Presumably with the new UK CVF’s having an in service life of 50 years, mitigating corrosion must be one of the the most important aspects of the design

Interesting debate guys, there can be no doubt the Chile has a nice little navy. It is though oft forgotten what an enormous amount of Blue water Chile has to patrol from the mainland westwards 2500 miles to Easter island and North to south from 18 degree South of the equator down to the ice where sea conditions are the worst in the world, so a good size navy would be needed.

See their English language website (a nice touch)

http://www.armada.cl/p4_ingles/site/edic/base/port/home.html

Britain and Chile have always had such good military and in particular Naval relations due to the British naval assistance in the founding of the Chilean state and Chile has always been grateful for this. This is why one of the current Ships is named after the Famous RN officer Cochrane who went to assist at that time.

I would imagine that they will be delighted with their type 23’s as I bet they got them for a bargain price. Anyone else would probably of had to have paid top dollar.

Anyone else think they might find themselves in posession of a flat top and 20 Harriers in a few years also courtesy of the RN ?

Dumb question time. The graphic shows 40 aircraft yet the current vessels hold 22. The new ships are more than double the size of the old, so is the 40 aircraft compliment a conservative (cheaper) peacetime number and that a wartime uplift would be greater ?

And what are they doing about Maritime Airborne Surveillance and Control ? Have they said anything yet ? Is it going to be a helicopter based option or will they beef up the front undercarriage of a hawkeye to cope with the ski-ramp ?

Also I can’t believe that the French would jump out of the programme now, as now is an opportunity to reduce the cost of their own projects with bulk purchases and common technology

Part of the problem is that the Pumping station that moves the fuel was beside the depot that exploded and has apparently been damaged. This will also prevent Shell/BP pumping various fuels to/from their yard which was slightly further away from the one that exploded and recieved less damage.

I don’t know for certain but I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere like Heathrow may use in excess of 10 million litres of fuel a day, and if you take say a third of that away, it becomes a logistical nightmare to tanker in say 3 million plus litres which would be up to 120 truck loads, so as Skymonster suggests this may go on for a while until they find another way. Reducing demand by up to a third by applying uplift restrictions is part of this