Hawker Siddeley Trident Project

[WANX]

When I was reading The Air Staff and AEW, I found that it seems like the Trident was not considered a carrier due to whatever reasons. Aside from FASS, there were many configurations proposed, including a ventral retractable radar which should be well-fitted into the trident's body. Aside from this, there are also very limited, if not say none, proposals for transforming the Trident into something like maritime patrol aircraft. I will say it is interesting since Trident is a larger platform than BAC 1-11 and has advanced avionics that can support it for flight and landing under the worst visibility. So was Hawker Siddeley reluctant to propose military transformation for the unsuccessful airliner or there were many of them but just not popular enough?

 

[hesham]

Actually Hawker-Siddeley had many projects for AEW,for example here is HS.818.

 

[alertken]

CJG's Nimrod Genesis has MR Tridents (Avro 778). They lapsed when HSGp MD Sir Arnold Hall chose low/no risk Comet as base for an all-up fixed price Bid to defeat BAC, 1965.

When Ministers attended from c. 1973 to replacing Shackleton AEW2 the logic of scale economy gave Boeing E-3 a headstart. WGermany pitched an A300/AEW as the notion grew of a Joint NATO-Europe AEW Force. UK chose not further to confuse with a new scheme. Very soon the issue simply became cost-sharing for some $ billions of NE-3s. Drift. UK Ministers quit from NATO discussions as Shacks 10,000 rivets were falling out of formation, so we "could not wait" and we retrod incomplete MR Nimrods for a low risk, quick AEW fix. Which seemed such a good idea.