great britain

HOTOL: Britain’s Spaceplane by Dan Sharp Now available for pre-order here: HOTOL: Britain's Spaceplane Tempest Books ISBN: 9781911704294 Format: Hardback Pages: 424 The start of Space Shuttle operations in 1981 marked a new era in spaceflight – with the five orbiters launching numerous...

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As we have had some interesting 50s and 60s what-ifs I thought it would be fun to go for a big one. Put yourself in the chair of Sandys, McNamara or any other key Defence Minister of your choice. Now put together a better balance of options than they did.

In a perfect world for the British armed forces how would you modernise HMS Vanguard and the King George V class to serve in the 1980s? (Before anyone asks Yes CVA-01 through 04 are built in this timeline, so no yapping about building carriers instead, this is a perfect world for the RN, so the...

There have been several discussions about the British aircraft of the 60s since I started here a few weeks ago, apparently it's a never ending topic. They appear to start out technically and end financially and politically in a viscous circle of failure. In the process some interesting and...

A detailed description of the Torpedo Protection System for this ship is held by the University of Tokyo and has been digitised. I have downloaded, and uploaded here, the description and the diagram of this system. It goes without saying that the presence of this document in Japan is a very...

Good evening people! Once again, I am flummoxed as to how secret our projects can or can't be !?! I have just became the proud owner of Aerocraft Models (I must add for the sake of conformity, that other Model Brands are available), Fairey Tactical Strike Aircraft GOR.339 Project 75. Now...

https://www.mortonsbooks.co.uk/product/view/productCode/15817/westland-aircraft-rotorcraft-secret-projects-cutting-edge-technology

Thirty-plus years in the making, this is a must-have for anyone researching postwar British aircraft. It's from Air-Britain, so you know it will be good. Pricey, even for members, but this time next year you'll wish you'd bagged one...

Everybody and his brother were trying to have as good as aiforce/air-service as possible, and especially in the specified time frame, but many times the available budget was a serious brick wall between the desires and reality. What kind of aircraft should a not-rich, but a reasonably developed...

P.1224-1 from May 1983 was the first variant of the unmanned fighter aircraft (UFA) studies conducted at BAe Kingston during the 1980s. More info can be found in the recent Hawker's Secret Projects book.

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/55948/rip-john-m-burns

From 'Review of United Kingdom Radar' by J. Clarke (Royal Signals and Radar Establishment), D.E.N. Davies (University College, London), M.F. Radford (Marconi Research Centre) published in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 'Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems...

In the thread "Could the UK have done a better job of maintaining carrier based air power?" I've suggested that doing a better job of managing the British aerospace industry is closely related to the UK doing a better job of maintaining carrier based air power. The first step to that is...

Does anyone have more information on the Matra BAe Dynamics ARAMIS powered (?) glide bomb? Afaik it was offered for the french AASM program and was fire-and-forget using an imaging-ir seeker and INS/GPS.

Hey fellas, I'm (planning) on making a video game, set in the late 1950s, where Britain, the USSR and the USA each have their own space programmes, the US having Von Brauns ferry rocket and space lift ops, and the Brits having the BIS', now formed as the British Interplanetary Commission...

The Royal Navy started receiving Phalanx CIWS too late for the 1982 Falklands War. It would be interesting to know what the impact of the following would have been: Phalanx fitted on T42 and Fearless/Intrepid as it was later in the 80s. Replacement of Seacat by Phalanx on a one for one basis...

Hi, I've been looking into the Royal Ordnance 'RO2004' light tank design that was built in the late 80s/early 90s; and am now looking for more information regarding its armament. The tank was armed with a 105mm L7 derivative, called the Improved Weapon System (IWS). Supposedly it had: - A...

There is information that in the 80s the Garrett GT601 gas turbine was tested on the AMX 30 tank. Does anyone have any more information about this vehicle or any pictures?

The A-12 and the later SR-71 used the NAS-14v2 astro-inertial navigation system (ANS) from the 1960s, which was particularly interesting in the pre-GPS times. The set apparently looked like this...