Liger30Either i missed the irony or you have a great opinion of them that i really can’t share.
Fox is noticeable only for his nice speaks so far, and for the letter that very rightly points out some of the main flaws in the current cuts plan. But if he fails to get the NSC understanding that, he’ll still be another failed minister for defence.
Osborne will be valued in time when the full effect of the cuts inexorably brings at least a few months more of recession in the UK economy. He can brag all he wants, but the cuts are going to have a deep impact over the economy and especially on jobs.
He also understands nothing of foreign policy/defence, and this we can say clearly already now.
Cameron is hard to judge. His stance on defence is foolish if we listen to the press, and he’s been unable so far to score any significant achievement in foreign policy and i’m guessing that even into Great Britain he’s not managed much either, so far at least.
Only good part was the mildly-hawkish stance on the Falklands against the absurd claims of Argentina, but this is general UK policy, and they should have been more vocal still.
On defence, he’s betraying years of activity in the opposition.
Easy to protest the cancellation of the 7th and 8th Type 45 and then come in power and destroy even the capabilities already available, faking to forget everything they said earlier.
For politicians is normal, but if i or you make it, it is called Fraud.
Liger30Actually, most of EVERY weapon system IN THE WHOLE WORLD was designed in Cold War time, not just the UK’s gear.
But this review is not about realism, nor about actual strategic needs. It is about budget cuts and what mr. Cameron wants for the future.
Unfortunately, he fails to realize that as powerful as he may be as first minister, he definitely does not decide how the future looks.
And he’ll also learn that he’ll rapidly become internationally far weaker than he is now when his words will not be backed by the Roosvelt “big stick” that’s the military might of your nation.
Liger30Wasn’t it here already?
I remember seeing this video before. However, thank you. Better than any gloomy cut proposal over RN ships.
I’m sick of cuts.
Liger30If it was an attempt of industry to sell bigger and costier ships i don’t know, but to give the requested performances of 25 knots max speed, 18 for Task Force ops and 7000 naval miles max range every study ended up agreeing that the scale was to shift more on the 100 meters/3000 tons extreme than the 2000 tons size.
As to tankers being cheaper, they are so cheap that the RN already tried 3 times and 3 times failed at getting 800 millions for six oil tankers.
And this is without considering the risks and expense on the long term of continuously providing RAS to many ships all around the ocean.
And oil tankers are cheaper than frigates, but i have doubts on a combination frigates + lots of tankers against a fleet of more autonomous ships.
Liger30Weird. I’d thought they’d have a better reach than the Type 23. But they are older, and evidently their machinery is less effective. This would also explain why they are generally tasked to the gulf, but never really farther than that.
Liger30Not exactly true. It depends on how you need to deploy your ships. If they can’t get there on their own legs, you have to use more oil tankers to get them there.
More oil tankers means more hull needed, more crews, more training.
Or it means useless ships which can’t go where they are needed, and thus are of very little use. If you need hulls to cover the holes in your capability to deploy in key areas, you need hulls that can go in those areas.
Otherwise, it is not worth buying the hull.
By the way the Type 23 is a 4900 tons, 133 meters, 9000 miles at 15 knots vessel, and the Type 22 B3 at over 5000 tons is unlikely to be so short-legged. I can’t find a data about range at the moment, but 4500 miles seems too little.
Liger30Not a bad idea, however MK8 Mod 1 is significantly larger than a 76 mm gun. It is wise to question ourselves if it would ever fit on a Khareef hull and the answer may easily be “no”.
At 99 meters long, their hulls don’t offer that much space. 99-110 meters was expected to be the size for C3 originally, so we have to keep in consideration the limits in size and range for the ship.
What use can the Uk make of a Khareef with 3500 miles range? It is next to useless unless it is escorted and continuously resupplied by (inexistent) RFA oil tankers.
The realistic requirement in range for the RN was always stated as around 7000 miles, for the C3. There are problems to overcome, obviously.
Liger30@Lindermyer
How often have RM been used as RM? Last time it was in 2003, Iraqi campaign, Al-Faw peninsula. Earlier, they had been inserted by Helicopter into Afghanistan from HMS Ocean.
Not much time has passed from both ops, i’d say. Earlier we had Falklands.
Italy is continental and has 200 homebuilt Ariete tanks. Spain i don’t know, but hardly has many more, and it is also continental. The UK is an island.
I never suggested losing all the UK tanks, but an Armoured Brigade could be cut with its vehicles put in storage and the two Armoured Infantry battalions used as Light Role. It would be far less dramatic a cut than losing amphibs forever.
RECCE formations are important for reconnaissance and combat screening. While some cuts can be taken in this sector, the value of the RECCE formations is too easily overlooked lately, i noticed more than once.
Anyway right question is if the UK going to “have to stop an armored thrust” anytime soon?
Observations:
1 – it would be able to deploy a single armored brigade anyway, so it would not change much.
2 – UK forces are well supplied with Javelin (possibly 550 launchers + 4400 missiles + a more recent order for additional 1200/1300 to cover usage in Afghanistan, albeit precise data is classified), NLAW and possibly Apache overhead as well, with air cover: a formation of Tornado/Typhoons with Brimstones could devastate a tank force in no time. Tornado carries 12 missiles, Typhoon will carry up to 18. 4 planes could in theory destroy from 48 to 72 tanks in one go.
3 – An attack on an enemy capable to launch any serious armoured thrust against british forces is most likely going to be faced as part of a coalition.
The absence of Challengers would be felt more because the soldiers would be unable to exploit their precise firepower, mobile-screen and psychologic effect to advance and seize their targets than because they would be unable to respond to enemy armour attack.
A Commando force of 4 Battalions hardly looks unsustainable. I never suggested to expand them to USMC levels (200.000 men! The whole armed forces of the Uk haven’t that force!), i suggested to make operative ONE more battalion by keeping current size of the 3 Commando but creating a full-marine Commando unit to replace 1 RIFLES.
My proposal is less ambitious than the earlier one discussed when there were still hopes to have a STRATEGIC and not Budgetary review, to expand all infantry battalions to 750 men after experience of Afghanistan ops where battalions unsurprisingly proved to be sorta too small.
Losing 1 RIFLE as part of cuts is eventually because of a policy of definitely-non-strategic cuts, hardly justifiable just because a new Commando is created.
As to the assumption that the army can’t be cut their bit right now, i don’t agree.
As to the Chinooks order, it seems to have already been halved from 22 to 12, 2 of which replace airframes lost in Afghanistan, so no worries.
Also because the Sea King HC4 and Pumas are set to be lost, so hardly will you be lamenting overabundance of utility choppers anyway.
Liger30@nocutstoraf
Oh, no worries. I won’t get angry and i do get your point very well. It is not like i didn’t see it myself, but you’ve explained it all too well.
Translated brutally, it means that unfortunately the UK is turning into a Guardian pet, and this scares me, but i guess i can do nothing about it. History will fix that herself eventually, like she always does at some point.
I’d only ask one question: you really think that becoming internationally irrilevant won’t, maybe not immediately, but in the long term, impact dramatically on the world and on your current standard of living that you are obviously all so keen to maintain?
Hoping to always live like you were citizens of a major power, or even hoping to improve further, while letting your industries whiter and your international relevance vanish looks hopelessly optimistic.
It will be very hard to play indipendentism from Europe while simultaneously shrinking more and more while retaining so high ambitions.
That’s the basic point i fear the british public is missing.
Liger30It’s an observation i make from looking at the Uk from the outside. The difference is massive.
If you want to take it as an offence, i can’t stop you from doing it. Personally, i’d think about it however.
The UK as a nation seems to be turning to a surrendering entity who still is a global power, but pretty much wants to disappear from the scene and be it no more. And it is a process going on from long time by now.
Liger30I wonder if your soldiers and the Britons who stay back at home are the same race and really come from the same island, i swear.
There’s a whole universe of difference.
Liger30all this talk of the Homicide of Great Britain sounds a little, well Un-British?….
Sorry, but i don’t get your point.
For me, un-british is being unable to build a ship without having to ship in polish workers who built the URSS submarines. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti…=feeds-newsxml) because shipbuilding in the UK is being killed year after year.
Un-britishness is the constant pathetic and ill-informed and irrational crying and bitching of “we can’t afford it! We are no empire anymore!”.
Total un-britishness is sea-blindness who makes the people of the greatest marittime power in History neclect their navy and behave like they are a small continental region sitting somehow behind the protection of an US army in Europe that’s no more and behind the shoulders of allies that actually can do less than the UK can and that tomorrow will generally be able to do even less.
THIS is un-british.
And sorry if i so dearly miss the time in which people would say “Be British!” as a way to resume some of the most admirable qualities a person can have, when the UK was capable to build the Concorde, invent the Hovercraft, the tank, the aircraft carrier, build the longest hover bridge in the world and so along.
Now it seems that all the UK can do is cry “it costs too much!”, either it is building satellites or spending a bunch of pennies on the defence needs of the country.
Liger30Utterly agree.
Air Mobility of great military forces is quite a dream. The Sheridan, X8 light tank and the many “air mobile” armoured vehicles produced by the russians have all enjoyed a short and not very succesful life.
Even parachute assaults are getting more and more a matter for special forces, or anyway a mean to carry out a rapid, small scale raid, but no one would ever dare launching a modern-version of Market Garden!
The US cancellation of the Future Combat System vehicles and the death of the FRES “C130 mobility” requirement are the latest gravestones set over the concept of large forces deployed by the air.
We still have difficulties moving in by helicopter a L118 gun with a light tractor and the needed stock of ammo, and we brag about power projection by the air!
Madness!
At the end, it is always an un-cool but reliable ship which brings the stuff where it is needed. Yet people forgets it so easily!
Liger30Unfortunately, there’s not much to say/show for the moment. There’s not even certainty to get the damn ships yet, even now that the first is being built.
Think i wouldn’t like to have lots of images of QE coming together? Unfortunately, political babbling is what we get for now instead.
Liger30@Lindermyer
I share the obsession for amphibious power projection with the US, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, China, Russia (Mistrals buy goes in that direction) and even Chile and Brazil and others on a smaller scale, thank you. I’m in company of most of the world’s population, so i don’t feel like i’m alone. It looks like Japan might join soon, and already has some capability (in terms of Landing Craft, the LCAC US Style is ages away of Uk capability to say it all, even. Another example of british failure: have a smart idea, design a revolutionary concept, and then almost completely neclect it as the rest of the world gorges on it…)
I also have many, many strategicians of every age who have been very vocal in explaining the role played by the sea in war and in international policy, so i’m totally comfortable on my own positions, reinforced by the fact the RM did fight EVERYWHERE in EVERY single war the UK has faced from the IIWW onwards.
A fourth Battalion for 3 Commando Brigade IS by any mean needed, so much so that 1 RIFLES was configured as Light Role infantry and attached to 3 Commando and put under operational command of the Royal Navy’s Marine commanders.
692 men are by any mean trainable to Commando standards if there’s the will to do it. There’s not such thing as “unfeasible”.
Another Commando unit releasing 1 RIFLES means having one more deployable unit for the whole spectrum of operations from COIN to High End warfare.
It is unfeasible until generals brag about Cold War relics while hiding under the carpet the fact the UK still has an Army of the Rhine structured with heavy battle tanks waiting for hordes of T72s to come from Russia swarming into West Germany.
The real Cold War relic, in other words.
But even if the army escapes most of the cuts, many regiments will re-role to Light Role anyway, with armor being mothballed. Create a stable, true Royal Marine unit would fit perfectly into the same strategy.
The fact people is blind and won’t do it does not mean it couldn’t be done.
As to every brigade being capable to do amphibious assaults, it is true to a certain degree. You need to train them for it. They are not Commando, but they need to say what to do.
Moreover, they need the SHIPS and the LANDING CRAFTS and the people who drives the LANDING CRAFTS.
If you lose these components, good luck in sending an Armoured Division doing an amphibious landing.
Challenger IIs Duplex-Drive…? 😀
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