People are going to miss the MRCA saga once its over. Its like a sitcom thats been running for a while that you are really bored of it, but when the channel pulls it plugs you miss it !

Its not long now 😀 one more season….

there was the artillery competition. even ekta kapoor couldn’t have done a more cheesier job at managing these procurements.

Dannat won’t get the defence job. He’s just quit as a government adviser
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1299401/General-Sir-Richard-Dannatt-quits-Government-defence-adviser.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

At least he’s being consistent, he’s always been anti-carrier. Seriously some of these Army guys are a threat to national security trying to grab all the goodies for the army to be ready for the time when we’re just pulling out of Afghanistan. Thankfully I believe Fox is on the ball to the threat of this.

how does he justify scrapping the carrier ? :confused: if any weapon system makes sense for UK’s needs it is the carriers and the amphibs. what is the logic he gives in proposing such a move ?
as for the army, you guys are probably better off with something resembling the Israeli model without the conscription. reduce the size of the regular army and perhaps increase the size of the TA which can be mobilized quickly in times of need.
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Mr pot and kettle would do well to remember that we are not interested in his autobiography, one misplaced idiom at a time.
less one line flames and more worthwhile contribution would go a long way in him being considered a serious contributor rather than a tiresome troublemaker.

they sure do, going by the number of times people start ranting about aid money and India’s poverty in a thread supposed to discuss UK defence review.

sorry to be off-topic but I’ve to respond to this absolute disinformation. if there’s a better thread I’ll be happy to move this there.

Inaccurate, I’m afraid. Colonial India funded part of the British Empire (mostly itself, except for a few decades up to WW1) for about 150 years.

I’m afraid your assertion is grossly inaccurate.massive amounts of wealth flowed from India to UK following the campaigns of robert clive.
some of it was direct, as in looting of royal treasuries of native kingdoms (if you visit the red fort in Delhi you can still see the numerous gaps in the wall panelings of the diwan-i-khas which were once adorned by hundreds of precious gems, not one was left by the colonial government.) or to cite one example, the annexation of Awadh, itself done on some petty excuse, where the british officers went into the royal women’s quarter and forcibly removed jewelery from the queen(s) and princesses as payment for the exorbitant taxes. this story was repeated all over India. did I mention the crown jewels that adorn the queen’s tiara ?

the fortunes gained by colonial officers and soldiers too were a significant addition to british economy. from the English literature of the era you can easily see that an India posting was seen as a way to become very rich, very quickly and that money was sent back to UK in turn funding the machines of the BE. where did that money come from ? at whose expense ?

then we come to the taxes, rich fertile farmlands were taxed well beyond their capacity, so much so that it caused massive famines every 10 years or so. a couple of examples, 1770 famine killed off 30% (!) of the population of Bengal, keep in mind that these are areas that are so fertile that there had been no instances of large-scale famines in its entire history before the British rule. much closer to us in 1943, even though food grains were available, the colonial government created an artificial famine by hoarding most of it for the British army fighting against Japan, killing 3 million.

but we haven’t reached the real meat of colonial exploitation yet, that really provided UK its impetus during the days of industrial revolution.
massive quantities of raw materials bought at dirt cheap prices (usually a % or two of market value) that were processed by UK industry and then sold back to the world and India at 100-200% of the original price, of course after systematically destroying the thriving domestic industries of India. a system also known as double exploitation.
case in point, the UK textile industry and the way cotton and indigo dye was procured from India, forcing farmers to cultivate indigo instead of food crops (again leading to famines) which were then bought by British indigo planters at 2% of market prices. since this was unsustainable they were provided loans by the British indigo planters again at ridiculous interest rates, sometimes 250% interest rates for a month ! the illiterate farmers who didn’t know any better were caught in a debt trap and the prevailing laws allowed the British planters to use these farmers and their descendants to be used as bonded labourers without pay, IOW slavery by a different name. the situation finally erupted in the form of indigo rebellion of 1859.

why was the rail introduced in India ? hardly for some philanthropic purposes, it was done to get raw materials from the interior cheaply to the ports for transportation to UK and to move around the British Indian Army quickly to crush the numerous revolts.

as a parting shot, on the eve of independence UK gave itself a massive ‘aid’ from India to ameliorate its poor fiscal condition in the aftermath of second world war. 😉

to sum it up, current british affluence is without doubt built on the backs of its colonies, primarily India. it was called jewel of the crown for a reason.
no doubt other countries of western Europe could have matched it in technical strength but they didn’t have as many colonies to exploit, neither as rich. the exploitation that has sucked these countries dry will still take many decades to recover. out of these India does not need, neither ask for British aid which is anyway small change for what India actually spends on poverty alleviation.( last year alone India spent 12,945 million USD on one scheme alone, and it is but one of similar half a dozen schemes. to putit into perspective, annual UK aid to india amounts to less than 400 million USD, most of which goes back to the UK)

but there are ex-colonies, especially in Africa that are in dire need of assistance. India does not ask for the return of its plundered wealth but we would consider that debt repaid if you use it to do something useful, like funding schools and hospitals in poor African nations rather than buying showboats like SSBNs which you frankly do not need post cold-war.

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back to on-topic

UK military has to reflect the nature of UK’s position in a post cold-war world, that of a mercantile island nation and not a global empire (pre world war) or a mini-superpower (post WW2 to end of cold war). therefore IMHO the royal navy should be the most important force and no expenses should be spared to build it as a credible conventional force capable of protecting british shipping at least in the atlantic if not a little beyond.
the argument for SSBNs is much less strong, as is the argument for nuclear deterrence. although I understand it’s an emotional issue and most britishers would like to hang on to it for the time being. in that case the most cost effective one is to use custom-build submarine launched nuclear tipped cruise missiles. supersonic and perhaps with some RCS reduction measures.
I have a hard time believing as some have asserted, that this is beyond the capability of UK’s military industry.

as for the army and RAF they should be re-organized around the RN, it’s not as if the UK needs to defend against aerial or land threat to the island in the near future. whatever military engagements will be there would be beyond the shores and should be led by RN. yes, I know Afghanistan is land-locked but an inherently mobile force like a navy doesn’t have too many problems using its land forces IOW marines in such situations.
a much better rationalization could be bringing the BA itself under the control of RN. it makes little sense to have separate land forces.

is it really necessary to post all this here in the IAF thread to help a person who is probably not even reading it ? we don’t even know who he is !
if he was interested enough he could have found the correct information by himself, it’s not that hard to find.

France and dassault’s half hearted bid always surprised me, the mirage is an absolute IAF favourite and with a little more effort, say a proposal to launch development of the higher output m-88 for future rafales and LCA could easily have tilted the competition in its favour.

India already is cooperating with Israel on a host of projects, from co-development of a long range SAM, to launching Israeli spy-sats and developing an unmanned rotary wing UAV. this is over and above the large number of direct purchases, including in sensitive areas like AEW&C, advanced radars and datalinks. India is Israel’s no1 military customer and the recent events have no impact on Indo-Israel relations outside a few statements from ministry of external affairs.