looking at the video again i think I agree with you. Which means that website I referenced is talking rubbish.

Unless of course they renumbered the rings part way through or something. Always possible.

So in weight terms LB04 is still only half way and about 2/3 of the way in terms of length

Pymes knows a lot about naval topics 🙂

I think his site may be a bit out of date though.

which world do YOU guys live in ?!! 😀

maybe even the UK can start considering India to be a threat now huh? India could invade them in the next 2 decades or so if not for non-existing resources then for revenge ?! :rolleyes::D

Revenge for what exactly? British occupation of India was as much the fault of Indians as of the British. But of course it is always easier to blame others than to blame yourselves. The current hundreds of millions of Indians in poverty is Britain’s fault too I presume? 😀

India needs not to invade Australia through military means. They can just do what they do to the UK, migrate and change the demographics. Much easier in Australia with its lower population. although I think China, Lebanon, and Vietnam may have a head start..ever been to Melbourne!?

The UK has between 0.5% and 1% Indians. I’m not sure if that counts as invasion TBH!

welcome to the real world WITCHA, in which not everyone wants to hug and kiss and make nice…. fact of the matter is, Australia does have a threat in India and China… even Indonesia. Accept it. as we continue to overpopulate this world, and resources and space become more scarce, countries finances become worse and worse…. if a country runs out of money, doesnt mean it no longer needs to buy things… and if said country has a large military… things can/ and have happened…

and those aircraft would make a world of difference… in any defence of the country, it will not be sheer numbers that win the day…. training, determination and skill and quality of equipment will matter… as will tactics, and geography… we have alot of distance to trade for time…enough time for allies to come and assist….

Agreed! Good relations now doesn’t mean things won’t change in the future, especially considering India and China will become ever more determined to obtain resources, and Australia has lots of natural resources.

Would the Airbus A.400 be suitable or available?

Of course, for lots of money!

Yebbut we’d have to buy it. We already own the sensors Marshall’s wants to fit.

No. This is a quick fix proposal, re-using sensors bought for MRA4. We’re not going to get any A400M until 2013 or 2014, & they’d then need to be modified. Also, it’d be a waste of all that cargo space. The kit shown in Marshall’s picture looks as if it’d fit in a smaller, cheaper, aircraft than a Herc. Why use an even bigger, more expensive aircraft?

So we still definately own the MRA4 sensors? They weren’t scrapped with the airframes? Do you know where they are being stored?

All I know is that the MRA4 decision is something that will come back to haunt them. Probably sooner rather than later if my reading of the South American situation is correct. 😡

Falklands and Russian submarines are a real concern, though personally I’m more worried about the lack of long range SAR.

Might be one of the “secret” BN-2 types, there was a thread about them on here before IIRC but I can’t find it. They are supposedly quite camera shy!

*lol*

That means that your arguments are pretty weak – if they would be accurate, you would have no problem to write a clear answer to my statements. But you was unable to bring additional arguments for your flawed logic.

As I have written: if your opinion would be realised, Britain would be completely ruined.

But I’ve not stated an opinion on the force structure, yet you’ve already calculated it costs more than the economy produces 😀

I’m not surprised at this coming from you however, since as Bomberboy has shown, your mathematical abilities are perhaps not so great.

Leon,

You honestly think that, because there is no Nazi Germany or Soviet Union that a Navy with 19 frontline escorts is excessive?. Have you, by any chance, taken a few minutes to look at the number of defence commitments we have?.

Someone mentioned earlier that we now have alliances to protect us. Well alliances work by member states committing resources to them. We have obligations to provide units such as escortsn minehunters and UNREP capability for alliance operations. We may not be the big colonial power anymore, but, we do still have overseas dependent territories. We have a moral responsibility to those dependents if nothing else. An RN presence is, I happen to know, a valued and visible sign of the UK’s ongoing commitment to those territories.

Basically just do yourself a favour before you come on a site with military personnel, ex-military and plenty of committed observers find out how overstretched those services are, what the operational tempo is like, how many ratings are trying to swap drafts to avoid yet another 7 or 8 month deployment etc and then tell us how over equipped we are.

The one thing Nazi Germany did show that’s relevant is that you can’t just wait until Nazi Germany appears before you buy the weapons, by then it’s too late. Of course planning for the next war is never easy 🙂

Which British overseas territory is actually threatened by someone? So it would be necessary to protect it? None. Same for French overseas territories or the British coast itself.

Which of them will not be threatened over the lifetime of a warship programme from design to decommissioning? In otherwords, over the next 40 years, which ones are definately not going to be threatened by which enemies? We are talking about procurement here, which is about the future. Don’t forget drugs and hurricanes 😉

Waste of bandwidth.

But all Britain has to do is surrender, and then they don’t need a military, or at least that’s how I read his response 😀

I repeat it again: currently there is no military thread to Britain. And for the near future there is non to be expected. All your arguments demonstrate this complete lack of thread, if you even cite e.g. Spain or Mauritius as thread.

And wars, which were started by the British government, in which Britain is the aggressor, certainly does not qualify as thread to Britain – and it would be absurd e.g. to call Gaddafi a thread to Britain. The British government, as many other European governments, supported Gaddafi to get his oil and because they wanted Gaddafi to prevent refugees to enter Europe.

Wars started by us are still justification for us having a military 😀

@ppp
OK, I won’t list what we get, but as a matter of interest who do you think gets “more” than us (apart form US, France and China who spend more)

I don’t mean it so much as a comparison to other countries (though that would be valid), but rather how our own resources are so obviously wasted. I think it’s fairly obvious that if you waste, or badly spend, a large chunk of your budget, then you are going to get less than you might otherwise get. It’s not just wasted money that’s the problem, but also wasted opportunity to develop something that can be a strong export competitor, and wasted opportunity to generate and maintain skills in our industry rather than in another country’s. Sure, we do currently do these things well, but we could most certainly do them better.

One Word: Japan

Yup they are a good comparison.

You can have your extra submarine even assuming no more are ordered – Triumph will still be in service by 2020 (current plans).

I’d like to see more frigates I agree. I suppose we can hope that they will increase the T26 buy.

The submarines issue is interesting, especially in terms of how they will maintain the skilled workforce.