Has anybody seen the levels of investment, recruitment and long term planning going on at AWE lately? Kind of indicates the UK won’t lose a nuclear capability anytime soon.

My view is that with defence there is a legitimate justification for helping domestic industry even if it costs more, to preserve the industrial base, maintain expertise and retain an independent capability to avoid becoming a hostage to foreign suppliers. Not all countries have that capability, but in marine engineering and ship building Finland does, and they should try and preserve it rather than going for a short term cost saving.

Italy builds good ships. So does Finland. If Finland buys Italian warships I imagine they’ll be perfectly good ships, but it’s still a shame to see a country with such an excellent maritime industrial base as Finland going to foreign builders. In my own opinion, and it is just my own opinion based on my time working in offshore oil, Finnish marine equipment is as good as it gets, and I’d put Finland alongside Norway and Japan as probably the best quality suppliers out there at least for commercial maritime equipment.

Nuclear is more flexible, but face it, it’s not affordable, not even for the USN. Nuclear replenishment ships would be prohibitive, the economic vs. capability argument is finely balanced for carriers and subs, for everything else there just isn’t an argument as the economic argument speaks for itself. As Unicorn infers, if the Tico ships had been nuclear you’d have seen a similar situation to the current DD(X) situation with massive costs pushing the type into a marginalised silver bullet force of 4-6 hulls and the USN looking for a cheaper alternative. And if DD(X) was nuclear, the USN would struggle to afford 1 or 2 hulls without creating a crises in other programs. And even in todays world of active arrays, SM-3, Aster etc. numbers do still count.

About the damage issue that is a legitimate concern, and there are real environmental implications too even if a nuclear ships takes heavy damage that doesn’t result in total loss.

Attack helicopters have been to sea many times, not least the AH1 family. Putting a helicopter on a LPH may seem no big deal, but taking the AH64D to sea is a significant development when the original model is not marinised. This hasn’t got a lot of coverage but the UK decision to marinise their AH64D’s with a requirement that they be operable from RN vessels was quite a significant capability improvement in the AH64D. Just as the fact that the LPH and Invincible class CVL’s now have an attack helicopter capability (and a superb attack helicopter at that, despite it’s critics the AH64D is a helicopter almost any force in the world would love in it’s arsenal) is a significant move for them. So all in all yes, seeing an attack helicopter at sea and seeing a flat top with attack helicopters may be nothing new, seeing the AH64D at sea and seeing RN vessels with attack helicopters is worthy of comment (although Ocean has had this capability for a while).
About the Harrier and it’s demise, the F35B is on the horizon and I expect that the F35B will give a whole new impetus to naval aviation, with more countries building ski jump equipped STOVL carriers or multi-purpose LPH/LPHD type vessels.

A shame, Finland has a first class shipbuilding and marine engineering industry, with some genuine world class companies like Wartsila.

The political factors and the wish to support British industry were certainly a big factor in the UK decision not to pursue the Tico option, if memory serves me right they were also concerned about costs, not just aquisition but also operating cost and the UK was under a lot of pressure to be more European (one of those funny little urban myths, many other European nations think the UK is uncle sams doorstep into Europe, many Americans think the UK is in the pocket of the EU) which was important at the time. My own view is that in defence programs the consideration of protecting the industrial base and expertise is a perfectly legitimate factor, but too often in Britain this has been over riding and led to some real crap being foisted on our forces.