russian planes appreciation thread

[elmicker]

they are designed to carry and launch F-35C's, the reason the Royal Navy seems to be going with the F-35B's is because BAE believes EMALS is going to be "too expensive" to put on the QE carriers.

There's a bit of an inter-service territorial pissing contest going on too. If the QEs came equipped with cats and traps then in all likelihood we'd end up equipping the RN with hornets or rafales and spend whatever was saved on not purchasing F-35s on carrier-borne radar and refuelling aircraft (or we'd still buy the -35s and get the support aircraft later). Once we've done that the Fleet Air Arm would be an outright superior force to the RAF. There'd only be a couple of toys left for the RAF that the RN wouldn't have, things like full sized AWACS in the E-3 and the mini-JSTARS Sentinel aircraft (which is being retired as soon as it's not needed on operations, which will be precisely never, it's a beautiful bit of kit, on time, on budget, met expectations etc. obviously it was top of the coalition's list to cut).

Helicopters are already operated jointly, as were the harriers towards the end of their life. The RAF's biggest fear is that someone with two brain cells to rub together sits down, looks and the numbers, and decides that instead of having two services doing exactly the same job with exactly the same types of aircraft that are already operated jointly every time they're deployed, perhaps it'd make a lot more sense to simply have one unified service. The RN would always win that battle, so the RAF are hell-bent on keeping as many operational roles as they possibly can. It's the same reason that the RAF are the ones who operate the UK's heavy lift helicopters, despite them being exclusively used to support Army operations.

[Liare]

they are designed to carry and launch F-35C's, the reason the Royal Navy seems to be going with the F-35B's is because BAE believes EMALS is going to be "too expensive" to put on the QE carriers.

There's a bit of an inter-service territorial pissing contest going on too. If the QEs came equipped with cats and traps then in all likelihood we'd end up equipping the RN with hornets or rafales and spend whatever was saved on not purchasing F-35s on carrier-borne radar and refuelling aircraft (or we'd still buy the -35s and get the support aircraft later). Once we've done that the Fleet Air Arm would be an outright superior force to the RAF. There'd only be a couple of toys left for the RAF that the RN wouldn't have, things like full sized AWACS in the E-3 and the mini-JSTARS Sentinel aircraft (which is being retired as soon as it's not needed on operations, which will be precisely never, it's a beautiful bit of kit, on time, on budget, met expectations etc. obviously it was top of the coalition's list to cut).

Helicopters are already operated jointly, as were the harriers towards the end of their life. The RAF's biggest fear is that someone with two brain cells to rub together sits down, looks and the numbers, and decides that instead of having two services doing exactly the same job with exactly the same types of aircraft that are already operated jointly every time they're deployed, perhaps it'd make a lot more sense to simply have one unified service. The RN would always win that battle, so the RAF are hell-bent on keeping as many operational roles as they possibly can. It's the same reason that the RAF are the ones who operate the UK's heavy lift helicopters, despite them being exclusively used to support Army operations.

from my understanding that has ALWAYS been the story of the Fleet Air Arm, with the RAF wanting it killed off ASAP while the fleet doggedly attempting to keep it as a almost completely separated air force.

what surprises me is that the whole inter-service fighting is allowed to be done in this manner at all, its obviously damaging the British state, both in image but also on the capabilities of the actual armed forces when they are needed, Typhoons that cannot/could not use modern air to ground munitions, Destroyers that are effectively outperformed by frigates in any kind of "hot" naval conflict, the SA80/L85 rifles not enough heavy lift choppers in afghanistan (for going on eight years) and the list of failures from the last 30 years just goes on and on and on, and it has cost the lives of who knows how many servicemen ?

honestly, its no way to run a modern army/navy/airforce, so when are you going to grow up and learn to do it right ?

[Qwert]

B1s releasing flares over White Sands Missile Range.

[Larkonis Trassler]

they are designed to carry and launch F-35C's, the reason the Royal Navy seems to be going with the F-35B's is because BAE believes EMALS is going to be "too expensive" to put on the QE carriers.

There's a bit of an inter-service territorial pissing contest going on too. If the QEs came equipped with cats and traps then in all likelihood we'd end up equipping the RN with hornets or rafales and spend whatever was saved on not purchasing F-35s on carrier-borne radar and refuelling aircraft (or we'd still buy the -35s and get the support aircraft later). Once we've done that the Fleet Air Arm would be an outright superior force to the RAF. There'd only be a couple of toys left for the RAF that the RN wouldn't have, things like full sized AWACS in the E-3 and the mini-JSTARS Sentinel aircraft (which is being retired as soon as it's not needed on operations, which will be precisely never, it's a beautiful bit of kit, on time, on budget, met expectations etc. obviously it was top of the coalition's list to cut).

Helicopters are already operated jointly, as were the harriers towards the end of their life. The RAF's biggest fear is that someone with two brain cells to rub together sits down, looks and the numbers, and decides that instead of having two services doing exactly the same job with exactly the same types of aircraft that are already operated jointly every time they're deployed, perhaps it'd make a lot more sense to simply have one unified service. The RN would always win that battle, so the RAF are hell-bent on keeping as many operational roles as they possibly can. It's the same reason that the RAF are the ones who operate the UK's heavy lift helicopters, despite them being exclusively used to support Army operations.

from my understanding that has ALWAYS been the story of the Fleet Air Arm, with the RAF wanting it killed off ASAP while the fleet doggedly attempting to keep it as a almost completely separated air force.

what surprises me is that the whole inter-service fighting is allowed to be done in this manner at all, its obviously damaging the British state, both in image but also on the capabilities of the actual armed forces when they are needed, Typhoons that cannot/could not use modern air to ground munitions, Destroyers that are effectively outperformed by frigates in any kind of "hot" naval conflict, the SA80/L85 rifles not enough heavy lift choppers in afghanistan (for going on eight years) and the list of failures from the last 30 years just goes on and on and on, and it has cost the lives of who knows how many servicemen ?

honestly, its no way to run a modern army/navy/airforce, so when are you going to grow up and learn to do it right ?

I haven't read this all but the crabs should have been gotten rid of years ago and boundries defined. This inter service rivalry and pissing contest is destroying the armed forces.
Strategic lift and carrier borne strike aircraft: Navy
Support helicopters and CAS: Army

Hey I just got rid of the RAF, saved lives and money.

Larkonis Trassler OBE

[Klesk]

Unfortunately the crabs are great at the political game and the navy just sort of bends over and takes it, no pun intended.

[Frug]

hnng what a gorgeous photo.

[Klesk]

they are designed to carry and launch F-35C's, the reason the Royal Navy seems to be going with the F-35B's is because BAE believes EMALS is going to be "too expensive" to put on the QE carriers.

There's a bit of an inter-service territorial pissing contest going on too. If the QEs came equipped with cats and traps then in all likelihood we'd end up equipping the RN with hornets or rafales and spend whatever was saved on not purchasing F-35s on carrier-borne radar and refuelling aircraft (or we'd still buy the -35s and get the support aircraft later). Once we've done that the Fleet Air Arm would be an outright superior force to the RAF. There'd only be a couple of toys left for the RAF that the RN wouldn't have, things like full sized AWACS in the E-3 and the mini-JSTARS Sentinel aircraft (which is being retired as soon as it's not needed on operations, which will be precisely never, it's a beautiful bit of kit, on time, on budget, met expectations etc. obviously it was top of the coalition's list to cut).

Helicopters are already operated jointly, as were the harriers towards the end of their life. The RAF's biggest fear is that someone with two brain cells to rub together sits down, looks and the numbers, and decides that instead of having two services doing exactly the same job with exactly the same types of aircraft that are already operated jointly every time they're deployed, perhaps it'd make a lot more sense to simply have one unified service. The RN would always win that battle, so the RAF are hell-bent on keeping as many operational roles as they possibly can. It's the same reason that the RAF are the ones who operate the UK's heavy lift helicopters, despite them being exclusively used to support Army operations.

This is also the reason the Army/Navy have to keep recycling Lynx variants for millions of quid, instead of buying nice cheap American Blackhawks.

[lucian]

Heh, I take it no one knows about the consolidation wars or the Admiral's mutiny back in the 40's. That was some serious inter service rivalry! The Secretary of Defense, in conspiracy with the SAC bomber jocks tried to eliminate both the navy and the marine corps, and reduce the army into strictly an occupation force. They reasoned that all future wars would be strictly nuclear, and therefore the entire defense budget should be reallocated to B-36 construction. Came within a hairbreadth of pulling it off before public outcry stopped all the shennagigans.

[Paradox]

And yet we don't operate a strategic bomber. Instead we like to drag Tornadoes around by the nose to areas FAR in excess of their operational range, deploy small amounts of ordnance and drag them back. Then we complain about how we don't have enough money to put catapults on a carrier. All the while declaring that the F-35 will solve all our problems despite being, for all intents and purposes a fictional aircraft.

[Ophichius]

Sounds like the only difference between your armed services and ours is that ours get paid a lot more money to waste on shit projects, then push the shit projects on to you guys.

-O

[Rans]

Why would UK need a strategic bomber?

[Paradox]

Why would UK need a strategic bomber?

For bombing shit. That's basically the only thing the RAF have done since the end of WWII

[Liare]

going to have to diagree with you Paradox.

Strategic bombers is a thing of the past, the only real niche left for them is either extreme range stuff, say B-52's hitting things in afghanistan while flying from US shores, that can be done better, cheaper and much much more efficently with a swing role plane flying from a friendly airfield, or from a carrier.

nuclear delivery is either by SLBM's, ICBM's or on a tactical scale, small enough that it's advantageous to put them on multi role fighters, there simply is no scenario left where a Strategic bomber provides a advantage any more, saturation of a target can be done by using cluster bombs, either as part of a cruise missile package or from a fighter.

[Paradox]

going to have to diagree with you Paradox.

Strategic bombers is a thing of the past, the only real niche left for them is either extreme range stuff, say B-52's hitting things in afghanistan while flying from US shores, that can be done better, cheaper and much much more efficently with a swing role plane flying from a friendly airfield, or from a carrier.

nuclear delivery is either by SLBM's, ICBM's or on a tactical scale, small enough that it's advantageous to put them on multi role fighters, there simply is no scenario left where a Strategic bomber provides a advantage any more, saturation of a target can be done by using cluster bombs, either as part of a cruise missile package or from a fighter.

Mmmmm. Yeah. Except Tornadoes had to be refueled twice each way from Britain to Libya. Maybe not a strategic bomber maybe some sort of medium range thing perhaps would be more useful. Of course what we did do was deploy cruise missiles from a submarine, that worked pretty well. There was some sort of proposal to make an A440 variant with cruise missiles that could be launched from the back of it. It sounds hilariously ghetto but it would probably get used quite a lot by the RAF.

[Liare]

no, the RAF was doing it wrong by not flying from the nearest friendly country, the RDAF flew from San Vito dei Normanni, and the Tornado's could have flown from Aviano with a pair of tanks and a reasonable war load.

[Paradox]

Yeah but you can't always rely on there being a friendly airbase nearby, the reason we didn't operate from the Italian airbase is because they wouldn't let us, not because we didn't want to operate from there.

[Qwert]

going to have to diagree with you Paradox.

Strategic bombers is a thing of the past, the only real niche left for them is either extreme range stuff, say B-52's hitting things in afghanistan while flying from US shores, that can be done better, cheaper and much much more efficently with a swing role plane flying from a friendly airfield, or from a carrier.

nuclear delivery is either by SLBM's, ICBM's or on a tactical scale, small enough that it's advantageous to put them on multi role fighters, there simply is no scenario left where a Strategic bomber provides a advantage any more, saturation of a target can be done by using cluster bombs, either as part of a cruise missile package or from a fighter.

Actually, one of the biggest problems with bombing things is that bomb reloads are a pain in the ass to move in volume, especially without a nearby port for supply ships. So if you need to fly in every load on a plane anyway, why not just make it able to drop the bombs too?

[Jurskjeld]

Yeah but you can't always rely on there being a friendly airbase nearby, the reason we didn't operate from the Italian airbase is because they wouldn't let us, not because we didn't want to operate from there.

Wait wat.

[Liare]

because shooting down a B-52 is a lot easier than shooting down a F-16.

[Liare]

Yeah but you can't always rely on there being a friendly airbase nearby, the reason we didn't operate from the Italian airbase is because they wouldn't let us, not because we didn't want to operate from there.

everybody else got a clean pass, heck if memory serves the germans flew off Sicily.