F-35s ready for front-line operations

[barkingmad]

Let’s cross fingers and hope none of this kit has been fitted to our new carrier fleet?



IIRC the Type 45s have been bedevilled with electrical power supply problems from the start but that was allegedly some highly paid admiral signing off a design with one solo electrical system for a warship? Hope it’s not correct, but truth is often stranger than fiction!

[TheGreenGoblin]

I had read that the Type 45''s engine inter-cooler was and still is problematic.

The Type 45 is powered by the Rolls-Royce WR-21. The engine can interestingly no longer be found on the Rolls-Royce website, likely due to its issues (it can however be found using a web archive here).

‘The WR-21 engine incorporates revolutionary enhancements in gas turbine technology to reshape the traditional gas turbine performance curves and produce long term fuel savings’

The WR-21 was designed alongside Northrop Grumman. I’ve also been told by a defence source that the engine ‘was meant to be a UK-US joint programme (the W stands for Westinghouse) but the US then didn’t use it in the ships they were going to’.

The issue with the engine is the ‘intercooler-recuperator’. This should in theory recover heat, making the engine more efficient and crucially, reducing the ship’s thermal signature.

Read the sadly predictable story of the partly UK designed engine's procurement and failings here...

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/type-45 ... vys-fault/

As for chips we should use ARM processors to run UK computers and systems...

A British success story

[ian16th]

Didn't a Japanese company buy ARM?

[TheGreenGoblin]

Didn't a Japanese company buy ARM?

Japanese investment bank Softbank bought ARM but it is still headquartered in Cambridge and the IP is still (for now) being generated in the UK.