The Royal Air Force has taken part in a massive aerial combat training exercise involving over 50 aircraft.
According to the RAF here, British Typhoon and F-35 aircraft operated alongside Royal Netherlands Air Force F-35A Lightning from Leeuwarden and United States Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles from the 48th Fighter Wing based at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk.
Air Vice-Marshal Ian Duguid, Air Officer Commanding 1 Group, was quoted as saying:
“Exercise POINT BLANK is an important serial in the training calendar for the UK and our allies – both in NATO and the US. This latest Exercise was a great opportunity for us to work closely with our Royal Netherlands Air Force colleagues using the F-35 Lightning II aircraft and the F-15E with United States Air Force.
The training allowed Combat Air to enhance interoperability in a demanding and highly contested air environment, including the support of NATO E-3A. It is not only the flying of complex missions, but the planning and developing of our capabilities in a collegiate manner that ensures we are ready to operate alongside our Allies across a number of dispersed units in multiple countries.”
The Royal Air Force said in the above-mentioned news release:
“Exercise POINT BLANK is a long-standing exercise designed by the 48th Fighter Wing and Royal Air Force with a mission to prepare aviators for operations against near-peer adversaries.
It provides NATO nations with an opportunity to practice and develop shared tactics, techniques and procedures. The training is invaluable in the continued refinement of interoperability across partners to maintain a unified, capable and confident NATO.”
Exercise POINT BLANK took place on 3rd and 4th February and included a range of 4th and 5th generation fighters, helicopters, command and control and air-to-air refuelling aircraft.
Training for a very useful purpose! Report: New Stealth Aircraft and Capabilities in China’s Air Arms Eroding U.S. AdvantagesNov. 4, 2021 “Quoting China’s own internal defense white paper from 2019, the Pentagon said the air forces are transitioning from strictly air defense to “offensive and defensive operations,” toward building a “strategic” air force capable of projecting power at long range. The Pentagon revealed that in addition to China’s J-20 Mighty Dragon and FC-31 stealth fighters, as well as a “strategic” stealth bomber, China is developing “new medium- and long-range stealth bombers to strike regional and global targets.” https://www.airforcemag.com/report-new-stealth-aircraft-and-capabilities-in-chinas-air-arms-eroding-u-s-advantages/ MOSCOW, July… Read more »
Yes these countries are catching up especially China. They may have been copies and lesser quality initially but they have learned over the last 10/15 years with stolen data or their own analysis and seem to be churning out prototypes showing an evolution of design and the have the industrial base to mass produce much more than we do. We need to do the same with Tempest and move away from a PPT programme of work and show something tangible even if it is a prototype that is not the final article. All good with having a digital “twin” but… Read more »
Agreed, we cannot afford to let Tempest fall by the wayside.
We need 6th gen to stay ahead of the pack now that they have caught us up to some degree and overtaken the west in others namely hypersonic missiles.
Which hypersonic weapons have they demonstrated that work against advanced maneuvering targets deploying very capable ECM? and an effective kill chain? Genuine question.
None and neither has anyone else ever.
👍
I think the tech is still pretty immature, and a lot is bigged up to justify spending.
Yep and to big up the ego of an insecure man. Maybe 10-20 years they will be viable against moving targets but the guidance problems are immense and maybe unsolvable at that kind of speed.
Russia proudly announced that Zircon had hit a target at sea…It was a static moored barge. So yes it was at sea but the missile basically flew from one GPS point to another which isnt exactly ground breaking.
OK its a fast missile but Russia/Soviets have been doing fast since the 1960s.
Its all in the media spin…
Yeah against a static target with zero ECM it’s a problem. For everything else meh. But at least it stops the serfs wondering how the boss got to be the richest man on earth !
Risk today is that hypersonic missiles could take out half to two thirds of the Royal navy on day 1 moored in port at all the usual mooring locations . All the naval base support infrastructure and all the RAF key facility buildings etc without any real ability to defend against it
With you on this Pete. Some CAMM Sabre units to protect RN ports could be useful here.
Indeed, In case of naval ports..Can 1 x vessel (either T45 or 23, stay hot while in harbour during hightened periods of tension ?. Aster would probably be better for hypersonic threat…or is there to much littoral clutter ?
Yes they can…but it will bugger up everyone’s TV when the radars are on…the locals would revolt!
Unless you had a zero warning attack everyone would sail in a time of tension anyway. As I have said before its a big ass ocean to hid in/on.
If the USA is concerned so should we be, China and Russia are building up their own defences first and expanding out from there, what layered defence do we have in place to protect the UK from such threats? Nuclear arms experts say China’s weapons test appeared to be designed to evade U.S. defenses in two ways. First, hypersonics move at speeds of more than five times the speed of sound, or about 6,200 kph (3,853 mph), making them harder to detect and intercept. Second, sources tell Reuters that the United States believes China’s test involved a weapon that first… Read more »
I agree Pete, we’re woefully prepared. All this dismissing of hypersonic missiles could be dangerous. The MOD now want their own hypersonic missiles so maybe some do work ok. Reminds me of how we dismissed the Japanese before WW2 & the nasty shoick of their larger, longer ranged Long Lance torpedoes.
An early pre-emptive strike will be far more damaging & harder to recover from with such a tiny fleet.
It was interesting to read that the RN are interested in hypersonic missiles. It was clear from the words of the outgoing First Sea Lord that the RN has almost certainly decided not to purchase an Interim Surface to Surface Guided Weapon (I-SSGW) to replace the already obsolete Harpoon Block 1C which will go out of service in 2023. “ISSGW has been paused” said Radakin. The navy is more interested in hypersonic missiles with much longer range. The “sticking plaster” approach of spending £250M for 5 sets of missiles to equip just 3 ships is hard to justify and surprisingly he suggested it… Read more »
is that like they planned to make sell and use the su57?
From what I can gather the Su-75 Checkmate as seen at the MAKs show, is very close to the finished product in design. If that is the case, it still won’t be in the same low-observability league as the F35. Like the Su57 Felon, they still have a ways to go before they can fully compete. The aircraft does feature careful shaping to minimise radar returns especially when seen from the front. However, the more tubular top above the engine is poor at minimising radar reflections. As is the traditional round variable exhaust. Other features such as panel gaps and… Read more »
Very good analysis there Daveyb, especially the last paragraph. The RuAF have not fielded single engined fighters for a long time so this may not be for them. The tactical defence role performed in the past by the Mig-29 now seems to be SAMs. The Checkmate seems to have ‘sucked’ as much as possible from the, now in series production, Su-57 with the intent to get a modern day Mig-21 out there in the market. Some stealth but only enough to help against the opposition it might meet, very low purchase price and low cost and straightforward maintenance. It will… Read more »
Hi Davyb, thank you again for your detailed reply, it appears to me to be 4+ gen aircraft with some stealth features added into the mix.
I wonder if a deal will be struck with China to use their engines in future?
I’m not sure, China are still a good ways off having reliable engines. The Russian ones are smokey, but they are powerful and relatively reliable by Western standards. China has dumped shed loads of money into engine research. So they will be on par with Russia within the next 10 years I’d say. Western engine makers will still have a significant advantage over them for a quite a while yet.
What is Xi going to extract from Vlad in return for bailing him out if he does go into Ukraine and the Russian economy is put into the deep freeze?
Xi may well hope that he does it so that Vlad is then dependant on his best mate Xi.
Xi will milk Vlad for all he can get.
Nasty though that.
The Russians understand the military tech in a theoretical way that the Chinese don’t really appear to. Decades of primary systems research and knowledge are there.
A quick answer to that is land, resources and energy. In SE Siberia here has been a mass migration of Chinese. Whole new towns have been created in what was once Siberian forests. This is causing a fair bit of dissent in Siberia with ethnic Russians. However, Russia has been hit hard by the Corona virus, especially so in more remote areas. The Chinese have been only to willing to help send labourers. Who are working in the mines, but also cutting down the forests to make arable land. As Quoted in Asia News: “China imports the energy resources it… Read more »
Hopefully China does not invade to protect its own citizens. By putins accounts that is ok to do
And to think we fought with n armed both these countries up in 2ww & they’ve become our arch enemies
It’s not just in hypersonics China is taking a lead but also AI, quantum computing, quantum communications, novel nuclear fission and also nuclear fusion. In all of the fields China leads the world. They’re not far off cracking quantum communications at all, after which eavesdropping on their back and forth basically ends. The US didn’t anticipate this and have been caught seriously off guard. In fact, I think the West has been engaging in a lazy, racist dismissal of the collosal efforts China has made in pursuing ground breaking tech. We are the ones now playing catch up. In fact… Read more »
“In fact, I think the West has been engaging in a lazy, racist dismissal of the collosal efforts China has made in pursuing ground breaking tech.” Like the use of substandard steel being used in the construction of their Navy with poor welds as mentioned by a few on here over the years forgetting that they are the worlds leading exporters of all grades of steel. I think the west has woken up to the fact that they have overtaken us in many areas as you say, the question is what will we do about it? China The biggest steel… Read more »
Indeed. Internally they operate, I think, a five tier rating scheme for the quality and range of products produced in their steel mills. Their tier 1 mills and many of the tier 2 mills are a match for globally equivalents in terms of quality for the products they produce. There are,a couple of ultra exotic product ranges where the West (Europe and Japan) hold an advantage . The quality performance of the tier 1 and tier 2 mills has been driven largely by partnership with European and Japanese IP owners such as Sumitomo, Marubeni Itoch, Vallourec etc looking for lower… Read more »
What is the in-service date of the first type 26?!
“To put this massive scale of production into perspective, the destroyer commissionings alone brought a total of 768 additional VLS cells into the PLAN fleet last year, comparable to the entire Royal Navy fleet in service.”
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/01/plan-in-motion-chinese-navys-massive-ship-commissionings-in-2021/
There are indications the Chinese are looking to let the intellegensia grow and move to AI and robots.
Very good piece. I totally agreed.
Quality does not always have the edge, you need numbers to and the opposition are growing theirs. Already we are falling behind. No boots on the ground and even if we had nothing to give them… Start of WW2 all over but at least then we made our own kit, now we don’t
50! Really that is massive, it’s nothing really and we all know it
I am in borth wales and we have had none stop F15 fighters over here and up to snowdonia for about a week normally in flights of 3 from Mildenhall and Lakenheath, very loud as they were mostly at around 17,000 ft .
I read yesterday this article regards the F35 winning the Finnish comp regards a new Aircraft. What I found interesting was the contract the Finns wrote out:
Article will self delete after 7 days:
https://i.postimg.cc/t4ZcbFHK/img205.jpg
I am assuming all the F35’s are on the same side! lol.
Is it just me or have a whole bunch of comments been removed from this thread…. IT/IS glitch or are thought police getting nervous?