Trumper, you and me both. The thought of being in a sub gives me the collywobbles. What courageous souls they were and are !

I spent a very brief period below the waves (long enough to get some good stories but not long enough to do any damage). When I took my boys to HMS Alliance we were shown around by a couple of old hands who regaled us with their tales of patrols on that very boat. At the end of the tour we were asked if anyone had served. I would have felt like a complete fraud in such company and kept my gob well and truly shut.

People who don’t understand how merging from two lanes to one works

Well specifically one old fart and his enormous baggage passenger behind me today

Al. Thanks for the risotto one, is this the Scottish, or English version?..:highly_amused:
Jim.
Lincoln .7

I’ve missed the joke. How embarrassing! Could you take me through it slowly and carefully?

In answer to OP:

It’s the boring and predictable balance of payments issue.
There are several items bought by the MOD where the obvious answer would instead have been a US system. Traditionally the analysis has been: we needed/had decided to keep a viable UK industry and so paid over the top to retain industrial capability X. Which has some truth (as does simple patriotic chauvinism). But another big worry was how much we still owed the US from WW2 (final payment was 2006 I believe) and anything which added to the flow of cash from UK to US was seen as a very bad thing.

For Naval operations STOVL has three big advantages (which is not trivialise the cost, range and payload penalties which ARE significant).

The flat top does not have to turn into the wind for launch. That’s not just a convenience issue it can make the path and location of said carrier and its escorts far less predictable.
‘Stopping and then landing’ rather than ‘landing and then stopping’ imposes less (and fewer) stresses on the airframe and is supposedly an easier skill to master (I’ve never tried either method outside of a consumer simulator so I cannot claim great personal insight).
Operations can continue in far less benign weather conditions (not an issue on the pacific which is pacific but it was certainly a factor down south in the winter).

MigL

funny that…

You just beat me to it. But I was going to compare French and German partners.

Instinctively it is easier to see Germany as a reliable partner for UK, and France as the awkward squad. But looking at concrete examples I’m not sure that’s true.

Lynx, Gazelle, Jaguar, Puma all went pretty darned well. The RAF spec Mirage IV died because of us not the French.
A carrier capable Eurofighter it turns out would have been a good thing.
(West) German requirements for Tornado were initially very much at odds with RAF requirements. And a lot of time and money was spent marrying up the two. EAP could have been the basis for eurofighter but (West) German insistence on starting again added significant cost. Post unification Germany had more important priorities than eurofighter, unfortunately German politicians addressed this in the time honoured way of pissing about around the edges and actually making the programme more expensive not less.

Anglo Italian defence co operation has gone pretty well up to now.

Presumably you mean the recuperator?

As far as I know (and I’m very happy to be corrected) T26 will use a much simpler CODLOG rather than T45s IEP system.

Different doctrines really:

US and UK saw submarines and air airms as the principal offensive arms of the fleet (even when the RN’s air arm was to put it kindly a shadow of its former self)

I would guess that the honest answer to your first question (certainly as far as skimmers were concerned) was: MCG and SAMs. The job of skimmers was no longer seen as being engaging the enemies surface targets (sorry ‘combatants’)

Harpoon came from a specific requirement for MPAs to be able to engage surfaced or snorkeling boats. McD then pointed out how easily it could be integrated (physically and with C3) on every other asset and ‘poof’ a new capability for US-aligned ships.

The French (inspired by a chap with a particular dislike of Les Anglos who even owned a yacht called ‘Flying Fish’ which he would steer at RN warships in Marc Overmars style scything runs) had a very different view. As of course did the USSR.

Part of me (the fairly small, non-cynical ‘you’ve taken your eye off the ball there chaps‘ part) thinks that the reason for an AShM capability gap in USN and (in particular) RN is the ingrained belief that if you want to sink a ship rather than just engage her it is best done with a heavyweight torpedo.