Well yes, and a lot of people have questioned whether the 138 ‘buy’ will happen anyway.
As the A has lower purchase and in service costs it looks like a way to match the budget stretch a little further, or maybe get deliveries sooner?
Will that cost remain lower when we have to pay to retrofit Voyager with a flying boom?
We already have the RC-135s which rely on USAF tankers for A2A refuelling.
And P8, P7 and C17!
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That’s mad, why the hell don’t we have flying boom on Voyager then?!
Good question. My understanding is that every other MRTT operator has them, but we chose not to.
I really hope is isn’t a pride thing, because we invented probe and drogue refuelling.
It’s one of those thing that makes sense if we are sticking to a probe and drogue only system, but if we are going to now have 5 types in service that can’t use it that needs to be re-examined.
I thought you could put a probe on an A variant as a customer requirement?
This problem is certainly already being sorted. Here’s an article from May:
This £170m contract for Voyager upgrades was issued 2 days ago, but I’m struggling to find out exactly what is being upgraded?
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I had heard that was being mooted as a ‘D variant’, possibly for the Canadians?
The Canadians are upgrading their tanker fleet to flying boom.
Paint removal system?
A voyager boom would be a very high ROI upgrade. Unfortunately it’s not sexy to the head shed of the RAF. It’s not a new fast jet, powerful missile or cool AI capability they can pose with or brag about. One would hope that a smart money man like Rich Knighton would have picked up on this - maybe he has?
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From UKDJ. Questions in parliament.
New British nuclear strike jet can’t be refuelled by RAF
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Again, without giving national secrets away, our IP run & tgt maps were very detailed…
Because Air Tanker contract didn’t specify a boom and the contract still has 10 years to run.
Why they don’t build WE177s again and mate it to Typhoon, half the weight of Storm Shadow.
Thing is if you are looking at getting in and out again either stand off or stealth are the options to consider.
We 177 was 450 pounds in weight, the warhead would fit easily in a Storm Shadow in place of the conventional warhead. Look at the sectioned training round at the Boscombe Down Museum and you would be surprised how small the nuclear part of the weapon is!
The problem with stand-off is that it may come under some of the nuclear weapons conventions.
Build them again? We probably haven’t got around to disposing of them yet!