I was pondering if he was referring to war of independence or falklands.

The French got a bad rap for the Falklands because they were associated with Exocet, which the Tabloids picked up on. In reality they did a lot for the UK in terms of giving them Exocet details and details of French made aircraft etc.

And didn’t Taranis start before the source codes for F35 were denied?

Fact is: the “dead” russian navy comes spying on british SSBNs. British SSNs do not go wandering outside Murmansk. Who’s more “dead”…?

Not the most well reasoned argument i’ve ever heard. British SSNs are usually quite busy and have little need for shows of strength against a country who no longer is any threat to the UK. The Russian’s however are trying to regain their military credibility and flex their aching muscles by flying bombers near to NATO and putting SSNs into the Atlantic. Perhaps that just shows the Russians have more time on their hands.

Did anyone notice in one of the articles on this that they mentioned a crew tansfer from ship to shore was happening at the time of the incident. Perhaps they were practicing inserting the SBS and got a little too close to land.

It may be that Britain doesn’t have the capability to retake the Falklands in 2015, were it to somehow be invaded (the British strategy now is sensibly to simply prevent that from happening to begin with) but by 2020 we would have that capability again, and probably a more powerful capability than we have now, or in 1982, thanks to CVF. The point is that we have the capabilities in the build phase already, how would Argentina really be able to scrape together all the advanced equipment they need when it has’t even been ordered at this point?

One scrapped and a second carrier or Ocean mothballed.

Link please.

The plan is for Ark Royal to be decommissioned but Lusty and Ocean haven’t been mentioned at all today. One of the CVF’s has been mentioned as going into extended readiness though.

what ever they do, I really hate seeing these stories. Yes great success, you caught a drug ship! but you used a sledge hammer to crack a nut – well done.

The Type 45 really doing the job it was created for here.

http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/MilitaryOperations/HmsManchesterCatchesCaribbeanDrugRunners.htm

I really would at this stage advocate, leasing the Port of Spain class OPV from BAE, send 2 of them to the Carib to work out of Barbados doing this same role and waiting for Trinidad to comes to it’s senses.

Ahem T42.

But yes the 3 OPVs would certainly be useful. Use it to cover the Caribbean commitment so that an RN destroyer/frigate can be used elsewhere. The other 2 could either help on that mission/base at Gib and take a Frigate of Med duties/reinforce the Falklands until Endurance comes back or gets replaced (not sure if the OPVs have the right specs for this) or supplement the Coastguard.

I’m pretty sure the expensive bit of the Type 23s isn’t the propulsion, but rather the power plant which is a fuel hungry turbine designed for high speed. Cheap patrols require diesel engines. Removing the turbines is hardly a cheap or practical option.

I’m not sure how cost efficient it would be to give away 4 mid-life frigates to sell 5 frigates, assuming they want to build the ships in Brazil too. Unless there were something more to the deal, the UK would essentially lose money by getting the deal. The Type 23 being mid life could also potentially push the procurement of the 5 frigates back by some years, since the Type 23 would essentially be the replacements. This of course raises the risk that at the end of that period the Brazilians will threaten to drop the deal and go Italian/French unless they get an even better deal.

What you’re not taking into account is that the UK may well be about to cut those 4 frigates from the fleet in the SDSR anyway. That has been suggested in several rumours over the last few days. If that is the case it makes sense to use them for something else useful.