The point I am making is that the conventional fleet, the one which is working day in day out, has been cut to the bone. Even if the Type 23s are replaced one for one (do you think that will happen?) we will have just 13 frigates. Yet the government proposes a force of four SSBNs, the same as when we had 70 frigates. This makes no sense. I agree Britain should remain a nuclear power, but we have to cut our coat according to our cloth. Polaris and Trident were the perfect cold war nuclear deterrent, they provided secure second strike capability which could take out Moscow, and that is what we needed then. It is not what we need now. The cold war has been over for 20 years, and a cold war legacy system costing tens of billions is not what we need or can afford. A cheaper deterrent, say based on SLCMs, would not be as “good” as Trident, but Trident itself is far more than is needed for a credible deterrent against any likely nuclear aggressor going forward.

The real thing that concerns me however, is that at the moment they envisage only 13 will be ordered, so I imagine this means the RN will end up with 8 or so.

I fear you may be right. Twelve Type 42s were meant to be followed by 12 Type 45s, and look how that turned out. Will 13 Type 23s really be followed by 13 Type 26s, or will the Treasury argue that each Type 26 is twice as good as a Type 23, and hence only half as many need to be ordered? The day when the Royal Navy consists of one ship must be approaching.

Then I will repeat my question

You can repeat your question until you are blue in the face, but you will not get an answer. That’s the whole point, we do not have the facts. I think we should have them, you are happy to be kept in ignorance.

Why in this particular case do you deserve to know commercially sensitive price breakdowns when such information is never released?
No, I don’t know the breakdown but I wasn’t involved in the decision, so I don’t need to. I might want to know, but I don’t need to.

I’m telling you the cost involved more than just the ship conversion. You can choose to believe me or not. If through life costs were included then they would have been included for both options. Personally I hope that they were, the MOD has made decisions on to short a term far too much.

The only other alternative which is what I object to was the suggestion that BAES/ACA had effectively falsified the figures. It is with respect to that allegation that my knowledge of some of the people is relevant. Wouldn’t you take offence at people slandering your friends or colleagues without any factual basis?

You might be happy to live in the dark, I am not. It’s our money they are spending, and our country they are meant to be defending. As to what BAE/ACA are up to, the fact that you are friendly with some of the personnel is neither here nor there. If there was anything fishy in the figures, even if they knew about it, why would they tell you?

John,

You do know that Prom has already provided his view on that in the sentence preceding the one you claimed ‘stifles debate’?. He said:

…the non ship costs being things like recovery tanking, CATOBAR basic and continuation training etc i.e all the things that constitute full CATOBAR capability that do not apply to STOVL.

With respect the views of a private citizen do not constitute a breakdown of the costs. Has anyone seen an official costing? I would have imagined that costs such as arrester wires, deck alterations etc would have been covered in the original £400 million conversion cost on top of the £450 EMALS cost. I have a feeling that the entire 50 year running and crewing costs of the cats and traps has been lumped into the overall conversion costs, as if they were day one costs. Until a proper breakdown of costs is produced, we are in the dark. That’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a statement of fact.

Prom, The Carriers and their costs seem to remind me of the Olympic Costs, initial back of fag packet figures quoted at time of bid then total costs at least double…
Do you, or does anyone, know what the actual differences, in costs being recognised as part of the project, between the initial cost estimates and the finally worked up costs actually were?
Did the final costs include say Hawkeyes and the costs for Chobham to develop air to air refueling kit for the F35C. As well as the higher lifetime costs for the deck crews and the refit costs of the cats and traps over say 40 years?

Exactly. Unless you see the detailed breakdown, you have no idea how this so-called cost of conversion has been worked out. All I can say is that if you have a £2.6 billion ship, and a £450 million catapult system, a figure of about £1.4 billion to fit the catapult looks very suspicious on the face of it.

It seems to me that if you have a 100% hit rate in testing, the tests are too easy, and you will not learn anything from them. However, this sort of thing appeals to the communist desire that reality should always match party rhetoric. Keep up production in the tractor factory comrade!

As I said earlier there is no specific threat in terms of a hostile nation at this time. Even so this system can protect us now and in the future from nuclear blackmail and from nuclear weapons which is a threat that has proliferation not decreased.

What good is a conventional power projection force if every time you move to use it you’re blackmailed out of it with the threat of nuclear weapons?

I find it hard to see that a system devised to beat the ABM defences around Moscow is really necessary to deter the sort of rogue states which might develop nuclear weapons in years to come. I am all for keeping nuclear weapons, but we must cut our coat according to our cloth. We already have SSNs, we already have Tomahawk, and we have the ability to make nuclear warheads. It seems like a good fit. However in reality I think governments will kick the can down the road and find ways to keep our existing Trident fleet going into the 2030s.