Royal Air Force - Meta-Defense.fr

The Royal Air Force abandons its Mosquito combat drone

June 27, 2022June 27, 2022

In recent years, the British armies have been particularly prolific in terms of new Defense programs, under the impetus of the political axis chosen by 10 Downing Street for 3 years and the announcement of a significant increase in resources to available to La Défense in the years to come. However, it is clear that, very often, these announcements are short-lived, and that beyond the initial announcements and promises, many of these programs do not come to an end. This is once again the case today, with the announcement by the Royal Air Force of the abandonment of the LANCA program, for Lightweigth Affordable Novel Combat Aircraft, and its…

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UK wants more F-35Bs and A400Ms

April 28th

Like most European armies, British military forces suffered the backlash of the benefits of peace at the budgetary level between the mid-90s and the 2010s. On the other hand, due to the significant British participation in the Second World War Gulf, and in the Afghanistan campaign, these quickly eroded their operational reserves, to the point of being on the verge of a global capability rupture at the start of the 2010s. maritime patrol or on-board naval air capacity, London undertook in 2012 to increase its investments, so as to reconstitute and modernize the…

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Former NGAD Program Architect Will Roper Joins Tempest Program

September 14, 2021September 17, 2021

The 3 years during which Doctor Will Roper directed the acquisitions and R&D of the US Air Force, from February 2018 to January 2021, were marked by a dynamism forgotten for several decades by the American forces, both in the very design of the new combat aircraft than in piloting the programs themselves. Architect of the "Digital Century Series" which today oversees USAF programs, including the very promising Next Generation Air Dominance program, or NGAD, which should give birth to the replacement for the F-22 Raptor before 2030, and which could well produce a replacement for the F-16 in the process...

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Great Britain conditions new order for F35B on lower maintenance costs

June 24, 2021June 24, 2021

While the Royal Air Force's F35Bs began the aircraft's first operational missions and strikes from the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth II, targeting Islamic State targets in the Middle East, the Minister of La British defense, Ben Wallace, has weighted these previous statements regarding future orders for the Lockheed-Martin aircraft. According to the Conservative minister, these new orders will only come into effect once the integration of the Meteor long-range air-to-air missile has been completed and validated on board the new aircraft. Above all, he announced, on June 23, that these will only take place once the maintenance and upgrade costs…

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Economic sustainability is at the heart of the British Tempest program

May 26thMay 26th

The British Ministry of Defense announced earlier this week the start of the next phase of development of the FCAS program for the Future Combat Air System and its 6th generation combat aircraft, the Tempest. For this, London has confirmed an envelope of £2 billion to finance developments over the next 4 years, from 2021 to 2025, allowing the program to be long-term, and to maintain its entry into service objectives between 2035 and 2040 to replace Royal Air Force Typhoons. This announcement is in itself only the confirmation of what had been established by…

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Royal Navy to send 165.000 tons of diplomacy to the Pacific

April 27th

Obviously, British authorities like the Royal Navy want to make the first long-term operational deployment of their new aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, an event that is as significant as it is symbolic. Indeed, the carrier battle group which will set sail next month for a 28-week mission in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, will be made up of no less than 8 major British-listed ships, representing a total tonnage of 165.000 tonnes, more to the global gauge of Marines like Turkey or Brazil. No month of 18 F35B will embark on the HMS Queen Elizabeth, including 8 belonging to the Royal Air…

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Britain orders 14 MH-47G Chinook heavy helicopters

April 21th

The Royal Air Force will continue to deploy the CH-47 Chinook heavy helicopter for many years to come. Indeed, an agreement was signed on March 25 between the British authorities and the Pentagon, concerning an order for 14 MH-47Gs as well as engines, armament and defense systems, for a total amount of $2 billion. This order, under discussion since 2018 and initially for 16 aircraft, will ultimately be postponed for 3 years at the request of the British authorities, in order to absorb the budgetary effects of the Covid19 crisis. The new aircraft will replace the oldest of the 60 CH-47s still in service in…

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UK to order more F35Bs in coming years

April 2thApril 7th

Prior to the publication of the new Integrated Strategic Review, many rumors circulated about the arbitrations that will be carried out by the Johnson government, to redefine the format of the British armies. Among them figured prominently the hypothesis of a significant drop in orders for F35 aircraft, of which Great Britain had committed to order 138 copies. For a long time, it was even a question of limiting the size of the fleet of this essential device for the use of the two new aircraft carriers of the Queen Elizabeth class, to only 48 aircraft, i.e. the number of aircraft already ordered. and being delivered. The publication of the Review…

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British Mosquito Combat Drone Demonstrator to fly in 2023

March 30, 2021March 31, 2021

For several years, the French and Germans viewed the British FCAS program, which includes among other things the new generation fighter Tempest, as an outsider to the SCAF program, even as a burst of pride from politicians across the Channel following Brexit. Today, it is clear that this program is advancing rapidly, and much more serenely than the "European" program, and that its ambitions are far from being so limited that one could hear it say there is no only a few months yet. In addition to the significant effort made by the British authorities to support this programme, with an annual budget set at £2bn by the new Strategic Review…

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Is technology a substitute for the masses in Defense?

March 23, 2021May 30th

Since its public release last night, the new British Defense White Paper has been flowing endless streams of digital ink. In the crosshairs of most comments, very often hostile to the approach proposed by the Conservative government of Boris Johnson, the reduction in manpower and the volume of force of the British Army, which will lose 10.000 men to settle in 70.000 soldiers, some of its Challenger II heavy tanks and all of its Warrior infantry fighting vehicles once they reach their age limit, but also 24 first-generation Typhoons from the Royal Air Force, or even …

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