Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

The Combat 75 Military Surplus Thread. Past, present and future.

We've all heard of foreign powers reverse-engineering technology and hardware from rival nations, but I had never heard before of a country having to reverse engineer its own kit, and from twenty years ago only as well :D

www.thedrive.com

The Air Force Is Having To Reverse Engineer Parts Of Its Own Stealth Bomber

Twenty-one years after the last Spirit was delivered, the Air Force is working out how to build the exotic spare parts the bomber requires.
www.thedrive.com www.thedrive.com
 
For the second time, the Mercian Regiment has lost a fully recruited Battalion to save the chronically under-recruited Bn's of Royal Regiment of Scotland, purely for political reasons.

There's lots of stuff happening that was neither in the speech nor in the command paper - lots of stuff that could be debated, some good some bad, some thought out and some purely cash driven and idiotic, but that's my really fucked off take. It's an emotional response - you could argue that it's in intellectual response, because other Inf units will either have to detach individuals or formations to keep the jock units as functioning units.

As with all defence reviews the eating will be in the money, but for me it's - as ever - trying to do the worldwide capability and the land force committed to NATO capability on about 60% of the budget you'd need bro do both.
 
I was impressed by the report on Radio 4 just now that there will be a permanent RN presence in Singapore... I suspect we are supposed to think :6455AB2A-195F-4B1E-A0ED-6C5B0011BD0C.jpeg

but most of the time it will be:

012229CB-2A31-4B93-AABE-502CED137C60.jpeg

Still I suppose it will be popular with a ‘ certain type’ of Tory MP who never forgave that Wilson chap for being the only PM the Queen liked.
 
Last edited:
LynnDoyleCooper said:
I have absolutely no idea if that's serious or a joke. That says something, I'm not sure what, although fairly certain whatever it is, it isn't good.
Click to expand...
existentialist said:
Any comment on here regarding the RAF and luxury goods or services can be fairly guaranteed to be a pisstake :cool:
Click to expand...
Sorry, but just for once only half joking: Though Ministry of Defence insiders have confirmed that the iconic team will not be felled next week, RAF sources insisted its days were numbered unless other streams of financial support could be found urgently. The Red Arrows has arranged a raft of sponsorship deals with some blue-chip brands, ranging from BAE, Barbour and Breitling to Land Rover and Rolls Royce, worth just under a million pounds in total.”

 
Last edited:
the problem the reds have got is that they piggyback on the wider training fleet of Hawk jets - however the Hawks are going out of service by about 2025. What they going to be replaced by (and whether they will be replaced) is a question to be answered at some later stage.

When the hawks were first bought (70/80's) the Reds needed just a tiny extra slice of the wider training fleet to form the team, but by 2025 they could be operating 25% of the total fleet, and that is just less and a less justifiable.

The same goes for the pilots - in the 80's the 10 pilots were a tiny drop in the ocean of the whole force (4/500+?), but by 2025 the team could be about 20% of the size of the whole of the F-35 fleet...
 
kebabking said:
the problem the reds have got is that they piggyback on the wider training fleet of Hawk jets - however the Hawks are going out of service by about 2025. What they going to be replaced by (and whether they will be replaced) is a question to be answered at some later stage.

When the hawks were first bought (70/80's) the Reds needed just a tiny extra slice of the wider training fleet to form the team, but by 2025 they could be operating 25% of the total fleet, and that is just less and a less justifiable.

The same goes for the pilots - in the 80's the 10 pilots were a tiny drop in the ocean of the whole force (4/500+?), but by 2025 the team could be about 20% of the size of the whole of the F-35 fleet...
Click to expand...
Couldn't they use drones instead?
 
kebabking said:
there's an RAF pilot joke in there.... :thumbs:
Click to expand...
Ouch! :D

In a Certain Place I worked, an awful lot of the departmental managers were ex-RAF. My lot were ex-RN, my line manager was an ex-Lieutenant Commander who, despite being married, hadn't quite figured out what women were, his boss being a retired rear-admiral...and the director-general had some kind of Army-related territorial decoration. The crabs slagged off the Grey Funnel Line, and the sailors were mildly disparaging of those who went to war sitting down, and the green...well, there's a rather appealing smugness that seems to go with the chaps who wear green'n'brown makeup to work, and don't have to be surrounded with various tonnages of metal to do it :D

Then I went to work for an operation that was entirely ex-Army. That's when I really got to understand the rivalry between green arses, wet arses, and shiny arses... :) Tri-Services Commissions must have been a barrel of fucking laughs.

ETA: not to mention the even more intense rivalry between the various bits of the Green... :eek:
 
Last edited:
The recent Defence review that included proposals for an increase in the UK’s nuclear deterrent got me thinking about the policies of the other ‘legacy’ nuclear States.

The UK appears to be the only one of the big five to rely on just one delivery system The US and Russia obviously have the budget, desire and need for just about every type of nuke available, but France and China have a broadly similar level of nukes to the UK, and the French if not China will also face similar political and economic constraints to their nuclear ambitions. Yet they both have different delivery systems, but the UK only a submarine-launched ICBMs. Which might be formidable and very difficult to neutralise, but still expensive as fuck.

Why hasn’t the UK perused a second delivery system? Air to surface missiles that can be launched from various existing bombers and even fighter-bombers must be much less expensive to procure and maintain than SBMs...
 
T & P said:
The recent Defence review that included proposals for an increase in the UK’s nuclear deterrent got me thinking about the policies of the other ‘legacy’ nuclear States.

The UK appears to be the only one of the big five to rely on just one delivery system The US and Russia obviously have the budget, desire and need for just about every type of nuke available, but France and China have a broadly similar level of nukes to the UK, and the French if not China will also face similar political and economic constraints to their nuclear ambitions. Yet they both have different delivery systems, but the UK only a submarine-launched ICBMs. Which might be formidable and very difficult to neutralise, but still expensive as fuck.

Why hasn’t the UK perused a second delivery system? Air to surface missiles that can be launched from various existing bombers and even fighter-bombers must be much less expensive to procure and maintain than SBMs...
Click to expand...

Cost - the weapons themselves, the enhancements on the delivery aircraft, the infrastructure and security. These are not small, bolt on costs...

Risk - the air base where your nukes are based becomes a target for other people's nukes.

Utility - SLBM's can do all the nuclear roles: city busting armageddon, counter-force, tactical (with risks of escalation due to the delivery system), aircraft, unless you're building B-2's at a billion quid a pop, can only do the tactical stuff.
 
Daft question; but can Trident subs do regular sub stuff, like hunter-killer type stuff or is their sole purpose to be able to launch nukes?
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
Daft question; but can Trident subs do regular sub stuff, like hunter-killer type stuff or is their sole purpose to be able to launch nukes?
Click to expand...
I think the general principle is that no missile sub is going to want to get near any kind of direct conflict. They do have torpedoes, but I think they're regarded as a last ditch thing - they can also launch decoys. But they have extensive sonar, and can run away very fast, so their best bet is to get the hell out before they've even been spotted.
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
Daft question; but can Trident subs do regular sub stuff, like hunter-killer type stuff or is their sole purpose to be able to launch nukes?
Click to expand...

They can, they have fantastic sonar etc... but their job is to hide, to be as far away from anyone who might have a pop at them as possible.

The USN converted some of their missile boats to be cruise missile carriers.
 
Thread here on the 40% more nukes figure being bandied about.

To summarise, he is essentially saying that the rise is temporary and only a logistical thing as they get upgraded and the total amount will more or less remain the same over the long term. The Tories are just spinning it as a massive willy waving exercise. Also he says that as the nukes are essentially leased from the USA UK gov doesn't really have much choice. Does that sound plausible?

Some other interesting snippets in there as well.

 
He's both right and wrong - the increase in the stockpile numbers is about swapping over to the new warhead, but it's also about increasing the number of warheads that are deployed on each sub. not to the kind of numbers the subs could sail with, but a higher number than the 40 or so of the Cameron era.

The decoys are common knowledge, if your enemy has 100 anti-ballistic missiles (missiles?) and you present him with 100 targets, and he has no way of determining which are 50 warheads and which 50 are decoys, some warheads will get through, and he knows that.

The 'renting' idea is both right and wrong - we are dependent on the US for the missile bodies, we bought into a pool of missiles, and we can have 55(?) at any one time out the wider USN/RN pool, and they are serviced and upgraded by the US in the US, but the warheads themselves are designed and built in the UK, even if they do end up bareing more than a passing resemblance to the US warheads.

However, the wider renting thing applies to all military hardware - we see it in the defence review: unless you (fairly) constantly apply money to your gear for upgrades and refurbishment it quickly becomes obsolete. In the 15 years of Iraq and Afghanistan we effectively stopped spending money on the upgrade paths for anything that didn't get used in the desert, so stuff that should have happily been able to carry on in service for years (decades?) is now going to be turned into razor blades because it is now so behind that no upgrade path is either available, or so expensive as to be impractical. Warrior, AS90, E-3D AWACS, and many others are going for this reason.
 
kebabking said:
He's both right and wrong - the increase in the stockpile numbers is about swapping over to the new warhead, but it's also about increasing the number of warheads that are deployed on each sub. not to the kind of numbers the subs could sail with, but a higher number than the 40 or so of the Cameron era.

The decoys are common knowledge, if your enemy has 100 anti-ballistic missiles (missiles?) and you present him with 100 targets, and he has no way of determining which are 50 warheads and which 50 are decoys, some warheads will get through, and he knows that.

The 'renting' idea is both right and wrong - we are dependent on the US for the missile bodies, we bought into a pool of missiles, and we can have 55(?) at any one time out the wider USN/RN pool, and they are serviced and upgraded by the US in the US, but the warheads themselves are designed and built in the UK, even if they do end up bareing more than a passing resemblance to the US warheads.

However, the wider renting thing applies to all military hardware - we see it in the defence review: unless you (fairly) constantly apply money to your gear for upgrades and refurbishment it quickly becomes obsolete. In the 15 years of Iraq and Afghanistan we effectively stopped spending money on the upgrade paths for anything that didn't get used in the desert, so stuff that should have happily been able to carry on in service for years (decades?) is now going to be turned into razor blades because it is now so behind that no upgrade path is either available, or so expensive as to be impractical. Warrior, AS90, E-3D AWACS, and many others are going for this reason.
Click to expand...

Thanks, bit more nuanced then.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

I
Motorcycles you have owned, loved and used down the years.
Replies
4
Views
145
Nivag
Nivag
tim
Ferry land - which ferries have you taken and which do you wish to take before Charon rows you across the Styx.
2 3 4 5
Replies
129
Views
2K
ID47
I
PR1Berske
Railway adjacent chat thread.
Replies
5
Views
479
PR1Berske
PR1Berske
Sasaferrato
The lonely transport post thread.
2
Replies
37
Views
1K
T & P
T & P
bimble
Solved! (Thread for the bin please)
Replies
10
Views
531
A380
A380
Back
Top Bottom