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Post by madmac on Apr 3, 2018 22:17:24 GMT 12
One would bit pushed to suggest the last white paper was sufficient, let alone a document of excellence sufficient to spend 20 billion on, so a few questions might not be amiss.
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Post by horicle on Apr 4, 2018 11:29:52 GMT 12
With a bit of luck the P-8 will be out of production before we get our ducks in a row. The intelligent alternative that our decision makers realise the P-8/MQ-4C is the wrong deal for us is not something to rely on. I live in hope.
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Post by thelensofhistory on Apr 5, 2018 0:43:24 GMT 12
One would bit pushed to suggest the last white paper was sufficient, let alone a document of excellence sufficient to spend 20 billion on, so a few questions might not be amiss. A perfectly valid point. The problem is there virtually no time for a standard peacetime review. To meet New Zealand's declining strategic position, emergency acquisitions of everything from frigates, RNZAF "air combat" capabilities and the (supposed) existing and new capabilities outlined in the junk white paper. |
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Post by madmac on Apr 5, 2018 10:03:40 GMT 12
A perfectly valid point. The problem is there virtually no time for a standard peacetime review. To meet New Zealand's declining strategic position, emergency acquisitions of everything from frigates, RNZAF "air combat" capabilities and the (supposed) existing and new capabilities outlined in the junk white paper. In theory I image the paper work behind the white paper should be fine just the weightings & hence the conclusions need revisiting, however as with all problems the first step to is to actually determine your problem, unfortunately one would suspect that it the view of the problem was a tad more middle east focused than if written today (& still insufficiently focused on direct threat compared to one written likely to be written in a couple of years time). I think we are stuck with Rutherfords "We've got no money, so we've got to think" which while its been the status quo for a while but now with some different threats. The question becomes were are they going to dig up any original thinking! P8 is an interesting example trying to leach off organizations with excessive cash & too little thinking, it is very limited from where it operates from unless you have a tanker available, given the lack of airfield in the pacific and distances between them this will hammer time on station plus the fact that patrols are typically solitary (if you think tanker gas is expensive when supporting a whole package, wait till you launch a tanker for just one patrol aircraft). This starts to look like the classic example of using a million dollar missile to blow up a 10,000 dollar truck, NZ's economic performance is just insufficient to support such an inefficient application of force. |
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Post by zealman on Apr 6, 2018 12:06:13 GMT 12
Classic left wing Labour and the Greens, at their worst!!
Govt trying to explain to the good people of N.Z what their plan is when another major earthquake hits our country, and we don't have reliable NZDF resources to respond sufficiently?
P.M;
"Sorry N.Z, as a lot of our pilots and ground crew have left for jobs with the RAAF, and the RAF, we now have insufficient resources to fly the only C-130 in service', sorry about that !". " So we are counting on the generosity of our allies, and are looking into hiring suitable aircraft over the next month". "but hey, Auckland has new trams though".
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Post by thelensofhistory on Apr 6, 2018 13:46:54 GMT 12
Madmac, unless New Zealand is invaded by King Penguins from the Antarctic, then the last white paper is strategic toilet paper. At the min, the RNZAF would have to be doubled in size, before any new or old capabilities are restored.
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Post by madmac on Apr 6, 2018 20:11:12 GMT 12
Madmac, unless New Zealand is invaded by King Penguins from the Antarctic, then the last white paper is strategic toilet paper. At the min, the RNZAF would have to be doubled in size, before any new or old capabilities are restored. I was trying to be positive about the white paper process hoping it wasn't stupid, nor completely trapped by institutional group think & blindness in an age of inconsequential war (it sure the hell isn't peace time and it isn't war time if mission fail has no consequence, well not for the west anyway). I would have suggested it was used toilet paper, its already covered in messy stuff. Don't under estimate the threat generated by our relatively closeness to antarctic but still less than our presence on the Zealandia Continent (or those going WTF, all the tech like driverless cars, AI, etc are grossly overrated, however when applied to the sea will result in a effect 3 fold increase in the size of the planet & global economy but this only applies to country with decent marine territory, countries who have little marine territory, will stagnate or result to military options, guess where the PRC falls). |
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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 7, 2018 9:11:59 GMT 12
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Post by johnnyfalcon on Apr 7, 2018 11:56:36 GMT 12
I may have missed something, but I'm curious what Lockheed's reasons are for not doing with the P-3 what they've done with the C-130
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Post by saratoga on Apr 7, 2018 12:02:54 GMT 12
Lockheed had a P-7 ,basically an enlarged Orion ,I think the idea/design lost out to the P-8, so consigned to history.
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Post by beagle on Apr 7, 2018 16:28:49 GMT 12
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Post by isc on Apr 7, 2018 22:19:53 GMT 12
The French / German aircraft is expected in the 2030s(thet don't say which end of the 2030s), but the French Breguet Atlantic has been in service since 1961. isc
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Post by madmac on Apr 7, 2018 22:30:41 GMT 12
An A320 based MPA would still be limited by the use of two turbofans even with the new gen engines they will be left with a choice, good fuel burn & poor field performance or high fuel burn & good field performance, don't think the Europeans would want to have to lengthen too many runaways. There is sufficient ground clearance, you could go the whole hog and fit a couple of turboprops on the A320.
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Post by saratoga on Apr 7, 2018 23:05:09 GMT 12
I like it, thats the plan, an A320 with turbofans to the front and rear facing(just cause it'll look cooler) turboprops for loiter.Maybe give it an amphibious capability too, all that cargo hold going to waste, double hull it,just in case...  |
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Post by horicle on Apr 9, 2018 16:44:42 GMT 12
Lockheed had a P-7 ,basically an enlarged Orion ,I think the idea/design lost out to the P-8, so consigned to history. |
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Post by horicle on Apr 9, 2018 16:47:22 GMT 12
The P-7 and P-8 are some years apart. Check my post of May 29, 2017. The P-7 beat Boeings B757 MPA but priced itself out of the picture.
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Post by horicle on Apr 9, 2018 16:50:26 GMT 12
I may have missed something, but I'm curious what Lockheed's reasons are for not doing with the P-3 what they've done with the C-130 A good listing of P-3 Variants is at this site. Google Lockheed - P-3 Orion Research Group There were projects for a P-3D and a P-3G with new engines but they were not taken up. That would be the equivalent of the C-130J development but well before it in time. I am hoping this posted where I meant it to go. |
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Post by johnnyfalcon on Apr 9, 2018 17:30:58 GMT 12
Thanks for the information. Makes me wonder why it wasn't taken up considering the successful longevity of the design and now there is all sorts of scrambling and sticking-plaster efforts to bridge the gap!
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Post by saratoga on Apr 9, 2018 17:58:26 GMT 12
Probably overspecifying the platform(still...),a bit of greed ,and the US forces lurching between Lockhheed and Boeing for big contracts,ones up, ones down.
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Post by horicle on May 8, 2018 13:48:54 GMT 12
Currently I am still against the P-8. It will not do the job the way the job needs to be done. Its proponents tell us it is there to patrol the oceans and sink submarines. Consider these observations.
There are two parts to anti sub ops. The first is stopping the lurking boomer (nuclear missile launching sub) which is the prime cold war task. Face it, there is no way any aircraft will find a boomer unless it knows where to look. You could cover half the ocean with sonobuoys and still miss it. It is akin to flight 370.
The second is stopping the air breathers. This is more like the battle of the Atlantic, but things have moved on. Think SAM’s on subs and radar warning systems. Now you might think moving the search platform up to 30,000ft is going to make the odds better. It won’t. The prime senses for finding things on the surface are all electromagnetic. Radar has a small bandwidth, optical and infrared have their parts of the spectrum. Note, optical includes the mark one eyeball.
In the radar world the point where RWS (radar warning systems) had the advantage over radar search systems had occurred before Kahu. So that means that at 30,000ft a surfaced sub knows you are looking for it when you are are 190Km away. When you get close enough to detect your returned signal at about 160Km (a really good radar system) the sub has sensibly submerged so you never new it was there. If the sub was still on the surface to be detected what can be done? Terms of engagement would surely exclude launching a missile at it. In fact you would only know it was a sub if the blip suddenly disappeared. This is a case for drones. But the drone has to be in the right place at the right time. If the drone is that good, why the expensive P-8 to manage it?
There is more hope for optics and infrared as they are passive tools. Unfortunately they have their own set of disadvantages which are made worse by altitude. Both are degraded by distance through the atmosphere. The main culprit is water vapour. If it is cloud it totally stops sight. The lower frequency infrared can see through cloud but it is reduced a bit by that and all other water vapour in the atmosphere. For infrared to work the main pickup would be the subs exhaust gases as the subs hull temperature would have to be different to the sea around it to be visible.
The only advantage of patrolling at 30.000ft is to monitor surface activity. Perhaps those P-8’s are really patrolling at 12,000ft where they can manage what they find, and not tell the whole world where they are.
The more I look at the P-8 the more I think Fairey Battle (the RAF light bomber that ‘bombed’).
I can only agree with the belief that the USN bought it because all the other options had been outmanoeuvred. Boeing failed the first time up with the maritime 757 in the late 90’s which had it won would have made more sense than the current 737 P-8. But that time the USN chose the more ‘Orion’ like option and the whole exercise failed on cost.
I also note that Australia signed up for the MQ-4C (Triton) in August 2014, it was announced by Tony Abbott with no mention of numbers or cost. They are now in for seven.
Also that Kawasaki has made an approach to the European group working to replace all their MPA’s (except UK and Norway of course) with local production mentioned. That is a ten year project so time might be on the P-1’s side.
I feat that only if our government dithers for long enough will we end up with the best answer. Not a nice way to get there.
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