Briefings (05/01/10) : C-17, A400M, PAK-FA

Contracts have been signed for a 7th C-17 Globemaster for the RAF. It should enter service in March next year.

However the RAF's future airlifter the A400M could be in trouble again, this time from Airbus who apparently want to ditch the project?! Airbus don't want their troubled airlifter to damage it's successful commercial division.

Russia have begun ground tests of their next generation combat fighter, the PAK-FA and it will hopefully make it's first flight later this month. There are still no photographs of this mysterious new beast though so we don't know yet if its a Raptorski, Flanker 3.0 or something else entirely.

A US drone has crashed in eastern Afghanistan, probably due to technical problems not enemy fire. The French Navy is celebrating 100 years of naval aviation this year (the FAA celebrated it's 100th birthday in 2009 of course).

Was software to blame for Chinook crash?

The BBC say they have received evidence that the crash of a Chinook helicopter in 1994 that killed 29 people may have been due to faulty software in the engine management system. In the official enquiries the pilots were found guilty of gross negligance but the BBC say the MOD documents it has received, written months before the crash, say there were problems with the Chinook Mk2's airworthiness and the engine control software, FADEC, was "positively dangerous".

The MOD replied that the Chinook Mk2 has had a very safe service history since the crash on the Mull of Kintyre and that the MOD documents in question were availably to the Inquiry team and were not new evidence. The MOD have refused to reopen the Inquiry despite later inquiries in the House of Lords and House of Parliament that found the gross negligence verdicts on the pilots unjustified.

Women set to serve on RN submarines

Women now serve in many areas of the British armed forces alongside men but one bastion of maleness has remained underwater so to speak. The ban on women serving on submarines may be lifted though the ban on frontline infantry will remain. Lifting the ban would bring almost total gender equality to the Royal Navy, though the number of ships women can actually serve on is unlikely to increase by much anytime soon. Submarines like the Astute (below) could be  adapted to accommodate women though existing classes may be more problematic.

Briefings (04/01/10) : Iraq, Chinook, Airships

In December there were no US combat fatalities in Iraq, the first time there haven't been since the start of the war in Iraq. Though there were 3 non-combat fatalities, and a huge number of Iraqis killed of course. Think Defence looks at the Royal Navy's efforts to replace it's current escort fleet with Type 45 and FSC.

Flight's DEW Line blog asks how serious the US are about airships and includes a recent USN presentation on the subject. Former Defence Secretary Malcolm Rifkind writes in the Telegraph that a defence review must reflect policy not budgets, i hope he tells that to his mate the shadow chancellor.

The BBC are claiming the 1994 Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash, that claimed 29 lives, may have been caused by software faults after getting hold of a document that spoke of problems with the engine control on the Mark 2 Chinook.

Sunday Fail : Supermarine PB 31E Night Hawk

Military projects do not always work out as you know but usually the end result is something reasonably close to the original project aims (once you throw enough extra billions at it). But in this weekly series i will present projects that never made it. Military projects that simply never worked, not to say the projects were all bad. They failed for a variety of reasons, for the PB 31E it was probably just a bit ahead of it's time...

In this first week we go back to the First World War and the first aircraft to bear the Supermarine name, the company changed it's name from Pemberton Billing in 1916 (after Mr Pemberton Billing sold his interests to the company's other directors). One of the last aircraft Pemberton Billing had been working on had been the PB 29E, a large quadruplane for anti-airship defence. Unfortunately the sole PB 29E crashed during flight testing but the Admiralty decided to continue pursuing Pemberton Billing's ideas for combating the zeppelin menace so sponsored a further aircraft (Bruce 1969).

Supermarine PB 31E

This was the PB 31E, like the 29E it was a large quadruplane 37ft (11.27m) long and with a wing span of 60ft (18.28m). It was made more sturdy than the 29E with a planned crew of 5 and heavily armed with a 1½-pdr recoiless gun and twin Lewis machine guns. It was intended to be able to stay aloft for up to 18 hours and carried a searchlight that was powered by a separate engine and thus was probably one of the first aircraft to carry an auxiliary power unit (Andrews & Morgan 1981). Because of the long planned duration it was fitted with some basic comforts for the crew including a heated cabin. The aircraft also carried armour in some key areas and the cockpit was bound with fabric to avoid wood splinters in the event of a crash to protect the crew.

The problem with all of these features was weight, the PB 31E weighed over 6100lb (2787kg) when loaded and there simply wasn't the engine technology of the time to properly handle such a plane. Two 100hp Anzani engines powered the PB 31E and was enough to get it airborne but not enough to give it sufficient performance to perform in the anti-zeppelin role. The PB 31E took an hour to climb to 10,000ft which meant that zeppelins could easily escape it by ditching ballast and climbing rapidly. The design speed had been 75mph (120kph) which was considered fast enough to catch zeppelins (though some zeppelins could go faster than that in favourable conditions) but it is reported the PB 31E struggled to pass 60mph (97kph) (Bruce 1969).

Front view showing the search light on the nose

The PB 31E first flew in February 1917 but by then it was apparent there were flaws in the concept, highlighted by the PB 31E's poor performance. Unable to pursue a zeppelin it's only chance of success would have been the sheer luck of being in the right place at the right time and firing on the zeppelin before it got out of range (Bruce 1969). It's main armament, a 1½ pounder Davis non-recoil gun, was also rather unwieldy.

The sole PB 31E was scrapped in the Summer of 1917, the second planned example never being built. The PB 31E, which was given the name Night Hawk, was technically innovative and it's concept could maybe have worked with a better performance. It was an early example of what we would call today a "weapons system" (Andrews & Morgan 1981). In the event the zeppelin was near the end of it's time as a military weapon anyway, Supermarine survived the war. You may have heard of one of their later products.

Further reading :

Supermarine Aircraft Since 1914 (Andrews & Morgan, Putnam, 1981)
Warplanes Of The First World War - Volume 3 (Bruce, Macdonald, 1969)

Breaking the Iron Law, the importance of the nuclear deterrent

When James Callaghan left Number 10 after being defeated by Margaret Thatcher in the May 1979 election (i just about remember it) he broke the so called "Iron Law". An outgoing administration is not supposed to supply it's files to it's replacement but Callaghan thought some files were important enough to break the law, they were on the British nuclear deterrent.

Callaghan had already been discussing with President Carter replacing the existing Polaris SLBMs with Trident and he wanted to pass on his notes to Thatcher and technical documents he had commissioned. In the event Thatcher continued with the Trident programme and we now stand at a point where the deterrent has to be replaced again.

The smart money is on renewing Trident with improved missiles and a new generation of boats though it could be the government may aim to delay replacement as long as possible to save money. A design contract has already been delayed of course and it is likely they will try and make do with 3 boats not 4 (the original RN SSBN force was to have been 5 boats).

Is a nuclear deterrent still as important now as it was in 1979, could you imagine Brown passing on his notes to Cameron? The deterrent is still important which it why it is likely to remain part of the British defence armoury despite the current fiscal strains. A permanent seat on the UN Security Council would be difficult to justify without the means to destroy much of the world, as well as that it (and the French nuclear weapons) are a vital part of EU foreign policy and security in many ways even if you would never get anyone to admit it.

Briefings (01/01/10) : LEMV, A400M, Trident

Happy New Year to everyone, as it is the start of a new year (and a decade) i am going to run things a little differently on this blog from now on. I will regularly (hopefully daily during the week but we'll see how it goes) present a briefing of defence related news and information i hope others may find interesting. There will also be editorials and other news items as well.

That is the plan anyway, for our first briefing the US Army is looking into lighter-than-air technology again and hopes to buy a long-endurance hybrid airship for surveillance in Afghanistan called LEMV. The A400M's flight test programme will get into top gear in 2110, with testing to also take place in France as well as Spain.

Back in 1979 out-going Prime Minister James Callaghan broke the "iron law" about handing over files to a new administration (Maggie Thatcher of course) when he made sure she received "key documents" relating to replacing the British Polaris nuclear deterrent with Trident. Sticking with strategic weapons USAF Global Strike Command (AFGSC) has taken over responsibility for US ICBMs part of an ongoing plan to unify all USAF nuclear assets under one command.