Yes it is, but i guess it would still be an option if a potential customer is looking for a new anti-ship weapon. It appears that post the purchase of the 100 odd missiles the program will open it up for competition where Raytheon wishes to compete with the JSOW-ER for the air launched component of the weapon. If so then we may end up having 2 options one from raytheon and one from Lockheed.

Like Swerve says I think thats moving into a different bracket of weapons system. The antiship variant of the weapon looks very clever in its proposed capabilities, but, a question must be asked as to what level of pre-prep targeting support is required?. While the weapon may be cleared for export will the targeting database, allowing the missile to recognise a target or correctly evaluate an inbound radar signal and take appropriate evasive action, be similarly available?!!!. Some of the information in that database will naturally be sensitive and deeply troubling if a potential opfor were able to acquire it and find out how much and what the USN knew!. The US isnt good at sharing its sweeties in that regard…with some justification it has to be conceded.

Clearly no such problem exists for the Kongsberg product with the weapon in active service currently.

Recent article giving floating out date http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140504/DEFREG01/305040010/UK-Carrier-Preps-Launch-July

This article suggests that HMS Queen Elizabeth will be named after Elizabeth II, other evidence suggests Elizabeth I. Has anyone seen anything which clarifies this?

My ‘evidence’ being the monogram and the motto used in various places.

HMS Queen Elizabeth will take on the Battle Honours of the previous warship with that name (http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/The-Fleet/Ships/Future-Ships/Queen-Elizabeth-Class/Queen-Elizabeth/History-of-HMS-Queen-Elizabeth). The name goes back quite a way and honours Elizabeth the first.

Israeli analyst think that Turkey will come under increasing pressure.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Turkey-vulnerable-to-rising-Russian-power-in-the-Black-Sea-349928

I see where you get some of your opinions from now JSR. This op-ed piece is one of the most accomplished piles of gash I’ve seen in a while. The author notes that the Turk Navy can only achieve parity with the Black Sea fleet (ignoring the critical imbalance in subs of 11 – 1 in the Turkish favour) if it uses its whole fleet. Using its whole fleet in this context means a day or two’s sailing through the straits…its not much of a logistic challenge. Where does the Black Sea fleet reinforce from?. Vladivostok?. Murmansk?.

We best leave alone comments of how the Ukraine have effectively handed over 11 ‘major naval units’ when the only major modern combatant in their fleet was alongside in Odessa last I heard and the Black Sea Fleet’s prizes, in fact, number a couple of 30yr old missile boats in dubious materiel condition and more doubtful combat potential.

There are at least 6 contributors here, without thinking, that could produce a far more credible piece than this…difference is that they wouldn’t arrive at the same conclusion…because its twaddle!.

Sounds a little crazy Fed, but, there has been a slow burning little coastguard one-upmanship contest going on in the region for a little while now. The South Koreans built the Sambong-ho (6350ton deep load) to match the Japanese ships Blitzo mentions should they deploy around the Dokdo islands….amongst other taskings. The Japanese ships themselves are commonly used for very long range patrols, as far away as Malacca, similar to the trans-oceanic taskings the USCG Legend-class ships will undertake.

12000tons clearly takes things into the realms of silliness, especially when a very Legend-esque 5000ton cutter design is also apparently in the offing for the Chinese coasties, but it does seem to fit with the general pattern over there. Here’s hoping the Japanese dont keep the p*$$ing contest going as the next step will be everyone else in theatre racing to buy up Kirov-class boats with the intent of slapping on a coat of white and a few blue lines here and there!

I thought the best option would be a split 50/50 purchase between the manned P-8A and the unmanned Triton.

The best option would be a coherent wide area maritime surveillance strategy with clear, quantified and phased threat evaluations before we start matching capability delivery platforms to address those threats/requirements.

Do we need Triton if the Reapers we’re bringing back from Afghanistan can be fitted with a top drawer maritime patrol radar and already have optronics ideal for surface surveillance?.

If we are facing a serious ramp up in ASW threat in the coming decade or two, which myself I dont see, do we need wide area cueing before we need assets to prosecute-to-shoot?. Are three T-AGOS SURTASS ships going to add more to persistent surveillance than a dozen or more P-8’s?.

If we can cover surface surveillance from unmanned assets and can do ASW cueing from standoff SOSUS/SURTASS backed with Fleet subs and frigate tactical towed arrays do we need the airborne platform to be an all-singing all-dancing platform like a P-8?. In the near to medium term would something like a refurb S-3B be all that would be required for a quick reaction long range torpedo shooter tasking?.

To my mind the only move we need to make here, in the very short term, is to clarify the issue with unmanned ops in UK airspace then put in an order with Selex for half a dozen Seaspray 7500E sets and the General Atomics pylon/pod assemblies to mount them to our Reapers. After that one of the current RAF Reaper squadrons assumes a maritime co-operation tasking. That should buy us several years to see where the subsurface threat is heading.

Slight re-profile of the fore and aft surfaces of the conning tower Wan. Contrast with the verticals in the below image of an earlier example:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]227280[/ATTACH]

You know I am surprised about that, interesting move by Russia. As a PR move it is quite interesting.

Its a known fact that the Ukraine have been pressing the US for a 2nd hand OHP or two for about six years!. The last thing I’d expect that Russia wants to see is a suddenly more fighty Ukraine Navy sore about being dumped out of Sevastopol and sat next door. They hold on to a few 30yr old Taruntals and Matka’s and they suddenly see the US agree to an FMS supply of 4 shiny new Ambassador class FACs and an OHP to ‘replace what the Russians stole’ and aid a fellow democratic state!. Would be something of an own goal.

Despite a drastic reduction in resources and number of ships available and global reconfigurations. In other words, commitments that have and will continue to persist through sheer bureaucratic and institutional inertia until they meet the slightest resistance, whereupon they will collapse. Hollow commitments of this sort are a disaster (and an embarrassment) waiting to happen.

Not really…some taskings are gapped…some are undertaken by units that, at first, seem an odd fit but, in nearly every case, the RN has managed to respond to situations that have arisen. Be they natural disasters in the Caribbean….the conduct of its hydrography programme and vital peacetime MCM route-survey work, various multinational exercises (hosting a few big ones) and, obviously, participation in combat ops…even if just a couple of escorts on gunline off Libya or Umm Qasr and the odd Fleet sub lofting a TLAM.

The force is stretched to do so, of course, and you could say we’ve been ‘lucky’ that multiple crises haven’t emerged simultaneously to pull us in different directions at once. In all honesty theres really only one navy left on the planet that this isnt the case for to some degree. Even when we had a numerically far larger Navy in 1982 we still needed help from allies to cover some of our slots while the fleet was engaged down south.

Thats why I put the word lucky in quotes above…good planning allows you to look at risk and make the necessary decisions…my view is that we took some risks based on sound planning and, pretty much, the gamble has paid off. In context of the thread this is where we are with MPA…the gamble has a finite time limit on it, but, gapping here, were experience now tells us we had a window of opportunity to be able to do so, has saved money that has been applied elsewhere…UOR’s for lads actually getting bloody shot at in the sandbox for one!.

You can call that a diminution of a once great power if you like, for me though, that’s a considered analysis of where the money we do have could be best spent. You could argue that the decision to go to war should have been backed by the funds to conduct it, no-one would argue I’m sure, its not like we have a monopoly on stupid politicians though is it?. You pay £65k a year…going rate for a middlin competent IT consultant…do you expect to get creative and entrepreneurial geniuses who’d make 5 or 10 times that in their fields?. Not just our democracy thats flawed!.