F-35 Initial Operational Capability was granted with 67 exceptions, say the National Audit Office in a report.
As of February 2020, the project team had cleared 47 of the exceptions, although Air Command is clearing them more slowly than planned, say the NAO in their report titled ‘Defence capabilities – delivering what was promised’.
The Ministry of Defence is buying 48 F-35B Lightning II aircraft. This is the first tranche of the 138 Lightning II aircraft the UK has committed to purchase over the life of the programme.
The Department will operate F-35s from the carriers and the Royal Air Force base at Marham. IOC (Land) was declared on the 31st of December 2018 with 67 exceptions against the intended milestone including: no availability of training simulators, issues with the global support solution and immature infrastructure delivery.
What is an exception?
The National Audit Office say that the Ministry of Defence declares key project milestones as achieved, without the intended capability always being delivered at that point. MoD guidance permits the declaration of a milestone “even if performance does not meet acceptance criteria, or if testing to confirm criteria have been met is incomplete”. The Department allows exceptions for a variety of reasons, “but the most frequently used in our case studies was that progress was good enough, despite criteria not being met”, they added.
“In some cases, this affected the Department’s ability to use the capability in the way intended. For example, in the case of the F-35 fighter jet (which accounted for two-thirds of exceptions in our case studies), delays to the provision of synthetic training facilities affected the availability of trained pilots and maintainers. Exceptions should be granted on the basis that there is a time bound plan for their resolution, but this was not the case in most of our sampled case studies.”
The report adds:
“The Department currently expects to deliver the promised F-35 Full Operating Capability requirements by 2023.”
Auditors always need to find something to criticise: unless they’re being paid a lot of spondulix by the auditee, of course!
Bring back the Hurri and the Spit… Something wrong? Give it a bash…
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1d/c6/83/1dc6838cd5a6681d82cf89f45e8b3dfe.jpg
Cracking picture Nigel….probably the only ‘plane in history that replaced it’s replacement.
Got a needle and thread, mate?
Great picture, Nigel.
Where I live we sometimes get to see the Fleet Air Arm Swordfish lumbering around the sky. Remarkable that it out lasted designed intended to replace it!
i’m waiting for a big film to be made about that – “war in a stringbag” or similar – what a story and what bravery
It should still be an option for the carriers. Doesn’t need assisted take off and can land on a sixpence.
When I was in the MOD / DERA there was a Scrutiny department. You had to submit your project documention to them before you could move onto the next phase. If it was not inline with the criteria you didn’t get the tick in the box and got sent away to sort it out. For some projects that was a BIG issue.
Trouble was the Scrutineers were ‘scruffy’ civvies and not all that senior either… so the rules (language) started to change and the Scutineers slowly got undermined. 67 exceptions is the result – indiscipline that’s what this is. Indiscipline!
Tax payers money is wasted and service personel go into action in kit not up to the job. You can’t blame politicians for this type of shambles because they have been told that the platform has achieved IOC and the ministers will have been given a report probably with a table of capabilities marked red (no capability), amber (some), green (full), blue (exceeds). The latter is almost as rare as hens teeth, sadly. Senior officers are putting their people at risk to cover their poor project management skills.
For me the problem is military officers are trying to be project managers – would any of you ex-service people on here follow a project manager into battle?
As I am now a PM I suppose I could now follow myself into battle, obeying the orders I give myself… It might get a bit confusing especially if my Prince guidance doesn’t fit the outcome…
🙂 Great answer Gunbuster…
I do know a number of ex-military who have come across into management roles in the private sector (is that what you have done?) and at least one former one star ranked officer agreed with me on this general point. He even admitted that he would never have agreed with me if he was still in uniform, but after a couple of years he had realised that there was an issue. It was very honest of him.
I generally understand that the training these officers recieve is designed to give them the ability and crucially the confidence to lead under the most stressing conditions that frankily I cannot imagine. Unfortunately, I don’t think that training puts them in the best position to manage the acquisition of complex and hugely expensive kit.
In the meantime good luck that the Prince guidance… 🙂
Yes I am now working for the private sector but still fixing grey things of various nations.
As for Prince 2 you could insert the words “common sense” and achieve the same outcome.
What do you think should be done about the NAO’s fraudulent claims about the MOD? It balances its budget every year, and to have a couple of civvies who know nothing about defence lie and lie again about that is disgraceful.
https://thinpinstripedline.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-nao-report-on-mod-spending-bad-news.html
There is an issue with how certain types of officers are streamlined for project teams, as its deemed they don’t really have the capability for the front line, 1st line or sea duties. But it is also an issue with how promotion is handled, as each junior officer must do a staff tour, before they are looked at for promotion. Luckily we do have some very good officers who have the capability and flexibility to jump from front line duties to staff tours etc. They bring first hand knowledge of how kit actually works in the field. The problem has always been bringing manufacturers to task and how they can afford better contract lawyers than the MoD. They always seem to wriggle out of penalties.
Please don’t say this, Ron5 will be on your back like he was with me.
Going with catapults and the C variant would have been much better for the Royal Navy. Now they’re stuck with the worst version lugging a big and heavy lift fan around. In a world where anti ship missiles are having greater and greater ranges the use of a longer ranged ‘C’ variant and refuelling drones is critical for the survivability and effectiveness at range for a carrier group.
Agreed, but we are where we are – unfortunately.
We are stuck with 2 somewhat useless carriers in a real fight over open ocean, where missiles launched from a coast can outrange the planes we carry.
Far from useless……..with a full airgroup they can pack a mighty punch. Anti-ship missiles will always be a threat, and defences must rise to the challenge! We can refuel our Bs with help from USMC. The projection of airpower is the key to any conflict, he who rules the skies, controls everything else. In addition, if we were to go up against a known enemy with land based anti-ship capability, do you not suppose for one moment that we would address that threat via long range heavy bombers and land attack cruise missiles?
Agreed far from useless but your statement that the projection of air power is vital in any conflict just maybe out of date. At the beginning of WW2 the most important naval asset was the big gun battleship; nobody thought that the aircraft carrier and naval aircraft would make it obsolete. The same may be happening now; the next war will maybe see the nuclear attack submarine and hypersonic anti-ship missiles make the West’s big stick carriers obsolete too. I actually doubt it but we must invest in as many air defence systems as we can on all our ships – including getting some ‘goal keeper’ Sea Ceptors on the QEs.
Has the captain of the Bismarck. The royal navy understood all about carriers, we invented them. And battleships were very useful throughout the war, principally because we controlled the sky’s over land and sea.
We should and would have refuelling aircraft if that was the case surely
Also look at what we did with our old small carriers and subsonic harriers. Its how we use the carriers and we can use these ones far better as we have more options and better escorts. Carrier on carrier at sea is unlikely or even A peer on peer war is highly unlikely as its suicide for both nations and their economy’s. Luckily soft power and politics with almost certainly stop a peer on peer war in the near future.
How do these people with missiles actually find these carriers in the open ocean.? Who wants to fire these missiles against us?
What missiles from what nation might those be then? another comment from the great uniformed.
we shouldn’t see the south china sea as the yardstick. the key roles for these carriers is to secure the northern atlantic trade routes and to a lesser extent, the med and even the gulf (probably too dangerous.) I cannot imagine a scenario of going to war with China and can imagine even less what kind of contribution we should/could make so far from home and our interests. in that respect, they are not useless
The main thing the carrier brings to the party is 4 acres of sovereign airfield. It bypasses the need for diplomatic agreements, over-flight agreements or use of airfields.
A few months ago, it could have easily snowballed into a conflict due to the hijacking and mining of tankers by Iran. If it escalated, its not unreasonable to believe a carrier would have been needed. Would Saudi, Kuwait or Oman risk letting us launch a retaliatory or offensive strike from their lands? Possibly, but its not guaranteed, especially as Iran has the means to fire a lot of fairly accurate SSMs at them!
A SSN would not enter the Gulf as the waters are too shallow, so would have to remain south of the Straights. Besides it has a limited number of TLAMs, which would have to be targeted on the most significant targets. The best option would be to sit a carrier task group off the south of Iran. It would be very ballsy to send a carrier into the Gulf without a lot of significant support. However, our F35Bs would annihilate the Iranian Airforce and their air defences would be next.
Like China, Iran has been investing in ballistic anti-ship missiles. It knows it cannot compete against the USN, so is trying to develop a weapon that can give it significant punch. But if it works how will they find a carrier group? Their long range surveillance aircraft will be detected and then intercepted by either the combat air patrol of the group’s missile defences. They have a few Kilo class subs, but our T23 and SSNs will get rid of those pretty quick. Their surface fleet is not up to much. Any ship or Dhow will not allowed anywhere near the fleet with an enforced exclusion zone. They don’t have satellite imagery, unless they pay Russia, China or Pakistan for it. So unless they have a new method of discovering a fleet from significant distance away over the ocean. The carrier would be pretty safe from any attack.
You mean the most versatile version? Of all the variants the F35C is the one lagging behind as the US Navy decides that maybe it doesn’t want as many as it first thought. The Falklands proved the truth worth of Stovl as Harriers launched and recovered in conditions that would have seriously hampered caliber ops. The USMC are able to refuel their Bs via V22 Osprey tankers. During QEs firstxset of trials they launched and recovered Bs in adverse weather conditions proving it’s worth.
Yes, of course they’re more versatile. Against a much less developed nation who only operated a few air launched Exocets. And even then, the only use of the carriers was to protect other ships and provide air superiority for the fleet. They could not perform any strike missions due to limited range and payload. If this is what we need carriers for, then why invest billions on two under armed supercarriers as opposed to smaller escort carriers?
You’re aware half the Harrier fleet during the Falklands were RAF close support versions that, shockingly, provided close air support not air superiority?
The Sea Harriers did conduct strike missions, but due to limited numbers their primary role was air defence which they carried out very effectively against far superior numbers of Mirage and Dagger fighters try reading ‘Sea Harrier over the zFalkkands’ by Sharkey Ward. The F35B is a fifth generation stealth Warplane, considerably more capable than a Sea Harrier, and indeed the majority of Fighters. Projection of airpower from the sea is critical and the F35B can fulfil the mission admirably
Better in a game of top trumps, sure. The reality is the C variant has been the most delayed, and EMALS has barely just qualified for service in the US.
There have multiple articles on various pages explaining why the RN has gone with STOVL, so I’m not going to go into a lecture on the subject. The overall conclusion is that the B variant and ramps are, for the RN, the best option.
I’m aware the procurement for EMALS has been a disaster, and that was a dodged bullet for the RN. This doesn’t counter act the fact that our F35’s are the worst of the group and will perform the worst in a conflict. We also cannot launch electronic jammer aircraft (which is becoming much more important), AWACS or refuelers
What on earth gives you the ill-informed impression that the F35B would perform the worst in combat? Absolute twaddle!
Limited range and payload capacity. Not to mention some weapons can’t be carried due to a smaller internal weapons bay.
Range on internal fuel is still better than any Rafael or Typhoon.
Go back to your bridge.
The combat radius of a rafale is much greater. Not to mention it can carry more weapons due to catapult assisted take off.
You are misinformed, on internal fuel the F-35B out ranges Rafael. Especially if carrying a warload.
Not on internal fuel it isn’t. And the F-35B has a greater maximum takeoff weight than Rafael. So two errors in two sentences.
The F35B can only carry a 1,000lb JDAM as opposed to a 2,000lb version, but of course the 2,000lb version is only ever carried by heavy bombers…….you have to remember an F35 woukd only operate in total Stelth mode in the opening days of a conflict and the Bs would be tasked with strike and air defence as appropriate, after which we can carry a truly impressive warload externally. With regard to range, US Navy carrier borne aircraft were refuelled via in-flight refuelling on a regular basis, and the USMC are bringing their Ospreys with them on QEs initial deployment. That facility will exist, so range is not actually a reL concern.
That should be regularly refuelled during both Gulf wars
Regardless, we should also not rely on friendly nations as our exclusive method of inflight refuelling. Catapults would allow for the launch of AWACS planes, refuelling drones and electronic jammers. I’m aware the F35 can do the former, but not to the standard of an E/A18 Growler
The USMC, with whom we have an excellent relationship are already developing under wing jamming pods for the F35B based on those used by the EA18G. The UK will at somepoint have to order the MV22, both for air lifting troops ashore from POW and for refuelling our F35Bs.
We would never have built the carriers with catapults or arrestors.
“Worst performing”. Once again, in a game of top trumps, sure. The B variant was the first to enter service, has proven operationally reliable, and offers the best availability for carrier operations.
The Lightning itself spreading offers enhanced AEW and electronic attack capabilities over previous gen aircraft through sensor, which helps to alleviate the lack of dedicated aircraft for the roles. We’re not planning on fighting the USN in open battle, what we do have are still the best non-american carriers
Of course, the two carriers are excellent assets. What I’m saying is they could have been done better.
Ethan,
Not at the time they were built. EMALS is still not reliable enough and hugely expensive. We would still be playing around trying to design the ships – years off build completion. We could NOT afford to spend the sums the US is on fixing EMALS. Conventional steam catapults would require steam generators to be fitted adding a huge amount of complicated and expensive equipment – unless we when back to steam propulsion! The RN has not had engineers trained to handle steam since the Leanders went out of service in the earlu 90’s and with coal fired power stations shutting, boil technicians are going to be as rare as hens teeth in the UK soon…
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but at the time these ships were designed and built the solutions implemented were the best available that the UK could afford.
For the UK to afford such capable assets at the TIME the projects were started is down to STOVL aircraft. The B variant is a key enabler. If we waited until 2050 we could a mumdinger of a UAV carrier! Or we could wait until 2150 and build a warp drive! How long do you want to wait?
The point I am trying to make is that you build what you can with the tech you have at the point you make the decisions – please leave the rose tinted glasses of hindsight in the draw! These ships and aeroplanes hit the drawing boards 20 years ago! That is probably too long and we know the issues with the procurement systems, but even so such is the complexity of modern systems it would still take 10 to 15 years to deliver these assets. And before anyone says we did better in wartime – look up the Lion Class of battleship.
Things were changing so rapidly during the war that the Lion Class, along with HMS Vanguard, occupied 3 (if I remember rightly) of Britains’ biggest slipways when we needed them the most and delivered nothing during the war!!!!! Everyone was doing the best they could at the time, sadly on this occassion, and with hindsight, we can see it was an almighty mistake…
Cheers
CR
That’s well said. I’m still agreeing that STOVL was the better option at the time, though I think with better procurement and had EMALS gone better we could have incorporated them into the design.
If we had decided to build the QE’s 10 years after the original date it may have been a possibility but even then we couldn’t afford it so it is genuinely a total pipe dream.
Hopefully drone tech moves on quickly and they can operate a variety of systems based around them to make up the gap.
Yeh, looking at some of the smaller drone designs the weight saved by not having the soft squiggy person in the front mean that they are way more capable than the equivalent sized manned aircraft.
I wonder given the smaller size for the same payload capability if it would be possible to design them to be lifted into the deck head with the undercarriage retracted and have another one parked underneath – as the Swiss Air Force do in their mountain hangars.
That would significantly improve the size of the air wing – although you would have to take ship stability into account as well…
Hi Ethan,
The design was suposed have the facility to upgrade to cats, but with all the usual faffing about with specs etc it got dropped. So sadly future role changes could to quite expensive…
What catapults? The ships were not designed for catapults, there is not enough steam. The arrestor gear has been problematical for the US navy. It’s becoming increasingly clear that after the 4 Ford’s, the US Navy is going to produce something different in the future.
The US and French carriers have nuclear and generate steam. As is repeatedly said the sortie rate for catapults would be lower than vtol. Everything you suggest is massively over simplified.
Sortie rates for one catapult will be lower compared to a STOVL ski jump. But sortie rates for 2 or 3 catapults are greater than STOVL. Not to mention the variety of planes flown. Also, I’m taking about Electromagnetic catapults.
And 3 plus catapults requires huge carriers, half as big again as QEs .
We either don’t have any, or we have the ones we currently have.
This is a legitimate question and it goes to the heart of what our military strategy should be.
The ships can incorporate at least 2. The deck space of QE is very similar to that of a Nimitz, 4 acres to 4.5
Still making things up Ethan. Give it a rest. Sortie rates are not determined by catapults or ski jumps.
Worth taking a look!
Development of the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier – a design history
https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/development-of-the-queen-elizabeth-class-aircraft-carrier-a-design-history/
ARRRRRRRRGHHHHH!
Right the year is 2020.
Anti ship missiles with ranges of hundreds of miles( far greater than 300) , that fly faster than 3.5 mach are not new.
They have been around since the early 1960s…I will save you the math …that’s over 60 years.
The AS4 Kitchen ASM armed Bears and Backfires in the 1960s . It is now being modernised to stay relevant (and a bit faster at Mach 4.5) . That’s still a 60 year old design.
The much vaunted Zircon is not is service despite the hype. Its suffering from “Childhood Diseases” to quote the head of the project.Its range is around 300 miles and a lot of its capabilities are contradictory. Its supposed to have plasma stealth that stops it being seen by radar and yet its supposedly radar guided and sends info to other missiles by data link. How? The laws of physics don’t stop working for one sort of EM radiation and not the other.
IR Homing? At MACH 8 the IR homer wont see anything due to the heat from friction. The available materials used for radar and IR homing windows at those speeds are limited. They have short comings in their performance and there ability to withstand erosion. A small raindrop, sleet or particulates in the air hitting the homing radome/ir window at mach 8 will do serious damage
To hit a target at that range you need to find and target something first. So unless you have lots of mid-course guidance assets or long range airborne radar aircraft and the refuelling assets to keep them in the air, you would need to do a shot gun type blind firing. That’s not really a practical solution.
So have a guess what the first targets are going to be in a shooting war? Mid-course guidance, refueler’s and radar carriers…nice big slow lumbering aircraft which will be ripe for a 120 mile Meteor shot by aircraft hundreds of miles from a carrier.
Long range , fast Anti Ship Missiles are not new. The Western powers have been working out tactics and countermeasures against these for over half a century. I could discuss homing head look angles, homing head radar baskets, manoeuvring out of baskets, Radar silence , ESM, Counter measures, decoys, hard and soft kill but that would end up with this comment being the the size of a book and if you read it I would have to shred you afterwards.
Lets just say its a big ass’d ocean and its surprisingly easy to hide in it if you know what you are doing. And from experience of doing Anti Ship missile defence its a well practised and well thought out evolution.
In practice, yes, but you forgot to mention human error.
Hopefully, we’ve learned from the lessons of the past.
“Revealed: catalogue of failings that sank Falklands warship HMS Sheffield”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/15/revealed-full-story-behind-sinking-of-falklands-warship-hms-sheffield
Theory sorry.
But Sheffield wasn’t a carrier was it???
No Ron, It was a much smaller target.
It was operating in an area where the carriers would not, so your comparison is badly flawed to say the least.
Do try and keep up Ron5, we’re talking about the ability to locate naval vessels at sea for ASM’s to be of use and how difficult it would be to do so in order for them to be effective, not the type of ship.
The ability to hide in open oceans of today is a thing of the past, satellites dedicated to finding threats and their location is now in real-time.
Most of this technology remains classified, but the link below should at least give you an idea.
https://earth.esa.int/c/document_library/get_file?folderId=233885&name=DLFE-2178.pdf
In short, it’s no longer a question of finding a needle in a haystack, quite the opposite.
Surveillance:
“A constant and vigilant surveillance of potentially hostile military threats is critical in preserving the operational effectiveness of our armed forces around the world.
Naval Space Command manages two distinct surveillance efforts in support of Fleet and Fleet Marine Forces: tracking satellites in orbit and monitoring over-the-horizon threats from sea and air forces.”
We learnt very quickly. Seawolf had its software modified withing a few Months. It was proven against a live exocet shot off Fishguard in 1983.
The issues with Scot which led to the loss of Sheffield where implemented immediately. The call “Strangle Scot” from the EW Director is still in place now.
Since then other ASM Defence issues have been put in place. Even the vessels are a lot more stealth and so hard to hit since then. Even the actions taken after a hit are completely different. Ships have different cabling, better compartmentalisation and nobody now wears nylon shrink wrap in heat working cloths.
Has there been any reporting on the tactics used by the Argentinians when using Exocet and how they found the ships? From what I remember they first tried using high flying Canberras as surveillance aircraft, trying to detect ships radar emissions. Then one got shot down by a Sea Dart, so they stayed further away. The issue for both Sheffield and Coventry was that they were doing jobs that an AWACs should have been doing, i.e. acting as the eyes of the fleet by being the radar picket. Therefore they had to have their search radars operating, so could easily be detected. I did read that the Super Entendards used a Hi-Lo-Hi attack profile as they new the minimum engagement height for Sea Dart.
“Argentinean attack
Sheffield was first detected by an Argentine Naval Aviation Lockheed SP-2H Neptune (2-P-112) patrol aircraft at 07:50 on 4 May 1982. The Neptune kept the British ships under surveillance, verifying Sheffield’ position again at 08:14 and 08:43. Two Argentine Navy Super Étendards, both armed with AM39 Exocets, took off from Río Grande naval air base at 09:45 and met with an Argentine Air Force KC-130H Hercules tanker at 10:00 hours. The two aircraft were 3-A-202, piloted by mission commander Capitán de Fragata (Commander) Augusto Bedacarratz, and 3-A-203, piloted by Teniente (Lieutenant) Armando Mayora.[12]
At 10:35, the Neptune climbed to 1,170 metres (3,840 ft) and detected a large and two medium-sized contacts at the coordinates 52°33′55″S 57°40′55″W. A few minutes later, the Neptune contacted the Super Étendards with this information. Flying at very low altitude at approximately 10:50, both Super Étendards climbed to 160 metres (520 ft) to verify these contacts, but failed to locate them and returned to low altitude. 25 miles (40 km) later they climbed again and, after a few seconds of scanning, the targets appeared on their radar screens.[13][14]
Both pilots loaded the coordinates into their weapons systems, returned to low level, and after last-minute checks, each launched an AM39 Exocet missile at 11:04 while 20 to 30 miles (32 to 48 km) away from their targets. The Super Étendards did not need to refuel again from the KC-130, which had been waiting, and landed at Río Grande at 12:04.
Supporting the mission were an Argentine Air Force Learjet 35 as a decoy and two IAI Daggers as the KC-130 escorts.”
Hi Gunbuster,
Steady, mate. Deep breath!
I particularly liked “Shred you afterwards.” 🙂 Much more painful than the traditional, “would have to shoot you.” 🙂 🙂 🙂
Just to support the “its a big ass’d ocean”. A ship doing 20knots will cover 240nm in 12 hours. If the ship is already at sea and you’re trying to find it then you have to search a circle of 181,000 sq.nm. That’s a huge area and the CSG would go quiet if it was trying to hide.
There was an interesting episode of Britain’s biggest warship, where Commodore (now Rear Admiral) Jerry Kyd explained why the Navy still uses signal lambs, flags and sextants. Its for when all that clever tech fails or is more of a hinderance than a help.
It is possible, as I know you know, to detect a radar transmition up to 4x times the distance of the effective radar coverage. That is just a simple law of physics – no way round it. So if a hunting group, planes or surface vessels got too close to hiding CSG with their radars on the chances are they would have a very exciting if short life expectancy…
The best chance of catching any ship, carrier or otherwise is at choke points and everyone keeps them under close watch. If a Russian sub got into the Western Approaches, for example, with a view to sinking a NATO carrier it would have to be very good to stay alive long enough to fire, or very lucky if the carrier came too close… Why? Because NATO knows the risks and patrols those waters.
NATO Naval forces are good, British, French and US Navies are particularly good. The Dutch and German forces ain’t too shabby either (equipment issues fo rthe German’s accepted).
Again we’re into book writing stuff 🙂
Long story short our CSG are hugely capable and we should be proud of them. If they were that much of a sitting target the US would not be putting MC units at risk on them.
Cheers CR
I completely agree. I spent 34 years doing this stuff and the RN was very very good at it and still is. Even in the 5 years since I left the tech has come on leaps and bounds. Luckily I still keep up to date on the systems and the current threat assessments. Things are not as bad as they are reported in the MSM.
Go on, dare you? (I have a red pen ready for corrections and black felt tip for redacting)
Hmm, plasma stealth. With regards to EM waves i.e. radar, radio etc, plasma can either reflect, be in resonance with or allow transmission through. This is all dependent upon the plasma’s electron frequency. If the frequency equals the radar frequency and is thus in resonance, it can absorb the EM wave (totally) and not allow it to pass through or be reflected. Plasma can act as a superconductor and recently there have be strides to develop plasma antennas and waveguides. This is because there is next to no interaction between the E and H waves as they travel down the plasma waveguide, i.e. no losses. But also the antenna can have its gain tuned, but also switched on or off. You can have a plasma field with multiple electron frequencies. This means you could tune the plasma field to your specific needs, i.e. one frequency for your radar to search for targets and another frequency tuned to say an X – band frequency to absorb an enemy’s radar transmissions. There are a number of papers and patents dating back to the 60’s to show the theory and experiments behind the concept, however, I have yet to see a working prototype, yet alone a production version. Theoretically speaking because of the tune-able amount of resonance (absorption) it could even defeat quantum radar. For a change Wiki actually has a correct explanation of plasma stealth.
Plasma also has some weird affects where it can act as a solid, but be very slippery. It was shown that in a wind tunnel it could be used to affect the laminar flow over a wing. By either directing the airflow, much like a blown wing surface or could be used to reduce drag. It was postulated that it could be generated ahead of the aircraft, to create a “vacuum like state” for the aircraft to pass through and thus significantly reducing friction and drag. Think along the lines of cavitation torpedoes using bubbles to glide through the water. There was a concept tried for the SR71, but it never got past the prototype stage. I guessing they couldn’t maintain the plasma field.
Hypersonic vehicles travelling through the atmosphere interact with it differently compared to supersonic ones. The main issue is heat, not only does this heat up the vehicles skin, but also ionizes the atmosphere. The faster you go the worse it gets. This is the reason that space capsules and the shuttle had radio blackouts lasting minutes long and in the case of the space shuttle half an hour long. The capsule/space shuttle would be hitting the upper atmosphere at speeds greater than Mach 25. At these speeds the air molecules are literally being broken apart and thus ionized by having their electrons stripped off. The capsules with their blunt draggy shape would slow down much quicker than the space shuttle, so capsules like Apollo 16 only had radio black out lasting minutes. The first space shuttle missions had blackouts lasting nearly 30 minutes long. They quickly developed a dedicated satellite communication system, where the antenna in the tail fin pointed back up to space and thus was no longer affected by the ionized gas cloud generated by aero-braking.
This brings us on nicely to the mythical Zircon. I have no doubt that it can travel faster than Mach 4.5, as it’s a development of earlier missiles. It will not be travelling fast enough to generate an ionized cloud around it (Mach 10+ish). However, it is reputed to travel nearly at Mach 9, at these speeds you may start to generate an ionised cloud. There are a lot of factors involved especially when travelling low over the sea. The ionized cloud will blind the Zircon or interfere with its radar. I do have doubts over its plasma stealth? The question is how is it done? To have fine control over the plasma field you need a known gas that you can control. The atmosphere can be used, but it has too many constantly changing variables such as density, temperature, humidity etc. This means the gas must be in a vessel located in front of the radar in the nose. You will need a means of injecting or evacuating the gas to/from the vessel, as the gas’s density has a part to play in the electron frequency. You also need a method of controlling the gas’s temperature as this also effects the electron frequency. The missile is supposed to be huge compared to say a Harpoon, but even so to produce the components to accurately control the plasma may be beyond today’s technology. I’ll stand corrected if the Russians prove me wrong.
I read that we have enough up and coming pilots but there’s just not enough trainers and planes to go around! Closing training bases and getting rid of 5,000 personel wasn’t good for the RAF! I don’t know why we put up with it! Americans wouldn’t, and now everyone’s saying France is now the major european power not the UK.
“Everyone” ?? In France maybe, nowhere else.
And yet they performed admirably at Red Flag.
Exactly Ron. An example of how ‘expert’ opinion matches up to performance comes to mind. Before Gulf War I British Challengers were bit of a bad joke having come a miserable bottom in a N.A.T.O. tank trial. Our national media went into over drive and The Guardian’s resident poo-stirrer mocked them as ‘crap tanks’. Three hundred went out to liberate Kuwait followed by a press pack itching to find fault or ‘make-it-all-up’. After the war Brig. Patrick Cordingly went to thank Challenger’s designers and makers for a superb vehicle. Ninety eight per cent availability and the longest tank-on-tank kill recorded among a huge number of T65s, T72s and Soviet era A.P.C.s knocked out. As (I think) Brig. Cordingly said the real test is how they perform for real. We Brits are, as a nation world, leaders in knocking out own achievements.
+1000
And importantly the fuel consumption was way lower than the US equivalents meaning the Loggy train was less vulnerable and a lot less needy.
(“Oh US ARMY you need to stop for fuel? We will keep going then as we have another hundred miles in the tank….)
Oh land stuff, let me put my boot in.
In reference to tank trials, they are usually fairly one sided, some of the ones I have been on tend to play to a certain tanks strengths or weakness. So for example, If I was designing a shoot for Challenger 2, I would put plenty of long range engagements in that are time dependent and plenty of multiple target presentation to play to the strengths of that particular platform. I would however deliberately omit timed movement as Challenger 2 is painfully slow at accelerating.
I have seen this happen on a shoot between Leo2 and CR2 where the points allocated for moving fire positions were high but actually hitting the target low, as Leo is much faster than CR2 the Germans trounced the British.
What Barry is referring to was the Canadian Army Trophy 1987 where CR1 got spanked, the shoots were fast and short range which was a Challenger1 weakness, but the main problem was the crews on a new platform fresh from the factory.
M1A1 suffered badly in the desert, the turbine engine hoovered up the dust and a large portion of the tanks usable fuel is also used as protection to the crews wouldn’t use it, hence the stopping so often. Challenger was designed for the desert, that’s why it did well, it also didn’t come into much contact with the Iraqi top end kit.
BV
It also helped spending a couple of months in Oman prior to kick off, ironing out the bugs, i.e. more enclosed track skirts and better filters.
Some interesting comments in relation to this post, something I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion in the past on UKDJ, transfer the technological improvements to a sixth-gen airframe and support the 5th gen aircraft up to block four standards.
As I’ve seen on more than one occasion in my industry, once you have different software versions running on different systems, its better to draw a line under it and create something new in order to avoid the same problems that are now occurring with the F35 programme, fix one problem for one version and create two more elsewhere on others.
Tempest has a great future ahead of it, including loyal wingman.
“During a Monday briefing, Lockheed laid out a series of upgrades that could be adopted during the jet’s “Block 4” modification phase in the mid-2020s.”
Lockheed hypes F-35′s upgrade plan as interest in ‘sixth-gen’ fighters grows
“I’m not sure you’re going to see this big leap — like you saw from fourth-gen to fifth-gen — with fifth-gen to sixth-gen. I think it could very well be an evolution,” she said. “F-35 could be the basis of what we look at, and certainly the technologies of the F-35, if not the platform itself.”
https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/paris-air-show/2019/06/21/lockheed-hypes-f-35s-upgrade-plan-as-interest-in-sixth-gen-fighters-grows/
The next decade should be very interesting!
Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert speculated in February 2015 that the F/A-XX would not rely on speed or stealth as much as previous generation jet fighters due to better signature detection and proliferating high-speed anti-aircraft weapons.
Instead, the fighter would carry a new spectrum of weapons to overwhelm or suppress enemy air defences.
One approach could create a minimum cost F/A-XX that uses high cost, high-performance weapons to defeat threats; according to the Navy’s Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) battle network concept, an individual platform would not need to have a full suite of sensors and rely on off-board data-linked information from other platforms to provide targeting information and guide weapons launched from the platform.
The F/A-XX platforms will be made to carry missiles, have power and cooling systems for directed-energy weapons, and have sensors that can target small radar cross-section targets; cyber warfare platforms at a tactical level as part of a family of systems are being explored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F/A-XX_Program
“As I’ve seen on more than one occasion in my industry, once you have different software versions running on different systems, its better to draw a line under it and create something new in order to avoid the same problems that are now occurring with the F35 programme, fix one problem for one version and create two more elsewhere on others”
Are you seriously saying that the UK should stop buying F-35’s because there are F-35’s operating with multiple software levels and start totally fresh with Tempest because that way there will be only one software version: the Tempest one???
Good grief. Firstly you say the UK shouldn’t buy F-35’s because it has too many faults, then you said the UK can’t afford it, and now you’re saying it has too many levels of software.
I wonder what you’ll come up with next. You dislike the F-35 as much as Putin does.
It’s like dealing with a child who is just learning to read.
Take your time and look at the very first paragraph.
Let me help you again Ron 5, “and support the 5th gen aircraft up to block four standards.” Not due until the mid-twenty twenties. Try reading the attached links and educate yourself, I don’t expect you to think out of the box, or read between the lines.
This is for commercial use now, think what the military has up its sleeve.
Far greater image resolution for a start, real-time tracking capabilities with a ship’s location, speed and heading.
“How can satellites help tackle maritime piracy?
The ability to effectively track ship and other vessel movements via satellite helps to ensure the safe passage of both passenger and cargo boats across our seas. Keeping track of each of those vessels is the first step in rooting out maritime crime.
Real-time tracking of shipping in Europe is underway. EMSAs SafeSeaNet is a vessel traffic monitoring and information system covering the waters in and around Europe. It works by tracking Automatic Identification System (AIS) radio signals, an electronic device with which nearly all commercial ships are fitted that broadcasts the ship’s location, heading and identity. Emerging technologies now enable AIS signals to be received by satellite, allowing for an extended geographical range of the AIS system.
However, maritime pirates boarding a commercial tanker will typically disable the AIS tracking system, causing the boat to “disappear” for up to days at a time. Remote sensory imagery from geostationary satellites in near real-time can help find these missing vessels across square miles of open ocean.
But very high-resolution satellite imaging has further applications yet, owing to the quality of observation and tracking data. “You can see what type of vessel it is,” says Tony Long, who leads Pew’s Ending Illegal Fishing campaign. “You can see quite clearly two vessels side by side… any activity on deck, and indeed, if there is any fishing gear in the water.” The system has already been proven to work on two separate occasions.”
https://earthi.space/blog/satellites-prevent-maritime-piracy/
Why do you think LRASM, purely as an example, is becoming such a big factor in the USA’s and other NATO partners naval strategy for the future? Datalink is the clue here.
“The LRASM is based on the AGM-158B JASSM-ER, but incorporates a multi-mode radio frequency sensor, a new weapon data-link and altimeter, and an uprated power system. It can be directed to attack enemy ships by its launch platform, receive updates via its datalink, or use onboard sensors to find its target.”
Put two and two together, real-time positioning and a two-way data-link.
Beginning to make some sense?
The two-way data-link via satellite communications is still the weak point for long range systems. Possibly one of the methods how Iran gained control of the RQ170 Sentinel drone was by over powering the data-link signal to the satellite. There is clearly more to the story, like how did they know where to air their jamming signal etc.
There has been a spate of countries announcing dedicated space commands. For the UK that is predominantly to control our communication and surveillance satellites. However, I do foresee in the very near future the UK’s ability to launch small to medium sized satellites into low earth orbit. A number of countries have shown they have the capability to physically damage satellites, with India being the latest. Russia is also well known for tampering with satellites via hacking. Therefore the confidence in maintaining communications over long distance isn’t guaranteed, especially as satellites are now quite vulnerable. We rely on them for the majority of our communication needs, long distance control of UAVs. reconnaissance and navigation.
We must have the ability of replacing damaged or hacked satellites. The Zephyr high altitude aircraft is a cheap alternative, but is only really good as a communications relay due to its limited payload. The ability to launch lots of cheap cubesats is the long term answer. With each cubesat being dedicated to a single purpose that can be networked to packet of cubesats to give a better spread of resilience and capability. The Surrey Satellite Centre has already demonstrated that it can build a swarm of cubesats that network with each other. Planning is underway in Sutherland, Cornwall and Prestwick to develop space port sites. With the A’Mhoine peninsula site being designed for vertical launches. Whilst the St.Mawgan and Prestwick airports are being designed for horizontal launches. So hopefully in a few years time we will have the capability of replacing our own satellites.
It all sounds very promising indeed!