Future UK Maritime Patrol Options

[downsizer]

As I understand it they have had to raise over £1 million from crowdfunding and are still short and looking for sponsors.

They have successfully reached the 2 million pounds target in crowdsourcing money the other day.

More money wasted.

[Gabriele]

More money wasted.

Not a believer in the hybrid airship idea...?

[downsizer]

Nope. Not to the military.

[Happyslapper]

Nope. Not to the military.

Out of interest, why do you think that? I've no particular opinion, other than thinking it looks ally

[shark bait]

Its the biggest VTOL aircraft in the world , surely there must be a use for it on the biggest VTOL aircraft carrier the the world.
If it's cheap to run it could deliver big payloads by air which we can't do presently.
Again if its cheap to run and can go high, why not strap a crows nest to it? The my you could get persistent cheap aew.
This is just speculation based on hybrid air vehicles marketing, real world will most likely be different of course

[downsizer]

Nope. Not to the military.

Out of interest, why do you think that? I've no particular opinion, other than thinking it looks ally

Not my posts but some it up better than I could

The Herc can carry 20t and the C17 closer to 50t. You don't have to suck it to the ground and/or burn precious gas keeping it on the ground. No need for a mast like the 10 tonner. They can both land on rough strips and get there at 2x and 3x the speed. They're not a complete 'sitting duck' like a blimp and they are a lot smaller in size to spot than a blimp as well.

Lockheed and the US Army threw millions at this and couldn't get it to work, there is a lesson in there somewhere. This company (in its various guises) has been fleecing investors for 50 odd years.

Blimps have some uses like balloons at BSN, but this is waste of money.

[shark bait]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32732626

BBC reporting on the MPA gap.
Hopefully we found we cant do without, especially with Russia's antics, and the pressure is clearly building for a replacement.

[Tiny Toy]

Not my posts but some it up better than I could

The Herc can carry 20t and the C17 closer to 50t. You don't have to suck it to the ground and/or burn precious gas keeping it on the ground. No need for a mast like the 10 tonner. They can both land on rough strips and get there at 2x and 3x the speed. They're not a complete 'sitting duck' like a blimp and they are a lot smaller in size to spot than a blimp as well.

Except that Airlander isn't a blimp, it's self propelled. Clearly fixed wing aircraft can travel faster but they do so by burning many times as much fuel, and you're assuming that fuel remains cheap for the foreseeable future which is far from a given. Regarding being a sitting duck, as I said airships can move around by themselves, and if you shoot down a Hercules it makes a very big mess where it lands, whereas if you shoot down an airship it comes down very slowly and makes very little mess.

There are applications here, but they may be a little too far off for the myopic. By all means carry on arguing against the benefits in the here and now, but bear in mind that by doing so you're caricaturing yourself as Commander Denniston in The Imitation Game.

[downsizer]

Oh. My. God.

[jonas]

Tiny Toy.
Perhaps before posting, you really should know what you are talking about. If you don't even know that a 'Blimp' as you put it is also 'self propelled' then I would suggest you refrain from trying to teach your grandma to suck eggs. You are making yourself look rather silly at the moment.

[RetroSicotte]

Guys, chill. I can already see this about to go off the rails.

Let's keep it grounded.

[SKB]

Blimp (noun) A small airship or barrage balloon.

Oxford English Dictionary.

[Dahedd]

Hopefully a Nimrod replacement will be funded soon. But at least we have NATO cover when needed. Just as the French needed our Sentinals & C17s we've needed their map. That's how it's meant to work I guess.

Incidentally 2 lads I commute with are ex raf Nimrod guys. I get 2 very different opinions on the scraping. 1 lad (ground crew/engineer) says that they were a death trap & that the mra4 wasn't any better while the other (flight crew) says the mra4 was perfect & ready to go. Both agree that a Poseidon purchase looks very promising though the Engineer does like the Kawasaki because of its 4 engines.

[Halidon]

. Regarding being a sitting duck, as I said airships can move around by themselves, and if you shoot down a Hercules it makes a very big mess where it lands, whereas if you shoot down an airship it comes down very slowly and makes very little mess.

Sorry to jump into this conversation but I feel the need to push back on this point a bit. Airships can and have crashed quite violently and made very large messes when they did so.

[downsizer]

Lets not forget the effect of a headwind on these gas bags.

[jonas]

Blimp (noun) A small airship or barrage balloon.

Oxford English Dictionary.

Collins English Dictionary, (noun) small airship.

[Tony Williams]

A blimp is a non-rigid powered airship, i.e. one without a metal or wooden structure to which the gasbags, external skin and other hardware are fitted. The shape of the blimp is formed by the gas pressure inside the bag, aided by an internal ballonet to keep the gas under pressure. Blimps tend to be slower than rigid airships since a strong headwind would distort the shape. See definitions here: http://www.airships.net/dirigible

[RobWilliams]

Are we really having a discussion on the semantics of blimp versus airship?

[Tiny Toy]

OK, I checked and I am wrong in that blimps can also be self propelled, apparently what makes it a blimp is that it has no rigid structure (not its size as some have suggested). Sorry about that.

Sorry to jump into this conversation but I feel the need to push back on this point a bit. Airships can and have crashed quite violently and made very large messes when they did so.

The physics of it dictates that it will have much lower momentum as it travels at a much lower speed and the momentum is what causes most of the damage. A fixed wing aircraft contains quite a bit of petroleum and there is a high probability this will spill and ignite in a collision where it will burn all over the surface of what it spills on. Airships contain only a small fraction of the quantity of petroleum. In the case of helium airships like Airlander there is no other flammable material. Even in the case of a hydrogen airship, the hydrogen (being so light) will typically burn straight upwards into the air away from the crash site, have a look at this for instance. Early airships had a flammable aluminium-based skin which could catch fire if the hydrogen was ignited, as with the Hindenburg. However even with that design flaw most airship crashes were highly survivable (e.g. Hindenburg where 62 of the 97 on board survived and most of those who died did so because they panicked and jumped out). Compare this with the recent Germanwings A320 where none survived even with 78 more years of airframe safety design experience.

Here is an image of the crash site of USS Shenandoah. You will note how little mess there is beyond the airship itself.


In contrast this is what a Hercules crash site looks like:


Note minimal damage caused to building at an airship crash site:

compared to an aeroplane crash on an urban area:


Having said all this I would love to see if you have links to evidence of violent airship crashes for comparison. The Johannisthal disaster is the main one I can think of and that was a very serious design flaw that really maximised the possible damage that can occur with an airship design. Even so there were survivors.

[jonas]

OK we've all had our say, can we now get back on topic, please.

[shark bait]

yeahhh....... so about them planes that kill boats eh??

[Tiny Toy]

yeahhh....... so about them planes that kill boats eh??

Some of the options under consideration in Seedcorn are unarmed, e.g. the MQ-4C Triton. ASUW is not the primary requirement according to the list:

• search and rescue
• offshore economic protection and security
• intelligence gathering and area surveillance
• ASW and ASUW

IMO a maritime patrol aircraft should at least be able to drop sonobuoys which I don't think the Triton can. I guess the plan would be to have a limited number of something like Poseidon or even helicopters to drop buoys and perform the interdiction role, and Tritons for the actual surveillance job.

[jonas]

yeahhh....... so about them planes that kill boats eh??

Some of the options under consideration in Seedcorn are unarmed, e.g. the MQ-4C Triton. ASUW is not the primary requirement according to the list:

• search and rescue
• offshore economic protection and security
• intelligence gathering and area surveillance
• ASW and ASUW

IMO a maritime patrol aircraft should at least be able to drop sonobuoys which I don't think the Triton can. I guess the plan would be to have a limited number of something like Poseidon or even helicopters to drop buoys and perform the interdiction role, and Tritons for the actual surveillance job.

Following is an extract from an article published in SEAPOWER magazine, dates back to 2013 so I would think things have moved on a bit since then.

"Navy Plans for Poseidon Crew Control of Triton UAV 13 Aug 2013 RICHARD R. BURGESS, Managing Editor
Quote:
"WASHINGTON – The Navy is planning toward a future capability of a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft crew exercising in-flight control of an MQ-4C Triton unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

The P-8 and MQ-4C “are going to be sharing real-time information back and forth, and when you get into the later generations of P-8 capability and Triton capability, we’re actually going to get to a point where crews on [the] P-8 will operate, fly, [and] handle the sensors on Triton,” said Capt. James Hoke, the Navy’s Triton program manager, in an Aug. 13 briefing to reporters at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s Unmanned Systems 2013 conference.

Hoke said the P-8A and the MQ-4C represent the first time in naval aviation history that a manned platform — the P-3 Orion — is being replaced by a manned and an unmanned aircraft combination."

[xav]

US Navy and Boeing Conducted Air-to-Air Refueling Ground Tests with P-8A Poseidon MPA

The series of tests will mitigate risks associated with the in-flight AAR demonstration, which is slated for 2016. The P-8A will deploy with the AAR capability within the next two years and will use the flying boom, or Air Force style, method of refueling.

http://www.navyrecognition.com/index.ph ... ew&id=2727

I really thought AAR was already validated and proven for the P-8A... Somewhat inherited from the Turkish Peace Eagles (it is "basically" the same airframe) http://earth66.com/img/turkish-airforce ... ground.jpg

[Gabriele]

a maritime patrol aircraft should at least be able to drop sonobuoys which I don't think the Triton can.

Triton can't use sonobuoys and doesn't carry weapons. It is formidable for wide area surface surveillance, but the only real ASW capability it has is an optic sensor which can pick up SSKs when snorkeling, if i remember correctly. In other words, it is a great complement to an actual MPA, but in no way a complete MPA solution in itself.