John KI agree it’s possible to go overboard on technology. It occurs to me that the Royal Navy will surely be losing its last Type 42s soon, the budget cuts will see to that. Butthey have some good equipment on them which could be reused. Look at the weapons: not Sea Dart, obviously, but a 4.5″ gun, two Phalanx, sundry light guns, and a helicopter. Put that lot on a new hull and you’ve got the makings of a decent patrol frigate. The times ahead are going to be hard, and the Navy will have to think hard how to economise, otherwise we will end up with a surface fleet of six Type 45s and, maybe, six Type 26s. I can easily see it happening.
John KTime, time, time!
We can order another 60 or 70 in 10 years. Or are you assuming that we’ll still be broke then?
Hopefully the economy will have recovered, but that does not mean it will translate into any more F35 orders does it? I don’t get the impression that Green Dave cares that much about defence, beyond getting Britain out of Afghanistan by 2015. Capabilities lost will not be restored.
John KIf F35B is not adopted, the RAF loses STOVL capability. Simple like that.
Yes, that is something which will have to be accepted. I notice that Beedall is talking about an order for F35s of about 50. I would prefer to see 60+, but that will only be enough for the Royal Navy.
The latest reports that any new Trident decision will be put back after 2015 is welcome. We don’t need to do it right now, so it will have to be postponed.
I agree with much of Beedall’s thoughts. The Royal Navy will shoot itself in the foot if it goes for a tiny number of high end escorts to replace the Type 23s. We have seen that six Type 45s will replace twelve Type 42s, and it is quite possible that six Type 26s will replace thirteen Type 23s. I wouldn’t really want to see the Royal Navy reduced to a dozen surface escorts.
Having Albion and Bulwark alternate in service makes sense, but it would be a terrible loss if the four Bay class were to be lost. Ocean will probably retire without replacement.
The Royal Navy now is so small that maybe the RFA is not needed in its present form, but again, that would be a serious loss.
The idea of transferring the Royal Marines to the army can only be called wrong. I sincerely hope it is canned.
Overall, it is clear that this defence review is a travesty, a cuts exercise and nothing else. Nothing good will come of it, the only hope is that it is not as bad as it might be. A truly sorry state of affairs.
John KI can’t see 138 F35s being ordered at this time of cuts. To be honest, I can see only one CVF being in full commission at any one time, and that with two squadrons of F35s at best. Thus, 60 F35s ought to suffice.
If you think about it, with 138 F35s, we will have a “joint force”, which means the RAF will have dibs on half the planes, which will only see a carrier very rarely if at all. You just have to look at the history of the Joint Force Harrier. So let’s bite the bullet and accept that we should only order enough F35s for the Navy.
John KFrosty is right. The “Strategic Defence Review” is a cost cutting exercise. Any cuts are just that, cuts, there will be no extra spending and no substitutes. If the CVFs are cancelled they will be cancelled without replacement.
That’s why I think the F35 purchase should be cut in half and allocated to the Fleet Air Arm. It is a naval aircraft and should be operated by the Navy. The Joint Force Harrier was a scam which stopped making any sense as soon as the Sea Harrier was stabbed in the back. The Navy would be mad to go down that route again, or we will end up with carriers setting sail without any F35s on them, and that really will be a scandal.
John KIsn’t the current figure something like 128 or so? Clearly we are not going to buy that many F35s. Why not bite the bullet, order 60 for the Navy and forget this nonsense of “joint forces”. The F35 is a naval aircraft and should be allocated to the Royal Navy, and 60 or so should suffice.
John KPeople, this is nonsense! If CVF02 is cancelled, there will be no LHD order as compensation! Get real! The Royal Navy will have two carriers or one, but it won’t have one carrier and one or two LHDs. The so-called “strategic defence review” is a cost-cutting exercise, nothing more or less. The budgets for most government departments doubled in the NuLab period. Defence did not, but it will still be slashed by know nothing politicians.
To my mind, it is quite obvious that we will never be buying 150 F35s for a grandiose “Joint Force” to replace the Harriers. It surely makes sense to buy enough F35s to equip a carrier force, and assign them to the Fleet Air Arm. How much will an F35 cost? Say £80 million. If we cut the order by 80 units, I make that a saving of £6.4 billion. That’s pretty handy, and will give the Navy enough F35s to equip a carrier air group.
The Joint Force Harrier always struck me as a transparent scam which would lead to RAF control of the Navy’s fixed wing assets. That is what heppened, and it was only slightly surprising that the Navy brass were quite so stupid as to fall for it in the first place. Are they daft enough to do it again?
John KObi Wan is spot on. Cancellation of CVF01, CVF02 or both, will, apart from wrecking the whole basis of the Royal Navy, destroy our military ship building industry. Without the CVF programme there are no orders, it’s as simple as that. I consider ship building to be a strategically vital industry for our island nation, and any government which cannot see that is dilletante in the extreme.
A more interesting conundrum is what aircraft to fly off the carriers? I can see great advantages from the RAF moving to an all Typhoon force, since it seems the Tornados will be phased out some years early. If we could afford, say, 60 F35s, that would be enough for two active squadrons and an OCU, which will suffice given that only one CVF will be in full commission at any one time. The F35s should therefore be given over to the Fleet Air Arm. British military aircraft ownership will then be simple, Typhoons for the RAF, and F35s for the Royal Navy. We won’t be buying 150 F35s, so we may as well face reality: the service which needs the F35 is the Navy, and we will only be able to buy enough F35s for one service.
John KWill the public even notice?
Given the cuts in public spending which are coming, I think the BBC et all will make sure they do. Having a squadron of nine F35s rattling around in a 65,000 ton carrier will be seen as a criminal misuse of scarce resources, and will probably end up being blamed on the Navy.
John KI think we can fairly assume that when and if the CVFs are built, they will sail around looking fairly empty. It seems they will typically carry no more aircraft than a current CVS, despite being three times the size. I doubt the public will be impressed by talk of “surge capacity”, they will see a very expensive asset being extremely under used, and I would be tempted to agree.
John KI thought we had moved on? Are we still at this? You are entitled to disagree, we have laboured the point between us and I think we are boring people. Nobody’s view is gospel, you can disagree with academics, you can diasagree with whomever you like, you are right wing, I am left wing, I care about Africa, you don’t, I think the Industrial revolution was paid for with capital accumialated under slavery, you think it just gave us sugar. One of us is right, or maybe we are both wrong.
we both want the CVF to be built, lets move on.
You are not entitled to say I don’t care about Africa. I take the view that the foreign aid programmes of the west simply do not work to alleviate poverty. I think about a trillion dollars has been sent from the west to Africa since the end of empire, and most of it has been wasted. At independence, Ghana was richer than South Korea. What happened? Yet, despite our economic problems, with huge defence cuts looming, the aid budget is sacrosanct, and a government minister is actually comparing the cost of a CVF to the budget for educating Africans. We might both want the CVF programme to proceed, but how can it if our finite resources are spent in this way?
John KYou would be willing to stand and look at a Black Britain and say that? You would look someone who is in the UK because their family were seized in Africa and taken to the other side of the world, (by some of your relatives) made to work for nothing but a blooded back and you could stand there and say “nothing to do with MY country”.
Why NEO-colonial guilt? Neo-colonial is a term bounded about by those who believe we should not be taking part in military intervention in Africa, it does not refer to original flavour colonialism. Also colonial is the wrong term to use when talking about slavery. Colonialism is a term that mainly refers to the penultimate phase of empire, late 19th century until the 1940s (after which we get collapse and abandonment, lets stop being so sanctimonious as to call it “giving them independence”) Slavery occurred in the earlier phases of empire when the emphasis was on trade and commerce rather than outright domination and rule.
As for the ‘Granuiad’ it is one of the reasons we gave up slavery, it is also one of the key protagonists in the fight to end child labour in the UK, extend workers rights, give you the right to a union and the right to protest. While there is a lot wrong with it, it is also a very British institution and one I am frankly very proud of.
Yes we gave India almost a Billion in aid last year. Ever been to India? We give them aid because it is poor, very poor. They have a huge army because they pay their soldiers peanuts and they need one otherwise their country would be defenceless and at the mercy of a dozen militant groups and the situation would be worse. To give you an idea of the reality GDP per capita in the UK is around 35,000 dollars India is about 1000. That isn’t just a huge disparity it is a monumental gulf and again partly due to two centuries of asset stripping by the UK.
Which would you rather…a tiny proportion of our wealth to help solve education, AIDs, poverty etc in Africa OR British and European soldiers having to fight in peacekeeping ops in order to restore order in an unstable, desperate and starving Africa. I would assume you are against British soldiers being killed for the cause of Africa? Defence money can sometimes mean not just buying arms, we can attain the aims of UK defence in many different ways.
You want to stop immigration to the UK I am sure (inference I know, but probably a good one?) then raising the living standards of poorer countries is the best way to do it. You want the UK economy to grow, then raising living standards in one of the worlds largest barely tapped markets would help massively.
As a matter of record it did. Can I point you in the direction of Simon Schama’s a History Of Britain and his fantastic book on the trade Rough Crossings. Also for a more economic out look there is Slavery, Atlantic trade and the British economy, 1660-1800 by Ken Morgan.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/building_britain_gallery.shtml might be a good starter for you.
So you are ok with that? It made the country as a whole rich I’m afraid.
Thats so nearly racist as to be insulting. “It was so terrible, we took thousands from their native homes and all we got was a tooth rot” Never visit London or any major UK city and say that aloud, please!
Look at the sources above and I can pass many others your way, I’m afraid it has been accepted historical fact (for years) that the UK economy like much of the west was built on a bed rock of slavery, its in the national curriculum and taught to year 8s, its on the A-level syllabus, its taught at university.
You are correct in stating that the Industrial revolution set us apart BUT did you ever stop for one moment to ask how did we afford the industrial revolution? Where did the capital to fund it all come from? I’m afraid it comes from Britain’s Holocaust, the Slave trade.
Your use of the “R” word is as inevitable as it is laughable. You seem to be the one in fear of what black people will do to you, not me. I rather think that most black people in Lewisham would rather have their taxes spent on their welfare, not that of foreigners, and I would hope that any who disagree with me would do so peacefully.
As it happens, for most British people, the only “benefit” they got from slavery really was cheap sugar, and not much else. Dr Schama may say otherwise, but his views are not gospel. He thinks Obama is wonderful, and I disagree with him on that too!
John K“Bleeding heart stuff” such an easy term to throw out there and means nothing other than ignorance of history and the ignorance of the social structure of the UK. I dare you to go into the centre of say Brixton, lewisham, Battersea and stand with a sign on your chest that says “Africa is not MY problem….” Perhaps on your back you could add a line like “I don’t care that your relatives live in poverty in the Caribbean”
So the Royal Navy’s support and defence of the slave trade in the previous 200 years is over looked then? We just concentrate on the dramatic U-turn as it suits our conscience to do so? I’m afraid the story of this tiny rain soaked island that appears to have not much going for it is dramatically changed by Empire and most importantly slavery. Where do you think we got most of the money from? How do you think a poor medieval state that was scraping around in the mud in the 15th Century, barely having an impact on world history, suddenly became the richest most powerful state on earth? I’m afraid (and it is a very bitter pill to swallow) its because we used our navy and merchant navy to seize resources and in particular people from Africa. We took these people, moved them to where we could use them and then worked them for all their worth and raked in the money.
Its a problem of our creation, a stable Africa is a peaceful africa and therefore (and I am not suggesting we hand over CVF money) helping to repay the centuries of damage we inflicted has to be a role of the UK and other western governments.
Sorry old boy, but I really don’t care if their relatives live in poverty in the Caribbean. I didn’t cause it, and it’s nothing to do with me. I live in Britain, and I want British taxpayers’ money to be spent defending Britain, not wasted on some futile attempt to assuage the neo-colonial guilt of the Guardian reading classes. If Britain is not the world’s policeman, it certainly isn’t the world’s daddy either. India has got larger armed forces than Britain, and we are giving them aid? Come off it!
As a matter of record, slavery did not make Britain rich. It made some British people rich, and made the ports of Bristol and Liverpool rich, but the main impact of slavery on most British people was to rot our teeth with cheap sugar. The industrial revolution made Britain rich, that’s what set Britain apart from states such as France, Spain and Portugal which all had large colonial holdings built on the slave trade.
John KBecause we spent the best part of four centries asset stripping the continent for our own benefit? because the long term wealth of the UK (and much of Europe and the USA) is built on the foundation of Trans-atlantic slavery? Because we are decent human beings who realise that the state of Africa is a stain on the world especially given that its the closest continent to Western Europe? Because helping the poorest nations to educate is the best way of lifting them out of poverty and that is also one of the best ways of keeping the peace….having spent some of my career trying to educate African children I can assure you its a very worth while and much needed enterprise….BUT we digress, back the QEs….
I’m afraid I can’t agree with this bleeding heart stuff. The Royal Navy actually ended the slave trade two hundred years ago, and these states have been independent for fifty years. They are not the responsibility of the British state and the British taxpayer. If any private citizens wish to make charitable donations to African education then good for them, it’s their decision how to use their own money.
John KWe haven’t had an empire for quite some time, I wonder why it is our responsibility to educate the children of Africa?
Sign In
