Where is the Chinese threat to Europe? Are China a threat to Taiwan? Yes. To Japan? Potentially, as they are a potential threat to India. But Europe? Sorry, but scare mongering over China to increase the UK defence budget is crazy, it’s not our job to defend Asia (even if the Asians wanted us to which I find very hard to believe) just as Asia would hardly see as a duty of theirs to join in and defend Europe if things did ever kick off over here. On Russia, we can defend ourselves Russia now, and if the situation changes then we change our policies accordingly, but even there I don’t see much threat of war despite some hysterical over reaction to a few Bear flights over the North Sea.

Of course, but then you’re just paying for over manning old platforms rather than paying for defence capability, which is a poor use of resources no matter how wealthy you are. And as has been pointed out, the US struggles with personnel costs despite outspending all others in defence and European navies have invested large sums in following commercial lean manning practices despite being wealthy nations. This isn’t just about cost of the actual platform in question, it is lost value in other areas of defence and also a question of personnel resources, OK India isn’t short of people but how will the Indian forces attract the best talent in a growing economy where there are lucrative career streams, one of the problems facing many military organisations is less the cost per se but just attracting people of the right quality, and squandering a lot of those quality people on over manned platforms is again a pointless waste of resources. There is a good reason expensive automation and heavy investment in lean manning is so popular, and it isn’t entirely driven by cost. Bear in mind this applies to the whole defence budget, it isn’t just about crews on aircraft carriers, at the moment India and China get an awful lot more for each $ spent on defence than the USA, Japan, Australia or EU countries as the low cost industrial base applies right down the whole chain, as the economy grows general wage inflation, economic growth, competition for economic capacity etc. will all mean that India and China will hit the same problem of having to spend ever larger sums just to stand still as the mature economies which again means that expensive labour intensive platforms will not be especially sensible.

My understanding is it’ll be a short range point defence system so it may well be a good retro fit for CVF if it can just be bolted on and needing minimum vessel modification.

China?India? Arms competition. They cannot sell even a rifle in free market terms. and South Korea is too much depended on West to challenge West.
Russia has to balance act in middleast. For High Tech area Arms market will be the same as it is.

OK, live in a dream world as Chinese technology continues to improve and the Koreans steadily build up an arms industry (when did Germany being in the US sphere stop them selling arms?), IMO China is now at the tipping point of achieving indigenous self sufficiency, their current generation of hardware like the J10 used a lot of foreign assistance but are undoubtedly Chinese and very capable, I think they’re at the point where the next generation will be totally home grown (they have the economy to support the sort of huge R&D modern military development needs) and then they may be in an excellent position to beat Russia for the high quality low cost sector but also challenge on quality alone potentially.

At the end of the day the customer shouldn’t have to work round it. If you got shoddy service in a store you’d walk away and/or demand a refund, why should different standards apply to defence companies?

I have no truck for the “spend 3% on defence” campaign, for one it’d just lead to more inefficiency (look at what the NHS and education did when they got massive funding boosts after 1997…) and defence funding has to be linked to need, not some figure plucked out of the air. However, I do think that the UK must either change defence committments in line with available funding, or increase funding to meet those committments, the current half assed attempt to pretend to be a military power on the cheap is having disastrous affects on our forces. Ultimately Europe is a benign continent, we have no empire to defend anymore (excepting a few dependencies that want to stay as they are) and are part of NATO (many of whose members spend a lot less than we do on defence, and in all honesty I have to say that NATO hasn’t exactly shone in it’s first out of area test), basically we could actually reduce spending significantly and still maintain a perfectly adequate self defence force. Personally I’d rather see funding increased to a level that supports our current defence policies, but if we are not prepared to spend that money then at least have the honesty to provide the defence force we are prepared to support fully financially. Despite the scare mongering over a few Bear flights Russia isn’t a threat as yet and we are more than capable of defending Europe from any Russian threat, we can increase defence capabilities in line with Russia if it is ever needed. In Asia China may have ambitions on Taiwan but I don’t see them having any grand design for the conquest of Asia (and being brutally blunt, where is Japan’s defence committment to Europe? Or is it meant to be a one way street? They’re a wealthy country with alliances of their own with the USA and seem to neither need or especially want European help in defence) which all means that for the UK the defence situation is still remarkably benign.

I’m guessing the ships will be delivered in a pretty austere configuration and the RN will plan upgrades as money allows once the ships are in service. I see a similar approach to T45 (regarding possible SSM,TLAM and torpedo tubes) and can see FSC going the same way. Less than ideal but somehow the RN have to make live within their alloted budget which isn’t easy.