Jackonicko“This is simply an extremist, nationalist and arrogant position and I will take it like that, end of the discussion.”
No it isn’t. It’s simple, cogent fact.
You just don’t have an argument against it.
The Falklands lie 300 miles off the coast of South America (further from South America than Madagascar is from Africa, further than Sri Lanka is from India, further than Cuba is from Florida). They really are not that close.
The islands have NEVER been administered as part of the Argentine state. They have never been settled by people who identify themselves as Argentine.
They have no aboriginal population claiming links with or protection from Argentina.
They do have an overwhelmingly ethnically British population who regard themselves as British, and who utterly reject Argentine claims, and who refuse to discuss such claims, and who have been British for more than 170 years (the longest period in the islands’ inhabited history).
And this is all about the fundamental rights of the population of the islands, which override Argentinian colonialism and greed.
If anyone is being arrogant, it’s you. If you believe that Argentina has a legitimate claim to the Falklands that takes precedence over the wishes of the overwhelming wishes of the population, then perhaps you can calmly and rationally explain what it is?
What legitimate claim does Argentina have to the Falkland Islands, that could possibly overturn the democratic wishes of the Falkland Islanders themselves?
Having tried to take the islands by force, and having suffered a humiliating military defeat that resulted in an UNCONDITIONAL surrender, isn’t now the time for Argentina to recognise geopolitical realities and move on?
And if the Falklands question threatens relations between Europe and South America, as you suggest, would not the best thing be for Argentina to do the decent thing, and to recognise the fundamental human rights of the Falkland Islanders to self determination?
This isn’t some kind of ‘last gasp of the British Empire’. This isn’t about national self interest. Britain has spilled the blood of its own servicemen to uphold a fundamental principal – that of the Falkland Islanders’ right of self determination. Had Argentina not resorted to aggressive military action, the UK would have been happy to co-operate in the exploitation of natural resources, but you’ll understand that the Brits are less willing to co-operate with bullies and desperados.
JackonickoIt’s time for Argentina to do the right thing, climb down, and recognise the rights of the Falkland Islanders to self determination, then.
Jackonickosantiagorivas,
You said:
“Excuse me, but Falklands is the British name and Malvinas the Argentine name, as I respect the British name, you must respect my name.”
No, actually we don’t have to respect any such thing. The Falklands is the name preferred by the overwhelming majority (perhaps even a unanimous majority) of those who live on the Falkland Islands.
Nor, beyond mere geographic proximity, does Argentina have any legitimate claim to the Falkland Islands, let alone a claim that could overturn the democratic wishes of the Falkland Islanders themselves.
To claim the Falklands for Argentina is like insisting on depopulating Argentina of its existing population and returning it to those who occupied it before the Spanish settlement.
And even the argument of geographic proximity is shallow – Port Stanley is further from Buenos Aires than are Montevideo or Santiago, while South Georgia is further away than Rio. These are huge distances, and it is simply not correct to claim that the Falkland Islands have ever been part of Argentina’s territory.
The Falklands are British by history, ethnicity, culture and the overwhelming preference of their inhabitants. Those are all overwhelming arguments. Get over it, Argentina!
JackonickoProximity to a large neighbour is NO justification for territorial claims.
If it were, Argentina would have a stronger claim to Uruguay and most of Chile than it does to the Falklands. Australia would lay claim to New Guinea, India to Sri Lanka, Cyprus would be Turkey’s as of right, and Malta would be Italy’s. The Irish Republic would not exist, and the Bahamas would be an offshore posession of Florida.
The Faroes are closer to the UK than the Falklands are to Argentina.
It’s vital to underline the complete lack of any real justification for Argentina’s claims. Most ordinary South Americans are decent, fair-minded people, and if exposed to more than the Argentine side’s propaganda, would recognise how shallow those claims are.
Argentina comes out with some nice rhetoric, but it’s unjustifiable, and it’s empty posturing.
Argentina has NO legitimate claim over the Falklands, whose population are:
61.3% Falkland Islander
29.0% British
2.6% Spaniard
0.6% Japanese
6.5% Chilean & Other
You can just imagine how the principal of self determination impacts. In fact, not only do the majority of the population not want to be Argentinian, or under Argentine sovereignty – they don’t even want to talk about it. Moreover, Argentine behaviour during the 1982 occupation torpedoed any chance of the islanders EVER trusting the Argentinians again.
Occupation/control of the Islands has been shared between:
France 1764-66
Britain 1775-1770, 1771-1776, 1833-date
Spain 1766-1811
Argentina 1828-1833
Sovereignty
Spain 1811-1820
Argentina 1820-1833
Britain 1833-date
Argentina needs to be told (politely but firmly) to drop its claims and concentrate on bettering the life of its own citizens.
The rest of Latin America needs to be educated in the facts, and then use reason rather than emotion and prejudice to shape its attitude to the rights and wrongs of the Falklands question.
JackonickoYiss. But Aussies, Kiwis, they’re the same, aren’t they? Live down under. Reliably good at cricket, less reliably good at Rugby, inclined to whinge and then accuse others of whingeing?
JackonickoAnd I would suggest that you, DJ, should perhaps refrain from language like ‘jackboot’ when referring to the British monarchy – if not the first then certainly the most successful constitutional monarchy.
Offensive national stereotypes aside, the present Queen is still head of state in all sorts of places, including the land of whingeing, culture-less antipodean boozehounds, crims and sheep worriers…….. :p
Do I need to point out that this is humour, and not deadly insult?
Since the Brits are, by nature, a mongrel lot, most of us incline towards the thought that anyone born here, and who proclaims themselves English, sort of qualifies. And while Betty Windsor’s grand-parents may have changed the family surname from Saxe Coburg Gotha as ‘recently’ as 1917, and though she’s married to a Danish/Greek she hasn’t got a German born ancestor since her Great great grandfather, Prince Albert (husband of the incredibly English Victoria – whose mum may have been a tad on the German side), and we haven’t had a foreign born or non English speaking monarch since George II, King from 1727-1760. That’s nearly 300 years ago, and he was her great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather.
Not a terribly German monarchy….. and if we have to go back that far to define nationality, then there’s barely such a thing as an American.
Generations:
QE II < KG VI < KG V < KE VII < Q V < Prince Edward, Duke of Kent < KG III < Frederick, PoW < King George II (GERMAN!)
JackonickoBuy it.
Motorbooks in London used to stock it.
JackonickoThink about it.
Our squadron has 16 combat ready pilots.
MONDAY: Two aircraft at readiness. Two pilots (Andy and Arthur) at readiness until scrambled or for 24 hours. A couple more (Bob and Bill) and two more aircraft at reduced readiness ready to replace the first if scrambled.
TUESDAY: Charlie and Carl take over. Doug and Dave are at reduced readiness.
WEDNESDAY: Ed and Ernie, Fred and Frank.
THURSDAY: Geoff and Gary, Harry and Hugh.
All 16 have taken a turn on Q or at reduced readiness in four days. In eight days all will have done one QRA standby and one reduced readiness.
In a fortnight, every pilot from two squadrons has taken a turn.
Except that some pilots are on leave, and others on deployment in the Falklands.
No wonder some blokes from the OEU, the OCU and even the Staish himself will occasionally take a turn at QRA.
Nor can you just leave the same four aircraft on QRA permanently. Some maintenance is on a calendar basis, and you need to spread hours across the fleet.
That’s why you need AT LEAST two squadrons to sustain a pair on 24 hour alert.
JackonickoThe F3 will handle Northern QRA until its OSD (March 2011 on present plans).
There has been speculation that Coningsby may start undertaking a QRA det at Leuchars…..
But since it takes a two-squadron wing to sustain a single QRA det adding this, as well as the Falklands, would ensure that the Typhoon force could do nothing else. Basic A-G currency is already suffering.
I welcome intelligent debate as much as the next man, F-35B, old chap, but when a newby pops up with something that has been done to death, asking questions and putting forward propositions that are fundamentally flawed and that are likely to result only in a rehashing of old and tired debates, then I’m less tolerant.
“Typhoon is a Cold War dinosaur, designed purely as a Cold War interceptor, not fit for purpose in the air-to-ground role, isn’t it a scandal it’s not in Afghanistan” is just such a proposition.
JackonickoMichael,
I gave two alternative explanations, only one of which was ‘dimness’.
Those two alternatives were not offered until you’d demonstrated that you weren’t accepting or understanding the good answers that you were being given, and they were offered specifically because it was clear that using “superior knowledge” to “convince you otherwise” was simply not working.
You got a polite answer at No.12, thereafter, by continuing to ask the same question and refusing to accept the accurate answers that I and others gave you, you earned a more testy type of response. Actually, with the nonsensical points in your first post (questioning Typhoon’s fitness for purpose, the silly two man crew point and the false claim that Gav Parker was disciplined for claims he made) I think you were lucky to get as much courtesy as you did get.
With regard to your more recent post:
You may not have used the words ‘cold war dinosaur’ but you outlined exactly the same witless and fundamentally incorrect claim (that Typhoon was originally designed purely for AD) in your original post.
You said:
“Remember it was designed specfically to meet an RAF requirement for a dedicated air superiority role in a Cold War senario.” You were effectively paraphrasing the Cold War dinosaur claim, and again, you were WRONG!! It wasn’t.
You question Bagwell’s contention that “Typhoons are very busy with meeting the Falklands and the UK QRA commitment” and opine that “it doesn’t require the complete Typhoon fleet to meet these two commitments.” WRONG AGAIN. The UK QRA commitment and Falklands AD actually requires a fighter force that is bigger than the current Typhoon/F3 fleet, and those commitments are already over-stretching the Typhoon force. Maintaining and sustaining two QRA stations (Northern and Southern QRA) has always required four AD squadrons, long term. The Falklands equates to a third QRA commitment.
You ask: “if the answer is as straightforward as there not being enough Typhoons in service then OK, but why do those at the top not say so?”
They do say so, albeit in language which is sometimes a bit ‘coded’. I don’t think Greg Bagwell’s was all that obscure, though, to be honest.
Senior officers cannot make public comments that openly criticise Government policy, or which acknowledge problems in procurement/deployment. Bagwell’s comment was about as far as you could expect a senior officer to go, and he did underline the fundamental problem, which is:
We only have two squadrons, so there aren’t enough Typhoons to do more than they’re doing in UK AD and the Falklands.
JackonickoThe ‘sensible’ option would have been to retain Jaguar and F3 squadrons until they could be directly replaced by new Typhoon squadrons, thereby leaving no gap in aircraft numbers and capability. That way we would now have sufficient assets to cover all needs, and could deploy Typhoon in theatre, if that were felt useful.
JackonickoIn UK parlance, Strike means nuclear. You might as well start calling them planes. I’d prefer to be accurate.
Typhoon was NOT originally conceived for the air superiority role, as the original AST, and ASR make clear.
Eurofighter’s own, dedicated website might place “a not insubstantial emphasis on Typhoon being a single-seat, twin-engine fighter”, but that reflects multi-national priorities during the initial entry into service phase. It does not alter the FACT that the aircraft was always intended as a multi role fighter.
You ask (again) “why the hesitancy on the part of senior officers and civil servants in answering the question as to when it will be deployed operationally?”
It doesn’t matter how many times you ask, the facts won’t change. And the fact is that Typhoon has a robust deployable A-G capability (albeit without the theatre entry standard weapon for Afghanistan) and that what is preventing deployment is not a matter of development in the ground attack role but a lack of aircraft availability.
We need five fighter squadrons for UK AD, QRA and FI, and we have two and a bit. We simply can’t spare Typhoons for the sandpit, right now.
Nor do we need to, since GR4 can shoulder that burden for now.
Endlessly dredging up the ‘Typhoon is an irrelevant Cold War dynosaur, optimised for AD only’ argument does constitute a pointless and ‘witless debate’ that ‘achieves nothing useful’.
Your inability to grasp the simple fact that we don’t yet have enough aircraft to deploy Typhoon in the A-G role and your continued attempts to question Typhoon’s ‘fitness for purpose’ marks you out as being either a bit dim, or as being a troublemaker with an agenda. Either way, what you are peddling is pernicious nonsense.
If you’re trying to imply that Typhoon is something that the RAF did not want
and that is being “imposed by political short-sightedness”, then you’re barking up the wrong tree.
If you care about the RAF, then fight for increased funding and increased force structure. And, indeed, for more Typhoons, which could address many of the current shortfalls in capacity and capability.
JackonickoMichael,
I’m a working aerospace journalist.
I speak to Typhoon aircrew and industry personnel routinely.
I have been following the programme for years.
With specific regard to the RAF Typhoon’s A-G capabilities and timescales, I would refer you to (for example) Group Captain Knight’s recent Typhoon RAeS brief on 28 January 2010 (I quote it because the notes happen to be in front of me). He is Gp Capt Typh at HQ 1 Gp, but there are countless similar Typhoon briefs that give the same information, and you could even look back and see what CP193 and CP210 added to the main development contract (and, by extension, what was already in the MDC).
You may “believe that Typhoon’s originally designed role has been stretched to accommdate short-falls elsewhere in the RAF fast-jet inventory”, but that’s simply not right. When the 232 number was drawn up, it was to equip seven squadrons, replacing five Tornado F3 units and three Jaguar squadrons, and the aircraft was intended to be a fully multi-role asset, though the initial stand up plan was for dedicated FBC and ADX units (two each, if memory serves), and three MR, pending a transition to a full seven-squadron MR force.
Even CP193 was only undertaken to bring forward an A-G capability that had always been planned, but which was slipping as the overall programme slipped. The result is that while virtually the entire programme has slipped to the right considerably, the A-G placeholder has pretty well stayed where it was supposed to be.
There are plenty of worthwhile things to debate on Typhoon (and there is plenty of harsh criticism to be made), but the hackneyed old cliché that it’s a ‘Cold War Dinosaur’ and that it was designed to meet Cold War RAF AD requirements has been done to death, and only the non-specialist dimwits (Lewis Page on the Register, and the dimmer Fleet St ex-Subalterns) have failed to grasp that the debate has been had, and that this particular accusation is entirely without merit.
This is a pointless, witless debate, and thrashing it out once again achieves nothing useful. This is a facile, groundless accusation currently being used by the unscrupulous to attack the RAF and its budget.
Typhoon does have some real issues, and discussing those might at least serve the purpose of focusing attention on them, and on providing a real impetus for solutions. You may believe that it is “obvious that no one in the MoD, the RAF or BAe is ever going to say anything negative about such a major investment”, but I have to say that that is not my experience. Quite the reverse. Though the ‘on message’, public media line may be enthusiastic and positive, any programme as important as Typhoon (or JSF, or CVF) is inevitably the focus of passionate debate and of searing criticism within the services and within industry.
It is these ‘behind the scenes’ debates that are the icing on the cake for folk like me, who have to understand them, and then convey the sense of what we learn.
JackonickoSens,
Factually incorrect. Tranche 1 was not built for A-A only, and always had a rudimentary A-G potential, though this was expanded via CP193, and only the UK have gone for a MR release.
Tranche 3 is not ‘mainly A-G’ either.
Michael Leek,
1) In a UK context, strike means nuclear. It doesn’t matter how you use the term. You’re incorrect in using ‘strike’, when you mean air-to-ground.
2) It may state all sorts of things ‘somewhere’ about Typhoon, but the original Air Staff Target and Air Staff Requirement, and the original heads of agreement all made it clear that Typhoon was to be a Jaguar/F-4/ADV replacement, and, moreover, a deployable one with out-of-area commitments.
3) The Tornados strike role ended with the withdrawal of WE177 in 1998. It did not operate in the Strike role in the first Gulf War. You may view this as a matter of semantics, but actually it’s a matter of accuracy and using technical/operational terminology correctly.
4) It doesn’t matter how it was reported. You asked a question and were given an accurate, correct answer.
5) No-one at Leuchars has flown Typhoon yet, so their opinion as to the merits of flying a single seater in the A-G role are of little relevance. No.11 Squadron is the lead unit for Typhoon A-G, and they are clearly happy that the single-seat cockpit presents no problems in that role.
6) The Typhoon achieved its MR OED on time. (Multi Role Operational Employment Date). That’s simple fact, whereas your vague assertion that: “Typhoon should have been ready in the ground-attack role sometime ago…. under the circumstances prevailing at the time” is ill-informed propaganda.
JackonickoThe RAF needs five squadrons to fulfill UK AD, QRA and Falklands commitments.
We have two Typhoon squadrons and an under-strength Tornado F3 unit.
The RAF therefore simply does not have spare capacity to support an Afghan deployment.
That said:
1) will Typhoon ever be fit-for-purpose in a strike role?
No ‘strike’ = nuclear. No nuclear role is planned for Typhoon. Typhoon is fit for purpose in the attack role.
2) Remember it was designed specfically to meet an RAF requirement for a dedicated air superiority role in a Cold War senario.
No it wasn’t. It was always intended to be a deployable swing role fighter, replacing Jaguar as well as F-4/Tornado F3. And it’s scenario.
3) ‘….the OC of the Typhoon squadron that went out (I can’t remember which squadron it was), was quoted as saying Typhoon was ready for the strike role.’
No he (OC 11) wasn’t. He said A-G role, and the aircraft was indeed ready as declared, hence the MR OED.
4) This was apparently not the case and, according to further press reports, he was reprimanded by senior officers for making a false statement.
It was the case. There was no such reprimand.
5) I have heard it said that the workload in a strike role is too demanding and that some pilots would prefer a two-man crew.
That’s not what 11’s pilots think.
6) Are the delays in getting it to full operational status a reflection on the fact that it is not a suitable platform for such a role?
No, they’re not. They are a refelection of development delays, slow delivery of aircraft and diversions of aircraft and training capacity to support Saudi Arabia.
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