nocutstoRAFChox,
I thought and still thought we went into Afghanistan to meet our moral obligations under the NATO treaty and to make sure USA does not decide that they do not need the rest of NATO.
As for carriers not being vaguely useful can you cite one instance when the UK used one of its carriers say in the last ten years when it could have used a different ship to do the same job? Because even a causal glance has shown we have being using carriers since we invented them to the full of the maximum of their abilties and I am pretty sure that every navy which has them in one form or another does as well.
I am happy to debate if the CVF’s where the right choice in hindsight (personally if I could travel back ten years I tell the Navy to fight for three 30,000 tonne LHD’s a purchase of 40 F-35B’s and to refuse to cut the rest of the surface fleet to get them but that is a different story, and then sacrifice now the third LHD but that is because I am less convinced than Jonesy that we really need a strike carrier).
As for potential flash points, neither the MoD nor the NSC think that Afghanistan type of conflicts will be all we face in the next 20 years. We will obviously find out next week which conflicts they think most likely but if the story in the Telegraph a while ago was actually based on the scenarios they are looking at then they are thinking that likely conflict scenario include everything from a medium scale land operation in Africa on our own up to NATO and EU scale large conflicts requiring both land, air and sea forces. About the only threat they did not look at is conflict in the South Atlantic.
nocutstoRAFGreat it would seem that Chox has imported from ARRSE the “great why bother with carriers because you will only have 12 fighters on board under normal circumstances” argument so beloved by White City on ARRSE. Hopefully Chox is not White City as White City has a tendency to refuse to accept any argument for carriers and claim that those supporting them are misguided and lacking rigour in the arguments.
Personally I think the argument that we do not need any carriers is a load of cobblers – without some sort of carrier there is no point in a blue water navy we would be better of building SNK’s, coastal ASuW corvettes, missile corvettes and OPV’s to protect littoral waters of the UK and of our overseas territories and investing heavily in more land based fighters and shore based missile systems.
For any shooting war outside Europe against an enemy with a credible air force it would soon show that you need both carrier and land based fighters and you cannot always rely on the USN to turn up to save our bacon, as they are becoming less interested in Europe and turning their attention to the Pacific.
In a shooting war we might well decide just to operate the carrier with less than full complement of fighters if our objective is to provide air defence, AWACS and more Lynx’s for ASW and ASuW. While I am not a big fan of the idea of power projection, the ability to operate our amphibious and surface ships under the protective bubble of the fighters and helicopters deployed on the carrier is a force multiplier which is essential to modern navies.
I am sure someone will bring up the argument why have carriers when most European based navies lack them, the counter argument is why are so many European navies interested in building new LHD’s capable of carrying F-35B’s if there is no point in being able to deploy carrier based fighters?
Finally, it would be stupid to cancel the carriers as the point to make the decision was about a year before the contracts were signed due to the fact that a) the penalty clauses where to harsh once they were signed that it was cheaper to complete them than cancel them, and b) the UK wants to keep its ship building going, this means that it needs that if you where to cancel the carriers you would need lead time to design something else to build or just accept we will be only buying ships from France, Spain and Italy in the future (though Navantia does build some damn fine ships).
nocutstoRAFAs you say Pagen01 if it is still on, but it hard to see how they could pull out of A400M and I understood that they plan to reduce to two transport types, so logically the poor hard worked C-130J’s are for the knackers yard once we pull out of Afghanistan and I expect the C-130K’s might go before then, even if no A400M are delivered anytime soon.
nocutstoRAFSo it is really a case of supplementing the Nimrods with either small commercial airplanes for SAR or in the long term purchasing something like the C-295 MPA? Is there no value in SLEPing half of the C-130J’s as MPA post 2015? Because according to the newspapers the C-130J’s are for the cut post Afghanistan as the plan is to just operate C-17’s and A400M’s, and if it does not cost to much to SLEP and covert the C-130J’s it would be a shame to bin them.
nocutstoRAFAlso whilst the C130 can actually make a good maritime patrol and SAR support type UK Hercules don’t have the avionics or radar fit suitable for that role.
I know the mantra is SDSR = cuts = no money but is there any chance that some of the C-130J’s which are rumoured to be for the chop might be converted in the mid-term to fill a maritime patrol/SAR role in support of the Nimrods? After all originally the RAF wanted 21 Nimrods and is only getting 9, maybe they could convert 12 of the C-130J’s to fill the rest of the capability requirements.
nocutstoRAFOk my predictions for RAF transport.
-Chinook order slash confirmed (8-12 aircraft now to be purchased)….(rest cut so not to annoy the MOD’s)
So no chance that we would buy out part of the FSTA (like the core number we expect to always be using and leave them the ones that we use for surge activities) or that we might go back to holding a new competition for medium lift helicopters.
Realistically I know you are right but part of me really wanted the RAF to get the funds it needs to expand its tactical and strategic lift, especially the amount of helicopters it can field – not just so that the Daily Wail and others would then have to focus on something else to complain the soldiers are lacking in Afghanistan (my money is that they will then start to say the MoD needs to buy a new 7.62 mm rifle to replace SA80 A2 and the squad support weapons) but because helicopters in particular seem to have been cut more than any other area of the equipment budget in recent years.
nocutstoRAFThe guns are 30mm
Thanks, the reason I asked is the Type 22 uses 20mm rather than 30mm like the Type 23 (at least according to the all so reliable Wikipedia)
I will make it clear I think the Mk 8 is way overkill for this role but it would be cost ineffective to introduce a new gun and a new supply chain for that gun so no I wouldn’t go for that the RN should stick with the Mk 8 and the 30mm. The RN really needs to streamline it’s supply chain and cut down the amount of different weapon systems stick with PAAMS, CAMM with Artisan, Phalanx CIWS, Mk 8 and 30mm.
While can understand the logic, especially as Mk 8 can be fitted on the 3,000 tonne patrol corvettes we seem to be favouring.
However I cannot help feel that if they end up with say a 2,000 tonne OPV for the C3 role, which in the past was the sort of size that the MoD was looking at (effectively an updated HMS Clyde or those new unwanted Port of Spain class OPV’s), then that if enough of them are built either the 40 mm bofors or the 57mm bofors is the way to go, as there would be enough of them to justify the logistics and this would allow the a much greater chance of dealing with fast moving threats (like a fleeing drug smuggler).
I know that they the Port of Spain OPV’s have been dismissed as not all the useful to the RN in the past, but is there any margin in leasing them for say 10 years and the arranging a basing agreement to use the three OPV’s to patrol the Caribbean and free up a Type 23 for other duties? Personally this is what I think that Trinidad is hoping, that the UK will pay for them and then base them in the area to provide patrols.
nocutstoRAFThe price of the individual MRA4s tripled because the order was cut.
I presume NAO mean that by cutting the order from 21 to 9 MRA4’s the MoD under the last government effectively spent more money than it they ordered all 21 – now that is clever decision making 🙁
No doubt someone will spin it to make out that the 57% savings on operational costs out weighs the 29% increase in total capital expenditure for the whole programme.
(The percentages are not official, but what I quickly calculated: the first is basically the percentage reduction in total MRA4’s, and the second is the percentage difference between 21 MRA4’s before the unit cost tripled and 9 MRA4’s each costing 3 times the unit cost of 21 MRA4’s)
nocutstoRAFPjhydro does your Mystic Meg turn stretch to the future of the JHF and future helicopter orders? Because all the “signs and omens” in the newspapers are that somehow the Coalition is going to try and pass of a large reduction in total helicopter numbers as a good thing based on a small increase in numbers available for Afghanistan. This is not just me trying to bring the conversation around to AW149’s again, honest!
I personally think that it will be good thing if at the end of the SDSR the RAF gets an increased budget for tactical and strategic air lift at the cost of the number of fast jets, as I am sure we can handle our part of future expeditionary warfare from planned future Typhoon and F-35 buys but I am not convinced if we sell off the C-130J’s, reduce our A400M buy and cut our helicopter lift that we can pull our weight in tactical and strategic lift – and that this is a core area that the MoD should be trying to find the cheapest options to improve are capabilities in.
nocutstoRAFI have to agree with Al with regard to Frosty’s Global Patrol Ship – the remote operated guns (are they 20 or 30 mm?) should be raised up. To be honest I like to see the mid section raised to be in-line with the hangar, the modularised weapons systems replaced just with CAMM and the hangar deck if possible extended back to cover the work area.
As discussed in previous posts for a patrol ship I am not sure you really need 2 quad Harpoon.
I also wonder if you are going to build the ship with a semi-decent array of radars and other sensors if there is any mileage in putting Mk 8 in the A position and a 57mm Bofors Mk 3 on a raised platform behind the Mk 8 (is this the B position?), as this would allow the ship to deal with multiple threats on different attack vectors, and I would expect the greatest threat a Global Patrol Ship might face 2 – 3 fast boats on suicide runs, either packed with explosives or a couple of jihadists armed with RPG’s.
If there was a real chance of engaging Iranian forces in the littoral then I would imagine you would need a ship with decent sonar to detect Ghadir class submarines, light torpedoes to kill the Ghadir’s, anti-ship missiles suitable to take down the numerous patrol ships and fast attack craft which are small in size and whose radars limit the range of their missiles (something smaller & cheaper than Harpoon so that they can squeeze 16 of them on a frigate), good CIWS and soft kill to decoy or destroy any Yoor or Kowsar missiles and the ability to suppress or destroy shore mounted missiles and artillery batteries
nocutstoRAFThanks Jonsey for your answers – I am back with more questions if you or anyone else knows the answers please enlighten me 😀
Am I right in thinking that one of the key abilities of any potential T22B3 replacement is the ability to support covert insertions of the SBS (and if I had to guess the T22B3 likely also has a sensor fit that allows for some ELINT/SIGINT capabilities based on hints I have read)?
My second and final question of the night is, given that we would really like Brazil to choose to partner with the UK for future naval procurement is there any way that we could in the next few years be building the C3 or even the C2 designs in Brazil, thereby hopefully securing Brazilian purchase of T26 and their own C3 OPV’s and getting the C3/2’s into service this decade?
nocutstoRAFI say we are in this mess not because we insisted on buying British if possible, but because we then decided on such a precise specification that what we got was expensive and un-exportable. This was then compounded by very close ties between the big defence companies and senior members of the armed forces that allows for specification creep. After all others have posted on the forum that shows as a percentage the amount of equipment UK buys from British sources is less than France for example, and I would say that France gets good value for money out of their defence procurement.
nocutstoRAFThe main advantages of the AW149 against the UH-60 is that AW149 secures British jobs and brings tax revenue back into the Treasury. Especially if by buying AW149’s this encourages other countries to buy them. I suspect a buy is on the cards long-term as we are going to increasingly be pushed to only buy British equipment if it could be exported, and AugustaWestland along with BAE will be pushing UK Government to keep the good times rolling.
nocutstoRAFSomeone mentioned earlier the fast boat threat…..well you beat the fast boat threat by starting firing on them before they can get a detect on your ship!.
Surely the best way to deal with fast boats is to send you Lynx after them with LMM, rocket pods or even a mini-gun? I thought (no evidence to back this up just a gut feeling) that the whole reason why they where developing LMM in the first place was deal with these types of threats.
In addition, if you really need to deal with them up close and personal, then surely something like the Sigma A2 which mounts a 30 mm bushmaster plus 7 LMM is a better way to deal with them than a 57 or 76 mm gun?
However I do see one flaw – if we all have our way then there will be more ships needing MK8’s than MK8’s currently in service (in terms of handing them down), would it make sense to make small run of additional MK8 or would we be better of at looking at different calibres then?
nocutstoRAFI think you are right with regard to not yet being in production in Kentucky yet as a search of the BAE web-site basically says that it will be built in Kentucky when in full-rate production.
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