The UK's paper tiger carrier

The negative sounding LOL’s are well deserved when we have something like this:

A typical deployment of one 65,000t vessel outside UK territorial waters would include an embarked air wing of 12 short take-off and vertical landing F-35Bs.

Wars can have a bad way of showing up quickly, in the here and not days from now.

For any deployment.

The Boy Scouts have it right: “Be prepared.”

A 6$,000 ton vessel deploying with 12 faulty, short-ranged strike aircraft that have a horrific cost-per-flying hour.

No on-board tanking or proper fixed-wing AWACs.

And if this kind of “force” was sunk outright, quickly, as an object lesson by an aggressor, what would the UK do?

Not much, because they are now officially, a hollow force.

And, the UK taxpayer is getting taken to the cleaners.

As always, best to make buying decisions when looking at a complete go-to-war product. Every potential F-35 customer / partner won’t have intelligent buying-power knowledge until 2019-2020 at the earliest.

UK MOD makes up story on F-35 concerns

All the difficulty and yet the UK MOD entrenched bureaucracy doesn't get it.

An MoD spokesman said: “The UK has been at the heart of the Joint Strike Fighter programme for over 10 years, playing a key role in development and production with 15 per cent of the work carried out in the UK.

The programme remains on track and we have recently taken delivery of our first test fighter jet..”

Yeah, the UK took delivery of its first F-35. It is in no way, anywhere close to working with go-to-war systems.

UK to have degraded air-defense capability with the F-35

Since the start of the UK signing on to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program years ago, it was briefed that one of the weapons to be cleared for internal carry by the end of systems development and demonstration (SDD) phase with UK jets was the ASRAAM AIM-132 air-to-air missile.

Now, according to a briefing by program officials earlier this year, it seems that the AIM-132 will only be cleared for outside carry--the non-stealth mode--by the end of SDD.

There have been other degraded affects with the AIM-132 and UK F-35. Back in 2008, program officials announced that it was just too much work to clear the AIM-132 for carry on internal air-to-ground hard-points. In each of the F-35's two internal weapon's bays you have one hard-point which can hold either an air-to-ground weapon or an air-to-air weapon. One door from each of the two bays can also hold an air-to-air missile. This gives the potential for the F-35 to carry 4 air-to-air missiles internally.

Originally the UK expected to have the ability to carry 4 AIM-132s internally; 2 for each weapons bay. With the 2008 announcement, that left the UK with 2 internal carry AIM-132s (hung on the internal part of one of the weapons bay doors) and the other two would be carried externally. In 2008 it was passed off that the external carry would be with low-observable hard-points to carry the missile but program officials have already stated that if you carry weapons externally, you are not stealthy.

A March 2012 briefing now shows no internal carry of the AIM-132 for the end of SDD.



Compare that to this 2009 slide (from a Lockheed Martin 2010 briefing) which reflects what has been briefed for years in relation weapons cleared by the end of SDD. Those weapons with pink text labels.

Ignore the pink on the external fuel tanks. That went away in 2006 when trying to figure out stores separation became too troublesome. Note that the 2012 brief still assumes the UK will have the F-35C. This is no longer so. They are back to the F-35B.

The 2012 brief also has some interesting items about schedule best left for another post.

It will be interesting to see how program officials respond to the idea that the UK just recently said good-bye to internal carry of the AIM-132. An industry observer and military aerospace engineer not attached to the program put forth some possibilities:

ASRAAM is a rail launched weapon so the body is likely not designed to take the loads of an ejection and the exhaust would burn the beejeesus out of the weapon bay, with exhaust plume byproducts being blasted into the bay and onto everything in its flight path, like the EOTS sapphire window.

Then there is the under fuselage crossing angle issue with a rail launch from the door station which would somewhat seriously hinder simultaneous or closely spaced dual launches to consider.

Most likely too, it was yet another case of the PowerPoint not matching engineering reality. Quite normal for this program. Woe to the U.K.

So what does that leave the UK with? AMRAAM. However that has its own trouble with production reliability considering the 2-year-old motor problem and overly optimistic probability-of-kill claims against high-end targets.

The U.K. is currently running a going-out-of-business sale with the military. How the F-35 will help any improvement in their combat capability is a large question.

It may be possible to see weapons clearance options catch up after SDD. However the way the program is struggling, that is the least of the worries for the F-35 faithful who are trying to keep the cause alive.

UK MOD shouting past the graveyard with the F-35

Maybe U.K. MOD officials need to have a chat with the U.S. chairs of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) in regard to their findings on F-35B STOVL progress.

What we have here is stock and trade regurgitation of Lockheed Martin talking points via, a clueless U.S. DOD boss, Mr. Panetta who is acting more like a seller of the F-35, instead of being a helpful counsel to a valuable ally.

Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, poured scorn on concerns over the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) programme on Wednesday comparing an official US government audit into the embattled fighter jet to a “home buyer’s survey” that could be safely ignored.

I would wonder if there is anyone left in the MOD that has the skill to do proper military engineering studies? Below is the top analytical statement. Faith-based and dangerous.

“Maybe some of the sceptics will change their minds when they see it fly.”

You mean...like this?

I wonder how that kind of attitude works with these guys?



If you take some time and look at the trade-press and various sites over the past few weeks, you will see a surge in F-35 marketing spin.

All for an obsolete-to-the-threat, troubled and overly expensive aircraft.

Royal Navy--betrayed

The U.K. MOD remains committed to the troubled F-35B short take-off and landing (STOVL) strike-fighter.

That is until it becomes known that it could be dumped. Interesting when you fire so many people in the MOD, hardly anyone is left in the military that wants to cheerlead for you.

Maybe the UK MOD F-35 fan-base need a senior communications advisor to help get the word out to the public.

Taxpayer funded of course.

Farnborough fluff

In it's latest PR move, LM will "deliver" to the UK its first F-35B aircraft.

Not mentioned by the trade press is the following.

LRIP-3 deliveries--which the jet came from--are behind. The LRIP-3 contract should have been complete at the end of 2011.

The aircraft the U.K. will receive, will go to Eglin Air Force Base (AFB), Florida to join the training program. The training program is still grounded for training real students until DOD and industry can resolve many F-35 safety-of-flight issues identified in a 2011 audit. Training should have been well under way by now.

Instead, what we get are crickets chirping.

Also, years after first flight, the aircraft still has a very limited flight envelop.

The aircraft delivered to the U.K. is under-tested, under-developed and will require numerous structural fixes and changes before it can ever be front-line material. Hardware (known as TR-2) that is needed to drive Block III software won't be fielded for a few years.

Stay tuned. I am sure we will hear more amazing stories from Farnborough this week.

Alternate reality for admiral's club

The Royal Navy boss says air power from the sea is important.

Too bad he lives in an alternate reality where there are only a handful of active ships and there is little hope of the RN becoming bigger.

Britain's aircraft carriers are crucial to its future as an effective global power, the First Sea Lord has warned.

What, "future as an effective global power"? The patient is bleeding out and it is just a matter of a few years before the doctor signs the death certificate.

Along with that, the two aircraft carriers the UK wants have a very high risk of becoming overly expensive helicopter carriers because of massive F-35 risks.

The guy is all dressed up and doesn't really have anything of a Navy to lead.

What would interest me is how he would explain the admiral-to-ship ratio. That would complete this discussion of ineffective naval roadmaps of the world very well indeed.

F-35C not compatible with French carrier

Besides what I tweeted on the right, note that the UK thinks that if they go with the F-35C, it won't be compatible with the French aircraft carrier.

A reassessment of the programme, ordered by the Prime Minister, found the F35C would only provide one operable carrier, rather than two, and would carry an extra cost of up to £1.8billion, the Times reported. The review also found the programme would not be compatible with France's aircraft carrier and the new vessel would not be likely to come into service until 2025.

EMALS, critical to F-35C success in the U.S. Navy? Oh wait. Someone has to prove that you can trap an F-35C.

Tanker problem for RAF

The UK MOD has a air-refueling tanker problem. It seems that the hardware involved is having trouble passing gas to RAF Tornados.

I suspect the problem is fixable. More interesting in the article is the lease for 14 converted Airbus A330s for $16.7B (USD).

Leases are in some ways like rentals. It would be interesting to see the terms of the lease in detail.

At first look, acquisition of 14 tankers would be less. However budgets (especially a death-hospice MOD budget environment) are all about what colors of money you can spend at different times.

In that case, I wonder if a civilian contractor could do it better cheaper?

UK air-refuelling requirements are almost all hose-and-drogue. Interesting as I would have thought getting the C-17 and used Rivet Joints would get in the way of all this.

I could be wrong, but as far as I know, the RAF's A330s will not be fitted with a boom system.

MOD and UK leadership don't know half of the problem

Wait until the dummies in the MOD find out that neither variant of the F-35 is a good idea.

They will end up with 2 over-priced helicopter carriers.

The usual

I wonder how U.K. law deals with fraud.

The parts and components for the 3,000-strong fleet of F-35 jets are to be built by a number of different companies across Britain before the planes are assembled in the United States and begin to be delivered in 2015.

Large section of UK aircraft carrier build moving along

Hopefully this will turn into something other than a jobs program. With the MOD budget on death-watch, I have my doubts.