Just to clear up the tax / duty thing here are some figures I did for another thread:

Petrol costs on average £1.049 per litre.

Fuel duty is (before the £0.02 increase in April 2008) about £0.50 per litre and VAT at 17.5% is paid on both the fuel and the duty.

So removing all VAT and duty would make petrol cost about £0.39 per litre.

A barrel (159 litres) of crude oil costs today about £46 ($91 but it has been as high as $100 recently) so that would make the ‘cost’ of the crude in petrol about £0.29 per litre.

Leaving just £0.10 per litre to cover all exploration, extraction, refining, transportation and profit for the oil company and the retailer.

So even if the oil companies and retailers made no profit and the petrol magically appeared in the pumps…

…your petrol would still cost £0.93 per litre!

Also only about 50% of the barrel of crude can be made into petrol (the rest isn’t wasted but it can’t be made into petrol) so the actual ‘cost’ of the crude in petrol is more like £0.55 per litre…

…which means that the oil companies make a loss on petrol. :confused:

The figures are a couple of months out of date but you get the idea.

The government could easily reduce the price of fuel for all motorists but the treasury would need to raise that money from us somehow. At least a duty on road fuel reflects the damage to the environment caused by cars and helps promote fuel economy in vehicle design.

Far from inconceivable, most retailers make most of their profits out of what you buy in the shop when you pay for your petrol, very little if any profit is creamed of the core product.

Well I did some searching (read, digged up my Weyers 2005/2007) And counted:

SSBNs:
Yuri Dolgorukii,
Alekssaner Nevski

SSGNs:
K-226
K-186
K-150
K-139
(this list doesent include the Kursk)

SSNs
B-336

K-335
K-157

SS
Sankt Pettersburg
Petroskoi
Sevastopol

B-459

And thats 14 to my count…Names migth not wrong, but numbers should correct…the Weyers list is bit…well, german:cool:

But how many of those were actually laid down after 1992.;)

I think the Russian ship yards are producing vessels at the same rate as during the cold war, however instead of cruisers and destroyer size ships they produced back then i think the modern shipyards are producing frigate and corvette size vessels instead like minesweepers, so while the number of hulls being produced is now equal to cold war the tonnage is nowhere near so. Correct me if i’m wrong someone.

No chance, take 1987 for instance, actually a bad year for the Russians in the 1980’s

2- SSBN’s, 1 Typhoon, and 1 Delta 4.
1- SSGN, 1 Oscar 2.
4- DDG’s, 3 Sovremenny’s and 1 Udaloy

Oh yeah and in 1987 the Soviet navy commisioned 5 nuclear powered submarines.

That is just the major units that I can find the dates for now and does not include frigates and diesel electric submarines (would at least double the figure) minesweepers and other support ships. Should probably add to that that the Victor 3 was still in production at that stage so there was probably at least one of those as well. So perhaps now we can put this little fan boy fantasy to bed and actually have a discussion in this dimension? Unless of course someone can confirm that the Russian navy laid hulls down in double figures last year?

Having heard the windows of the laboratory rattle from the supersonic boom from interceptors scrambled during the peak days of of the Cuban Missile Crisis on a mission for which they seemed to have been cleared for supersonic flight over a major city, I guess I’ve got a similar nuclear obsession! But to judge from my contacts with the Russian military and industry, Russia’s strategic view is not going to change for at least another generation.

Shame, people I have spoken too from a multiple of other countries have very different ideas.

Well no-one has ever said that i know of that an-22 or b-36 crews went deaf from the noise, however all across the internet you find referances to Bear crews becoming deaf, the old saying ‘theres no smoke without fire’ springs to mind, now of course you may well be correct but two people on one forum giving the opinion that its not too loud is not really enough to quash the ‘rumours’ if you like, infact its rather insignificant when compared to the amount of voices that say otherwise. I somehow doubt this will be settled even if sources were provided to prove the hearing issues, there will always be some who for reasons unknown will choose not to believe it…

The problem with internet is that there often is smoke without fire, if one person says something once it soon get sprayed across the web where it stays forever more whether it is true or not. That is why I regard it as so important to show that most of what dionis says is untrue in order to prevent the spread of false information.

Prove it. 😉

Disprove it.;)

The USN is going to turn the former Super Carrier USS Forrestal into a Artificial Reef and scrap two more Super Carriers and even a number of Aegis Cruisers! Personally, I understand all of the scrapping and sinking except the Aegis Cruisers. Clearly, the US could find a number of homes for them. With possibly Australia interested in them in a short-term lease until the arrival of there own AWD Ships or maybe even Tawian! Hey, maybe even India…….

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/02/navy_shipdisposal_080223w/

I dont really have an issue with this, the Forrestal’s are now getting very old indeed and probably getting beyond the point of being able to be economically reactivated if required. Correct me if I am wrong but the Aegis ships being scrapped are the non-VLS Tico’s, not massively versatile and they dont really fit in with the rest of the fleets now. There required compliment and maintenance costs probably makes them impractical for export.