I’m not sure i agree. Apart from Somali pirates, what other potential rivals in the world, even without thinking of “major” powers, have ships that can be attacked with LGBs without being targeted by all sorts of SAM missiles…?

I dare saying “none”.

The day the pirates will get a few Strela SA7 portable SAMs, everyone will have missiles to fire.
Of course, war planes are made to challenge SAMs and still drop their bombs, but… you know. A warship is a warship. It would be far nicer to fire a bunch of missiles at the ship and let the enemy deal with them.

It would be nicer, but is this a ‘must have’ capability? What nation with sea launched SAMs is the UK likely to face, alone, in the foreseeable future? I would much rather pay for the integration of the SDB.

If we were facing a blue water navy with SAM capabilities then it would likely be far away from the UK, and the Royal Navy, with it’s SSNs and surface to surface Harpoons would be the thing to use.

On a side note, is it possible to drop LGBs from high altitude?

My understanding is that the current production of the F-16 is for fighter-bombers whereas I would have thought that the ANGs primary role is that of bomber interception for homeland defence. This isn’t to say that the ANG doesn’t have other roles, but the primary one is bomber/cruise missile interception.
Regards

And whose bomber fleets and cruise missile barrages would these be?

Times have moved on 😉

I would have been 13 at the time, it was a pretty normal school day but I do remember people making some strange comments to the effect of “we’re at war now”, but I dismissed them.

When I got home I was reading in my room when I heard my mum screaming downstairs, so I ran into the living room to see her and my brother watching the news unfold. She was panicing about someone attacking London and I calmed her down and explained that it was New York, and that is when reality sank in, that this was really happening on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

At first I was convinced that the towers hadn’t collapsed, that ‘only’ the portions above the impacts had fallen, but then the ash cloud gradually cleared, leaving only a vision of hell right there in the middle of the city. My dad got home and was convinced that the US was going to start deploying nuclear weapons at any time, it was frightening, all the more so because for what felt like a long time there was no news on who was responsible.

I wonder what lessons we have learned from the events of that day…

just wanted to check something. What is the position with regard to having to send the aircraft to LM for weapons integration? Is it really still the case that UK F35s cannot be modified once they are delivered? i thought we had got past all that?

Brimstone is an immensely capable and useful weapon that I would have thought would be essential for the RAF at least…

If we don’t get the software, we shouldn’t buy the aircraft. Period.

Negotiate a deal on Rafales- joint spares, training etc.

Just my 2 cents.

I’ll be there, but I’ll be working 😉

France operating of British carriers …..

…..Liam Fox is pushing close cooperation with the French for all it’s worth and that some sort of agreement will come out in October which will radically change the way we cooperate with the French. (I can find you quotes from his speeches if you like which show that this is part of his strategy).

I wonder…..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6261885.stm
😀

Until the Germans captured a port capable of unloading vehicles it essentially would have been a light infantry battle, which the British Army was still fully capable of fighting.

This has been debated before, especially when there was a write up in (IIRC) the Torygraph about the RAF victory being less important as the Navy was intact.

While getting a fleet across the channel would have been a major undertaking, the Luftwaffe would have negated anything the Royal Navy had to offer in short order. The home fleet, lacking total fighter cover in a narrow band of water within range of the Luftwaffe airfields in Europe…. bad idea.

The thing is, even if the RN would have been forced to sacrifice itself, it could have done irrecoverable damage to the invasion force, killing thousands of German troops in transit, as well as sending tonnes of supplies and equipment to the bottom of the channel, as well as isolating the beach head troops from reinforcements.

Even if the RN only lasts a day or two in combat, it would be ample time for the army to contain the troops that had already landed.