One of the local Portsmouth MPs (Lib Dem) has apparently been saying the Carriers are safe, which is good.

Details seem to be coming thick and fast right now. Two defence issues so far:

1) Liam Fox is to be new Defence secretary.
2) The commitment to Trident has been confirmed, but will be scrutinised for value for money. This seemed like something EVERY program should be doing. BAE will be less than amused at the thought.

I was surprised but happy with the second one. I thought it might be forced into the SDR.

Not entirely, The RMs still maintain their assault boats for use in conjunction with the helos, but the majority are airlifted in. But it does mean that in a heavily contested environment there are a couple of ways of getting ashore and securing the beachhead nice and quickly.

I can’t however see the use for an amphibious tank, especially where the USN is involved, anything that’d require a tank to deal with (such as other tanks and fortifications) should really have been pounded by NGS, PGMs or attack helos in the opening stages before a landing begins. Everything else should be able to be handled (at least briefly while the beachhead is secured) by the Marines being inserted and helos. If anything a tank is just a larger target for AT missiles.

Just wondering: if the UK for whatever reason doesn’t get F-35Bs, what aircraft could it operate from its new carriers, which will not have catapults? (I know they’re ‘fitted for, but not with’.)

They will have a ski jump however, so could the proposed Sea Gripen operate from these carriers? What about a Super Hornet? I’m thinking about these two types since they are relatively cheap.

Apologies if these are silly questions.

Sea Gripen theoretically could, Super Hornet couldn’t, nor could Rafale or F35C.

Umm apart from that, perhaps the Russian carrier aircraft (Su-33 right?). Can’t think of any others in production.

If we didn’t get F35B it’d either have to work solely as an LPH, or go for a catapult fit.

Are there any obvious things they could improve to increase its passive stealth ability? Retractable fuelling probe? (Why didn’t they do that to start with?),

None of us will be able to accurately answer where Typoon will be then yet because we are yet to see what is being included in T3A let alone T3B which are the timescales we’ll be looking at.

I’d think that AESA would arrive fairly soon so that they don’t lose export prospects. And Meteor will arrive at the same time as it will on Rafale (maybe slightly earlier, aren’t the British taking the first missiles?). Not sure what else may be included, probalby more A2G enhancements and possibly, but less likely, TVC.

Heres a question: Since you all seem so sure that the the armour of the Belgrano would somehow stop all of these missiles from doing much damage, why the hell does no-one armour ships anymore? Generally the stuff that has a use is kept and the stuff that doesn’t, isn’t. Just seems like you all have no faith in SSMs at all. (Personally, i’d send an SSN as per RN doctrine, but SSMs have shown their lethality, even if it hasn’t been against armoured ships.)

Not that any of it matters, armour wasn’t enough to stop Conquerer, which is exactly why we have subs and how we would have dealt with any threat like Belgrano or 25.

Out of interest where wass the armour on Belgrano concentrated? They usually talk about an armour belt, but I don’t have much knowledge of WW2 ship design. SSMs usually strike quite high up on the ship, hitting higher parts of the superstructure, so would the majority of the armour even have been much use?

well is this the same principle as Replica was perported to be for? Namely -We can build our own stealth fighters so take our capability and demands seriously.

I noticed EJ200 wasn’t listed in that article, I wonder if that is an error…

I was wondering that, they did mention a long list to choose from, so those mentioned may not be exhaustive. With them looking into purchasing Typhoon it would make sense to go for a common engine.