Indeed! On trials the HMS Daring ran 4100 naval miles with an average consume of just 35 cubic meters of gas for day. http://www.science.mod.uk/codex/issue3/features/features10.aspx

That actually means A QUARTER of average Type 42 consume.

Didn’t we discuss that article previously, and the meaninglessness of the figures without further details? 35CZ/day at what speed? What proportion of the time was spent alongside? Was it on shore power for any of that time? etc.

Baths?!!! The accommodation is truly luxurious if there are baths onboard. Maybe just one in the hospital and one in the admiral’s cabin if he’s very lucky?

it will be down to who gives the best price!

Not necessarily. It will be at least in part a political decision. Australia may get her, yet not be the highest bidder. Or they may be the highest bidder but she goes to whomever the Minister or Secretary thinks will be most sweetened into buying a few T26. It is a rather opaque process.

Especially if the CVF respects her planned running cost of 40 millions a year, which is quite damn cheap. (and QE will probably actually be cheaper, because the 40 millions a year figure is based upon a carrier with full airwing, with all this implies, included a crew of 1500.)

£40m calculated when, using £ value in what year? If that’s current, there’s no way it is based on running costs including airwing. At best, it is the operating cost of the bare platform.

Taking Navy Matters as the secondary source:

In May 2000 the Defence Procurement Agency said that the lifetime cost of the two new aircraft carriers will be about £5.5bn, given the expected forty year service life this implies an annual running cost (including refits) of just £44 million per ship – considerably less than an Invincible at £60-70 million.

So £44m at 2000 prices. Ten years on?

Since the composition and costs of the airwing was unknown, it couldn’t possibly be included in the cost estimates. Someone else’s budget…

The reality is very, very few large Muslim flagged vessel are held. And when the pirates seized that one large Saudi tanker, it was soon released without payment and I am sorry about that.

From the list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_attacked_by_Somali_pirates_in_2010 I count 7 ships flagged or owned in a predominantly muslim state as having been captured and held for ransom out of 47 vessels attacked in 2010. It’s only Wikipedia, so perhaps you can find a more accurate or reliable source.

You may wish to cross reference with https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2108rank.html for an indication of what portion of the world’s merchant shipping is flagged in a muslim state. Saudi Arabia has the world’s 58th largest merchant fleet.

I do wonder though where the owners of the Al Nisr al Saudi went wrong for their ship to be held by pirates for 9 months since, as you say, all Saudi ships are released promptly.

If we don’t have the ships then contingency plans won’t work will they.

Why would you draw up contingency plans that employ ships you don’t have? I don’t think the naval planning staff have been smoking anything quite so exciting.

There is always a contingency force available within the vicinity of the UK. That’s how planning and readiness works. If you wanted to make a point you could say that the scale of crisis that could be dealt with has been reduced (3 Cdo Bde pre SDSR, a commando group post SDSR), or the capability (if it even existed recently) to deal with more than one simultaneous crisis has been reduced, but the planning system works so that we can always respond to *a* crisis with a response up to the limits of planned contingency resources.

Commitments like APT(N) will be cut (has been cut) before the contingency forces are.

I will give you that it is ironic, in the manner of Tidepool in the Falklands, but of no more significance than that. Could as easily have been HMS Daring on her way to first deployment east of Suez, in which case we’d be graced with “Navy’s Newest Destroyer Saves The Day” type headlines.

First I’ve heard they don’t have radios. Everything I’ve read suggested otherwise. And mothership doesn’t imply a larger boat, its just the phrase coined for the boat carrying the leader. It’s used as a slur more than a definitive identity. These are irregulars with macho attitudes.

Incorrect. “Motherships” in this context are the dhows or captured merchant vessels that skiffs operate from at extended range from shore. Skiffs are either towed or carried on the mothership’s deck.

Skiffs and pirate boarding parties may or may not carry battery powered radios and/or satphones. Inventories of confiscated equipment mentioned in news articles should give some idea.