Also while most people talk about the Visby class when thinking about steatlh ships, the very first were the French Lafayette class.

This is ridiculously pedantic and only serves to prove your central point but ….. the T23s were about a decade earlier than Lafayette.

Admittedly their Lordships decided that making T23s LO wasn’t British so we decided to stick as much crap and clutter up top as possible to make up for the hull and superstructure shaping.

The numbers are far too small to justify licence building. The unit price would go through the roof, & we’d end up with half as many.

If we buy P-1, it’d have to be OTS airframes, perhaps flown here for fitting of UK-specific equipment.

Sure in Swerveworld or Real Land but in Alworld:

1. Crabfats get a couple of squadrons with Stormshadow for power projection
2. FAA end up operating a couple of squadrons as MPAs
3. KM and MN get some (see previous posts about the realities of their current solutions, which are admittedly better than our ‘**** it, we’ll be all right who needs MPAs anyway?‘ approach)
4. As part of European Defence Force EU operates two squadrons for flag waving piracy, presence and projection missions

I will confess to broken record syndrome here but licence built P1s

But they are licence built off t’shelf to fixed price contract with no programme points on castors to be pushed right and a no bells and whistles clause

Jobs in UK, message to BAe which is not a pyrrhic cut off face to spite nose one. Give Kawazaki a toehold for the European market (coz medium term it’s not just UK which needs to replace MPAs although admittedly our continental chums will not have the capability holiday that we face)

In my ideal alternate reality this comes linked to Japan licence building tiffie for the Asian market.

And some US2s for coast guard, search and rescue, fisheries patrol, we will buy them in a simple money for planes deal giving us time to get crews trained up in some kind of flying big planes over water skills.

Given Canada’s likely range to station/time on station requirements, and the impact of this on airfame habitability and in-flight refuelling requirments, its hard to see anthing other than a P-8 and E-7 combination being considered.

True but if our Canadian cousins did logical procurement they would have had F15s not 18s.

I am interested in why at 8 did he even consider adopting a restrictive diet?

******** if I know.

He has always been a bit of deep thinker (I am sure his first word was ‘why’ not momma or dada) and has always had a very developed sense of right and wrong. Which has led to him getting upset earlier in life when he could not understand why other people don’t play nicely like he does. i am not surprised that he made the decision, but am surprised so early.

How many 8 year olds do you know?

But there is a kernel of truth to what you say which I agree with. His initial thought was to be a ‘vegetarian’ , his mum is set against that (partly for the reason you state and partly as his body is still growing and he is an omnivore thus there may be problems with lack of nutrients by following such a diet) so I suggested that he have a think (done) about being a pesky contrarian. That is what he chose.

It’s not a patch on the Blackbird but I do like the two seat jag

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nigelblake/2356644669/

Usually fighters look better as two seaters anyway but the jag even more so. Maybe because she was originally meant to be a two seat trainer? None of the single sweaters chisel nose, French or radome even come close.

Edit: sort of sorted, you will need to click on the link

My disagreement was about dimblebys joke being in bad taste. I thought it was entirely acceptable. (Also I think that zebra and horse both taste delicious).

I liked the uses of a ruminant song as well.

Number one son has just decided to become a piscetarain (sp) and I am really rather proud of him. Annoyingly it probably means that I shall probably have to support him (he is 8) by doing the same as will his grandad. I shall continue to tell my tales of eating gazelle, scorpions, penguins and dogs though. Just in the distant past.

If my post was not clear (and obviously it was not) if you think that if it goes between two bits of bread it is a sandwich I agree with you. If you think that eating animals is wrong and so do not, I support you. If you think and do the same about mammals I agree. Likewise cetaceans. Likewise primates. But I gots no sympathy for someone who happily eats one type of animal but regards another as cute and claims that squeamishness as morality. It ain’t its weakness and hypocrisy.

Again all IMMOO