It was only a matter of time............

[Muzz]

Perhaps this will speed up the decision makers

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-30398114

[stevehnz]

Thats just embarrassing for the UK on so many levels.

Steve.

[HP42]

Tell me again why we scrapped the already developed and built Nimrod MR4? (Ok it was running costs over its lifetime) So presumably asking NATO to bail us out is acceptable? I wonder if the French, Canadians and US will get bored with this pretty quickly? Make a weakness and it will be tested to find out how weak it really is.

Quite honestly I feel vulnerable without a MR capability, aircraft carriers and fixed wing naval aircraft. As the title says, it really was only a matter of time.

Are there any plans for a maritime recon aircraft and if so, what would we look at?

[Panzer Vor!!!]

No no plans at all for a MRP however the gov has said that further cuts are needed in the MOD budget

Theirs talk now of deep pay cuts to serving personal

[Muzz]

How long before a periscope is sighted in the Clyde or Forth!

[PLC1966]

Sorry Panzer Vor but I disagree, I would safely put a few quid on us getting some P-8's after the next SDR, not soon enough

obviously but we will be getting them.

We haven't got guys on Seedcorn for any reason other than keep the ASW skills up to speed and help our cousins across

the pond to continue to improve.

As for the Nimrod, it was unfortunately never going to get an Air Worthiness Certificate apparently. And even if it had, no Government

would have wanted to be in power if another ever went down after the last Nimrod crash....the red-tops would love it..'lashed up rework of a fifty

year aircraft crashes etc etc...

As for NATO allies getting cheesed off pretty quickly, to be fair, this is the point of the alliance I guess, everybody

brings something to the party. Lets be fair, other than the Americans, I guess only us and the French bring Strategic Airlift Capability, Mushroom Cloud Making Facilities and a stand-alone AWACS Capability.

Not that it is a position I am happy with us being in.

But why worry, I am sure the Politicians of all Parties know best, it's not like we live in an uncertain world or anything.......

[Nigel Bunker]

This problem has been forseeable since we scrapped the Nimrod MR.4, and I'm just surprised it has taken so long to happen. I hope there are a few red faces in the MoD and somebody is dispatched across the pond to either arrange for the lease/purchase of P-8s or to get some low hours P-3s out of the desert (if there are such things as low hours P-3s).

Perhaps a periscope on the Thames outside the Houses of Parliament might concentrate a few minds!

Edited December 10, 2014 by Nigel Bunker

[PLC1966]

Problem solved:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/374917/20141113-Schedule1_Shackleton_clean.pdf

[Paul J]

Makes me so cross. How long has this been happening? I bet a while now since Nimrods vanished from our skies!

[Radleigh]

Problem solved:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/374917/20141113-Schedule1_Shackleton_clean.pdf

Could you imagine the media uproar IF we did get that back in the air for military use LOL as good as it would be for us enthusiasts though..

We really need a P-8 or ten or some second hand P-3's....

Edited December 10, 2014 by Radleigh

[Duncan B]

Possibly old news and my apologies if it has already been covered elsewhere but what an embarrassment we have become, unable to protect our own coastline! Not a Political statement but an observation that, as an island Nation, we really need a Maritime Patrol asset.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-30398114

Duncan B

[Martian]

Of course, nobody could possibly have predicted this when the PM decided to cancel the Nimrod MR4!

Martin

[wellsprop]

The RAF does seem to be lacking a few things at the moment. Most notably a multi-role carrier-bourne aircraft and a long range maritime patrol aircraft. Ironic for what was once the worlds greatest sea fairing nation... Shame the MRA4 was such a disaster, although it was inevitable, trying to convert a 50 year old air frame into a next gen maritime patrol aircraft will obviously incur a huge amount of hidden costs (the basically redesigned the entire airframe).

I personally doubt the RAF's strategic effectiveness in Iraq, who many thousands does it cost to operate a squadron of Tornadoes, plus all the support, as well as a couple FSTA's and then some C-17's just to have blown up a couple pick up trucks with Brimstone missiles that cost £100,000.

Ben

Edited December 10, 2014 by wellsprop

[tomprobert]

We are completely surrounded by water and yet have no MR capability.

One does wonder what goes through the minds of our esteemed (in their opinion only) political 'leaders'.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Their incompetence is simply beyond understanding. If any of those on the gravy train at Westminster were in the real world (by that I mean earning an honest living like the rest of us) they'd be either fired for being useless or going bankrupt within a few weeks. The only reason they can get away with it where they are is because they're all as bad as each other and cover their backs.

I think it's about time the Defence Minister dons his snorkel mask and armbands, gets swimming and looking for this submarine. At least that would give us more capability to find subs than we currently have!

[Duncan B]

Let's not forget the Russian Warship that was sitting 12 miles off the Scottish coast, in full view of beachcombers etc, a few months back. How blatant do they have to be before we take the hint?

My other concern with a total lack of MP aircraft is that we now have no top cover for any maritime incident that might take place in our waters. During the Piper 'A' tragedy a Nimrod sat over the area acting as a Command and Control centre, a role that they carried out many times when vessels got into difficulty too. Heaven help any vessel getting into difficulties in our waters now.

During our Offshore Survival training we were often told that should we end up in life rafts a Nimrod would be on site within a couple of hours to locate us and coordinate a rescue. Last year two men found themselves adrift off the NE coast for 3 days before they were eventually found, that would just not have happened 10 years ago.

Duncan B

[whitestar12chris]

Well what can you say, the answer to my mind would be a next gen coastal submarine fleet, shame we sold off the upholders. Wouldnt need to be nuclear, a diesel or fuel cell version would do the job, Constantly patrolling our waters, with astutes sonar, problem sorted.

Seems our government is out of step with our Nato allies, this is what Germany has and a lot of other countries, as you say we are an island nation, so why dont we?

Chris

[Greg B]

Gents, please leave the politics out of it, as difficult as it is.

[Hockeyboy76]

I have also heard the P8 rumour & we probably already have some crews either in training or on exchange tours with this A/C.

I'm sure someone told me he had seen some Shackleton spares in one of the HASs at Boscombe Down which would put the RAF in an unusual position of already having some spares for an A/C instead of robbing bits.

[wellsprop]

I reckon Airbus could do so ething very good. Lets face it, the A330 FSTA programme was VERY smooth and the aircraft itself is very good.

Albeit it is a heck of a thing to pull off when a bomb bay needs to be added to the actual airframe. They made the Beluga, so how hard can it be to put the bulge on the underside rather than the top

Ben

[pigsty]

Can I just throw a small thought into the mix?

On some recent threads there’s been a theme of "why can’t Britain design its own planes any more, we used to be great". This takes no account of the expense of modern aircraft. It overlooks the fact that, bad though some programmes have been, if they hadn’t been designed in collaboration with other countries, the production runs would have been smaller, the unit costs much greater, and the whole idea less viable.

Now look at the options for replacing the Nimrod. They essentially boiled down to rebuilding the old ones, or buying someone else’s design. Even with a production run big enough to replace Nimrods one-for-one - unlikely, given the reduced need for them - a completely new design would have been impossibly expensive, and there were no British airliner or freighter designs to develop.

The decision was, of course, to rebuild the old ones. Two very important factors in this were maintaining British design capability and keeping jobs in the UK. Two things about this:

• this was a decision taken by politicians, just like the decision to give up on the programme. Of course it was - no-one else is in that position.
• it didn’t come off.

Looking back, two things seem pretty clear to me:

• BAe oversold their capability. We should have seen them coming after the AEW Nimrod and any number of other problems. Not everything was their fault - the state of the airframes, the constant tinkering with the specification - but the programme was probably doomed to failure because of its starting point.
• so we’d have been better off buying P-3s to tide us over, then buying into the P-8. As it is I hope we do buy the P-8 - but we’ve lost any chance of being involved in its development.

But if we’d bought those, there would have been howls of protest at Britain no longer being great, a brain drain, having to rely on foreigners - all factors that influenced the decision. And very similar to the complaints on here about the Typhoon - and, if there had been forums at the time, I’ve no doubt that much the same would have been said about the Tornado. Bloody politicians, is always the moan, ruining the country.

So which is it, chaps? Are politicians wrong for trying to buy British, or for buying foreign? What do you want them to do?

[Paul J]

Hm. Pigsty has a point. But at least we still have a sort of 'air defence capability'. We can see them coming by air but not by sea!

Or..... is the threat coming from within??

[alex]

It looks more like europe should have gathered together earlier defining a common standard for MRP aircraft. After all, who doesn't need long endurance, some space for the people and sensors up there and maybe some torpedoes? So, a common base is there, like it was with the atlantic. And comparing the single-nation vs. common development approach: France did a great job building the Rafale, but it looks they won't find any customer for it at all. It's not a big surprise, since you rely to 100% on one nation after you buy the product. And most successful projects (speaking not from the unit-price, but from the efficiency) recently are multinational projects. Why not make a A400 MRP? it has room, endurance, speed and will be shortly in use by different nations and so there is no need to develop a new airframe, keeping maintenance costs down. But it looks like the P-8 will be next generation. It may be a nice aircraft, but again, a missed opportunity for an european solution.

Alex

[Radleigh]

Shame we can't adapt a C-130 to do the role.

[Jinxman]

Having been in Japan recently and seen that they seem to have P3s, (some R1s), E2s, E767s and so on coming out of their ears it is difficult to understand what our approach to defence is, given the similarities between our geographic locations.

[Nigel Bunker]

I gather the unit cost of a P-8 is £165 million. My guess is that if you look at the cost of converting an Airbus, I suspect that the development costs alone would be over £1billion (avionics & prototypes) and it would take years and years to do with the MoD forming countless committees whilst the P-8 is coming off the production line now and those development costs would buy us 6 P-8s. The USN might even let us take some of their production as it would defer their spend for the year. But we would need to take them at USN spec and if we want to make changes do it once we have the planes, not incur delays at Boeing.

It is good to buy British but there are times you should be pragmatic and buy from abroad.