Fuerza Aérea del Reino Unido

[solrac1]

si no encallan en Finisterre

[And...]

si no encallan en Finisterre

pueden encallar 5 si quisieres.... los otros dos la hunden!!

[Iris]

A Australia, Reino Unido y Arabia Saudí


Airbus Military entregará en 2011 las primeras unidades de A330 MRTT



05/01/2011

(Infodefensa.com) Madrid - Airbus Military ha anunciado la entrega de los aviones de transporte y reabastecimiento en vuelo A330 MRTT para tres fuerzas aéreas en 2011. Las primeras unidades estarán destinadas a la Real Fuerza Aérea de Australia, la Royal Air Force británica y la Fuerza Aérea de Arabia Saudí.

Además, según recoge Aviaçao Militar, durante el mes de noviembre, cerca de 25 pilotos de cazas F-16A/Bs de la Fuerza Aérea de Portugal han recibido entrenamiento de reabastecimiento en vuelo realizando más de 70 contactos con y sin combustible y con diferentes configuraciones de armamento, incluyendo contactos con el sistema Boom en una aeronave de la Fuerza Aérea saudita.

El proceso de entrega del primer avión para la Fuerza Aérea australiana está en marcha, con la entrega prevista tras concluir con la revisión de toda la documentación y actividades completadas.

El avión A330 MRTT Future Strategic Transport Aircraft británico ha completado una serie de contactos en seco, en ejercicios de simulación con el caza español F/A-18 Hornet.

El modelo de aeronave para reabastecimiento en vuelo es el mimso que el ofrecido por EADS North America, en este caso el KC-45, para el programa KC-X por el que pugna con Boeing, un contrato valorado en 35.000 millones de dólares.

El Ejército del Aire saudí recibirá la primera aeronave A330 MRTT a finales de 2011. La primera unidad se encuentra en proceso de pintura y debe efectuar los primeros vueos completos en 2011. Otro cliente son los Emiratos Árabes unidos que recibirán un primer avión en 2012, actualmente en montaje en las instalaciones de Airbus Military en la localidad madrileña de Getafe.

http://www.infodefensa.com/?noticia=air ... zas-aereas

.- Saludos.

[Roubak]

Pronto se tendran que sustituir los Harriers por los F-35 o por los raffale o por los Mig-29.
¿No cabria la posibilidad de que se consiguieran piezas de recambio de los Harriers que se estan retirando de la Royal Navy?
Para que se aplazase el retirar el harrier.

[Mauricio]

¿Mas? Al paso que vamos al 2015 esto va a ser el Real Club de Vuelo.

Forces Prepare For Axe to Fall On Fighter Jet Fleet In Drastic Cuts Package

Source: Daily Telegraph; published Jan. 25, 2011

The Armed Forces are braced for another round of drastic cuts as the Ministry of Defence has to make up a £1.6 billion shortfall for the next financial year.

Key defence officials are meeting on Tuesday to thrash out the details of how to make immediate savings to the 2011/2012 budget.

The RAF is bracing itself to its fleet of 134 Tornado GR4 fighter-bombers being slashed in half to just 60 jets to save up to £300 million a year.

Despite challenging the previous government over the helicopter shortages in Afghanistan a key decision will be the likely announcement to cut 12 extra Chinooks that were part of a package ordered by Gordon Brown.

Other important equipment programmes are going to be axed in what will be an embarrassing revision of last October’s Strategic Defence and Security Review.

The MoD has been forced into making the extra cuts after it miscalculated savings in the next financial year.

It was supposed to save £8 billion by 2014-15 as a 7.5 per cut real terms cut to its budget. Half of this was meant to come through headline equipment cuts such as the Harriers, Nimrod reconnaissance planes, frigates and the aircraft carriers Ark Royal and Illustrious. The rest was to come through axing 17,000 Servicemen and 25,000 MoD staff as well as “efficiency savings”.

Service chiefs will sit down today at the Defence Board’s meeting on planning round 2011 (PR11) to discuss what will have to be cut with officials warning that “everything is on the table”.

“We have 34 major procurement programmes and it’s a question of what’s nice to have and what’s necessary to have but no one can see how to take that decision because they’re all regarded as vital,” said an officer involved in the planning.

They will also discuss other savings including exchange rates, fuel and personnel costs.

[Yorktown]

Scrapping RAF Nimrods 'perverse' say military chiefs

Leading military figures have warned that scrapping the £4bn fleet of new RAF Nimrods will create a "massive gap" in British security.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12294766

Lo dicen en una carta abierta en el Telegraph, firmada por Marshal of the RAF Lord Craig, the former chief of the defence staff and chief of air staff; Major General Julian Thompson, the commander of land forces in the Falklands conflict; Major General Patrick Cordingley, the commander of the Desert Rats in the Gulf War; and Admiral Sir John "Sandy" Woodward, commander of the naval task force in the Falklands.

La carta:

The destruction of nine new Nimrod jets is folly

Several million pounds have been saved, but a massive gap in British security has opened.

10:00PM GMT 26 Jan 2011

SIR – Without any explanation, the Security and Defence Review announced that the Nimrod MR4 maritime patrol aircraft would not be brought into service. The decision was fiercely debated within the MoD, but the need for immediate savings and priority for current operations prevailed.

Destruction of the nine airframes has now begun. Machine tools have been destroyed; several million pounds have been saved, but a massive gap in British security has opened.

Britain is committed to the support of the UN, Nato and the EU. The vulnerability of sea lanes, unpredictable overseas crises and traditional surface and submarine opposition will continue to demand versatile, responsive aircraft.

Nimrod would have provided long-range maritime and overland reconnaissance, anti-submarine surveillance, air-sea rescue co-ordination and reconnaissance support to the Navy’s Trident submarines.

Some of Nimrod’s roles in home waters can be covered by frigates, short-range Merlin anti-submarine helicopters or even the C130 Hercules. They fall short, however, of replacing the strategic multi-role contribution of Nimrod. Other countries are actually seeking to reinforce their maritime patrol capacity, with the new Boeing 737 P8A a strong contender.

In a week when reports suggest that the Government is seeking to impose even more severe cuts on the defence budget, it is not perverse to suggest that the gap left by broken Nimrods should be readdressed.

Air Vice Marshal Tony Mason
Major-General Patrick Cordingley
Marshal of the RAF Lord Craig
Air Commodore Andrew Lambert
Major-Gen Julian Thompson
Admiral Sir John Woodward

[Anderson]

Y siguen, que no paran:

UK cancels SAR-H

As expected the UK government has axed the contract to privatise the search and rescue helicopter force.

Gary Parsons - 8-Feb-2011

February 8: As expected, the UK government has axed the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deal for privatising the country’s search and rescue (SAR) helicopter force. The contract was due to come into force in 2015 and would have seen the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy fleets of Sea King helicopters replaced with commercially-operated Sikorsky S-92s.

At present search and rescue work is provided 24 hours a day, seven days a week from 12 bases around the country - four are already operated by Soteria's CHC on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), with eight by the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. Together the bases cover 11,000 miles of coastline, 1.4million square miles of sea and regular overland work. SAR-H was intended to bring a harmonised service, operated under the joint auspices of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and MCA.

The cancellation of the contract with the preferred bidder, Soteria, has come about after alleged corruption. In a statement to Parliament, the Transport Secretary, Philip Hammond, said: "In mid December, the preferred bidder in the SAR-H competition, Soteria, had come forward to inform the government of irregularities regarding the conduct of their bid team, which had only then recently come to light.

"The irregularities included access by one of the consortium members, CHC Helicopter, to commercially sensitive information regarding the joint MoD/Department for Transport project team's evaluations of industry bids and evidence that a former member of that project team had assisted the consortium in its bid preparation, contrary to explicit assurances given to the project team.

"In addition, the MoD Police is investigating how the commercially sensitive information came to be in the possession of the bidder."

He said the MoD and Department for Transport would now "consider the potential procurement options to meet future requirements for search and rescue helicopters in the United Kingdom, including options to maintain continuity of search and rescue helicopter cover until new longer term arrangements can be put in place".

In response Soteria made the following statement: “Soteria is disappointed to learn that the UK government has announced the cancellation of the SAR-H programme. We remain confident that Soteria was designated as the preferred bidder for the SAR-H programme as a result of the value, expertise, dedication, excellence and exceptional technical solution that Soteria can provide in leading search-and-rescue efforts across the UK.

“Soteria is evaluating the government's decision and if given the opportunity is confident that it is capable of delivering the SAR-H programme and stands ready to work with the UK government.”

http://key.aero/view_news.asp?ID=2934&t ... n=military

Saludos!

[Mauricio]

British Tornados May Become Victim of Upcoming Budget Planning Round

Source: Forecast International; issued February 22, 2011)

LONDON --- The U.K. Ministry of Defence is scrambling to find GBP1 billion ($1.62 billion) in cost savings prior to the end of the current fiscal year on March 31. Adding to the challenge, the cost-cutting options presented represent politically difficult choices that may see Britain transition from Tier 1 military status to Tier 2.

The options include cutting 20,000 troops from the Army from 2015 onward (this would shrink the British Army to its smallest size since the 1820s due to a downsizing at the end of the Napoleonic Wars) and withdrawing more ships from an overextended, under-strength Royal Navy.

But the option being considered most carefully seems to center on the Royal Air Force's fleet of Tornado ground attack aircraft. With the release of the U.K. Strategic Defense and Security Review last fall, the Tornado emerged as a big winner in a MoD review that pitted the aircraft against the Harrier GR7/GR9 fleet in what evolved into a battle royal for which platform remained in service. Due to its continued use in the Afghan theater, the Tornado made the cut and the last Harriers were withdrawn from service earlier this year.

Now the Tornados operating in Afghanistan could fall victim to budgetary cutbacks, as officials are considering the immediate withdrawal of the RAF's eight Tornados deployed in that theater. This move would be followed by the retirement of the remaining Tornado fleet of roughly 100 aircraft within as short a timeframe as three years.

In their stead, the MoD would seek to expedite the rate at which Eurofighter Typhoons are being brought into service, a task that may be facilitated by the dissipation of a potential sale of 24 Typhoons from the British Royal Air Force's Tranche 1 Block 5 stocks to Oman.

[maximo]

Estos estan corriendo a por una flota de tiffies. Si acaso alguna excrecencia en forma de JSF. Estan pillados por los huevos con el programa EFA, y como de ahi no pueden cortar, tendran que cortar de donde sea.

[Mauricio]

Dos escuadrones de Tornado de aquí a Junio.

UK confirms two Tornado GR4 squadrons will go by June

By Craig Hoyle

Two of the UK Royal Air Force's Panavia Tornado GR4 squadrons are to be decommissioned on 1 June, as the service's fleet of the type will be reduced to 136 aircraft.

The RAF confirms that the units to fall victim of the Tornado force reduction are Marham-based 13 Sqn and 14 Sqn, which is located at Lossiemouth in Scotland.

"These squadrons have been selected by the Air Force Board Standing Committee, taking into account operational commitments and the relative seniority of the squadrons at each base," the RAF says. "The choice of these squadrons in no way indicates the direction of ongoing basing discussions," it adds.

Removing the two units from its force structure will reduce the size of the Tornado GR4 force to five frontline squadrons, and forms part of a process through which around 1,020 RAF personnel will be notified of their redundancy by September. These will represent the first casualties of a process that will eventually reduce the service's staffing level by 5,000 posts.

"These reductions in manpower requirements result from changes to force structures and reform in the way in which we do business; there will be no effect on current operations," says defence secretary Liam Fox.

Meanwhile, Fox says the MoD is still working on the details of a plan to remove a large number of student pilots from the RAF's training system.

"A decision has been taken to remove up to 170 RAF student pilots from the flying training pipeline. The criteria being used to select those trainee pilots to be removed will be a combination of the service need, officer qualities, ground-based pilot aptitude testing, and flying performance to date," he says.

"The selection process for re-streaming trainee pilots is not due to finish until mid-March," Fox told the House of Commons on 28 February.

[Mauricio]

Estos estan corriendo a por una flota de tiffies. Si acaso alguna excrecencia en forma de JSF. Estan pillados por los huevos con el programa EFA, y como de ahi no pueden cortar, tendran que cortar de donde sea.

NAO pone el costo unitario en 126 millones de libras (20.200 millones por 160 unidades), 75% de sobrecosto por unidad. Mas o menos consistente con lo que el Parlamento había calculado (130 millones por unidad).

Audit Blames Typhoon Overrun on Over-optimism

By ANDREW CHUTER
Published: 1 Mar 2011 19:00

LONDON - Poor cost control, efforts to balance the defense budget and over-optimism on key investment decisions have contributed to a massive cost overrun for the Typhoon fighters being delivered to the Royal Air Force, the British National Audit Office (NAO) will say in a report to be released March 2.

The Typhoon is being developed and produced as a four-nation program involving Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain. (U.K. Ministry of Defence) The government spending watchdog said the forecast development and production cost of British Typhoons has risen 20 percent to 20.2 billion pounds ($32.7 billion), even though the Ministry of Defence has reduced orders from 232 to 160 aircraft.

"Key investment decisions were taken on an over-optimistic basis, the project has been adversely affected by corporate decisions to try to balance the defense budget and costs have risen substantially and at a rate the department [the MoD] did not predict," said the report into the management of the Typhoon program.

The Typhoon is being developed and produced as a four-nation program involving Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The NAO slammed the collaborative program, saying it failed to deliver spares on time, was inefficient and, without change, would challenge British efforts to upgrade the Typhoon quickly and cost-effectively.

The cut in production numbers for the Royal Air Force has helped drive up unit costs.

"If the development and production costs are taken into account, the unit cost of each aircraft has risen by 75 percent," the NAO report said, adding that part of the reason for the cost increase was that the MoD failed to have a realistic understanding of the balance "between costs, numbers of equipments and the importance of the operational capability to be provided."

A similar script could have been written about numerous major defense programs here in the U.K. and elsewhere.

The British government is in the midst of another acquisition restructuring effort aimed at reducing time and budget overruns, which last year saw costs on the 15 biggest defense programs rise by 3.3 billion pounds.

The Typhoon report wasn't all bad news, though.

Analysis undertaken for the NAO concluded that the current unit production cost, excluding the collaborative development phase, is similar to comparable aircraft types.

The NAO also said that since 2005, control over those portions of the project where the MoD has entered into contracts has improved and costs are stable.

Much of the rest of the report, though, made for grizzly reading.

The NAO cited collaborative arrangements between the European partners as largely responsible for more than doubling the cost of the British element of development spending.

Out of the 3.5 billion-pound increase, some 2.2 billion pounds was attributable to "inefficient collaborative commercial and managerial arrangements, obligations to international partners and the complexity of the technologies being developed, a challenge compounded by the rigid collaborative workshare requirements," the report said.

A further 332 million pounds was spent evolving the Typhoon from an air defense fighter into a multirole platform.

The NAO report said Typhoon would not have a full weapons-carrying capability, including the Storm Shadow cruise missile, until 2018.

The remaining 1 billion-pound increase in development largely reflects the cost of capital charges caused by delays in the project, the report said.

The spending watchdog said the objectives of the four nations were not fully aligned and decision-making was slow, with key decisions requiring consensus of all the partners.

On one occasion, it took seven years to agree to and deliver some key upgrades, the NAO said.

While local contractors BAE and Rolls-Royce have largely achieved their performance targets supporting the RAF Typhoon fleet, the same can't be said of collaborative contracts across the partner nations for the supply of spares and repairs, the report said.

The NAO said to compensate for poor performance, the RAF has had to cannibalize some of its Typhoons to keep other aircraft flying. The spares and repairs problems contributed to the RAF's inability to meet its annual flying hours target, with a 13 percent shortfall in 2009-10.

Under current plans, the British would likely spend 37 billion pounds on Typhoon by the time it was taken out of service in 2030. Some 60 percent of that figure would be spent on procurement and upgrading the aircraft, the report said.

The British are buying 160 Typhoons, with the first one delivered in 2003 and the last one scheduled for 2015. The number of aircraft will fall to 107 by 2019, when the Tranche 1 machines are scheduled to be taken out of service.

Amyas Morse, the head of the NAO and an ex-senior official at the MoD, said in a statement that while the MoD had put into place some building blocks to secure value for money, "difficult and deep-rooted problems remain to be overcome."

The report was published hours after the MoD began detailing the first tranche of Royal Air Force personnel cuts as the service looks to reduce its head count by 5,000 people over the next four years.

The MoD said 1,020 personnel would go in the first cut, including trainee pilots, weapons system officers and operators, ground tradesmen and up to a further 121 officer redundancies of the rank of air commodore and below.

The statement said the number of officers at the air vice-marshal rank and above will be reduced.

The British recently announced a significant cut in Air Force capabilities as part of a broad reduction in defense spending. The Harrier GR9 fleet was retired, the Tornado GR4 strike aircraft fleet reduced and the Nimrod MRA4 maritime reconnaissance fleet was scrapped before it entered service.

Details of personnel cuts to the British Army and the Royal Navy are expected next month.

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?c= ... &i=5837697

El reporte:
http://www.nao.org.uk/idoc.ashx?docId=5 ... version=-1

[maximo]

O sea, que vendran a salir como los JSF. Con la diferencia de que con el Tiffie estan cogidos por los huevos (aun mas que con sus portaaviones) y con el JSF lo unico que tienen seguro es el dolor de huevos del motor.

[Mauricio]

O sea, que vendran a salir como los JSF. Con la diferencia de que con el Tiffie estan cogidos por los huevos (aun mas que con sus portaaviones) y con el JSF lo unico que tienen seguro es el dolor de huevos del motor.

126 millones de LIBRAS por avión. En el cuarto lote los EE.UU. han pagado 111 millones de DOLARES por aparato. 126 millones de Libras son más de 200 millones de dólares.

[Plissken_101_AB]

Typhoon 'spiralling out of control'

The Ministry of Defence has been told to "get a grip" on its equipment programmes after the cost of each Typhoon aircraft was found to have risen by 75 per cent.

A report from the National Audit Office (NAO) said the cost of the Typhoon development and production had risen 20 per cent, now forecast to cost £20.2bn. In addition unit costs were also inflated by 75 per cent due to a 30 per cent reduction in the number of aircraft being purchased. Rising costs, which were said to exceed MoD predictions, have been predicted to result in £37bn being spent on the aircraft before they leave service.

Concern was also raised over aircraft functionality. Although the MoD has committed £564m to developing a ground attack role for the Typhoon, which would add to the current air-to-air role, the NAO said the aircraft were unlikely to be the choice for ground attack missions until 2018. But their report also said that the ministry would retire 53 of the oldest aircraft by 2019. On this point, Richard Bacon, a member of the Public Accounts Committee said: "Unfortunately, the Typhoon will not be a true multi-role aircraft until 2018, just twelve months before the oldest Typhoons will be retired and nearly four decades after the project first began."

Other issues highlighted in the report pointed to slow decision making, a lack of alignment in the objectives of partner nations, as well as support and spares problems that have resulted in less flying of the aircraft by the RAF.

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said: "The Typhoon is currently performing important operational tasks but the full multi-role capability won't be available for a number of years. Until this happens the MOD will not have secured value for money from its over £20bn investment in Typhoon. MOD has put some of the building blocks in place to enable this to happen. But difficult and deep-rooted problems remain to be overcome."

He added: "Key investment decisions were taken on an over-optimistic basis; the project suffered from corporate decisions to try to balance the defence budget; and the department did not predict the substantial rate at which costs would rise. None of this suggests good cost control, a key determinant of value for money."

Margaret Hodge who chairs the Common's Public Accounts Committee said poor decisions had wasted billions of taxpayers' money, and she said costs had been "spiralling out of control". She warned that costs could even exceed the £37bn now predicted.

"Yet again we see evidence of over-optimistic cost projections, slow decision-making, and problems with operational deployment of aircraft," she said.

"The Ministry of Defence needs to get a firm grip on its equipment programme and ensure that decisions to delay, speed up or rescope projects are based on a full understanding of the financial and operational consequences."

http://www.defencemanagement.com/news_story.asp?id=15641

Cuesta una barbaridad y no se puede considerar ni multi-role.

[Orel .]

¡Hola!

Analysis undertaken for the NAO concluded that the current unit production cost, excluding the collaborative development phase, is similar to comparable aircraft types.

Esa frase está cogida de la noticia de Mauricio, que además señalaste en negrita, y dice bien clarito que el mismo organismo que está criticando reconoce que el coste unitario de producción actual es similar al de otros cazas semejantes. ¿Es más caro que los demás o tan caro como ellos? Porque ese párrafo dice lo segundo. Otra cosa es que esos costes le resulten exagerados a cualquiera (sea comprador de Raptor, de EFA, de F-35, de Rafale, de "súper-remozados"...). Y entre eso y la crisis, de ahí tanto recorte en números, retrasos en tomas de decisiones... para todos.

Un saludo