People can say a lot of things about the French, some of it somewhat justifiably less than pleasant, but they never lost pride in being French and they never lost ambition. Both were unfortunately social engineered out of the British public in the anti-colonial push.

Apologies for going off topic here, but it really all comes from the aftermath of Suez. The French formed the exact opposite conclusions that we did and decided that they had to be prepared to stand up for their interests and that meant they needed to have a genuinely independent nuclear deterrent. They refused American help and this meant that it took longer for the Force Oceanique Strategique to reach the water than the RN’s Resolution class SSBN’s did and it was arguably less capable at first, they kept spending money on it. In contrast Britain gave up its rocket technology thanks to good old short termism so we don’t have the expertise to build an indigenous SLBM. Whereas the M51 SLBM is derived from the Ariane 5’s solid boosters and that no doubt helped to reduce the development cost.

That’s the fundamental difference between France and Britain, the French realise that to be at the top table you have to spend money, that’s why Dassault can tell potential Rafale buyers that the aircraft has fully integrated air to surface capability, ECM etc whereas BAe can only tell potential Typhoon buyers “Err can we get back to you on that?” Its that whole short termism and trying to do things on the cheap mentality that has cost Britain so badly in just about all aspects since the War.

Ah well rant over! 🙁

Something else that I’ve been thinking about is given the awful series of headlines that the Coalition has had recently, could they really afford giving Labour another stick to beat them with?

I think someone mentioned upthread that the C is the political choice because Cameron made such play about interoperability with the USN and the MN so it could be the politics that is the deciding factor.

As much as I’d like to see the RN back in the CTOL game I hope it won’t be at the expense of other projects such as T26. 🙁

Just out of interest, do South American governments get as exercised about French Guiana?

I’ve been wondering about this for at least 10 years now:

-What got into the Argentinians when they didn’t deploy every last a/c they intended to use on the Falklands and fortify the air base there ?

Quite simply they didn’t think Britain would try to recapture the islands so they hadn’t considered how they would defend them. They thought the international community would accept the invasion as a fait accomplait as it had with the Indian takeover in Goa.

I’ve watched it last night and it was amazing. Never underestimate people with resolve !

Martin Withers and Bob Tuxford had serious balls for pressing on with the mission knowing that they didn’t have enough fuel to get home! 😎

The only thing wrong with the programme was that a 1 hour show isn’t long enough to tell the entire story, they had to omit parts like the problems in fitting the Dash 10 pod on to the Vulcan as well as the full story of Tuxford’s final refuelling. Pity someone wouldn’t make a full length serialisation of Vulcan 607 so that the whole storey can be told. 😎

As I see it the B has many major risks associated with it, I used to think that the C was a safe bet until there were problems with it getting back on a carrier.
Yes the UK is part of the consortium that is making the JSF but can we actually afford it? Would it not be in overall terms cheaper to ask BAE to hurry up with the carriers and initially purchase say 40 Rafales, either the single seat Ms or in my view preferably the two seat Ns.
This way the the UK gets two carriers, starts on the type 26’s earlier and has a proven omnirole aircraft, that has many of the weapons that the UK uses integrated. The sub plot then becomes does the UK look to save money on the Typhoon by not funding the air to ground upgrades that it would seem to me that of the original partners on the UK and Germany could ever afford, I seem to recall reading that the Germans where extending the life of their Typhoons in the A2G role.

Certainly the idea of a Rafale purchase seems attractive but the Rafale N was never built, if someone was willing to pay Dassault I’m sure they’d gladly revive it but I don’t think our budget would cover it. Sadly given the number of jobs at BAe, Rolls Royce and other firms dependent on the F-35 I think there is precisely zero chance of Britain pulling out unless the entire programme is canned.

The thing I don’t understand is where the £1.8 billion figure for CATOBAR conversion of PoW comes from. I thought CVF was designed from the outset with future conversion in mind?

Is there anyway to overcome the door gunner problem short of a redesign of the helicopter?