RAF Destroy £50mil Reaper UAV

[News]

A £50 Million British spy plane was deliberately blown to bits after crash landing in Afghanistan – so the Taliban couldn’t find its secrets.

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[Chris]

good lord thats an expensive piece on kit to blow to pieces with a 1000lb bomb

 

[AdmiralAwesome]

In terms of money wasted by the RAF, this doesen't even get onto the scale.

Why did they have to send a plane to blow up the thing? Predator UAVS only way 512 kg, surely a Chinook could have picked it up? And couldn't the SBS guys just have blown it up if they couldn't lift it out? Surely cheaper than sending a plane to do it.

 

[Chris]

Very good points actually they didnt even cross my mind at the time.

 

[Ashley]

1. Could any explosives carriable by a soldier do sufficient damage to make the data totally unretreivable?

2. There could have been a pilot that hadn't got a chance to bomb anything for a while and thought he could do with a refresher.

3. They could have had a bomb near it's expire date =P

 

[Ninja_Stoker]

The impression I draw is that it needed destroying fast with minimal risk. It's monetary value was probably of less importance than it's tactical value.

The facts aren't always what's printed.

 

[Chris]

That makes sense, im just not entirely sure what is expensive for military hardware to be honest. Saw a book in waterstones the other day that had some estimated costs of the hardware currently used could be worth getting it for myself.

Is military expenditure made public in the UK? I really had no inclination to find out about this kind of thing until reading this news feed.

 

[GreyWing]

It's a strange one, how much it cost and how much it is worth are 2 different things.

I can't see it being worth £50 million to be honest, it may have cost £150m to develop and they have only built 3 uptill now, thus giving a newspaper headline grabbing figure of £50m each. But the unit price might be as little as £3m to put together.

I think a Chinnock costs around £8m (although might be way out there), so I just can't see it being true.

As for collecting it, some of these UAV's are bigger than the lancaster bomber from WWII, not sure how easy it would be to pick that up on a battlefield.

--

The sun also says it had an engine "flame out" yet the Reaper is prop driven unmanned vehicle with pic next to the story. A flame out as far as I know can only happen on a jet engine, so that's a little strange to say the least. Never seen a jet powered unmanned vehicle before and not sure why they would really want one. Fuel efficeny for slow flying aircraft is much better with a prop. You only really need a jet when you get to heights where the air is much too thin, or if you need speed.

-----

They say it landed in one piece but personally can't see it. It won't have the electrical power to beam pics back to base when the engine goes out and pilot the craft. These things are lite as hell and won't be carrying more than a small battery.

As for the special forces going in, one can only imagine it was to collect the debris scattered over a few hundred meters from the crash and put it all in one big pile. Then I imagine the harrier can destroy eveything in one go. Otherwise the harrier couldn't be sure it would get everything incinerated.

All the best
GW

 

[GreyWing]

£10 million in the times newspaper, not £50m. That's The Sun for you.

Also from the times "Engine failed", not flame out. They must have their entertainment reporter on this one, thinks he's watching too much Top Gun.

Forced landing with remaining wreckage destroyed, doesn't sound like it landed in one piece as it said in the Sun.

Seems The Sun making things up again, unless it's the date or price don't believe it. :doh:

GW

 

[Ashley]

Good points, the wreckage could have been hanging out everywhere and a 1000lbs bomb could destroy everything within a radius whereas the SBS might not have found part of it..

 

[Ashley]

As has been said above, The Sun making up rubbish again most probably.

MODOracle.com is run by The Sun?

 

[jeremy]

:P

 

[GreyWing]

MODOracle.com is run by The Sun?

Nope I don't think so although can't confirm. Mod Oracle does what our News Bot does and then repackages it on their site.

So it just goes round taking stories from military sites, as far as I know it doesn't right anything itself.

GW

 

[Ninja_Stoker]

It would indeed be remarkable that the MoD would allow a news feed to publicise inaccurate factual newspaper items which are not vetoed before posted on the Official MoD Oracle website.

Obviously all points of view, both pro and anti-military have to be allowed to give a balanced view & avoid accusation of state censorship.

We also have a News Feed on this website, but each item released in this forum is checked before posting- mainly to avoid duplication, merging where necessary, or simply deleted due to irrelevance. If it is an item linked to a dubious news source without MoD sanction, then it is not released here.

One would hope that the MoD Oracle website operate a policy of allowing genuine news items to be posted but would draw the line at blatantly sensational or knowingly inaccurate news items - after all the MoD has it's own Media Operations experts who are employed to advise accordingly.

 

[AdmiralAwesome]

It's a strange one, how much it cost and how much it is worth are 2 different things.

I can't see it being worth £50 million to be honest, it may have cost £150m to develop and they have only built 3 uptill now, thus giving a newspaper headline grabbing figure of £50m each. But the unit price might be as little as £3m to put together. GW

We bought them straight off the shelf from America for around £4m.

And the latest batch of Chinooks are going to cost about £40m each.

 

[GreyWing]

I read the telegraph website and it becomes apparent where the Sun got £50m from.

The Telegraph site "According to the US Department of Defence Security Cooperation Agency, Britain is looking at buying another 10 Reapers as part of a wider £540 million deal."

Some mug from the sun read that and thought £540 million devided by 10 equals a headline figure of £50m each. Unfortunately for them it actually reads "as part of a wider £540 million deal" which means we bought other stuff aswell.