Grim901My wife says Bath, but you all sound the same to me….:cool:
ducks behind parapet and looks over shoulder for misses.
ahem :mad:. Bath is for the posh Bristolians to escape to. And for some reason all their buildings are 2000 years old, they need to update 😛 And they don’t even produce any defence equipment.
Runs away.
Grim901http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon
surely adaptable to our purpose….and designed in Bristol!
All the best stuff comes from Bristol :P.
Ah well, i wonder if they are very collectable. I hope so if not intresting reads for kids if they have an intrest. We did have awesome rocket names namely thanks to our rocket men 😀 men with beards given a chunk of the Isle of Wight and some money and left alone.
The Clansman radio a nice big brick that also could stop bullets alongside other uses. Signals blokes make bloody good PC repair blokes as well but they are best left alone to talk to the technology.
I’ve always fancied building a big secret rocket base on Ascension Island or one of the other isles in the South Atlantic nice and quiet out of the way. Perfect for secret stuff also since it southern it’s not totally covered by tracking radars.
Im sure at some point mankind will unite to go into space and we’ll build some big starships. It’s only a matter of time i hope, first step is back to the moon which i think will be possible. Build a moonbase and ****** off into space once we have health and other issues nailed.
Joking aside, Ascension would be a damn good place for a spaceport (if there is enough room) right near the equator (the reason we use the French territory in South America) and not near anyone who might not like it.
Grim901You see part of me wonders if we should try to steal a lead and forget “conventional” forces and go for something a little more “out there” and start funding a space programme and build a hypersonic sub-orbital bomber….
….sorry i’ll put my old collecton of Eagle comics down now…:D
Weren’t the Americans toying with a sub-orbital bomber a while back, Hypersoar or something.
We should just get it over with and build a honking great spaceship to dominate the planet, I call it a “Deathstar”. Everyone who’s ever watched a Hollywood movie already knows, the English are the bad guys, so we may as well play to it.
Grim901I wouldn’t go that far, I’d like all the UK armed forces to get adequate funding:cool:
I would say though if you’re building an expeditionary focused military then a very strong Navy makes an awful lot of sense.
As our armed forces are.
I’d also like to see the armed forces well funded, but i’d focus on the Navy once all service had enough.
Grim901Yep that Time article made him out to look a complete pillock, next time he starts talking about potential cuts to defence programmes it might be a good idea if he didn’t admit that he didn’t know what he was talking about in the next sentence.
Mr R B for Minister of Defence? We’d have a bloody good navy that’s for sure.
And by extension the best possible armed forces for Britain. The best soldiers are marines and the most useful air units are carrier based 😛
Flubba i’m with you, the Navy should be the defence priority usually.
Grim901[QUOTE=Flubba;1460283]Yeah things have not been moving much recently after the election i would expect things to be more active. Richard Beedall for defence minister anyone? He’d get my vote no problem. (
Grim901@matt: Pretty much what we all knew already but what the government and the oppositon have both refused to admit. The defence sector is important and our last manufacturing lifeline. I know we shouldn’t decide cntracts based on where the work happens, but at the moment i’d rather see contracts go to slightly more expenisve UK companies and helping the economic situation, than to foreign companies that will disappoit just as often as the UK industry without any benefits whatsoever.
Grim901An interesting thing i just read is that HMS Vanguard is being fitted with the new Core H for it’s PWR2 reactor. The rest of the SSBN’s will be fitted with this core as they go through refueling refit. This is the same reactor core that is being fitted to the Astute class to allow them no need to be refuelled during their life time. This technically will allow the Vanguards to run for another 25 years before requiring refuelling. If this is the case what is the main reason the Vanguard’s can’t be keep on for longer?
I would think the hull was pretty strong and could keep going until the american’s have the new missile ready and are replacing the Ohio’s. Look at HMS Sceptre see was launched in 1979 and will keep going until 2010 at least.
What are the main issues that are preventing the RN from SLEPing for 10 years?
They are having to SLEP them for 5 years to take them out to 2023. And maybe the reactors can be loaded with a different amount of fuel (not sure as they don’t exactly brag about how these sub cores work). And the design life of the Vanguards may just be shorter, the equipment may be more sensitive than on an SSN out of necessity for an SSBN etc.
There are plenty of possible reasons that we could not know because it is classified. They wouldn’t be desperately trying to replace them if they could avoid it, look at the SSN fleet. Swiftsure should have gone years ago, but they could avoid it, so it is still here. If they say it can’t be done for Vanguard, we just have to accept it.
Grim901We’ve already paid about 25% of the bill, for development & setting up production. Do the penalty clauses mean we get it all back if we cancel?
Clobbers the British firms building large parts of it, as well, if we cancel & buy American. Neither C-17 nor C-130J have significant UK content, unlike A400M.
Another major problem with cancelling A400M is the likelihood of the wing manufacturing being moved away from Filton to somewhere overseas. I doubt we could get Boeing to start local production either unless we ordered a massive number of a/c.
I think his point about penalty clauses was for not cancelling Typhoon/CVF. I think out of all our major programs A400M is the one we can most easily get rid of. The money invested isn’t too high, it has decent alternatives and would not cost as many jobs as the others. Still we would need firm commitment to replace them with other a/c, which defeats the point of making these stupid and massive cuts. If they cut something, I doubt we’ll see a replacement.
Grim901thank god for penalty clauses.
The only way it seems to keep a british government doing what they said they would do!.
Im all for the A400M cancellation. Buy more C-130’s and C-17s
Leave the euro fighter and carriers alone.
I know though knowing our policitians they will scrap the JSF deal and say we can make do with Harriers. Or only buy 30.
If I was in government i’d make sure I included penalty clauses so that if I got kicked out it’d be too late to scrap important projects.
The only issue I have with scrapping A400M is if we can’t recoup any/most of our costs, then it’d be pointless really. I think we’d also have to wait quite a while for more C-130’s and C17’s. But in the long run i’d rather have C-130’s so that it’d be easier to justify KC and AC variants being bought.
And if they scrap the carriers they’ll almost certainly scrap JSF as pointless. Add that to scrapping Typhoon and Britain has suddenly lost it’s naval power projection and the majority of it’s fast jet force. All that would happen before an SDR could be completed so would be entirely a knee-jerk reaction to 12bad months for the economy and would **** up our country’s defence for the next 30-50 years. In short George Osborne is a short sighted ******.
Grim901http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6835280.ece
Dear god and to think I am campaigning for them. Ill stop today
Now I feel ill.
I couldn’t care less if A400M was scrapped for now, in fact i’d welcome it, because the Tories would effectively be forced to buy more C17’s unless they actually want to wave their dicks at our troops and the war in Afghanistan.
Typhoon doesn’t need a decision for a few years now (2012) as 3A has been signed and done with. They can put that off until the finances are a little better, but eventually they’re going to have to buy something to use.
I just hope that the contracts for the carriers is too far gone and too much work has been done for them to cancel them. It’s the second CVF i’m particularly worried about because they’ll try and justify doing something stupid like only buying the first.
The fact that the chancellor is saying this not the defence secretary tells me that they won’t care what we need, only what we can buy, thus making the upcoming SDR pointless. The Tories have managed to snub out the last faint hope that made me want to vote for them.
Grim901Doc, can we please at least try to stay on topic. I don’t mid wondering off every so often but this history stuff is boring the hell outta me.
On a more topical note, I was sat in an airport departure lounge yesterday and found a fascinating article against de-nuclearisation, which i’ve always been against anyway. See what you think:
Grim901Not to sure about that to be honest Grim, by withholding SSBNs from the SDR all you do is give ammunition to its opponents, the labour party did the same thing at the last SDR. Personally I think it would make more sense for it to be included, it would almost certainly be found that it offered the best deterrent for the money anyway.
It probably would, but could well hold up on starting the project (I think we’ll see freezes on most large decisions that aren’t urgent until after SDR certainly, I’m not sure if SSBN’s might in some way get stuck for a while despite the urgency of replacing them).
And once they’re built/building, the money has been spent. So what if the opponents don’t like it, by the time they have a chance to be in power it could really be too late. Especially since the majority of MPs are still in favour of it.
Nothing good can really come from putting in the SDR except as a chance for people to try and get it cancelled entirely or for some idiot to come to the wrong conclusion. The fact that so many stupid ideas have been put forth by important people suggests he is making the right choice and avoiding the problem of telling them they’re wrong.
Grim901Some good news from my pro-SSBN point of view.
This was in an defensenews interview with Liam Fox (the soon to be defense secretary):
Q. Will SDR address the nuclear deterrent?
A. Some things are non-negotiable. Britain must retain a nuclear deterrent in a world where nuclear proliferation is becoming more widespread. We believe a submarine deterrent is the best way of doing that. The idea of nuclear [air]-launched cruise [missiles] is a nonstarter in my view and isn’t something I intend the SDR to look at.
At least we know he isn’t a complete moron.
Grim901I’m hoping after the next SSBNs are finished they will go straight onto the next SSN class, with production being spun out to include the Astute replacement as they come to the end of their lives.
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