To be honest, as our closest ally, I think it is time to say, we have a deck and if you wish to bring some pointy things, then welcome on board.

seaspear wrote:I dont believe the ceiling height in the hangars will allow it to be filled with chinooks as the height varies

Having been in the QE i can confirm chinook will fit in vertically even on stilts. The hangars are 'mahoosive' to quote CJ. The helos would benefit from power folding blades though.

can anyone honestly claim to want to be in a herky bird for 10hrs at a pop. you could run over ac/dc and not hear them!! So a lot like the Shackletons then? Noisier according to someone who has flown in both and done asw in the former. The initial sonobuoys were active and the the passive ones from...

downsizer wrote:DPM is retro and old skool now.

I like to throw the odd piece on when visiting Army units to make the RSM geezer go spastic.

Baiting the RASMAN was always a risky business even for ruperts!?!!!

The original QINETIQ study showed a capacity for surge ops with:

48 dave b
4 aew
8 asw merlin
4 wildcat

I cant find the link but it was on the last blog, it was initially restricted but found it's way via a friend but later released in a RUSI briefing document. Maybe Gab can help?

can anyone honestly claim to want to be in a herky bird for 10hrs at a pop. you could run over ac/dc and not hear them!!

Slight faux par vs the inbound viper, since when was an Alamo a threat to a warship?!

BAe proposed a reworked Nimrod the moment LRAACA collapsed in 1997. They also offered the A320 but refused to do the initial work on the airframe. They wanted to farm this out to Airbus (which they still part owned) to avoid any conflict with Boeing at the time of their proposed merger. This obvious...

O'h this one's got legs, are we going to call it 'Poseidongate'. 'Run for the oval office, the bastards can't corner you there!' HR Haldeman Everyone in the MRA4 program from 2002 knew it wouldn't work. The fitters at Kinloss were amazed it was proposed they were going to use the airframes in 2000....

Nice one!!

Did not intend to be patronising but sometimes when you are told something from 4 independant sources then there might be something in it?! Perhaps, but those 4 independent sources are hardly reputable. 4 anonymous enigmas on an internet forum with no historical credentials or external evidence to ...

shark bait wrote:and yet somehow as belittling others and their ideas is for "the grown ups"

Did not intend to be patronising but sometimes when you are told something from 4 independant sources then there might be something in it?!

So having a slightly more stringent standard of proof makes me childish? No but constantly pestering does! Sometimes the open source intel is backed up by the unofficial rumour mill. If you have ever worn a green suit then you would know that to be true. 4 posters here have all corroborated the inf...

They won't be leased anyway. I thought our nebulous source had said they would to start with. Nebulas can be very dangerous places. DS, I think we may have borrowed the airframe (s) for this flight in a more permanent way. Whether we get to keep them is another matter but there and those 13 gaps wi...

P8 (USN ) has just flown with an all UK crew - seedcorn and exchange personnel.

No disrespect but this discussion dose not take into account about how they are bloody well used. This leads to a classic REMF interpretation and the poor bastards on the ground get hernias and then mullahed in that order!! It isn't just the all up weight of the system but modality of use and the nu...

downsizer wrote:It isn't being considered at the minute.

That's what I have heard also. Stingray has been trial fitted last month i am led to believe. P1 is back in Japan, 30Brits are in P8 presently. Coincidence?!

So the Defence Industry is a modern-day British Leyland? Yes in many ways! The supplier dictates the product not the end user. TRIGAT was a classic example, nobody in the UK wanted it. It never worked and damned near killed me in one test fire. We wanted the proposed SAL MILAN with the motor upgrad...

Does anyone remember TRIGAT?!? That was a complete CF. We cant compete on all fields so pick the battles we can win. IMHO perhaps we need smaller design houses modelled on our superlative car industry. All the great British designs came out of small UK firms or the garden shed!!

The lateral view of QE looks like ARTISAN has been fitted?

Whilst it is true i have ended up in the gutter on more than one occasion following a sortie to Clatty's in the fair city of the Clyde, I was also brought up as a gentleman. As such I wont dignify the previous comment with a response other than to say I eagerly await your second. The source is not a...

3+6+3 P8 airframes starting 2016.

I believe the OCU is due to wind down soon AFAIK they only have 6 operational airframes(dont have serials)I guess they may stay in business for a while longer if the OSD is put back more but there are sims at Marham and the HAS complex is being revamped for Typhoon soon if the order book for a local...

All the tonkas are down south!The base at Lossie is now the northern qra field. At Kinloss all the the ASuW/ASW infrastructure has been removed and the airfiled down graded from a NATO diversion field. I believe the LRR radar has been deactivated and the sim block demolished. The armory has been rep...

Lossie doesnt have the washdown bays and hangars spare to deal with them. A big part of the move to Waddington is based on common facilities etc. Sadly Kinloss was too inefficient when it comes to operating a few airframes instead of the 4 squadrons of the kipper fleet.