Yesterday Dave the Tosser gave Pakistan £600 million, whilst telling them terribly sorry we were that everything in the world is our fault. Today we flog off part of our amphibious fleet on the cheap. This nation is ruled by idiots and must surely be doomed.

What is the the military or the political reason push to send the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Enterprise to the Red Sea rather than its presence within the units of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean.?!

The only reason I can see is that President Zero really doesn’t want to get involved in this at all. He was only elected because he wasn’t George Bush, and the last thing he wants is to preside over another war with a Muslim country. A complete abdication of responsibilty if you ask me, but we don’t get a vote do we?

As to Ocean, if she is there with Apaches so much the better, this will enable us to provide the abilty to take out targets of opportunity such as tanks and artillery that you can’t if you are using RAF Marham as your aircraft carrier. It does show up once again the absolute folly of a ten year carrier holiday, no-one saw this coming even a few weeks ago, yet here we are again. If Cameron had any balls at all he would admit that the SDSR has been overtaken by events and reinstate Ark Royal and the Harriers, they are the weapons we need, not Tornados in East Anglia.

Dannat’s an ass. He gets fawned on because he’s a general. So what? Percival was a general, and he didn’t do much for Singapore did he? Dannat is a very limited man who was obsessed by getting FRES for the army, so much so that he neglected the urgent need for mine protected vehicles, even as our troops were being blown to bits in Iraq and Afghanistan in Snatches and Vectors. As far as I’m concerned he’s got their blood on his hands, but he clearly has no trouble sleeping at night, the sh1t.

Frankly with all the talk of MRA4 and CVF FRES gets missed by the press. Which angers me as the program is an utter mess and a fine example of the services gold plating something that should be simple – in this case the army.

FRES should be simple! The Warrior IFV are worn out, the FV432 are obsolete and worn out and the Saxon are probably not needed any more as it was a battlefield taxi for the BAOR and useful in Northern Ireland. A number of manufacturers around the world produce designs that are proven to work off the shelf and just require the correct radio fit. All the MOD and army needed to do is pick something that doesn’t have inferior performance then what is already in service and ensure some offset! It doesn’t need to have massive capability improvements off the shelf, just work and have the capability to bolt on upgrades in the future which usually means the engine and transmission should handle more then the base requirement….oh and the water boiler pot that all British armoured vehicles have and the tankies couldn’t live without!

Instead they kick off all sorts of blue sky thinking armoured vehicle of the future projects, then state they will get something off the shelf but it must be Redesigned to meet army needs. In other words complicate a process that should of been quick and easy. In the meantime the tankies have been forced to operate knackered AFV or a mishmash of illconcieved UOR procured vehicles!

A RIGHT ROYAL BRITISH PROCUREMENT FIASCO!

You are spot on, the army is proposing to spend £15 billion on what should be a simple procurement decision. They want an all singing, all dancing family of air portable supervehicles. This from the people who thought it was a good idea to send snatch land rovers out to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The whole procurement process at the MoD is rotten to the core. Our defence budget of £40 billion would be adequate if it was spent wisely, but a large proportion is simply wasted. It is shameful.

Has anyone been watching the Channel 5 series about HMS Manchester? In the latest programme they tried and failed to sink an abandoned drug smuggling speedboat with the 4.5″ gun. It doesn’t matter what sort of gun you have if the crew are not trained how to use it. Of course, shells are expensive, so no doubt training is an easy candidate for cuts, until you have to use the bloody thing!

Its politics though isn’t it? The USN does not want to run even the slightest risk of losing its new supercarrier programme; if gators have skijumps and look like the carriers being used by RN, PLAN and Russian Navy there is a (real or perceived) danger that USN will be told that it already has the aircraft carriers which it needs.

On a technical note I’d fully agree that the loss of helo spots would be a price worth paying for the extra effectiveness of the embarked JSFs. But of course I don’t have to fight the funding battle ………….

You are probably right on this. Then again, an LHA is as big as the Charles de Gaulle, and can carry up to 20 F35Bs. It’s a flat top. It already looks like a carrier, and is bigger than most carriers. Adding a ski jump which would enable the F35B to take off with a decent load of bombs and fuel will hardly turn an LPH into a rival to the CVN will it? It seems more like “not invented here” syndrome to me.

Well if that’s the case, an awful lot of money seems to be being spent on providing the USMC with 4-6 fighters, don’t you think?

This whole thread is surreal. The government has scrapped our MPA capability. We had the aircraft ready to deploy within months. They have been scrapped, purely to save their running costs. The capability has gone, and this government will not reinstate it, they prefer to wibble on about using Merlins and Hercules instead. That’s it, and it doesn’t matter what we think, the capability is gone, and as long as Green Dave is the PM, it will stay gone.