No, we need to invest in alternative energy, this is like saying spend money on anti-lung cancer drugs rather than erradicating the main cause of the disease. The technology could be developed to reduce our dependence on oil, at that point what do we care what happens in the Middle East, Nigeria, Venezvuela etc? If we don’t do it then we’re shafted anyway as oil is a finite resource and won’t be there forever no matter how many soldiers we have. And politicians aren’t idiots, no matter how much I often say so in fits of rage, they’re highly tuned in to what the electorate wants, if there is no real voter interest in defence then the politicians won’t prioritise it. Personally, I find it one of the UK’s redeeming features that we live in a country where the political landscape is dominated by civil issues and the military is relatively low key, and I say that as somebody who is ex-air force.

PS. I did my RAF time under a Tory government and all I saw was the services being shat on from a great height then, so this is certainly not a party political issue.

Hopefully we’ll see PA2 taking shape soon, the CDG and PA2 with the two RN CVF’s supported by the Italian Cavour will give Europe a very capable maritime air power capability. Be interesting to see how different the CVF and PA2 are when they enter service considering they’ll share a common basic platform.

I’ve never voted Labour in my life but really don’t see them as being any more anti-armed forces than the Tories, do you really think the state of the forces would be any better under a Tory or Lib-Dem government? And what do you want to cut, or where do you want to raise the extra revenue to double the defence budget? Bearing in mind public finances are deteriorating already. And where are the threats to the UK? The EU? If the purpose of the armed forces is to defend our own country from any realistic threat then we don’t have that much to worry about, the question is whether we want an expeditionary/power projection capability.

Depends whether you’re talking defence or offence. Western Europe and the UK are more than adequately equipped to defend ourselves from any realistic threats, and as to whether we need the ability to start wars outside our own area is a political question. My own view is this is the fundamental problem, the UK doesn’t need a lot of our expensive gear for defence, yet we lack the true strengh to support major expeditionary deployments, we’ve ended up in a half assed no mans land of paying more for defence than we need to without getting the long reach and strengh in depth of the US forces. Should be one or the other, either accept we only need a defence force and spend the money on other things (or reduce taxes) or pay up the huge costs needed to pay for the sort of forces the politicians obviously like to imagine we have (but won’t pay for). Defence just isn’t a major issue in UK politics, we live in a stable and benign Europe with virtually no real threat in terms of traditional military threats, and the terrorist/irregular threat we face doesn’t need heavy military forces.

I think this forum has reached a new low, somebody so morally bankrupt they can defend shooting down airliners and SAR machines. Quite telling they throw an incident nobody has attempted to defend (i.e. the Iran Air A300) as some sort of vindication. Pathetic.

Why does the Russian airforce need PR?
Who are they selling to?
The reality is that they have a job to do and this is part of their job. Now they have the funds to practise doing it and they are doing it.

Yes, Russia is such a small country there is nowhere to practice flying there so they have to stage highly visible missions over the North Sea. After all, where else could they fly:rolleyes:

Would love to see the same. How much the Americans will spend on things they don’t need because fanboys think they are cool. Am sure the next terrorist attack in the US will be completely stoppable by an F-22…

About as relevant as Bears to the next Chechen attack in Russia I’d say. Or is arguing the point that stuff like this isn’t of a great deal of use to countries fighting domestic terrorism only relevant to the USA?:rolleyes:

The USAF hasn’t stopped an airliner yet… what chance a real bomber. :diablo:

I take it that comment goes with your support for shooting down airliners. When the Russians do it of course:rolleyes:

Not familiar with that case.

I thought you were interested in Russian history? Or is it just Russian history that erases stuff like that?

So nice to know you’re impartial and not biased.

I’m going to disagree with you, though you make an interesting point. Protection on the Deutschlands was pretty good by heavy cruiser standards. The first thing to notice is the thick armor for the main battery. I’m trying to think of ships that did better. Hipper (one of the only advantages to the later, larger ship) and Zara, of course. The big American ships from Brooklyn on. I think that’s all. No British, French, or Japanese ship could match it.
Deutschland’s belt and deck armor enclosed a lot of hull volume. I don’t know any Allied competitor with the same percentage of protected buoyancy. The 50-80mm belt is nothing to crow about, but it is inclined and backed by a substantial bulkhead. (I would have shaved 20mm off the bulkhead and added it to the belt, but nobody asked me.) The deck protection is twice as thick as Hipper’s. There is no perfect armor scheme, but Deutschland looks respectable to me.
Now, about the comment on follow-up ships. This is especially interesting, I think, because it leads into the shadowy chasm of German naval thought.
The next ship after Graf Spee, Ship D, was going to be an enlarged version of the same concept–six 28cm and eight 15cm guns, but faster and more thickly armored. The fact that it would have had turbine engines is the first indication that something was amiss. When France announced the Dunkerque specifications, Ship D underwent a complete redesign and emerged as Scharnhorst, one of the worst battleship designs of the dreadnought era. (Sorry there, lukeylad!)
Dunkerque has an importance in battleship design that is often overlooked. The last battleship class to be built before Dunkerques was designed was Nelson, that speedster with 23 knots. All the Deutschlands could hit 28 knots on a good day. So the underlying concept of the armored ship was not unrealistic. Dunkerque effectively raised the bar on battleship speed standards. The RN abandoned its “fleet submarine” program because of this, and even retired the “battle cruiser” rating from further use; the King George V class ceased to be called battlecruisers and were officially rated as battleships despite their high speed.
The Germans built no more armored ships because they concentrated their efforts on battleships, and they signed onto the international treaty system, which did not accommodate super-cruisers. There was one more plan to build armored ships, but like most of the Z Plan, it never reached completion.

I tend to agree with DK Brown that in cruisers good armour for magazines and splinter protection elsewhere was quite acceptable and allowed a more balanced design, as trying to give genuine armour protection to them drove up weight and came at the expense of other elements of design and at the end of the day was still inadequate against heavy callibre artillery anyway. The Deutschland class had a wide belt, but it was’nt that effective in protection, to me limiting the belt to around the critical parts of the ship and trying to give genuine capability to withstand severe punishment in those areas would have been better.
On the German Z plan, that was an ill-found plan from day one and was an astonishing re-run of just about all the mistakes made with the High Seas fleet a generation earlier in antagonising potential enemies and spurring a naval arms race Germany wasn’t in a position to win.

IMO the armoured ships of the Deutschland class were some of the most over rated of the era, they were certainly an ingenious way around the Treaty of Versailles restrictions and a good effort at getting a powerful ship onto a modest displacement, but it came at the expense of protection (they weren’t even heavy cruiser class in terms of protection) and were slow compared to cruisers and battlecruisers. The oft quoted bit of more powerful than anything faster, faster than anything more powerful is a bit of a smokescreen as they were quite a bit slower than cruisers and battlecruisers and there armour protection was in no way line of battle standard. To me the ultimate indication of their value is that as soon as the German Navy was in a position to they abandoned the concept and reverted to conventional battleships and cruisers.