RAF Typhoons confirmed gunless?

In article , Paul J. Adam
writes
In message , Dave Eadsforth
writes
In article , Paul J. Adam
writes
It costs money, which is in seriously short supply. What will you give
up instead?

Is it necessary to think of giving up something instead?

Funding is finite and the list of desirable items is larger than the
money available.

Cannot disagree with that - but because of this it is vital to maintain
a grasp on which items must retain 100 percent effectiveness

If cannon are
'the cost of doing business' for a fighter - a necessary contingency -
then the money should be allocated.

Is the cannon more or less important than the towed decoys for the DASS?

Is the cannon more or less important than ASRAAM integration?

Do you fund the cannon before or after fitting ALARM capability?

...and so it goes.

Specifically concerning cannon: cannon provide a very fundamental
capability - and cheaply. They are there when all else is:

used up;
failed;
inappropriate.

Air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles are vulnerable to countermeasures
- and you don't know what the enemy might have up his sleeve until he
unveils it; so you might experience disappointment at a vital moment.
Missiles are also somewhat poor for delivering warnings - the shot tends
to go into the target instead of across the bows. And if you want to
bring any vehicle (boat/truck) to a halt instead of annihilating it
cannon are the only option.


Over the last few decades, British defence funding has been dogged by
the motto 'there isn't going to be another real war, old chap' but of
course wars have a habit of turning up - and then we are stuffed.

Add also that the politicians declare that "the UK will only face
conflicts in these particular areas" and make cuts accordingly: usually
followed by an out-of-area problem which of course HM Forces are
expected to deal with anyway.

Indeed - and flexibility is key in such situations.

During the Falklands we had ships that were wired up with cable that
gave off toxic fumes when it burned, and the men had overalls of man-
made fibre that shrunk nicely onto the body when close to a fire. And
as for the prospect of ships being attacked by more than one aircraft at
a time - couldn't possibly happen. Close defence? Lord 'what's a
Vulcan cannon' Chalfont didn't have much to offer when questioned on the
subject.

I can offer quite a few modern examples: the problem keeps coming down
to funding. Better some capability than no capability: other shortfalls
can hopefully be closed by UOR.

Agreed some capability better than none, but it is no good having a
weapon system that is 80 percent as good as the enemy's - if it is to be
deployed it must be 100 percent as good if not better, and the savings
can come from elsewhere. The forces should not have to blunt their
teeth - that is a terrible and dangerous option.

Until "screwing up defence" becomes an election issue, it's not a
problem for our lords and masters: and until then it's easy to keep
squeezing defence in the sacred name of Schoolsandhospitals.

Yes, and the mishandling of the Iraq situation does not help the case
for 100 percent forces that are ready for anything if such forces are
perceived to be vulnerable to 'misuse' (Personal view: Never mind the
WMD - I'd have invaded Iraq if the Iraqi consul had double parked in
Kensington...)

All such defects can be guaranteed to have been foreseen - and the
warnings filtered out by a staffing system under pressure from the
Treasury. We have the competence to avoid these traps, we just lack a
coherent vision at the top.

Not even that; we just have a political class accustomed to a "can do"
attitude from the Forces, and too much experience of getting results
despite repeated cuts.

I can only agree with that too - they are better than the politicians
deserve. I spent years working alongside the military and I know their
private thoughts on such matters - but regrettably cannot reproduce them
here.

Cheers,

Dave

--
Dave Eadsforth

On Mon, 10 May 2004 00:16:44 +0100, Paul J. Adam wrote:
In message , Dave Eadsforth
writes
In article , Paul J. Adam
writes
It costs money, which is in seriously short supply. What will you give
up instead?

Is it necessary to think of giving up something instead?

Funding is finite and the list of desirable items is larger than the
money available.

If cannon are
'the cost of doing business' for a fighter - a necessary contingency -
then the money should be allocated.

Is the cannon more or less important than the towed decoys for the DASS?

Is the cannon more or less important than ASRAAM integration?

Do you fund the cannon before or after fitting ALARM capability?

...and so it goes.

I can think of several purchases the MoD has made in recent years
which didn't represent value for money (IMO) and which together
would have saved more than enough to fund Typhoon fully:

1. funding development of F-35, cost: GBP 2 bn. This is a US plane
and Britain doesn't get any significant control over the program.
It's quite likely the Americans will only sell us a second-rate
version without full stealth capabilities. Better would have been to
wait until F-35 is in service and then have a competition with it
and other carrier-borne fighter-bombers.

2. development of Boxer/MRAV, cost GBP ??? m. There was really no
need to fund development of a new 8x8 vehicle -- plenty exist
already, and automotive technology is mature, thus only incremental
improvements could be expected over what already exists. It's even
more of a waste of money, since the UK has withdrawn from the
programme.

3. FCLV (Future Command and Liaison Vehicle), cost: GBP 200 m. This
is a light truck, it looks like an over-sized land rover (there's a
picture at http://www.zen19725.zen.co.uk/weblog/art_222.html).
Britain is buying 400 of themv at over GBP 400,000 each, or about
20 times the cost of the land rovers they'll be replacing. I dare
say it's a good vehicle, but is it really worth 20 times more than
a land rover? I don't think so.

4. Apache. cost: GBP 2.5 bn. attack helicopters are over-rated, and
would probably suffer terrible casualties against an opponent well
armed with HMGs, autocannon, and man-portable SAMs.

5. Poodling for Bush, cost: GBP ??? bn. Britain's involvement in the
invasion of Iraq was political, designed to cloth the American
invasion with a veneer of multilateral respectability. A much
smaller force, say a single brigade, or just a battalion, would have
served this politcal end just as well. I'm sure the USA would have
cocked up the occupation just as badly without British involvement.

That lot's probably about 10 billion quid altogether, which would
pay for a few Eurofighters, and would mean the MoD wouldn't have to
be scraping for savings on not using the guns.

I can offer quite a few modern examples: the problem keeps coming down
to funding.

Does it though? There are countries that sped less on their military
than the UK, but seem to get better value than us. Consider Sweden,
for example. This country has a per capita GDP about the same as
Britain's, and spends a similar proportion of GDP on its armed
forces (2.5 % for Britian, 2% for Sweden). Imagine if Sweden and
Britian had a land border and were hostile towards each other; who
would win? Sweden could mobilise a larger army, and would probably
get air supertiority quite quickly, since Britain doesn't currently
have an air superiority fighter. Now consider that Sweden's
population is *one seventh* of the UK's -- why doesn't Britain have
a more capable military than such a small country? One reason is the
Royal Navy, another is Breitisan's cabability to deploy forces
overseas without full mobilisation, but I don't swee how these
together make up the whole discrepency. Judging by the programmes
I've listed above, the MoD seems to be remarkably insouciant about
value for money.

Better some capability than no capability: other shortfalls
can hopefully be closed by UOR.

Until "screwing up defence" becomes an election issue, it's not a
problem for our lords and masters: and until then it's easy to keep
squeezing defence in the sacred name of Schoolsandhospitals.

Having a decent education system is a pre-requisite to having a
powerful military: ignorant people can't design weapons, they are
harder to train as soldiers, and they don't provide the economic
foundation to fund any of these things.


--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)

On Mon, 10 May 2004 18:25:42 +0100, Dave Eadsforth wrote:

Air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles are vulnerable to countermeasures
- and you don't know what the enemy might have up his sleeve until he
unveils it; so you might experience disappointment at a vital moment.
Missiles are also somewhat poor for delivering warnings - the shot tends
to go into the target instead of across the bows. And if you want to
bring any vehicle (boat/truck) to a halt instead of annihilating it
cannon are the only option.

I'd add that people have thought guns on aircraft were useless
before, and have ended up re-instating them.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)

In message , phil hunt
writes
On Mon, 10 May 2004 00:16:44 +0100, Paul J. Adam news@jrwly
nch.demon.co.uk wrote:
...and so it goes.

I can think of several purchases the MoD has made in recent years
which didn't represent value for money (IMO) and which together
would have saved more than enough to fund Typhoon fully:

Of course. Naturally, procurement authorities are fully prescient.

I can offer quite a few modern examples: the problem keeps coming down
to funding.

Does it though?

Yes. Defence is not a vote-winner: being able to boast about how much
you spent on the sacred schoolsandhospitals is.

There are countries that sped less on their military
than the UK, but seem to get better value than us. Consider Sweden,
for example. This country has a per capita GDP about the same as
Britain's, and spends a similar proportion of GDP on its armed
forces (2.5 % for Britian, 2% for Sweden). Imagine if Sweden and
Britian had a land border and were hostile towards each other; who
would win?

Sweden, easily, because nobody expects Sweden to be able to fight out of
area, maintain a blue-water navy, have credible amphibious forces that
can deploy outside home waters... life is easy when you only have to
fight at home.

Now, if Sweden felt it necessary to put a battalion of troops into the
People's Republick of Uckfay Ouyay to get their people out alive ahead
of the revolution... how would they do that?

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

In message , Dave Eadsforth
writes
In article , Paul J. Adam
writes
Funding is finite and the list of desirable items is larger than the
money available.

Cannot disagree with that - but because of this it is vital to maintain
a grasp on which items must retain 100 percent effectiveness

And which are less crucial.

Is the cannon more or less important than the towed decoys for the DASS?

Is the cannon more or less important than ASRAAM integration?

Do you fund the cannon before or after fitting ALARM capability?

...and so it goes.

Specifically concerning cannon: cannon provide a very fundamental
capability - and cheaply. They are there when all else is:

used up;
failed;
inappropriate.

They're also short-ranged, inaccurate, bloody hard to use...

Air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles are vulnerable to countermeasures

So is the gun - you're using a gunsight that depends on range and rate
input from the radar. The enemy screws with your radar, he screws with
your gun solution.

Or you can spray'n'pray with a fixed reticule or a basic gyro sight -
with not many rounds. It can be done, it used to be the rule, but it
needs a lot of skill and practice (for which read money) and it has an
extremely limited firing envelope compared to modern weapons.

Chop the gun and you'll *guarantee* that there'll be a time when some
pilot needed it and didn't have it. Can't argue with that. But there's
only so much money: what do you tell the families of the pilots killed
because the DASS was cut back / the ground troops told that "sorry,
Brimstone was less important than the gun"...

I'd prefer to keep the capability myself: but it's less essential than
some of the other possible cuts.

- and you don't know what the enemy might have up his sleeve until he
unveils it;

There's an old rule of bayonet fighting: the guy with the last bullet
wins. If the enemy still has one missile and you're down to guns, you're
in the kimchi. (And having a gun and the training to use it isn't much
use against an incoming AAM or SAM)

Missiles are also somewhat poor for delivering warnings - the shot tends
to go into the target instead of across the bows.

Trouble is, for combat use you don't want tracers (which warn the enemy
they're under fire). But with no tracers, how do they know they're being
shot at?

The warnings that you've been intercepted are clear, promulgated by the
ICAO and don't require a cannon.

And if you want to
bring any vehicle (boat/truck) to a halt instead of annihilating it
cannon are the only option.

27mm high-explosive cannon shells, arriving twenty or thirty a second,
are not reliably able to "bring vehicles to a halt". Trouble is, they
aren't reliably able to stop them either.

Back during Viet Nam, the US armed gunship aircraft with 7.62mm miniguns
and 20mm cannon; evolution was rapid, as air defences meant higher
standoff altitudes and the gunships moved from close support to
interdiction.

The AC-130s went from .30" and 20mm batteries, to 20mm and 40mm, to
discovering that even 20mm wasn't an effective truck killer, and ended
up with a mixed battery of 25mm, 40mm and 105mm(!)

Add also that the politicians declare that "the UK will only face
conflicts in these particular areas" and make cuts accordingly: usually
followed by an out-of-area problem which of course HM Forces are
expected to deal with anyway.

Indeed - and flexibility is key in such situations.

'Flexibility' for aircraft translates to payload, which can be turned
into fuel or ordnance.

One wonders how the Sea Harriers would have fared during the Falklands
had they been able to trade their ADEN gun pods for more Sidewinders
(like the twin-rail launcher that would have doubled their offence) and
most especially more fuel to let them have more time on station.

I can offer quite a few modern examples: the problem keeps coming down
to funding. Better some capability than no capability: other shortfalls
can hopefully be closed by UOR.

Agreed some capability better than none, but it is no good having a
weapon system that is 80 percent as good as the enemy's -

Tell that to any tank crewman who took a M4 Sherman against a SS Panzer
unit. Or any pilot who was flying a P-51 or Tempest where Me262s were
expected.

Being "better" only counts if you can bring that advantage fully to
bear. To be controversial, the US Army's Rangers clearly and completely
outclassed the Somali militiamen in 1993 - but who retreated and who was
left running the country?

if it is to be
deployed it must be 100 percent as good if not better, and the savings
can come from elsewhere.

What will you give up to pay for keeping the Typhoon crews fully trained
in air-to-air and air-to-ground gunnery? Be specific and stick to the
remit of the relevant IPT for the required savings. Where will you find
the money through the life of the aircraft?

The forces should not have to blunt their
teeth - that is a terrible and dangerous option.

That's what the politicians demand and the electorate approves. Until
the voters protest, the politicians will keep on slicing.

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

In message , phil hunt
writes
I'd add that people have thought guns on aircraft were useless
before, and have ended up re-instating them.

Folk have thought horsed cavalry with sabres obsolete, and reinstated
them - or not. (It's worth remembering that one 2Lt George S. Patton
wrote the US Army's last sabre manual-of-arms... but failed to keep
horse cavalry close to the front, and didn't push for the issue of
sabres to all troops, when he was a commander in WW2)


You'd certainly like to keep the gun if all else was funded: but when
the budget axe falls, what will you give up before you sacrifice the
gun?
--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

In article , phil hunt
writes
On Mon, 10 May 2004 00:16:44 +0100, Paul J. Adam
wrote:
In message , Dave Eadsforth
writes
In article , Paul J. Adam
writes
It costs money, which is in seriously short supply. What will you give
up instead?

Is it necessary to think of giving up something instead?

Funding is finite and the list of desirable items is larger than the
money available.

If cannon are
'the cost of doing business' for a fighter - a necessary contingency -
then the money should be allocated.

Is the cannon more or less important than the towed decoys for the DASS?

Is the cannon more or less important than ASRAAM integration?

Do you fund the cannon before or after fitting ALARM capability?

...and so it goes.

I can think of several purchases the MoD has made in recent years
which didn't represent value for money (IMO) and which together
would have saved more than enough to fund Typhoon fully:

1. funding development of F-35, cost: GBP 2 bn. This is a US plane
and Britain doesn't get any significant control over the program.
It's quite likely the Americans will only sell us a second-rate
version without full stealth capabilities. Better would have been to
wait until F-35 is in service and then have a competition with it
and other carrier-borne fighter-bombers.

2. development of Boxer/MRAV, cost GBP ??? m. There was really no
need to fund development of a new 8x8 vehicle -- plenty exist
already, and automotive technology is mature, thus only incremental
improvements could be expected over what already exists. It's even
more of a waste of money, since the UK has withdrawn from the
programme.

3. FCLV (Future Command and Liaison Vehicle), cost: GBP 200 m. This
is a light truck, it looks like an over-sized land rover (there's a
picture at http://www.zen19725.zen.co.uk/weblog/art_222.html).
Britain is buying 400 of themv at over GBP 400,000 each, or about
20 times the cost of the land rovers they'll be replacing. I dare
say it's a good vehicle, but is it really worth 20 times more than
a land rover? I don't think so.

4. Apache. cost: GBP 2.5 bn. attack helicopters are over-rated, and
would probably suffer terrible casualties against an opponent well
armed with HMGs, autocannon, and man-portable SAMs.

5. Poodling for Bush, cost: GBP ??? bn. Britain's involvement in the
invasion of Iraq was political, designed to cloth the American
invasion with a veneer of multilateral respectability. A much
smaller force, say a single brigade, or just a battalion, would have
served this politcal end just as well. I'm sure the USA would have
cocked up the occupation just as badly without British involvement.

That lot's probably about 10 billion quid altogether, which would
pay for a few Eurofighters, and would mean the MoD wouldn't have to
be scraping for savings on not using the guns.

I can offer quite a few modern examples: the problem keeps coming down
to funding.

Does it though? There are countries that sped less on their military
than the UK, but seem to get better value than us. Consider Sweden,
for example. This country has a per capita GDP about the same as
Britain's, and spends a similar proportion of GDP on its armed
forces (2.5 % for Britian, 2% for Sweden). Imagine if Sweden and
Britian had a land border and were hostile towards each other; who
would win? Sweden could mobilise a larger army, and would probably
get air supertiority quite quickly, since Britain doesn't currently
have an air superiority fighter. Now consider that Sweden's
population is *one seventh* of the UK's -- why doesn't Britain have
a more capable military than such a small country? One reason is the
Royal Navy, another is Breitisan's cabability to deploy forces
overseas without full mobilisation, but I don't swee how these
together make up the whole discrepency. Judging by the programmes
I've listed above, the MoD seems to be remarkably insouciant about
value for money.

Better some capability than no capability: other shortfalls
can hopefully be closed by UOR.

Until "screwing up defence" becomes an election issue, it's not a
problem for our lords and masters: and until then it's easy to keep
squeezing defence in the sacred name of Schoolsandhospitals.

Having a decent education system is a pre-requisite to having a
powerful military: ignorant people can't design weapons, they are
harder to train as soldiers, and they don't provide the economic
foundation to fund any of these things.


You have touched on a philosophic point here. At present, the British
government believes that you can recruit soldiers as required, use them,
and after a number of years shove them back into a society that has
little understanding of either soldiering or the diplomatic realities
that justify its existence. It has always been true that an army
reflects the society from which it springs - and Britain should ponder
the implications of that.

All professions benefit from recruiting from a pool of people who
understand the role of that profession and are motivated to join it.
So, when Britain recruits its military forces mainly from the dole
queue, which has been the case for a long time now, what will be the
result?

Well, better than you might expect. While many priceless NCOs have
taken early departure, the training system remains intact, so the
recruits do get a solid foundation - unless they are headed for a a non-
combatant role in which case the soldiering capability will be 'thin'.
While we still develop a clutch of outstanding soldiers we have to cope
with the fact that the average recruit still lacks the depth of skill,
understanding and commitment of his counterpart of a few decades ago.

So, at present, the Home Office wants the population to act like sheep,
the Politically Correct want the population to act like amoebas, and the
Foreign Office would like a credible military posture. These cannot be
reconciled. We need some leadership here; leadership that cope with the
rough edge that the British can often present, but I'm afraid that the
mediocre lawyers who inhabit the higher layers of government are poorly
placed to supply it. I yearn for a reincarnated Earnest Bevin, but I
suspect that that is out of the question.

Cheers,

Dave

--
Dave Eadsforth

On Mon, 10 May 2004 09:20:35 -0700, (Harry
Andreas) wrote:

In article , John Cook
wrote:

It wasn't really to do with weight or cost of cannon - was more to do with
cost of qualifying the equipment for use when the gun was being fired. The
vibration and exhaust gas analysis is apparently quite expensive (but since
they share common equipments with the other countries, I don't quite
understand this as they are getting the same guns??)


One of the points sugested to me was the vibration of the gun was
detrimental to the avionics/airframe, this in conjunction with the
training/maintainence/logistics etc would save about £6M, not a small
amout, but IMHO worth spending it, as it should be used in the RAF,
its always better to have it and not use it, than need it and not
have it.

The acoustic noise levels associated with a gun firing are high, but not a
driver in the life of the equipment since the duty factor is so low.
That is to say, they don't actually fire the gun that much.
Most of the equipments will have an acoustic noise spec anyway, just due
to proximity to bays, inlets, etc.

IIRC It wasn't so much acoustics as the couple of tonnes of recoil!!,
;-), I understand the concepts of not fighting with guns anymore, but
I really think you need them for those 'other' circumstances.
'Other' meaning all the things you never thought likely to happen.

Cheers


Gun gas composition is well known and is far less corrosive than the
acidic salt spray that blows over the flight deck of a carrier.

I doubt it's engineering factors that are driving the gun. More likely is
(as you say) the training/maintainence/logistics and their contribution
to life cycle costs.

John Cook

Any spelling mistakes/grammatic errors are there purely to annoy. All
opinions are mine, not TAFE's however much they beg me for them.

Email Address :-
Spam trap - please remove (trousers) to email me
Eurofighter Website :- http://www.eurofighter-typhoon.co.uk

On Tue, 11 May 2004 00:18:02 +0100, Dave Eadsforth wrote:

You have touched on a philosophic point here. At present, the British
government believes that you can recruit soldiers as required, use them,
and after a number of years shove them back into a society that has
little understanding of either soldiering

Soldiering is like any other job, you don't have much understanding
of it until you've done it. I don't really see how that could not be
the case.

or the diplomatic realities
that justify its existence. It has always been true that an army
reflects the society from which it springs - and Britain should ponder
the implications of that.

Which are?

All professions benefit from recruiting from a pool of people who
understand the role of that profession and are motivated to join it.
So, when Britain recruits its military forces mainly from the dole
queue, which has been the case for a long time now, what will be the
result?

Well, better than you might expect. While many priceless NCOs have
taken early departure, the training system remains intact, so the
recruits do get a solid foundation - unless they are headed for a a non-
combatant role in which case the soldiering capability will be 'thin'.
While we still develop a clutch of outstanding soldiers we have to cope
with the fact that the average recruit still lacks the depth of skill,
understanding and commitment of his counterpart of a few decades ago.

So, at present, the Home Office wants the population to act like sheep,
the Politically Correct want the population to act like amoebas, and the
Foreign Office would like a credible military posture.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here.


--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)

On Mon, 10 May 2004 22:46:52 +0100, ess (phil
hunt) wrote:

snip
3. FCLV (Future Command and Liaison Vehicle), cost: GBP 200 m. This
is a light truck, it looks like an over-sized land rover (there's a
picture at http://www.zen19725.zen.co.uk/weblog/art_222.html).
Britain is buying 400 of themv at over GBP 400,000 each, or about
20 times the cost of the land rovers they'll be replacing. I dare
say it's a good vehicle, but is it really worth 20 times more than
a land rover? I don't think so.

(Apologies for the late response, and a bit off topic but...)

FCLV replaces the Ferret scout car which, as it has been out of
service for over a decade, has seen it's roles temporarily filled by a
variety of vehicles including Land Rovers, CVR(T) and Saxon. FCLV is
in no way a replacement for the Land Rover - I wish it was as the MoD
would be buying thousands of them.

Also, the contract for 401 vehicles is worth GBP125m and includes some
support costs, putting each FCLV at less than GBP 315,000.


Alex Walton
----
Royal Navy & Fleet Air Arm pages:
http://www.btinternet.com/~a.c.walton/navy/navy.html
----