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Reply To: Should the Brits have accepted the Rafale design?

Home Forums Modern Military Aviation Should the Brits have accepted the Rafale design? Reply To: Should the Brits have accepted the Rafale design?

#2142731
Marcellogo
Participant

When it came to military ships each navy has their own standards: some tend to favor seafaring capabilities, hence great spaces for fuel, lodging and storages, other instead fill up their ship with weaponry and leave little space for crew confort.
US Navy is probably the perfect example of the first approach while VMF and MMI are quite notorious for their attitude of fill up their own ships to the limit with firepower.
It depends by various factors, geografy included: USA ships have to cross minimum an ocean to get to any operation scenario, main russian bases are in the polar circle, and
Given that military ships are in reality a systems of systems, the idea of a real multinational programme in which anyone is allowed to have their own saying if is possible even more chimerical than with fighter planes.
I remember an humorous drawing made by the developing team working on horizon Destroyer showing them sailing on half-made one without the main radar, missile bays and gun towing a barge in which there were instead such items and their own PAAMS colleagues ferociously brawling.
In the meantime they were waiting on the deck for requirements from the partners nations to come: Italians sent a seagull carrying a single envelope in the beak, French a office shelf on the top of a sea tortoise and the Brits a Lynx helicopter carrying with an hook under the belly a whole strongbox with tons of papers leaking from the door…

So it’s perfectly plausible than the same ship would look as super equipped to an american or a british and instead just sufficient to an italian or a russian.
Still it’s not a casual thing, there are usually excellent reason for each of the mentioned nations to keep on building their own ship in the way they do.