Have finally decided to revamp the site after last nights little outage.
One of the main problems is the massive server load caused by the multi hundred comments posts that are refreshed continually to keep up with the conversation so I am going to have a look at external commenting systems and a few other things to keep the TD show on the road.
The comments on all posts are now paginated so there will be a newer and older link at the top of the comments section.
In the meantime, have a spot of eye candy…
Edited to add.
If you fancy a spot of sport, watch Ursula Brennan getting a proper roasting at the Parliamentary Accounts Committee on Carrier Strike yesterday
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=10685
Ouch
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Wow what does Philip Hammond actually do in his time? Seems like he is quite out of his depth…
Great site – keep it up
That video is an appalling indictment of the sorry state of our defence procurement process. I’d just hand over running of the carrier programme to the Parliamentary Accounts Committee – seems the only lot with any sense, but unfortunately not enough clout
I watched the video right through with appalled fascination. Watching Ms Brennan squirming was like watching a rat in a trap. I think I must have a sadistic streak since it gave me a good deal of pleasure. The bottom line is simple: the useless Dr Liam Fox personally decided to switch to the F-35C without asking MOD to conduct any detailed financial analysis of the consequences. Instead of setting to work to show the minister what the reality was, the senior MOD management displayed moral cowardice and simply acquiesced in the decision. They only became exercised after early conversion work and the continuing issues over the viability of the EMALS catapults suggested there was a serious problem. On the present defence budget MOD cannot afford to convert both carriers and is now trying to switch back to the manifestly inadequate F-35B as the ‘cheaper’ option. The carriers are designed to last 50 years, way beyond the life cycle of the F-35B, so limiting the platform this way simply causes another issue around 2035 about how to replace the obsolete STOVL aircraft.
One could rehash all the issues about weapons bring-back capability (the B will be forced to jettison expensive larger missiles to get back aboard), lack of power and weight growth, AEW and COD needs, lack of penetration range, dubious stealth benefits, etc. But this may not matter since the aircraft is a lemon anyway and one can almost guarantee that the carriers will have to be reconstructed in the future with angled decks (and I guess their future owners – India and Brazil perhaps? – will do so in the 2020s-30s) to accommodate conventional aircraft.
Probably the correct answer is for the UK to abandon the dubious F-35 project (ignoring BAE’s vested interest in the project) and order F-18 or Rafale at a considerably reduced unit price, thus freeing up funds for the angled deck. The latter would I suspect be the better option, but BAE will squawk that a UK order will destroy the remaining export order for Typhoon (assuming there is one) and I can imagine political reluctance about being seen to buy French.
What is more worrying is the contempt that senior civil servants like Brennan exhibit for elected representatives. In the USA she would have been cited for contempt of Congress. Her main objective is not to protect the interests of the MOD or enhance the defence of the UK, but to protect her political masters by acting as a human shield. She rightfully has a low reputation inside MOD as a woman who will do almost anything to further her own career and with a limited knowledge of defence she allegedly own got the PUS job at MOD because no-one else wanted to apply for the poisoned chalice. The inadequacies of British parliamentary committees is also clear. Unlike properly resourced American ones the lack of preparation and prior staff briefings is very clear from the quality of the questions. They need teams of professional experts who can skewer the evasions, omissions and downright lies of bullshitting senior civil servants determined to conceal the inadequate decision making process of themselves and their political bosses. Without reforming the committees the MOD and other departments will never receive the exposure and transparency that are so much needed and we will go on having financial disasters like the carriers.
She did have a rather nice coat though
Fatman,
We don’t actually have to BUY French, we simply need to SHARE French. That’ll save a bit of face.
However, we’ve pumped a lot of money (£1.5b?) into the F35 project. Ditching it would lose face again since we could have spent the money on the carrier conversion.
Simon
The money spend on F-35 has effectively been wasted already as this project dwindles in size and the unit price goes through the roof. We can’t recover this. We backed a loser here to keep BAE in business. If we cancel the angled dark we are wasting yet more money since the work has already started on fabricating these.
If you think the UK has not already lost face I suggest you read the French defence press or talk to USN officers. They all think we are barmy. The French won’t ‘share’ Rafale – why should they? We are up s**t creek without a paddle thanks to Fox, Brennan and their ilk (and I wonder what her bonus was last year). I suspect some kind of leasing arrangement could be made for Rafale, but more likely the French will want a sale. I would.
F-18s go out of production in 2014, so if we wish to go down that route we need to make a quick decision. After that Rafale is the only real option. However, I suspect that well known military expert and strategic thinker David Cameron has already decided that we are having the F-35B even if it won’t work, costs £300m per aircraft and we can only afford 6. He won’t wish to upset the USA. That’s Britain’s dysfunctional democracy at work.
Fatman,
Mad idea alert:
Three carriers: CdG, QE and POW. Two active, one for Britain, one for France.
We’ve loaned 1/2 a carrier to the French indirectly – they can’t afford PA2 at the mo.
They loan a squadron of Rafale in return.
Hi all – i expect it’s been mentioned and destroyed in the past, but why is there never talk of navalised typhoons for these carriers, which at least would keep BAE happy (i’m assuming we’d up the total numbers by ~50-80 planes?), and simplify various supply chains etc. or is it really that difficult – i’m sure i’d read about feasibility studies where the possibility at least had been shown?
Also, from my own limited reading the C variant does seem a ‘better’ aircraft for all missions etc, surely the B can’t be that disastrous if the US Marines will be using it – or is the feeling that they have quietly pulled back, what with their recent Harrier purchases and statements?
Simon
In reality the plan would only work if we separated ships’ companies from air groups; it is not really practical to lend a carrier to the French for say 4 years and expect them to work up a totally new crew to man it. So this means carrying a French air group on one of the QE class with a British ship’s company. It could be done, but the financial division will be horrendous and what happens if the French want to deploy to say Syria and we don’t? Or do we go the whole hog and look at merging not only our defence policies, but also our armed forces? How popular will a Royal French Navy be I wonder? Still their female sailors are a considerable improvement in my limited experience.
elizzar
BAE keeps pushing the idea of a Naval Typhoon but I suspect you would end up with a Seafire compromise. The development costs would be substantial (BAE will see to that) and would be entirely a matter for the UK taxpayer. No other Typhoon partner needs such an aircraft. It is difficult to see an export market since a very small production run will lead to high unit prices. The positioning of the Typhoon’s forward canards neatly blocks the pilots vision on a landing approach and the US attempts to develop a reliable helmet that allows you to see through solid structures (fir the F-35) have so far met with failure. Rafale gets round this by having the canards behind the cockpit. The only options are F-35, F-18, Rafale, possibly Sea Gripen (if it goes ahead) or of course Sukhoi (unless we are hoping to buy a navalised LCA Tejas from India or some future Chinese aircraft). After 2030 there may be the US 6th generation carrier fighter.
If you want an original idea then how about stopping carrier construction, mothballing them and wait on events? After all that is what happened to the liner Queen Elizabeth in the 1930s. The BAE shipyards could be kept busy with something useful like building another 4 Type 45s.
Fatman,
I get your point, and the main issue, I guess, is the physical difference between CdG and CVF, but it could be made to work, if we wanted it enough.
The French would get it more difficult because they’d need a CdG crew and a POW crew, we’d have a QE and POW (essentally the same).
Just a silly idea
Fatman,
Just to follow up.
You have to bear in mind that this “silly” idea gives both nations 365 day-a-year CATOBAR carrier strike for about £2b each.
The common carrier sharing has been mooted before, it seemed to have died a quiet death last time.
@Fatman
I’m not really impressed with US Congressional hearings too. Rolled my eyes on the one where they “questioned” Greenspan, and directed the bullshit to seem like China was hindering US recovery. This was before the Bill to sanction China for depressing the yuan. Idiots may think that scoring points with the electorate’s fun, but if China loses it and pops a round off, people die.
Observer,
Well I’ve tried to get the “shared carrier” idea into just about every thread I’ve been on
It’s just one of those daft idea that so daft it may just work.
As I work for the civil service in NI I can wholeheartedly support the view set out above about senior management refusing to challenge Ministers. Quite simply saying “No Minister” is career suicide and senior managers, most of whom are selected for their likelihood not to make a fuss, are too busy plotting how they’ll get up the ladder to worry about the long term consequences. Many of them would probably put their hand in the fire if the Minister told them to. ;(
The impression one gets is that it’s entirely the other way around with the Civil Service thwarting and playing their Principals.
Phil
If only that were the case. The mass media is full of stories drip fed by politicians about how ‘they’ cannot do what they really want because those beastly civil servants (note the word servant) stop them. It makes a wonderful excuse to cover up lack of money, internal political opposition, pressure from the USA or EU, incompetent top level political decision making and so on.
The old style civil servants who knew their ministry and stood up to ministers in pursuit of a greater good have gone to be replaced, during the Blair era, by a new generation of inexpert self serving careerists who flit from ministry to ministry and would prostitute their own mothers of the minister wanted them to do so. You should see the gusto with which they will pursue the decisions of ministers, no matter how badly thought out or damaging they may be. The present crowd at the top of MOD are particularly bad. I don’t think they could successfully run a defence policy or ministry if you doubled the funding available, because they will always respond instantly to any passing political whim and cannot pursue longer term principles or goals.
It reminds me of a joke from pre-war Nazi Germany:
‘Have you heard, they are replacing all the weathercocks on church steeples with civil servants.’
‘No, really, why are they doing that?’
‘Because civil servants know better than anyone which way the wind is blowing.’
That is the British Civil Service today.
After all the ducking and diving, at 10:25 the video (through Chair’s remark) turns into Mrs. Brennan’s personal competence
- even though that is a wider matter, she proves comprehensively in the the 25 minutes that follow that she doesn’t actually know much about the topic at all