TurbiniaThe British are looking for a face saving way out of Iraq similar to the “decent interval” Nixon/Kissinger sought in Vietnam and I’m guessing we’re in the end game and final run down of UK involvement in the country. Something I don’t object to as we aren’t in a position to have a perpetual committment in a quagmire.
TurbiniaKosovo was an internal problem for Serbia. It was nothing for NATO to get involved with.
Based on that logic the Rwandan genocide was an internal Rwandan genocide and no business of the outside world. I find it amazing that you see nothing wrong with the USSR shooting down airliners full of civilians then get all high and mighty over attempts to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing, that is one warped moral compass.
TurbiniaDestroyer launches on the Clyde
HMS Diamond is the latest in a series of cutting edge destroyers
Thousands of schoolchildren have watched the launch of the Royal Navy’s newest destroyer on the River Clyde.
HMS Diamond is the third of the new Type 45s to be built and launched at the BAE Systems shipyard on the Clyde as part of a £6bn programme.
About 5,000 children from as far afield as Tiree and Dumfries had the chance to watch as HMS Diamond left the slipway in Govan.
The Type 45 will replace the Navy’s ageing fleet of Type 42 destroyers.
Six in total have been commissioned to be built and launched in Glasgow, securing work at the Clyde yards for the next 15 years.
The new destroyer in detail
HMS Daring was launched in February 2006 and HMS Dauntless in January 2007.
They will come into service in 2009 and 2010.
With a price tag of £605m, the 150m long vessels weigh in at 7,350 tons.
The Type 45 is fitted with state-of-the-art technology, including the Principal Anti-Air Missile System, which can provide airspace cover for hundreds of miles.
BAE Systems took on more than 100 apprentices this year and hopes the launch will encourage more young people to join up.
The Type 45 programme was ordered by the Ministry of Defence.
The six vessels – HMS Dauntless, Daring, Diamond, Defender, Dragon and Duncan – are all due to be launched from the Clyde.
Baroness Taylor, minister of state for defence equipment and support, said: “The new Type 45 Destroyers – such as Diamond – will be the most powerful destroyers ever built for the Royal Navy.
“We are in the middle of the biggest shipbuilding programme for the Royal Navy in decades and today’s launch of Diamond demonstrates the scale of that investment.
“This is an important day for the Govan shipyard, the Royal Navy, and indeed the UK, and is a tribute to the hard work of everyone involved in this project.”
The First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sir Jonathan Band, said: “The Type 45 destroyers will be powerful and versatile ships, capable of undertaking a wide range of military tasks.
“They are based on first-class innovation and engineering, which will set new standards in air defence and will ensure that the Royal Navy remains at the forefront of the world’s navies.
“Today confirms the excellent progress we are making on the Type 45 programme.”
TYPE-45 DESTROYER – THE NAVY’S NEWEST WARSHIP
1 Flight deck to take Lynx or Merlin combat helicopter
2 Navigation radar
3 Long-range radar monitors air and surface threats
4 Communications mast
5 Small-calibre gun
6 Multi-function radar can guide ship’s missiles and detect enemy ones
7 Gunfire control system
8 Vertical-launching system for short- and long-range missiles
9 Medium-calibre main gun
10 Bow sonar (under keel)
TurbiniaI’m not anti-4×4 per se (regular cars with 4×4 as made by Subaru, Audi etc) are brilliant, and if you have a genuine need for an off road vehicle then there is no debate at all. What i do find hard to understand, without saying I make a point of arguing the point with their owners, is why you’d buy a less efficient, worse handling, worse performing alternative to a regular car if you never leave the tarmac? To me that just doesn’t add up, if you want the extra traction of 4×4 for winter driving there are plenty of regular 4×4 cars out there that are much, much better options than a SUV. Just my opinion, but I’m not advocating telling people what they’re allowed to drive, just voicing my own opinion.
TurbiniaI’m not anti-4×4 per se (regular cars with 4×4 as made by Subaru, Audi etc) are brilliant, and if you have a genuine need for an off road vehicle then there is no debate at all. What i do find hard to understand, without saying I make a point of arguing the point with their owners, is why you’d buy a less efficient, worse handling, worse performing alternative to a regular car if you never leave the tarmac? To me that just doesn’t add up, if you want the extra traction of 4×4 for winter driving there are plenty of regular 4×4 cars out there that are much, much better options than a SUV. Just my opinion, but I’m not advocating telling people what they’re allowed to drive, just voicing my own opinion.
TurbiniaThat’s right, there was no state sponsored mass murder in the Balkans and those mass graves were all optical illusions:rolleyes: And yes, it was shameful the world did nothing to stop the Rwandan genocide, although if the world had acted I’m guessing that people like you would still find a kind word for those carrying out the genocide rather than supporting strong action to stop it. Like in Dharfur, it is shameful the world is taking no serious action to stop the genocide. What do people think should have happened then? Do nothing and allow ethnic cleansing and genocide (something which almost everybody except our member here who proudly supports shooting down airliners full of civilian passengers agrees would have been the outcome of inaction as in Bosnia)? Start a ground war, if people think the Serb civilian infra-structure was hammered in the air war, just WTF do they think would have been the impact on civilians of a major ground war?:confused: Tell me, I’m really interested as to what people suggest NATO should have done bearing in mind the truly appalling consequences of failure to act properly in Bosnia.
TurbiniaSo, Usama was right using moral arguments to justify the destruction of the WTC. 😮 Jihadist even can claim to have “moral superiority”. Ehhh, he also can claim some sort of Clausewitzian rationality behind the attack: To induct the “evil west” to attack some Muslim countries in order to bleed them in the Muslim heartland.
Eh? Where are the US extermination camps then? Are you trying to deny what happened in the Balkan wars? When did the US ignore warnings and pull back from some precipice prior to 9/11? If you want to comfort yourself with delusions that Serbia was the wronged, innocent victim in the Balkans then fine, but others would disagree.
TurbiniaYou could apply the same logic to anything, do you get an individual receipt for each brick, piece of wire, electrical fixture etc. when you buy a house? The UK has contributed to the JSF program, if the program managers have used the UK funding to pay for utilities all well and good but it doesn’t alter the fact that the UK has paid into the program and expected to be a part of the program, not shafted at the end of it. No, non of us have seen the contracts, so nobody is in a position to say what was and wasn’t agreed, but personally from what I can see the UK (and other partners) have had some very shoddy treatment with the US side going back on what they had led partners to believe when getting them to join.
TurbiniaAre you seriously claiming that bombing a bridge is the same as murdering civilians in cold blood in death camps? The infrastructure can be re-built, try re-building those dead bodies. And the fact remains, if the Serb’s had backed off from their ethnic cleansing in Kosovo they could have avoided war, planning a genocide robs them of any claim to appeal for sympathy at what followed.
TurbiniaDepends on the circumstances, if the US had funded them partly and been led to believe they’d have access to the technology, then yes they’d have a right to feel aggrieved. The UK is a small player in the JSF, it doesn’t alter the fact the UK has still contributed significant money to the program and was led to believe they’d have full tech access.
TurbiniaLike I said, I took no pleasure in the air bombing of Serbia, but I’m guessing unlike you I was a witness to the mass graves uncovered in Bosnia-Herzegovina, saw what the Serb backed militias did in that country, and when they tried to ethnically cleanse Kosovo using similar tactics then as far as I’m concerned they lost the right to make any complaints about what NATO did. Call it moral equivalence, but if you think collateral damage of war is the same as genocide against civilians that’s your own values at work.
TurbiniaWhat, are we now to believe Serbia actually won the Balkan wars?:confused: Are people claiming that NATO fighting to their strenghs and avoiding a bloody ground war was a sign of NATO wekness? The sort of weakness in not being dumb enough to fight on the enemies terms?:confused: And whilst I take no pleasure from bombing civilian infrastructure, my sympathy is somewhat limited by the actions of the Serbian government that provoked a war in the first place which robbed them of any right to claim any sort of moral high ground.
TurbiniaLast of Bay Class enters service
26 Nov 07
The fourth and last of the Landing Ship Dock (Auxiliary) Class, RFA Lyme Bay, has been accepted into service following formal transfer of Operational Command (OPCOM) to the Fleet.
Lyme Bay
Source: MOD
The state-of-the-art 16,000 tonne Bay Class landing ships provide a significant enhancement to the Armed Forces sealift capability. They are designed to deploy troops, vehicles and stores directly into an operational area.
At 177 metres long, they can operate rotary wing aircraft from their flight deck and can travel up to 8,000 miles at 15 knots. The storage decks are able to carry 32 Challenger II Main Battle Tanks as well as over 350 fully armed troops, landing craft and supporting stores.
The flight deck is large enough to accommodate Merlin or Chinook helicopters to transport troops ashore. They also have a floodable stern dock 31 metres long by 9 metres wide and 3 metres deep.
LSDA Team Leader Andy Hewitt said:
“The acceptance of RFA Lyme Bay marking four ships delivered into service within the last 18 months is a fantastic achievement and a credit to all involved in this amphibious shipping programme. In addition to the uplift in the Royal Navy’s capability, they enable more people and more equipment to be sent to trouble spots around the world.”
Lyme Bay is currently operating around the south coast where she is undertaking ship staff familiarisation and safety training.
Operations for her sister ships Cardigan, Largs and Mounts Bay over the past year have included a multi-national exercise in support of Mine Countermeasure Vessels – Operation Orion 07 and Operation Grey Heron, an amphibious exercise. Cardigan Bay and Largs Bay are currently preparing for lengthy deployments in support of operations.
A Service of Dedication for Lyme Bay is due to take place in January 2008
TurbiniaPhantoms defending a re-supply base 1000’s of miles from the combat zone and Harrier GR3’s initially reliant on RN carriers. Face it, whichever way you look at it 1982 exploded the idea once and for all that the RAF could give the fleet the air cover it needed to operate against hostile air threats, without Hermes and Invincible the Falklands would still be Argentine in all probability.
TurbiniaInteresting comments, this is one of the greatest problems in naval (and Army and air force) procurement, how to try and achieve both capability and affordability, and each new generation of technology is making the argument ever more difficult. Modern high capability warships are hideously expensive but also incredibly capable, to maintain fleet numbers is getting harder all of the time, the main options seem to be;
-a high/low force mix
-accept a smaller fleet
-cut costs by using the “fitted for but not with” principle
None of these are ideal, but the high/low force mix is probably the better one, as even using fitted for but not with it has proved too hard to maintain good hull numbers (see T45 amongst others) which is where a relatively affordable down spec warship comes in. The big debate is where to make the compromise between cost and affordability and this depends on the intended role. If we want a Policing vessel for anti-smuggling, anti-piracy, flying the flag, UN support type ops then a large sea going OPV with minimal true war capability and a basic self defence fit is all that is needed (eg. the large USCG cutters, the RN helicopter carrying River class OPV). Such ships however have no real military use and so are still a dilution of the fleet and reduction in force, although freeing up the true warships for other missions. If we want a vessel capable of filling a front line duty then it will not be cheap however we do it and many believe the best way to do it is a single role ship, and I mean single role, a pure ASW vessel for instance with no other equipment, in the 80’s the British seriously considered a pure towed array sonar ship with nothing other than a 30mm cannon beyond it’s ASW systems. This gives a vessel of true utility in a front line role, but at the expense of all else. The alternative is a vessel which does a bit of most things reasonably well but far from matching the best, and I believe this was what the FFG7 attempted and achieved with some success, they were decent ASW platforms, had a decent AAW capability and have proved good GP platforms. Obviously they fall a long way short of the bigger USN destroyers, but for in service they’ve done remarkably well and I believe they’d have served well as Atlantic convoy escorts. To get a comparison it may be better to compare the FFG7 with other non US designs, and when compared with most non USN designs they look pretty capable vessels and quite a few navies still depend on the class as first line combatants, it has also been an excellent basic platform. Which is why I believe that for all it’s faults, a successor design is far more appropriate to the future USN than the LCS. That said, any such ship is a lower end companion to vessels like the Tico and Burke classes.
Sign In
