Defence Secretary Michael Fallon is to discuss an acceleration of delivery for the P-8 maritime patrol aircraft.
Asked whether the United Kingdom would be asking the Pentagon to provide some form of stopgap measure until the P-8s are available in order to deal with an influx of Russian submarine activity in Europe, Fallon said that will be an issue brought up during his Friday meeting with US Defense Secretary Ash Carter.
Fallon said:
“Yes there will be discussions, and I hope they will be this afternoon, because we need it.”
Defense News report that the UK are looking at having two US Navy P-8s, with British crews, operate from the UK in order to bridge the gap between now and when the first P-8s enter service.
Fallon also called for greater industrial ties between the US and UK.
Should have kept the mighty nimrod in the air, still to this day a mighty hunter/killer very capable of what it did best..
Maybe we should have kept Shackleton too?
It couldn’t get an airworthiness certificate.
Nothing wrong with Nimrod ….. Except for the wings! The wings didn’t fit. But apart from that nothing wrong with it …… Except for it being 9 X years behind schedule and £750 million over budget, but apart from that, nothing wrong with it …… Oh has anybody mentioned the air worthiness certificate? Please, please, please can we put the Nimrod story to bed?
I thought UKDJ was talking about the Shackleton re the airworthiness certificate?
Oh yes, 10,000 rivets flying in close formation.
And we were told the NImrod was an old design, how old again is the 737?
Should’ve kept the Nimrods, great British engineering and one of the worst decisions ever made by a peace time govt, that and scrapping all the harriers.
Would they also be repainted in RAF roundels and colours? Better then nothing I suppose, but it will look a bit embarrassing having an RAF aircrew flying over the UK, with a big fat US “NAVY” scheme down the sides of the aircraft, haha.
This is a good idea.
Shame we don’t have our own maritime patrol aircraft….. Nimrod mk4
Nimrod was scrapped for good reason
Yup. A mismangaged money trap.
What Simon said ^^^
Nimrod was a black hole sucking in money. Couldn’t even get an air worthiness certificate and was years behind schedule. Get over it.
Exactly.
Tell us this news 13 years ago it wouldn’t cause a fuss. Retire the the MR2 it’s an old airframe with limited future development. But to spend years on MRA4 so close to rolling it out and then cancel it, black hole or not we have been left with a capability gap P-8 a good platform but still not deliverable until 2020? So 10 years with no fixed wing maritime patrol aircraft. #SDSR
It WASNT close to rolling it out though. Nobody knew how much more money it was going to take and how long it would be before it could fly. The crime was how long it was allowed to go on for. It’s sad to say, UK doesn’t always do best when it comes to the military. We’ve had our successes but we’ve also had our failures. Just look at the Chinook fiasco. Tried to do it our way, failed!
who cares ?, we spot a Russian sub., then what, we sure as hell are not going to attack it. Just fly over it in an old twin & bomb it with red dye.
Who says we wouldn’t attack it?
Anybody with any common sense
This is good move till our built ones are ready and after all USN got loads sure they won’t miss two, but would they allow them to have temporary RAF markings?
Of course the P8 aircraft will have RAF markings if and when they are leased, just as the initially leased four C17 transports had RAF markings before they were purchased outright.Not an issue.
Does the US have enough to spare, I thought they only currently had around 30 of them.
The US focus is not on Russia anymore, its on China and so leasing us the planes doesn’t help them with their priorities like it did when Russia was it.
Good idea to lease a couple of P-8 aircraft until the first UK P-8 ones arrive and they should be re-painted with UK markings. As I understand it the problem with the Nimrod MR4 was that it was a political decision to keep putting money into a project, based on a old airliner design and therefore costing a lot of money, and not a military one. It appears that each aircraft required to have custom-made wings plus one of the decisions of the MOD was that it had to be modified to carry a type of missile that required the… Read more »
If the US judges that leasing a couple of P8’s to the UK is detrimental to their own capabilities they won’t do it.Simple really.
Agree with Russ Hunt. Nimrod is dead and has been for about 15 years. Let it be. Long live Poseidon!
In retrospect, while rebuilding the Nimrod was selected as a cost saving measure by the Major government it would have been cheaper and far more useful to develop a brand new purpose built airframe. The decision to proceed with a rebuilt Nimrod was a perfect example of the UK’s post-cold war penny wise pound foolish procurement strategy.
A ” brand new purpose built airframe” for a requirement of under ten planes? Can you be quite serious? Even the US didn’t do that.
So an A320 airframe off the Hamburg production line, fitted with adapted wings (which happen to be made in the UK anyway) and then filled with all sorts of our evil black boxes back here at BAE wouldn’t be affordable then?
Uh, no it wouldn’t. For 10 planes, are you serious?
Looks like the Great British Public have a Nimrod Derangement Syndrome (NDS) to go along with their Harrier Derangement Syndrome (HDS).
I was sure at the time of Nimrod 2000 that an Airbus A320 airframe would have been the best way to go .
Does any know if It gets the magnetic anaomoly detector fitted, I read where it operated at higher altitudes than Nimrod and would not work, But I also read where the Indian version have one fitted. the vanilla USN ones don’t