The strike versions were arguably the best low level strike fighters of their era and are still very formidable fighter bombers, still competitive with any other platform out there. The ADV was a pure missile carrier that became obsolete almost as it entered full service, although it’s since made a pretty good SEAD platform.

You can blame the Russians if they quote a price for the work & then say “Oh no, we can’t do it for that price! We’ll have to charge you double.” It suggests either incompetence or dishonesty, & a reputation for either isn’t going to help them win future orders.

believe it or not, and I’m not being sarcastic here, that is not unusual for ship yards and not just in Russia, that is why it is essential to do a proper survey and analysis of work and cost of a project. All commercial shipping companies would take that for granted, and with military orders it is even worse, just look at the UK sector, all the cost over runs, part of it is inept project management (usually by BAE), part of it is genuine cost inflation but part of it is that the stupid way politicians insist on lowest price without a realistic assesment of cost encourages suppliers to offers unrealistic bids and worry about sorting out the real cost later.

In the UK the renewables obligation certificate (ROC) system has produced genuine investment in renewables but it is still a tiny percentage of generating capacity, and unfortunately almost all of it has gone to wind farms, I’m not against wind but we need more than wind. The UK has the potential to generate vast amounts of power from tidal sources but so far there has been nothing beyond talk, the Severn barrage is again being talked about, that would give 8.6GW, the equivalent of around 3 or 4 large coal or nuclear stations, the solway is another prime candidate. There has been some investment in biomass too but again it’s very small relative to other investment. The big decision is whether to go nuclear again or not, and that decision needs to be taken soon given the lead time of nuclear stations and the requirement for replacing older stations.

The problem is not a lack of CVFs, as Sealord said, it is the prospect of not being able to actually properly use the two that are being bought! If insufficient support ships are bought, then they will be difficult to support on operations. If insufficient aircraft are bought, then they will not be readily deployable, since there will not be enough aircraft to actually put on them!

I should have posted a few smilies, my statement was a bit of sarcasm based on the premise that no matter what we need to be able to boast of a full compliment of equipment for exercises no matter what happens with equipment being used on ops, such as the current situation with regards the Harrier force being committed to CAS in support of the Army at the expense of the RN.

With regards the aircraft, yes it would be nice if the RN and RAF could each buy 100 F35’s each, but with what money? There will be problems affording 135 combined and unless they make major cuts elsewhere there won’t be large additional orders. With a fleet of that size then a joint force makes the most sense IMO. On the CTOL-STOVL configuration, that argument will run and run but it is nothing like a straightforward argument either way.

Personally, I think what europe should really be doing is developing alternatives to fossil fuel, generate our electricity from nuclear and renewable plants (and some european countries have enough coal to cover an intermediate stage in maintaining energy security) and push the adoption of stuff like fuel cells and hydrogen for cars. At that point it won’t matter either way if somebody cuts off the gas tap. If the will was there it’d almost certainly be possible, and the cost probably would end up competitive with the military costs of protecting our jugular vein and competing for finite resources, and whatever happens those resources won’t last forever so we need to be working on what comes next anyway.

There is also the unfortunate fact that the C130J is a lemon and the RAF are desperate that the A400M will be a much better aircraft, a massive shift from the mid 90’s when most in the RAF wanted an all Herc fleet and the A400M was forced on them for political reasons. Bizarrely, it may work out that the RAF may get the right aircraft for all the wrong reasons. As well as the £-$ reasons, it also has to be remembered the UK can effectively offset at least part of the cost of the A400M against high value work in the UK economy and companies like RR and Airbus UK plants.

On losing the FA2 I agree, it is a worrying capability gap that the RN has no fleet air defence fighter. My own view is that the current RN carrier ops are best viewed as maintaining operational skills with the vessels until the CVF’s arrive unless there is another requirement for an amphibious deployment (at the moment their ASW and Strike roles would require a major change in international affairs to be needed). The F35 will have at least some air-air capability as many customers want it to serve as a multi-role fighter, how much of that is incorporated into RAF examples remains to be seen but if the UK variant F35 has a muli-mode radar and either AMRAAM or Meteor integrated then it’d give the RN a very potent defensive fighter, and the RAF pilot pool of fighter pilots will probably benefit massively from the EF Typhoon as it is the first time in decades the RAF will have had a truly agile dog fighter with which to hone their skills (as opposed to a missile carrier). Unfortunately, there is still a disparity between defense funding and what the government expects the forces to do which is stretching the elasticity of all three services very thin, and the Army has just cause to be demanding the first priority on what there is at the moment given their ops in Iraq and Afghanistan, which would include certain funding for air programs like lift (both operational and tactical) and close air support. Personally I still hold to the view that we need a genuine debate on how much we are willing (as a nation) to spend on defence and configure our forces accordingly, but that’s just my view. The run down of our involvement in Iraq will help but Afghanistan is probably still an open ended committment and UK forces are in the hot zone over there. Unfortunately, the RAF has always been one of the most politically switched on of the forces, often to the serious detriment of the other two services, which I do regret (as an ex-RAF man myself) but I do still believe a joint force command is the way to develop our forces as these days most operations are inherently combined (and have been for a long time).
On this particular story, I’m genuinely surprised that it should be considered in some way unusual that a country supporting two major operational deployments should have better use for military resources than NATO exercises.