UK unveils new next generation fighter jet called Tempest

[philehidiot]

I'm going to make the least risky prediction ever:

If it's ever delivered it will be late, over-budget and have less capability than currently stated.

The aircraft carrier project was delivered early and within budget. They learnt a lot from the modular construction of the Type 45 Destroyer which was a shambles. I hope no one ever has to fight those ships. I won't go into some of the issues (unless you really want me to) but they are major and not fixable without considerable cost.

The system revealed does sound quite interesting. The £2bn does also include a budget for upgrades to the Typhoon to allow them to take over the role of the Tornado (Brimstone missiles and some kind of interesting advanced flight envelope protection that keeps the aircraft within its limits so the pilot can concentrate elsewhere, I believe there's also some kind of enhanced SAM ECM / active countermeasure being installed but I was too drunk when I read it to remember).

The new aircraft is a concept and whilst engineers have designed some of it, the model has been done by artists. They take out all the little bumps and so on to make it look sleeker and even the colour is clearly totally wrong... do you really want a shiny aircraft that'll reflect light, laser and radar? No, it'll be a boring grey or near black I'm sure.

I find a mission pack the length of the fuselage to be very interesting. This will allow kit to be installed depending on the mission and you may have a wing comprised of fighters when previously there would have had to be a support aeroplane in there as well providing SAR, ECM and so on. This makes the whole wing far more flexible and survivable.

Whether these aircraft will be stealthy is another question. Stealth aircraft are horrendously expensive to run and the man hours required to maintain them per hour of flight is insane. Also, I'm not sure if stealth aircraft respond well to the RAF generic fix of applying speed tape to the fault and announcing with confidence "it'll do a trip".

Whilst I do feel we need stealth capability in a mass produced aircraft, for general use we do not need stealth and versatility is far more important along with cost effectiveness. There are some cases where stealth is a disadvantage, such as a Quick Reaction Alert - you want speed, firepower and the hostile aircraft to know you're coming. Additionally, when you have air dominance in a situation, you may well want the enemy to know just how many aircraft you have in that battlespace so they think twice before attacking. Add this to cost effectiveness and maintenence and it does make sense to have stealth and non stealth capability.

[Gerrard]

Also, I'm not sure if stealth aircraft respond well to the RAF generic fix of applying speed tape to the fault and announcing with confidence "it'll do a trip".

Can confirm that's what we did on the Typhoons a few years' ago; doubt it has changed recently! For reference, "speed tape" is aluminium tape, so extra shiny and reflective.

[philehidiot]

Can confirm that's what we did on the Typhoons a few years' ago; doubt it has changed recently! For reference, "speed tape" is aluminium tape, so extra shiny and reflective.

I wonder if a company will come up with "stealth tape" made of a suitable RAM that can be applied to the F35, allowing it to be both stealthy and bodged. Given the MTBCF during testing, I expect there will be massive demand for such a product.

[spacein_vader]

The carrier's may have been on time & in budget, but the only planes capable of flying off them certainly aren't.

[DanceswithUnix]

The carrier's may have been on time & in budget, but the only planes capable of flying off them certainly aren't.

I thought it was only in budget because we stopped building one of them? Can't remember, all became too painful to watch with the cats & traps hokey kokey.

All together now...


You put you catapult in, take your catapult out.
In out in out change your mind about.
You do a biassed costing and you turn around,
That's what doubles the budget.


What that didn't rhyme? Have to form a £1M committee to fix that...

[watercooled]

Last I heard both carriers will be fully completed and commissioned - the question mark is over whether both will be put into active service, with the alternative being one mothballed/used for training but ready to return to service should the need arise?

[philehidiot]

Both carriers to be kitted out. Currently plan is for continuous at sea presence with one being in dock whilst the other is out on operations. I THINK they built enough RFA ships for at sea replenishment to deploy both if required and we will certainly have the planes by the end of it all. The F35 is a nightmare of a program but I am slightly happier having heard from the pilots who have said there are capabilities which are not public and are seriously a generational step up. I suppose we'll have to wait and see. Certainly the more recent wargames against the F16 (not the ones with a half built F35) suggest it'll swat down last gen fighters like flies. They had a 15:1 kill:loss ratio... which is insane when you're pitching a prototype plane against a mature platform with experienced pilots.

I also expect that, for interoperability and to allow for new jets that will be made within the lifespan of the carriers, we'll probably see them modified with cats and traps.

[spacein_vader]

Both carriers to be kitted out. Currently plan is for continuous at sea presence with one being in dock whilst the other is out on operations. I THINK they built enough RFA ships for at sea replenishment to deploy both if required and we will certainly have the planes by the end of it all. The F35 is a nightmare of a program but I am slightly happier having heard from the pilots who have said there are capabilities which are not public and are seriously a generational step up. I suppose we'll have to wait and see. Certainly the more recent wargames against the F16 (not the ones with a half built F35) suggest it'll swat down last gen fighters like flies. They had a 15:1 kill:loss ratio... which is insane when you're pitching a prototype plane against a mature platform with experienced pilots.

I also expect that, for interoperability and to allow for new jets that will be made within the lifespan of the carriers, we'll probably see them modified with cats and traps.

They are both to be finished, but we're desperately hawking the second one around to the Indians, Brazilians & Aussies. It'll only have delivery mileage on it but without cats & traps they don't seem keen.

By the time we've decommissioned enough ships for the navies budget to balance when these white elephants go into service we won't have enough left to support 2 carrier groups anyway.

[philehidiot]

They are both to be finished, but we're desperately hawking the second one around to the Indians, Brazilians & Aussies. It'll only have delivery mileage on it but without cats & traps they don't seem keen.

By the time we've decommissioned enough ships for the navies budget to balance when these white elephants go into service we won't have enough left to support 2 carrier groups anyway.

We don't (with the downsize of frigates and destroyers) have enough ships for two carrier groups and to cover our global commmitments. However that is a non issue as we routinely operate within NATO groups and the EU Navy also. As a result we have type 45s providing air defence for American carrier groups, etc. The plan as I know is it is that both are to be in service but only one at sea at any one time. Bear in mind that we would rarely want both at sea anyway. If you want a continuous at-sea presence from a class you're looking at 4 ships in general. One will be in dock being refitted / maintained, one at sea, one for training and one on exercise keeping the skills up for the things not normally well practiced on deployment. Given the size of the carriers we'll probably have one that can cover a couple of those at a time (training newbies and on exercise) but you'd never expect two ships to be deployed at the same time unless we were at war and even then, continual deployment isn't likely.

I didn't know they were trying to sell one. If they did it would have to be a shell basically as we couldn't sell it with the advanced warefighting tech. Hence why they won't be keen as they'd have to develop all the stuff to stick on it and when you've done that you might as well just build a carrier suited for your needs. Additionally, as you say without the cats and traps this carrier is only suited to Harriers and F35-Bs which I don't think are available to any of the countries you mention aside from the Aussies.

Not that I'm questioning the authenticity but I'm interested to hear where you read that we're trying to sell one on. It's not something I've heard but equally I've been out of the loop on this particular disaster for a bit.

We also have a recruitment crisis in the Navy where there simply aren't enough people to fully crew both ships without taking a massive chunk out of the rest of the fleet. I think as a project from the private sector it was very well done but the government has not done its part in that we don't have the manpower (the Navy has arranged successful exchange programs with the Spams so we have officers and pilots on their carriers keeping our skills up), the planes (although really a year or so until it gets them isn't a massive issue given the length of service expected and also the fact that it'll be undergoing shakedown and won't need or want a full compliment of fighters for that) or the need to run them both. We do need a carrier strike capability, that's sensible but we could have done with a few smaller ones like previously or a single large one. This was a Gordon Brown vanity project to keep his seat through elections.

We have two amphibious warfare ships which they want to decommission for cost saving. I dunno how far they got with that but these ships are so advanced they can run a whole war from them. Bulwark and its sister ship are potentially for mothballs. This is utter madness and only brought about due to poor financial planning at the centre of government.

We just celebrated 100 years of the RAF and today two air bases are for the chop.

[Ttaskmaster]

They had a 15:1 kill:loss ratio... which is insane when you're pitching a prototype plane against a mature platform with experienced pilots.

That sounds ridiculously low.

The F6 Hellcat was 19:1 in WW2.
The F-14 was over 160:1, last I looked... and it looks far better launching off an aircraft carrier!!

[watercooled]

In fairness though, the F-35 isn't intended as an air superiority fighter, unless I'm mistaken? Hence its use alongside Typhoon/F-22 and the requirement for this Tempest aircraft.

[peterb]

Both carriers to be kitted out. Currently plan is for continuous at sea presence with one being in dock whilst the other is out on operations. I THINK they built enough RFA ships for at sea replenishment to deploy both if required and we will certainly have the planes by the end of it all. The F35 is a nightmare of a program but I am slightly happier having heard from the pilots who have said there are capabilities which are not public and are seriously a generational step up. I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

The problem is finding the personnel to man both ships at the same time. There has been a reduction in personnel for the last 20 years, alongside a reduction in vessels and shore jobs for those not deployed at sea.

[philehidiot]

The problem is finding the personnel to man both ships at the same time. There has been a reduction in personnel for the last 20 years, alongside a reduction in vessels and shore jobs for those not deployed at sea.

Yep, that has been a known problem mentioned repeatedly in Private Eye since the program started. We simply can't man them both at the same time and we keep doing silly things like.... prosecuting our armed forces. Which isn't a great way to recruit.

As for the ratio, the performance improvements in modern aircraft are obviously far smaller - gains reduce over time. And still, in this test the F35 was not finished and against the mature and superb F16 in dogfights. These are different aircraft with different roles and fundamental designs. You could see it as sticking a bomber against an air superiority fighter (obviously not quite but you see the point). The problem with the F35 is going to be quite obvious very soon - it is trying to be all things to all people and it is going to fail at that. Most multirole aircraft started off as a fighter or something and found they were damned fine at bombing and so on as well. Bear in mind that anyone who goes up against the USAF is wasting planes and just doesn't bother.... and that's been against the F16. So a 15:1 ratio against the F16 which can already dominate the air to the point where Hussain didn't bother challenging it is very impressive. Add in skilled USAF pilots in those F16s and you have an impressive result for a multirole aircraft with new pilots, unfinished systems and so on Vs a mature true fighter with experienced pilots. I will be very interested to see what the finished F35 comes up with in war-games although due to the horrendous issues with the project, I'm not sure it can even fire its cannon as yet... not without making the aeroplane turn slightly and screw its aim due to the aerodynamic changes caused by deploying the cannon.

I honestly can't believe the US stopped production of a true air superiority stealth fighter for this (F22). The F22 is so far ahead of everything else and is a proper fighter. The F35 makes compromises to be everything but really, you need a proper fighter and not a jack of all trades for when there is real turd - fan interaction.

Sorry, I'm rambling. That's the beer.