I think in monetary terms it should be left alone but i think it needs a good looking at, such as the mess that is procurement. I personally are one of those strange nutters that think the MoD should only worry about getting the best kit for the best price without worrying about keeping people voting labour or voting for whoever.

We can but dream!

Add to the wishlist, without being emotionally blackmailed over the supposed nationality of kit.

or the massive socialist failure that is the benefit system

In what way do British social benefits hand control of the means of production to the working classes? The argument I have implied (using my implicature) is that we **** lots of benefit money up against the wall and achieve very little with it. I’d agree with that.

The problem is Labour is screwed

Correct

I
and it needs to buy votes from those not working

Who tend not to vote either

I
and those who work in the massive mess that is the civil service.

Who are just as pissed off with the waste caused by people higher up the tree than them. And more likely than most to think ‘ah fnck it why bother voting it never does any good anyway’ than most since they’ve seen it first hand. Or are you referring to the double handful of senior civil servants at the top of the tree? I suspect that their voting allegiances have been set in stone for years.

I
I am also in favour of cutting the International Development budget which achives very little

There are more than a few people working in international development who would agree with you 100%, citing the negative effects of the way we spend our OSD money.

German Govt does this with ships for Israelis. US government does this for warplanes and missiles.

Whether this is down to guilt over the holocaust, loss leaders or a chance to have systems tested by proxy I know not.

Lord Owen on the wireless this morning suggested that the very best nuclear deterrent (ICBMs capable of penetrating Moscow’s ABM defences) is no longer necessary but that some kind of nuclear deterrent is until such time as everyone can be persuaded to disarm.

I find it hard to argue with the argument as a whole.

My concerns are with the fiddly technical bits. What if Moscow becomes our foe again? What if Moscow modernises its ABM defences? What if no one else agrees to nuclear disarmament?

Oh and another thing.

When Ocean was still on the drawing board ‘everybody* knew‘ that she was the prototype for Invicible replacement and that ‘we would never get proper flat tops again‘

* and that included an awful lot of serving RN officers

Mods please feel free to move this post to a new thread but I think that this is at least tangentially relevant.

Up front, my sympathies are very much with submarines and this may very well skew my logic. (Which raises the question of why I post on a Naval Aviation forum but I digress)

John Keegan (amongst others, but his has been the loudest voice) forcefully argued that skimmers are too vulnerable in a fight between evenly matched navies and thus that submarines will in the future have to take on more and more of the warship roles. Once upon a time all of the ‘This is what the world will be like in the Year 2000‘ style of books had as well as hover boots and cities in domes navies consisting of submarines and a handful of fast attack craft.

So what roles absolutely HAVE to be carried out by skimmers?
Launch and recovery of aircraft
Mass Troop transport
Fishery policing and protection*
(inc. smuggling and piracy patrols)

So what roles PROBABLY have to be carried out by skimmers?
Hydrography?
NGS?
Mine Warfare?
AAW?
Launch and recovery of UAVs?
C3?
T45 replacement?

What roles could be taken by boats?
Deep Land Attack
ASW
ASuW
Denial of access
Minelaying
C1?
C2?

Boats will be less visible, less vulnerable, scarier, have lower manning requirements, provide greater strategic deterrence (not just nukes but also in terms of ‘hmm we don’t KNOW where HMS Conqueror is so we have to be cautious in our planning‘)

But have less on-the-spot deterrence, ABSOLUTELY REQUIRE bang-up-to-date Hydrographic charts, are more expensive to purchase and are possibly more expensive to run, cannot be subcontracted to cheaper yards so easily

* can you imagine trying to board and inspect from an SSGT? No neither can I

Only a Brit would try to spin this into good news:rolleyes:

I genuinely don’t see any bad news here. 🙂

Mayhap ‘only a Brit‘ would be so used to genuine bad news that they would see through the sensationalist headline pretty easily and see the non-story.

Or would you have preferred me to respond that ‘only a fictitious, drunken Eirish Priest would take the headline at face value and not read the content‘ and thus start some kind of rather pointless flamewar?

Franglais Joint Carrier Programme

4x QE class
At any 1 time – 1 in refit, at least 2 at Sea
With catapults
With MLG27 not Gambo

Airwing
10x JCA (Joint Carrier Aircraft)
20x Rafaele-M
10x Reaper UAV
4x Lynx Wildcat (planeguard duty mainly use escort’s helos for most stuff)
(surge of extra 10x Rafaele, Helos)

NB: JCA Viking/Turbo-tracker/Hawkeye replacement
Turbofan or Turboprop powered
Tasked for:
AEW or
long-range/large volume ASW or
Maritime patrol or
Tanker or
EW
Sell to RN and MN then (build under licence if necessary and) clean up wrt USN, IN, MDB