loop so to speak. The battle management would either be handles by a AWACS or via relay ground station. Of course the un-manned platform would have a driver back at base. We also need to seriously look at a ground launched counter GBAD capability with a range out to the maximum allowed by treaty. Something that carries numerous sub-munitions than can be dispersed over a large area, each with a dual anti-radiation/IIR seeker. This would allow both the control, radar and launch platforms to be engaged at the same time. Ideally this would be a very fast main platform to give the opposition the minimum time to react. In fact this would be an ideal system for development for the MLRS/HIMARS's new long range rocket that is to replace the ATACM.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Lord Jim wrote:Look at the idea of a next generation F-22, but having learned the lessons of the current generation of platforms, be smaller, more affordable and smarter.
Who is suggesting it should be smaller?

I have seen no talk of a smaller aircraft, whereas I have seen talk of an aircraft that can operate further from the soft targets of Tankers and AWACS. That does not suggest a smaller aircraft is on the cards.
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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The RAF may wish for a 21st century Vulcan but that isn't going to happen. At this time there is a lot of brainstorming going on within the MoD about what comes next with regards to manned aviation. Some of this is leaking out through various means but these are just ideas. Yes we would like a stealthy platform with a range equal to or exceeding that of Tornado that can also replace the Typhoon in the air superiority role, whilst being able to carry the same payload as the Tornado internally and so on. What they want and what we can afford even if we are able to form a large coalition of partners for the programme are two very different things. We are a very long way away from actually coming up with a set of requirements that can be met by an affordable platform, which is why "Project Tempest", is premature and more a fishing expedition to see if any other nations will bite on the idea, and to see what sort of technologies can be developed for a future programme and possibly installed in existing platforms in the nearer future. It took more than 25 years to get from the ACA to the IOC of the Typhoon. If I was an optimist, I would say this is the minimum for the next manned combat platform for the UK so we are looking at the early 2040s.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Details on Tempest in Parliamentary written answers...

HOUSE OF COMMONS DEFENCE COMMITTEE
FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS TO THE 24TH OCTOBER SESSION WITH SIR SIMON BOLLOM, CEO DE&S, ON THE WORK OF DE&S

Q9. Clarification on whether the Tempest programme will have access to the European Defence Fund? (Q152)

The Team Tempest technology maturation activities are UK national projects and a subset of the Future Combat Air System Technology Initiative (FCAS TI). The proposed Regulation for the European Defence Fund (EDF) is that it will only offer funding to collaborative programmes where the industry consortium is from a minimum of three Member States or associated countries. Negotiations on eligibility remain ongoing.

Q10. Further details on the funding for the Tempest programme. (Qq155-156)

A nine-year funded programme of record exists for the FCAS TI, of which the Team Tempest project is a subset. This programme consists of three main elements; PYRAMID (an Open Mission Systems Initiative); National Projects; and International Projects. Team Tempest is a part of the National Projects element and is jointly funded by the MOD and industry. All other FCAS TI activities are currently solely funded by the MOD. The MOD is contributing c.£2 billion to the FCAS TI programme.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Pity there isn't a wide angle of this without the dais. Tornado, Typhoon T3, F-35 and Tempest mockup together...

some poor sod had to polish that floor....


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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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The other angle..in the bottom right


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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Timmymagic wrote:FCAS TI, of which the Team Tempest project is a subset. This programme consists of three main elements; PYRAMID (an Open Mission Systems Initiative); National Projects; and International Projects. Team Tempest is a part of the National Projects element and is jointly funded by the MOD and industry. All other FCAS TI activities are currently solely funded by the MOD. The MOD is contributing c.£2 billion to the FCAS TI programme.
As for my comments a few months back, I will now award prizes (virtual pints?) for anyone giving a breakdown of the total 2 bn, between PYRAMID and Team Tempest...
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

Post by Lord Jim »

So the Typhoon could be on the frontline for another quarter of a century, not a bad thing if you look at the life of the F-16. Does sort of show that the next generation platform is a fair way off.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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It’s takes time to transition from fleet to fleet typhoon started replacing tornado in 2005 and almost 15 years later here we are. If it’s replacement follows a similar pattern starting to place typhoon from the 2030s will see typhoon leave service around the mid to late 2040s.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Well yes according the UK manual on how to drag a programme out as long as possible to save in year spending.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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There's more to it, like training pipelines. Especially in Tornado's case: the training of the "back-seat drivers" was dropped yonks ago... I wonder if the last ones will retire with the planes?

I would guess that with the F-35 the bottleneck will be more the engineers and maintainers: if that part of the force is as stretched as often is said, how do you take folks out, for them to retrain (incl. ALIS) in sufficient numbers?
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Remember a great many these days are BAe or Rolls Royce personnel, both at forward and depth.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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That is exactly what I had in mind: the prgrms that we have had for Tornado and Typhoon support (pushing stuff back, to be done by staff at the suppliers) will not be directly replicable with the JSF
- so, just when we learned to play the game efficiently, the rules of the game change
- although: perhaps efficiencies at home will be lost (?), the effectivenes of deploying Expeditionary Airwings (plural might be ambitious?) may be improved by the global nature of backing-up logs
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.
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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Lord Jim wrote:Remember a great many these days are BAe or Rolls Royce personnel, both at forward and depth.
Not forward they aren’t.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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You're right, I keep forgetting depth is basically what was 2nd to 4th line whereas forward is what was 1st line. But my point is still valid, the RAF really only has to worry about training personnel for forward as it should be backed up by industry at depth.

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Re: Future UK Combat Aircraft (Project Tempest)

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Lord Jim wrote: But my point is still valid, the RAF really only has to worry about training personnel for forward as it should be backed up by industry at depth.
... and mine (,too)
- considering that "the industry" is mainly somewhere else when the F-35 overtakes the Tiffie as the backbone for the RAF fastjet force
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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Lord Jim wrote:You're right, I keep forgetting depth is basically what was 2nd to 4th line whereas forward is what was 1st line. But my point is still valid, the RAF really only has to worry about training personnel for forward as it should be backed up by industry at depth.
don't forget that whoever they work for in depth they still need training and we don't pay that cost directly but it is something we need to understand the cost of.

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