mattI didnt think anything decent happened in Bristol! I thought it was all done on guernsey!
All that defense stuff! Isnt bristol a bit useless? It only houses a few small defense firms.
Ok
So what is the total score for SSBNs then?
Have we given up on the idea of having massive aircraft carriers that can be sitting ducks hmm I was about to say enemies but I am sure the yanks will sink em soon as they can.. friendly fire and all that you know..
mattMatt Read the Above Post. There is no Point speaking to you on this. See the view of people more qualified than you or I.
At this moment in time i doubt whether the people you presesnt the report are any more qualified than my five year old nephew who seems to understand politics and strategy more.
With regards to minimum deterence if these fools were correct and India did have minimum deterence China would have stopped playing the game some time back! The fact is India does not have minimum deterence and china is very aware of this!
With the fact that these guys seem to be backing up the NSA and that the NSA has just castrated India in front of the world.
The NSA has no credibility and nor do these so called experts or think tank.
I wonder while they were thinking did they ever wonder that if they were right why does China behave to beligerently towards India?
Deterence is what pakistan has on us even though our armed forces are twice/thrice as big as theirs and technologically superior! It is a shame the Idiots that have been voted into power do not learn something from our neighbours!
mattWe do not need to match China to have minimum det. We are capable of inflicting serious damage on China, and thats all that matters. They will not Nuke us if they know there is going to be huge loss of life on their side.
China do not want a full scale war with India, and it would probably be a stalemate, as for border incursions we should strengthen our logistics in the region which is what we are doing.
The media is blowing the issue out of proportion the incursions happen on both sides of the border, and sensible journalists have written about it. The others have FIR and criminal procedures started against them, which is a shame.
And Chinese thinking of today is not like during the time of Mao.
Ok seriously what makes you think that we are capable of inflicting serious damage onto china? When Moa utered his famous words the US was ALREADY 20 years or so ahead of where India is today with regards to missile and atomic technology.
I guess you are correct with regards to china not wanting a war with us, i guess they are building ports in Gwadar to help us in our future needs, and building listening posts and ports in Burma to give Kolkata a help in some future.
Oh and all those troops it has at our northern borders must be there to carry flowers to our elderly and help them cross the street etc..
And what if china refuse to give visa’s to people from Arunachal Pradesh during international events claiming they have no need for them as they are chinese, it must be doing this purely as a show of love towards India.
You know i see the error of my ways, I guess the Indo China war of the 60s was a mistake on our side they were really all crossing over to India to learn how to cook bombay allooo!
You are so correct, and all this time I thought china was playing a great chess move.
The media do get it wrong however on this instance I would say carry on and blow it out of proportion, i am sure an Indian Army chief was uttering similar rubbish as the Foriegn minister is doing now when the Pakistanis were taking over Indian Land in Kargil..
But what is land, its only a small part of India, as long as the masses in the City can go about living there normal lives what does it matter if we sacrifice a few thousand acres here or there!
Long as bollywood carries on and we become friendly with America!
mattNot true but all this Nuclear Willy Waving is un-necessary we have our minimum deterrent against both our neighbors. And thats all we need.
I am not concerned about the U.S relations. Testing now will be a blunder thats all. I told you we can and should test. Just bid for our time.
In what way or form does India have a minimum deterence against China?
Have you by accident picked up the stock pile list of the USA?
And in which way will bidding for time help? Do you mean wait until we have signed away our right to do Nuclear tests? Or wait until congress surrenders arunachal pradesh to China?
A deterent is only a deterent when their is unequivocal proof or belief that it can do damage; Indias case this is not yet so.
Moa Tze-tung ” The Chinese people are not to be cowed by U.S. atomic blackmail. Our country has a population of 600 million and an area of 9,600,000 square kilometres. The United States cannot annihilate the Chinese nation with its small stack of atom bombs.”
In the current climate and situation and with mass excersises being conducted by China on Indians Norther borthers and along the LAC the only way to prove this is by a Nuclear Explosion or Two!
Would you prefer that our country Kow-Tow to the chinese in some silly hope that the US would come to our rescue when China tries to capture more land accross arunachal pradesh!
Does it not fill you with shame that the foriegn minister of India is on the news to ask people not to blow up recent Chinese transgracense for fear it could lead to un wanted actions?
matt@matt: Pretty much what we all knew already but what the government and the oppositon have both refused to admit. The defence sector is important and our last manufacturing lifeline. I know we shouldn’t decide cntracts based on where the work happens, but at the moment i’d rather see contracts go to slightly more expenisve UK companies and helping the economic situation, than to foreign companies that will disappoit just as often as the UK industry without any benefits whatsoever.
I agree with you to an extent, i mean if we have the capability to do it in the UK or if we believe that we can pump money into the R&D to get capability then we should do it here. But we should not be thinking of jobs alone as this would again be a waste of our money.
But on a positive note I have heard of a few R&D projects being funded by TSB which are keeping a lot of manufacturing jobs, not just in a the aerospace sector but also other sectors. Our Automotive sector (not UK brands they have long gone but our car manufacture and design in the UK used to be very strong!) has collapsed and is seen as something cursed by banks (even though we the tax payers have bailed out the banks) but the money the government is putting into programs within the aerospace and defense sector is helping those companies as well.
This obviously is also helping the economic cycle and keeping people in jobs, keeping them spending which is in turn having a positive effect in this down turn. A lot of us are dreading any Tory style Private sector cut back before we achieve full recovery or atleast confidence.
I guess this could also go on for a few pages but its would not be correct to go on in this forum.
So what is the ratio of votes at the moment?
Are we more pro SSBN’s ?
Anyone looking to put a poll up?
mattHoping for Republican administration in U.S next term and continue from where Bush and Singh left off. 😀
So you want this to continue? See below..
US lavished $ 3.5bn arms on Pak in 2006
Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN 17 September 2009, 04:50pm IST
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WASHINGTON: Acting against its own interests and unmindful of Indian national security, the United States lavished big ticket arms worth $ 4.5
billion on Pakistan between 2005 and 2008 even as Washington now frets about Islamabad’s diversion of military equipment away from the war on terrorism.
An updated Congressional report released last month says Washington signed arms transfer agreements with Pakistan in excess of $3.5 billion in the year 2006 alone, ”ranking Pakistan first among all arms clients of the United States during that calendar year.”
In fact, the report says, the total value of Pakistan’s 2006 arms purchases from the US nearly matches the total value of all Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program purchases by Pakistan from the US for the period from 1950-2001 (more than $3.6 billion in current dollars).
President Bush was in the White House in 2006, locked in a tactical embrace with Gen Musharraf, whom he described as his tight buddy. The Congressional report would suggest that for all its famed engagement with New Delhi, the Bush administration was unmindful of India’s security.
The report lists the key elements in Pakistan’s arms purchases from the United States as follows: 36 F-16C/D Block 50/52 fighter aircraft for $1.4 billion; a variety of missiles and bombs to be utilized on the F-16 C/D fighter aircraft for over $640 million; the purchase of Mid-Life Update Modification Kits to upgrade Pakistan’s F-16A/B aircraft for $890 million; and 115 M109A5 155mm self-propelled howitzers for $52 million.
None of these big-ticket items have much relevance to Pakistan’s mandate to fight the specter of terror it nurtured in the region, subsequent audits and some US lawmakers and experts have pointed out. That has not stopped the Obama administration and some prominent lawmakers from processing even more military supplies to Pakistan in the current Congress although there have been promises of greater oversight.
While Congressional reports, meant to provide analysis to lawmakers and their staffers, typically do not question US policy, this August 24 report tartly observes the ”rise of Pakistan to its new status as a major arms purchaser from the United States is particularly noteworthy given the difficulties the US has had with Pakistan since the 1970s over its successful effort to produce nuclear weapons.”
The Congressional report, part of continuing updates about US arms sales to Pakistan, came a fortnight before Pakistan’s deposed military strongman Pervez Musharraf was reported to have boasted that his regime had suckered the US and diverted American military aid to bulk up against India instead of deploying it for the war on terror. There has also been some disquiet in the military about the wisdom of arming Pakistan when there are 100,000 US and Nato personnel next door in Afghanistan who don’t share Washington’s rosy view of ties with Islamabad, especially after a few firefights on the border.
Musharraf subsequently denied making the remarks about diverting the arms, but his disclaimer carries little credibility because he has a long history of mendacity to shield Pakistani interests and misdemeanors, including during the Kargil terrorist operation and Islamabad’s nuclear proliferation. Most famously, the Washington Post once nailed his falsehoods in an editorial bluntly headlined ”General Musharraf’s lies” when he denied remarks he had made in a taped interview.
But Musharraf’s unexpected disclosures about diverting US arms against India (including his in-your-face remarks that he didn’t care what Washington thought of it), combined with the Congressional update, could put a spanner in the aid package that the Obama administration is currently pushing through Congress if it takes up the matter seriously. It says it intends to.
Last week, a State Department official said Washington will ”take seriously any allegations like this,” noting that it was a former President who has made these allegations. ”But simply we don’t have the details to be able to respond to the allegations,” he added vaguely, although it was more of a self-congratulatory boast by Musharraf about his regime’s tactics than an allegation.
However, the Obama administration is up against lawmakers who fancy themselves as long-standing and deep-thinking policy experts who feel the way out of the Af-Pak wrangle is to throw more money at Islamabad before calling it to account. For what it is worth though, the Obama administration is now sending audit teams to Islamabad to monitor the disbursal and use of US aid. The first such team is visiting Islamabad this week.
mattDefence Industry Body Comment on Shadow Chancellor’s Potential Defence Cuts Remarks
(Source: Society of British Aerospace Companies; issued Sept. 15, 2009)
Commenting on Shadow Chancellor George Osborne’s suggestion that the Conservatives could consider defence spending cuts if they were to win the next General Election Matthew Knowles, spokesman for A|D|S the UK’s aerospace, defence and security trade body, said:
“Any future defence cuts would be very short-sighted. Cutting defence spending not only threatens to deprive our armed forces of the vital equipment that they need to protect us but it also threatens the UK’s economic recovery, given the enormously positive impact from the defence industry and its 300,000 employees. Fully 10 per cent of UK manufacturing jobs are in defence.
“While other Government departments’ resources have increased, defence has seen its allocation fall from 4.4 per cent of gross domestic product in 1989 to 2.3 percent in 2009. Any future Government looking to make savings should look at other departments because defence has already made its contribution. The operational and industrial impacts of those savings are currently being felt and further cuts would put intolerable pressure on our troops and our high-tech manufacturing capabilities.”
Mr Osborne’s comments came at a conference organised by The Spectator magazine.
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shame about the sub cuts!
mattkinda reminds me, wasnt the E-2C hawkeye 2000 offered to India at the 2005 edition Aero India?
see model below.
It was offered but the then administration had the good sense to turn it down because of tie ins to silly end user agreements which basically made the E-2C useless
mattI would bet that an army from a nation in a poor country helping the people face to face would have better propaganda value than money. It would show that the UK armed forces are not big bad people they hear about in stories but in fact nice caring people that can help and dont always kill people..
That part would be Great! and to give credit the UK armed forces do actually do a lot of this, unfortunately media attention at present is focused on things that sell which is normally doom, death destruction and not peace, smiley faces etc..
But yeah we need to shake this yoke of being US lakey and Evil empire want to be off.
mattWe do give a lot away for “charitable” things.
That is the exercise of soft power and it can be done without an army.
We dwell too much on zimbabwe. Modern day Zimbabwe is a cumulation of several mistakes made by ourselves and also by concurant Zimbabwe administrations.
There are other countries in Africa and Latin america we could coerce with our soft power which would benifit us a lot more.
mattObligatory thats why all i advocate is a moderate manpower increase to 300,000. Thats not huge by any measure. That would bring the British armed forces to a bit above the Bundeswehr.
As to who i wanted to attack that would be nobody, i mentioned the French in the last comment from jest as they have been invaded many a time. But to reply to a saying with another – “If you want peace, prepare for war”. The simple fact is that it is in human nature to confront others and it is better to be prepared when the time comes.
Furthermore wars now and in the future are likely to be low tech requiring manpower over technology with ‘Boots on the Ground’ increasing the armed forces allows for better harmony.
Matt i grasp what you are saying. But i for one would not like to sit on my **** i would get involved but not in daft hopeless misadventures i would do a lot of training with foreign militaries mainly the smaller ones to show that we know what we are doing.
Carriers are still very necessary IMHO as they allow entry to a nation or can be used defensively such as in the Falklands. You cant go nukeing people for little things where carriers would be better or SSGN’s better still.
OT- I wonder who would side with each as well, it would really show what countries thought of the UK and France. I might also want to get involved in things like Darfur or Rhodesia/Zimbabwe i know thats very Imperialist as some people may say but thats my opinion.
Imperialism it self is not a bad thing, or a good thing. Its the nature of man we, as much as we would debate against the same, are animalistic to the core and Territorial advancement is in our nature. Better to be the Empire than to be the other guy feeding the empire with your hard labour.
Nothing wrong with UK being imperial again and why not. Only thing I would say is we need to make our minds up as to what we want to be.
All this sitting on the fence since the end of the cold is making our forces dazed, depleted and unfortunately mistrusted by the very people it is built to protect!
If you want to down size, than down size and keep the SSBN’s! if on the other hand we want to be an empire again lets hurry up and bulk up now before China really wakes up!
mattI know of a relatively small country next to a much bigger country and I would say one of the reasons for existance of the small country till date is its Nuclear aresnal, its military is not much in comparison to the neighbour and the only reason it gets time of day is due to its nukes.
I own a house and every month I pay money into some guy who say they may pay me back if ever something was to happen to my house. I believe the latter to be unlikely but I still pay that guy the money. It keeps me at peace and gives me confidence.
British SSBNs are similar and relate to both the examples, build up the nukes and keep them, they are the only reason the UK is taken seriously these days.
Stop unecessary misadventures and we would not have trouble with our conventional forces, keep them for defense only, the SSBNs will take care of the rest.
Better to have second strike capability than aircraft carriers!
mattAll is well and good and again i do not deny the efficasy or existance of Babur etc,
and lets even ignore the report because it may be a lot of bluff and nothing more, again the CIA being as intelligent as it is reputed to be and shown to be about Iraq, Indo – Pak nuclear bombs and a few more blunders…
Would a missile with a range of 100km 600Kg be tactically useful in Siachin or in the Thar mounted on a Geep or something similar?
mattIf you were a general in the pakistani army and you had picked a fight with India once again, would you try to saturate indians air defense with lots of very expensive missiles or would you use old missiles that are past their use full ness in other ways?
I think its a good idea (economically speaking), it isnt to say that Pakistan does not have better missiles, it probably does but if you can have a few more guided land attack missiles to cause havoc on cheap targets why not?
mattI would still like to see this survey of 60% of India wanting closer ties.
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