RAF Lyneham.

[Sean Mac]

This may be of some Intrest.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wilt ... 448436.stm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Blackcat1]

Interesting, is it me or does the nose of the Herk in the pic look a bit odd???

[pikey01]

"During a debate on the issue in Westminster Hall, Mr Gray said the single runway at Brize Norton was often closed in bad weather and questioned whether the move had been fully risk assessed."

While I agree it is a mistake to put all the eggs in one basket, I take it Mr Gray has visited Brize to know how "often" the runway's closed?

[Sheff]

More claptrap from our beloved MP's I'm afraid. Shame it took him six years to start complaining - presumably he was too busy filling-in his expenses forms until now? Obviously the closure and move to Brize is a done deal now and everyone (including the MP) knows it. He's just doing the usual cynical politicial gesture by "valiantly fighting to save his local base" for the benefit of the voters who might think that he doesn't give a toss otherwise... imagine!

[Sean Mac]

Yeah this is very true but if the Goverment were to put the C-130's in to Brize this would be 25% of the RAF fleet of Aircraft in one place this in my opinion is a bad decision. But this work at Brize will work in their favour, as it will free up space for the future delivery of the MRTT and the new C-17s. Also this would make more space for the regular visitor to Brize the AN124.

Regards


Sean McRandle

[TonyO]

More claptrap from our beloved MP's I'm afraid. Shame it took him six years to start complaining - presumably he was too busy filling-in his expenses forms until now? Obviously the closure and move to Brize is a done deal now and everyone (including the MP) knows it. He's just doing the usual cynical politicial gesture by "valiantly fighting to save his local base" for the benefit of the voters who might think that he doesn't give a toss otherwise... imagine!

Actually he's been arguing on and off about the closure of RAF Lyneham for six years.

This government truly is making a very deep hole for itself if it doesn't reverse the Lyneham closure decsion. The recent boltholing of the RAF's transport fleet to Birmingham and East Midlands Airports should have made them sit up and take note. How many other nations base all their transports and refuelling aircraft in one location with one runway?

[RichC]

No worries, they will be basing every fast air asset at Coningsby, every ISTAR/AWACS asset at Waddington and every air transport, tanker etc at Brize.
A three base air force will soon be on the cards.... sod everyone else in their eyes.

Like said, it's going to come round and bite them in the arse when Brize closes due to fog or deep snow or ice or if it comes to the worse an accident which will throw Brize into chaos.

How many times have lots of airports including our transport bases been closed to fog or limited operations atleast in 2009?

Look at Brize right now with the snow/ice issue... it's not working right is it? limited ops at best.

This snow event should have woken them up but i bet it hasn't.

I know what else will happen now too. Lyneham was/currently still is the MEDA airfield for the whole of the south of England and Wales.
So when it closes which air station will take up the role of MEDA? I bet it will be Brize Norton.
So... being a MEDA brings added risk of an incident upon approach or landing and Lyneham having several runways to choose from was the reason why it was given MEDA status over the other air stations.
Lyneham can handle 1 MEDA Operations per 10 minutes for 60 minutes.
Try that at an air station which is packed with transport/tanker operations in and out 24hrs a day. The increase in traffic alone is enough to worry about let alone trying to fit in MEDA between those.

[Sheff]

I think the problem is that people tend to assume that there is some sort of jumbled logic in these decisions whereas there patently isn't. It's clear that the aim is (as Rich says) to pursue this bizarre "superbase" concept which has been floating around for years now. So, it follows that wherever and whenever possible, the fast jet assets will be concentrated at Coningsby, the EW and similar types at Waddington and the transport/tankers at Brize. Sadly, Lyneham's no longer an option and the MP can whine all he likes but the decision has been fixed for a long time, so one must assume that his only motive for this rather late fuss is to maintain popularity with his voters. His only hope is that an alternative use might be found for the base. The MoD seems to have gone cold on the "helicopter superbase" idea for Lyneham so in the absence of anything else, it's difficult to imagine what other use could be found for the base.

[TonyO]

Lyneham is still an option, nothing has moved yet, and the only money that's been spent on 'Future Brize' is the enlarging of the parking areas, which, let's be honest is probably quite a useful addition anyway, given some of the ridiculous manoeuvring of aircraft that had to be carried out near the terminal in the past.

[Sheff]

Lyneham is still an option

How? It's been earmarked for closure for years now and there's never been so much as one word to suggest the plan would ever be changed?

[RickIngham]

Very interesting transcript here thats several pages long:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... 0648000001" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Sorry if its been posted elsewhere...

At the moment there is a £44 million budget, but of course most of that will go across to Brize Norton. I am told that the net saving from closing Lyneham is round about £6 million a year: absolute peanuts. So it will cost us hundreds of millions of pounds to move to Brize Norton and we are saving £6 million a year. The MOD's

By contrast, of course, Lyneham has everything that could possibly be wanted. It has huge ramp and hangar capacity and plenty of married accommodation. Its simulators are state of the art. The C-130J simulator is widely known to be absolutely the best in the business. It will be torn down by big cranes and £10 million will be spent on building a new one at Brize Norton-another £10 million wasted.

The people around RAF Lyneham are not noise-averse-they are wholly supportive of the RAF. I am not certain that the people of Carterton in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), the Leader of the Opposition, would necessarily be all that pleased about having all the planes in one place.

Of course, there is only one runway at Brize Norton, compared with the three that we have at present: two at Lyneham and one at Brize Norton. Bung everything into one place at Brize Norton-what an invitation to an enemy, a terrorist or adverse weather conditions. Brize Norton is subject to flooding and fog, and if the runway is closed incessantly because of weather or-I shudder to say it-a dirty bomb on the one runway, we would remove our entire air transport capabilities for days or weeks.

[Unknown74]

The continuing demise of the UKs Armed Forces. Anyone see the Daily Mail this morning (15th January) for example?

[T_J]

The continuing demise of the UKs Armed Forces. Anyone see the Daily Mail this morning (15th January) for example?

More breaking news scoops by the Daily Mail. Quick everyone on the outrage bus! How long before someone starts a "Save the BBMF" petition? Watch the
forums all stirred up and people prattling on from the roller coaster of the political outrage bus.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... light.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ding, ding! All aboard the outrage bus! Leaving now and stopping at all available internet forums!

TJ

[GOOSE]

BBMF statement -

You may have seen the article in the Daily Mail today speculating about the future of the BBMF. Air Command have advised us that the potential demise of the BBMF as a cost saving measure is untrue;

There is no plan to cut any funding from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. We routinely review all spending to balance our resources and focus on the highest priority - operations in Afghanistan. A wide range of options are always considered in each annual planning round but not all of these are taken.

http://www.raf.mod.uk/bbmf/news/index.c ... E906A0C1C6" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


The staff would ask that all members remain light hearted in their posts regarding MOD spending cuts. Whilst such news will always be emotive, please stay friendly.

[T_J]

Well done, Goose. I was just about to tack it on to my post.

TJ

[Unknown74]

Could these pondlifes in the Media please do everyone a favour and get their facts straight, stories like Bases closing and then stories being denied why are these people writing such nonscense? Is it some idiotic editor sitting in his Fleet Street or wherever Office or slum thinking to himself what garbage can we write today, who can we upset?

Finally can I please state that I would love to see Lyneham and all these other major flying bases remain open 'cos as a spotter it would be really great to see some Aircraft actually flying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dunk]

The problem with Brizes runway going black is the ancient snow clearing equipment which is never fully prepared for the winter season, despite Ops and MT insisting it is. The first time it gets used in the winter, nearly 75% of the equipment wont start or breaks within an hour.

Ops will always wait until it starts snowing before laying clearway, due to environmental and money saving issues. By then its too late. Clearway needs to be laid in advance of any snow to be effective.

Having experienced 2 winters in Brize tower I can say that snow clearing operations, despite the best efforts of those that operate the equipment, is a farce, due to very poor planning and not listening to the people that operate the airfield and look out of the window 24/7 - namely ATC!!!!!!

Once again it all comes down to money and equipment. Look at all the major airports, after an initial small period of closure they all re-open, bar gatwick - which seems to be the first to close when it snows, and then the last to open!

This was taken in 2006 or 7, still using trucks to pull ancient equipment, as opposed to proper snow clearing equipment. Ops were told by ATC and Met (both who have weather radar) that snow would fall at 0300. Ops said rubbish BBC say it will miss, so laid no clearway. At 0301 this happenned!





Operations said would have the runway open in 1 hour - 14 hours later when I came back for my nightshift.......see above!

So, having one runway is no big drama, but it is if you dont invest in the correct equipment to do the job. Its a real shame that Lyneham will close, I still think it will be a JHC base or the Gypsys (Army) will move in once the RAF have gone.

[Sheff]

Disposing of BBMF has been mentioned on FC before. It seems very unlikely for now though, simply because BBMF doesn't actually cost all that much when weighed against their PR value. The Red Arrows are the real concern but as we've discussed many times before, the Reds will doubtless survive until their Hawks run out of hours in a few years from now. It would be an unnecessary (and pretty unpleasant) saga to prematurely kill-off the Reds when they will inevitably have to be wound-up when they no longer have any aircraft.

Newspapers love to create stories and I guess the Mail would like to whip-up a "Save the BBMF" campaign so that they can claim that they've saved the BBMF afterwards - much like they did with the Vulcan. It's harmless fun really and even when the story isn't true, it does at least keep the public's support active which is by no means a bad thing. It's inevitable that BBMF will eventually become a target though when there is nothing else left to chop, but I suspect that when the day arrives, the MoD will opt for some sort of partnership with a civilian operator which enables the aircraft to continue flying but with someone else's finances. Whatever happens, it's not as if any of the BBMF aircraft are in any danger of being grounded, no matter who owns them.

As for Lyneham, well as I aid before, I'm surprised that the subject has become more of an issue now, when closure has been planned for years. It seems pointless to dwell on Lyneham's assets as that kind of argument could apply to countless RAF stations which have been abandoned. I think it's self-evident that Lyneham is a valuable and useful base, but when the MoD is so painfully short of cash, this fact means nothing. The simple truth is that Brize is capable of accommodating all of the RAF's transport and tanker assets and that is precisely what Brize will do. The only real question is whether any other use can be found for Lyneham. Simply banging-on about how the base should be saved achieves nothing. Saved for what?

The MP might be busy making all the right noises now but it's simply hot air. Obviously, Lyneham is a valued base and it will cost a lot of money to transfer everything to Brize but that ignores the obvious savings that will come from concentrating everything at one base. It goes without saying that the move makes financial sense, otherwise there would be no interest in doing it, therefore the MP seems to be missing that rather obvious point. We all know that logistically it will probably be a retrograde step but as we know, the only motive now is cost. Daft stories about "dirty bombs" just sound like desperation. I think the MP would be better-off looking at alternative uses for Lyneham rather than wasting everybody's time flogging a proverbial horse which has been dead for years.

[Vulcanone]

....

[Richard B]

If they wanted a base to house all the types suggested and with the benifit of offset runways then Upper heyford would be a good bet.
or even Culdrose. and shut the single runway airfields.
just a thought.