D'wards
IT'S YOUR DECISION DANIEL
We are central to the sanctions, and they are quite pissed off with us in general, as we are with them.
Probably to distract from some terrible thing they are upto in Crimea
Russian Long Range Bombers disrupt UK airspace
- Thread starter weltweit
- Start date
Probably to distract from some terrible thing they are upto in Crimea
D'wards
IT'S YOUR DECISION DANIEL
Putin ordered the assasination - we know this. The UK has been holding off pursuing an inquiry for a long time for fear of a diplomatic incident. Seeing as relations between the two countries are at a low at the moment and Russia openly hate us the government thought fuck it, lets just get it all out of the way now, strike whilst the irons hot and all that.
2hats
Dust.
Apparently the formation was accompanied by MiG-31 (Foxhound) fighters and they refuelled twice from Il-78's. They were picked up off Norway and intercepted there by F-16's, then the Typhoons and finally French Mirage 2000's before the circus turned around and retraced their route out (over the top of Norway, SW around the top of Scotland, W around Ireland before heading SE then E along the channel). An RAF tanker was dispatched from Brize to gas the Typhoons up off the Irish coast.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
^ If they did a British remake of 'Top Gun' this is exactly how I'd imagine it to be.
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
it would be awful - dull people called 'Kevin' comparing polyester trousers and grey slip-on shoes... very little homo-erotic beach vollyball and lots of golf.
dylanredefined
Not a house elf a tiger
True the only Pilot who could live up to the top gun look I ever met was an Apache pilot who not only looked good he was also better than everyone at anything and a really nice guy as well the bastard
bluescreen
tofu eating wokerati
Mary Dejevsky is sceptical about the commonly accepted version of the Litvinenko assassination. But I don't want to derail. Perhaps there's room for a new Litvinenko thread?
Dogsauce
I’ve got Skol but I’m not a Scholar
True the only Pilot who could live up to the top gun look I ever met was an Apache pilot who not only looked good he was also better than everyone at anything and a really nice guy as well the bastard
Kid from my school (couple of years younger) that ended up as a pilot (can't remember what, but think it was planes rather than helicopters) was the dashing cool-guy type, but died in a crash, possibly in GW1 although vague feeling it was something non-combat related.
Edit: Googled it, was a helicopter in Bosnia, and he wasn't the pilot (and may not have been one).
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
Couldn't happen. Our navy doesn't have any planes.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
triffic inn'it, spunked all that cash on aircraft carriers when we have no aircraft for them to carry. We're about to spend untold billions on our independent nuclear deterrent, the one we can use use without Washington's say so. #proud to be british
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gosub
~#
cos the RAF are cunts. (and gave the Harriers a holiday from Afganistan in order to save the Tornados)
dylanredefined
Not a house elf a tiger
think we have ordered 4 and have one already.
gosub
~#
Taken delivery of 2, 48 on order
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kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
sadly, and against all my prejudices, not true. the RAF was given enough money in the SDSR 2010 to maintain either the Harrier fleet or the Tornado fleet, and the Harrier fleet didn't have enough airframes to last until the F-35 comes into service in 2018 or so. on top of that Tornado could do long range strike while Harrier couldn't, and Tornado can go deeper, and earlier, into hostile airspace than Harrier.
given that, the choice was self-evident.
neither of these are true - the first Carrier, HMS QE, won't be ready to accept aircraft until around 2017, so there seems little point owning aircraft in 2015 that have nothing to land on. by the time HMS QE is ready to accept aircraft, we will not only own the appropriate aircraft, but we'll have owned them long enough to use them without crashing them all trying to land on a carrier.
Trident is, operationally, completely independant of US systems or influence. there is nothing the US can do to stop, or interfere with, a UK launch. the missile bodies are serviced in the US, and they could decide to stop doing that, but there is nothing in the servicing of the missiles that any of half-a-dozen aerospace companies in the UK couldn't do.
2hats
Dust.
Only 'independent' if the dependent parts of the chain are duplicated locally, thereby inflating the huge budget yet further.
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
I used to think so but given that that a very large civilian aircraft can apparently fly for eight hours undetected and disappear without trace for ever, perhaps we can't.
Which begs the question: are stealth fighters a fucking waste of money? Just make sure your transponder is off and you can just about go anywhere you please on any plane or your choice.
2hats
Dust.
Yes, in that their time has been and gone.
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
there are different types of radars - broadly, and 2hats can provide the substance - civilian air traffic radars don't do old-fashioned 'skin-paints', they (in effect) broadcast a signal that the transponder on an aircraft responds to by sending a signal of its own. turn off the transponder and you disappear. military search and targetting radars do get a 'skin paint', so it doesn't matter if you switch the transponder off. hence all the effort to reduce the amount of radar signal that either bounces off military aircraft or bounces off and goes back to the transmitting radar.
2hats
Dust.
Multi-spectral bi-static radar. Blah, blah, blah.
The US is involved in the "buses" that carry the multiple warheads, as well as the missiles, isn't it?
I'm sure Duncan Campbell* dug up evidence that the US has, or could have, a second-level warhead deployment authorisation code that would override the UK's decision.
* That's Echelon Duncan - not nice Duncan who worked for the Guardian, the other one.
pogofish
Testicle Hairstyle
Thing is, there have been a load of these incidents since Putin restarted the flights (@300 is at the back of my mind from somewhere) - and since last year, at least three (as of last Nov) were considered high-risk, with quite a few more being rated "serious" as opposed to just routine, which amounts to the majority.
Maybe its better to ask why the reporting now?
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
NATO reported that it had carried out 400 interceptions of Russian aircraft in 2014, with 150 of them being in the Baltic area. there were two very serious incidents involving a Russian military aircraft sans transponders in the Baltic last year, the worst was when an SAS airliner blundered to within (reportedly) 100 meters of a Russian aircraft...
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
Trident uses US GPS, if they switch it off the missiles go nowhere.
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
Trident uses GPS among a handful of other methods of determining its position. switching it of no more stops it launching or hitting its target anymore than it would stop you going for a walk in the country.
Because Whitehall decided there would be reporting, when they called in the Ambassador and let it be known they had done so.
That's something the "serious" papers can't not report.
Now, why did they decide that?
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Provided we weren't fussy about who we wanted to attack.
And why should we be? We've probably got enough warheads that if we were to shoot them all off it would obliterate human civilisation as we know it worldwide, so what's the point of even aiming? The people who get the direct hits will be the lucky ones if anything.
TheHoodedClaw
acknowledging ur soup leg
If the seemingly well-sourced wiki article is correct, there's only 40 warheads on the deployed submarine.
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
Well, it is not impossible that a contained exchange between two nations might happen without dragging the rest of the world down with it (India vs Pakistan for instance).
So I guess you're saying if the UK decided to launch a limited attack against military targets in, say, North Korea, and the U.S. didn't approve, the UK would be technically unable to hit its desired targets?
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