Red Arrows to Fly Foreign Built / Designed Aircraft?

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Drago

Legendary Member
The thing about the Red Arrows is that they go around the world doing displays. This is advertising for British industry and shows what we are capable of making plus demonstrating our planes for possible customers. 1,000 Hawks have been sold around the world to foreign customers. If we were to use foreign made aircraft it would be advertising for foreign competition and a huge negative for British industry giving the impression that we can't make anything anymore. It would also be a huge kick in the teeth for British workers.


Im not sure flying round in jets North of half a century old that were never actually all that when new is much of an advert for British industry. People that write big cheques with lots of zeroes know it's only window dressing, and flimsy window dressing at that.

Surely the question should be what trainer aircraft do the RAF use to train their pilots?

Red arrows are just window dressing.

Absolutely. It needs to be single engined, capable of at least high transonic speed, stable yet agile, very robust, and ideally also capable of having a pack fitted in field to provide combat ability. Even better if its a well-known airframe, has massive parts backup, can carry the same weapons as most of our NATO chums, etc.

There are several variants of the F16 that tick all those boxes...

The Hawk was never all that as a trainer, have always been unrepresentative of types pilots will move onto in their careers, is pretty pith poor in its secondary backup combat role, and now its pretty much knackered on top of all that. If a bunch of spodes on a cycling forum can figure that out then you can bet anyone with a budget to spend who is supposed to be impressed by British industry knows it too.

We can be pretty sure the chance of a go in a Fighting Falcon will attract more recruits than the possibility of learning in a tired Hawk.
 

wiggydiggy

Legendary Member
It is amazing how America can make their aircraft go on much longer than ours? We sold off our Harriers about 12 years ago whilst the Spanish and Italians still have theirs. I think the Americans may have stopped using theirs now.

In some cases (B-52) is it a question of them being Triggers Broom? How much of the aircraft flying today is the original 1950s design?

For the Harrier, I don't know enough about it. I know many believe it was retired early, especially as the Queen Elizabeth Class carriers and their aircraft were delivered late. Its definately an aircraft we should have kept flying.
 
Good morning,

It's going to be hard to avoid NACA territory, but President Trump has made Europe think about it's defence capabilities and requirements in a way that opens up a lot of possibilities that were unlikley a year ago.

Russia/Ukraine and P. Trump have shown that the belief that war in Europe could never happen again so defence spending and defence industries didn't really matter. is a wrong.

However UK businesses and employees are already massively overtaxed so defence spending will probably have to come at the cost of other government spending, so there will be a need to blame somebody for it.

Being someone liked/hated P. Trump can and already is being used by European policitians to promote massive increases in public expenditure on defence, we must do this because;
  1. Trump is evil and has no interest in Europe
  2. Trump is right, the defence of Europe is not the US's problem.
  3. Both
Sadly at the moment this planned expenditure seems to be simply buy US systems rather than commit to a local (the whole of Western Europe) development program.

But this defence commitment could come with a new attitude; such as Fred Aviation can compete, then replacing the Hawk could be easy. After all the Spitfire was a modified race plane from a company with no military supply experience.

This is where it gets hard, we need companies that can afford the development costs but are not so big that they waste vast sums of money on just operating. Boeing built the Staturn V first stage but seems to be struggling with their Starliner.

My understanding is that the Hawk is primarily a trainer with some ground attack capabilities added afterwards to make it sellable, conceptually it is slow (just sub Mach 1), slightly unstable so it feels like a real fighter, but cheap to run with a long life. These abilities are just as valid now as when it was first designed and as it can never out perform a pure air superiority/ground attack aircraft why waste the effort trying to be a bit faster or carry a slightly heavier payload?

In other words a smaller company could do what Musk did with Space X, (keep selling old NASA technology under a new name with a few tweaks). The Hawk would no longer a BAE product but the Tawny Owl, a new concept from Worcester Advanced Aerospace a company formed from F1 expertise and the Radar and electronics expertise from cold war establisment from Malvern and perhaps Aldermaston (AWRE).

In other words replacing the Hawk is not fundamentally a technical one but a presentation one, the replacement aircraft must by definition of its role be pretty much the same as old Hawk, There simply hasn't been the deevlopment in materials or electronics to make a radically new design required.

Bye

Ian
 
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Sharky

Guru
Location
Kent
With the drone technology we've seen in Ukraine, spending on aircraft could be the wrong development strategy.
 

Jameshow

Veteran
The thing about the Red Arrows is that they go around the world doing displays. This is advertising for British industry and shows what we are capable of making plus demonstrating our planes for possible customers. 1,000 Hawks have been sold around the world to foreign customers. If we were to use foreign made aircraft it would be advertising for foreign competition and a huge negative for British industry giving the impression that we can't make anything anymore. It would also be a huge kick in the teeth for British workers.

But it's an outdated plane the f16 beats it hands down and is cheap enough.
 
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