No:

DEFENCE minister Peter Luff has defended the government’s cuts to the Royal Navy during a visit to Portsmouth.

Mr Luff, who is in charge of defence equipment, responded to criticism of last year’s Strategic Defence and Security Review which saw 5,000 sailors, aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and the navy’s Harrier jump jets axed.

He said: ‘No-one wanted to get rid of the Harriers and Ark Royal. It was not the decision we wanted to take.

‘But the UK faces a huge financial crisis and cuts had to be made.’

The minister poured cold water on speculation that a small number of Harrier jets may be brought back for use on Ark Royal’s sister ship HMS Illustrious, which emerged from a £40m refit in Scotland last week.

He said: ‘We will shortly be announcing disposal of the Harriers. That decision has been taken and there will be no backing away from it.’

Clue is in the link “Sea Trials”.

Looks expensive.

Not sure about the sub-munitions, seem a bit OTT to me, also would it be classed as a cluster weapon?

Talk about it being ready for deployment after 2030, seems like a long time for developing an anti ship missile.

No forgiveness needed.

In 2020 the government came up with a vision of the armed forces we would need in 2020, & laid out a plan to get there. It made certain assumptions about what would happen between 2010 & 2020, & built them into its plans. One of the assumptions was that they, themselves, would behave in a certain way, & not take certain decisions. The budget was set on the basis of the 2020 vision, the plan on how to achieve it, & the assumptions underlying that plan.

5 months later, they took a decision which their plan assumed they would not. This decision is costing money. It also shows that some of their other assumptions are invalid, & the 2020 vision may underestimate what we need. They have not changed the budget to take account of the extra spending they have chosen to make. :confused:

True but in all honestly the labour party did the same thing when it became apparenent that the 1998 SDSR was unfunded, they just buried their heads in the sand until they decided they had to make cuts, when everyone knew the wiser choice was to increase the budget.

Small point of order the UK is not buying any F35B, if it buys any they will be F35C.

UK is committed to buying 3 development F35bs, they have attempted to change at least one of these to F35cs without success if rumours are to be believed.

Shame, some money in would do more good to the MOD than airframes sitting in storage.

Absolutely, I wasn’t intending that our Norman chums got one of the two built but rather a third unit (I suspect that that they’d get no 2 and we get 1 and 3). Sorry if what I typed could be misconstrued. This being my daydream dates don’t get pushed back so costs don’t go up, JSF cost increase doesn’t happen (well doesn’t affect FAA anyway) and economies of scale (and compettition for contracts to build blocks between French and British yards….) mean that CVFs come in slightly less than planned so we get CVF 4 as well. Since CVF1 and 2 (and maybe 3) are already showing their worth (Libya?) before the lines shut down.

This is all lovely and all that but if we’re talking daydreams here then why not go one further and say that Eurofighter is designed from the beginning as carrier capable and the French stay in the pogramme.

:cool:;)

Is it actually a better anti tank weapon though? There are versions of Hellfire that can be used against non-hardened targets as well. How does it compare range wise? I would think the main concern regarding fitting Brimstone to helicopters would be cost, how does it compare against Hellfire?