Brit_in_Japan

The British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have logistical requirements, some of which can only be met by using Chinooks. If the terrorists in those countries promised not to attack road convoys then we may have been able to send additional aircraft to Pakistan. But living in the real world, that just isn't going to happen.

Also don't forget the logistical overheads involved. IIRC they need 1 or 2 hours maintenance (from a complete ground service crew) for every hour spent in the air. So all the ground service equipment and personnel need to follow the Chinooks too.

3 Chinooks is better than none, it's a pity it took a week for them to be made available.

CHRIS_D

I've just last week returned from operational duties in Iraq, providing infrastructre not KILLING btw. We rely heavily on helicopters to get us around as travelling by road just recently could be considered as suicide.

I had a road move planned for a thursday. On the monday, tuesday and wednesday there was an IED, rocket attack and small arms fire at coalition forces on those consecutive days on my planned route. I subsequently cancelled my road move and booked a heli flight instead. On the thursday there was an IED, it could have been me.

Soldiers are dying daily in Iraq due to road side attacks. We have limited supply of helicopters which are saving lives of british husbands and fathers.

3 chinooks. At least we are helping in some way.

kilo_4que

Chris no one is saying they are nto helping, i think 3 chinooks is defo better than none and im sure they will be made to good use

CyprusScooby

They sure did. Saw the last of them leave when I was there.

I saw the 2 Chinooks transit through here in Cyprus the other day, on route to Pakistan.

Petem95

Good post chris, I guess the Chinooks in Iraq are very important then.

I never realised how few Chinooks the UK military had - I wouldve thought heavy lift helicopters would be fairly plentiful. I guess thats the result of years of underfunding and cut-backs tho

I hope the 3 being sent to Pakistan go to good use anyway.

CyprusScooby

We have no where near the number of Chinooks in Service that we need. Govt. squanders money on the NHS, schools and bloody immigrants instead.
Do you know that there was an Argentinian Chinook in the RAF museum at Cosford that we captured during the Falklands war that was recently pressed into service with the RAF!!!!!
As for Tornados being crap, they are but we still manage to beat all the F15's F16's and F18's etc in exercises!

CyprusScooby

The reason we aren't sending lots of troops to Iraq is that we don't have the manpower!!!!!
Just look at all the places around the world where there are British troops, sailors and airmen. We still Police the world alot more than the US does! We are still involved in major Operations in N. Ireland, Balkans, Afghanistan & Iraq. We are also in Sierra Leone, Kenya, Canada, Falklands, Belize, Brueni, Kuwait, Germany, Cyprus, Gibralter, Accension Island, Diego Garcia, and a few more countries. We are also providing fighters and personnel to guard Lithuanian Airspace as they have none of their own!
The Govt. has cut us back so much recently. There are only 40,000 sailors, 45,000 airmen and 90,000 soldiers! (give or take 1-2,000) And they plan to cut us back again, even though their are more comitments for them!

kilo_4que

Hi Cyprus, really liked your last two posts mate very informative. However I have one doubt which is regarding the Tornados. Yes some would argue them being crap, some would say they are adequate however I have never come across a Tornado outclassing an F14, F15, F16 or a F18 in Military Games unless you have some source on this. I am very much into military affairs and have never come across this. The only times I read up on American fighters being beaten in Military games is when the face off the likes of newer russian fighters such as the Su-30s and Su-35s. The Fulcrums and Flankers have always been a great challenge to american multi role fighters but they are the only real competitors in a similar league. Yes we have the new triplets released one after the other recently which have been put on the market with varying price tags and of course they are far superior though they are different generation fighters. The fighters im talking about are of course the Eurofighter Typhoon, Dassault Rafale and the gorgeous JAS Gripen.

CyprusScooby

Cheers mate. The only evidence I've had, is the results from Red Flag Exercises. The F3 Tornado was designed (I know it evolved from the GR1) much like the F14 to fire lots of missiles, over the horizon, at masses of Russian bombers! It was never designed to hold its own in a dogfight! The nly reason it beats alot more agile fighters like F18's, is because our pilots are far better trained. Plus 2 people in a cockpit are better than one!
The best quote I heard of compairing fighters was when one Tornado jockey compared it in computer terms as a ZX Spectrum, whilst the F15 is a PC!

The new Typhoon is the biz though!
Although when I recently inspected one close up, the panel fit was shocking! None of the panels were flush with the fuselage. Must have been the Italians that made that part!!!
If it was a car, you would take it back to the dealer and asked for it to be replaced!!!! Shocking!

Bit off the Topic Title.

kilo_4que

I know its al il off topic but better than the tensions that were falring earlier

Nevertheless, yes the Typhoon is very high tech, you need to also defo get a close look at the Rafale and Gripen. The three are so blatantly competing against one another LOL

About the Tornado, are they BVR capable? as ive always seen them more of ground attack roles such as the Chiense Q5 or A5 Fantan in other words.

O and yes the british were the ones that trained the Pakistani Pilots back in the days, hence the reason why the quality of Paksitani piltos is always picked up on pitty they dont have much to play with apart from hundreds of Mirage III, and Mirage 5. and loads of old chinese tech.

Anyways, let us know about the tornado please if it is BVR capable,

CyprusScooby

Not heard of anything referred to as BVR!

kilo_4que

O lol i thought you was in the military, sorry my bad mate. BVR is Beyond Visual Range where a fighter can fire without the enemy in sight and still get him. Hence a fighter is called BVR capable

CyprusScooby

ah, my bad! Nah, they just have the old Blue Fox Radar and Sparrow missiles combo. Have new ones now.

Brit_in_Japan

I wouldn't say spending on the NHS, schools etc is "squandering" money. No doubt those who work in those sectors would consider the amount spent on military hardware as squandering money. Ulitmately there are competing needs and no-one is happy with what they get.

The Tornado F3 is not a great fighter. It was not originally designed for that type of role and is rather compromised in it's design. When it first came into service it had a lump of concrete in the nose for balast as the radar was not ready! All the aircraft mentioned have undergone mid-life updates (or multiple evolutions) so it depends on what you compare with what. The BAe Hawk has recorded "kills" against F16's in exercises, but you wouldn't really call it a fighter aircraft.

Whilst in apearance the Gripen, Typhoon and Rafale look similar, they have been built with different rules in mind and have different capabilities. The closest rivals are the Rafale and the Typhoon. The French were part of the original team which led to the Eurofighter, but differences in roles and requirements meant they ended up going alone. The requirement for a marine or aircraft carrier version was one of the major differences. The Gripen is single engined, making it much cheaper than it's rivals, but also unsuitable for certain roles.

It's the avionics fit which ultimately defines how capable they are. In this respect the Typhoon is the leader of the bunch. The only aircraft which might out perform the Typhoon currently is the F22. Of course JSF will be more capable than all of them when it comes into service.

Taff107

.............................

kilo_4que

hence the reason the price tags differ lol. As far as im aware the Gripen have single unit value of 35 million where as the Rafale 75 with Typhoon a litle more expensive

Flatcapdriver

Whilst I agree with the main thrust of your argument I'd dispute your point about the manpower involved in places such as Diego Garcia which is largely American run and Ascension, Gibraltar and Kenya have only token forces mostly there on exercise which is the same situation in Belize.

The Trooper 1815

iTrader: (31)

Sadly, mistaken on most counts. Typhoon - no ground attack version for quite some time to come. Designed for the cold war, now gone. More Chinooks if we need them? sorry no money, though we are going to "Light Mobile Forces". Merlin still major problems. F-16 why not. It's proven!!! No nonsense approach-SA-80 A1, Challenger 1 Tank - only sold the export version, Challenger 2 anyone bought our version yet?? British Defence Procurement was described as "woeful" by our own Government. "No Nonsense" that a beer not British Defence

kilo_4que

aah should have said they were my assumptions on the british military as i know very little about them. I in fact believed the british forces had high end budgets to play around with.

Regarding the Typhoon, is itnot a multi role fighter?

kilo_4que

o and mistaken maybe so according to assuming the budgets of the British military however, ground attack my friend i think you need to look back at your sources. A quote:

"The aircraft was designed with Air Dominance as its primary mission, and ground attack being the secondary"

so it so seems that you are pretty much wrong about the Typhoon. tudloo

The Trooper 1815

iTrader: (31)

15% returning from Operations
15% on Operations
15% Preparing for Operations
(45%)
5000 to Afgahanistan next year.
20% Training
15% In Training/Assisting
20% In Support Roles

Were's the slack in the system?
Now we can't afford up armoured LandRovers for Op Telic but we have bought them for the Iraqi Ploice in Basrah.

I'm on my soap box now.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...838909,00.html

Thanks

kilo_4que

o just to add for sake of reference that was from defencetalk.com

here are a few more quotes and sources

"The EFA was focused on air superiority, but could perform ground attack as a secondary mission"
vectorsite.net

"Eurofighter is a single-seat, twin-engine, agile combat aircraft which will be used in the air-to-air, air-to-ground and tactical reconnaissance roles"
fas.org

"Eurofighter can use a wide variety of air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons"
flug-revue.rotor.com

they are jsut a few btw

_Meridian_

iTrader: (1)

"Used as" does not mean the same as "actually any good at" BTW.


M

kilo_4que

if you are referring to my post then it sounds rather childish my friend. Regardless of how good it is, it still has the capabilities doesnt it. No one is talking of how GOOD its ground attack is but it has it as its secondary mission which is sufficient. Obviously it would have more priorities set on certain missions than others such as air superiority. However, the Typhoon was dubbed by Mr Dragon as not being able to carry out ground attacks, my response highlights a few sources proving him wrong that it DOES have such abilities.

Sbradley

Typhoon does have a limited strike capability, it's true. The key word here is limited. It doesn't at present have any self contained target designation capability, so no smart weapons unless they are guided from outside. That means iron bombs, rockets and cannon only. That, allied to the low speed/altitude combined with draggy external stores puts it fairly close to the edge of its combat flight envelope. Not somewhere a pilot wants to be.

In terms of Air to Air capability, though, it's pretty damn' close to the top of the tree.

We regularly see RAF and Fleet Air Arm aircraft, notionally less capable than those of our NATO friends, outperforming everything in exercises. There's a lot more to an effective combat unit than the stats quoted in Janes etc. Our aircrew are better trained and, more importantly, better disciplined than most others and when all is said and done that counts for a lot.

For the record I have scored (exercise) air to air kills against F16s. In a helicopter. Yes, really. So aircraft capability is a fairly long way down the list of what counts...

Going slightly back on topic, three Chinooks is an awful lot of lift capability. Oh, it doesn't sound much and of course it's a tiny fraction of what is actually needed. But it's a start, and it genuinely will make a difference. Of course, were the Pakistani government prepared to accept help from India then it may be rather better. But that's another thread, I believe.

One last thing. The software problem that brought down the HC1 on the Mull of Kintyre was nothing to do with navigation. Do a Google search on FADEC...

SB

kilo_4que

thanks Sbradley, nice post mate

Flatcapdriver

If you'd read and understood my initial point, you would see that by and large I'm agreeing but padding out the list of places where the personnel count is low isn't justified.

dsmith

As someone intimately involved in the NHS side I can assure you that IMHO there is a good deal of squandering going on.

_Meridian_

iTrader: (1)

It was aimed at the argument about whether it was for ground attack in general - because that in turn stemmed from how good an aircraft it was. For all I know it might be complete rubbish at ground attack, but that could still be listed as a role. And the question is completely valid, as that is one of the commonist distortions of salesmen everywhere: "Of course it will do xxxxx..."


M

Brit_in_Japan

My sister is involved with the NHS too so I know there is money wasted. There is money wasted in the armed services too, don't think there isn't. I know of several houses all painted in Royal Navy blue paint because there was excess stock and it fell out of the back of a warehouse.

My point is when you are spending huge amounts of money there will always be some wastage and competing sectors will always claim they don't have what they really need. If you doubled the money for the armed services they would spend it all and still claim shortage of equipment and personnel. It's just life I'm afraid.