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| Artist’s rendition of the newly “expandable” C-130XJ aircraft, which takes advantage of the exceptional operational capabilities of the baseline C-130J Super Hercules. The aircraft is offered at a reduced price based on a combination of uninstalled line replaceable units and the configuration return to the legacy C-130 cargo handling system. |
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| Artist’s rendition of the latest variant of the C-130J, the Sea Herc. The SC-130J will redefine maritime reconnaissance and patrol. |
That Sea Herc looks interesting, might be aimed squarely down the throat of the British MOD if its got the right capabilities. Any more info available on it?
ReplyDeleteOnly worry in my mind is that Herc's are meant to leave RAF service soonish (although I hope they can be life-extended or replacements added to make up for the shortfall in A400M numbers).
The XJ does look more like an attempt to match the A400M, will only work if they get the price right, cant see many other differences there.
Grim901,
ReplyDeleteI believe there is a video from Farnborough where someone from Lockheed specifically mentions the lack of a British MPA and that the SeaHerc could easily fill this role. Also there has been on off rumours that there is a £1bn budget for an MPA replacement and now that the MOD has a balanced budget with an unspent £8bn reserve to cover program overruns or too fund other programs most people thing that we will see an order for some sort of MPA just before the next election.
Also interesting to note is that it’s apparently the Royal Navy not RAF that has been put in charge of the replacement MPA program. So the Hercs could leave the RAF and be transferred to the Fleet Air Arm (however that bun fight hasn’t happened yet the RAF may want to keep all the toys). Before the SeaHerc got shown off at Farnborough the leading prop-based MPA was the C-295 since its cheap (something like £60m-£70m was quote in a House of Commons report) and we have quite a large Airbus infrastructure building up. However there is the outside odds that we may get 6-7 P-8’s since the MRA4 contained quite a lot of the same mission systems and we don’t want to be seen as letting the MPA side down.
However if we can role on the mission equipment stripped from our 9 MRA4’s into the 9 best Herc airframes and let LM make the mods required for weapons and sensors I think we might take that option.
TMM
Any long range aircraft can do the job. The main thing relating to cost are the systems. The advantage of the P-8 over the P-3, or a C-130, is the higher cruise speed means you get to and can spend more time within the operational area. That said it's not clear a new UK MPA would include a similar set of systems to the P-8 so a C-130 or C-295 might be a good choice; however, if the requirements are basically for the same systems as the P-8 then they'd be better off with that aircraft and not get sucked into integrating all the systems on another aircraft. That hidden cost ends up screwing nations all the time.
ReplyDelete