Gloster Meteor

[Nick]

Found this randomly posted gibberish on Facebook:

The gloster meteor needs to be remade asap! .. permanent mass/emergency jet! ............................................ Only changes needed are engines, radar, wing mounts, add su25 wing tip airbrakes and some electronic upgrades! ...................................... Loadout doctrine = 2-4 a2a or 2 a2g! :................................. NEED 1ST ONE BUILT AND FLYABLE WITHIN 3 MONTHS!!!!!!!!

Bit odd.     

But it made me think. Is the Meteor a good basic starting point for a mass produced emergency fighter?

[kerick]

Definitely replace the engines. It had no radar so blank slate there. Modern ejection seats. By the time you are done redesigning the airframe for all this you might as well build F-5s or just crank up production of F-50 or the F-CK-1. Good idea for a whiff build perhaps but not so much in RW.

[jcf]

What's that dude imbibing.

[sandiego89]

3 months? 

Modern requirements & acquisition folks could not even decide on the color of the armrest in 3 months.   

[Weaver]

Question is when?

If nowadays then, no way. You'd get the same capability by arming up just about any advanced trainer. I presume that they've still got the Hawk 200 jigs? If so, then that can do everything you need and run rings around a Meteor by any metric. Even they havn't, a Hawk 127 can do most of it, and it'd still be cheaper and easier to recreate the -200 jigs from scratch than design a whole new aircraft.

It'd be interesting to see just what a Hawk 127 fitted with the Typhoon's IR search/track sensor, a datalink and ASRAAMs could do. You could rip out the back seat and console to make space for the avionics and probably still save some weight. It'd be able to build an entirely passive air picture from AWACS+other "real" fighters' radar and then slither into the fight unseen with 4-6 10+mile range missiles: that'd be evil...

If it's the late 1950s or early 1960s and you've got loads of Meteor airframes knocking about then sure: a Meteor's definitely better than nothing. Not sure what you could cost-effectively and quickly do to it though: probably just wiring it for AIM-9B Sidewinders would be the most cost-effective thing (if the Yanks could wire Pakistan's F-6s (MiG-19s) for AIM-9B then they could do it for anything). We know from UK missile trials that you can carry and fire 700lb missiles from a F.8's cropped wing tip, so two wingtip Sidewinder rails plus two on the underwing pylons should be possible and give you a useful loadout. I don't think radar of the period is possible wihout turning it into a NF.14, which is too much hassle. Having said that, the Sidewinder mod would be just as useful on an existing NF.14 as on an F.8.

[NARSES2]

Possibly April 1st ??   

[kerick]

Found this randomly posted gibberish on Facebook:

The gloster meteor needs to be remade asap! .. permanent mass/emergency jet! ............................................ Only changes needed are engines, radar, wing mounts, add su25 wing tip airbrakes and some electronic upgrades! ...................................... Loadout doctrine = 2-4 a2a or 2 a2g! :................................. NEED 1ST ONE BUILT AND FLYABLE WITHIN 3 MONTHS!!!!!!!!

Bit odd.      :

I think someone was really jazzed up on Mountain Dew and playing too much video game fantasy land. People should not be allowed to type on their phone in such a state. You can tell all he knows how to write is badly worded text messages.