A Royal Air Force Poseidon P-8 has been refuelled in UK airspace for the first time, during Exercise Cobra Warrior 25-2.
The sortie was carried out by 42 (Torpedo Bomber) Squadron during Exercise Cobra Warrior 25-2, with a USAF KC-135 Stratotanker from RAF Mildenhall extending a refuelling hose to the Poseidon mid-flight.
The procedure allowed the aircraft to remain airborne longer without returning to base, significantly expanding its operational range.
Squadron Leader Kane, who previously served on exchange with the US Navy and gained extensive experience testing Poseidon refuelling with both KC-135 and KC-46 tankers, captained the historic flight.
A spokesperson from RAF Lossiemouth said: “This is a major milestone for the UK Poseidon. The P-8 is already a versatile aircraft but being able to extend the time those missions can stay in the air will be of huge benefit to both the RAF and our allies.”
They added: “This exercise has also shown the importance of being able to operate with, and alongside, our allies. On behalf of the P8 crew I’d like to thank our US Air Force colleagues for aiding us in making the first AAR a success.”
Poseidons, operated by 42, 120 and 201 Squadrons from RAF Lossiemouth, are at the heart of the UK’s anti-submarine warfare and maritime surveillance mission. However, the type lacked a British refuelling option. The UK does not operate any boom-equipped tankers, meaning aircraft like the Poseidon and some other types must rely on US support to extend endurance.
The milestone comes just weeks after 42 Squadron was formally re-established at Lossiemouth in a ceremony attended by King Charles III. It also coincides with the 2025 iteration of Exercise Cobra Warrior, bringing together NATO partners for large-scale collective training.
O/T – The PLAN just conducted their first publicly disclosed launches of their J-35, J-15T and KJ-600 aircraft from their carrier Fujian. It’s the first time a fifth-generation fighter has been launched using an EMALS.
Yes but they are all rubbish and their Pilots are rubbish and their Emals are rubbish and their ships are rubbish and they are rubbish at fighting and and, and everything.
So there !
And they have no 100 year history and who gives a shite if they have twice the number of major surface combatants as the USN.. they are only pretend warships. We all know HMS massive is the best idea ever and one HMS massive is worth 10 normal warships.. because never in history has the side with the most stuff ever won….
The side with the best tactics, training and capability wins. And operational experience. Ukraine being a very good example against the Russian masses of shite. They aren’t winning. But the Russians thought it would be over in a week. China without doubt has mass, and enormous industrial capacity. But totally unproven in even the most basic combat scenarios. And centralised command structures do not have a track record of working very well. It seems wh3n people discuss China, all real world combat tactics and geopolitics seem to go out of the window. People forget the capabilities the Americans have. And China isn’t interested in some war of attrition that drags on for years. They have absolutely nothing to gain from that.
Sorry Robert we are going to have to agree to disagree.. operational experience and tec edge only takes you so far.. and the more mass you develop and deploy the more you improve your tec and operational experience..
Essentially the increased mass that China has is going to end in the likelihood the USN losing against it in a future conflict.. because it’s mass that created great navys.. small navies are essentially not very good because they are small, Mass creates the ability to deploy and perfect your skills, and then control your enemies movements finally overwhelm at the needed point.
The guy who has really looked at this and is worth reading is Sam Tangredi, the Leidos Chair of Future Warfare Studies at the US Naval War College and a former US Navy captain
In Jan 2023 Sam Tangredi wrote a paper that essentially says if history is any lesson, China’s numerical advantage is likely to lead to defeat for the US Navy in any war with China His reasoning was developed by studying the 27 biggest navel wars and in 25 cases the largest navy won and that was not the most advanced navy it was the biggest.
He specifically states naval wars “were won by superior numbers” or, when between equal forces, superior strategy, or admiralship. Often all three qualities act together,”
because
“operating a large fleet generally facilitates more extensive training and is often an indicator that leaders are concerned with strategic requirements”
“ In the Napoleonic wars, for example, Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson may have been more brilliant—and braver—than his French and Spanish counterparts. His captains and crews were better trained. However, Great Britain dominated the war at sea because it had a larger fleet it could concentrate or disperse as conditions warranted. French warships were superior in the technology of ship design and construction, but ultimately, it was the large numbers of Royal Navy ships that prevented Napoleon from crossing the channel.”
that are the statement from the professor of future war studies at the U.S. Naval. It’s not my though that the mass of the PLAN will overcome the USN.
There is another very good 2020 report that was published by US naval intelligence ( it was released as part of a FOI) that was tracking the trajectories of the two navy’s and essentially comes to the conclusion that on its own resources the US is no long able to maintain naval dominance over the PLAN and by 2030 the PLAN will have 200 major surface combatants vs about 90 USN surface combatants.. its conclusions was essentially the only hope the USN had of matching the PLAN was for the USN to start building every ship it could in friendly countries,Japan and Korea and Europe.. because the PLAN could and is simply outbuilding and at some point soon will be able to overwhelm the USN. But it could not do that due to laws and barriers.. it also noted that it was essentially impossible for the US to regenerate its naval shipbuilding industry to keep up with the PLAN.
The same report also noted that PLAN ships were now essentially being built to the same standard as the U.S. baring a few minor weakness that were being dealt with at speed.
As for china not wanting to fight a long war.. that is exactly the war china would fight, all its planning is around a long war.. in their literature they specifically dismiss a short war, one of their leaders ( I cannot remember which) stated something to the effect of “it would be a nice fantasy to be able to defeat the US in a short war, but that will not happen they will be defeated in a long war” essentially Chinese military doctrine is all about the long war, you win by suffering nothing more nothing less. If they decide war is the only way to reunite with Tawain and if the US gets involved chinas plan is simply to wrap the US and any allies in suffering, because it thinks a western democracy will break before china does.. that’s it that’s their plan, it’s well known and written about a lot.
I think the difference is that now you don’t need to either see the ship close up, or even notice the smoke from its funnels for it to be in range. Realistically the only major naval battles in the last 40 odd years were in the Falklands, and all our losses were due to aircraft attacks, whilst the Argentinian loss was from HMS Conqueror, then a very stealthy submarine compared to the Argentina capabilities about their “battleship”.
Navy’s can now engage each other from over the horizon, so whilst looking at historical data can offer some insight, given the changes since the last large naval engagements, it is perhaps not as applicable as some might think.
The thing is Mark..it’s essentially universal.. to think we have technology ourselves out of a basic principle is a very big assumption and potential catastrophe mistake..essentially unless you are talking generations difference in technology it stands. So yes if your navy has 32 cannon frigates and the opposition is in war canoes..you can make some assumptions if both your navies have long range cruise missiles, space based ISTAR etc then the rule will apply…so yes if china rocked up with 200 ww2 gun armed destroyers numbers are meaningless… but they are not.
I don’t belive starbucks drinking, ticktock watching, Disneyland visiting young Chinese are anymore up for suffering than me or you. They just want a nice life. Not war with the US. And if China was truly threatening or even sinking US warships. B2 & B21 delivered tactical buckets of sunshine would be on its way to those warship building yards. Then any advantage is gone in a second.
Hi Robert the problem is many of the tick-tock watching Starbucks drinking Disneyland visiting young Chinese people are yes very pleasant, but many ( the majority) of them are also die hard nationalist communists with a profound streak of Han exceptionalism..
Just consider this, the third Reich and the profound nationalist exceptionalism that came from it was born out of 20 years of national humiliation. Han exceptionalism was created from the century of humiliation, it’s seed started to grow in deep in the early 1900s, the nationalist revolutionary Sun Yat-sen made Han Chinese superiority a basic tenet of the Chinese revolution. The “century of humiliation” was created by Western colonizers, Japanese imperialists, and the weakness and illegitimacy of the ethnic minority Manchu Qing Dynasty.. from this core in the revolutionary movement a fierce ethnocentrism and zealous xenophobic sentiment was born in china equal to,anything born in Germany in the 1920s. China was to be for the Han, an opportunity to wipe away the incompetence and inherent wrongs of the Manchu emperors who had not only brutally invaded and conquered China centuries earlier, but had shamefully led the Middle Kingdom to near ruin by succumbing to “ barbarians.” When the Qing Dynasty fell in 1911 this hatred was cemented.
Now Mao who for all is many faults was one of the few none racist leaders of his time tried to remove this Han exceptionalism from china, Mao’s campaign against “Han racism” was not a success ( this was a man loved by the Chinese like he was an angle) . Ethnic minority groups seeking independence or cultural autonomy were deemed counter-revolutionary and collectively punished. The superiority of the Han was embedded into the class struggle as Chinese communism warped away from international communism into national communism..Bigoted language and straightforward expressions of racial superiority were essentially covered over with condescending views on revolution.
So many academics have concluded that it’s actually impossible to get around this collective superiority “ As with many sociological facets, Chinese prejudice is manifested as a collective, not an individual, issue, bringing about a serious societal disconnect.”
The young have been raised to be national communists and good servants of the communist state.
The older generations, those with the power also believe completely in the Chinese cycle of suffering..it’s culturally embedded.. Mao killed 20 million Chinese people, as a society they still venerate him and explain it away as a bad day. They accept and believe in the cycle of suffering and national renewal from china becoming whole and re integrating Taiwan.. they culturally will never and cannot accept separation from Taiwan..for china this is still a war being fought, they are simply in a hiatus preparing for the last act…. This is what most people in the west don’t get..china is at war with Taiwan, it’s just not jet decided it’s time to start its final offensive, they are still giving time for Taiwan to surrender before the bloodbath begins.. but that clock is ticking with four seminal dates 2027 ( 100 years since the start of the civil war with the nationalists) and 2035 ( 100 years after the end of the long March) 2049 ( 100 years since the end of the century of humiliation).. this time period coincided with the likely high tide of Chinese strategic power and the fact xi is 72 and wants to cement his place in history by reunification.. Xi and china will reunify by 2049 no matter the cost..this is set in stone..this a their “we will fight them on the beaches”…
This is what the Chinese believe and what they will always say they believe and if they don’t they will shut up and agree or be re-educated. Because Xi directly controls the Chinese communist party of 100million members who all follow him, he has total control of internal security forces equaling 5 million, a 5 million strong armed force and 3 million political warfare operatives as of 2023 there were 700 million CCTV cameras in China..all linked to security forces.. that’s 1 for every 2 people..
The Chinese believe they will suffer, they are educated to accept that fact and embrace it and those that don’t are discovered and re educated…xi himself spent years as a young man a prisoner being re-educated.
Chinese society is a heady mix of the worst bits of the Soviet Union and the third Reich intermixed with the most advanced surveillance systems and biggest security apparatus ever known.. the Chineses will die in their millions before their society destabilises.. they done so before.
As for the buckets of sunshine.. that only works if the other side cannot trigger MAD and china can now trigger MAD, the US will only throw buckets of sunshine if it wants to die.. because I would bet money china would never start a nuclear exchange, but I would bet everything that they would fully engage in one if it started.
So if you want me to make a bet ( and I’ve read a shite load on this subject) 1 of 3 things will happen
1) Taiwan will capitulate without the west getting involved, this will be because of strategic strangulation, probably..
2) china initiates a war with Taiwan and the west gets involved.. with the west the way it is at present.. that’s war will drag on for years until one side essentially capitulates because its population cannot take the shattering of its economy anymore..( because neither side will be able to give a knockout blow and all sides have massive strategic reserves).. sea control will be critical for the west. It’s likely Russia, NK and Iran will take their opportunities at the same time.
3) the West changes course, gets its head out of its arse realises it’s in a superpower race with a power block that is far more deadly than the USSR ( because it’s both a land and maritime superpower).. realises china is already at war with Taiwan and means everything it says. This change of course essentially means a profound Cold War reset..developing our population to expect and manage catastrophic events, ensure have a water right alliance in the pacific and can put the equivalent of the entire European navies into the pacific to back up the U.S… the U.S. needs to move to procuring 5 major surface combanants and 5 SSNs a year.. the west needs to be able to guarantee access to another 40 million gross deadweight tones of merchant ship products if it wants to compete with china in the maritime domain, it needs to roll back china from Africa and South America, essentially it’s needs to go completely all out “Reagan doctrine “ on china and it needs to happen ASAP. It essentially destroys chinas ability to fight WW3 before it starts.
Their is a small chance that china will skip the foreplay if it believes it’s inevitable the US and Japan will become involved and undertake a day one strategic strike and try and force the US out to the second island chain… but strangulation of tiawan is more likely if it thinks there is a chance it can keep either the US or Japan out of the war.
The vanishingly small outcome is that china just accepts it’s not having Taiwan. I simply don’t believe from all my reading china would ever accept this unless there was no hope what soever of winning as it would likely destroy the CCP and china is the CCP.
Historically not for naval warfare, battles like Trafalgar are the exception. 8 times out of ten the side with more people and more ships won.
China has about 200 times the military shipbuilding capacity of the US. For every destroyer the US makes, China can make 200. Is a Burke really 200 times better than a Type 052D? No, no it’s not.
We’ll all agree the US has better training and better equipment, but the Japanese started with much better training and experience and often better equipment in WW2. We all know how that turned out.
And China is focused in the South China Sea, the US Navy is spread across the world to enforce US policy worldwide.
Halfwit??? Truly a halfwit.
We desperately need more P-8 airframes in service, just like everything else in HM armed forces use. The upcoming Defence investment plan is going to be crucial. We will find out how seriously the government is taking the defence of the nation.
Not holding my breath, there will be some reason why the MOD can not order what it says it needs, lots of defection, warm words, long briefings, charts and meeting and deluded CDS agreeing and nodding a long.
It’s a disgrace that we can’t refuel our own aircraft! Only made worse by the fact we have so few we need to be able to maximise the time they spend on station. Classic MOD ineptitude.
That’s just silly, I’ve seen our aircraft being refueled many many times on station.
It depends which aircraft it is, some need probe refuelling like P8 which will need refitting in time.
Do you think its a disgrace when RAF Voyagers refuel US Navy F18s? or French Rafales?
No as the US and France clearly have the capability to refuel their own aircraft if they need to. Which you know already. Hopefully. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t since talking horse crap is your usual level on here.
I’m very aware they refuel their own aircraft. Except the US Navy doesn’t have boom refueling capability. So i guess with disgrace they rely on the USAF. Shock horror. Working with allies isn’t disgraceful is it. We help them, they help us. On live operations, allied nations work together making the most of each nations capabilities. Like during the first and second Gulf wars. Or operations over Afghanistan or Syria and Iraq. But you know that right. Having boom capability on RAF tankers would be great. But we don’t. So we make the best of what’s available. And lucky for us, we are best pals with the boys at Mildenhall.
You’re missing the point.
The issue is a correctable problem. It only exists because of corruption (Yes, I’ll call it that), born out of PFI kickbacks. The air tanker contract is absurd to the maximum, it wouldn’t survive modern contract scrutiny of today.
It should be invalidated by the courts.
The PFI was signed when the need for boom didn’t really exist. And the Voyager fleet is tenfold better than the Tristar/VC-10 days. The cost and training involved is also considerable. Its just another one of those things that trickles down the priority list when our thinly stretched defence budget needs to be spent elsewhere. Especially when we can reach out for allied support.
Asking the airforce to refuel a navy plane is pretty different to asking another country to refuel your plane.
And yes, it’s making the best of a bad situation, but it’s a situation that should never have occured.
Why on earth can’t we have the ability to change at least one fuel drogue to the American type the P8s need?
Good… But, we should use this news as a reason to push the MoD to expand the MRTT’s that we have to be able to do this in house, adding our own Refueller Boom/Probe. And it’ll mean the fleet would be capable of coupling with the F-35As that were recently penned in by the PM.
… Another way to boost our Aerial Refuelling would be to modify the AirTanker contract so that the A400M’s could perform the Under Wing refuelling, as right now, they’re the exclusive providers to the RAF.
Sadly changing contracts is simply a way to take a huge pile of taxpayers money and hand it over to shareholders.
The Dutch had a tanker at RIAT that can refuel using a boom and also use drag hoses.
Yes, I think it’s high time we sought to renegotiate the MRTT contract and have booms fitted to our A330 fleet, either as part of a Contract Extension or Variation. I appreciate this would be an opportunity for AirTanker to load-up any response but a boom capability is increasingly becoming a necessity IMHO, what with F-35A being added to the list of boom receivers now coming into the RAF inventory. I dare say FR/Cobham and the like would be interested, no?
which in turn also probably means the RAF acquiring the 5 aircraft under contract but used by airlines and converting them to tankers….maybe MOD just buy airtanker out of the remainder of the contract
Now if only we had about 20 odd aircraft and the ability to mid air refuel them ourselves…NATO for ever..or else.
“extending a refuelling hose” really!
You got to feel sorry for the chap who has to do the Siphoning.
A case of “Suck it and see”.
Although other aircraft can refuel our assets, it is a crazy facet of British defence and procurement that we have more types in RAF service that we cannot refuel ourselves than those that we can.
Can: Typhoon. F35. Atlas.
Cannot. C17. P8. RC135. Coming E7.
And the ridiculous F35A purchase.
Don’t fret so.
Tempest is all electric, zero emmisions and a 1500 mile range in cold weather, more when its warm.
Just highlights the ludicrous situation we are in. Want a maritime patrol aircraft with “legs”? Please Mr USAF can we borrow on of yours”? And the PFI contract with Air Tanker? Tear it up, tell them “war is hell” and they can stuff it.
The air tanker contract needs to be investigated by the home office and torn up by the courts. It’s fraud in the most blatant way.
‘Poseidons, operated by 42, 120 and 201 Squadrons from RAF Lossiemouth’
Could someone please explain why three squadrons are required to fly 9 aircraft?
42 Squadron is the Operational Conversion unit, and presumably it’s easier to manage the active aircraft between 2 squadrons for deployments etc rather than splitting a single squadron.
Because we secretly have 36 P8’s It’s just that we like to pretend to have less.
Well really it is two, as 42 is the OCU for the type.
A few guesses:
There are many more people in the Squadrons than is usual in other Sqn’s with assets like Typhoon, with but one pilot, so they are split. And add the ground crews as well.
The RAF wanted to resurrect as many famous ASW MPA “Number Plates” as possible, like 120 and 201. The other was 206.
Some aircraft assets are pooled, I believe, so they are not allocated to a particular Squadron.
So RAF will now be after boom refuelling.
Then they can have more F35A as it is a sovereign capability.
All so predictable.
The boom refuelling is such a pain in the arse, in the grade scheme of things. All because Curtiss LeMay. Mind you he was a git, grossly underestimated the Luftwaffe in 1943, did what he could to make the Cold War Hot and insisted on these frikken boom refuelers.
If you take a step back, the Voyagers have only recently become an issue. Until recently we only had 8 C-17s that couldn’t be refuelled by a sovereign tanker.