Yes, we all have heard this automatic retoric before. Do you want to continue to make this a Falklands thread? I don’t, so here is the last I will say about this issue on this thread: Argentina will never, ever, stop claiming. Having said that, by our laws, by our politicians, population and military, the use of force is not a possibility, not now, and not in the next 2 generations at least. Many things need to change dramatically for this matter to degenerate into a new armed conflict.

If you feel like you need a constant enemy to justify the defence expenditure, you will not find it on us.

Your nation won’t be a enemy perhaps, but for sure it is not being friendly at all to the UK, nor to the Falklands. Your claim is an invasion, for the people of the Falklands do not want you.

You do not see the difference? Behind also those naval power projection are Marines and landing ships. -> Boots on the Ground.

Ask me if the amphibs should go with the UK and I say no.

What is your point then?
I’m the greatest supporter ever of Marines and amphibious ships, and i’m the first who says that power projection is possible if you have the capability to bring boots on the ground to conclude the campaign.

But this also means you need carriers and airplanes to support your attempt to project power, otherwise it simply does not work.
If the price to retain the CVFs and the amphibious capability has to be losing an armored brigade, so be it. It is still a win.
Doing the opposite is a loss instead.

Ask US marines to go anywhere without air cover from embarked planes, and hear the answer!
Royal Marines need air cover in exactly the same fashion. So, CVFs are a must.

Power Protection with national assets alone is something no European country is capable of doing against any modern state. Without a doubt the UK could do power projection in Africa, like the French do, but in the end who would willingly take any responsibility for that ****hole.

This is your assumption.

If you ask France, Italy or Spain, they will answer you that they believe very firmly in power projection.
I don’t know who said you that power projection is no objective of European militaries anymore.

The Cavour and the Lagunari (italian Marines), the Mistrals, the Juan Carlos I and the Galicia ships and all the rest… They ARE power projection tools, and no one in Europe (apart from UK) is thinking about giving that up.
Italy dreams to build a new 15.000 tons LHD class to replace the San Giorgio ships, actually, and planning to buy Iveco 8×8 amphibious IFVs to create an amphibious armoured group and replace us-built AAV7. The US marines are looking at the same Iveco platform to replace their LAV vehicles. There is also an ambition to get Scalp Navale or Tomahawk at some point.
France is building a 3th Mistral and developing faster and bigger landing crafts. It also plans to deploy Scalp missiles on submarines and FREEM frigates.
Spain is getting into service the Juan Carlos I and recently bought Tomahawk missiles from the US.

I’d like to know from where you are getting this absurd idea that power projection ambitions in Europe are over. Actually, the major nations are trying to INCREASE their capability in this sector.

I’d like to know what gives you the certainty that such scenario is “non possible” and “non existant”. Give me good reasons that go past the facts i could instead list out to make evident how much Argentina still craves the islands and how much a big oild find will increase their hunger.

I’d like to know on what basis you rule out a new clash in the future.
Because your last point is a wish, not a sound reasoning. It is almost weaker than the “Never again war!” agreement of Chamberlain and Hitler in Munich in 1938.
That one agreement wasn’t worth the paper it was written upon. With Argentina there’s not even that inconsistent agreement.

I think no one in the Uk wants a war, but you’d be shocked by how many Argentinians get hot when it comes to the Malvinas. Schools in Argentina still teach the children that the islands are Malvinas, not Falklands. That they are Argentine, but the evil Uk stole them.
You still find “Malvines son argentines!” writings on the road signals in Argentina.

And the last 15 september, less than ten days ago, Argentine extreme militants belonging to a self proclaimed “Patriotic resistance” have taken over the Panama flagged Audax II docked in the port of Buenos Aires, which they allege was originally Argentine but lost to the British during the 1982 Falkland Islands conflict.
http://en.mercopress.com/2010/09/15/argentine-militants-demand-return-of-falklands-war-booty-docked-in-buenos-aires

This is old of merely 12 hours: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3149443/Oil-out-war-as-Argies-call-for-help.html

Cristina Kirchner publicly thanked Uruguay for banning a Royal Navy warship from docking.

And she slammed Britain for wanting to “exhaust” her country’s natural resources. The tirade included what sounded like a call to arms to Uruguay president Jose Mujica – suggesting their countries form a “joint defence”.

Referring to Britain, Kirchner ranted: “We know they are coming to exhaust our natural resources. They may come for the oil, they may come for the fish. They are after Argentina today, maybe they will be after Uruguay tomorrow if they feel they are lacking something up there.

“I appreciate the eternal solidarity Uruguay has showed towards the Malvinas (Falkland Islands). For this is a question that belongs to the whole of South America.”

The Royal Navy confirmed Uruguay blocked the HMS Gloucester from taking on fuel and supplies last week before heading to the Falklands. A spokesman said it “respected” the decision.

Uruguay backs Argentina’s claim over the Falklands and the two countries have been trying to foster closer ties.

UK firm Rockhopper Exploration has said its Sea Lion field discovery could generate £2.5billion in tax for the Falklands over the next 20 years.

I’m not saying there will be a war tomorrow. But my facts are a bit more consistent than your happy claims, and it would be stupid to make the same error the UK did in 1981 yet another time.
I think once is enough to learn certain lessons.

Second carrier or “anything else” is nonsense.

You’ve already bought aircraft lifts, engines and steel for TWO carriers. You’ve got the design ready and going. You’ve the first ship 25% built. You have the infrastructure ready, the dock enlarged and the crane in position. It is all ready and working.

You already have amphibious ships, you don’t need new ones urgently because you are actually risking losing the ones you’ve got.
There is no real “anything else” that can take PoW’s place.
Another single-ship-of-the-class experiment like Ocean, this time a LHD…? You’ll have to design that, from scrap or modyfing an existing design. It wouldn’t be what the RN need, it wouldn’t give enough work to the industry compared to the second carrier, it wouldn’t have the same value in money, yet between cancellation, new design work and everything it would cost as much as PoW.

Type 26 is still to come, and anyway, to pretend to exchange a carrier for frigates while ensuring the industry gets the same amount of contracted money and work means either building a whole class of frigates (can’t see that happening, and i think no one sees that) or building a frigate putting down one plate of steel each week to drag it long and give work to everyone for the contracted time.

It is ridiculous to even just think about it.
It should be time to get serious and stop kidding: either it’s the carriers, or is nothing. It is what the nation needs, it is what industry needs, it is what you signed contracts for.

No wonder all MOD programmes get over budget and late during time: the damn government continues to screw with MOD planning and forcing programmes to be torn to pieces and started from scrap all over again every damn time. What the hell! Make your mind up, and then be it!

Frankly, i have serious troubles understanding what kind of strategy some of you envision for the UK.
Build QE alone, put it in a deck like Invincible (poor ship, sacrileged like that…) and buy F35A of ZERO relevance whatsoever.
Sacrifice aircraft carriers for frigates and SSNs… But you really are so blind to think that if the RN does not get the CVFs it will really get more destroyers/frigates…? How can you possibly believe such a lie is beyond me. The best case is that renouncing to the carriers would save the Type 42 and 22 early retirement, but this wouldn’t change the fact that in a few years they would be lost all the same, with NO certainties at all about getting high numbers of frigates either.
What the hell do you do with F35A, another airplane stuck to land bases, if the UK is not going to fight back invasions anytime soon, only one point on which everyone pretty much agree…? The RAF has got Typhoon. Stop it already, and get something YOU CAN ACTUALLY USE in any circumstance.
F35B/C work from carriers as well as from land bases, but F35A can’t do the same. It is cheaper, but it is also nearly USELESS.
I can see the F35A becoming Super Tucano in the years before a order is placed, if this line of thought is followed: without carriers, we spell the end of Britain indipendent capability. Lately we’ve heard “power projection” being deemed: unaffordable, impossible for the UK, not needed, irrealistic.

Beware, Britons, that a definitive decision is at stake: the risk is a new “East of Suez” decision that spells the end of the Britain we have known.
If the carriers once more lose, if the line that gets accepted is “UK will only contribute to allied ops”, the UK will effectively end being an independent nation.
If this line wins, i see it hard to get F35A: it will emerge that to participate to allied missions so many planes are not needed. So advanced and expensive fighters are excessive. We’ll buy less of them, we’ll keep just Typhoon, we buy the army a bunch of Super Tucano for counteinsurgency. That is the path the Uk risks taking, beware! It won’t be in 10 years perhaps, but someone recently said “we don’t want Britain to become a belgium with nukes.”

Yeah. It could lose the nukes as well, in future. Some of the plans suggested for the replacement of Trident (“we keep the warheads and scrap all the rest”) are RIDICULOUS. What kind of deterrence would come from a bunch of warheads that everyone knows pretty much can’t be delivered anywhere?
It could easily lose nukes as well, and we have lots of people who’d be all too happy:

Tessa Munt, the MP for Wells, said the cost of the nuclear deterrent should be compared with those of housing, education and health. Speaking in the debate, Munt said she would quit as a whip over the issue “if it had to come to it”. Munt said the cost of Trident should be compared with the costs of the “housing, education, health, social care needs that we have”.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno, the Lib Dem peer, asked where the UK’s “moral lead” would be if the country said to nations such as Iran and North Korea: “We can do it, but you can’t.” To applause, * he said he backed complete nuclear disarmament.
Lady Williams, the co-founder of the SDP, which eventually merged with the Liberal party to form the Lib Dems, said Trident was “a cold war weapon, and it was sort of my impression that we’d moved on from the cold war. We ought to think a bit more about what we want to do in the world**.”
Nick Clegg told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday that he did not think people would understand “why we would sort of exempt Trident from the same financial pressures when people are having some of their benefits qualified in different ways”.

*= How you can clap to this kind of childish rhetoric is a mystery yet to solve.
**= UK is ahead of everyone. Smarter than US, Russia, France, China and India (and in different ways Pakistan and North Korea and possibly Israel), who unfortunately are all stupid and have not noticed the Cold War is over. The UK in fact should warn the world about the end of the Cold War, and spend even more on international aid. With the demise of defence, there’a s nearly a whole 2% of GDP to dispose of! Cheer up everyone! Santa Uk is coming to reward all of you!

Without power projection, everything else loses sense.
It is a very dangerous state of mind to enter:
If you decide you don’t want to be able to project power anymore, you need: less air tankers. No amphibious shipping. Less air transport.
No carriers to protect. No SSBNs to defend. Why SSNs then? Scrap them and get a handful of diesel electric subs. They are cheaper! They lack range, but we are not going anywhere, right?
No carriers to protect. No SSBNs. No power projection to make. Why so many frigates and destroyers? We don’t need them, we need cheap patrol ships to fight off RPG-armed pirates and “protect british coasts”. (From what? illegal fishing? Illegal immigrants? If the UK coasts ever will be directly menaced again, it will be by warships that an OPV certainly won’t be able to bother)
Why so many jet fighters and tanks? Not needed. A bunch for protection of the sky of Britain, and they are already too much!
We’ll keep instead 100.000 soldiers (i won’t say it is a ridiculous number, but i’m honestly tempted to) to “collaborate with allies”, and have them well supplied with Mastiff vehicles and supported by a Sapper unit with Talisam anti-IED task force and a bunch of Super Tucano and a few M777 howitzers… no, forget that, keep the L118 is cheaper…! and use them for the “Wars among People!”
USA will love us!

You know what this all translates to?
More Afghanistan-style ops. Which happens to go in contrast with the stated policy that the Uk for at least ten years will avoid this kind of bloody tangles. Does it make sense? NO.
It will mean more (???) boots on the ground, to make generals and “desk-strategist” military experts happy. Unfortunately, it also mean more dead boys to cry for, because no matter how well equiped they’ll be against RPGs and IEDs, it is far cheaper and easier to get a RPG that holes thicker armor than design armor that defeats the RPG. (example: RPG29 supplied to Hezbollah, vaunted israeli Merkava tanks burning)
At the same time, it means political irrilevance on the global stage. From Falklands to anything else, the UK would no voice, because its voice would then be “the allies”. And we all know there are no allies that would bother for the Falklands, and for so many other possible british interests being menaced. Unless, of course, the Falklands hold a fortune in oil, and the allies gorge on that fortune.
Hell, the European Union has so far been unable to even just reprimand the Spanish Coast Guard that roams at will into Gibraltar’s waters! What the hell do you expect to get?

Now, i know it, i’ll have people shouting “drama!” “irrealistic!” “scaremongering!” at me, but i invite everyone here to think about it a moment before you do.
Because i based myself on very real things that have been suggested for the “new place of the Uk in the world” that is to be decided by the SDSR. There will be cuts. There can be cuts that leave the UK standing, but there are others which will kill off most of the Great Britain we know as a nation and politic power.

We had an “East of Suez” review.
The carriers were lost to an air force which had produced false maps with Australia being closer of hundreds of miles to close frightening gaps in coverage.
Coverage that was to be given with TSR2 (cancelled) and then F111 (never bought).
Result of that disaster: everyone lost. The Navy, the Air Force, the british aerospace industry, the shipbuilding, the military and the nation itself.

I higly warn you about the long term dangers. The aircraft carrier row is not about two ships and 10 billions worth of planes.
Just like last time, it is about a choice of policy. The RAF laughed when the navy lost the carriers, but soon enough the RAF bases around the world were lost. The F111 bomber promised to enter service in place of the cancelled, immensely superior and BRITISH TSR2 ended up being a whole different thing from the “cheap” plane it was expected to be (Buy abroad and save!!!) and it risked costing more than design and build the TSR2 at home.
It was never acquired.
Now, if CVFs goes, what will the “fall-out” post-explosion effect be like?
There’s little bases left to lose: Diego Garcia is already US only, pretty much. Akrotiri could follow. Dhekelia is already proposed for closure.
Gibraltar and Mount Pleasant complete the picture.
Last time it was F111, and the RAF was the “winner”.
Now, if the army wins and the RN and RAF both lose… you really expect to see F35, no matter the type, in UK service?

It is not about two ships. It is about the shape the UK takes in the next 50 years, its policy, its industry, its economy and relevance in the world.
It may become a belgium with nukes.

It may lack even the nukes. Or have a base full of warheads it can’t realistically deliver anywhere, which deter no one, which cost and pose a danger to the community, and lure protestors from all over the country if not, far worse, terrorists from all over the world. Which would be even worse than having none.

And just to shock you all even more, so that you call me “dramatic scaremonger” more happily, i will add that the thing that scares me the most is that if i explain this “evolution” to certain britons (if i publish it on the Guardian, for example) i’ll get a lot of comments of this kind:

“Yes! We won’t waste billions in evil weapons anymore! We are no empire anymore! We don’t need to spend all that money in tanks and fighters and ships we don’t need! Now we can spend it all on schools and hospitals!”

A few hundred thousands workers in defence industry and shipbuilding and aerospace will lose their jobs, and the UK will lose a 35-billions a year industry, but hey.
If the engineers are a little bit lucky, abroad they’ll find who will welcome them on their knees and build bridges of gold for them: from India to Russia to France and even to Italy.

All the places where, silly them, they still want a defence industry, and dream of expanding their share of market in the world.
How stupid of them! Will they ever learn they don’t need that…?
Because of course Italy can’t afford to domestically produce Beretta guns and sell them to the world, US armed forces included.
Can’t afford to build tanks, 8×8 and IFVs and armored vehicles of all kinds at home. Can’t afford to build Lince and sell to the Uk to see it called Panther.
Can’t afford to build ships at home.

No, no. Cheaper to buy abroad.

Have you ever thought that perhaps it was better to keep british defence industry alive, like when people would buy Centurion tanks from the UK and love them, like when Italy bought the legendary DeHavilland Vampire, and so along…? Like when FAC missile boats were built by Vosper, like when british built ships were known and admired all over the world…?

What’s left of your defence industry costs so much because the thick of the industrial capability was destroyed over the years by foolish decisions like killing the TSR2, and now what you get is never new enough to appeal the market (save for the Type 45 that though is too expensive), never competitive in terms of prices and most of the time simply isn’t british, but is effectively bought abroad and then masked up as british.

You say the MOD is wrong on procurement why it tries to buy british. Wrong.
It was the destruction of british industry that was wrong and is now paid dearly. The alternative is destroy the little that’s left.
France and Italy, even Germany, can say they buy shamelessly from home industry: beretta, Oto Melara, Iveco, Rheinmetal, H&K…

In many sectors, even wanting to, UK simply CAN’T anymore.
It is unable to produce rifles since after the SA80 the industry was left dying entirely, tanks, armor and such.
Think well about it: even the ammunitions depend from the Rheinmetal Group in Germany supplying propelling charge!

You should thank the sky every day for the bits of kit the MOD still manufactures in the UK, if you think about it a moment longer and reflect in deep.

And now fine, call me scaremonger for all this. 😀 But please, think about it. I regard this as food for thought. I’m not depositary of Truth… but sincerely, some of the stuff we’ve heard lately is astonishing and goes completely against reality.

Maybe you are right, maybe not.

But i actually think it is totally possible, if not very probable, that BAe tried to secure a customer for PoW.
Her future is far from certain, and what will most likely save her (if she’s built) from being sold is just that probably no one will want to buy her.
The government won’t think too long over it if they had a good offer for the vessel, and the army generals would apparently be all too happy of it, along with a whole fleet of stupid press reporters, military “experts” that i won’t give a broken bow to with how demented their analysis on aircraft carriers “not needed” are and a lot of other misinformed or plain dumb persons that exibite in daring assumptions like: “we can’t afford them” “they are useless” “what do we do with them” and the most ridiculous of all that i read on a blog: “we don’t have the manpower to man them”. And Bae would be happy as well: Bae doesn’t really care if the carriers get to the Royal Navy. They want the carriers to be built, sold, and paid for, as every company.

So, yeah. Pardon me if i play bitter infidel and take the maximum prudence when it comes to the government decisions on defence, and even more so on the navy, which somehow has long become the less cared-for service in the whole UK.

Indeed, the army’s top brass have been absolutely hateful lately. And they are trying to make of the SDSR the worst disaster EVER in UK history.
Were them to win, having the navy lose the carriers and the amphibs, it would be a long term disaster that would beat Dunkirque 10 – 0.

HOW THE EXPLETIVE DELETED HELL CAN YOU CALL “ADAPTABLE” A MILITARY WITHOUT CARRIERS AND MARINES???

No quote ever was more correct than saying that aircraft carriers separe the nations between who’s got them, and who wish to have them.

And another point made in a recent press report astonished me:

Washington also wants the UK to press ahead with the F35 and to maintain strong intelligence agencies and special forces. “It’s the carriers they are not too concerned about,” says one MoD official. “With 13 aircraft carriers of their own, the Americans aren’t exactly bothered whether we have one or not.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4b8c9970-c4e6-11df-9134-00144feab49a.html

Point one: 13 is a wrong number. In the long term, the TARGET of the US navy is to have 11 carriers, with 10 all-times complete carrier air groups. They may get less, depending on how much their budget is cut.
Point two: what is that? An admission that the UK is preparing to become a new state in the USA, without really getting the advantages of such a scenario…?
That declaration is HORRIFYING. I’m not ashamed in saying that the one who reasoned this way should be gunned down, pretty much.

I hope Fox wins and gets everyone to REASON. He seems the last one left sane enough in that tangle of people.