TurbiniaIn 1966 as AT payload-range was being enhanced by VC-10/C-130K, Ministers chose AAR/F-111K as strike cover to an airborne Rapid Deployment Force, dumping expensive CVA, duck, sitting, bait for 1st. generation ASMs and SSNs. (In 1968, broke, we gave up on policing the Indian Ocean after Eagle/Ark expired, and let any friends spend to mind their own shop). Now, with C-17A, C-130J, A400M, covered by UCAVs and/or accurate, non-nuke SLCMs to do our intervening, instead/as well, we choose very expensive CVF to brush off Astute-types while swatting stealthy, accurate incoming. Forecast that in 1968 and the white coats would take you away. (Put aside the politics of why we now propose to subsidise, with men and money, nations busily taking our jobs; just stay with the kit: ) Educate me on what I have missed. If you answer that PAAMS will do what Cats/Darts/Slugs could not, then with respect: Quack.
Maybe it is because the decision to transfer responsibility to the RAF for fleet air cover was recognised as a disaster many years ago, it was based on all sorts of assumptions about availability of friendly bases and range that were outdated as soon as the decision was taken. The ultimate proof of this was 1982, where was the RAF fleet air cover in the Falklands?
Turbinia14 years would still be a stop gap, probably just a stalling tactic to defer major investment in new machines for another few years. Don’t forget the Sea King HC’s the RN operates for the royal marines too, they’ll also need replacing, for that one i think they’d be crazy not to go with more AW101’s.
TurbiniaNice comedy but low on fact. I think there is an honest debate out there on the affordability of CVF at current naval funding levels without a major adverse affect on other areas of naval ops but this skit wasn’t it. That said, I did laugh out loud and found it a very funny sketch.
TurbiniaYes, the HC2 upgrade, call me a cynic but if they go ahead I bet it’ll end up as expensive as just buying new and be years late.
TurbiniaYes, but politically the AW149 is to be built in the UK and financially the UK still has an interest in supporting Agusta Westland, not to mention that the AW149 should be a very cost effective choice. And I’m not being a hypocrite, I have no objection to France and Germany supporting Eurocopter for similar reasons, nor the USA supporting Sikorski and Bell.
TurbiniaDefence funding has to be matched to need, if the forces work out that the funding needed is 3% then fine, but if we pluck a figure out of the air all that’ll happen is the top brass will blow billions on big ticket junk and in a couple of years the begging bowls will be out again with sob stories of how they’ve got no money. Look at the NHS, they’ve had money thrown at them and how much of it has actually achieved anything? Yes, the NHS has improved greatly over the last decade IMO, but nothing like proportionately to the vast amounts of extra money pumped into it. Give the top brass a massive cheque to spend and it’ll be the same thing, yes we’d see some genuine improvement in the capabilities of the forces but an awful lot more waste and inefficiency.
TurbiniaIt is either/or, the CVF will have a secondary commando carrier role if needed but it’ll be at the expense of it’s strike carrier role. That said, as has been said, it looks like a much smaller amphib role for small special forces type ops is going to be part of it’s strike carrier capability. With HMS Ocean a fully optimised LPH (and a LOT cheaper than the CVF) using the CVF in the commando carrier role is likely to be pretty low in it’s list of operational priorities. Very few vessels are genuinely capable of simultaneous amphib support and fast jet strike operations, only the USN LPHD’s can do it, and their fighter groups are not at all big as USN strike packages go (although as big as most non-USN strike groups).
TurbiniaIMO, the USN would be far better served using the money that the LCS program has been allocated in a FFG7 replacement, the FFG7 has been much maligned but it’s been an outstanding success story and found an excellent balance between performance, capability and affordability that many navies desperately need to emulate today in the face of soaring military hardware inflation. Ultimately, for all the original LCS concept was valid, it now looks like the USN will get a stealthy fast vessel of very limited capabilities once you look beyond speed and stealth, and will get it as it looks like naval priorities will revert back to a more conventional stance after the asymetric littoral doctrine of the last decade. Like the vaunted Visby, look beyond the admittedly impressive stealth and it’s little more than a hideously expensive OPV.
On ASW frigates, one of the big myths in some circles is that the ASW frigate is a “cheap” and easy to design companion to the AAW destroyer, when actually truly effective ASW sensors and equipment are hideously expensive and the ships to deploy them are anything but easy alternatives to AAW destroyers. The T22’s came out pretty similar in price to the T42’s and the T23 (arguably the best ASW ship of it’s era) used a lot of novel and innovative engineering to optimise it for sub hunting. One of the biggest problems, which remains a huge problem despite some hype, is combining truly effective and capable AAW and ASW types into a single hull, it’s very expensive to do and many still believe a two platform approach is the better solution.
TurbiniaFobbing off ancient white tails as new isn’t the best way to keep customers happy.
TurbiniaThe whole point of using % GDP is compare like for like, if you want to use absolute figures then I’m guessing the UK defence budget is still one of the highest in the world despite the inadequacies we all know of. If Germany has twice the population they also have twice the burden for healthcare, education, transport and other government departments to worry about.
TurbiniaIf Soviet style Socialism was so great why has Chinese economic growth exploded since embracing Capitalism and dumping the much lauded socialism and why did the USSR implode at the end of the 90’s when their less successful rivals who used the inferior Capitalist system went on as usual?:confused: The USSR produced some superb military/aerospace technology but it was at the expense of the rest of their economy and their non-military technology lagged massively behind, and it is on non-military technologies that most peoples lives depend.
TurbiniaI see a large AW149 order with much more modest EH101/AW101 orders over the next decade or so. Nothing wrong with that as it’d be an excellent compromise between cost and capability. What I do worry about is that I’m betting a good slice of it will be that dip **** PFI funding model.
TurbiniaThere is a circular relationship, defence spending should be dictated primarily by need, but need depends on planned defence capability which is determined by resources available. Easy to ask for more money for defence, a lot harder when it comes to arguing to either higher taxes or spending cuts elsewhere, especially bearing in mind that other departments like health and education have a lot more political weight than defence (and rightly so IMO). Yes, the government wastes billions on inefficiency, failed IT systems, bad management etc. but so does the MoD, if the MoD spent the money it already gets wisely there’d probably be no need for this debate in the first place. Giving money to a government department is like giving cheap cider to a wino, it’s not that they need more, there is just an insatiable desire for more and spending demand always rises to meet any extra money so they always need more, look at the massive increases in the NHS budget that have done nothing to stop whinging that it’s under funded and needs more cash, we could put defence spending up to 10% GDP and we’d still have people whinging that it needed to be higher. To me the fundamental problem is the UK needs to decide what our armed forces are for, self defence or force projection/out of area ops? If we want a self defence force then we could actually cut the budget substantially, if we want force projection then it costs a lot more than we’re paying just now with the result we have a half baked policy that is way too much for self defence and totally inadequate for force projection in the way our politicians like to pretend.
TurbiniaNot entirely brilliant from the standpoint of the taxpayers.
The Foxhunter radar debacle underlined the relative inexperience British industry had with modern air-to-air radar technology. Before the Foxhunter, the most modern British radar set had been the AI.23 in the Lightning!
Of course, the original purpose of the very demanding requirement that lead to Foxhunter had been to exclude any American competition to protect a British avionics industry that had fallen desperately behind. The result was a very real capability gap at the height of the cold war and massive cost overruns.
Protecting a domestic industrial base for military equipment is a perfectly legitimate government policy, most nations do it, the USA, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, China etc. Military equipment isn’t just about getting the cheapest equipment, there are also strategic concerns and issues of technological capability at home rather than being reliant on foreign suppliers for the true high skill/value equipment and just metal bashing and assembling TKD kits here. Easy to attack the radar for cost over runs but if you look around huge cost over runs are nowadays pretty much the norm in advanced military programs wherever you look.
TurbiniaUK is one of the “transit routes” for global air traffic. I guess most of the RAF sorties are flown for air policing. If it is a blind B767 or a Russian Bear doesn’t change the performance requirements for the aircraft. This job can be adequately done by F3 Tornados. Out-of-territory combat jobs (fortunately) remain the exception.
True, but most air policing could be done by Hawks and over the last 20 years out of area ops have played a huge part of UK military ops and on the whole any other major fighter (F15, F16, F18, Mirage 2000, JAS39 etc) would have been more suitable for the sort of ops that the UK has been involved in than the ADV. But then, none of those fighters would have been as good as the ADV in it’s intended role, it was really a victim of changing circumstance, a changing circumstance it must be said that was hugely beneficial to the UK and the rest of Europe.
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