General Cool pics

[sunday]

19 minutes ago, TrustMe said:

If you look at post WW2 history. Britian had a massive air industry and was a world leader in jet propulsion technology plus other aera's. I don't know why we have nothing left, does anyone know?

Still among the world leaders, if not THE world leader in wing design for large passenger jets. Airbus wings are manufactured in England, and that is the most important part of a commercial plane.

There is Rolls-Royce in aero engines.

Do not sell your country so cheap.

That does not mean than I do not want Gibraltar back, for the record.

[TrustMe]

2 hours ago, sunday said:

Still among the world leaders, if not THE world leader in wing design for large passenger jets. Airbus wings are manufactured in England, and that is the most important part of a commercial plane.

There is Rolls-Royce in aero engines.

Do not sell your country so cheap.

That does not mean than I do not want Gibraltar back, for the record.

 

Just for the record, I would not be worred about it if it does got back to Spain. There is also a British air force base in Cyprus which is also a British sovereign terrority and the locals there also want the air base to go back to them. 

However both military bases are strategically located and I doubt that will ever happen.

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

18 hours ago, DB said:

And yet, it wasn't the airframe nor the gangly undercarriage (for austere field performance) that killed TSR.2. The hints are there - the mission avionics were... tricky, and as usual the money to get them working was not there.

 

Which proved the basis for the avionics for Tornado. If we had done it as a multinational project from the start, and had a 'Tsr 2 Tsar' to oversee it between several different companies, ive no doubt it could have been successful. Instead we just got Australia, who baled at an early stage.

15 hours ago, TrustMe said:

If you look at post WW2 history. Britian had a massive air industry and was a world leader in jet propulsion technology plus other aera's. I don't know why we have nothing left, does anyone know?

Well lets be fair, we still have Rolls Royce, thanks to the intercession of PM Heath. The rest? The lack of politicians willing to step in and prop them up till we could come up with viable long term solutions.

And we could have done. I was looking the other day at Dassault, and wondering why they were able to churn out jets like Mirage III, Mirage F1, Mirage V, Mirage 2000 and Rafale. Political indifference has a lot to commend it.  We wouldnt even have Typhoon if Margaret Thatcher wasnt set on privatising BAE, and she twisted John Notts arm to give them something next generation to build.

Sadly it seems being nationalised meant it was all too easy to let it all run down, and successive politicians were happy to let it do so.

[DB]

Tornado used basically the same TFR avionics as the F-111, so that would have had nothing to do with TSR.2. Marconi was, IIRC, the main avionics contractor and there were significant issues with the side-looking radar at least. So, it's not clear to me what Tornado took from TSR.2, or how that's relevant to its cancellation.

[TrustMe]

The Tornado was origionally called the Tornado MRCA (Multi role combat aircraft) but only the UK proceded with the fighter version, the rest bailed. Probably because the F3 version was a piece of crap.

[futon]

 

[shep854]

On 9/8/2023 at 12:55 PM, TrustMe said:

The Tornado was origionally called the Tornado MRCA (Multi role combat aircraft) but only the UK proceded with the fighter version, the rest bailed. Probably because the F3 version was a piece of crap.

It was good in the intended role as a bomber interceptor, but as a real 'fighter', it was a total sitting duck.

[shep854]

23 hours ago, futon said:

 

Would an actual, red insignia really compromise stealth??? Or any full color national insignia for that matter?

[futon]

47 minutes ago, shep854 said:

Would an actual, red insignia really compromise stealth??? Or any full color national insignia for that matter?

I came across this article suggesting that it might be the paint that is part of the stealth absorbing material. Although Denmark uses color on theirs.

https://www.outono.net/elentir/2023/06/09/what-will-happen-to-the-red-and-yellow-roundels-if-spain-decides-to-buy-the-f-35/

[TrustMe]

1 hour ago, shep854 said:

It was good in the intended role as a bomber interceptor, but as a real 'fighter', it was a total sitting duck.

The thing was that when the F3 entered service Russian bombers were getting escorted by the long ranged Su27's. The Tornado's would of been annihilated before they got to the bombers.

[DB]

This isn't quite true. The entry into service dates for both types are within a year - 1985 versus 1986, so "already escorting" is a bit of a stretch. Their development is pretty much in parallel, so the Tornado was a reaction to the known existing bomber threat, whereas the Su-27 was a reaction to the F-15. It's likely that the probable capabilities of the Su-27 were unknown until the T10 was spotted in about 1977, long after the Tornado's design was fixed.

The ability of the Su-27 to intercept interceptors before they got to the bombers seems to assume that they would have the ability to detect and move to intercept, when at the time they had a missile system that was at best comparable to that of the Tornado (which were Skyflash equipped), and probably not even that. The R27, which seems to approximate the capabilities of late model AIM-7s and thus similar to Skyflash and Aspide, does not seem to have been available until about 1989.

Given also that Russian probing missions disappeared in the early nineties, for quite a long time, the continuance of the F3 was not really significant. (If the Russians had continued to pose a threat during that period, then newer missiles were in development that it can be argued fell victim to the "peace dividend", such as Active Skyflash.)

[TrustMe]

I got the information off www.pprune.org from ex RAF pilots, so I believe them about the F3.

Out of interest the Saudi's and Italians got rid of the F3. The Saudi's after a few dozen examples (replaced by an equal number of IDS's and the Italians after the begining of Allied Force, when they realised how bad they would fair against Mig29's (replaced by second hand US F16A's.

One interesting thing about Russian Bear bombers was that if WW3 had of gone nuclear the Bear's could of launched nuclear tipped cruise missiles from a distance of 1000km away well outside the F3 (and Eurofighter) weapons range. 

The whole UK air defence was basically neutralised and just for show.

[DB]

Make up your mind. Either the Su-27s are escorting Tu-95s on strategic bombing missions, or they're 1000km away whilst subsonic Kh-55s are being sent instead.

I'm sure that you appreciate that subsonic cruise missiles of that era are hardly a challenging target for air intercept, being not fast and not stealthy. They were also unlikely to be able to saturate air defences given the limited number of available launch platforms and the vast number of targets needing to be serviced.

Still, it's always been part of the undermining of the UK population's morale by those who would see it fall, to take cheap shots at UK capabilities whether that be by false claims of the death of UK manufacturing, uncritical comparisons of realistic capabilities of our equipment against inflated propaganda claims for every other similar system or just a continual refrain that every (conservative) government has been hell-bent on destroying the country in favour of some crony capitalism.

There are times when it feels like LuckLucky is right, but 60 years too late.

[TrustMe]

Make up your mind. Either the Su-27s are escorting Tu-95s on strategic bombing missions, or they're 1000km away whilst subsonic Kh-55s are being sent instead.

If WW3 had of happened conventionally the Su27 escorts of stopped RAF jets cold. If the war went nuclear then, as i said,  the crusie missiles would of gotten through due to there massive stand off range.

Did you know that cold war RAF pilots were told that if the RAF jets ran out of missiles and their were still USSR bombers, then the pilots were ordered to crash there jets into the bombers, kamikaze style. It's true.

 

I'm sure that you appreciate that subsonic cruise missiles of that era are hardly a challenging target for air intercept, being not fast and not stealthy. They were also unlikely to be able to saturate air defences given the limited number of available launch platforms and the vast number of targets needing to be serviced.

Your not thinking about the massive airspace that the Bears & White Swans could move in. They have such a massive flight range that they could come in at any angle. For example West of Ireland to attack British targets in England. I'm sure the RAF had plans to interdict Russian aircraft in the most obivious flight corridors but what if they didn't?

 

Still, it's always been part of the undermining of the UK population's morale by those who would see it fall, to take cheap shots at UK capabilities whether that be by false claims of the death of UK manufacturing, uncritical comparisons of realistic capabilities of our equipment against inflated propaganda claims for every other similar system or just a continual refrain that every (conservative) government has been hell-bent on destroying the country in favour of some crony capitalism.

Putting your hear into the sand and to follow something blindly, without reasoning, is not a good idea. 

 

Edited September 19, 2023 by TrustMe

[shep854]

On 9/18/2023 at 8:08 AM, futon said:

I came across this article suggesting that it might be the paint that is part of the stealth absorbing material. Although Denmark uses color on theirs.

https://www.outono.net/elentir/2023/06/09/what-will-happen-to-the-red-and-yellow-roundels-if-spain-decides-to-buy-the-f-35/

Interesting article; thanks!  I'd still like to see the various nations use full color, though there are plenty of stories from WWII of misidentifying aircraft even with large, color insignia, even though aircraft were within a few hundred feet.

[futon]

1 hour ago, shep854 said:

Interesting article; thanks!  I'd still like to see the various nations use full color, though there are plenty of stories from WWII of misidentifying aircraft even with large, color insignia, even though aircraft were within a few hundred feet.

No problem, you're welcome. I guess if the aircraft itself is F-35ish in shape, the pilot can assume that its friendly, at least until more stealth aircraft types with the typical stealth lines start emerging across the board.

[shep854]

2 hours ago, futon said:

No problem, you're welcome. I guess if the aircraft itself is F-35ish in shape, the pilot can assume that its friendly, at least until more stealth aircraft types with the typical stealth lines start emerging across the board.

Even with all the modern long range, networked God-view stuff, some risk-averse bureaucritter will probably insist on visual ID...

[bojan]

On 9/19/2023 at 12:50 PM, DB said:

... The R27, which seems to approximate the capabilities of late model AIM-7s and thus similar to Skyflash and Aspide, does not seem to have been available until about 1989...

Must be earlier since base R-27R was exported to Yugoslavia 1989. Russian sources say R-27R and R-27T were produced in series since 1984 and that in 1987 R-27ER and R-27ET models with extended range were accepted for service.

 

[DB]

OK.

[JWB]

 

[Ivanhoe]

XF7U-1. 1948. Crap engines, but by gosh that's a beautiful plane. 

 

[lucklucky]

Rolls Royce is still around.  But the answer is managerial and political class took over and market forces were  ignored.

 

It is  interesting comparing Westland and Italian Agusta. Both lived initially from American helicopters licenses: Mostly Sikorski for Westland and  Bell for Agusta (with also and Agusta Sikorski S-61 known as Sea King in UK)  the difference is that Agusta was successful in civilian market with historical A-109 that is still being build almost 50 years latter, while Westland half hearted tries were failure, the only real successful designed helicopter by Westland was the Lynx but it is a military helicopter. Then both companies allied and developed the Merlin, and while Westland was happy Britishising AH-64, selling Lynx variants and some Merlin the end of Cold War made Westland very vulnerable, their design capabilities were thin, and their selling and international support was non existent  in civilian market.  Agusta/Leonardo was increasing their design capability  a line of multi use helicopters AW-139 - also successful more than 1000 sold - and other variants for both markets build on the successful A-109. In the end the knowledge between Westland and Agusta due to Merlin that seems to have run well with no ill feelings between teams made Agusta/Leonardo buy it.

 

 

[DB]

This feels like your post is in the wrong topic.

[Ivanhoe]

[TrustMe]

Phantom Fours