You may remember this story from March on how the British-designed VAAC control system for the JSF project was being used by the Americans without any apparent return. Well, Sir Digby Jones, the outgoing director of the CBI, has weighed in. Link. “One of the most shocking and worrying aspects of loss of independence has…
Read More Too little, too lateJust a quick update on this one. The Nimrod MR-2 lost with its entire crew over Afghanistan was XV230, the first one to be delivered to the RAF in October, 1969. She was also the first to get the colour display version of the Thomson Searchwater 2000 radar, which is a detail. What is less…
Read More Nimrod UpdateOK, so our last fit seemed to have got results. The MOD had, it seemed, finally found the cash to give the RAF’s C130s the explosion suppressant foam in the fuel tanks that the Americans and Australians fitted 40 years ago, after the loss of XV179 on election day in Iraq and an unprecedented campaign…
Read More Foam Party: We’re Going to Lashkar GharInformation has reached me that some progress may have been achieved about the C-130 Defensive Aids Suite, and specifically about the foam in the fuel tanks that might have saved the crew of XV-179 on election day in Iraq. Apparently the K fleet (super-E in US parlance, CMk1 in UK officialese) are getting their foam…
Read More Foam Party!You may remember the shooting down of the RAF Hercules aircraft XV179 on election day, 2005, in Iraq. This blog ran quite a lot of stuff about it – some reasonable, some utterly ludicrous speculation. In the event, it turned out that the plane really was involved in special forces support (contrary to my scepticism…
Read More A Slight Return to XV-179