nocutstoRAFBBC news has said that we are loosing Ark Royal, Harriers, a Landing Helicopter Platform (I typed in full I was impressed by BBC news knowing what Ocean was designated as), and a number of frigates and that at least one of the new carriers will be re-designed to allow interoperability with US and French aircraft – I guess this confirms CATOBAR operation.
EDIT: Having watched the news this is a link to the story on BBC web-site:
nocutstoRAF😮 That make’s sense, I feel a bit dumb for asking though I naively assumed that if the RN brought them they would use them in a similar way, and looking at the pictures of the Port of Spain Class it looks likes there is no room to even fit a retractable hangar.
nocutstoRAFSo why did Trinidad and Tabago order three OPV’s for primarily anti-piracy work without hangars?
nocutstoRAFWell, we seem to be going round in circles. How can I make this any more simple?
Cancelling the carriers might be expensive. Nowhere near as expensive as financing them for another 30-40 years together with the aircraft that operate from them. It’s not an insignificant amount, it’s a huge sum which the defence budget patently can’t sustain (hence the proposed cuts).
I understand your points I just do not agree and I suspect nor do many others here.
On the expense matter I think you are trying to compare apple and oranges, you trying to say that the MoD should spend £5 billion now for nothing to save around £200,000 million a year from 2016 in operational costs and you seem to be ignoring the fact that even without the carriers we would almost certainly be purchasing the same numbers of F-35’s as we are likely to purchase now to keep our work share in JSF programme (which I mentioned before should be based on R&D but will almost certainly be based on orders), so that there would in the short to medium term be no savings on aircraft and only a marginal difference in operational costs in the medium term.
If this is your position that it is better to spend £5 billion now to save maybe £5 billion over 20 years then fine, but I cannot see how you can support it on a logical basis. It would make sense to induct the carriers and if in 10 – 20 years time the operating costs where unsupportable against the threats to dispose of them then instead of cancelling them now to save money outside the period of the CSR and this is almost certainly the logic that has driven the Treasury.
Personally you come across as having an ideological dislike of carriers in the RN and I doubt anything anyone would say to you would change your opinion and I suspect that nothing you can say to me would change my mind that carriers of some sort are vital to the RN.
nocutstoRAFWhat I said previously: “the moment the contracts were signed they were going to be built in one form or another as it is more expensive to cut them than to build them”
I appreciate you are a military writer, well my day job is all about finances and contracts and I do appreciate over the whole 50 year life span the whole life costs of the carriers will exceed £5 billion, I would expect that the operational costs would exceed £5 billion (normalised to today’s prices) around about 2036 – 38 dependent upon how we operate them, what alterations are needed and based on 2005 the two operational carriers costing £149 million per annum.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2005-01-24a.136.6
The air group is a complete different issue driven by political needs to remain with-in the JSF programme and gain workshare, which technically should be based on what we invested during the development of the F-35 but which we all realise pragmatically is going to be based on orders. If they stick to the F-35B order than only approximately a third of the original 138 was earmarked for the FAA and it seems to me that regardless of what happened with carriers they were going to order F-35’s.
…and what you fail to grasp is that the cost of operating them (and purchasing/operating the air assets on them) is out of all proportion to the cost of buying them or cancelling them. Britain would save a fortune by simply writing-off the carriers.
nocutstoRAFIs there enough slack in the USN to lease a squadron of Hornets or Super Hornets? Or are they suggesting that the RN might get a carrier based trainer, maybe an updated Goshawk design?
I also read yesterday (I think on PRUNE or ARRSE) that they now think Afghanistan would be to dusty for the Typhoons and operating them would be detrimental the life of their engines.
nocutstoRAFanyway, there are pros to the C i just never understood the logic behind swapping when so much effort had gone into the B….
at least the F18 argument is dead and buried.
If we do switch it would not be the first time that we spend money and then change our minds. For example I am betting all the rumours about the MRA4 are sadly true.
Maybe we should make your blood boil by trying to claim that the UK should switch to the Sea Gripen, as the Sea Gripen if ever exists it would be a better at operating from short air fields the F-35C and therefore better at filling the JSA role than the F-35C 😀
nocutstoRAFSweve,
+1, I said something very similar to Chox, just not as eloquently or as succinctly as you did.
nocutstoRAFHow would that save money? :confused: That is, after all, the entire point of the current review.
The way I see it (rightly or wrongly) we need some sort of reciprocal deal if we want Brazil to consider buying T26 from us, along with orders for OPV’s and supply ships, as T26 is very likely to be delayed for a considerable time. If we can agree a reciprocal deal, we spend £x million in Brazil if they spend £4x million in the UK (as an example) then we end up in the long run quids in. If we really want more defence exports (which is something we can all agree we want) then IMO we are going to have to make deals like this with Brazil and India as they have the purchasing power to walk away from anything less than a deal where we transfer tech and we invest in some shape or form in their countries.
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nocutstoRAFIran claims it was an accident, but I cannot help think it is a demonstration by either the US or Israel how easy it would be to attack Iran’s nuclear weapon facilities done in a way that there is no conclusive proof that Iran can parade on the news. After all what’s more scary, a sudden explosion in the dark which may or may not be a bomb from a B-2 or a couple of air groups of F/A-18’s with 1,000 lb GBU’s?
nocutstoRAF… however they still have a value, and giving them away for free is a bad idea when they can instead be sold… The 4 frigates could be sold to any number of countries.
I might be (almost certainly am) reading to much in it but I think it is an amazing coincidence that the week the SDSR is announced and it is almost certain that four more T23 will be paid off that the president of Chile is visiting. Not sure that Chile needs four more T23’s given that they announced plans to modernise their existing frigate fleet, but I cannot help wonder if the President is not over because the RN plans a fire sale.
On the issue of incentives for Brazil, personally the best way they could seal the deal with Brazil is not to give them four T23 but instead for the MoD to place an order with BAE for four 4,000 tonne frigates to replace the T22’s and have BAE build them in Brazilian ship yards.
nocutstoRAFWhen I read it I was thinking Israeli special forces or maybe a saboteur, but I have been wondering if it was a B-2 dropping 3 GBU-28 bunker destroying bombs which the US developed for almost exactly that role (attacking Iranian underground facilities).
nocutstoRAFAnd as for Trident, Challenger II, Tornado and Harrier, you might be better advised to pose that question next week after SDR. The review will doubtless confirm that (at least in Fox’s opinion) Tornado and Harrier are indeed not vital. But the carriers presumably are? Nope, they are a symptom of bungled Labour defence policy and continual political pressure from the Navy. Trident is a separate issue which has as much to do with foreign policy as it does with defence. Besides, Trident costs nothing, it is a replacement which costs money and that issue doesn’t need to be addressed for quite a long time.
According to BBC news last night the plan is looking like reduce Harriers to single squadron and cut in half the Tornado’s. What was not mentioned is if they are going to SLEP the Tornado’s or not. I imagine they will also mothball around a third of the Challenger II’s but again no mention of if they will upgrade the main gun.
I am going to repeat again the point you seem to be failing to grasp, it is irrelevant if you think the carriers are pointless or not, the moment the contracts where signed they where going to be built in one form or another as it is more expensive to cut them than to build them and no-one can afford to spend £5 billion for bugg*r all. Again I am happy to discuss with you what sort of carriers the RN needs, such as a 30 – 40 thousand tonne LHD/ASW carrier with a limited ability to carry F-35B’s or to discuss what if any changes they can make to the carriers to make the more versatile (personally I think they can afford to make zero changes, and if they where going to make changes it makes more sense to make QE the Catobar strike platform and re-design PoW as the LHD rather than the other-way around).
nocutstoRAFI believe what Liam Fox has said is that there is no threat of direct attack on the UK i.e. no one really thinks that Typhoons are going to be dogfighting over the North Sea to stop an all out Russian attack any time soon, but that we are in an uncertain world and UK interests are under threat.
nocutstoRAFSome points to clarify:-
It’s like I said earlier, it’s fine to look back at all the instances when carriers have been useful, and imagine lots of future conflicts where they might be useful again. This is precisely the line which Fox is going to try and sell us this coming week. But they have never (at least since WWII) been vital to the defence of the UK and they will be no more vital in the future. They will be a luxury which we clearly couldn’t afford 40 years ago, and certainly can’t now.
Sigh – I believe we could say the same about Trident and Challenger II, about the Tornado and the Harrier. None of them are vital to our defence, after all in the strictest narrow definition of defence all we need are enough Typhoons to provide air defence of the UK and overseas territories, a small standing army equipped with IVF’s, small number of transport and liaison aircraft, about the same number of helicopters as we have now, a number of SSK’s, corvettes and patrol ships to cover the littorals. The UK chooses to do more and can afford to do more, we are no more broke than the US, unless you think our national deficit is running into the Trillions like the US does.
The focus in the press on carriers is rather ridiculous as if they not been mucked about with they would have cost £4 billion for 2 of them, making them only twice as expensive as current LHD with over twice the capacity, and the RAF would happily embraced the 138 F-35B’s that where due to be brought and which they wanted and were going to get the lion’s share off. Sure if there where no carriers then the RAF might get the F-35A instead, but they still where looking at owning and operating most of the new F-35 purchase.
The problem is that the average voter would rather cut defence to the bone than except that Defence is the only area that should be ring fenced from the cuts and that the UK is likely at the smallest size that is safe for the UK to operate given our commitments. I have no problem with some of the other cuts, and I say this as a person who works in a University, a sector funded by the Government which is looking at reduction in the teaching grants (the block funding to pay for academic staff) of 80%, which would mean for example at my university, before the new fee level comes in, a cut of at least 30% of the university’s total budget and since staff make up most of the budget you can guess where the axe is going to fall.
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