Wasn’t there talk of trying to lease some of the Tico’s to the RN a few years ago to meet the RN AAW vessel requirement? Seem to remember when the Horizon program was mired in political bitchin’, arguments over capability, numbers etc. it was briefly mentioned by the US as a possible solution.

You’re assuming that politicians act rationally, if they made rational decisions why the hell did they provoke a war with Britain in the first place? And you obviously have never read the history of the diplomatic conflict through the 70’s that led to war or the war itself. Read the history and then try and argue, as it is pretty obvious you are clueless on the history of the 1982 war. Are you seriously suggesting a Navy who knew full well the capabilities of it’s own Type 209’s and managed to get one of them into firing position several times against some of the best ASW ships and crews in the world at that time didn’t appreciate the power of British SSN’s? C’mon, get real.

PS. the fact that the T209’s got into firing position and failed to do anything at least twice should be born in mind by those on this board who think that a sub getting a firing solution on a USN carrier equals sinking it.

In that case why have a navy? In war you risk losing assets, if you are not prepared to lose a warship then it has zero value. In 1982 the RN lost a load of ships but got the job done, ships can be replaced. The Argentine carrier attempted a two pronged attack on the task force with a group led by Belgrano the Southern arm of the attack, they knew the risks of RN SSN’s but took a risk on two counts;
-Most importantly they appear to have been under the false impression, shared by many British critics of the war then and now, that the British exclusion zone was a boundary of operations and that outside the zone they would be safe. If anybody ever bothered to read the exclusion zone announcement they would see it was very specific in not limiting attacks on Argentine forces to the exclusion zone.
-they made a judgement that the risks were acceptable when balanced against the possible gains from a successful strike.
After the loss of the Belgrano their navy changed this policy, but they were fully aware of the threat of SSN’s right through the period leading up to the war and the war itself. If you’re interested I’d suggest reading up on the history of the Falklands issue, not just the war but the decade leading up to war when RN SSN’s appear time and time again as a key factor in the strategic thinking of both sides.

Oh, Politics is Politics…………the UK will save alittle now with no catapults and spend much more down the road to add them! Does anyone here believe if the CVF’s are built that they will never received some type of catapults system in the future????

Yep, if the decision was for a STOVL carrier then why build it 65,000T big, you could get the same STOVL capability in a much smaller hull. By deciding the design would be catapult capable if required later the design has had to be based around the parameters needed for catapult operation with all the implications for size, structural requirements, power etc., it is a common misconception that “steel is cheap” to rationalise this over engineered aspect of the chosen type, but anybody who knows anything about ship building and nav arch would dispute that. I do think there were good arguments for a STOVL design now that the F35B promises similar performance to a conventional fighter type, but when the decision was made to include future upgrade to catapults then at that point they should have just gone for the catapults in the first place, not least because it’d make the AEW/AWACS choice a lot easier, which is a vital part of the carriers capability.

In that case why did the assessment by the commander of the Argentine submarine forces that his boats could not track and kill RN SSN’s colour so much strategic Argentine thinking before and during the war? Several times it was fear of RN SSN’s that persuaded Argentina to ratchet down the heat in the years before the war. Why did awareness that RN SSN’s were being tasked to go to the South Atlantic accelerate Argentine invasion plans at the last minute as they were scared that an invasion would not be possible with SSN’s on station? From the start of the war the Argentine Navy was very aware of their vulnerability to British submarine attack, and it was the one deterrent that the British could have kept on station at semi-reasonable cost that would have probably avoided a war in the first place.As Swerve says it was Argentine belief that the UK was uninterested in defending the Falkland Islands and the incompetence of British government policy on the issue over many years that led them to believe that a quick and clean occupation would be accepted by the UK after a decent interval of diplomatic and economic protest, not an under estimation of UK military capability.
On British under estimation of Argentina, anybody who lived through that time will know that the British prior to war had a pretty dismissive view of Argentina in general and the fleet underestimated the operating radius of Argentine strike fighters, their ability to mount effective low level strikes, their use of air launched Exocet amongst other things, combined with an over estimate of the effectiveness of Sea Dart, Rapier (both disappointing in action), oddly the British under estimated Sea Harrier which even many British officers viewed as a toy town fighter.

Not really, it was pretty hard to get Europe to give diplomatic support or maintain an arms embargo. True, the UK didn’t ask for military help in battle, but we did ask for diplomatic support, arms embargo, sanctions etc., and whilst France offered genuine support and the USA, and NZ offered a frigate, most of the rest of Europe and NATO was pretty luke warm bordering on almost hostile.

For a lot of European countries I do think it makes a lot of sense, many EU countries are surrounded by other EU members, have no other defence committments and know that any major external threat would be countered by the big EU military forces (UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy etc.) so why not just free load and get somebody else to pay for defence? Possibly not a very laudable attitude, but a logical one.

I think failure of the F35B increasingly unlikely, and the sad reality for anybody operating STOVL type carriers (UK, Italy, Spain etc.) is that any other possible alternative will probably end up at least as expensive once development costs and lead times are taken into account, especially if people are seriously proposing trying to convert STOVL hulls to a configuration like STOBAR. Ultimately, my own view is that the F35B could kick start much wider adoption of maritime air power as navies can field a high performance, highly capable fighter off modest sized flat tops with dual function, such as using LPHD type vessels.