Rivet Joint’s first flight since arriving in the UK back in November. A big white elephant or a vital addition to the RAF’s growing ISR fleet? Discuss!
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Capability requirement = yes.
(Crews from 51 Sqn have been trained with the USAF - http://www.offutt.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123371162)
Working on military airworthiness provision to be accepted under all MAA rules & regulations = ???
One possibly is that it will have an “emergency clearance” for ops only, such as Op Herrick, to help monitor troop drawdown.
Ah, if they can’t make the aircraft fit the rules, move the goalposts…
Only “interim” approval. Wonder what Haddon-Cave would say?
one is reminded of Rumsfeld’s ‘you go with what you have, not with what you’d like’.
no one has specified any actual airworthiness problem with the RJ’s, no ‘i’m not happy with the way L3/Boeing go about their business’, no ‘the wings don’t fit’, no ‘the engines catch fire’ - just a ‘i don’t have a letter saying everything is safe, so its not safe’ attitude.
SIGINT and RJ are, imv, critical national assets/capabilities - they have the same status as the bomber boats and the infrastructure that supports them. i’m afraid that i take the view that any service member who refuses to undertake critical national task because of the risk, or theoretical risk, of such operations has no place in the armed services.
and before anyone honks off, i had the dubious pleasure of driving around Afghanistan in snatch Landrovers - we knew they were unsafe in that operational environment, the MOD knew the were unsafe, and the whole of our CoC knew they were unsafe - however they were what we had, and the tasks were undertook were critical to the wider operation and to our own force protection.
can’t handle unspecified risk? get a job with easyjet.
<<<< can’t handle unspecified risk? get a job with easyjet. >>>>
Try telling that to the crew of XV230…
[quote=“MikeJenvey” post=18612]<<<< can’t handle unspecified risk? get a job with easyjet. >>>>
Try telling that to the crew of XV230…[/quote]
this would be the crew of XV230 who were part of the kipper fleet who had been raising very specific fears about the safety of every aircraft in the Nimrod programme for more than 20 years - the AAR system, the wiring system in the bomb bay, the cooling system for the mission system in both the MR2 and the R1?
Nimrod was a rickety old death trap and everyone who flew them and maintained them knew it - it was not unpecifified, unknown risk, it was specified, very much known risk. no one, to my knowledge, can point to one single system or componant on RJ, or one single proceedure carried out be L3 or Boeing, that has a history of failing, or looks dodgy, or gives anyone ‘bad joo-joo’, not something that could be said about Nimrod.
No [person] ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb [person] die for his country.
I flew in XV230 lots of times in the late 1970’s, the tacho hadn’t gone around the clock the first time then…
The problem, post Haddon-Cave, is to satisfy all elements of the MAA. The RJ doesn’t fit conveniently into any category. Now, if Boeing accept Design Authority status, then life will be much easier. Irrespective of “no issues” (would our 'Merican friends admit to anything?), who will be the accountable manager in the RAF who will sign off the unknown…
To quote from the H-C report:
mind you these airframes are from 1964 so been round the clock a few times themselves not bad for a few hundred million ???
Is RJ the oldest Airframe flying in the RAF? irrespective that its probably only a bolt that is original :unsure:
Probably. That said, there are a lot of similarities between it and what would have been it’s RAF contemporary the MRA4. Underneath the MRA4’s new registrations were 1960’s fuselages as a basis. The RJs in that respect are similar in that they were re-winged and engined in fairly recent history (in the KC135 lives).
[quote]this would be the crew of XV230 who were part of the kipper fleet who had been raising very specific fears about the safety of every aircraft in the Nimrod programme for more than 20 years - the AAR system, the wiring system in the bomb bay, the cooling system for the mission system in both the MR2 and the R1?
Nimrod was a rickety old death trap and everyone who flew them and maintained them knew it - it was not unpecifified, unknown risk, it was specified, very much known risk…, not something that could be said about Nimrod. [/quote]
Angus,
What you have written is complete and utter tripe. I flew the Nimrod from the 1970s to the 1990s and in that time probably flew every aircraft in the inventory, including all the R1s. As well as being a squadron supervisory pilot I instructed on the OCU on both the MR1 and 2; holding an A2 rather than the customary CtoI. In addition I was closely involved with the AAR project during Corporate and have considerable knowledge of the modifications embodied. Had I thought for a moment that it was a [quote] rickety old death trap[/quote] I would not regularly have taken it out to 20W or done the wide range of other more challenging things for which we were tasked. Indeed, Had I or my many colleagues harboured any of the doubts that you claim, then we would have rapidly taken steps to get ourselves posted elsewhere. On occasion I was authorised to operate the aircraft outside of the normal flight envelope published in the ACM; there was a special RtS that covered this. I never had any qualms about doing so.
For the avoidance of doubt, I do not have any great affection for the Nimrod. I thought at the time; and still do; that it was not the best airframe for the primary role. The longitudinal stability was imo marginal for the role and this shortcoming was exacerbated by the trim system. There were also aspects of its directional stability that caused me to ponder, not the least of which was the yaw damper configuration. However in spite of that it was a satisfactory platform for the task.
The downfall of the Nimrod was mainly due to a gradual erosion of airworthiness oversight on the part of the engineering staffs. This could be compared to the cumulative effect of sub-critical modification that was not incrementally assessed. However the failure to properly monitor airworthiness was far more insidious and ultimately cost the crew of XV230 their lives.
Finally Angus, your statements smack of hearsay originating from someone who really doesn’t know what they are talking about.
exmpa