“Ever read 1984? The X-Factor is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to the ‘two minute hate’…”

That was one of the most clear and accurate pieces of analysis I’ve seen in a good long while ending in a superb analogy. Well said that man.

And a freighter disobeying traffic control and turning into the path of the JMSDF ship, effectively ramming the Japanese warship is the fault of the Japanese warship’s manning level how?

Concur absolutely. If someone goes across your bows as happened here there is little chance of any other outcome.

The rules on this one are quite clear – if you detect a vessel on an intersecting course a well established series of warnings are to be issued these including RT messages and a pattern of blasts on the ships horn. If there is no response to this, and you have no searoom to maneuver, you come to a dead stop, if that will allow him to pass clear, or go astern. You do not have the right to cross the bows of an oncoming vessel and cause one crash to avoid another.

The master of that SK vessel might be finding himself in hot water soon if the Japanese choose to press the issue.

Sorry Kev your points are laudable and well made, but, extremely dangerous in my view.

The fact that we had the terrorists in Afghanistan chased off, for miniscule publicly recognised losses, into the Waziristan border regions right from the start of this is well accepted. The problem is that it left nothing behind as a nationally-recognisable authority to take charge as there was no ready ‘opposition’ structure waiting in the wings who could do the job. There were several who made pretensions to it, but, no-one who could deliver on the promise.

What is obvious is that there has to be some, independent, force structure in place there until some form of ‘good governance’ can be established. That governance is not the existing regime or the one to come. We are looking, at least, at two generations for the concepts of governance, as we know them, to establish themselves over there. Only then could we consider scaling back the force presence with the hope of leaving a stable and robust political entity behind.

We’ve seen what happened after the Soviets were obliged to retreat in 89. The vacuum forms and the Taleban essentially return the country to the tribal fiefdoms of centuries back. We retreat, wash our hands of the mess, and the whole cycle starts again.

What happens is that the hardcore Al-Qaeda mob come down from the Northern Pakistani badlands with the Pakistani’s helping them on the way to shore-up their own border security situation. In a decades time thereafter the Taleban and Al-Qaeda are not only back up to pre-9/11 capability levels, but, enjoying the reputation of having chased NATO out as well as the best that the Soviets could throw at them.

If we pull out, as you suggest, we stop the tragic, but relatively limited, flow of casualties out of the combat zone (and I say that as someone who has friends out there and soon to deploy) and we enjoy a lull of maybe as much as a decade whilst Al Qaeda reconstitutes. Then we get to wait and see which civilian populations take the brunt of the renewed and invigorated terrorist campaign that ensues.

As a secondary effect to pulling out we suffer our own Vietnam-hangover. We admit failure and an inability to make good on our pledges. We show ourselves as a nation lacking in resolve and conviction even when our (western democratic) interests are expressly challenged. In short we show ourselves to be an unreliable partner, ally and friend to anyone who may wish to see such qualities in us….and this isn’t an intangible, frivolous factor to be dismissed when stacked up against the cost in service personnel’s lives. It is a crucial dimension in how others define their relations with us.

Post-Falklands Great Britain’s’ stock could not have been higher, we had shown ourselves as people who could be trusted to back their words with deeds, still the people who would make the principled stand….even at the highest of costs. That communicated a message to potential friends as much as potential opponents. Pulling out of Afghanistan citing it as an unwinnable war sends out every bit as powerful a message and is one we will pay a price for down the track as perceptions are very hard to change once ingrained.

Afghanistan is in every way a lose/lose situation for us. One way we suffer the casualties and trauma associated with a 30yr long presence in a country facing an effective armed insurrection and the other way we give that armed insurrection an unassailable political victory and brace our civilian populations for the resurgent backlash that results. To my mind the ‘least worst’ option there is obvious and it doesn’t involve a pull out.

Boys and Girls,

Not sure what the issues are in other countries, but, for reasons of OPSEC/PERSEC its going to be best not to give accurate details of what the routine readiness state, of those armed personnel guarding UK defence establishments, actually is.

Cheers

Concur absolutely with Swerve. There is a world of difference between a hunter having a general location on your boat and a hard fix.

If you have a buoy dropper, like a Hoover, boxing you in and getting near the point of drawing a bead the ability to make him go away is going to be massively beneficial. Even if he has a friend in a near sector it will be a finite number of minutes before he can relocate and continue the prosecution. Those minutes are the ones that you use to clear the datum.

Funnily enough I’d not expect this to be all that useful against pingers. Dipping choppers tend to work as a pair – either with one flushing the contact to the ‘catcher’ or as an active pair to bracket a given area. Giving the submarine two targets that would have to be simultaneously engaged, without deploying some missile director element, could be chancy.

If possessing a subSAM convinces the submarine mafia they are driving an AEGIS destroyer and try and take on whole squadrons then that is a problem. I cant see that being a real likelihood though and, if its cheap and has a low ship-impact, I would imagine that this kind of missile could be a welcome addition to a subs self-defence suite.

The reality is that a LPH order was not going to the be forthcoming in the short term and that CVFs were never going to have a full combat air group in actual practice. It also seemed unlikely that both would ever be in service simultaneously, or embark more than 9 F-35Bs under normal circumstances..

It does make one wonder how many times that the designed purpose of CVF has to be stated and restated. Just because it looks like a fleet carrier doesn’t mean it actually is one!.

CVF has been intentionally designed as a ‘purple’ carrier. It is designed to be effective in Carrier Strike by embarking a full F-35B airgroup for high sustainable sortie rates against target sets ashore. It is also designed to accomodate troops with easy assault routes to the hangars and flight deck to support the Joint Helicopter Force and Commando Helicopter Force deployments in an expeditionary LPA-style configuration.

In short CVF was ALWAYS INTENDED to serve in an LPH/LPA role in those situations where 36 F-35B’s were not necessary for the combat phase.

Tornado IDS was devised as a low alt penetrating interdictor. Is there anyone left with the misconception that, against a comprehensive IADS, that GR4 would still be capable of delivering that effect without massive SEAD/DEAD supporting elements?.

Facing the prospect that we do not have those supporting elements to dispatch with GR4 its difficult to picture the Tonka’s role as anything more than a CASOM carrier. The question then being do we need an expensive bells-and-whistles supersonic terrain skimming striker to carry a whole 2 Storm Shadows to a launch point outside of the said comprehensive IADS envelope?.

The whole point of the Sustained Precision Effects At Range (SPEAR) project is to examine how to replace the interdiction capability now attrited by the greater challenges facing the manned ‘deep strike’ mission. For my money the answer is anything but a middlin range ‘Strike Typhoon’ or latter day F-111.

The RAF needs a couple of dozen ‘expeditionary’ large airframes role-adaptable for UCAV-command, ELINT/COMINT and as a carrier for a revisited ‘Skybolt-NG’ in conventional and nuclear guises. With non-time critical deep-strike taken care of by an LO-UCAV platform. The remainder of time-critical deep-strike being accomplished by buying into the US Fasthawk/RATTLRS and equipping RN escorts/SSN’s with it – perhaps there also adding in a nuclear option to allow for savings on SSBN/Trident to be reapplied in to the bargain.

…meaning that probably only portable equipment, stuff that would go with the air group, could be skipped. If QE is in for a refit, the necessary gear could & probably would be moved across to PoW

That was my thinking also. The PoW, even in ‘Commando Configuration’, will still need to turn around some fairly hefty aircraft. Just to work on Merlin and Chinook you are going to need overhead hoists and heavy duty lifting gear for example and I cant think of much else that would be built into the fabric of the vessel that would need to be specialised for a fastjet airgroup?.

IIRC Bager was a USMC plane mangler?. Maybe he would offer thoughts on, non-portable, specialist equipment that would not be reasonably painless to dismount from a vessel going into refit to cross-deck to an active ship?.