Benyboy

It sounds like you are yet another individual who doesnt know that Crown Estates profits go into the Treasury and not to the monarchy. The Monarchy instead take a payment called the Civil List. Last I checked Crown Estates put about £240mn a year into the economy and the Civil List barely stacked up to £8mn. You pay their way do you?.

They put in twenty times what they get out, work continually to raise the profile of the country in commercial and diplomacy terms, serve in the forces and, in your view, are still fair game for any kind of public dissection that will satisfy your tawdry little needs for entertainment?. Honestly?

Another thread on here has commented on the degradation of UK society. Thanks for highlighting the kind of narrow-minded selfishness that is the real problem we face so starkly.

Does if you want to push one down a tunnel entrance thats 5m or so wide. A few kt’s well placed may be more effective than a few hundred ‘nearby’. It must be said though there is something, I find, deeply disquieting about any technology that makes it easier and ‘routine’ to deploy and employ nuclear ordnance!.

Its a pile of gash Wan. The Guardian, a paper with strong anti-Defence leanings, has reported on something that they just dont understand. The Record is just the latest publication to mindlessly parrot a good ‘sensationalist’ story.

Its no different to the claims that Rolls Royce reactors are unsafe that came out in the media a while back following a “damning report” which turned out to be a misinterpreted sentence from the UK officer in charge of reactor safety which was:

“All pressurised water reactors are potentially vulnerable to a structural failure in the primary circuit, causing a rapid depressurisation and boiling-off of most of the cooling water.”

This clearly shows that the UK builds shonky reactors according to the witless wonders in British journalism!!!.

The issue with the Astutes’ steam turbines is similar. The PWR2 core is, by alleged RR claims, up to 6 times more powerful than the PWR1 core driving the T-class boats. The steam turbine set driving the T-class is sufficient to push them along at quite a clip…they aren’t slow boats by any definition. The PWR2 core though is able to supply more pressure than that turbine set can handle….hence the wonderful soundbyte that the Astutes propulsion is like a ‘V8 engine coupled to a Morris Minor gearbox’. The simple expedient of running the reactor at lower power settings is enough to get past any major issues from a power mismatch!.

There are issues apparently with some of the internal plumbing where non-spec materials have been used in some valves which is more worrying as it shows a certain cavalier attitude in some at BAE. First-of-class is usually where design problems come to light anyway and the listed defects were nothing to do with the specs or design…just the execution!.

Yes, but the French experience of designing & building SSKs is more recent, whether deserved or not the Upholders have a bad reputation which may, unfortunately, put potential buyers off, & the French SSNs would need much less down-scaling than the Astute class.

Wasnt so much a bad reputation as much as the U-class boats were designed and built to do a specific job…that was to chug out to the GUIK narrows at transit speed and then pootle about on patrol back and forth at a few knots above steerage, for a couple of weeks, waiting for a contact. That patrol profile didnt demand huge fuel bunkerage so the boats werent designed with it. The oft claimed range for the type of 8000 miles is not one based on an operational profile!.

This is the sort of consideration that would need to be made if swapping out an SSN’s nuclear reactor for a conventional arrangement. Fuel bunkers and trim requirements would make that kind of conversion twitchy and the accuracy of the mission profile definition and volume calculations absolutely crucial.

A major part of the issue, generally, is the development of communications technology, and its pervasiveness in society, allowing for the bombardment of advertising and ‘lifestyle suggestions’ that society is now subject to and to the general lowering of standards in the media.

Couple that to the degradation of traditional values of thrift and the expansion of ‘easy credit’ for much of the last few decades and you have the fuel, the spark and the lack of good sense required to nudge society towards the obsession with instant gratification that is driving the ‘rat-race’.

That said I dont think the majority of people in many of our communities have lost sight of the value of empathy, decency and courtesy. I see doors held open, bus/train seats offered up and friendly advice given frequently. On Wednesday I visited Maidenhead for the second time in about 10 years and, when I asked a college-aged lad for directions, the response I got was that that he showed me the way personally and pointed out how to get back…couldnt have been more helpful and openly friendly. As the saying goes ‘perspective is reality’.

Ironically given some of the criticism leveled at the ‘cruise missile to replace Trident’ lobby on these boards, all it would have taken was a couple of Soviet SSGNs to sneak in close to the North Sea coast or even travel up the mouth of one of our larger rivers or estuaries (Soviet subs allegedly sailed up the Bristol Channel during the Cold War) and shower those areas where the V-Bombers were dispersed with cruise missiles with little if any warning and the V-Force would have become so much scrap.

Why is that ironic in terms of the deterrent?. What you are describing is nothing whatsoever to do with deterrent effect?. If the SSGN was caught on SOSUS, chased down by UK ASW forces trying to close the Humber estuary, and sunk or damaged then its load of missiles are removed from the board. If thats your strategic deterrent gone you are rather screwed aren’t you?.

http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/2560/why-the-navy-should-retire-tlam-n

Lots of useful data in the above link, rather more than I think should be public domain in some respects, but enough to hopefully disabuse those remaining who’re stuck on the idea of nuke TLAM as a deterrent.