Airbus A330 MRTT

robunos

robunos

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Here's an image of the Voyager that flew past at this year's Cosford Air Show...

cheers,
Robin.
 

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Yesterday wandered over to the ‚Hall and nice to see Voyager forward deployed from Brize for supporting QRA. It does happen occasionally and as luck had it ....call to scramble around lunchtime from Lossiemouthnbased Typhoons intercepting Russians over the North Sea, so here are my photos ..

cheers

4370C91D-C953-46DD-96E5-60C0D95D489F.jpeg 0C19936A-D5B5-4644-A298-F588E211B993.jpeg 7E1EF012-E2AC-434D-A650-A332237BC5E1.jpeg 57166335-A1A7-4AC8-A371-C993BCDCEE2D.jpeg 007F94CA-E61F-4CAE-AAFB-3F7FFD0C9D47.jpeg C629CDBD-4CF6-4F28-AB7D-1DCD2ECB81F0.jpeg 2065BEB0-93D7-4BBB-BB89-AFC6E2EF67DD.jpeg A5794B02-4F56-4993-B83B-C078CE368B8B.jpeg 08D7DCB1-276F-460B-86C6-F1B8C800C4EB.jpeg
 
Morning, been going over Voyager development and apparently the KC.1 designation was reserved for the boom-equipped KC-45A pitched at the USAF (I don't think we'll pursue this...)

Chris
 
Given the number of aircraft in service and entering service with the RAF, which are fitted with flying boom receptacles (C17, P8, Wedgetail and Airseeker/Rivet Joint - although on images I've found of these do not show a receptacle), I am surprises that a version of Voyager with flying boom receptacle hasn't been procured.

Plus it only seems good manners to be able to refuel USAF aircraft in our airspace.
 
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I think these US types retain the boom receptacle. Poseidons do (see attached) and the Sentries do, hence the very offset probe. The C-17s were procured under an agreement that initially didn't cover IFR and the Rivet Joints are probably refuelled on a boom (shhhhhh).

Could the Air Staff be waiting to see how Singapore gets on with the automatic air refuelling system on their A330 MRTTs?

Oddly enough, today I was wondering how the accounting for inter-air force fuel costs worked.

Chris

ukdefencejournal.org.uk

First P-8 Poseidon handed over to Royal Air Force

ukdefencejournal.org.uk ukdefencejournal.org.uk
 
Noticed three all white Voyagers at Brize on Monday. Saw them briefly from the top deck of a bus. No idea why they were all white.
 
...and adopting the boom system could allow the UK to buy a tranche of cheaper F-35As rather than all 138 F-35Bs. Or perhaps that sensible decision has been made as I'm well out of the loop on the F-35.

UK75 - you must've seen some white elephants.

I think I'm about to go on a pre-breakfast Voyager rant, so will stop there.

Chris
 
Of course the fly in the ointment is that the RAF doesn’t own the Voyagers, the Airtanker consortium does. No doubt any change to the fit the customer requests will attract a hefty premium to the lease cost.
 
And just to really make my day, Boris One went over the house.

Chris
 
JohnR said:
Given the number of aircraft in service and entering service with the RAF, which are fitted with flying boom receptacles (C17, P8, Wedgetail and Airseeker/Rivet Joint - although on images I've found of these do not show a receptacle), I am surprises that a version of Voyager with flying boom receptacle hasn't been procured.

Plus it only seems good manners to be able to refuel USAF aircraft in our airspace.
Click to expand...

If my memory serve me right the KC-135's out of Mildenhall are also equipped with drogue units, so there is a precedent, what about the RAAF tankers etc?
 

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There were also the rather strange hermaphrodite used by the French AF, which was a KC135 with a flying boom with a drogue deploying from it.
 
Saying that, there should be some handy bargains around in the second hand aircraft market if the MOD wanted to do a rerun of the purchase of the Tristars post Falklands.
 
JohnR said:
Saying that, there should be some handy bargains around in the second hand aircraft market if the MOD wanted to do a rerun of the purchase of the Tristars post Falklands.
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Why 2nd hand? Just buy some Max. Fly them with drogues and convert the MTT with booms.
 
EwenS does raise an important point, these are not really RAF assets in the traditional sense. It's not clear what scope the MOD has for enforcing kit change without bumping up the lease costs, remember the fuss there was about adding the required self-defensive kit for operations over Afghanistan because it wasn't specified in the contract (as FSTA had pre-dated the Afghan operations).

I don't think buying more airframes is likely, the MOD is locked into the contract and isn't even getting full use of the 'surge' fleet so its unlikely the Treasury would agree and the MOD might not want to open up contractual cans of worms in buying a second set of tankers.
In any case in 15 years time the contract will be up for grabs again so who knows what shiny tankers we might get then?
 
Another Aerospace Deal of the Century!

I must admit I struggled to retain objectivity when I discussed the Voyagers in On Atlas' Shoulders and merely quoted the Chair of the PAC.

The Voyager, and its PFI financing in particular, came in for severe criticism when it emerged that the aircraft would not be fitted with the defensive countermeasures that would be required if the type were to go in harm’s way, unlike the version bought for the Royal Australian Air Force. Further criticism, of its finances and the PFI deal, came about when it was revealed by the UK’s Public Accounts Committee that the MoD had no idea if the aircraft represented good value for money!

Committee Chair, Margaret Hodge MP, stated that ‘Throughout the project the MoD has lacked the robust financial and performance data needed to make sensible decisions.’

I could have gone full-on Rowley Birkin and got stuck into the lack of booms, flying Geordies to Cancun, lack of countermeasures, one Voyager costing the same as a fleet of converted 767s, go all Private Eye on PFI contracts etc etc but as Hood says, it was all contracted pre-Afghanistan, nobody has a crystal ball and the past is another country (with a very strange fauna).

There's a book in Voyager and Atlas (another programme for which I just use quotes) but nobody would buy it.

I'd be interested in Alertken's thoughts on Voyager and Atlas...

I'll get me coat.

Chris
 
JohnR said:
There were also the rather strange hermaphrodite used by the French AF, which was a KC135 with a flying boom with a drogue deploying from it.
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USAF KC-135s have flown like that quite a bit since the 1990s in support of USN/USMC operations. Some have also been fitted with hose-reel pods, but the clip-on drogue adapter is still in use, I think. It's much hated because it's really short and doesn't have as much slack as the normal hose reels -- easy to plug, but hard to stay connected.
 
During my time at YYC (Calgary International), I got to see every one of the Voyagers that the RAF uses. Most of them had lots of lumps & bumps on them, like this below. Any idea what they do ?
 

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CJGibson said:
Another Aerospace Deal of the Century!

I must admit I struggled to retain objectivity when I discussed the Voyagers in On Atlas' Shoulders and merely quoted the Chair of the PAC.

The Voyager, and its PFI financing in particular, came in for severe criticism when it emerged that the aircraft would not be fitted with the defensive countermeasures that would be required if the type were to go in harm’s way, unlike the version bought for the Royal Australian Air Force. Further criticism, of its finances and the PFI deal, came about when it was revealed by the UK’s Public Accounts Committee that the MoD had no idea if the aircraft represented good value for money!

Committee Chair, Margaret Hodge MP, stated that ‘Throughout the project the MoD has lacked the robust financial and performance data needed to make sensible decisions.’

I could have gone full-on Rowley Birkin and got stuck into the lack of booms, flying Geordies to Cancun, lack of countermeasures, one Voyager costing the same as a fleet of converted 767s, go all Private Eye on PFI contracts etc etc but as Hood says, it was all contracted pre-Afghanistan, nobody has a crystal ball and the past is another country (with a very strange fauna).

There's a book in Voyager and Atlas (another programme for which I just use quotes) but nobody would buy it.

I'd be interested in Alertken's thoughts on Voyager and Atlas...

I'll get me coat.

Chris)
Click to expand...

Don't get me started on PFI, I do wonder if the F stands for fraud (Hire a school caretaker cost - around £80 a day, PFI comes in and changes 4 light bulbs takes about an hour cost £100+ GENIUS). What the costs are for the MMRTT is I dread to think.
 
kitnut617 said:
During my time at YYC (Calgary International), I got to see every one of the Voyagers that the RAF uses. Most of them had lots of lumps & bumps on them, like this below. Any idea what they do ?
Click to expand...

IIRC the were fitted with a electronics suite before they were deployed over Afghanistan, I don't know if that applied to all aircraft.
 
Just out of curiosity how many MRTT are painted white and how many grey.
 
Grey Havoc said:
www.flightglobal.com

VIP Voyager touches down with Union Flag livery

A UK Royal Air Force-operated Airbus Defence & Space A330 Voyager touched down at its Brize Norton home in Oxfordshire on 25 June sporting a new Union Flag livery to denote its tasking as a VIP transport asset.
www.flightglobal.com www.flightglobal.com

EDIT: Drats, just realised article is paywalled. :(
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i live in Cambridge anyhow not far from Marshals Cambridge Airport ( EGSC) and over the last 3 decades seen many interesting things including night test of Orbital Sciences Stargazer L-1011 as folks live under the flight path from EGSC. Marshall’s converted a Tristar to carry Pegasus in 1992/93 timeframe. when Clinton came to Uk here in 94 for D-Day celebrations he came to see the American Military Cemetery at Madingley just on The outskirts. The skies above folks house was Germany based Sikorsky UH-60A carrying Secret Service folk, and thought I saw VH-70N Whitehawks as well over the garden. Also you would have seen my thread and photos of Blue Angels new Fat Albert on its test flights from here EGSC as Marshall’s converted old RAF C-130J.

Anyhow here’s my photos of Boris Voyager coming into land (I missed it taking off after it’s paint job as was out of town),

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CJGibson said:
I think these US types retain the boom receptacle. Poseidons do (see attached) and the Sentries do, hence the very offset probe. The C-17s were procured under an agreement that initially didn't cover IFR and the Rivet Joints are probably refuelled on a boom (shhhhhh).
Click to expand...
This got me wondering why the Poseidon, designed as a US Navy aircraft has a boom receptacle? Must be the only US Navy aircraft with one.

Also, the other day I noticed on ADS-B that an AirSeeker flew a racetrack off Lincolnshire before heading for the Baltic. No tanker was showing, but that's not unusual.

Chris
 
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As I wrote above, I've seen the whole fleet at one time or another, sometimes four would rotate over a couple of weeks bringing and returning troops from Suffield. I never saw an all white one though, even the half painted one (the first of the fleet) was grey although it had no markings other than the registration. Have they gone through a repaint cycle ---
 
CJGibson said:
This got me wondering why the Poseidon, designed as a US Navy aircraft has a boom receptacle? Must be the only US Navy aircraft with it.


Chris
Click to expand...

The Orion doesn't have a probe; at least not an obvious one, and from the photo's I could find doesn't appear to have a book receptacle.
 
JohnR said:
CJGibson said:
This got me wondering why the Poseidon, designed as a US Navy aircraft has a boom receptacle? Must be the only US Navy aircraft with it.


Chris
Click to expand...

The Orion doesn't have a probe; at least not an obvious one, and from the photo's I could find doesn't appear to have a book receptacle.
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Orion didn't have in-flight refuelling, because it had very long unrefuelled endurance and it often didn't fly places where there were tankers available. P-8 adds the IFR receptacle though I doubt they will use it all the time. Changes to CONOPS do make it more likely that they will be flying in places where tanker support is an option, though. No point in including a probe, because there is so much on board fuel (up to 34 tons) that I can't think of a hose-and-drogue tanker a/c with enough "give" to be worth the effort (except maybe the Omega commercial tankers).

I can think of one other USN aircraft with the boom receptacle -- the E-6 TACAMO aircraft. Same basic reason as the boom receptacle on the P-8. They need much more fuel than tactical aircraft and no Navy aircraft with a hose reel could pass enough to be really useful.
 
TomS - I can't think of a hose-and-drogue tanker a/c with enough "give" to be worth the effort (except maybe the Omega commercial tankers).

Voyager, Extender, Pegasus

Chris
 
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CJGibson said:
TomS - I can't think of a hose-and-drogue tanker a/c with enough "give" to be worth the effort (except maybe the Omega commercial tankers).

Voyager, Extender, Pegasus

Chris
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Oops. Yeah, I was thinking in the USN fleet but I should have said that.
 

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