"Scrapped" RAF Sentinels to be sold to the US Army

[Trevatanus]

The RAF Sentinels that were scrapped recently, with an agreement that they would not be re-used, have apparently been sold to the US, with the U S Army being the end user. Not sure if they were end of life because they were no longer needed, or whether they were worn out, but either way, they will live on.

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/british-sentinel-a...

[paintman]

Interesting.
Another aircraft that we've decided to get rid of & the Americans have said 'Thanks very much, we'll have those'.

[sjt85]

Shadow is being upgraded to MKhowever; with additional aircraft to be built. I’d guess that fills the ISTAR gap left by sentinel.

I’d also assume the king air 350 it’s based on generally have a lower operating cost/maintenance schedules.

[williamp]

do they want any Tristars, by chance???

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

[aeropilot]

Trevatanus said:

The RAF Sentinels that were scrapped recently, with an agreement that they would not be re-used, have apparently been sold to the US, with the U S Army being the end user. Not sure if they were end of life because they were no longer needed, or whether they were worn out, but either way, they will live on.

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/british-sentinel-a...

They were hardly worn out.

The daft thing is, they are just a biz jet once the electrikery mission stuff is removed, and they were on the mil reg, and now we have MOD putting out a tender for some biz jets to replace the Bae 146's, and yet they have 5 of them sitting there already.

Its typical MOD procurement madness..............what an utter waste of UK tax payer money to buy something you already have.

[MarkwG]

It looks like the RAF fleet have an average of 6500 hours flying time across the five aircraft. I would think it's better value to offload those five & procure something more up to date & fit for purpose, than pay to strip them down, replace the interior & avionics etc & reconfigure as exec jets. If the US Army want to pay Bombardier for the privilege, that's their budget I guess; the Americans seem to be keen to keep theirs going, whereas the UK have different priorities.