Not that one.“The Royal Navy’s Merlin Mark 2 and Mark 4/4A helicopters are currently planned to go out of service in 2029 and 2030 respectively.”
SH-60 or NH-90, Pick one.
Not that one.“The Royal Navy’s Merlin Mark 2 and Mark 4/4A helicopters are currently planned to go out of service in 2029 and 2030 respectively.”
SH-60 or NH-90, Pick one.
“The Royal Navy’s Merlin Mark 2 and Mark 4/4A helicopters are currently planned to go out of service in 2029 and 2030 respectively.”
SH-60 or NH-90, Pick one.
Not that one.
Arguably, with over 100 lift helicopters (70 or so in the forward fleet), the UK is not short of lift - particularly given the way FCF is evolving.
What it is short of are special mission helicopters
The ones flying out of Mildenhall aren't ours.Wot? ...like the ones that fly out of Mildenhall?
“The Royal Navy’s Merlin Mark 2 and Mark 4/4A helicopters are currently planned to go out of service in 2029 and 2030 respectively.”
SH-60 or NH-90, Pick one.
Life extension.“The Royal Navy’s Merlin Mark 2 and Mark 4/4A helicopters are currently planned to go out of service in 2029 and 2030 respectively.”
SH-60 or NH-90, Pick one.
Lewis?You can make a Lada ’reliable’ if you keep a mountain of every conceivable spares to hand.
the claims they are ‘reliable’ are false. They are ‘reliable’ due to insane levels of fleet cannibalism to keep the ones on point turning and burning, leaving the user with none for any surge need. When the Falklands kicked off, the RN was able to roll large numbers of Sea Kings cooling their heels out of hangers and deploy them as they weren’t all being used as parts kits.
20 years of constant work has failed to get fleet availability above 50%.
When the main user refuses to buy any more, and the very buoyant international medium lift helicopter market refuses to buy them, it’s a Gods way of telling you it’s not a Hawk, it’s a Turkey.
No, being US-made is the requirement.If only the 60R was capable of meeting the requirement for ASW. Having a dipping sonar and being able to carry a torpedo is not necessarily meeting the requirement.
Well we wont have to even think about any can kicking until at least 2025 then.“The Royal Navy’s Merlin Mark 2 and Mark 4/4A helicopters are currently planned to go out of service in 2029 and 2030 respectively.”
SH-60 or NH-90, Pick one.
That's roughly correct. The original Merlin cancellation however was more driven by the helicopters being a victim of austerity, as the country was in dire financial straights at the time.If I remember correctly, Canada did intend to procure the ASW Merlin (possibly with a local name) as a Sea King replacement, but with the end of the Cold War the ordered was cancelled and the replacement ASW helicopter was kicked into the long grass.
I am from the part of the UK where helicopter orders or cancellations count as local news.
Unless it’s called Zumwalt DDG or LCS. Two programmes that put the Indian procurement process to shame. USN already decommissioning LCS that are less than six years old yet are still ordering new hulls, go figure?Is the answer - anything US Built because that will do the job regardless of specs far better than anything built by a European country be it ships, RW, FW, Armour, missiles, cannon, bombs,
There cars always seem to work best in reverse gear for some reason.Merlins are typically Italian, just like my Vespa PX, (that was made by an Italian aircraft company too, Piaggio), looks beautiful, handles like a dream, but allergic to water, bits keep dropping off and always breaking down.
Nobody has told them they were meant to do this.Also the differrence between not buying a load more because its crap vs not buying a load more because the cold war ended - Russian Subs went away and funding evaporated.
Who? The Russians? Their numbers have dropped but the submarine forces have had better investment than everyone else.Nobody has told them they were meant to do this.
This was my point (clearly clarity suffered for comedy). The Russians have reduced their submarine fleet but it's still active and does enough to make it of significance to NATO.Who? The Russians? Their numbers have dropped but the submarine forces have had better investment than everyone else.
Yeah, it had dropped off though and didn't wander far from home port. Back to the good old days now. Russia Stronk after all.This was my point (clearly clarity suffered for comedy). The Russians have reduced their submarine fleet but it's still active and does enough to make it of significance to NATO.
I keep promising myself that I will stop posting on this thread until there is significant news - STDE21 perhaps?
However:
a. @Not a Boffin can probably answer this. When the requirements were written for the Sea King ASW replacement, did that include increased range and endurance over the Sea King, and also MH-60/NH-90? That of course increases mass and cost, but is worth it if you can provide the same level of coverage (time on station/in the dip) with six aircraft instead of nine. With Junglies now going to sea routinely they can pick up many of the SAR/VERTREP type jobs.
Someone with greater mathematical modelling experience (@jrwlynch perhaps?) can answer that. My mental queuing theory calculation says that you need less transits to or from the carrier. The key metric is not the number of launches, it it time on station. Little's theorem anyone? This is PWO(U)/FASWC type stuff - clever people like @alfred_the_great and others.
b. Was the greater endurance the reason for Canada's preference? @terminal
c. Is the UK out of the Rotary Wing game? Since when?
d. Poland ordered Merlin for ASW/CSAR not so long ago - see here. I presume that they are still on the production line. Can NATO have a whip-round and buy them a few more, as they are on NATO's front line?
e. The Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force has started operating the MCH-01. I am not sure if this includes Yeovil made parts as well as a licence. @Raven2008 might now.
f. Leonardo at Yeovil are working on Crowsnest, and has very productive workers according to this:
independent analysis from experts at Oxford Economics revealed that employees at Leonardo are 80% more productive than the national average, largely because the company’s highly-skilled engineers generate high-tech IP the UK, which can be exported globally.
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Producing the UK’s next military helicopter on-shore is seen as a way of preserving high-value design and manufacturing jobs and boosting the economy, with every £1 invested in Leonardo putting £2.40 back into the economy, the firm said.
g. The global role of the carriers includes the carriers and a commitment to NATO. In the event of a major crisis in the NATO theatre...
h. Not only is Russia building and updating its submarines, they are exporting them, as are China. Iran and North Korea are happy to share submarine technology. They are other producers, and the threat for submarines and aircraft poses a threat to crisis response shipping, amphibious forces, and even peacetime shipping.
i. The carrier is about sea control as much as power projection.
Defence procurement tends to be very opaque in Canada. It is very rare that any sorts of details about requirements are ever made public, except in the most general terms, and specifications are generally made public again only in very general terms and after all decisions have been made. The government does not welcome public debate on these sorts of details, and generally the public don't push these issues. Debates in parliament tend to centre around how many are needed, when they are delivered, and how much they cost.(...) b. Was the greater endurance the reason for Canada's preference? @terminal (...)