True, the UK isn’t the world player that it once was. However the UK didn’t get where it was because it was liked or trusted by other nations. It got where it was becasue it was strong. I believe that the UK has more of an influence and responsibility on the world stage that you do. We will only maintain it by being strong.

On the world stage strength carries more weight than being liked or trusted.

Not entirely. British diplomacy used to be a yardstick for others. You could generally trust HMG to follow the process, it believed in the UN, while it may stand alone on an issue the UK was respected for the method. This is no longer the case, we decided to embark on a new Anglo-American brand of diplomacy post 9/11, a new breed of diplomat at the behest of Neo-Arbitan threw out the rule book written over the last few hundred years. Glacial paced, subtle consideration and patients was tossed aside in favour of jet setting, high speed, big name diplomacy so the new Prime Minister could wite his name in the stars.

Iraq and its utter failure for the UK is it’s legacy. 7/7 is it’s legacy, being sidelined in Europe for a decade is it’s legacy. The collapse of the Commonwealth is it’s legacy. The collapse of the UN is it’s legacy. The world is a poorer place for the dissapperance of the ‘dusty British Diplomat.’

Take £10 billion out health, education and social security the world wouldn’t end up disaster. Red tape is costing this country so much.

While I agree with you for the most part do you know how much money an average state comp school is run on? You take £10 Bil out of education i’m afraid you would see melt down quite rapidly.

To give you some idea an average History Department in a comp of 1000 students usually has a budget of £800 a year for everything including books, pencils, trips, posters, dvd players, artefacts, software, photocopying….all for a 1000 students. Thats how tight school budgets actually are- actually very good value for money to be fair.

How does a Navy do power projection without aircraft carriers then? use SSNs to lob a few Tomahawks inland? You’re not going to win a war doing just that.

I didn’t say no carriers. But I am just pointing out that the pot of money is gone and however much we want CVF it may not happen and as part of a wider look at it all we should ask whether we can do without a large carrier and settle for something smaller and cheaper – at the end of the day we have done just that for the last 30 years! The Halcyon days of the carrier fleet were with us back when my father was in short trousers….we can not and should not re-invent the past.

We are not the nation we were and while we have obligations they are nothing like they were 40 years ago and lets not forget our partners who we swore to protect, such as Australia or Malaysia are in a much better position to defend themselves with out our “mother country” attitude patronising them.

The route of all of this is the difference between the expectation of British Foreign Policy and how it is funded and executed. As a nation we still cling to an Imperial view, a Britain that is powerul and influential country, a force of good that is respected by other nations as an acknowledged leader on the world stage.

This view, a view that is held by Prime Minister and shopkeeper a like is outdated and almost entirely wrong. The UK is no longer a world leader, not anywhere near. It is viewed as an outdated, out of touch little country that has an inflated view of its own self importance. Its economy is weak and will continue to weaken relative to others. Its ability to influence world politics is small when in concert with others, non-exsistent when by itself. Its military clings to a technological superiority that grows ever more expensive and unattainable.

The real debate about foreign policy and defence policy needs to be had, to a certain degree this report is starting to address that.

Do we need a nuclear deterrent? We will never independently launch, so who exactly is it aimed at? Does it have a real role other than keeping our seat at the UN security Council?

Carriers? Do we need this level of power projection? Is it affordable or even desirable? Like nuclear deterrence the chance of us launching a large power projection war independently is tiny, so should we pay for that level of force given it it is unlikely to be used?

The sort of military operation the UK will launch independently will be no larger than a brigade+ Operation. It will be of the Sierra Leone scale. When politicians and Hiearchy except this we might actually get a military procurement that is efficient, value for money and affordable.

Wanshan, now i’m confused. :confused: Your contention was that there is little weight/size difference between Phalanx and Goalkeeper, which there plainly is. Yes the above deck portion of goalkeeper is a neat little package, but its the huge below deck part that makes the difference between the two. Phalanx is a self-contained unit thats why it was easy to fit on the CVS in 1982. I never said the arrangement was perfect but I was illustrating the point that you could not have done that quick emergency fix with Goalkeeper.

As for T22 and T42, you are correct about soggy dog, but why not fit T42 that needs better CIWS than a T22 with two goalkeepers then? The answer is because they would not fit, Phalanx does.

From memory there are 67 or so harriers, all of these are being, or have been upgraded to GR.9 standard. In addition there are 9 two seaters operated by the OCU.

3 Squadrons of 9 Aircraft Eact plus the OCU. If we want to be charitable we can seperate the NSW and call it 4 squadrons of 9 aircraft, giving 36 operational airframes. Enlarge all four squadrons to 12 aircraft and 48 Harriers are now being used. That give 19 Attrition spares, but remember that the production line *might* still exist as they were building replacement airframes until only a couple of years ago.

Each carrier can probably carry a dozen Harriers plus another dozen helicopters, so event with Invincible available there are more Harriers then can fit on the carriers.

Production is very firmly closed now. No more harriers i’m afraid, not without a massive industrial effort, or buying second hand from the spams.

Also there are not enough qualified carrier pilots to put all harriers to fill three invincibles to sea.

Land based Phalanx includes the weight of the truck and all the powersources that it needs. The ship-based Phalanx taps into the powersources the ship already carries so those cannot be counted in the weapons weight. A ship comes ready powered, a flatbed trailer does not.

You need to look at the scale of Goalkeeper Vs Phalanx.

There is very little below decks, it barely penetrates the deck. Compare that to Goalkeeper pictures in your post, that yellow box under the gun mount is all under the deck.

Then look at how simple the modification to HMS Illustrious in 1982 was, the RN basically bolted the Phalanx’s on. The work to put Goalkeeper on to the carriers had to wait for a major refit.

Goalkeeper is the better weapon based on performance but its too big a gun to fit to some vessels, phalanx has the edge on weight and simplicity, there is no mystery. It is why T22B3 only carry one Goalkeeper while the smaller T42 carries two Phalanx. Simple.

Technically UCAVs were debuted in WW2….