In a rare bit of good news the RAF has taken delivery of its 7th and probably final C17 Globemaster transport aircraft.
The MoD news piece was clear on the benefits
The aircraft, the seventh C-17 acquired by the RAF, is capable of flying non-stop to Afghanistan and can carry up to 138 people, a Chinook helicopter, or up to three Warrior armoured vehicles.
Can we forgive the glaring error?
Not wishing to miss this about to be present at an extremely rare event, UK forces taking delivery of a piece of a new piece equipment that actually works, the Prime Minister, David Cameron, decided to pop in for a visit and photo opportunity.
Commenting on the aircraft he said;
“What I am looking at today is the investment that we’re making to make sure that we succeed in Afghanistan, and make sure we have got the very best airbridge between Britain and Afghanistan,”
“It’s a very, very efficient piece of equipment and it’s very good news that we are investing in this – evidence that we’re giving our Armed Forces the capability, the flexibility and the mobility that they need to do the job that we ask them to.”
I nearly spat my sherry out when I read that one.
Do politicians live in some sort of bubble where they actually believe the nonsense they spout, one wonders by the term ‘we’ who is it he is actually referring to?
Does he mean the UK, does he mean the RAF because surely he cannot mean the coalition government.
Have a look at the date of this press release from Boeing, surely by ‘we’ he doesn’t mean the previous profligate government.
Does he?
Perhaps the point is “Be thankful “we” didn’t cancel the order, like “we” did with those extra chinooks.”
Though presumably this C-17 was far enough down the line that it couldn’t be cancelled when the SDSR went through.
I bet that WO stood there watching DAVE walk down the steps knew exactly where he wanted to insert his pace stick, and twist it as it went in , he will probably be one of the 2,500,000 un-employed very shortly , thanks dave keep up the good work
The sad part about this is only seven in total. Another five of this “very, very efficient piece of equipment” to make a squadron of twelve is what we really need.
Looking on wikipedia the UAE have six on order and India have ordered ten with an option for a further six.
Hi Jimsw,
Yes, the first 6 to get the “guns on hire” on to the spot plenty quick, when they are needed, so no need to pay for own defence on the scale that would otherwise be required.
The 10+6 to be used as “tactical transport” within a big country; hardly for the UN deployments, as those are just for arbitraging the high compensation and the low pay of the ground troops sent (without very much equipment).
Just a quick observation – under the UK serial (ZZ177) Is a number 090207 – is that a USAF serial? (it conforms to the USAF convention as I understand it for a plane ordered in 2009)
Rich;
Most or all of our C17′s were taken from USAF build numbers; especially the first 4 when they were leased, as when the lease ran out, the idea was for the USAF to pool them back into their own inventory, happily though, we carried on with the marvellous piece of equipment, and ours were the first to benefit from extra fuel tanks and upgraded avionics. It was also a fail safe incase we cancelled. Boeing does it fairly often, diverts an airframe being built for the US to a foreign customer to speed up delivery…
I hope the 8th goes through, but I also hate the ‘we’ dave is talking about…this was ordered way back, he or his cronies have no part in this at all…
We should be glad Dave did not scrap it to give more money to the EU/third world dictators/overpaid doctors/climate change non jobs.
DfID should pay for the 8th C-17 that the airlift review wanted. Ideal for humanitarian supplies after a natural disaster. They should also pay for SAR helicopters.
C-17s 8-12 should be acquired by diverting money from the international aid budget as should funding to keep both LPDs and RFA Largs Bay in service. If DfID use her to shift wavy tin to Haiti they can pay for her.
you all know my feelings, japan has a brilliant “mini-me” c-17 in the xc-2, japan is considering the eurofighter as it’s getting twitchy about stuff happening on it’s borders. Britain says it’s going to bin a load of tranche 1 fighters. i say swop ‘em let the japanese use them for the training hours and we get an excellent transporter to complement the C-17. Gotta be better than going down the nimrod “any old iron” route
Perhaps we could do swapsies for some P-1 aircraft as well.
hi Rich, welcome to Think Defence
The telling thing about the new crop of politicians in power is that they make no claim to the war in Afghanistan. It is ‘the war’ not ‘our war’, something they have to live with rather than have any passion for. The people who started it, Blair and Bush (and Cheney), are gone from government and if they ever persuaded us there is a reason why we are in Afghanistan everyone has since forgotten what it was. Much the same can be said for Iraq.
To be sure some good is being done, and history may eventually report kindly on the UK/USA mission to bring democracy to two failed states. But there was no conscious willing decision to take on the mission we have ended up with, nor any prior acceptance of the cost it would involve. All the talk of being out of it by 2015 says we accept that we are here and having started something we have a duty to bring some good out of the situation, but the price being paid can’t be justified for much longer so at some given point we are leaving.
So while our troops are paying the cost of a shooting war the Prime Minister is probably glad that he doesn’t have to justify why we are there and does his bit by being seen to do what he can to support the effort, even if it is just a photo-op with a new aircraft. But is there any chance David will be soon volunteering to sort out the next failed state; no way.
Coming back to the seventh C17, the issue here is that equipment that is being bought for Afghanistan is not necessarily equipment you would buy to defend the UK. If you are not planning on intervening in failed states around the world you wouldn’t see a need to buy the equipment to do that. I’d not be surprised if it was the case that somewhere in the recesses of the government’s mind is the view that Afghanistan rather than proving the UK’s capabilities, is in fact weakening the UK because resources are being diverted into stuff that you (ie they) don’t want, to fight a war you/they are not interested in. How many cyber warfare experts could you buy for the price of a C17?
Richard W
“Call Me” Useless originaly jumped right into the Afghanistan War. Politicaly Speaking.
I remember back in June pointing out to anyone who would listen, so no one, that Daves NSC had just published a report clearing the last lot of any wrong doing and adopting their strategy.
Richard W.
Transport assets that move heavy kit 5000 miles , can also be used to move it 500 miles. So if your army is at one end of the country, when the threat is at the other end, you can get there fast.
Do not forget Entebbe style rescue of Britons held hostage abroad.
@Richard W
I think it is naive to assume that defending the UK means our forces should never need to leave the UK. If we hadn’t sent troops to France in 1939, we would never have bought the vital extra time to reinforce UK shores. Admittedly, France isn’t thousands of miles away, but Afghanistan (unlike Iraq) was never about supporting a failed state, it was nipping the bud of terrorism there before it became an epidemic here. You can argue that we have failed to achieve this aim, but not that this aim wasn’t worthwhile. Besides that, richer nations have a duty to help poorer ones, especially when failed governments lead to a humanitarian disaster. Indeed our intervention in Kosovo did a great deal of good. The difference was that such aid was provided under the aegis of the UN. You can also argue about the legality of the Iraq war, and I won’t disagree, but the truth is Iraq is becoming a much more stable and productive state than it ever was under Saddam’s reign of terror. Meanwhile China is building the offensive capabilities of military forces beyond any defensive needs. Iran is increasingly exhibiting all the signs of a future failed state, with one subtle difference, it has nuclear weapons. For all these reasons, i tend to regard our fleet of C-17s as a fairly essential capability.
@Admin
What this post reveals is the hollowness of David Cameron’s Leadership. He is a consummate showman, but there was no way to judge the competence of his inexperienced leadership and government until the SDSR. When it became apparent that no one had given thought to where the Trident budget should come from – the Treasury or the Defence budget itself – and the decision to replace was effectively postponed, I realised that the Tories’ policies were all about short-term expediencies to ensure re-election with a majority rather than any real interest in creating viable long-term solutions for the UK. Now that the Coalition has revealed itself to be no more than an ‘alternative socialist government’ it really is no better than the half-wits it replaced. A plague on both their houses. The only good news is that it is likely to fail sooner rather than later, especially as 1st quarter economic data due in March/ April is likely to reveal the full and negative impact of the VAT increase on inflation, jobs and growth. I expect another election, with another hung parliament, only this time with Labour forming a minority government. Hopefully, it will give the Tories time to return to their roots (by kicking-out the closet socialists) and to find new MPs with some experience of the real world. Only then can we expect coherence to return to our defence strategy.
RE “Iran is increasingly exhibiting all the signs of a future failed state” a tightly controlled dictatorship, with no inhibitions using terror on its own citizens, should constitute the exact opposite of a failed state?
That is just terminology, implications can be partly the same.
Iran is increasingly exhibiting all the signs of a future failed state, with one subtle difference, it has nuclear weapons.
Iran doesn’t actually have nuclear weapons and isn’t actually exhibiting any of the signs of a failed state. It’s not a very nice state, but it still seems to be a fully functional one.
You can also argue about the legality of the Iraq war, and I won’t disagree, but the truth is Iraq is becoming a much more stable and productive state than it ever was under Saddam’s reign of terror.
Becoming? Maybe. It certainly isn’t more stable or more productive now than it was under Saddam.
According to a variety of sources, Iran already possesses nuclear weapons, which it purchased quite separately from its own nuclear programme. In my book a failed state is one where its people desire to have a say in who governs them and who makes their laws, but don’t. It is a very common characteristic of failed states just before they fail, because totalitarianism invariably leads to poverty, persecution, anarchy, and inevitably to collapse. Moreover, if Iran decided to do something crazy, like attack Israel pre-emptively, the massive retaliation that would follow would surely take Iran back to the Stone Age. That would also make it a failed state.
As someone who knows several Iraqi nationals involved in the rebuilding of Iraq, I simply disagree with your last statement. If it is still a violent and unstable state, it has a lot to do with its neighbour, Iran equipping and sheltering terrorist groups.
@Dominic, John, Monty,
All fair points.
You might notice I have not said that this is my view or persuasion. Rather I’m suggesting there is an observable state of peace-nik among our younger politicians (who are now old enough to be in government). Not just the government but the whole lot. They probably wouldn’t recognise the accusation but their low priority to matters military, compared with previous generations, reflects that the most recent interventionist expeditionary wars have failed to find legitimacy with a lot of people and that for many people there is no obvious or pressing direct military threat to the UK itself.
So when students are rioting over fees and seemingly everyone else is has a complaint about cuts to their spending, it’s understandably just too hard to convince politicians they would be doing the right thing to ratchet up the pain a bit more to spend cash on eye-wateringly expensive military kit.
Military people who tell the government that the government must urgently buy this or that new thing that has come along, that somehow Britain’s existence is imperilled without buying the latest generation of something, are finding that they simply are not being believed.
Again I’m not saying this is my persuasion but I suspect it is the new political landscape.
Richard, you are 100% right. We simply cannot justify spending gazillions on shiny new kit at this moment in time. Neither can we afford to be uninvited global policeman. But current cuts come at a time when we need to start planning for the next cycle. Delays will create huge gaps in our capabilities. That may not matter if we aren’t called upon to use them. We just have to hope that no one exploits our weakness. Just hoping isn’t good enough in my book.
According to a variety of sources, Iran already possesses nuclear weapons, which it purchased quite separately from its own nuclear programme.
Name these sources. They don’t sound very credible. As far as I am aware, none of the organisations with most interest in the subject – Mossad, CIA, IAEA and SIS – believe that Iran already possesses nuclear weapons.
In my book a failed state is one where its people desire to have a say in who governs them and who makes their laws, but don’t.
This is not the generally used definition of a failed state. Your definition – one used by no one else – would mean that China, to pick the biggest example, would count as a failed state.
As someone who knows several Iraqi nationals involved in the rebuilding of Iraq, I simply disagree with your last statement
Oil production remains below 2000 levels. Electricity production is about 60% of what’s needed. Violent deaths are still way above pre-2003 levels. And it took them nine months to form a government after the last election.