No cruise missiles fired since NATO took over (March 31st), AFAIK. So that can’t explain the discrepancy.

From Maj Gen Lorimer – UK comms officer on Apr 19/20

As part of this operation, a number of Tomahawk missiles were fired by HMS Triumph in the early hours of Monday morning. These were synchronised with precision strikes by Coalition aircraft, including Tornadoes and Typhoons.

A further salvo of Tomahawk missiles was launched by Triumph at additional command and control sites last night.

The RAF PR machine didn’t take long to get the video out! 😀
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7AkFc47Q2I

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12308437
Hi folks this was on the BBC website. I just skimmed through and the pics of CVF are pre SDSR 2010 I’m afraid.

Thanks for the article. I tried not to look at the comments but couldn’t help myself. Sigh.

More construction pics released. We’ve seen plenty of construction from Scotland, these are from Portsmouth.

Isn’t the basic problem that the MoD have been running the operation as though they had a £40bn budget for the last 10 years rather than £36bn and the bow wave of unfunded equipment has just built up to the disaster we now see?

And that’s just looking at the MoD budget rather than any waste inside the MoD!

For those interested on Wednesday Fox, Hague, Letwin & Mitchell went before a defence committee – was very interesting.

If you have a spare hour and a half (and no life!) you can watch the whole thing here
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=7892

Just a few off the top of my head.

No.1 The oil is in Scottish territorial waters. That would make England worse off. Definitely

Hmm, around 89% of it is. And on independence those waters boundaries will be disputed. Not the straight line that exists today.
Oil revenue is 2% of the GDP of the UK, the whole shebang is a political red herring. Notwithstanding the fact it is running out & fast.

No.2 The army. 10% of the population but 15-20% of the army. That would make the English army worse off.

They would just recruit more. And a whole bunch of Scots would still join the army (just like the Irish today) for the ‘action’ especially as any new scottish defence force would be considerably smaller than the amount of Scots in the British Armed Forces currently.

It was a bail-out by a UK government to UK companies that stopped a much much worse crisis.

In the same way it is UK oil. The point he was making was that Scottish taxes would never have been enough to bail out RBS in an independent Scotland.

The West Lothian question needs to be solved. It’s no good moaning about we didn’t vote for Thatcher so the Tories had no mandate – of course they did. These were UK elections and there was no Scottish parliament. You might be interested to know that in the 2005 election England would have had a Tory government so much of what Labour did had no mandate either.

We have had to take the brunt of the Def cuts same as any1 else. And we pay our share in oil money which the gov has robbed off all of years, and guess what it was the gov in westminster that squandered it.

Not to get too far into this debate because its stupid (and ppp does sound like his wife force fed him haggis every day) – Oil money is 2% of GDP. And being in a Union you cannot rob yourself! That’s life, as is the UK taxpayer having to bail out Edinburgh headquarted banksto the tune greater than Scotlands GDP.

As to the question posed originally. If the government can make something as important as Trident replacement political then a couple of RAF bases are easy meat.

I am fascinated to see how the UK Government translate this in terms of defence cuts and capability. I wouldn’t be surprised if it generates some sort of new announcement about capability in the short term…

I would, Cameron could’nt shut up about the need for less ‘cold war’ fast jets in the modern era before the SDSR.

This current government are defecit hawks first, second and last. Hell, Cameron only stood up yesterday and made out the SDSR was correct because we had HMS Cumberland and HMS York in the area. Of course the fact that both those ships are to be decommissioned shortly and we have no ship doing APT(S) as a result seemed to have passed him by!