CVF and Carrier Strike thread

[terminal]

So you think our esteemed Google/Wiki Warrior is actually an incredibly sophisticated anti-American troll? Maybe funded by OCCAR or some deep-state department within the EU to make us buy European or Japanese as a knee-jerk reaction? Or British as a last resort?

It's breathtaking, it really is.

Sorry for the thread drift, but 'Wow'.

I'm just pointing out that there is a reasonably objective and fairly reliable indication of the quality of non-American (and non-Russian) kit - the PF (Photex Factor) Index. The more that Photex claims that something is true, the less likely that it is to be the case.

We can assign a "PF" Index to this by counting the number and length of Photex's posts on a subject, as well as how many times he brings the subject up over and over again.

Merlin capabilities, MRA4 history, and WAH-64 myths all have very high PF Indexes. The PF Index may not be able to tell you what's right, but it's a reliable indicator of whether something is wrong.

 

[History_Man]

And you still have to land both on if you want to do ASW and Vertrep/general "stuff".

The discussion was about replacing Merlin HM2 in the ASW role with the Seahawk MH-60R; VERTREP could be done by repurposing the non-Crowsnest airframes for the role.

 

[Not a Boffin]

So widely expected to be a shoo in as everyone in MOD loved it, Westland even bought a production licence and built one.
......Then Heseltine threw his teddies and forced the Navy to buy a very much bigger helicopter it didn’t want, and made sure the Army wouldn’t get the battlefield helicopter is really wanted.

View attachment 540489

Except the Navy weren't forced, they had always wanted a proper long range ASW cab to replace SK, rather than a bigger Lynx (LAMPS III). As reflected in the relevant Staff Reqt, which predated Tarzan's time in post.

 

[Cold_Collation]

nope, we boxed ourselves into a dead end yet again with WAH-64.

we paid double for an incremental improvement over the then current US OTS version, and then couldn’t afford to keep improving it and it lapsed into obsolescence.
Its the same old same old, we fondly imagine the other blokes version won’t keep improving.

see the vast efforts and expense to get the non smokey Spey into the F-4, and by the time we got the Spey F-4 up and running, along come smokeless GE engines. And when later we bought a load of GE powered F-4’s, we found they had much better performance than our version.

see also the ‘visionary’ decision to choose the unproven WR-21 over the LM2500 for the Type 45’s - huzzah, workd beating engine! they are much more fuel efficient! and along comes the even more fuel efficient and utterly reliable LM2500R

Top tip:

if a U.K. manufacturer claims they can build a better version of someone else’s kit for half the price, run him out the door. It will almost invariably be 10 years late, twice the cost and half the performance.

You might want to have a conversation with a good mate of mine about how 'wrong' the Spey fit was. It was a bigger engine and took a while to spool up but once it got there... also, it was very much appreciated down on the deck.

For the record, he flew both types, having done exchange with the Germans on RF-4s.

Quite why we're discussing that here, though, given that I'm in my sixth decade on this planet and the prototype flew three years before I was born...

The WAH-64 gave us best-in-class at the time and something that, as noted, even the Americans envied. Things move on. And the -E is the right choice.

WR-21? Speak to that naval expert Geoff Hoon about that.

Your top tip is utter cock.

 

[Raven2008]

you’ll need to take that up with MOD(N), they captioned it.

Tech question ...and i am not taking the urine here lol...but can you tell the differences between the the various types in the Sikorsky S-70 series ..all Blackhawks, Pave Hawks, Naval Hawks etc etc ...

In my career to date I have seen pretty much / come across 3/5 of S-70 airframes only ones I have not seen come across are the United States Army 160th SOAR Nightstalkers MH-60K/G or the new USAF combat SAR HH-60W or the now retired US Navy HH-60H or USCG HH-60J/MH-60T Jayhawks.

cheers

 

[Lindermyer]

nope, we boxed ourselves into a dead end yet again with WAH-64.

we paid double for an incremental improvement over the then current US OTS version, and then couldn’t afford to keep improving it and it lapsed into obsolescence.
Its the same old same old, we fondly imagine the other blokes version won’t keep improving.

see the vast efforts and expense to get the non smokey Spey into the F-4, and by the time we got the Spey F-4 up and running, along come smokeless GE engines. And when later we bought a load of GE powered F-4’s, we found they had much better performance than our version.

see also the ‘visionary’ decision to choose the unproven WR-21 over the LM2500 for the Type 45’s - huzzah, workd beating engine! they are much more fuel efficient! and along comes the even more fuel efficient and utterly reliable LM2500R

Top tip:

if a U.K. manufacturer claims they can build a better version of someone else’s kit for half the price, run him out the door. It will almost invariably be 10 years late, twice the cost and half the performance.

Strangely though not one of your examples demonstrates that fact.

Unsuprisingly every one of them has repeatedly on arrse shown to be something of a myth created by some very selective filtering of facts (eg comparing Nimrod to P and youre inability to accept anything not 100% made in the USA is shite.

Amusingly offset by the racist disdain you show for anyone born in the USA who disagrees with you on any point

 

[aardvark64]

You might want to have a conversation with a good mate of mine about how 'wrong' the Spey fit was. It was a bigger engine and took a while to spool up but once it got there... also, it was very much appreciated down on the deck.

For the record, he flew both types, having done exchange with the Germans on RF-4s.

Quite why we're discussing that here, though, given that I'm in my sixth decade on this planet and the prototype flew three years before I was born...

The WAH-64 gave us best-in-class at the time and something that, as noted, even the Americans envied. Things move on. And the -E is the right choice.

WR-21? Speak to that naval expert Geoff Hoon about that.

Your top tip is utter cock.

Your assessment of the top tip is top notch.

Non-UK manufacturers with "off-the-shelf" kit won't be trying to meet the UK requirements at all. Rather, they will be looking to the UK to offset costs to complete their less than optimal kit for their own home market. Therefore, asking a UK manufacturer to do better is always the wrong question.

However much the UK manufacturer points out their UK-tailored system is more capable, meets more DLODs and is cheaper in the long run, they will almost always lose out in what becomes a political decision. This is nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that air-miles to Warton, Edinburgh or Telford can't possibly compare to those to DC, Dallas/Fort Worth, St Louis or Tampa. No sir-ee.

Oblig. conflict of interest: yes, I do work for an organisation with a reputation for products that are unnecessarily big and expensive - it's because we take a lot of Scheisse so the customer doesn't have to...

 

[twentyfirstoffoot]

Non-UK manufacturers with "off-the-shelf" kit won't be trying to meet the UK requirements at all.

Conversely any requirement described as 'unique to UK' should set alarm bells off all over Whitehall.

 

[ThunderBox]

Your assessment of the top tip is top notch.

Non-UK manufacturers with "off-the-shelf" kit won't be trying to meet the UK requirements at all. Rather, they will be looking to the UK to offset costs to complete their less than optimal kit for their own home market. Therefore, asking a UK manufacturer to do better is always the wrong question.

However much the UK manufacturer points out their UK-tailored system is more capable, meets more DLODs and is cheaper in the long run, they will almost always lose out in what becomes a political decision. This is nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that air-miles to Warton, Edinburgh or Telford can't possibly compare to those to DC, Dallas/Fort Worth, St Louis or Tampa. No sir-ee.

Oblig. conflict of interest: yes, I do work for an organisation with a reputation for products that are unnecessarily big and expensive - it's because we take a lot of Scheisse so the customer doesn't have to...

Not Big Arrogant and Expensive Systems as the Aussies called us?!

 

[alfred_the_great]

The discussion was about replacing Merlin HM2 in the ASW role with the Seahawk MH-60R; VERTREP could be done by repurposing the non-Crowsnest airframes for the role.

I salute you for drinking meths quite so early in the morning.

 

[History_Man]

I salute you for drinking meths quite so early in the morning.

Dry January at H_M Towers; I salute your aircraft recognition skills.

 

[History_Man]

Conversely any requirement described as 'unique to UK' should set alarm bells off all over Whitehall.

I refuse to believe that for the vast majority of military equipment that we use that our requirements are completely at variance with what the rest of NATO and Five-Eyes use. I can think of certain exceptions relating to strategic weapons, comms and crypto, etc., submarines and some munition types, but that is about it.

 

[alfred_the_great]

Dry January at H_M Towers; I salute your aircraft recognition skills.

The discussion was about replacing Merlin HM2 in the ASW role with the Seahawk MH-60R; VERTREP could be done by repurposing the non-Crowsnest airframes for the role.

So your genuine contention is that because the Me2 is too big and heavy* to be an ASW helicopter, we should replace it with the -60R which is about the same length.

At the same time, we should keep Me2 for VERTREP etc because reasons I don’t know why.

So thus, offering no advantage in flight deck or SHOL size - not that you need any, because increasingly the reference helicopter for embarked operations is a non-foldable CH-47 with ramp down - but because you’ve decided that 3 aircrew US helicopter is better than a 4 aircrew UK helicopter because the British Army doesn’t like Me3/3a/4 and instead wants the RAF to buy more CH-47 (because ally).


*I paraphrase, but bear with...

 

[History_Man]

So your genuine contention is that because the Me2 is too big and heavy* to be an ASW helicopter, we should replace it with the -60R which is about the same length.

At the same time, we should keep Me2 for VERTREP etc because reasons I don’t know why.

So thus, offering no advantage in flight deck or SHOL size - not that you need any, because increasingly the reference helicopter for embarked operations is a non-foldable CH-47 with ramp down - but because you’ve decided that 3 aircrew US helicopter is better than a 4 aircrew UK helicopter because the British Army doesn’t like Me3/3a/4 and instead wants the RAF to buy more CH-47 (because ally).


*I paraphrase, but bear with...

Do you normally get this emotional?

 

[alfred_the_great]

Do you normally get this emotional?

I’m just bored frankly.

 

[Archimedes]

Earlier Seahawks had a rear wheel forward of that. Why abandon that?

ETA: I’m talking cock. That’s not a Romeo in the picture. It’s a Sierra.

The forward positioned tailwheel was to provide a tighter turning circle, and it helps reduce stress on the tailboom. The original SH-60 had to be operable from decks where the SH-2 Seasprite was verging on being a tight fit, and the Knox class didn’t, in the end, get round to swapping the Seasprite for the SH-60; when the Knox class ships retired in the early/mid-90s, the SH-2F was retired at around the same time.

The Romeo retained the tailwheel that isn’t at the tail because the variant began life as a remanufacturing of the Bravo/Foxtrot versions. It was discovered - as happened with the USMC Harrier Plus - that it was in fact cheaper to build new airframes rather than remanufacture. Clearly, possessing a small fleet of otherwise brand new Romeos with the forward-positioned wheel and then having more Romeos with an airframe based on the US Army UH-60L made little sense. Building the Sierra using the UH-60L airframe as the basis was deemed to make more sense than using the Romeo airframe (I was once told the reasons, but forget), hence the different positions.

 

[History_Man]

I’m just bored frankly.

Then go and find something useful to do...

 

[aardvark64]

I refuse to believe that for the vast majority of military equipment that we use that our requirements are completely at variance with what the rest of NATO and Five-Eyes use. I can think of certain exceptions relating to strategic weapons, comms and crypto, etc., submarines and some munition types, but that is about it.

You'd be surprised how specific and non-generic requirements coming out of FLCs and DE&S are. It's what comes of having the Reqt Mgrs only do 2 years before they get swapped out: the new-in post incumbent always has a different idea to their predecessor.

Not Big Arrogant and Expensive Systems as the Aussies called us?!

Hadn't heard the 'Arrogant' bit before, but that's the typical sort of plain-speaking I'd expect from them.

 

[Mattb]

Earlier Seahawks had a rear wheel forward of that. Why abandon that?

ETA: I’m talking cock. That’s not a Romeo in the picture. It’s a Sierra.

At a guess, did they abandon the small-footprint models simply because they no longer needed a small footprint (with the retirement of older ships)?

 

[Gravelbelly]

Conversely any requirement described as 'unique to UK' should set alarm bells off all over Whitehall.

Why?

Take the size of the infantry section; we organise ours as eight soldiers. The Americans have squads of nine (US Army) or even thirteen (US Marine Corps). Is a vehicle that fits an 8-person rifle section a "unique to UK" requirement? What about optic sights - "Unique to UK infantry" from the late 1980s, when did other NATO armies agree that it was the correct decision? When did the US first push radios down to fire team level, in contrast to the UK and PRC-349?

Take something as simple as a tank. Is having a generator on the vehicle a "unique to UK" requirement? Or a Boiling Vessel? Or a tank telephone? Because you didn't find those on the M1 or M1A1, hence "doing a jump start on a tank that forgot to start their engines up before the battery ran too low" was a real thing.

What about the 120mm main armament? Chieftain had it fitted in the 1960s, when every other MBT in Europe was running the L7 105mm gun until well into the 1980s. "Unique to UK", but was it a bad idea?