Old designs with modern engines

[PR19_Kit]

Except then they didn't...    

They hardly ever do, NIH Rules OK.

[Weaver]

Except then they didn't...    

They hardly ever do, NIH Rules OK.

Well kind of. What actually happened was that the Cold War ended, West Germany got some MiG-29s to play with, and everybody got spooked by how good the R-73 (AA-11 Archer) dogfight missile was. ASRAAM is a "long-ranged short-range missile" designed to hit targets head-on at 10 miles _before_ a couple of hundred fighters merge over Germany 10 minutes into WWIII and the NATO side loses it's tech advantage in the confusion. With that prospect thankfully receding, it became much more likely that F-15s would find themselves up against MiG-29s in Vietnam-style "limited" wars where the dogfight performance of the AAMs mattered more. The US and Germany therefore decided that agility was more important than range, pulled out of ASRAAM and developed AIM-9X and IRIS-T respectively.

The UK stuck with ASRAAM, and managed to sell it to Australia and India. It's also been used to provide a quickly developed (4 months!) SAM system for Ukraine called Raven. More importantly, it forms the basis of the CAMM family of SAMs (Sea Ceptor naval SAM & Sky Sabre land-based SAM), which has turned out to be a case of "right product at the right time", with orders rattling in from Poland, Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, Pakistan, Italy, Saudi Arabia and Sweden so far.

[Charlie_c67]

with the British then runiing a national programme to develop a stand-off missile to replace the free-fall bomb in the split pod.

Would that be running or ruining ? The later sounds far more appropriate for any UK defence project   

It's mixed: the failures definitely get far more attention than the successes. We've been doing rather well with missiles lately, but there's hardly any publicity about it: Starstreak, ASRAAM, Meteor, Sea Ceptor, Brimstone, Martlet...

Quite possibly, but I'd still like to have a look at cost over-runs (and yes I know all modern day cost estimates are ludicrously optimistic) and also projected in-service times to actual. I just grew up in a working enviroment (completely different I know) where I was expected to produce accurate estimates for both.

I was actually basing my comment to some extent on your spelling of "runiing", and yes I am the world's worst speller   

That's all right Chris, I'm the world's worst proof-reader: no matter HOW many times I re-read what I've written, I ALWAYS spot something wrong 10 seconds after hitting "post".

As far as I know, all the projects I listed except ASRAAM came in more or less on-budget and on-cost, and the problem with ASRAAM was partly due to non-UK politics, because it was originally part of the UK/US missile agreement whereby we dropped Active Skyflash in favour of AMRAAM and the US was supposed to buy ASRAAM instead of yet another Sidewinder upgrade. Except then they didn't...    

Would be interesting to know how many projects were screwed up thanks to the "special relationship" Miles M.52, TSR.2 (yes I realise this one is open to question), Skybolt, the list goes on.

[jcf]

with the British then runiing a national programme to develop a stand-off missile to replace the free-fall bomb in the split pod.

Would that be running or ruining ? The later sounds far more appropriate for any UK defence project   

It's mixed: the failures definitely get far more attention than the successes. We've been doing rather well with missiles lately, but there's hardly any publicity about it: Starstreak, ASRAAM, Meteor, Sea Ceptor, Brimstone, Martlet...

Quite possibly, but I'd still like to have a look at cost over-runs (and yes I know all modern day cost estimates are ludicrously optimistic) and also projected in-service times to actual. I just grew up in a working enviroment (completely different I know) where I was expected to produce accurate estimates for both.

I was actually basing my comment to some extent on your spelling of "runiing", and yes I am the world's worst speller   

That's all right Chris, I'm the world's worst proof-reader: no matter HOW many times I re-read what I've written, I ALWAYS spot something wrong 10 seconds after hitting "post".

As far as I know, all the projects I listed except ASRAAM came in more or less on-budget and on-cost, and the problem with ASRAAM was partly due to non-UK politics, because it was originally part of the UK/US missile agreement whereby we dropped Active Skyflash in favour of AMRAAM and the US was supposed to buy ASRAAM instead of yet another Sidewinder upgrade. Except then they didn't...    

Would be interesting to know how many projects were screwed up thanks to the "special relationship" Miles M.52, TSR.2 (yes I realise this one is open to question), Skybolt, the list goes on.

The US had bupkis to do with the
M.52 and TSR.2 farragos, they're
both own goals. TSR.2 was a goat
rope and people at BAC on the engineering side and in the RAF were relieved when it was axed.
The mythology around both is mindnumbing, especially the M.52.
As to Skybolt, it was going to cost a lot in terms of time and money to iron out its problems and turn it in to a viable weapons system. The US offered the entire project to the UK plus $100 million so the UK could continue development. A fair offer that was refused with much public posturing and dramatic pronouncements. The US taxpayer was going to be on the hook for the
continued development of Skybolt,
something they weren't going to use, so how the heck do you think
that would have been justified to
Congress and the US people?
The advent of the Polaris SLBM and with Minuteman in the offing meant that a much shorter ranged, evidently the heavier Red Snow warhead to be used on the RAF version cut the range in half, aircraft carried missile was going to be of doubtful utility. LeMay at SAC whinged about the cancellation in
favour of Polaris, as did the RAF,
which sounds more like spitting the dummy because Polaris meant
that both air forces lost their monopoly on strategic nuclear weapons. "Oh, nos we have to share with the Navy? Waah".
🤣

[Weaver]

Spot on Jon.

M.52 cancellation was down to hand-wringing over risk.

TSR.2 was built to a dysfunctional and inter-service politics-driven OR, and was so bleeding edge technically that it would highly likely have ended up as an F-111-style bottomless money-pit, and unlike the US, the UK didn't have bottomless pockets to match.

Skybolt was "just another club in the golf bag" to the US, but we'd stupidly bet the farm on it despite having no control over it's development. Much as I would have loved to see Skybolt-armed Vulcans and VC-10s taking off for "poffling" patrols from an aircraft geek point of view, from a wider perspective I am SO glad that we ended up with Polaris. It was a militarily better weapon, offering far more coverage of the USSR for the money/effort/accident-risk. Furthermore, ballistic missile submarines in general were one of the biggest stabilizing factors in the Cold War, since the unpredictablity of taking them out by surprise removed the illusion that anybody could get away with a first strike. Even if you could find all the enemy's boomers (tall order) and get close enough to all of them to attack them pre-kick-off without triggering alarm bells (even taller order) then they were still submarines. With stealth. And torpedoes. Your ASW forces might engage them and still lose the tactical fight.

[NARSES2]

That's all right Chris, I'm the world's worst proof-reader: no matter HOW many times I re-read what I've written, I ALWAYS spot something wrong 10 seconds after hitting "post".

I tend to spot it just as my finger hits "post"

[Rick Lowe]

I always Preview, and still find misteaks after I Post...

[Old Wombat]

        

[Beermonster58]

I think you got it surrounded Jon     It's astonishing how  many people still look at TSR.2 through their rose tinted spectacles while ignoring the reality of the situation. I think that, given the circumstances, the  decision to scrap TSR.2  at the time was absolutely right and proper.

I can actually see the same happening to BAE Tempest (or is it now FCAS?). Spiralling costs, political indecision and dithering, squabbles over funding/work sharing, changing political priorities  such as elections etc (high cost military programmes are not really vote catchers) and, the other usual issues will, in my considered opinion kill this vastly expensive project before it even takes to the air or, as in TSR.2 it'll get scrapped after the prototype has flown.

Sorry for the cynicism!

[PR19_Kit]

Never mind all that stuff, the TSR2 still LOOKS amazing, and is well worth modelling, and even more worth Whiffing.



.......even with gun turrets. 

[Weaver]

I think you got it surrounded Jon     It's astonishing how  many people still look at TSR.2 through their rose tinted spectacles while ignoring the reality of the situation. I think that, given the circumstances, the  decision to scrap TSR.2  at the time was absolutely right and proper.

I can actually see the same happening to BAE Tempest (or is it now FCAS?). Spiralling costs, political indecision and dithering, squabbles over funding/work sharing, changing political priorities  such as elections etc (high cost military programmes are not really vote catchers) and, the other usual issues will, in my considered opinion kill this vastly expensive project before it even takes to the air or, as in TSR.2 it'll get scrapped after the prototype has flown.

Sorry for the cynicism!

On the other hand, all those factors also applied to Tornado and Typhoon and they still got built. One of the reasons multi-national programmes are so popular is that although they're harder to get going, they're also harder to kill politically once they're rolling.

[Beermonster58]

I think you got it surrounded Jon     It's astonishing how  many people still look at TSR.2 through their rose tinted spectacles while ignoring the reality of the situation. I think that, given the circumstances, the  decision to scrap TSR.2  at the time was absolutely right and proper.

I can actually see the same happening to BAE Tempest (or is it now FCAS?). Spiralling costs, political indecision and dithering, squabbles over funding/work sharing, changing political priorities  such as elections etc (high cost military programmes are not really vote catchers) and, the other usual issues will, in my considered opinion kill this vastly expensive project before it even takes to the air or, as in TSR.2 it'll get scrapped after the prototype has flown.

Sorry for the cynicism!

On the other hand, all those factors also applied to Tornado and Typhoon and they still got built. One of the reasons multi-national programmes are so popular is that although they're harder to get going, they're also harder to kill politically once they're rolling.

All reasonable points but, the aforementioned Tornado and Typhoon both had one thing in common in that  France wasn't involved

The current FCAS project already looks it's coming off the rails with, perhaps unsurprisingly, France being the culprit by demanding a bigger workshare than the other partners are willing to accept.
I'll give it a few months before it all falls over.

[Weaver]

I think you got it surrounded Jon     It's astonishing how  many people still look at TSR.2 through their rose tinted spectacles while ignoring the reality of the situation. I think that, given the circumstances, the  decision to scrap TSR.2  at the time was absolutely right and proper.

I can actually see the same happening to BAE Tempest (or is it now FCAS?). Spiralling costs, political indecision and dithering, squabbles over funding/work sharing, changing political priorities  such as elections etc (high cost military programmes are not really vote catchers) and, the other usual issues will, in my considered opinion kill this vastly expensive project before it even takes to the air or, as in TSR.2 it'll get scrapped after the prototype has flown.

Sorry for the cynicism!

On the other hand, all those factors also applied to Tornado and Typhoon and they still got built. One of the reasons multi-national programmes are so popular is that although they're harder to get going, they're also harder to kill politically once they're rolling.

All reasonable points but, the aforementioned Tornado and Typhoon both had one thing in common in that  France wasn't involved

The current FCAS project already looks it's coming off the rails with, perhaps unsurprisingly, France being the culprit by demanding a bigger workshare than the other partners are willing to accept.
I'll give it a few months before it all falls over.

France isn't involved in Tempest either: it's the UK, Italy and Japan in what used to be called GCAP (Global Combat Air Programme), which is why it'll probably work.

FCAS (Future Combat Air System) is France, Germany, Spain and Belgium, and it might well fall over because... France.

[Spino]

Here's an idea: a B-36 with Allison T40s instead of the Wasp Majors...

 

[Diamondback]

Here's an idea: a B-36 with Allison T40s instead of the Wasp Majors...

 

Wasn't that the B-36C with redesign to tractor props?