Well, you can use the same money to built and modernize railways, streets or airports and create a real improvement of the infrastructure that is felt by the public and a bonus for investors.

Imho Europe needs to cut its armed forces way more. No more fighting in far far away land, no more wasting money for such adventures.

What does infrastructure improvement do to stimulate growth?. Provides better access to markets and allows for ease of access etc but if there is no opportunity to be had in those places what good is the infrastructure achieving?.

Jobs and skills in terms of creation and retention nationally are the important things closely followed by commercial exploitation and export potential. Europe cannot compete on volume and price, but, it can in terms of quality. States like Brazil, as shown by the recent BAE deal, are clearly interested in that quality.

Supporting our high quality engineering industries with orders for platforms, that our own services are crying out for anyway, that can lead to commercial success is just win-win all round.

That’s a detection range for Irbis-E. Would not be a shocking conclusion that the much larger land based radars, among them units like Nebo specifically desighned for the purpose, would get far better numbers against VLO targets.

Any reports on the kinds of false-alarm rates experienced providing that resolution at 10’s of kms range?.

Really? I thought she had a thank you plaque from the USS Missouri

When the USN have had more successful operational missile shots against anti-ship missiles than us then they have a right to comment. To the best of my knowledge the score is still RN 1, rest of the world 0

Indeed. The whole story doesnt quite take into account the fact that shooting down smallish low-angle targets wasnt part of GWS30’s design remit so the intercept was quite a feat. I have to admit to understanding a degree of concern from the US side though. Had I been standing on the battlewagon noting the inbound pass across Gloucesters bow seemingly unmolested I may have passed the odd terse comment!.

Like I said though quite the irony if it does come to pass.

Would’ve kept to the original plan with the 2 STOVL CVF’s and signed on for a split buy of F35B/F35C with the RAF kept ‘on the team’.

Initial ‘short tranche’ of 24 F-35B’s committed to for an equal split frontline squadron and OCU. Crews being RN/RAF drawn to form initial deployment to QE. 2nd tranche being F-35C regardless – ostensibly for RAF Tornado replacement. 3rd tranche F-35B or C dependent on real-world STOVL performance.

Successful operational deployments with STOVL see’s reformation of JFH 4 squadron ashore/sea-based rotations. Failure of STOVL see’s buyback of F-35B’s to US over phased drawdown with refit of carriers for maturer EMALS gear at respective first major refit interval….with workup of RAF F-35C tranche 2/3 pool aircraft to CATOBAR ops in the meantime. Final tranche of -35C’s to make-good returned airframes – these going to a dedicated Naval Strike Wing with 24 aircraft nominal. RAF aircraft retasked for original shorebase deep-strike, but, continuation training/secondment of RAF 35C pilots to keep CATOBAR skills pool available in the community.

T45 sits as is – LACM upgrade scheduled…Libya proved we need more cruise-shooters. My T26 would be a very much simpler proposition than the current concept. Stretched T45 modification less PAAMS/VSR with enlarged hangar for expanded aviation dept and heavy davits amidships for a pair of CB90’s. First two built as command ships to replace what we lose with the 22B3’s. Following eight hulls replace the S2087 T23’s. Follow on class of Khareef-based 100-110m ‘Type 83’ OCPV’s replace the non-2087 Dukes and later the droggy, patrol and MCMW hulls.

Significant investment in multi-tier UAV and UUV force multipliers. MQ18 and S-100 rotaries for ISTAR/force protection and REMUS100/600 plus Seafox for MCMW. Lynx Wildcat stays, but, only on the strength that nothing else really makes more sense and the OCPV and T45 need nothing more capable.

Astute is, by her CO’s superlatives, top class. Simply, if more budget is found, more hulls are needed. If not, with subs, I’ll take unit quality over absolute quantity every day of the week.

MARS, I think, needs a lot of work to determine operational patterns. Certainly in my concept we have far less of the routine patrol taskings done by thirsty GT powered frigates and destroyers. Based on the excellent T45 hull it could be argued that the big escorts wouldnt be really all that thirsty anyway I guess!. We will have a full-sized carrier battlegroup to support though so fast oilers and stores ships will obviously be required. Perhaps with the dual-tier combat/patrol fleet split a range of UNREP hulls as in the BMT Aegir concept has merit?.

Trident

I’m not sure, it could easily be a ‘cultural’ thing as Gollevainen has pointed out with an example from a different, but pretty analogous, industry. It just seems like an absurdly long shot to make such an inference across widely disparate aspects of design, especially when certain other clues point in a different direction. With all due respect, the margin of error inherent in such an extrapolation would appear to be enormous.

Other than the fact that both have pipes I’m not entirely sure what the ‘analagous’ crossover is between civillian power generation and proper engineering design in a submarine?. Do civillian power workers have to contend with scenarios where they have to complete tracing and fault-finding, under emergency lighting within small smoke/fume filled spaces, before the space becomes uninhabitable?. Submarine crews drill on just that sort of thing with grim regularity.

Distinctly marked pipes and conduits knock time spent on fault-find down dramatically. There is nothing cultural about it….its just good engineering practice….and best practice is best practice wherever you go. Yours and Golle’s contention that the Russians may just ‘not want to do it that way’ is unthinkable…the suggestion is that in their culture they actually want their submarine crews to have a harder time than necessary in operating their vessels!?. You really think that?.

As I said the ONLY plausible option is that either they haven’t thought of an engineering measure so simple that every householder who has ever wired a domestic plug up is familiar with or that they weren’t bothered with it. Neither is indicative of a good design team and even ‘good’ design teams make mistakes. Poor ones, or even good ones put under ridiculous time/finance pressures, almost always put out compromised designs. As I said earlier see T42B1&2 and Type 53T for all the proof needed.

The only question I suppose, with tongue in cheek, is whether domestic wiring in Finland is colour-coded Golle….or would that go against the culture?.

I think there is something of a perception gap here that this last posting really brings into sharp relief.

The colour coding on the pipes is a representative observation. At the most basic level a well-designed boat is one optimised for its crew to be able to fight and keep operational under the worst emergency conditions. What the poster is describing is a boat where the designers have had either inadequate experience to make a proper job of it or have just lashed something together on the cheap. Either of those possibilities arrive at a finished unit liable to have many more issues in the snag list than just the pipes.

The extreme analogy would be those early Chinese 053T’s supplied to the Thai Navy. Poor design consideration, through relative inexperience, allegedly saw poor watertight integrity provision, poor access to key cable runs in some areas and insufficient shielding in others etc. The ships were ‘bad’ from the finalised specification because inadequate care and attention had been given in basic design areas. Just to appease the flag wavers the same could be said for the RN’s batch1/2 T42’s which, done ‘on the cheap’, had a litany of key design flaws, some actually able to (and did in action) negate the vessels combat capability under certain conditions, because the design had been flawed from the start.

I’m not interposing myself on the debate regarding the viability of assessing the new Russian SSN from a few modest-res images on the net, but, on the issue mentioned with unit quality being defined very early in the vessels conception I fully agree.

But Jonesy, THERE WON’T BE ANY HOT BUNKING! Women are only going to serve on subs which don’t have it.

So A-class only then eh?. As the plans are for the T class boats to be in service past 2020 we are going to be training crew members up who are absolutely unable to redeploy onto some fleet boats and the bombers (ratings) because they are women?. You think that is a defensible option for operational crewing policy?. They want to do this in 10 years when we are near Astute-only and looking to bring in the Vanguard replacement then maybe its something to look at?. Today it is not the answer.

The RN has had time to get used to mixed crews on surface ships. They’re going to be introduced gradually on subs, officers first.

Surface ships not subs. Big difference.

The female junior officer I saw on the Beeb yesterday struck me as no-nonsense, keen as mustard & likely to have no trouble dealing with the environment. If there’s careful selection initially, starting with women like her, then I reckon by the time female junior rates start being considered for sub crews (I’d bet initially only where there are female officers aboard) then the male crewmen will be used to the idea.

I went through basic with a girl who damned near designed the 2016 sonar so I’m a long way from the type who still refer to ‘jennys’ as split**$es!. I am well aware some of the girls we get through, most notably going through BRNC, are of very high calibre. That, you have to understand, isnt the problem though. That is the top of a dangerously slippery slope.

The problem is when the ‘not-so-high-calibre’ ratings start filtering through, along the paths trailblazed by the competent officers, and run into the Navy that does still use the ‘traditional terminology’ and friction occurs in close, confined, quarters with no easy release-valves like runs ashore etc. You cant expect to have the former without realising the latter is not far behind. Its wrong and shouldn’t happen. It will happen though because its basic human nature and it will have a corrosive effect on unit performance, service morale and personnel retention.

Cultures can & do change, & they can be changed. Military personnel reflect the society from which they’re drawn, but they’re a subset of it, & there’s also a military subculture, which there’s strong pressure to conform to once you’re in. That culture has changed, & continues to change. This is an exercise in pushing that change a little further.

I’ve often seen you mention close ties with Japan in your contributions Swerve. Let me ask you whether women are allowed to crew JMSDF subs?. My understanding was that they were only allowed to deploy on surface ships 2 years ago and, comparitively, dual-gender crewing a surface ship is simplicity itself. Cultures can change and, I agree, do change, but, you cannot ignore the impact that culture has in this scenario. Just because something works for the Swedish, in the earlier example, doesnt mean it will for us.