Doh! Note to self: When reading comments and then buggering off before posting a comment remember to refresh the page before posting.

Hello again :-) one thing I suggested a while back no idea if I said it on here but I may as well. The original idea when I first suggested it was to buy a dozen or so C-295’s to bridge the gap between the old and the new and then give them to a new Coastguard service fitted out with the full MPA kit. Now that Paul has reminded me about the paratrooper’s plight additional aircraft could be procured for a larger common pool (unlikely to say the least) and for light transport duties. New plan: – Buy a squadron of C-295’s and use them to fill the current and most likely future transport gap as everyone else has suggested but also later equip them with the palletised EADS FITS system. The primary reason is to fill that scarily massive gap in maritime patrol that exists, well maybe only in the minds of the sane, as to most we seem to be a landlocked nation. However since the system is palletised it means when needed it could be wheeled off so that paratroopers can qualify. Not ideal obviously but it is an attempt to kill 2 birds with one stone so it can’t be perfect.

Additional points I would make, it’s unlikely that we will see a smaller aircraft in service as the folks able to change things most likely thing along the lines of using the larger Chinook fleet to move smaller loads. The fixed wing transport fleet bringing it to distribution points and the Chinook fleet doing the last leg of the journey to where it is needed either that lob it out the back of either the Herc or A400M. Lobbing it out the back is a lot more accurate that it sounds these days just ask a Herc loadie doing so in Afghanistan, of course some items can’t be dropped but the majority can. Personally I think for training paratroopers using civilian aircraft for part of the Job sounds alright contracting to a Civilian company should work out cheaper if you know how many people and when. Naturally they would still need dropped from the back of military transports but hopefully on fewer occasions to stay fully qualified saving money and freeing up the transport fleet for other things.

feel free to nick, just credit me as a contributor, i hate typing!!! interesting features to add would be the gps parachuting system and the new “drop and forget” system the americans are testing. obviously the more we can fly the less on the roads and the less in the headlines.
chinooks are too maintainance heavy (spent too long in heli workshops, to know this) to use plus needed for medevac and hercs are just too big for a couple of pallets! i would even use the baby of the eads world, the 212 it’s good enough for the USMC!

anyway if it we used 235′s at the para school and maybe one for SF it would free up the hercs plus use less fuel keep the eco warriors happy.

Interesting idea Paul, might nick it and call it my own in a new post :D

just read that we are going to have 22 aircraft instead of 25 to cover the extra money they wanted, should’ve got that bloke off the tv adverts to haggle for us, couldn’t have done any worse!!
in the statement the french have agreed to purchase 8 casa 235′s to cover delays, a mighty fine idea as these use the same pallet system as the c130′s but are 66% cheape to run, we should follow suit as it can land on shorter airstrips plus more importantly we use hercs for transporting everything, it’s like going down to the supermarket in an artic. surely drop by the a400 to 20 (contract clause says you can’t reduce order by more than 10) and use the money to by a sqn of either 235/295. especially as on slightly left of centre topic there are a shed load of paratroops who are not qualified/current due to a lack of aircraft. the 235 holds 51 paratroopers the 295, 72. a much cheaper way of qualifying the guys, highlighted by the fact the RAF spokesperson said they had hired civilian aircraft to decrease the backlog.
crisis management wins through again!!

I thought I read somewhere recently that the RAF had already agreed to accept 19 for the same price!!!

Which is true?

Perhaps its neither?

All in all, it could be worse.
I still think we should nail EADS to wall over it, given Browns recent political offensive on defence, I cant see what he’s really got to lose, he could even win back some of his shattered economics master reputation by demanding fixed price means fixed price, even in defence.

But everything is OK , because the RN can defeat UFO’s !

Oh sorry, that was fiction…..

Apologies for being massively off topic, but I bought the full boxed set of Jerry Anderson’s UFO for Xmas and my 6 year old is getting well into it. We just watched an episode called Destruction in which in un-named County class DDG takes out a UFO with a Sea Slug ! When a second UFO attacks the Sea Slug is knocked out by its beam weapons (particle beam?) so it takes it with the 4.5′s !! Priceless, but then maybe thats why the MoD thinks we can be invincible with crappy kit ??? :-)

At least it still had a radar :-) albeit made of concrete and called Blue Circle Radar. I don’t think anybody in the MoD would have known the difference between Blue Circle and Blue Parrot anyhow.

“(although it is inconceivable that any RAF aircraft will now come into service without a full DAS)”

I’m sure airbus will be made to promise to install them, and they will exist on paper, but this is the UK, we’ve sent planes to war with concrete radar

“although it is inconceivable that any RAF aircraft will now come into service without a full DAS”
Ha! That is funny, of course some aircraft will be delivered without a defensive aids suite fitted. We are still talking about the MoD and we are still in the United Kingdom it would not surprise me one little bit if there are only a few fitted. By the time these aircraft actually get here Afghanistan should be long gone or at least it would be if I had my way so there will be no immediate need for defensive aids on aircraft. I do hope that we are only dropping 3 aircraft as that is not a serious dent although EADS should have been held to the fixed price.