Whatever happened to Israel’s ambitions to purchase a small LPHD/STOVL carrier?

Ships are designed to meet the needs of their customers, what the RN needs is maybe not what the German Navy needs, an obvious point but an important one. The F124 and T45 are different ships with different roles, the T45’s main role will be carrier group air defence and air defence for amphibious task groups, the single helicopter point is not a problem for ships designed to operate with carriers and other large flightdeck ships. On the question of the lack of Harpoon, that is a major short coming of the T45, but the RN made the very sensible choice that with the funds available it was more important to get the air warfare capability right, SSM’s can be added at any time later with minimal effort, so that is a bit of a sterile point IMO. On the question of radar, obviously a lot of the capabilities of APAR are restricted, that is true, it is also true for Sampson and the latest versions of SPY-1 and I don’t think anybody on this board is truly informed to talk about all three systems. The biggest disadvantage of the T45 I think is using the Sylver VLS in place of the Mk.41, Aster is a superb missile, but the performance of Aster is offset to at least a degree by the relative disadvantage of it’s VLS. If Aster was integrated into the Mk.41 then it would be a brilliant system.

Maybe they should have other priorities but history tells us that they like buying weapons, and pakistan tends to consider India a security threat- in case you havnt noticed there is a little bit of history between those two countries.

Quite. Perhaps the world media should include a list of the defence programs that country is finding funds for (F16 fighters, SSK submarines etc.) and show it on screen under President Musharaff next time he is berating the world for not giving his country enough money for disaster relief, just so the world can see where their government is electing to spend their funds.

Also assumes Argentina had the money to operate a strike carrier with an air group of that size. The De Mayo was retained on their active list for years when the ship was little more than a hulk.

Who would want to work in a British ship yard? Unless you’re high up the chain you’re looking at short term contracts, calculated to avoid employers liabilities for pensions, sick pay etc., no job security and no idea where your next job will be. Then they wonder why they struggle.
This boils down to cost, there is just no way the developed world can compete in labour intensive, low margin work like commercial ship building without heavy subsidies when developing nations can provide comparable work at a fraction of the cost, and without continuous work shipyards can not maintain the skills base to provide high quality, project management expertise and design innovation. This is not just a UK thing, most developed nations are suffering, even Norwegian yards are building hulls in countries like Romania then towing them to Norway for the high value fitting out part of the contracts.

Why doesn’t Canada just add a requirement to these JSS hulls to do ASW and AAW roles and also ASuW, and they will only ever need one ship type…..

Maersk?

Yes, well actually AP Moller, the parent of Maersk 🙂

Even around the Indonesian archipelago most piracy is bands of opportunists looking for easy targets who avoid law enforcement if at all possible. I spent years out there off Indonesia and East Timor managing semi-subs and organising supply boats, anchor handlers etc. and although we had big problems with piracy we never had anything that the presence of a patrol boat didn’t stop. And I’ve seen the internal company reports on the problems in the region (the company I worked for was one of the worlds biggest ship operators, one of the few that you could say is well known outside shipping circles) and their reports wanted OPV’s and coastguard vessels, not battleships.