I’m afraid to say that the UK would not be able to develop its own SLBM. It effectively abandoned its indigenous capability to develop large rockets more than 40 years ago.

1 The UK solid-propellant motor industry has no experience of creating large motors and has no capability to do do.

2 MBDA UK (and for that matter MBDA France) have no interest in getting into the strategic missile business. They lack the facilities and design skills.

3 The UK has no research establishment able to static-fire large rocket motors.

4 The UK has no test range able to fly strategic-range missiles.

So to develop a new SLBM, the UK would have to shop overseas for rocket motors and hire overseas test facilities. Once again, we’d be dependent on a foreign supplier.

Having been banned from developing rockets following WW2, the German industry had real problems in developing the third stage of the Blue Streak-based ELDO satellite launch vehicle. If that was the result of a 20+ year gap in rocket-development experience, imagine how a UK team would struggle to develop a much larger vehicle after a 40 year gap in experience. The youngest engineers of the Blue Streak and Black Knight era are now retired or close to retirement.

And time would be short – without a mid-life upgrade, Trident missiles will run out of life in about ten years from now.

Woomera. Its already used by BAe.

I actually have a question, what influence does the treasury actually have over government spending if the government in power decided one day that they wanted to order 500 Typhoons and 50 Frigates etc.

Could the Treasury turn around and say, no, you can’t have the money.

If not, blame the government, not the treasury.

It would save some money, but not very much in comparison to the cost of a carrier. A smaller STOVL carrier would be much cheaper than one large enough for STOBAR, but that is only possible if Brazil buys F-35B.

Which would be a wise decision given that F-35B is going to be priced fairly competitively and is much more capable then the competition.

Not Happening. These papers are all copying the story by the Guardian the other day. Think about it like the stories about the Kitty Hawk.

These stories seem to come out all the time but it’s rarely as bad as what is printed. If you added up what has been printed in the press in the last 12 months the UK would have about minus 200 planes and minus 20 ships. I’m not sure where these stories come from.

A major problem is the UK spends a lot of money on defense. Nearly £40 Billion. This is within the top 10 in the world. only the USA, china, Russia spend more. The problems are the 100,000+ civil staff at the MOD and the terrible way the money is managed. An average salary of £30,000 x 100,000 = 3,000,000,000 £3 Billion! and that is just basic salary. This is where i think the root of the problems lie. There are more Civil servants than soliders! These servants change procurement ideas half way through and drive up costs as well as messing loads of other things up. This is where the cuts have to come from. The civil side i would guess are using upto £15-20 billion of the budget in staff costs, building rent, admin costs, bonuses etc. What other country would have half the defence budget not going on defence! Crazy this is absolute madness.

1) The latest report actually said 85,000.
2) Add in the RFA and the Dock workers at the Naval Bases and that is a fair chunk of those (probably close to half).
3) Add in support staff at RAF and Army bases and that would make up another chunk (admin and maintenance).
4) There are close to 200,000 active duty members of the UK forces, more if you count reserves.

Lynx Wildcat.

I doubt the government would go for Harpoon or Torpedo tubes. Harpoon might be FFBNW. But if you drop the torpedo tubes, you can sill use the helicopter to drop the torpedoes.

Beautiful boat, Dutch Sigma corvette for the Indonesian Navy,

Doubt we’d get sigma’s, if only because it would make ship recognition a bitch if we ever had a confrontation with Indonesia.

Saved by the swerve.