New Royal Navy Wildcat helicopters can't transmit vital data Britain's latest military helicopter fleet has still not had a tactical data link capability fitted, two years after the aircraft entered service. Although the new Leonardo Wildcat helicopters have already been deployed operationally aboard Royal Navy warships, including deployments as the sole helicopter aboard frigates …
'I mean it's not like "Over the Horizon Targeting" and "Battle Damage Assessment" is a real thing is it? oh wait......'
Don't I still wake in a cold sweat trying to remember all the paragraphs for voice reporting OTHT. I always felt BDA was best conducted at a distance though, in case all you'd done was really annoy them.
The ARSSE article on the 'Future Lynx' seems relevant here.
It's talking about the Army version but it's the same aircraft. The article is 10 years old.
'The crew just can't actually tell anyone about the results before they land.'
Oh you can but the baud rate is worse than dial-up.
Calculating the baud rate for human speech is left as an exercise for the reader. On account of me starting Friday evening.
"you couldn't make this up"
Reminds me of John Fortune being interviewd about his work with John Bird on the "George Parr" interviews in the Bremner, Bird and Fortune series. When asked how you go about satirising topics he gave some explanation but then added that it the topic was governement policy then simply repeating it verbatim was normally better than anything you could write yourself!
Remember one where "General Sir George Parr" was explaining the preparations for the Gulf War and with great excitement went through a series of items saying how amazingly well the army was equiped only to add, when interviewer said that that would clearly help in Iraq, that "of course, we always expected to fight a war in nothern Europe so the uniform was too hot, camoflage was wrong colour, tanks broke down in sand" before at end of interview offering suggestion that the UK and US wrote to Sadaam Hussein and asked him that as he clearly wanted a war then would he mind coming over to northern Europe to fight it!
What do you expect - the ACOS in charge of IT is Dan Cheesman is a Royal Marine. They Andrew is so busy with hacks trying to get promoted its all short term great ideas like Artificial Intelligence and Cyber instead of getting the basics like radios and data links right. They can't even get a ship to sea without it breaking down.
"Prudence" Brown was quite happily borrowing £1100 per man, woman, and child in the UK per annum *before* the sub-prime bubble exploded as well as selling off government property and gold at rock-bottom prices. His ability to spend far in excess of tax receipts has nothing to do with sub-prime nor the credit crunch, the crunch just exposed it as the unsustainable "economics" that it was ...
As I understand it the poor people who took out mortgages mostly paid them back. It was the "real estate developers" whose speculative dodgy condos were classified AAA that caused the real meltdown, according to Gillian Tett and others. (But I agree with you in general terms - if Brown had told Blair that bank deregulation was a bad idea, he'd have been out.)
Clearly someone is doing it wrong.
Obviously, the Israelis as they have not followed the US and UK model of procurement. Or maybe it's not "procurement" per se, but departmental empire building and job security?
I do admire some of the stuff the Israelis do such as this as it's just a lot more efficient and cost effective. Other countries (US? UK?) could learn a lot from them. I'll stay out of the politics, etc. for this discussion.
I do believe that if the procurement departments were cut down, the savings would be reflected in budgets and hopefully, the cost per unit would drop since Joe Contractor/Builder would have less people to deal with.
"How did so many idiots get into positions of power?"
It's really difficult to get fired in most UK government departments, unless they are cost-cutting.
Instead of going through the months of HR quagmire to sack someone, it's easier to get them promoted out of your department into another. Hence the cream stays put and the shite rises. And certainly in the UK, the 'old boys network' means it doesn't matter what you know, only whom you know.
It also seems to help if your golf handicap is in single figures.
I think technically it's now Leonardo Helicopters to differentiate it from Leonardo the parent company, which used to be Finmeccanica. But the UK bit of Finmeccanica is now known as Leonardo Marconi Westlands and parents the UK bit of Leonardo Helicopters.
Because branding is so important for weapons systems.
Most air to air and surface to air Missiles are just that, they are designed to "miss" the target by a close proximity and then explode. lots of stuff flying about at high velocity hitting sensitive bits (lots of these on an aircraft). The only Hitile [sic] that I am aware of is the Rapier surface to air one.
Defence procurement has been an ongoing disaster for decades. Lots of smart and honest people have tried to fix it during that time and none have succeeded because it is institutionally incapable of being fixed.
Fortunately the British haven't needed to fight any serious wars unaided against a competent and well-equipped enemy for very long time. We should just accept that the purpose of defence procurement, and indeed the rest of the MoD, is to enrich defence contractors and prop up small parliamentary majorities, and that the Americans are expected to do any serious fighting for us. Now when is that nice Mr Trump coming to have tea with Her Majesty?
none have succeeded because it is institutionally incapable of being fixed.
I agree nobody's fixed it, and that the culture is deeply entrenched. But there is a simple solution - kick out the incompetent wasters of the civil service, make the whole MoD military personnel, reporting as an extra "service" to the chief of the defence staff.
Then the military have only themselves to blame. The military command structure is very good at shouting at people until they do what is needed (or court martialling them if they don't). Give them a finite total budget, with some forward visibility to stop the dogfuckers at the Treasury messing things up, and then they have to control specification and out-turn cost, they can balance projects against revenue costs. fight amongst themselves until they realise that is a zero-sum game. From a national perspective we'd know what we're spending, the military can never complain that they were "given the wrong kit", and the budget for toys wouldn't bloat since they'd have to choose what gets cut if they overspend on a particular project. The defence industry would suddenly find that the buyer didn't give a hoot about their lobbying, and that said buyer just wanted a product that worked, at the agreed cost and time. Equally, the military would be accountable for any spec changes or errata, with the certainty that they'd have to cut spending on another toy.
Simples. And if they really fuck up, we'd still be better off than today, because even with a load of inappropriate and broken kit, that's what we've got now, but we'd have the concept of a set defence budget.
The Army, Navy and the Air force are all permanently at war... with each other. Why do you think the harriers were scrapped? Kill strike from the Air force.
The MoD is there to try to keep them apart. Their basic tactic is to say 33% each. So actual needs are not considered. If the army wants a budget increase to buy, say, new guns, its going to cost the MoD 3 times the price to keep the other 2 happy.
So if the military were in charge, it would have to have 3 co-chiefs that sign of on every expenditure. War by meetings. With meetings.
So if the military were in charge, it would have to have 3 co-chiefs that sign of on every expenditure. War by meetings. With meetings.
I'm cool with that. After a couple of Chiefs of the Defence staff have found that their pension has been halved or cancelled for fucking up defence procurement, the next couple of incumbents would understand that they had to stick to the brief of buying the best set of weapons between the set budget and the demands of politcians for capability, without undue favourtism.
So that takes about six-eight years to take effect? Big deal, the problem won't be solved otherwise.
Harrier, MPA and numerous other Naval capabilities (hydrography was dear to my heart hence a resigned commission) where killed or hamstrung under the disastrous leadership of ex 1SL West. He happily sold his service for a peerage and a seat on the gravy train under Labour.
Not that the civvies in procurement didn't do their bit, but he encouraged and signed off on it.
As an aside - spent a evening exercising will power at a dinner that included a married couple who both worked in procurement. 1 was designing work station layouts for T45 ops room despite never having been on ore than a ferry, and the other Longbow comms (he learnt all about comms from clansman). It nearly soured my port I don't mind telling you.
Have you noticed that countries that actually need to defend themselves against genuine credible military threats manage to do a lot better? (Israel, Russia, China, Iran...)
The real reason that most Western defence procurement is so immensely inefficient from a military point of view is that it isn't really a military exercise. Its real purpose is to transfer money from the taxpayer to the "defence contractor" (armaments manufacturer) as rapidly as possible. As long as the product looks vaguely military, that's good enough. After all, it will never be used in anger, and it isn't meant to be.
It's only institutionally entrenched because of the way politicians think - if that is the verb I am looking for.
Based on my experience, which included gathering very detailed information for the most accurate possible bid in a UK defence procurement auction, the way the system works is this:
1. Government argues for a long time before drawing up a completely impossible set of incompatible, over-ambitious, technologically starry-eyed specifications.
2. Government invites bids.
3. Lowest bid wins. This comes from a cynical corporation with vast experience in contract engineering, deception, arm-twisting, blackmail, and other essential political skills.
4. Honest bidders give up in disgust, having wasted millions doing the job properly. (The winning bidder merely pulled a number out of a hat, calculated to appeal to the politicians and civil servants who, knowing nothing whatsoever about the subject domain, will believe anything and the cheaper the better).
5. In a few years, winning bidder tells MoD (in strictest confidence, of course, so the proles don't get to hear) that it turns out the work will take ten years longer and cost (say) £5 billion more than the bid.
6. Bidder asks senior MoD mandarins and political leaders, "Will you accept the extra cost and time, or shall we tell the media how utterly incompetent you are?"
7. Mandarins and politicians bend over.
8. Rinse and repeat.
9. After a random (but long) period, project is cancelled. Bidder keeps the many billions it has been paid; government (and taxpayer) gets nothing.
In the Falklands War it was discovered that the new combat overalls worn by ships' crews were made of a man-made fibre that fire melted into the skin.
The previous, more expensive, versions were made of cotton that only charred in the same circumstances - and therefore burns injuries were not made worse. Another case of financial economy making something not fit for purpose.
Watch the video on BBC news http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-38996750 of Helicopter pilot lands to ask for directions in Kazakhstan.
And it that doesn't worry you about the competency of the West, compare these photos of defence ministers
http://epicpix.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/741e5_f7f2d4a004f4a58a.jpg
"It's hardly going to worry me about the competency of the West, I'm fairly sure Kazakhstan isn't in NATO."
Quite. And if its got to the point in Kazakhstan that they don't even have any working GPS in the helicopter or even a backup radar system and military ATC to tell the pilot where he is then I don't think we need to worry about them being a serious military player at least!
'It reads as it was a UK pilot "The Ministry of Defence said the pilot had been taking part in a visual orientation exercise when he lost his bearings." And look at the size of the thing.'
That'll be the Kazakhstan MoD, the UK one doesn't operate a lot of Mil-8 Hips.
"it's the perfect excuse to fit sharks with lasers."
Sadly, Frikkin' Sharks are now an endangered species after a recent round of tornadoes. On the other hand, Hammerhead Sharks almost seem to be designed to have lasers fitted, what with the special mounting points at the front.
"The Ministry of Defence insists its £178bn equipment programme will create thousands of jobs over the next few years."
Or.....
"The Ministry of Defence insists its £178bn equipment programme will create thousands of votes (in a constituency that's moved from Tory to Liberal and back again), over the next few years."
"The Ministry of Defence insists its £178bn equipment programme will create thousands of votes (in a constituency that's moved from Tory to Liberal and back again), over the next few years."
The main purveyors of that technique are currently in the cheap seats at Westminster. It was the infamous twat Gordon Brown who ordered the two carriers before the specs were properly finalised, doing so purely to try an protect Labour seats in the arse end of Glasgow. Hence our embarrassing need for the even more embarrassing F35B.
>You could just hover over a convenient Starbucks and use their free WiFi.
In future battles there will be inflatable pop-up Starbucks, holographic Starbucks and stealth Starbucks deployed around the battle zone. None of them will serve a liquid that can be described as coffee.
Mystic Megabyte@
On the basis of your last sentence, you obviously mean 'Costa' not Starbucks.:)
[Although strictly speaking, both Starbucks & Costa DO serve a liquid 'described as Coffee', it just is being somewhat 'economical with the truth', as evidenced by actually tasting it !!!]
It would also make the requirement that 'Costa' are integrated into our UK forces as the 'Advance Communications Corp', much easier. :) :)
Maybe all WiFi-providing Coffee Chains could form a global alliance that would be allowed into all Battle Zones, rather like the Red Cross/Crescent !!! :)
Solves both the communications problem and the fatigue issues of a Battle Zone. !!! :)
If this is true!
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/starbucks-brand-perception-plummeted-since-220353319.html
Pay your taxes, like Google and the rest, toads, not too bothered about who you employ as long as you're not exploiting people, which I know you are!
It's not that good either, mine is way better at a fraction of the cost, commercialism and screwing us for the shareholder, enuff said.
So just sub out the whole shebang to FedEx -- targeting, delivery, feedback on efficacy. Just make damn well sure that Return To Sender is not allowed. That's perhaps the future of battle - FedEx vs. UPS, all munitions delivery by autonomous vehicles given their targets by AI.
And that's just the ones in the British undertaker and grave digging industries!
So your scout helicopter acting as your AWACS radar has to fly back to the ship to give it the data on the squadron of Russian Backfires coming in? Seriously, you couldn't make this stuff up!
'Now, basically, the defense of Great Britain rests in the hands of our Sea-slugs. {...} Now I must admit here, that there is a very strong possibility that our Sea-slugs won't get through. The British Sea-slug is a ludicrously cumbersome vehicle depending as it does on a group of trained runners carrying it into enemey territory. Mind you, the boffins are working on this one day and night—thinking of fitting it out with some ingenious device—wings or something along those lines and turning it into some kind of flying machine, in which case it will be renamed "Greased Lightning."'
—Beyond the Fringe, "Civil War"
This is extremely unkind. Plainly the users are inadequately trained in security and this is a belt 'n braces security precaution to prevent enemy hacking the feed and sending ship-killer SSMs down the channel.
It was, after all, a similar security lapse that led to the Beyond the Fringe expose of the British stealth Seaslug nuclear deterrent, relying as it did on teams of highly trained runners carrying it deep into enemy territory, literally under the radar! Later technically improved with new systems such as "sleeper" cells of British Olympic relay runners infiltrated into enemy territory 40 minutes in advance of the primary delivery platoons.
If that is insufficient to allay your fears, let me remind those doubters and doomsayers that it was the same service, the Fleet Air Arm, that crippled the Bismarck with its stealth Swordfish torpedo bombers, cunningly disguised as targets for German AA guns. German ingenuity and technological superiority yet again outwitted by British cunning, pluck, and stupidity at its best.
And if there are still any gutless frog-eating reverse-gear-tank-driving whining white-feather Bremoaner merchants, there are still a few zero-electronic-signature radar-proof stealth Tiger Moths in service somewhere to give the lie to all your cowardly Europhile technological nit-picking.
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