The Falklands and what is deployed there isn’t something which I have particularly strong feelings about.

I guess I must have imagined your involvement in a few of the FI threads then. Sorry, I recall it got rather passionate at one stage. (Though admittedly not quite as ill-advised as TJ’s proclamation of loyalty to Argentina on the issue).

What is air supremacy going to achieve in that situation?

To allow strike aircraft, choppers, and ground / sea forces to operate with relative impunity. Sounds quite a useful card to have up your sleeve in a ‘conventional’ war – just not so useful in Afghanistan right now…

Sorry, I recall it got rather passionate at one stage.

Not from me it didn’t – I suspect that you feel far more strongly about the issue of the Falklands than I do zokes.

Do an advanced search of the word “Falklands” under my username if you want to check.

You appear to be confusing what you think I should be thinking, with what I’m actually thinking.

Indeed ernie – and making up stuff He thinks I should have said.

TJ:

TandemJeremy – Member

La malvinas son argentinas

And as for you, Ernie, an advanced search shows you to have replied to Falklands threads 40 times in the past year, whereas I’ve only replied 14 times. So I suspect based upon that statistic that either you do care about the Falklands a lot more than me, or alternatively you have a lot of free time in your life to talk extensively on a topic in which you have little interest. If it’s the latter, that’s more than a little sad IMO.

What we really need are two big aircarft carriers ,say in 2020, costing either £3.5,£6 or £12 billion depending on who you listen to.One to mothball because we can’t afford it and one we can’t afford to put any American planes on,thats if we could decide which type of American plane we can’t afford.Oh and we won’t have any trained experienced carrier crew and no money for any new crew either.
Sort of sums up our defence spending strategy.

What’s worse is that they are thinking of reversing the decision they made in 2010 of going with the F35c and “cats and traps” and reverting back to the ski jump and the B version of the jet. This decision would be made purely on the costs of converting the carriers to cats and traps, and yet the ski-jump version of the jet is more expensive to purchase and more expensive to maintain.

So a short term financial decision to save money saddles us with an increased longer term cost and a less capable aircraft. Of course a politician like Philip Hammond won’t have to worry about that in a few years time and that’s what short termism does for the MOD.

All this complaining about buying british, I’d be worried if we got all our army gear of a country we then ended up at war with. Just saying self reliance might be a good idea.

If “British made = expensive tat” then that’s a whole other argument.

What’s worse is that they are thinking of reversing the decision they made in 2010 of going with the F35c and “cats and traps” and reverting back to the ski jump and the B version of the jet.

The QE class carriers were originally designed with a provision for a cat and trap deck, for France was at one point very interested in buying the design. The problem however is twofold – firstly, the type of catapault required is basically a scaled up railgun, not a steam powered piston and so far has only been adopted for the forthcoming Gerald Ford class supercarriers. The design is still in it’s infancy and we’d be fronting a lot of the development cost.

Secondly, the F-35C has a design defect in the rear fuselage that could cause structural failure during an arrested landing. The US Navy is also considering terminating the F-35C in the light of this. We’d either be forced to opt for the F-18E with a lesser capability or even the French Rafale. The latter was certainly on the table when the French Navy were considering buying the QE design.

There is also a proposal for a navalized Typhoon, however it’s performance will be compromised with the extra weight necessitated by strengthening the airframe and landing gear.

I have my own ideas as to how the UK’s capability could be expanded at a reduced cost but it would entail pissing every single crab and pongo off and it’s most likely wildly misinformed.

No reason why that should stop you. We’ve based most of the defence thinking on such an approach.

The QE class carriers were originally designed with a provision for a cat and trap deck, for France was at one point very interested in buying the design. The problem however is twofold – firstly, the type of catapault required is basically a scaled up railgun, not a steam powered piston and so far has only been adopted for the forthcoming Gerald Ford class supercarriers. The design is still in it’s infancy and we’d be fronting a lot of the development cost.

I haven’t heard anything about us paying towards developmental costs, also we aren’t going to have jets on the carriers for at least another eight years, giving the design more time to mature.

Secondly, the F-35C has a design defect in the rear fuselage that could cause structural failure during an arrested landing. The US Navy is also considering terminating the F-35C in the light of this.

Eh? The tailhook doesn’t work entirely properly, which will have to be re-designed, but structural failiure and US navy cancellation is news to me. I’d rather these problems than that “lift fan” in the B version, which incidently the US defence deptarment have been thinking of terminating.

or even the French Rafale.

Don’t have a problem with buying the Rafale, the aircraft we should have designed and built, but instead we landed up with:

There is also a proposal for a navalized Typhoon, however it’s performance will be compromised with the extra weight necessitated by strengthening the airframe and landing gear.

This aircraft has already been compromised by the partners we built it with. A navalised version will be horrifically expensive and the position of canards make any approach for carrier landing interesting.

I have my own ideas as to how the UK’s capability could be expanded at a reduced cost but it would entail pissing every single crab and pongo off and it’s most likely wildly misinformed.

This is a massive generalisation and the RAF does more than this suggests but the argument goes along the lines of splitting the RAF into strike and inter/intra-theatre heavy lift secrions and giving strike to the RN and heavy lift to the army allowing disbanding of the RAF and a reduction in support infrastructure. The idea of effectively binning the RAF doesn’t go down too well in various circles and has thus yet to be adopted.

Intersting thing is how much Saudi Arabia spends. Quite a market there for any country with defence export buisness.

That’s because a) there’s zero accountability or oversight on expenditure because of the undemocratic and opaque nature of the regime so huge amounts are lost through patronage and kickbacks; b) because expenditure in e.g. the air force has to be matched with expenditure in the army and national guard for political reasons (different services are tied to different families); because c) in addition to protecting against an external threat, it’s an authoritarian regime that has to protect itself by military means internally; d) it lives in a hostile neighbourhood; and e) all of the money is unearned free cash that comes out of the ground.

Surprisingly we spend 10 billion more than Russia for a sixth of the capability/manpower.

Well, one sixth of the manpower, possibly, but a huge proportion of that manpower is demoralised, brutalised, poorly trained, pissed off conscripts doing absolutely piss all in the middle of nowhere and occasionally getting rented out as sub-migrant wage construction labour by their commanding officers. Practically the only people who get conscripted now are those who are too ill-educated to get into uni and defer service for long enough to find another way out of it, or too poor to bribe their way out of it – so overwhelmingly a ground force of rural poor 17-19 year olds.

It’s worth pointing out that the war in Chechnya was (mostly) suppressed by a combination of headbanging local militias (Kadyrovtsy etc) and headbanging volunteer Russian soldiers (kontraktniki). There was an infinite number of conscripts thrown at the problem and they achieved sod all because they were scared, ill-prepared and weak. There was a period during which if the (anti-Federal) Chechens captured conscripts, they’d take their weapons, feed them, let them call their mums and then send them back to their unit. But they’d kill the kontraktniki.

All this complaining about buying british, I’d be worried if we got all our army gear of a country we then ended up at war with. Just saying self reliance might be a good idea.

But that’s a canard – even if the UK were “self-reliant” in arms, the economy is entirely interdependent with everywhere else for fuel, food, connectivity, intelligence – everything.

In any case, the UK is never going to war with the US, the EU countries or Israel again. (In fact, there’s a pretty good chance it’s never going to war with any country ever again).

And in any any case, the defence-depleting effect of more expensive, less developed equipment caused by domestic-only sourcing would be far greater than the – practically hypothetical – risk of external supply chains.

Autarky is for North Korea…

We often do well from these collaborations in terms of the finished product but they are costly and time consuming…. we cant do it alone though.

BristolPablo, what projects are you referring to here? As Typhoon and A400M aren’t what could be defined as ‘having done well’.

Russia has inherited most of the vast armoury of the Soviet Union. The air force, navy and army are using cold war era hardware which has seen minimal until relatively recently – but it has spent wisely in keeping 25+ year old jets and subs at the cutting edge.

And what’s the deal with the Typhoon? Delays aside it looks like a pretty neat piece of kit to me.

There is no single answer to the cluster frick that is MOD spending. Politicians need votes (QE class union votes). We need the jobs from the defence spending (Apache under license from the sceptics). Infighting between the services to secure their own little projects (The Merlin situation between the RAF and Army). Thats not to mention the Mann truck deal with ze Germans that resulted in the sceptics not giving us the avionics for the chinooks because we reneged on a deal for their Oshkosh ones because we were sucking up to the Germans because their nose was out of joint because of Iraq. But the classic one for me was BOWMAN coming in 10 years to late because the off the shelf version from the Canadians wasnt good enough. If you want a giggle, look that one up.

Basically, there is no answer to this. To many people have their fingers in the pie with their own little agendas.

We need the jobs from the defence spending (Apache under license from the sceptics).

But the problem with the jobs-from-defence line is that they’re massively subsidised jobs and the products are more expensive than if they were freely sourced from (and participating in!) the global market.

I haven’t heard anything about us paying towards developmental costs, also we aren’t going to have jets on the carriers for at least another eight years, giving the design more time to mature.

You think we’ll be getting the tech for free?

konabunny,

I see your point about subsidised jobs but all the people of yeovil will see is “jobs” therefore they will then vote for the MP that claims they brokered the deal. Its all swings and roundabouts.

konabunny,

I see your point about subsidised jobs but all the people of yeovil will see is “jobs” therefore they will then vote for the MP that claims they brokered the deal. Its all swings and roundabouts.
No, no, I agree entirely – if you’re a Yeovilite (?) then it makes sense to pressure your MP to get a lot of other people’s money spent in your town (especially now that you’re not sending money the other way to pay for British Leyland jobs in the midlands!), and if you want to be the MP for Yeovil, then it makes sense to work towards it – and if you’re a PM with a coalition government where every vote counts, then you sustain your govt by making sure your Yeovil dude gets elected…and so on.

zokes – Member

And as for you, Ernie, an advanced search shows you to have replied to Falklands threads 40 times in the past year, whereas I’ve only replied 14 times. So I suspect based upon that statistic that either you do care about the Falklands a lot more than me, or alternatively you have a lot of free time in your life to talk extensively on a topic in which you have little interest. If it’s the latter, that’s more than a little sad IMO.

So basically after doing an advanced search you couldn’t find a single example where I had expressed “passionate” opinions about the Falklands – despite you falsely claiming that I had done just that, so you decide instead to throw in a quick insult and suggest that I’m “little sad”. How pathetic 🙂

I case you hadn’t noticed zokes, I take a keen interest in current affairs and political issues, so it’s hardly surprising if I comment fairly frequently on issues concerning the Falklands. Add to that the fact that I’m half Argentine, and I’m actually surprised to learn that over the past year I have apparently, according to you, only commented 40 times in the inevitable monthly Falklands threads – I must be losing interest and getting a little bored with the subject.

But anyway……forgetting the level of contribution on the subject, I maintain with confidence my suggestion that you almost certainly have stronger views concerning the sovereignty of the Falklands than I do.

I am fairly unbothered concerning who has sovereignty over some miniscule godforsaken windswept cold islands in the arsehole of nowhere, and which are populated by penguins, sheep, and a tiny handful of inbred scots and welsh. Which I guess goes a long way in explaining why I object to this pointless remnant of a long deceased empire being used as a vanity exercise which has cost needless lives and is a drain on the British taxpayer.

Dispatches did a good program last year on the MOD wasting billions. Such things as Armalite offering assault rifles that would cost half the price of an SA80, improper made body armour and the chance to get Blackhawk helicopters being blown by top Army and RAF chiefs arguing on who would fly them. Then the contract being awarded to Lynx. Then the person who awarded the contract ended up working for them.

Then the person who awarded the contract ended up working for them.

No way! surely that couldn’t happen?!

BristolPablo, what projects are you referring to here? As Typhoon and A400M aren’t what could be defined as ‘having done well’.

and that really did make me laugh out loud!

bwaarp – Member

Bombing the **** out of their nuclear program and air defences from a forward operating base (carrier).

Or alternatively, we could missile the **** out of them- as previously demonstrated.