It looks like illogical insanity to me, if true. Fox’ statements so far make the loss of the Harriers a certainty, finishing QE as is, but not buying F-35B leaves us with a 65,000 tonne floating skateboard park. Interoperability as an excuse is nonsense anyway, F-35B and QE would ahve had plenty of cross decking capability with the USMC, Italian and Spanish navies.

Similarly, reducing the order to 40 makes no sense, isn’t Gideon’s cuts meant to ensure that by 2015, public finances are such that future procurement shouldn’t be a hassle?

The RAF look to have played a blinder in the last minutes of the game, offer up Nimrod and Harrier, for scant savings to make sure the Tornado fleet is still in place.

Meanwhile, the navy get’s it’s carriers, but is crippled as a fighting force until perhaps 2020 at best, now, the last few years ahven’t been pretty for it, having lost the sea Harrier, but the loss of even austere air defence and a decent strike capability, and no doubt a slashing in helicopter fleet sizes, means the RN has the rpospect of seven decent units in the submarine force for carrying out any effective operations.

Its not ideal, but this really isn’t a disaster. At present our carrier avaition consists of a dozen light attack aircraft, there has been barely any carrier FJ action happening in the last ten years, this is managed risk but the RN and the nation hasn’t gone under while all our harriers were in Afghan. This plan means we get the carriers, NATO and the EU get more carriers, massive force enablers and as the economy improves and the MODs deficit is sorted we get F35Cs, you say 40 is bad…its a more potent force than the Harriers, so a step up in capability.

It must also be remembered that the Harriers are knackered. The rear fuselage issues have not entirely vanished and as the decade goes on there would be very few of them that could be deployed to sea anyway.

Indeed, if the news report is correct, it seems that Harriers and Nimrod are the main victims, and all to finance a carrier which might or might not have air assets by 2019. As for this ludicrous “multi national” capability, one just despairs. Does Fox really expect us to swallow this claptrap or is he dense-enough to seriously believe it? It’s almost beyond description in its short-sightedness, short-termism and crass simplicity. Typical politics in fact.

How is this short sighted? Planning a carrier capability that comes on stream ten years hence surely is the very opposite of “short sighted” by definition something that will happen the parliament after next surely could not be described as “short-sighted”. I’m sorry but you throw these cliches and words out and you don’t even have a basic grasp of english. Something that looks more than a decade ahead can not, on any level be short sighted.

And why is multi-national ludicrous? Oh sorry forgot, little england it is, behind it’s moat….

PS, I’m not raking over all of the above posts again, there’s really nothing to add as I’ve addressed all the points in previous posts. However, somebody above really does need to check his grasp of Britain’s defence politics of the 1960s! 😉

Somebody being me I would assume. So why don’t you explain, a journalist with your undoubted skill and turn of phrase should easily be able to put me right, correct my errors of view, I supplicate my errounous view point to be supplanted by greater knowledge.

I notice every time somebody supplies you with evidence (ie voting for defence in Parliament, Falklands…)you drop that thread of your arguement instead of providing your devestating, well evidenced reply. Where are these amazing articles? The really good books and decent sources you keep harping on about. This leads me to a conclude that you are not what you say you are, you are just somebody putting forward their point of view, which is fine, but don’t BS us that you know better “because I am an avaition writer of repute” with a differently sourced library to the rest of us. You are, like the rest of us, just some bloke with an opinion.

As I asked you before, give us all this list of good books and journals so we can all be better educated or admit you are a WALT.

Second Carrier definately Conventional. PoW to get cats. Just been leaked.

It’s interesting that the notion of defending one’s sea lanes is raised, just when Nimrod looks like being a possible victim of the carrier farce. On the one hand maritime power is irrelevant and on the other it is vital, it seems?

Well thats making two assumptions. First off that the Navy has any say in the matter, Nimrod is after all an RAF platform. Secondly that the Nimrod is exclusively a maritime platform, which it is not, that is just one of its many roles. nimrod is not the victim of “the carrier farce”, if it is chopped its because of RAF priorities AND very poor procurement management.

It would be foolish to write-off the political decision-making of the 1960s. The very early 1960s are certainly nothing to be proud of but the subsequent years in which Britain found itself in a very similar state to 2010 make a good comparison. TSR2 was cancelled and quite rightly too. It was a brilliant design but dogged (doomed in fact) by the way in which its design and production was set-up. Healey (because of Callaghan’s financial constraints) rightly understood that Britain could not afford to sustain the status quo. F-111 could undertake the same roles more cheaply. He also rightly accepted the folly of supersonic Harriers, jet transports and much more. He also understood the absurdity of large carriers. It is widely accepted that Healey was one of the best Defence Ministers this country ever had even though far too many people erroneously dismiss him as the “vandal that cancelled TSR2”.

Britain now and in the 1960s bare almost no comparison what so ever. You might be an avaition journalist of repute but your understanding of recent British history is shocking. The idea that the Healey is some sort of defence genius…the man, who with no plan B, wrecked British indiginous aircraft production? You are right, the UK could not afford all the things it wanted to do in the late 60s, but the wrecking ball that was driven through the British Aviation and Ship-building industries with no thought to the long term issues this would cause was singularly mindless and one of the greatest examples of short term political thinking. What was maddness was the we endded up building TSR2 anyway in the form of Tornado – the aircraft you adore so much, the maddness of Healey was that we had already designed, built and flown it, we then spent the next 15 years do it again and then sharing the profits with two other nations.

Britain finally accepted that playing on the world stage was unaffordable and withdrew from East of Suez. TSR2 was therefore redundant as was its replacement the F-111. AFVG was a dead end. Carriers were an unaffordable luxury but the Navy persisted with it’s obsessive thirst for air power and eventually got their Through Deck Cruisers, a design which was absurdly ineffective from the outset but suited the Navy as it was the only way through which they could stay in the fixed-wing business. Even then these “carriers” had little to do with need – they were proverbial straws that the Navy grasped.

You never reply to the issue of the Falklands…

TDCs were a great design for what they were designed for, which was ASW. How can you say it was absurdly ineffective? It was originally conceived as an ASW escort to CVA, it was a brilliant design for the job, optimised for carrying an ASW helicopter sqn to sea in the North Atalntic. It then was adapted to do a job it wasn’t designed to do because somebody cancelled the carrier it was supposed to escort. Why were they not needed? Are you saying that at he height of the cold war the Navy did not need an ASW vessel capable of taking large numbers of ASW helicopters to sea? The five Harriers were added to keep the soviet maritime patrol aircraft away that would be guiding the subs to the convoys and shipping the RN was escorting…I really don’t see what your problem is about Naval air power, it is so utterly neccesary for a fleet to do its job.

AH but of course you favour the 1960s arguements, the ones where the RAF shrunk distances on world maps to demonstrate that its aircraft could cover all eventualities…I didn’t see many RAF aircraft over the Falklands in the end, guess that piece of BS backfired on them, lucky we still had some form of carrier then!

History is merely repeating itself again. Britain is in a similar financial fix. It is trying to maintain a world presence in the face of crippling costs, and the Navy is still trying (successfully it seems) to convince us that a country with hardly any future defensive and offensive air power, should divert huge sums of cash to support a dozen F35s for the Navy to parade around the world, to impress nobody but themselves. It’s utter nonsense.

You seem to have tied yourself up in knots. You complain the UK has no defensive or offensive power and yet you hate carriers?? Carriers are a fantastically brilliant way of projecting our defensive and offensive aims where ever we want them, no basing rights, no tankers needed for deployment, no need to maintain an airbridge of stores and munitions, the can apply pressure and then vanish on a whim, they can arry troops and choppers if that what you need.

Remember France has one large carrier, its greatest success is probably in 2002 when it was able to interpose fighters between India and Pakistan who were on the brink of Nuclear conflict. With a “dozen fighters” as you would put it (actually it was 6 Rafales and then mostly old SEntendards) the French were able poor cold water on the crisis. Only a carrier could have done that, parked a piece of french territory with a runway in the middle of the Arabian Sea and operate with no support from home.

Then of course there is the Falklands, which you keep avoiding….curious.

I think (as I’ve said before) some (not all) of you guys need to step back from the enthusiast magazines. It’s far too easy to wrap oneself up in the stuff that is peddled by pundits and manufacturers, whilst failing to understand the wider picture of reality and history.

Fundamentally, the issue is whether Britain can defend itself. Clearly, by whatever standards one cares to choose, we are barely capable of defending the UK mainland even as we are. After SDR we will have even less capability. Fox (using the old and dangerously feeble “ten year rule”) claims there is no direct threat to Britain which warrants any major defensive posture. This is of course utter claptrap. Nobody has a clue what lays ahead.

Instead, Fox is going to spin-doctor us into a brave new world in which Britain helps the US to police trouble spots around the world, equipped with our “formidable” force of maybe a dozen serviceable carrier aircraft. He will claim that all of these potential conflicts will be potential threats to Britain but like Afghanistan, only idiots will actually believe this rubbish. In order to conduct these future crusades, any credible means of defending the UK will have been destroyed, presumably for good.

So, let’s hope that Fox’s crystal ball is an accurate one and that no serious threat to the UK emerges either in the short or long term future, given that we will have virtually no ability to do anything about it if it did. On the other hand, our politicians will still be able to proudly strut on the world stage, committing Britain (and people’s lives) to even more conflicts which have the right foreign policy flavour.

Anyone with a few brain cells can see the utter folly of this situation and this is why hardly any MPs are willing to defend the carriers. Everyone knows what a ludicrous concept they are, but Fox (driven by the Navy’s appalling appetite for supremacy) is going to try his best to sell the idea to us this week. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

What on earth are you talking about? I’m sorry your view of the world appears skewed and contradictory – “we can’t defend ourselves” “but we shouldn’t have a navy” how are those two views compatable?

MPs are against the carriers? erm wrong, they are backed by the majority of the last governement and the current one.

It’s obvious you are not a ‘fan’ of recent wars, to be frank neither am I but your very twisted view of some grand ‘new world order’ i’m afraid belongs in the paranoid fantasy dustbin with most conspiracy theories.

And then where is this magic threat to the UK that we will not be able to defend? I am a big fan of saying that we can not predict what will happen over the next few years (hence why we need flexible, multirole aircraft carriers, but anyway…) BUT you can take that view too far. The EU is a stable, secure and peaceful grouping of like minded countries, so no threat on our doorstep then. Russia? They need us and the EU as much as we need them, so nope. North America? not even worth an answer. North Africa? please….So where is the threat going to appear from?

Then I would remind you the UK is a nuclear power. There is almost no threat directly to UK soil that cannot be dealt with because ultimately the point of the detterent is to prevent an assault on the UK mainland. Who is going to be in a position to challenge a nuclear armed country on its territory when it is surrounded by friendly, partner nations.

I’m afraid you assertions are just wrong. Threats to the UK mainland will come in the form of terrorism, cyber attacks (both mainly the realms of intelligence and police) and then there is attacks on our overseas territories and allies which require a Navy with aircraft carriers…..

I wonder why the UK’s cutting choices are so extreme (either scrapping all 120 GR4s, or retiring all 50 Harriers……) ? Can’t it preserve some parts of both fighters (such as 40 to 60 GR4s + 20 to 30 Harriers) for the necessary missions ?

Its the cost of support. The numbers in some way matter less, its the training, facilities, spares holdings etc that are the big cost and that doesn’t get reduced by much when you chop the odd sqn.

Well there we are, its all alright, Dave has stepped in, whatever that means except an attempt to make the PM look like the hero before the cuts are announced and they start burning kittens.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11556770

less than 10%….9.9%?