Well I hope they are done with most of the weather proofing up there, bit of a gnarly storm kicking around!

bobp wrote:Yes boom is required not just for Dave A, but also Airseeker and the P8 MPA and also then we can refuel US jets.

That will work right up to the point the Yank jockeys see the UK fuel prices and turn around!

bobp wrote: Do we need six I doubt it.

There won't be 6, expect to see the original three on Ebay the moment the new three have the first layer of paint applied.

I believe that LM has previously mentioned that changing the fuelling type was a 'non-issue' and the range isn't that different to the A, if memory serves they are the same on internal fuel due to the C's higher drag couple that with it's higher cost, increased complexity and reduced performance I s...

Years ago when the project was young on the net there was talk that the B could be hot swapped between land and sea ops by removing the lift fan and drive shaft and replacing them with an additional fuel tank and ballast. At the time I remember thinking that was a neat idea, when in use by the RAF t...

On the downside though you would have Dave C's with their more... questionable performance.

There's a lot of optimism in here, but in reality it's going to be River 2's with long range tanks and CAMM.

I don't know about that. T26 is as about top end as you can get as a 1st tier ASW escort, just as T45 is in regards to its AAW capability. . It is going to be outfitted almost entirely with hand-me-down equipment from the previous class and in the hunt for economy is slower and has shorter range. T...

marktigger wrote:
Could the UK afford to fund F35B to block IV development by itself?

The UK can't really afford to bolt existing missiles onto it's existing aircraft at the moment so not really.

'Don't fuck it all up... any more then you already have'.

After reading all the nonsense this morning on the Russia Stronk fantasy ultra-mega-super torpedo mk6 it did make me think about two things. 1- Many people on the net really have no understanding of mechanical engineering, that thing would need warp core levels of energy density to meet even half of...

I've accidently found our original mp.net ' Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers - News and Discussion ' thread archived on a Finnish site with the following link. Although many of the photos and videos are missing, all the text is still there. http://www.hollilla.com/reader.php?action=thread&am...

I didn't invent the concern - the guys flying the aircraft did. So the negative consequences are a tad more than a gouged deck. And I think 30 mph is too slow. Need more speed to make rolling landing worthwhile in terms of extra payload. I've read 60+mph. US carriers have a tanker aloft for bolters...

It's more F35 then carrier related but the relative on deck closing speed even during a fast SRVL is slow enough that even a catastrophic failure will be quite quickly arrested. I have seen nothing to suggest the CVF will have any raise-able crash barriers or netting but considering that the ~30mph ...

marktigger wrote:there's a Flower and a Tribal class destroyer in Canada

I'm pretty sure they are what is referred to as the 'Canadian Navy'.

Unfortunately I think the RN will be lucky to even see 10 hulls by the end of this, I'm putting my early bet on 8 plus a couple of extra river2's to 'plug the world leading capability gap'.

Time will tell of course.

Given how luke-warm at best the Navy's attitude has been towards the F35 I doubt they are really pushing hard for the aircraft!

I would think many of us were already aware of this given the state of the militaryphotos forums during it's last couple of years!

Any missile that can fly that high to shoot it down will probably cost just as much as the drone itself! Compared to say the horrific inefficiency of sticking a radar on a helicopter or the immense costs of putting 500 year old electric-intel aircraft back in the air then the loss of a persistent dr...

I get the feeling from the recently elected leader that by 'cheaper alternative' he meant 'nothing', and by 'upgrading the navy' he meant 'sell off the few remaining ships'. There are no F35 or Typhoon sales opportunities in Canada at the moment, the previous governments poor economic decisions bein...

Especially considering that the are slower, shorter ranged and using hand-me-down equipment from their predecessors.

Except in that case they were intercepted after searching a merchant vessel, something that the RIB drone wouldn't be able to do so you would need the same people in the same place to do such a mission anyway. This just doesn't seem like a good addition to the CVF tool box in my opinion, if you want...

Hello all! Thought I registered here ages ago but clearly not. To comment on previous talk of a third carrier... Even if we built the ship we could never fill it with people or equipment. In the parallel universe where the MoD ends up with some spare money then imho that should be spent on ship-boar...