Its thanks to the previous incumbant that there is no money – you think that next year labour wouldnt have had to make cuts equally if not more savage –

I start to think that this government is OBSESSED by cuts.
Many economists believe that cutting at this stage (so severely at least) will HARM the economy, and not help it. And i totally believe they are right, because creating thousands and thousands of new jobless people will only make the recession harder and worse.

Again, here we are talking of the DEFENCE of the nation and its INTERNATIONAL RELEVANCE. Something that should be ringfenced as much as possible. These follish cuts AREN’T needed, nor are they going to cause any real uplift in the UK economy, and believe differently would be childish.

And to conclude: you are really so sure that the UK budget is such a doomsday threat?
Italy is burdened by a public debt of immense proportions from well before the 2009 crisis. Just the municipalities have debts for over 67 billions euros. The state has a debt of enormous relevance, from well before UK ended up having its debt.
I don’t like how peaceful Italy is with its debt, and i think that reducing the debts is always the right thing to do…
But seriously. Without this “CUT CUT CUT CUT” obsession, Italy is still alive and going, and possibly, if you’ll allow me to say so, it is in better conditions than the UK.

Italy is not giving up its own Marines and anphibious ships to pursue “savings” that grant no other certain result than to weaken the nation’s relevance.

If you think that making the nation weak and vulnerable will help the economy, then go on this path. But you are only going to make things worse.
Not even Greece is cutting its defences, and we all know how broke Greece’s economy is. You truly think UK NEEDS to?

No. UK politicians WANT to. It is different.

Folly.
All Typhoons to be based in Conigsby…? But how the hell can they ever cover the UK’s airspace from there…? There’s no way Typhoons can scramble from Conigsby to meet russian bombers on the North Sea in time without having squadrons in Leuchars! They would never arrive in time, and they would eat away so much fuel that any “saving” would be immediately lost.
Not to say how frigging vulnerable it is to keep all eggs in one place… from having Harriers that could take off from everywhere to keeping all planes in the same place. It does not take a nuke to cause the RAF to pretty much cease to exist, it would be enough a terrorist attack. FOLLY.

Anphibious ships to be cut…? MADNESS. Scrap the army, at that point, and keep just the TA, because you are not going to go anywhere outside UK borders without anphibious capability.

2 SSNs to be cut…? What does it mean: 7 Astutes to be built but 2 Trafalgar to go earlier, or merely 5 Astutes built AND 2 Trafalgar to go earlier as well? In either case, a folly.
What the hell, scrap 8 minesweepers and 4 Type 22, but not SSNs and Anphibs! THIS IS MADNESS. TOTAL, ABSOLUTE MADNESS.
The carriers make no sense at all without Marines either: just hand Falklands to Argentina and retire from world stage to finally fail as nation.

If this is anywhere near the truth, this is the end of the Great Britain the world respected and admired.
I’m SICK after reading this, and i’m italian. I can’t believe you britons can accept this disaster. Evidently true britons ceased to exist many years ago… I think i’ll go and vomit.

I find it strange that so many consider defence and international aid to be mutually exclusive.

Ideally, it is not mutually exclusive. But at the proof of the events, it is, because while the defence budget is being slashed without mercy and without thinking of the future (and of the present either, for that matter), the International Aid budget is not just ringfenced but growing.

Which to my eyes looks hopelessly ridiculous. Even assuming every penny spent on aid does good, if you are really so in struggle to survive your debt that you have to slash even defence so brutally, it makes no sense at all to ringfence aid. Aid was the first thing which had to go to fix the domestic debt trouble, not the other way around.
Cutting the rest of the budget, causing thousands of people to become jobless with the process, won’t help the economy exactly as aid does nearly nothing for Uk economy. As it is, every job that can be saved is a treasure for an economy in crisis.

And i find it hopelessly offensive and ridiculous to hear the CVF called “unaffordable” when the cost of Queen Elizabeth is equal to the increase in Aid budget seen in 2010. This is kidding us all.
The CVF is not unaffordable. Nor the F35B for that matter, and not even Trident. To tell the truth, the UK could afford far greater armed forces than it has. “Unaffordable” is a concept that exists merely in the minds of people who simply want to rob defence to pay the injustifiable expenses of departments that are seeing their budget growing in double-digit percent each year.

Trouble is, even robbing defence to pay for that, they’ll find that they won’t be able to support that level of expenditure all the same. Because that’s the true unaffordable.

As it is, spending 6 billions at year on Aid instead of 8 would already finance Trident and make the pressure on defence get less crushing.
Bono Vox would bitch, of course, but he can use his own money to do what he wants if he really wishes so. He’s certainly not poor. The nation should have other priorities than those.

Don’t worry, the British Government will probably insist that Uganda buys only British contraceptives, so really it’s just the same as building the carriers, it’s all about keeping jobs in Britain, doesn’t matter whether it’s carriers or condoms…

Of course… Instead of 10.000 workers busy building a ship for the nation that will give work to thousand of people for the next 50 years, it makes far more sense to buy millions of contraceptives.
As long as they are british ones.

Can things fall down any lower than so…? 🙁

Wait. Don’t answer. I fear the answer that would come. Just forget the question.

Okay – is it given that they will be moving weapons from retired ships to arm the Type 26’s? -Are they still looking at BAE’s TMF proposal – 155 mm main gun in the 4.5 inch gun turrets? In any case there will installing Artisan Radar, new soft kill systems, and I thought they would be installing new VLS systems as well but I might be wrong.

While I could not find the link I read (I think it might have been comment on a blog), Think Defence says the initial estimate is £400 million per ship.

The Artisan radar is being installed on the Type 23 and is planned to move to the Type 26 later.

The CAMM missile is planned to replace Seawolf on the Type 23 in 2018, and then move to the Type 26.

The latest sonar equipment is slated to follow the same course (i think only 8 sonars have been ordered so far, though, so 2 more may have to be bought)

30 guns should definitely move onwards.

The 155 mm gun is in stall: i mailed a Media response center about it and was told that the gun was fired in trials in a Scotland range and performed satisfactorily. They said me that they are lobbying the government into signing a 10 millions agreement to refine the prototype and develop a final, ready-for-production system. Considering the potential savings coming from using a single stock of 155 mm ammo for army and navy, i’m hoping the RN will pay that little amount in time. There’s evidently no hurry to spend at the moment, though, and we’ll possibly have to wait some more.
However, i think the current phase of study and design was intended to last into the 2011, so it may just be on its natural course.
Was i in Bae, though, i’d spend something autonomously to complete the design without waiting for the government funding, because i believe a 155 mm naval gun capable to use standard NATO army-type ammo would have MASSIVE export potential. They could complete the work and then make an offer to fit the gun on Type 26 and refit the Type 45 with it as well during docking periods.

New VLS systems: it is hoped that the Type 26, as Strike warship, will be fitted with 8/16 “Strike Lenght” MK41 cells, capable to take Tomahawks, ASROC, SM3 and everything else. But this is far for certain or even probable, and it is too early to say if the navy will manage to get this capability or if, like with the Type 45, the ship will end up “fitted for, but not with”.

Stingray launchers: i think they’ll move from ship to ship, as no upgrade to the system is planned that i know of.

Finally, i read that figure as well on Think Defence, but i won’t assume it as a mantra. I doubt the RN would confirm such a figure if asked: they sure aim for something cheaper. And as i said, i have confidence that it can be managed.

I saw a price on a military procurement website which said 4 Italian FREMM’s at €340 million Euro’s each and did not look too far or note down the website I can re-look if need be but I will take others word that they are roughly half a billion Euro’s each.

If the Type 26’s come out a £500 million each then that would be in-line with FREMM but it seems quite high for export purposes – is there a bench mark for what a 6,000 multi-role Frigate would normally cost?

Italy is paying 568 millions euro for each FREMM, cost likely to increase if the last four out of a planned order of 10 are cancelled because an alternative buyer can’t be found.
French FREMM most likely cost even more, because the planned order of 17 frigates has been cut back to 11, and 4 have been partially “re-roled” to support the 2 Horizon destroyers in air-defence duty.

This said, the FREMM is a fantastic piece of equipment, and the italian version is to be fitted with the same VLS system of the Type 45, so that each FREMM will be able to possibly embark not just Aster 15 for self defence, but also Aster 30 for wider area coverage, even if the ship will need external targeting to fully exploit the longer range missiles.
Teseo anti-ship missiles and Milas anti-ship missiles are also the fit, in addition to MU90 light torpedoes. The General Purpose variant has an excellent 127 mm gun and a 76 mm Strales that also works as CIWS, the ASW variant two 76 mm Strales. Both have hangar space for two choppers and a mission bay aft.

The Type 26 in contrast will be a mere hull, until CAMM, guns, torpedoes, sonar, radar and RIBS are moved to it from the Type 23s retiring. It MUST be far cheaper. If the shipyards can’t roll out a hull for a decent price, then it is better for the UK to buy FREMM frigates built in France or in Italy and just ask to install different missiles and guns and main radar. Also, i hope the non-sense of single-helo hangar with additional dog-kennel for UAVs is abandoned as soon as possible for a far smarter larger, two-helo hangar.
The UK has no Fire Scout drones, so it makes no sense to make a hangar for them on the ship. And even if it was, it could and should be stored alongside the Merlin chopper in a larger hangar that can, in case of need, take two proper helicopters.
A larger hangar is more flexible and does not cost anything more than the ridiculous hangar+mini hangar. If one only chopper gets embarked, fine, so be it. But at least there would be space to embark another one, and not just UAVs.

Anyway, the Type 26 must definitely come out at a price well lower than 500 millions. 500 millions could be assumed as a fair price for a 6000 tons frigate well armed and with state of the art sensors.
But since the Type 26, especially if Tomahawk remains once more just a wish without happy ending, is going to be built for the RN positively unarmed, with most of the weapon system being moved from Type 23 to Type 26, i’m expecting the unit cost to be far lower.

If the hull alone costs 500 millions, then something is seriously, seriously wrong with british shipbuilding at this point. No, i’m expecting the Type 26 to cost no more than 300 millions a piece. And possibly less. If the RN needs to bite BAe team’s necks every few minutes to obtain this result, so be it.
Otherwise the Navy will be unable to renew its fleet, simple like that.

From http://www.timripley.co.uk/articles/jdw_uk_deploys_c_ram.pdf:

Phalanx was first tested for C-RAM applications in November 2004. It entered service with the US Army the
following year and is fully integrated with the service’s Forward Area Air Defense (FAAD) command-and-control
system.
Jane’s understands that the UK is initially acquiring a C-RAM capability through the lease of a number of US
Army LPWS (Land-based Phalanx Weapon System) systems for a six-month period through to mid-November 2007. It has also acquired a single
FAAD system.

It even seems the UK has no C-RAM centurions batteries anymore. Two were used in Basra, but they were apparently handed back to the americans after the end of the operations.

So we are easily looking at cost of a couple of frigates to buy or upgrade all the Phalanx’s and install them on every ship – I think that the RN might plumb for the ships 🙂

I still think a lot of the time they will have either CAMM or Phalanx and not both, with a space left for the other system, especially as the post you put up earlier with text from Navy Matters seemed to suggest that reduce radar cross sections improve the functionality of soft kill systems – and the MIDAS programme is also about improving soft kill systems so taken together soft kill (decoys and the like) might be how RN plan to deal with most missile threats.

I do not know much more about the MIDAS programme that what I have said about as all my information is from this article on Jane’s http://www.janes.com/news/defence/idr/idr100727_1_n.shtml

16 Phalanx 1B costed 57 millions. A few more could be updated. The RN should have at the very least 20 Phalanx around. Upgrade them all would have costed in theory around 70 millions.

At a unitary cost of 7/8 million dollars, a further 32 Phalanx would cost 256 million.
Total cost (possible) of fitting phalanx on every ship expected to use it would thus be in the region of the 326/330 million dollars. Not a little amount… but at least the Type 26 should be fitted with the CIWS from the start.
With Harpoon, radars, CAMM, sonar and torpedoes to come from the Type 23 going out of service, the Phalanx would be one of the very few pieces of combat system that would have to be bought for the new frigates, including (hopefully) the 155/39 gun upgrade on the MK8 gun mount and eventually 16 MK41 strike lenght canisters with Tomahawk missiles. I think that 16 US million dollars to arm a frigate aren’t such a frightening amount, considering that most of the weapons fit of the new vessels will not be new, but just moved from old to new hulls.

Seriously, the Type 26 should be quite economic a warship (it’ll better be, or the RN won’t be able to get them), all things considered.
The Phalanx coming from the Invincibles and the Type 42 should be enough to refit CVFs and Type 45s, and this would give a well protected fleet.