The government has changed its mind over the type of fighter planes it is ordering for the Royal Navy's new aircraft carrier, the BBC has learned.
David Cameron has signed off a decision to use the jump-jet variant of the US-built F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, as planned by the Labour government.
The coalition had wanted to switch to a variant using "catapults and traps" but costs are believed to have spiralled.
The government is expected to make the announcement on Thursday.
As part of its defence spending review in 2010, the government decided to "mothball" one of the two aircraft carriers ordered by Labour.
This followed a doubling of costs for the project.
And the coalition chose not to order the Short Take-Off, Vertical Landing variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, also known as the F-35B, for the carrier that would become operational.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18008171
They'll be looking for Sea Harriers next.
Quote from: Anmer on May 09, 2012, 06:40:36 PM
They'll be looking for Sea Harriers next.
Many a true word spoken in jest ;)
Regards-
G.B.
Listening to the archive clip of Cameron announcing in 2010 that the previous Government had choosen the wrong plane made me smile. 8)
Maybe so, but Wilson cancelled the TSR-2. Totally, unforgivable under any circumstances. >:(
Quote from: Triple7 on May 09, 2012, 07:22:42 PM
Maybe so, but Wilson cancelled the TSR-2. Totally, unforgivable under any circumstances.
Why? When did we need it?
Quote from: Anmer on May 09, 2012, 07:52:17 PM
Why? When did we need it?
Oh come on Mike, hindsight is 20-20. We needed it at the time just like any other defense system.
Tim
Quote from: Triple7 on May 09, 2012, 08:21:25 PM
Oh come on Mike, hindsight is 20-20.
Or brilliant forward thinking. ;)
Like rocketry we were ahead of the game in the late 50's and lost it, due to the lack of political will (scared cra*less of the Americans because of how much we owed them from WWII) :'(
Strange that nobody is mentioning the fact that the carrier version of the F-35 is unable to perform carrier landings as it is unable to pick up the wire due to a major design flaw in positioning the hook too close to the main undercarriage.
Quote from: Triple7 on May 09, 2012, 07:22:42 PM
Maybe so, but Wilson cancelled the TSR-2. Totally, unforgivable under any circumstances. >:(
How do you come to that conclusion?
I was around at the time and watched the aircraft fly on two occasions. I was also a member of a professional society in Hampshire to which many of the engineers at Boscombe Down belonged. During our meetings in a hotel in Stockbridge I heard many stories of the time of problems which were never solved. I never had any doubts that cancellation was the correct thing to do. The prototype never reached (and never was going to reach) many of the requirements laid out in the original specification and costs were spiralling even with just a handful of test flights carried out. In fact max range, max speed and max payload all had to be revised drastically downwards and take-off distance almost doubled.
In the end the RAF got two brilliant aircraft instead. The Phantom and the Buccaneer.
Oh! and it was Tony Benn who cancelled the TSR.2.
Quote from: viking9 on May 09, 2012, 10:50:12 PM
Oh! and it was Tony Benn who cancelled the TSR.2.
I thought it was a cabinet decison under Harold Wilson?
At the time Denis Healey was Secretary of State for Defence in the Wilson government and the cancellation was announced in the 1965 budget speech delivered by Chancellor James Callaghan.
Tony Benn was Postmaster-General when it was cancelled.
To quote John Farley, the eminent test pilot:
"Critics are seldom popular, but as a one time professional critic of potential military aircraft I have to say that an aerodynamic design optimised around a specification that gives priority to payload, range and a high cruise speed at low level will always have a tiny wing in order to minimise drag and improve cruise fuel consumption.
A tiny wing unavoidably leads to real problems with respect to takeoff and landing distances as well as providing an inferior medium speed manoeuvring capability. So personally I was relieved that the TSR2 was among the batch of cancelled projects that included the P1154, Fairey Rotodyne and AW681 because I felt all four were fatally flawed technically."
You are right, Mike, but I seem to recall that Benn had supported the TSR.2 project against other opposition in the cabinet. I heard it said that it was his eventual siding with Denis Healey, (who was said to have been turned against the project by Lord Mountbatten) that resulted in the cabinet decision to scrap it.
The Minister for Technology during the project was Frank Cousins, a former trade union leader who didn't have a clue about the job so Harold Wilson had Tony Benn shadowing him. Benn took over the job the year after the TSR.2 was cancelled.