The fitting of a flight deck and a hangar aft should be somehow an very easy and also easy reversible conversion.

The German offshore supply ship Schepelsturm was fitted with a flight deck and hangar for one expedition in the Antarctica in 1979/80:
http://www.ddghansa-shipsphotos.de/schepelsturm100.htm

and was afterwards converted back into a offshore supply ship.

The fact that they are building another 4 should seem to dispel any suggestion that the 052C does not work.

But it could suggest that it need some time to make them work. The first ships entered service in 2004/05…

Yes and do you think that that had primarily to do with north africa? Or possibly also with eastern europe? Or with the fact that people were trying their luck in one euro country after another after another? The arming of noth african countries by far predates any refugee (refugee? don’t you mean illegal economic immigrant) issue. In fact, it predates the EU.

All this points to not change anything to fact that EU and several European governments paid and armed North African dictatorships to hunt refugees. In case of Gaddafi this is a relatively recent development, because Gaddafi was isolated politically and economically, because he had supported terrorists. It is true that this policy is not restricted to North Africa, but this makes things even worse…

As I had mentioned before: there is a problem, because many Europeans are thinking that their governments respect human rights and are better than governments in other parts of the world. The reality proves this to be wrong. Many European governments ignore human rights in most aspects of their foreign policy and also in relation to refugees.

You can not clearly different between political and economical refugees – because economic poverty in most cases is caused by lacking political power – that means lacking democratic rights.

And: European populations are shrinking, whereas overall available wealth is increasing. Still the living standard of the majority is decreasing. Immigration can not be the cause for decreasing living standards – in contrast: immigration was much higher into e.g. Germany, when living standards were still increasing strongly. Today more people emigrate than immigrate.

@ snake65 those here, who contributes to this discussion should not complain about it…

On topic:
does someone have new photos of the new Type 052C? Are there Type 052D?

Still, not any different than US, Chinese and Soviet/Russian policies for that matter.

Yes – but unfortunately many Europeans think that the policies of the European Union and the different governments in Europe are better.

I think Italy is more of the problem.

Not really. It was the German Kohl government, which pushed the rule that refugees should stay in the EU state, in which they entered the EU – which is in most cases not Germany, but Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain etc. Because the German governments (Kohl, Schröder, Merkel) do not want to accept refugees in Germany, they helped the border states to prevent the refugees to enter the EU by violence. Part of this strategy was the arming and the payments of North African dictatorships – so that they hunt refugees (ignoring human rights, as expected for such regimes).

@ i.e.
there is difference between a growing economy and growing living standards for the majority of people – your mentioned examples of fast growing economies with very poor people (e.g. Germany in the 19th century or most of China today). The problem is no lacking competence, but lacking power of most people to defend their rights – which is also true for most Western democracies, in which elections rarely change policies. In contrast, in many Western states the governments enrich the rich (e.g. decreasing their taxes, lowering wages of the workers etc.) at the expense of the majority – in growing economies, where theoretically everyone could get more! There is also incompetence, e.g. the destruction of the industrial base in Britain (a process, which is also to a much lesser extent visible in Germany), but this was actually not something the majority voted for, but something, which the ruling class pushed for. Repeated defeats of governments, which were responsible for this policy, in elections did not changed this policy, demonstrating the lack of influence of the majority of people.

What the hell has this issue to do with PLAN News anyway?

Some people here forget that there were no problems in evacuating Chinese and Western people from Libya, but there are obviously still a lot problems for these Libyans, who fight for their freedom.

It was mentioned already that the warships send to Libya have only symbolic value and were sent their to calm the people at home – for evacuating anyone they were useless and not necessary.

Would you like to get more specific? I live in a European country, but I’m quite sure my government hasn’t payed Gadaffi a dime and we don’t get our oil from Libya. The vast majority (around 85 percent) of Libyan oil exports are sold to 4 European countries namely Italy, Germany, France, and Spain.

I was talking mainly about the German government, but also the Italian, French and Spanish. Actually, I do not know, if the Dutch government supported Gaddafi directly, but indirectly it did it – via the EU. The EU – mostly under pressure of Germany and some other states – paid and armed the North African dictatorships to hunt refugees.

China is a much bigger fish in some other African countries (where there are no dictators or crimes?)

The foreign policy of the bigger EU states was always the support of what was called “stable states”, with which they could make business. Actually these were brutal dictatorships, but if e.g. Merkel, Sarcosi, Blair etc. talk about dictatorships, they always tend to forget their allies.

In what way “the revolutionaries” in Libya are different from rioters in France? Or do you call them “revolutionaries” as well?

I would not call the rioters in France revolutionaries, because they only riot (but certainly have a lot of reasons to do so). In contrast the people in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt are in the process to free themselves. They will not automatically succeed, but they still could to do so. Certainly there are e.g. the army in Egypt, which try to save their power, but it is fare from being certain that they will succeed to maintain an oligarchy. You should not be that cynic in regard of people doing something for their freedom, for democracy and their social rights (something which many people in Europa are not doing, which is partly responsible for the declining living standards in many parts of Europe).

Well if it is more modular there is no reason why a more AAW focused variant couldn’t be marketed.

Most nations don’t need the wide area defence capability required by the RN and USN when it comes to an AAW vessel.

It is possible that also the RN would like to have the AAW variant of the Type 26 – because they will not get more Type 45.

The AAW variant would have probably something better than ESSM, because with something like ESSM probably the normal ASW variant will be equipped (as the Type 22 and 23 was). The AAW variant is more likely to get Sea Viper also.

No icebreaker because of the global warming? Interesting. In Germany, last winter icebreakers were needed, e.g. to supply the Hiddensee island… The Baltic coast of Denmark is not that far away…

Britain is using several Norwegian icebrakers, e.g. also Ernest Shackleton operated by GC Rieber. The current Endurance was also originally built for Rieber as Polar Circle.

I take it you don’t remember just how much havoc the PT boats caused during WWII then.

Where? Usually fast attack crafts are quit useless except against not well defended transports. Destroyers were able to defend themselves well against torpedo boats.

In the Gulf Wars fast attack crafts were also completely unsuccessful and were sunk in great numbers by frigates, destroyers and their helicopters.