Did you at all catch the recent sinking of a South Korean naval ship? The ship was blown in half by a torpedo. That probably was a mini-sub.

Indeed, but if the nations that operate in the gulf were aware of a threat from midget subs in Hormuz i’d rather not put my money on the the midget subs.

They may pose a minor threat for a short amount of time, but one Cheonan type incident against Iran’s major naval rivals in Hormuz and suddenly the 2-4 torpedoes carried won’t seem like enough.

R1 replacement now looks like being a long endurance UAV. This may however be a suitable eventual MRA4 replacement.

Urgh what? Didn’t we just buy RC135’s?

Also worth noting that a number UK Phalanx units are currently being upgraded to block 1b, which will also affect availability.

Which will also help with nocuts’ concerns about small boats, 1B upgrades Phalanx to deal with that threat, although it is massive overkill when a 7.62 or .50 would easily do the job.

Right… Lets kill the entire European defence industry because the USA is “streets ahead”… If i´ve ever heard a completely nonsensical argument this must be it.

Indeed, it’s just suggesting that if someone is better than you at something, you stop trying. How very un-american.

It all comes down to surprise and some sort of way out for the NK’s. If the South/US can be made aware in enough time of any attack from the North they can blunt it with technology on the gournd and of course air power.

If Kim has his back to the wall then who knows…I am not the only one to think that if The Dear Leader Kim sees himself, his army, or his country going down to defeat that he will push the buttton and use the nukes he has at his disposal.

tens of thousands are going to die in this sort of conflagration.

I’d agree with you there. I’d much rather Korea didn’t go back to war because it would cause many deaths on a large scale, it’d also destabilise a region which is one of the few on Earth where the US and China could come head to head directly.

If it did come down to it and we were almost certain NK was going to attack the only way to minimise loss of life would be a US/SK first strike using as many aircraft as they can mass to hit the artillery/SCUD sites that threaten Seoul as well as any other military and nuclear installations they can spare. The most pressing concern for ground forces would be the nuclear sites too, which I think is pretty much current US thinking on the subject.

It might for the sake of stable US/China relations be better if the campaign was more limited to a Yugoslavia style air campaign, with the military threats NK poses being hit from the air without a ground invasion. I don’t know what would really happen after that, any ideas? Would the NK population choose to join with SK on their own if the leadership and military were crippled? Or are they really as brainwashed as some people suggest? If we compare it to the Soviet states, they rebelled eventually as the police state broke down. As I see it, the North Koreans choosing to reunify once the leaders are killed is the only way for reunification to happen without China being able to openly intervene on NK behalf.

This raises a question with me… namely does the RAF really need the B model. Yes I know they want to own everything with a jet pipe, but in reality, other than being able to drop it onto 100m of moving Island every now and again, what operational use does the RAF really have for VSTOL.

Wouldn’t a mixed buy of As and Cs or As and Rafales make more sense.

The RAF would still oversee all the initial flight training up the Hawk then separate for their type conversion and learning how to controlled crash onto the QE.

Actually Kandahar was only suitable for STOVL aircraft for quite a while, hence the use of Harriers over Tornado’s there.

The RAF needs to look at more immediate needs rather than getting into a bun fight over what aircraft the CAVs will use. It need to ensure that it recieves enough Typhhons and that they are all brought up to the latest standard. This means ensuring Tranches 3A and 3B are funded. Even then it will only have a maximum of 7 squadrons. To find funds some of the options that need to be looked at are reducing the Harrier force to 1 squardon of between 18 and 20 aircraft and reducing the Tornado force to one wing of 4 squadrons.

The the new Government revisiting all procurement decisiions made over the past couple of years hopefully the Chinook buy will be re examined. I firmly believe that the Merlin is the right platform the replace the RM Sea Kings but 20-25 new platforms has got to be better that converting the RAF ones. In fact I would but another 10 to 12 Merlins for the RAF to replace the Pumas and cancel the Puma upgrade programme giving the RAF 2 full strenght Merlin squardons. I would buy attrition replacements for the Chinook and Hercules fleets and buy outright the 12 Airbus Tankers, an 8th C-17 and reduce the initial but of the A-400 to between 12 and 15 aircraft. I would finally look for an off the shelf Maritime Patrol platform to suppliment the Nimrod MRA4 fleet, maybe using the same platform as the Sentinal or a turboprop. As an out the box option, could a pallitised package be used in the C-130, A-400 fleets to produce a platform like the USCG Hercs?

Congrats you just killed the RAF transport fleet. We are currently planning on 14 A330’s, not 12, and that is a reduction from 21, which isn’t enough as it is. Adding 1 C17 and cutting half the A400’s won’t exactly help.

And people tend to go a bit nuts with Sentinel, when in actual fat it has a shorter sortie time, can’t be refuelled and can’t carry enough crew to work in shifts or properly analyse the data it is collecting, unlike the Nimrod.

I have another civilised question if you would be so good as to allow it? 🙂

What is wrong with the Vanguard Class of Submarine?

I understood it to be astoundingly good back in the early 90s. Is it not upgradeable or has submarine design really progressed so far?

On another point, nice though navalised typhoon is as an idea, there isn’t a realistic F35 replacement if the UK has ambitions to operate advanced fighter sized aircraft at sea.

Apart from anything else BAE has a massive stake in the production of the aircraft.

I doubt anyone can adequately answer your first question, too little is known about the Vanguards and what has been taken and upgraded for the Astute program. I’d assume that by the time it comes to actually build them in the 2020’s that things will have advanced a bit though, so it’d probably be better to build off the Astute design with a few upgrades rather than take another step back.

@nocuts: The point of the British deterrent is not to overpower the likes of Russia and China, but to ensure that we always have just enough power to inflict unacceptable damage on them should they ever go too far. We don’t need an arms race for that, that’d only be necessary if they could adequately counter our deterrent, when numbers become more important, which they can’t and aren’t.

As long as you now understand that a nuclear cruise missile simply up to the task of deterrence for Britain then that’s all that really matters, as it only leaves SLBMs really.