I am going to keep a running link list for information relating to the French Defence White Paper.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/10026084/France-to-cut-24000-defence-posts-by-2019.html
http://www.gouvernement.fr/gouvernement/le-livre-blanc-2013-discours-du-ministre-de-la-defense
http://www.gouvernement.fr/gouvernement/livre-blanc-2013-de-la-defense-et-de-la-securite-nationale
http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2013/04/29/defense-la-france-prepare-les-guerres-de-demain-avec-des-ambitions-reduites_3168164_823448.html
http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2013/03/28/le-budget-francais-de-la-defense-est-il-en-baisse-depuis-trente-ans_3149927_3224.html
http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2013/04/29/atlantiste-calamiteux-le-livre-blanc-sur-la-defense-concentre-les-critiques_3168423_823448.html
http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/infographie/2013/04/29/l-armee-francaise-a-l-horizon-2020_3168245_823448.html
http://theatrum-belli.org/livre-blanc-de-la-defense-et-de-la-securite-nationale-2013/
http://www.marianne.net/blogsecretdefense/Defense-34-000-postes-supprimes-d-ici-a-la-fin-2019_a1021.html
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130429/DEFREG01/304290010?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/france-whitepaper-livre-blanc-012462/
http://www.acus.org/natosource/france-releases-defense-white-paper-hollande-cut-24000-military-jobs
http://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/2013/04/29/20002-20130429ARTFIG00357-defense-les-cinq-elements-marquants-du-livre-blanc.php
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2013/04/29/01003-20130429ARTFIG00343-l-armee-de-terre-principale-victime-des-restrictions-budgetaires.php
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/29/us-france-defence-idUSBRE93S0JW20130429?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=t.co
First!
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/france-whitepaper-livre-blanc-012462/
“The building of a second aircraft carrier is shelved for good”
Is it just me or do I see the Anglo French with…
3 carriers
3 LHDs
3 LSLs
40 escorts
8 SSBN
13 SSN
Pretty well balanced for three expeditionary groups rotating 2-3 battalions each.
15 fregates de premier rang
15 patroulliers
06 fregates de surveillance
apologies for the atrocious french, but does anyone want to break that down?
15 frigates (5 La Fayette, 2 Horizon, 2 Cassard, 6 Georges Leygues or new class?)
15 patrol ships (various)
6 surveillance frigates (Floreal)
All guesses!
Deleted because it was a question that had already been answered
something smells here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_French_Navy_ships
they say 15 first rate ‘frigates’, but, they have:
2x brand new Horizons
2x ancient Cassards
11x potential new Fremms
01x ancient Georges Leygues class
01x middle aged Tourville
17 total, but four of those on their way out.
It reads more like they are mothballing two immediately without mentioning that they have no intention of replacing the other two when they leave service?
I would also be surprised if they built all eleven Fremm!
Then it gets really messy when you get down to light-frigates, sloops, and patrol vessels…..
I think you have to seriously question if the French will refuel their carrier next time it comes due which won’t be that far away as it had to get fuel 6 years after starting operation and it has been about 7 years since they did it. My guess is that around 2018 they elect not to refuel and refit the ship.
Been posting on the open thread. Think this means jyst 8 ASW FREMM, the other 3 ciukd be leased to Greece as per recent reports.
@All re: FREMM – The last I heard the French were building 9 FREMM and proposed 2 FREDA (AAW to replace 2 cancelled Horizons). They built one FREMM for Morocco – is that one of the 9?
“I think you have to seriously question if the French will refuel their carrier next time it comes due which won’t be that far away”
Agreed, scrapping plans for the second carrier is basically saying that carrier operation is a non-core activity for the french military.
@Wiseape: don’t think Morocco’s FREMM was from the batch, but as a lease of 2 to Greece was reported then it adds up. Bet the French wish they had gone for EMPAR radar now like the Italians.
@ Repulse – Cross posted from LSAIII – “Think the 6 Floreal class are the surveillance ships. Therefore, it does look to be 8 FREMM replacements for the older classes. I make that down 3 from the expected 11. There are 2 Horizons.”
Ah, that answers a lot.
They count LaFayettes as first-rates, which is dubious, but if that’s the way they want to play it:, rather suggests the two old AWD and two old FFD are due for the chop pronto.
In which case the first rate element is down to ten units; two horizons and eight FREMM.
Makes sense if carriers are due to become a legacy capability (at the next refuel?) and their ambitions are limited to coalition operations with the Mistrals.
Now is the time to scrap DfID budget, plough it into defence, and we will be in Berlin by Christmas. :)
@JBT,
Yup — I suspect that, in terms of construction schedules and jobs that is what it means (to grind an axe for a moment we often deride French defence as a jobs programme, and when that degenerates towards a spoils system as defence spending inevitably does that’s a problem, but a critical mass of decently-paid jobs making actual stuff is crucial to national security in any state, which is why so many financial-services types, who hate both nations and states because they get in their way, are inclined to support pollies of all parties who look the other way and collude with folk like the Eurocrats.) No FREDA, unless a miracle occurs (or France decides to back Les Grecs in an eventual Greco-Turkish conflict and sell them as export), one FREMM already in fitting-out stage for Morocco per contract because the Moroccans can afford it. And the other eight for Le Royale. I also suspect a number of the patrol vessels will go by the wayside and they will be lucky to get four SSN. The fleet has always been the poor relation (with rare exceptions like the 1850s and 1930s) compared to La Grande Muette and the armed wing of Dassault.
I don’t think CdeG will disappear; despite the putative Indian order they’re invested in Rafale M and from their own (French) perspective having the one carrier has been sufficient for them over the last decade. They will refuel and push her on until she falls apart (which, being the CdeG, could happen in a stiff crosswind…) but whether to replace, that’s an entirely different question dependent on the tenor of the times fifteen or so years from now since they’ve kicked this into the long grass. But they’ll slough off the Foudre and go down to three phibs, all about cloth-cutting around the either/or of “send a frigate to fly the Tricolor” or “assemble a task force around De Gaulle and a Mistral or two.”
Back during the last renovation when TD knocked through to the conservatory out back (didn’t misplace the biscuit tin, did he? We could lose our deposit with QnetiQ) I lost a comment in another thread which I wish I’d not done because it would allow me to be smug about the Armee de l’Air numbers. So they will indeed push through with Rafale (38-40 for the MN to generate a maximum count of 2×12 on CdeG at full push, the other 160-162 for the air force) and keep a smaller number (c. 25) of Mirage 2000N chuntering on by cannibalising the other nine, so you maintain options for the Force de Frappe. About right, and frees up some funding for the other priorities cross-listed in several of these articles after “Whoops, Mali” revealed the need.
Also not surprised wrt Army to see a bit of shuffling (hope that doesn’t mean they’re downsizing the Chasseurs Alpins too much, they have turned out to be useful again since the early Nineties) and if they’d held the line a little more on the Leclers (maybe they will in the end) simply a return to the Type 53 regts (4×13 in sqdn, 1 x OC) they toyed with during the late-90s reforms with all those listed in service committed (*ahem*, Royal Armoured Corps….) and a few of the leftover spares rotated for training. Likewise with the light “cavalry tanks” until their replacement by SPHINX or equivalent. I do however keep feeling they’d be better off concentrating back to something like a beefed up Division 77 model: fold in the Regts du Train et du Transmission from the pooled support command back to the actual “brigades”/smaller divisions they work with, and model each of four divs with 1x Leclerc regt, 1x AMX-10RC, 2x VBCI, 1x VAB plus arty and engineers (sound familiar? :) ), plus a division of paras (it’s a French thing), and an alpine division.
An independent deterrent will keep costing them but, bless ’em, they are determined to have it. I suspect more of the fiddly presence bits on which they have relied for decades (having retained an empire on the sly in the overseas dependencies, not much square footage but global placement and a hell of an EEZ) in favour of mounting expeditions when required a la Mali. Something to be learned on both counts? ;)
@x,
Cheek :) Although much of the 20th Century can be explained by two French military victories (snide commentary from Yanks aside): the first that did happen, at the Marne in 1914 (and yes it was a French victory despite the BEF’s sectoral contribution), and another that did *not* happen, the abortive Saar Offensive in autumn 1939. I hear Saarbrucken’s lovely this time of year ….
@ X – if only we had a “like” button here, i’d be all over that like a bad rash!
@ Jackstaff –
agreed on the naval stuff, but i would be surprised if CeDG lasted beyond 2020.
the army stuff makes sense in so far as i can understand it with my little mind.
and finally, yes, france is definately leaning in the direction of ongoing presence rather decisive intervention.
might very well be right for their priorities (little choice with that expensive force de frappe and aerospace commitments), but i’m glad we didn’t go down that route.
Jackstaff said “Marne in 1914 (and yes it was a French victory despite the BEF’s sectoral contribution”
I have no trouble with that statement. I said something to that effect elsewhere here recently and got jumped on.
Anyway got to go. I have an invasion to plan…….
@ Jedibeeftrix
Bless your little cottons socks.
@x,
Sorry for the confusion — that comment (re: First Marne) was aimed at the general audience rather than yourself, I know you are entirely fiar to Les Froggies (and I have to remember to stop by the Comedy Grauniad thread with the unfortunate reminder that we can lay a big chunk of the Rhineland remilitarization on Anthony Eden’s lap….) Please do let me know which corps commands are open for your little escapade, and realising that RT and GNB will be much better dressed for the occasion, one can’t argue with a decent hunting tweed….
@JBT,
Also a syntax error, that I’ve just now noticed in the long comment I made: I think actually the French are, discreetly, going to let a good deal of their small-scale presence capabilities wither quietly in order to preserve an expeditionary core, sallying out to do things like Mali and reassuring the UAE.
ah i see,
well, i suppose with the focus on airlift and intelligence, as well as enough escorts for the three mistrals, that well be the case, but it is not as ’emphasized’ as ours. the one-carrier-as-long-as-it-lasts strategy isn’t exactly a firm indication of future intent.
if we had produced this result I would have called it a fudge.
RE ” in order to preserve an expeditionary core, sallying out to do things like Mali and reassuring the UAE”
– 2.300 strong force fully deployed within 7 days at 3.000 km distance… that’s their metric. Wonder which one came first: the metric, or Mali?
It came as a surprise to me that in addition to the half sqrn and some ships, they also keep a demi-brigade in the UAE desert. Must be the same one that used to be in Djibouti (before the Americans set up camp) as there isn’t an endless number of them (in the Foreign Legion).
BTW, wasn’t Joint Warrior a prelude to the joint Anglo-French intervention force being declared operational this year? Anyone know; and also, what might be under that umbrella?
Wonder if this white paper exists for long. The socialist gov is already under heavy pressure, and lost jobs on the military-dependent yards may be one bridge to far.
If it persists, I hope it sets no precedent for the UK. We seem to have slightly lower numbers than France’ policy, called ‘efficiency’.
A
couplefew of questions:The French standing Army: Do the numbers [still] include Gendarmes (as I believe that they fall under their MoD)…?
UAE: If reports that they are going to go Tiffy this autumn, does this effect French ambitions within the Trucial States…?
Five-brigades: I thought that we were going bigger? Why is France limiting it’s expeditionary abilities…?
Fifty Euro-Turkies (A400M): Sustainable or alternate tankers…?
I agree with McZ, this is very dangerous stuff for the RN, our numbers and capabilities always seem to benchmarked against the French, if they have one carrier and 8 frigates then the probability of us ending up with the same has just gone up significantly.
It all makes that German fellow look even more stupid as the EU will become even more reliant on the UK for any kind of military credibility to back up their diplomatic big talk!
@X & Jackstaff – I’m assuming you will have a Cavalry Division; in which case with a Father and Great Uncle in the Yeomanry, I feel well qualified to serve as RT’s ADC…
I should add that I have been to the French War Cemeteries and wept every bit as much as I did at our own…and the only person I don’t blame for the 1940 Debacle is Churchill,,,
With you all the way on the Cousins though…I like them a lot, but they were very late to arrive at both parties…
@GNB
Understanding the US position on WWII necessitates understanding how the nation reacted to WWI. In short, had the German’s been smart enough to leave the US alone, I am not sure there was any pressing national interest in getting involved in the 1st war. Once it happened the problem for the US going forward were that Wilson sold the war one way (and no one publicly contradicted him from the allied camp until the thing was basically over) and then the peace treaty went another way entirely.
As a result the US populace at the time responded by saying to hell with it. I am no fan of isolation as it was in the 20’s and 30’s but I can understand why many people felt that way. The treaty talks to end the 1st war were not well handled by anyone (Wilson gets a portion of blame at least equal to the other allied powers) and it set the stage for some really bad things that followed.
“This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years.”
– Marshal Ferdinand Foch, 1919
@- Jeremy MH – I understand that, and certainly didn’t mean to offend you, or indeed any other Cousins who visit this site and know the real history. However, as I hope you understand, it is a slightly grumpy reaction to the numbers on your side of the Pond who believe you won the Great War as opposed to sending a useful Expeditionary Force who helped us to win it in 1918 (by which I mean the Anglo-Sphere as a whole, including yourselves)…and that without you we would be speaking German (not possible after October 1940, which secured us against existential defeat and left the way open for eventual victory)…or that the War started in December 1941(when it was over two years old)…or that D-Day was US Operation, when three of five beaches and much of the shipping were British or Canadian…or indeed that odd operations like the one to capture Enigma seem to have been carried out by the US, who were not then in the war…or indeed that Mel Gibson is allowed to make films in which all Brits are inbred and cowardly sadists…
I might add that if any Ivans pop up I will cheerfully acknowledge their war-finishing role – but not without mentioning the Partition of Poland, Katyn, or the deliberate abandonment of the Warsaw Ghetto to the SS, or their shameful conduct in Berlin…
For any Poles present, thanks for getting us the first Enigma, for your help in the RAF, in the Desert, Italy and Western Europe…and sorry about what came after; although i personally think Churchill (no fan of the Bolsheviks, he) might have accepted an unconditional German surrender working systematically from West to East given even half a chance.
Apologetic but hopefully accurate, and thus less Gloomy.
@ Chris M
I think you are right. This now makes EU defence policy with out the UK a total wet blanket.
On the face of it I think this could be a winner for us. France has obviously given up any pretence of being the European military leader which leaves the role wide open for us. WE should be raiding an extra £4 billion a year out of the DFID piggy bank and using it to enhance our ability to be a medium sized European coalition enabler with out US support.
Not to bothered if the French pull out of the JEF. I think nations like the Dutch and Italians have more to offer and if we played our cards right we could be the sole back bone of this concept. Lancaster house seems dead but its seemed that way from Two minutes after sarkosy was out of office.
did anyone read the comment in the Telegraph about the UK still being able to operate aircraft of CDG. Can’t imagine the CDG lasting more than thirty seconds with the hot exhaust from F35 b on its deck.
“Can’t imagine the CDG lasting more than thirty seconds with the hot exhaust from F35 b on its deck.”
In your own time, justify that statement technically based on teh thickness of the flightdeck, under deck insulation and on-deck paint system.
Crack on….
Do we think the French government are paying royalties to call me Dave and Osbourne. They have obviously lifted major parts of this white paper from SDSR 2010. (More emphasis on cyber security and intelligence and we can still .punch above our weight bla bla bla) Could me a money spinner for us peddling bullshit across the channel.
Was joking NAB. it’s a TD tradition to make fun of the state of CDG :-)
F35 B is obviously never going to operate from CDG so not really an issue.
Any updates on the UAV front?
Remember we had signed an agreement regarding uav, but Hollande went and invited the Germans. I’ve not heard much since.
“Can’t imagine the CDG lasting more than thirty seconds with the hot exhaust from F35 b on its deck.”
The French have a word for it, flambé. I believe CdeG’s wine cooler/cellar is a masterpiece of industrial scale catering and worked from the get go. Unlike other less vital systems…. :)
“It all makes that German fellow look even more stupid as the EU will become even more reliant on the UK for any kind of military credibility to back up their diplomatic big talk!”
Spooky:
http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post:84022ee2-9b2c-4e05-ad9a-a7e25bbfa11f
@ WiseApe,
Ja, mit chips. And it’s not simply a collective EU matter (although I give the collective EU until the end of the decade barring root-and-branch changes; the current language about the inevitability of closer European integration at all levels is exactly the sort of thing people say about a project right before the wheels come off), because in the broader context of European nations that still have interests, if the Germans really want to try and dominate the continent (I think of it, in fairness to them, as a Second Zollverein rather than a Fourth Reich, but the Zollverein of course was spokes round a hub, then Prussia and now Germany) then they have to disarm in the process. Such is the paradox. But in an increasingly unstable Europe (that “stable backwater” stuff is headed out the window, too, God help us — no continent whose southern corners are enduring near-30% unemployment on a long term basis is stable) part of the job of being head-of-whatever (governments, confederations, treaty bodies) is providing security or at least leading the way. And the German paradox is they simply cannot, people don’t trust them for two very good reasons: 1) the first half of the Twentieth Century for fCUk’s sake, and 2) because Germany does still, very definitely, have interests and favourites throughout the regions of Europe and those lesser nations calculate this in turn. They are stuck dominating something they cannot actually lead, except on issues like banking where the old image of German care and probity in fiscal and lending matters has taken a quite justified beating lately. Turns out that, like Victorian morality, German economic probity can be shed discreetly at the border ….
@all,
I think (depending on what does or does not shake out of the White Paper based largely, as someone said upthread, on the jobs impact) that France will aim, as France always would have aimed, to maximise the utility of their military for France and France alone, based on what they can manage in the budgets. They will continue to be a principal (not the principal) military power in Western Europe because it’s in their interests to be one, and the core capabilities they choose to value through this period of cuts will be the ones dearest to them, not to a general balance of EU resouces and certainly not to the much-debated-and-feared Amalgamated EU Defence Forces PLC. This may be another one of those periods in time where, given a quiet corridor with nobody listening in, we all say “thank God for French nationalism” for a little while, as they navigate the coming instability with their own logic rather than a bunch of fluffy ideals that serve only as cover for the banksters and the EUrocrats.
@The Other Chris,
Foch was one of the wisest men there. It is also worth looking back at Moltke the Elder’s valedictory in the early 1890s (‘im wot got more credit than he deserves for the German Wars of Unification, thanks to the modesty of Kaiser Bill’s excellent father, whose tragically early death became, over the next decades of his incapable son’s reign, a global catastrophe.) Old Moltke warned even then that “the age of cabinet wars is over, now we have only peoples’ wars” which could be “Seven Years’, or even Thirty Years’, Wars.” Of course the latter missed the mark only by about nine months.
@GNB,
Of *course* there will be a Cavalry Division. Even the French and the Poles (who now have more heavy armoured forces than Germany and an army near as large if these possible Bundeswehr cuts go through) can firmly agree that Operation Laissons-Nous Bollock Cettes Boches would go down better after a brisk morning trot.
@x – Excellent – put my name down without hesitation…last one to the Brandenburger Tor buys the beer…
GNB
On the French carrier have they perhaps decided the cost involved with doing conventional operations is quite high and to do it effectively you need to almost dedicate an airforce to it and build ships and infrastructure that its only really the preserve of the usa. And that in the vast majority of cases for France work arounds are available and that money could be better spend on other capabilities.
Could you have all he classified support systems for f35 installed on the French carrier? I think that maybe an area of concern for the cousins.
The challenge now is to balance the requirement to replace Rafale, Leclerc, CDG and the Force De Frappe (air and maritime component) plus all the supporting requirements in the next 20 years, where at least half that time is going to see a maximum of 1% PA growth in the budget.
I’ve always felt the French military was something of a potemkin force, and this will only get more pronounced as things get tougher.
It was announced a year ago that the Bundeswehr will be cut by 30%. I read it that the financial measure has by now been worked through, to produce the future head count? Sven could perhaps advise on this?
” parliamentary secretary of state for defense Christian Schmidt is reported to have said only 140,000 Bundeswehr posts are financed. As the Bundeswehr has 195,000 military and civilian personnel, this means 55,000 posts are not financed”
I have to make an exception to my normal agreeing with Sir H.
Permanent presence and intervention (capabilities) as for France have been contrasted here when in fact they maintain separate forces to do both. ” the 11e DP became the 11th Parachute Brigade in 1999″ and has the same strength as 16AA.
Then you have almost the same strength in the Foreign Legion, tasked with presence, together with lighter Gendarmerie. This view counts a bn ( (2e REP, French Foreign Legion Parachute Regiment) twice, but leaves the marines and their armoured cavalry out of the picture. So the Legion strength equates to our RM in head count, and all of these elements put together easily equal our intervention brigades.
What is likely to become defunct is heavy armoured forces (is that in any way different from us?). More of a combination of threats analysis and the transition from conscription (Europe only) to a volunteer force (can be used anywhere). However, the medium armour formations do exist (not just in plans), and rely more on wheels than tracks – something that we have had a lot of debate about here, whether it is the way to go or not.
225 first line planes? Is that bad when you take 107+48 as a benchmark?
Lots of synergies, because of differing capability profiles
-more vertical lift from the sea vs. more over the beach
-more first wave of amph. ops vs. more 2nd and 3rd wave follow-thru
– more presence in or near potential flash points vs more heavy airlift
Could go on, but as someone pointed out Poland will soon outmatch both Germany and France in land forces, but that alone will not make it a principal military power in Europe.
interesting post AAC, i’d like to see it expanded and focusing on what their objectives are, and how they complement our own.
i rather doubt that their will be a plan to replace CdG and Leclerc with local industries in the timeframe sir H mentions.
they will have their hands full with drones, complex weapons, and forces de frappe.
Assuming this white paper represents the plan that will be executed (far from certain), the crucial elements for France between now and (say 2030) will be :
1. Decide whether the airborne component of the FdF is retained (probably dependent on stand-off missile development)
2. Decide whether there will be an indigenous design and build aircraft beyond Rafale
3. Decide on retention of carrier capability and if required, design and construct a new CV/CVN.
Their SSBN force is relatively new with a modern design able to be constructed if required and their missile is also relatively new. I suspect they will do with LeClerc what we are doing with Chally (upgrades rather than replacement).
The biggy is the decision on what comes after Rafale and that will largely determine the future shape and capability of the entire French defence industry. If they’re smart, they will aim for a more modern version of Rafale good multi-role performance to replace the Mirage 2000 export versions around the world, shoot at F16 operators who don’t fancy F35, carrier-capable with an eye on Brazil and India (post MiG29) and potentially elsewhere. It’s the only way they’ll get the export numbers to retain the viability of their industry.
Assuming that CdG can be sustained out to 2030, design and build ought to be relatively straightforward, unless there is a radical departure in either propulsion or airwing. They do seem to be very keen on using their ship and certainly have managed to sustain the capabilities required for the airwing through judicious use of joint (Rafale) and combined (E2) training and support. There don’t appear to be too many logistical and infrastructure challenges to date. What they appear to have decided is that near-term spend on the second ship is beyond them and they will “muddle-through” with a single ship.
I could see CdeG being replaced with something Wasp like in configuration and size. Perhaps even 2 there of. I can’t see the French without a “grand” national flag ship. Especially 2 there of if they can’t go CTOL FJ. With shale oil and gas easing supply in the near future no reason to go nuclear. And they have access to systems like SCALP for strike and ESA to fly recon birds. Um. I also speculate that keeping the North African coast in check will stay a driver in security terms. Horizon and AAW FREMM would be more than a match for anything fielded against them especially if FJ can be provided from the Mediterranean islands. Though that will be thin because of distance and requires tankers. So……..
Sorry X, for the foul and most foreign to go down the Wasp route they’d need to :
1. Decide that they no longer needed to do Fleet AD and could live with a handful of CAS jets
2. Sh1tcan their entire aircraft industry in buying F35B – essentially admitting they could not afford a replacement for Rafale – you’d need STOVL because getting an LHD hullform to accommodate an angle and the required hydrodynamic performance will be a bit tricky.
3. Bin their three shiny new Mistrals, which will only be 20yrs old(ish) when the time comes for CdG to be replaced..
The general belief that aircraft carriers are too big strikes, and some major improvement could be made by cutting bits off, strikes again. CDG is 42,500 tonnes full load, Wasp is 40,500, America is actually bigger (45,700) than CDG.
If the French wanted cheaper, they could do STOBAR and build something like a Mistral but bigger, but we’ve been around this buoy before.
Is that ” a build something like a Mistral but bigger, but we’ve been around this buoy before”
a Juan Carlos, then?
– have not checked the tonnage
…or just use Mistrale with long-range anti-air missiles (Aster40?) targetted by ASaC copters.
200km sea control + assault?
“Is that ” a build something like a Mistral but bigger, but we’ve been around this buoy before”
a Juan Carlos, then?”
No. No it isn’t.
Seems like the argument of the French Navy being bigger and better than the Royal Navy which has persisted over the last few years may soon be put to sleep once and for all. Assuming that the RN doesn’t see any further reductions in the near future it will having a larger escort fleet of similar quality, one additional SSN, a comparable amphibious fleet and (hopefully) the all important extra carrier!
Also wasn’t the French Air Forces plan until recently for 300 fast jets? It seems that until recently our continental friends had even more ludicrous ambitions and delusions of grandeur than we had up until the 2010 SDSR.
Having spent some time in and around MB, I can’t recall any instances of comparing our c0cks with les francais during Defence capability assessments / reviews. Tends to be the media and “retired” that go there….
@ challenger
hopefully we will be spared any further cuts however even with Hammond viciously fighting his corner and a threat of a Tory back bench rebellion I can’t see the MOD coming out of the next budget unscathed.
French cuts may be the green light that Osbourne has been waiting for to cut more. hile comparing c**k size with the French matters little to us its a big driver in the media and the current governments concerns seem to begina nd end on the sheets of the telegraph.
Hope to god I’m wrong.
Would it not be inconvenient to launch, just when you’ve got everyone mustered to board their assualt helos, as in
“Mistrale with long-range anti-air missiles (Aster40?) targetted by ASaC copters. 200km sea control + assault”
I quite agree “Tends to be the media and “retired” that go there”
– the context is different, too. A marvellous job the Italians seem to be doing with their navy and maritime capabilities, even though the whole budget is the disappearing grouse… just like ours
“or just use Mistrale with long-range anti-air missiles (Aster40?) targetted by ASaC copters. 200km sea control + assault?”
You haven’t got your head round the idea that you can’t do Fleet AD with missiles yet, have you?
Different subject – for warship concept design there aren’t any easily available textbooks I’d recommend. You might try the US Naval Engineers Journal and the RINA “Warship” conference series for some ideas. Even then you get some old b0llocks – “trimaran aircraft carriers” and the like……
DK Browns “Rebuilding the Royal Navy” also gives you a good idea of what was done in the 60s to late 80s from one who was there and did that. Usually quite cheap from those “warehouse” book shops as well
@ NaB
Whoa! :) When I say “Wasp” I don’t mean the actual American USN class I mean a ship of similar style, style, and function. And I never mentioned them buying F35b. Actually perhaps I have should have said “naval fast air” instead of being specific with what the French currently use. I think canning plans for the second carrier have probably done for their naval fast air aspirations post CdeG anyway. Wasn’t the hope of a second deck that kept that alive more than anything? And how does it stop them developing Rafale land variant follow on? And what about Airbus? French defence revolves around defending France and her overseas “departments”, contributing units to EU stunts, UN adventures, and then lastly joining in at a distance any sponsored US jaunts. I would suggest Rafale next gen plus AIrbus tankers would keep more of French industry going than worrying about a Rafale next gen with a tail hook flying off a carrier that has been cancelled. Securing overseas departments means soldiers and marines, not nothing have them invested in Mistral. Securing the Med’ can be done with Rafale (next gen) and Airbus tanker working with the Italians and Spanish. For were we not told during the Libyan affair that aircraft carriers were a luxury, weren’t really needed, and to ignore sortie rates, geographical proximity etc. etc. and so on and just forget that the two nearest participating states had carriers in play? * As for UN adventures and playing with Americans well a large flight deck is a large flight deck; why shouldn’t France play the “Let somebody else bring that which we do not possess ourselves!” Also isn’t there always an convenient airfield in theatre? ** Let’s compare where France sits to say Germany in terms of naval units. Or let’s compare them to South Korea and Japan. The former has no large naval units; in fact a mantra that used to be heard a lot here is “A, B, and C countries don’t have this, that, or other naval capability yet have better economics, and don’t seem bothered, why should we?” Often a veiled reference to Germany and Japan. While talking about Japan and Koreaare both building helicopter carriers. As are the Australians. Building two large 40,000 ton-ish ships would keep French yards in work. And them ordering more AAW escorts would also help work flows. As would buying all the other systems domestically. Not of that EU competition rhubarb when it comes to keeping French industry going. And that leaves us with one more thing, national prestige. Forget the Mistrals. Just because we look at them with our cold Anglo-Saxon eyes and seem them assets to be squeezed I think our French cousins would look at them differently. They would want a big ship or pair of big ships to satisfy Gallic pride. They would need a real world capability; the French are that stupid. Something like a “Wasp” would be no smaller than CdeG, and buying two would address the loss of face of loosing naval FJ. The Mistrals could be sold, put in reserve, or used to keep numbers up. Buying something like Wasp would mean they get more lift and more speed. They could even host FAA F35b. As I say often the modern naval helicopter isn’t to be sniffed at a sea control asset. They could have a squadron of pingers and a flight of ASaC/AEW helicopters and still be an asset to a Western coalition. Nothing would cheer me up than the French planning to buy 2 or 3 CTOL carriers. Don’t believe into much allied integration with the French; a la joint navy as it wouldn’t work. But a well rounded RN fleet working with a strong French fleet with good all round capabilities is a different matter. It is a French problem. We will have the world’s best AAW ships accompanying a good sized carrier with a good number of modern jets when needed flown by great pilots and some RAF bods, and hopefully a good AEW system….
Forget these,
* No I don’t believe it. But that is what I keep getting told.
** see *
” What they appear to have decided is that near-term spend on the second ship is beyond them and they will “muddle-through” with a single ship.”
i’ll be pleased if it does remain a core capability longterm, rather than just the medium.
@X – “They could even host FAA F35b.” – Nicely done.
I have a horrible feeling the French are going to put a cheeky bid in for PoW. Someone said CdG is due a refuelling in seven years – won’t that roughly coincide with PoW finishing sea trials?
I have often wondered what France will do after Rafale (and Germany after Typhoon for that matter). Perhaps they’re hoping to prise India away from Russia to finance their next gen jet.
@ WiseApe
And we would be stupid enough to go along with it too. :(
Forget DfID. There is that other drain on our finances the EU. So we would sell them our carrier, probably for a pittance or some favourable to them lease terms, and still be paying subs to their “Tie Germany to the rest of Europe to save us from the evil Hun” Club when the Germans are about as much threat militarily as the Dagenham Girl Pipers. Gosh.
Cheer up @X depending on what happens at the next election and the ongoing Euro-shambles we could be out of the EU by 2020.
Now that is a cheering thought…
@ Peter Elliot
Hopefully yes. But I think it is going to get worse before it gets better. I see a Labour government in 2015. I see Euro elites chugging on while the periphery burns.
2015 depends how the whole UKIP schermozzle pans out.
They might succeed in pulling the Tories into a more sceptical position, or they might just split the blue vote and ao let Labour in. Cameron is a pretty astute politician (that’s not a compliment) so I suspect he will manoeuvre a way to avoid the latter outcome.
But its actually not down to us at all. The impetus will come fromt he Euro17 who will be forced into a level of fiscal centralisation that we won’t be able to tolerate – whichever government is in power here at the time.
NaB,
Thanks for the book pointers.
“You haven’t got your head round the idea that you can’t do Fleet AD with missiles yet, have you?”
Of course you can, it’s just you’d choose not to, whereas many nations probable don’t (and won’t) get much option soon… this could include both the French and ourselves the rate were all going.
“Of course you can, it’s just you’d choose not to, whereas many nations probable don’t (and won’t) get much option soon”
Except you really can’t – and those nations aren’t – they’re doing point defence.
USN fleet air defence is provided by Aegis, not Hornet or SH.
Obviously, I’m missing something here?
Speaking of UKIP, I see they are calling for scrapping Trident for nuclear cruise missiles, and building 4 more type 45s.
So, the next election (as for defence issues) will be framed as ‘shopping in Poundland’?
– for the first time I’m glad that most people don’t care
Bung a few more quid in the joint UK / French complex weapons programme and we could have some nuclear tipped cruise missiles also :)
UKIP: “The 2016 defence budget, excluding foreign military aid, will be £50bn in 2012
terms.”
They also propose passing Tornado GR4s onto a UK Air National Guard once the RAF have done with them. Shame that, for a second there I thought they might be sane.
Now I have time to think about it I am even more concerned about PoW being sold to France.
Anybody with a Tory MP who wouldn’t mind getting them to ask a question in the House?
JS,
I think that (along with most other UKIP policies), this one is a bit half-baked.
leaving aside the “nukes are good / a complete waste of time and money” argument, I suspect that buying an extra 4 T45s is not a good use of £5 billion. We already have 6, so we could reasonably expect 2 to be available for any nautical contingencies / warfighting etc. Those 2 can between them cover an area of 20,000 square kilometres, or just about 120 miles by 80 miles. Adding a further 4 T45s means 150% coverage is available. You might get 130 miles by 130 miles in a triangle.
You have to ask, what possible enemy has the sort of airforce or ballistic missile capability that can fight past 2 T45s, but not 3 and a bit T45s? I’d rather take that minimal risk and have a few biggish troop carriers for the same £5 billion. At least then you can put a Brigade ashore to actually win the conflict. You can’t do that with 3.33 one trick ponies.
You can still do the nautical diplomacy / presence stuff with an Albion replacement that T45s can do.
@ WiseApe
One more thing….
I got another “one” in there somewhere towards the end. Your mission is to seek it out……………. :)
X,
you probably want to get an email, containing some background detail, explanation of where you are coming from, and a suggested loaded question to Graham Hook, who is the more suggestible of Spreadsheet Phil’s two “Special Advisors”. You can find his contact details easily enough with some Googling.
If it’s worth it, the question will find it’s way easily enough to a compliant backbencher to ask at PMQs or Def Qs, along with a fully worked up answer (plus appropriate joke / note of sincerity) to the PM or Sec of State.
On the other hand, if you are making a complaint the Government would rather not hear in public, try Jim Murphy’s office in the Labour Party in Victoria Street.
Funny how Whitehall works.
RT
Unfortunately invading countries seems to lead to death by a thousand cuts rather than victory.
However I sort of agree with your priorities so my mythical 5 billion is spent on 4 T26 and a 35/40k LHD with capacity for 2 cdos and brigade staff.
@RT: where did the 5bn come from? Swap the 4 SSBN for another 7 SSNs which would mean 1 permanently attached to the RFTG, 1 in the Atlantic, 1 in the Indian ocean and one in the Far East. 14 sub launch platforms rather than 4, plus 2 CVF flying F35s plus the first rate surface fleet. That’s real influence.
@Not a Boffin
‘Tends to be the media and “retired” that go there’
Oh I completely agree! The decision makers and services seem to broadly get Britain’s relative strengths and weaknesses in comparison to our European friends, it’s the media, the retired and the laymen that obsess about who has the biggest dick in defence terms and tend to only tally up the numbers in a simplistic form, failing to take into account the relative quality of kit and spectrum of capabilities.
The intention of my earlier point was to say that perhaps now the French our also demonstrably cutting back on defence spending the above mentioned kind of ‘they take their defence seriously, we don’t, look they have a bigger navy than we do’ nonsense will if not cease then at least quieten down a bit.
@Martin
‘hopefully we will be spared any further cuts however even with Hammond viciously fighting his corner and a threat of a Tory back bench rebellion I can’t see the MOD coming out of the next budget unscathed’
Sadly nor can I, but I am trying to remain hopeful that any further cuts are as thought out and considered as possible and not equal reductions across the board. Even if the RN is affected I would like to optimistic in thinking that certain elements of the fleet and it’s level of capabilities won’t be further reduced, both because the cupboard is pretty much bare and because an expeditionary stance for the 2020 structure should make maritime presence and blue water power projection it’s centrepiece.
@ RT
Thanks for that.
P.S
On the specific comparison of French and British maritime power I think that in certain respects Frances larger EEZ and it’s size/spread of overseas territories with their population of 2.6 million people means that they will always want and perhaps justifiably need a larger amount of low-end patrol vessels, surveillance ships and light frigates than the RN does (as far from satisfactory as it itself may be) to provide ‘presence’ and security to these far flung commitments.
All that money to spend and no one mentions correcting the supposedly most difficult and dangerous of capability gaps opened in sdsr. Well if is my money spend the whole 5b on lrmpa/mma not more floaty boat or pointy jets.
x airbus tanker conversion line is in Spain not France. Airbus keeps the whole European aerospace sector ticking over.
@ Mark
My point was more that French aerospace industry and indeed the Fifth Republic wouldn’t collapse for the want of building 50-odd smallish fast jets with tail hooks. To be honest South West Europe all looks the same to me anyway. After Jersey it is a cultural desert until Gibraltar. ;)
You may have 2.5billion for some MPA. What do you intend to buy? :)
Repulse,
unless I’ve got the wrong figures from t’internet (always possible), 4 x £1.2B per T45 = £5B all up, thereabouts.
Cancelling “Successor” class yields savings of about £20B, but that money is not Defence-allocatable. Building 4 extra T45 gives the figures of about £5B. The extra £15B no doubt goes to housing benefit in Tipton, or some Tory tax scam.
So, in shorthand, UKIP want to spend £5B on defence, and specifically another 4 one trick ponies. My view is that if the money’s in the ring, let’s spend it on something worthwhile.
Of course, it is abso-f**king-lutely guaranteed that the moment a binding contract is signed for 4 more T45s, the next shindig breaks out somewhere unpredictable and yet again, the Andrew with their shiny new CVs, short-legged F35Bs, and super-stealthy Astutes find out that the real requirement is for putting infantry boots on the ground, there is zero air threat, and bugger all need for the ESM capabilities of ASTUTE****.
**** This state of affairs is getting repetitive. After all, Korea, Borneo, Suez, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Kuwait, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan… The only blip is the Falklands, and even then, the job was only done with boots on the ground delivered by civvy ferries and STUFT. Maybe the least drunk Admiral might spot a pattern? The only proper role of the Andrew should be to stop escorted ships from being sunk. Spend the minimum amount on AD and ASuW to get the job done, and everything else on floating troop carriers. Everything else is froth.
@Repulse – sounds attractive, but my understanding has always been that a major part of the CASD cost is not the “At Sea” bit but looking after all those Nukes ashore, keeping them safe, preventing bad people from swiping them, moving them about. Would the Cruise Missile option actually significantly reduce that? That said, I would like to see us get conventional value out of CASD if possible – do any of our more expert contributors have a view on CASD SSBN’s tubed for conventional missiles? Would that approach justify a production run of six not four, especially if we also reduced numbers of both missiles and warheads…work out the maximum number of cities we might need to obliterate in a single salvo, double that number for luck, and purchase accordingly?
On the bigger picture, with the EU in it’s current shape this all seems to me to be smoke and mirrors…and will remain so until either the Euro gets fixed or the EU itself hits the buffers at a very considerable rate of knots…until then, I simply can’t see any Government whose fate is tied to both those Quixotic enterprises knowing what it might do between now and the August Bank Holiday, much less now and 2020.
The Bullingdon’s finest might be in a slightly better place, but not by much; and I reckon our best hope is a close Labour Win in 2015, followed by a swift Milliband Collapse by 2017…with so much in-fighting in the eighteen months of office he secures that no lasting harm can be done. After that, who knows? Probably Boris and his brother Jo…but the Johnson Family at least seem to love their Country, know their History and are collectively as mad as a (very large) barrel of frogs…all of which seem to me to be a major bonus in crisis PM’s.
@x How’s the Invasion Plan coming on? Stohwassers and Sam Brown Polished, 1912 Pattern Honed, Mark IV Webley Oiled…
GNB
@RT – All of which will work beautifully until we want to put boots on the ground somewhere with a functional Navy of their own, or one they can borrow from a friend…at which point air cover might be quite handy, or we aren’t going…
@x – Can you find me another job for that invasion malarkey? I think I just resigned from my last one..!
@ RT I agree about the extra four t45’s six is enough with one East of Suez and the other attached to the JEF. Can’t see the benefit of an extra 4.
UKIP is full of waste of time policies not unlike the lib Dems. Easy to make promises when you know you never need to back them up.
Cammerons latest move to introduce referendum legislation before 2015 may be enough to split the coalition. The lib Dems need to find an excuse to leave soon so they can blame everything on the Torries before the next election.
UK leaving the EU may be the catalyst to push scotland out of the UK as well. I think independence from the EU would be a much bigger issue for Scotland than independence from the UK.
lts very dangerous notions largely being popularised by the press who think nothing of making up economic figures and failing to point out that the UK has a pretty poor track record on granting assaylum, pays less benefits to EU migrants than many other EU countries and that net contributions to the EU budget are only £5 billion per year (less than 1% of government spending)
@RT: T45 production cost was £650mn per unit excluding R&D costs which have already been spent. Though I accept it is likely to be higher than this given inflation and the need to restart the production line £1.2 per unit plus another 200mn for good measure seems a bit excessive.
Having said all that I agree the need for dedicated AAW ships is limited and a nice to have, better to get a smaller number of T26 all rounders like the US Burkes in ky view.
“USN fleet air defence is provided by Aegis, not Hornet or SH.
Obviously, I’m missing something here?”
US Fleet AD is provided by E2 + FA18, then Aegis/SM2 and then ESSM/RAM/Phalanx. Without the outer bit you don’t have Fleet AD, you have (an admittedly) large missile engagement zone.
Quick question, apart from Sierra Leone, when haven’t the UK fired cruise missiles from SSNs during a conflict? There is of course Libya, where SSNs were used but no boots on the ground bar SFs.
x
Well 50 jets is about 5 years worth of work for there fast jet production line. If we took 5 year out of uk surface fleet ship building what effect would that have?
As for mpa 2.5b would be to acquire 16 p8 would require a further 1.4b for thru life support and log. The remaining billion for an extra 11 king air for the coastal overland and choke point surveillance and there thru life support. Total requirement 5b
Mark, As you are in the industry, you may have some insights re:the Typhoon line(s)
RE “50 jets is about 5 years worth of work for there fast jet production line”
– the Rafale line has been throttled down to the bare minimum to keep it ticking over (11/ yr, pending the outcomes of the India and Gulf deals)
– the F35 final assembly line will soon start, but the confirmation of the Dutch order being assembled there is pending (and the Italian order has been cut down)
Acc
Typhoon fal at warton is low 20’s a year. Italian and Spanish fal almost finished.
F35 in Italy is there for MRO more than anything, facility is built I think.
@ Mark
Yes but what about Rafale-next-gen for the Armée de l’Air? All I said was not buying 50 aeroplanes with a tail hook, I never said the French couldn’t buy an additional 50 FJ f sans tailhook or the Armée de l’Air did I? French FJ numbers would then remain the same, non? :)
Remember that always convenient aerodrome in theatre……….
I think P8 is OK. What do you make of all that stuff about endurance and wasn’t designed to flow etc. etc. ?
Hi Mark, yes, the facility is ready. I just read an interview which I probably misinterpreted (as putting on a brave face as the orders are shrinking or in doubt) on the MRO,s part … would we be using it, too?
” there for MRO more than anything, facility is built I think.”
The support graph for Asia Pacific looked interesting. A half moon stretching from Alaska to N. Australia… facilities being kept at the far ends, presumably to reduce their vulnerability?
NaB,
From what I’ve read Admiral Arleigh Albert ’31-knot’ Burke was the chap who pushed through the creation of a missile defence system to provide fleet air-defence. This has ended up with 84 Aegis ships (currently) in the USN. I appreciate that outer layer air defence can be provided by a 380km visibility E2 and that a CAP station “up threat” could enage and defeat an incoming threat further out…
However, if you drop back to copter based AEW (200-240km with Merlin) you can engage a detected low-level threat with an improved Aster (purely theoretical new version). You don’t need the jet for air defence. In addition, a Mach4.5 missile will intercept the threat further out (time to target) than any scrambled jet so unless you happen to have you CAP station in the right place you’re not gaining anything.
So, my point is that you can provide fleet air defence with missiles. In fact that’s what we do now with T45. This is from the Royal Navy website…
“Britain’s six Type 45 destroyers…Their mission is to shield the Fleet from air attack using the Sea Viper missile…”
…I then infer that with missile based air defence you can then afford to use your jets for either a projected air-defence screen over landed troops (for example) or, task your jets for strike duties and call your carrier a “strike carrier”.
Given your apparent greater knowledge on such matters I can only presume I’m missing something fundamental. Semantics? The only thing missing with missile based air-defence is the ability to “eyeball” a potential threat, which I’d hope to do with ASaC or UAV technology nowadays.
@ Mark
Not flow, I meant “fly low”.
Sorry.
x
Well that a big question. Considering the thousands of western non us fast jets still flying round the world I would hope the European manufacturers are going to just offer that all up to the yanks.
As for p8 concerns well the amount of rework to these aircraft for military purposes is bigger than many realise and to me would not be a concern. The wing is optimised to high altitude cruise but extra fuel tanks have prob been fitted a uk company does that for Boeing in general.
Acc im not sure where we are doing ours but having experienced Italian aerospace over the past year I’d rather send our planes to Japan for service pretty much anyone but.
Simon, its all about layers.
Keep the enemy aircraft as far away from you as possible, and if that means smashing them up whilst they are still sitting in hangars, so be it.
Have a look at this RAF paper on ‘control of the air’
http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafcms/mediafiles/374CB724_1143_EC82_2E767CA5700C4E2D.pdf
Same principles apply although the details might change for the wet stuff
@ Mark
Competition is a good thing. We shall see.
As for P8 well I have wondered for a while why some though the USN would purchase a plane that didn’t work in its intended role. Aircraft that make it into production these days are seldom complete lemons.
@ Mark
‘but having experienced Italian aerospace over the past year I’d rather send our planes to Japan for service pretty much anyone but.’
My experience is, I’d rather send them to Kwikfit…
On a more serious note, plans afoot to do it at Bae Marham, no doubt some LRI will go to Italy, but I doubt the jets will.
TD,
Thanks. That doc brings everything together neatly.
I understand the layered approach and the relative benefits jets bring. My point is that you can provide area defence with missiles. It’s essentially how much of Russia is/was defended. There’s certainly little OCA a missile based system can provide, but Aster paired with TLAM (or equivalents) yields no requirement for fighter sweep or escort duties.
Without jets you are limited, but not useless.
I think I understand where NaB was coming from with “Point Defence” though, so thanks for that.
Who’s going to get the Royal Navy website spiel change then ;-)
1. You are generally not allowed to run round with your missile system in full auto – see USS Vincennes for details. What that means is that irrespective of your detection range, unless your radar contact initiates a “hostile act” you can’t do jack in most cases until it is positively ID’d as hostile. A problem magnified by the increased likelihood in recent years that any conflict will take place in areas where there is “white” air traffic, as opposed to the open ocean large scale maritime battle that Aegis was designed to fight.
2. Arleigh Burke did many things, pushing through Aegis was not one of them, although he most probably pushed the development of Tartar, Terrier and Talos. Aegis was developed to deal with the significant number of “leakers” that were expected to get through an air defence screen faced with regimental Backfire and Badger raids, loosing off As4 and AS6 at great range, plus the variety of SSN3, SSN12 and SSN19 missiles that the Soviet Navy (as was) was designed to deliver in a co-ordinated attack. USN carrier wings were designed to both attack the ship and submarine launch platforms ( with A6 and S3), the targetting aircraft (Bears – with F4, F14 and F18) and the launch aircraft themselves – again with F4, F14 and F18. The point of attacking the launch platforms was twofold – for each launch platform you kill multiple missiles (thereby reducing the load on the Missile Engagement Zone (MEZ) and more importantly those launch platforms and their crews will not be launching subsequent attacks.
Back then, the threat was much larger in terms of attack weight and stand-off than it is at this precise moment. However, the battlespace was much less cluttered – you could pretty much shoot at anything you liked. See point 1 above. It’s also worth considering that a war is a series of sequential battles over time, rather than one engagement where if one thing outranges another, it wins. You can use jets to carry AAM, bombs, cannon, recon pods and use them again and again. SAMs are a one-shot deal which may or may not kill it’s target and to the best of my knowledge, not a single VL SAM system can be replenished at sea. Not. One.
3. Your idea of long-range AAW is unobtainium-based – it relies on things (missiles, track quality data links) that are not yet fielded and may not be feasible. Just because a radar can see something, does not mean that the TEWA function can be put on the airborne platform which is where a lot of the OTH stuff falls over. It is also highly dependent on hi-bandwidth comms, which I’d suggest have not been tested against a capable opponent yet.
4. There is a science to placing CAP stations (or indeed working a deck-launched posture). Part of that science suggests that you don’t leave your “surveillance asset” to ID unknowns, whether manned or unmanned platform. They are completely vulnerable to a number of forms of attack.
5. The statement on the RN website is the usual vanilla . They have to say it’s there to do something and having larged it on shooting down cricket balls and the like, they’re unlikely to say “it can do part of Fleet Air Defence, but we’re missing a bit” on the website. More telling is the interview that Alan West gave back in 2003 regarding the looming retirement of SHAR, when the plan was still for 12 T45.
Warship IFR “What’s your opinion of the so-called ‘air-defence gap’ that will occur with the FA2 being withdrawn in 2006, six years earlier than expected?
West – “We come back to balancing the investment in present day resources with finding the funds for increased future capabilities.
As you know the RAF and Navy pilots in Joint Force Harrier will move to the GR9, which gives us an enhanced power projection capability but is not a dedicated air-defence fighter. In a perfect world I would love to have the resources to do the modifications that will get the FA2 to 2012. But, we will hopefully have the Type 45 from 2007 and there will be some capability in the GR9, which will help close the air-defence gap. They will be palliatives for the risk factor. You need a lot of Type 45s to give the same coverage as a naval air-defence fighter. However, I am sure it is the right decision despite the risk.”
WIDR – But what will happen if there is another Falklands-style situation, where the Royal Navy finds itself having to fight a war far from the nearest land-based UK fighters, and without the US Navy to fill in the gaps?
West – “If we had to do an operation without the US Navy in that risk period, and without shore-based air cover from the RAF, I may have to tell the Government of the day that the RN cannot do it.””
6. Even AM Jock Stirrup – the capability mgr who offered up the SHAR for retirement – recognised this in his evidence to the HCDC in May 2002, even if it had to be dragged out of him…
” (Air Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup) I would not claim that and I do not think I have claimed that. As I say (repeating myself, I know) I would rather be able to keep a viable Sea Harrier capability in service until it is replaced by the Joint Combat Aircraft. I do not see the Type-45 as a direct replacement for its capability. What I do say is that given the nature of the likely operational environment and the demand that is going to place upon defence and the need for highly reactive, short-range systems, the strengthening of that particular layer of the air defence system represented by the anti-air warfare destroyer is a very valuable addition to our capability.
232. I would understand if you could not answer this, but how many Sea Harriers are needed to tackle the number of simultaneous air threats that it is projected a Type-45 could deal with?
(Air Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup) It is impossible to say because the Type-45, for example, could deal with very fast, low-flying missiles. The Sea Harrier just could not deal with those at all. However, of course, it might, depending on how they were launched, have been able to deal with an aircraft which launched such missiles. So it really is not possible to draw a direct comparison between the two.”
People have allowed themselves to forget just how contentious that decision was and just how much risk was involved. The phrase “taking risk against capability x,y,z” stems from that very debate.
7. There is a reason the US (who have Aegis up the yin-yang) are pursuing F/A XX.
Have just noticed TD’s contribution and your response. Would only add that Russia did not depend on SAM for area AD. Suggest you look up Su15 Flagon (1300 built) , MiG25 Foxbat (1100 built), Mig31 Foxhound (400 built), Tupolev Tu28 Fiddler (200 built) for starters. All are air defence aircraft for waht was PVO Strany.
NaB,
I owe you an internet beer or at least a bowl of water to dip your fingers in after all that typing.
Thank you.
To be fair, the USS Vincennes didn’t have its missile defences on auto, the final launch was manual, remember reading an interview on that incident.
Simon, the problem with point defences is that they engage the enemy only after missiles have been fired. In the case of Backfire bombers IIRC they have a 6 shot “revolver” type missile magazine, which means instead of turning one bomber into junk to keep yourself safe, you now have to hit 6 which are smaller and much faster on more elusive flight profiles.
Another advantage of a CAP is what NaB brought up, non-combatant aircraft in the area. With a CAP, you can actually go out to the contact and interogate or wave him off or even force him to land as opposed to having to wait for him to get close before figuring out if he is an enemy or just a civilian pilot being an idiot. I know of at least two incidents in Singapore where this happened, mostly idiots who do not believe in filing a flight plan AND having non-functional radio.
@Simon: remove the CAP, your enemy can line up an MPA at high level 200km away, and any old aircraft, ship can rain missiles on you until you rapidly run out of SAM’s. Nothing you can do about it :-(
“To be fair, the USS Vincennes didn’t have its missile defences on auto, the final launch was manual, remember reading an interview on that incident.”
No, it didn’t. But that incident really brought home to all concerned the implications of shooting on incomplete or misinterpreted information, let alone enabling auto!
@X
Regarding the P-8 there was a pretty involved discussion of its range vs the P-1 here.
http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.com/topic/22638/Kawasaki-Heavy-Industry-delivers-mass-produced-MPA-P1?page=3
The long and short of it is that the thing will have as much range as anything else in its relative weight class. The only real concern is the low altitude performance in my view but I think the USN was honestly getting away from MAD detection anyway. Some of the new sonobuoy developments should really improve target localization from altitude and staying at altitude lets the P-8 take advantage of its very good radar(s) to provide a broader awareness of the battle space.
Obsv/Nab/Simon
Vincennes was a cluster, they fired upon a commercial airliner in following an airlane having read the warnings on the wrong frequency.
A purely SAM based system is defensive only but can provide protection within the MEZ.
You are not waiting for the enemy to commit a hostile act as you would then have the inherent right of self defence.
What you generally need is for the contact to demonstrate hostile intent. Not always simple and is ROE dependent.
What exactly is required to order an
engagement depends on ROE. However an initial air investigate will look at such things as speed( is it a fast mover) course (is it closing the force) height if ship can without using fc radar, is it following an airlane, is it squsking iff, is it emitting.
The AAWO on a single unit or the AAWC ( anti air warfare coordinator of a tg) must listen to all that info in seconds few, add in the other circumstanced, has the force been probe, is their a hostile MPA in the area possibly vectoring the raid, what is the threat, e.g level and capability.
He then will classify the contact/contacts and reccomend an action.
So unknown 1234 now suspect 1234 based on course speed no airlane and no iff. AIr threat warning now red read suspect 1234 warning 3.
No response warning 3 sir, roger suspect 1234 now at 55 miles and continue to close, read warning 5 (you can skip warnings).
No response warning 5 sir suspect 1234 now at 45 miles, AAWO air picture compiler suspect 1234 now 2 contacts redesignated 1235 and 1236 ( flying in formation is a combat indicator). Sir suspects 1235 and 1236 now hostile 1235 and 1236 due to flying in formation no answer to warnings and continue to close the force. Missile Director(MD) cover hostiles 1235 and 1236.
Sir recommend take hostiles 1235 and 1236 with our birds, they will be in launch range in 10 seconds.
Now that is over simple and ignores some reactions for various reasons, ranges are also made up but that can all happen in seconds few.
The CO/TG commander has to know his ROE inside out before he gives the order to engage. Is this a probe or an attack without CAP you do not know if they are clean or dirty, have there been previous attacks etc.
Big decision.
APATs think what we were on here is air CAP and layered air defences, and an air CAP helps a lot by forcing the contact to demonstrate intent before it reaches a critical zone. If a fighter confronts the contact, it has a lot of advantages, for example, in the Vincennes case, a simple visual check would have confirmed it was an airliner not a missile armed fighter. Visual range also allows you to “wave off” a target, with the gun pod if need be. This forces the target to either obey and veer off, or force their hand to demonstrate hostile intent by continuing to close in with the HVU, a very big red flag.
No CAP reduces the commander’s options to those you outlined above. Always nice to have options.
“The CO/TG commander has to know his ROE inside out before he gives the order to engage. Is this a probe or an attack without CAP you do not know if they are clean or dirty, have there been previous attacks etc. Big decision.”
Exactly – RoE are everything. And against a sustained campaign of probes / harassment, very, very tiring.
A repeat of the famous “clatter, clatter, clang – whose f8cking birds are those?” “those are our birds, sir” tape might be a lot more likely with a much less happy ending……
Why can’t the UK define a public RoE policy. For example “any vector that equates to a 1 minute impact is understood as hostile and will be engaged”?
Topman
Interesting about marham sound rather too sensible!
x
You don’t even have to take my word for it here’s Boeing own brief overview.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBc-DrliGW8
“Why can’t the UK define a public RoE policy. For example “any vector that equates to a 1 minute impact is understood as hostile and will be engaged”?”
For the rather simple reason that it makes your reaction predictable, which is generally not a good idea and is likely to have adverse consequences elsewhere.
@ Mark
Your word is good enough for me, even when I tell you it isn’t. :) ;)
How many would we need for 2 patrols per day, 365?
Predicatably dangerous. Similar to the CASD concept: “touch me and you’ll regret it”.
Has no one told the Cousins that any money saved by scrapping CASD will go towards tax breaks for the rich?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/defence-and-security-blog/2013/apr/30/defence-budget-trident
Don’t let me interrupt the discussion about how essential carrier air is. Assuming you’re out of range of a friendly airfield. Which is impervious to attack.
A point has just occurred to me – when Italy agreed to let UK and others use their airbases, did they impose their own ROE on their guests, or were each nation free to conform to their own? Handy to have a bit of your own real estate that can move about, isn’t it.
x
That’s prob one for the end users rather than me but I would guess it would be 4-5 a/c depending on crews and aircraft maintainence ect for continuous airborne patrol
@Mark & X
I think you are right it could be done with 4 to 5 aircraft. The 737 is about as reliable as one can make an airplane. Unless the avionics specific to its mission are breaking down I would guess the thing will fly day after day after day if you want.
That Boeing video (yes its a bit manufacturer fluff) does a very good job of breaking down what I would say are the main appealing points of the P-8 to anyone considering it. You won’t find something in that class that is cheaper to operate and you won’t find a larger spares pool out there either. An A320 based platform would be basically the same thing but I don’t see anyone fronting the cash to put one together. The Japanese solution will be more expensive to buy and to operate (unique engines and airframe). There are less capable solutions out there but I doubt one saves huge money going with any of them in the end if you look at the cost of running the thing through life.
Essentially this gives the military a chance to cash in on a product the airlines have badgered for efficiency and reliability for around 30 years. You are not dealing with military efficiency (which let’s be honest is usually a bit of a joke) but with market efficiency which is the most ruthless there is.
Hmm not to start a thread drift here but does this very expensive P-8 take this into account?;
http://www.diehl.com/fileadmin/diehl-defence/user_upload/flyer/IDAS_07_2008.pdf
Pretty sure that a sub will hear a plane/helicopter before the ones in the plane/helicopter know there is a sub,interesting…
@ Jeremy M H
Yep. I just couldn’t get over how some really believed that the USN, well the US Government, with its vast resources and backed up Boeing would “create” a dud.
Actually the P-8 is well suited to dealing with that because for the most part it will employ itself at high-altitude, even in the ASW role. It will operate at an altitude where you won’t hear it and where a surface launched IRIS-T missile would likely struggle to reach it at any significant range.
Even better if someone did fire off one of these things at a P-8 or even a helo operating near to where a P-8 was the surface scan radar would likely pick up the launch point and you could drop a GPS guided torpedo with a wing kit on the datum point from 30-50 miles out if you wanted.
I think that tech has a real application against helo’s, particularly ones using dipping gear. But against fixed wing aircraft within the range of the thing the bearing will change too rapidly for targeting. You have a 20KM range for engagement (much less up high as you spend the energy to get up there) and the P-8 should be clipping along at 13KM’s a minute. Someone better at math than I could figure out the bearing change rates that would generate within those 20KM’s for anything other than a straight inbound shot. But with sonar you are likely to hear the thing as it is outbound than when it is inbound (sound is only marginally faster than a cruising P-8) By the time you hear it and compute a firing solution it is out of the engagement envelope. I just don’t see it against fixed wing assets unless the sub gets really lucky. I don’t see it against P-8’s if they get the high-altitude ASW working (which I think they will) at all.
@X
Hell, I don’t put it past the US government and military at times to do exactly that. Money does not confer brains. But the P-8 concept in my view was a winner from the start. It should do the job more than well enough and be affordable to buy and operate. If they had started talking about tilt-rotors or hyper-sonic dash capability I would have been running for cover from the money that would have been falling out of the sky into giant holes in the ground. The P-8 program is great because they did something sensible as eschewed the military only thinking they often get into for no good reason.
The important part of this mission (other than endurance) are the radars, data links and sonobouys anyway. The High-Altitude components of the program don’t strike me as that risky as it is just adapting GPS stuff that already exist to work with sonobouys and torpedoes and will be more than paid for by the fact you can tap into a spare pool of some thousands of civilian aircraft for many things.
@ Jeremy M H
I know what you are saying. But you can’t really hide a 737 doing stuff from pilots, observers in the plane, observers on the ground, etc. etc. I was more interested in the airframe than the gizmos because that was where the criticism was laid on the P8 “system”.
Purely for the interest value and as TD posted recently about this company and I knew they did aux fuel tanks for the p8 when x asked about the aircraft here’s an overview.
http://www.marshalladg.com/products-and-services/aerostructures-products/auxiliary-fuel-tanks
Ref the P8
I just cannot help but think that like the 767 tanker deal the 737 based P8 was offered to suit Boeing rather than offer the best platform.
The A400M can could a far greater payload further for longer and only slightly slower in an MPA config.
I’m sure the cousins would love us to scrap Trident. more reliant on them for defence lose our seat on UNSC and more troos available to support their wars. Sounds like a great deal. May as well sign up to become the 52nd state.
Why does the press always have to us the US opinion as an argument. These days they need us far more than we need them.
” Why can’t the UK define a public RoE policy. For example “any vector that equates to a 1 minute impact is understood as hostile and will be engaged”? ”
“Her Majesty’s Government now wishes to make clear that…
All Argentine aircraft, including civil aircraft engaged in surveillance of these British forces, will be regarded as hostile and are liable to be dealt with accordingly.”
[aimed at the Argentine 707 used to locate and track the taskforce]
@Jeremy;Torpedo’s with wing kits,that sounds interesting,thx for your answer.I had not considered the very high speed of the P-8 since I assumed that it would be circling at low speed low over the waves,if so it would be lunch for the Idas,because the speed of sound underwater is much higher(4.3 times) then in the air,but if it stays high up,well that is a different ballgame.
@all politicians;The japanese ShinMaywa would do a better job at lower weight than the A400,it will also expand the number of engament scenario’s against subs.A p-8 or A-400 can be heard down below,a ShinMaywa not,it just floats around in the water,all the subcommander will hear is a sound of a container floating in the water…With flying boats you could actually use a tactic were you would force a sub towards the sound of the “floating container”,one flying boat taxiing at high speed(ready to avoid the Idas)the other one just sitting in the water waiting launch a torpedo and start the engines.
Another advantage of a flying boat is that you do not need airfields,it can be refuelled by a frigate!(endurance?well how about a whole week if the crew has a BBQ and can camp out on the wing if the weather is good,think about it).In today’s cruise/ballastic missile environnment large airfields will be toast anyway within a couple of hours.I do agree that the choice for the P-8 is more suited to Boeing then the US navy,same could be said about the Jurassic C-130J.
The A-400 is a true military transport because of it’s turboprop engines and not an airliner designed to look like a military transport like the Kawasaki C-2,the C-17(which is not an stol plane,and try taking off with that thing from a gravel strip,it will cost an engine overhaul)or the new Brazilian KC 390.offcourse provided that the A400 will live up to its’s expectations and that it will be a plane wchich can rely on dirt strips and primitive fileds.
An advantage of the A400 over the P-8 and P-1(Kawasaki) and also the flying boat is that the plane could function as a cruise missile launch platform,If I am not mistaken there once was talk of a “non penetrating aircraft”,it showed a picture of a freighter launching a whole bunch of missiles,interesting…maybe you could launch and retrieve ucav’s as well in the future.
I do know that the C-130 was used in the way in the Vietnamwar,except that it carried it’s uav(or whatever they called it back then)under it’s wing.Today you could imagine ucav’s being launched,retrieved,rearmed,refuelled and relaunched from the freightbay of an A400….well so far my sales pitch for the A400..I wandered a bit off from the subject..sorry!
You all have a nice weekend!
Cheers,
JJ
Having a UNSC seat in my view is fast becoming an irrelevance – money talks, natural resources talk and conventional military might (and be willing to use it) talks. Having CASD talks, but everyone knows it can never and will never be used. It can, by even by applying a little bit of nounce, be negated by never launching a nuclear strike on the UK – that simple.
That is why I believe in current times tactical nuclear weapons are a lot more of a influencer as you are much more likely to use them and the enemy knows that too. Plus it gets my 2nd batch of 7 Astute IIs :)
oops!offcourse mpa’s can also launch cruise missiles but not as many and offcourse the C-17 and all the other can do this all as well as the A400,perhaps a bit less or a bit more,but with more reliance on big luxury airfields with known locations…and that is what really worries me…
cheers again!
@ Repulse
One can of instant sunshine is much the same as another. They don’t really scale that well. A 16kt weapon dropped on a modern city like London would cause with more casualties than the a medical service could cope and cause trillions in damage. And once one is let off who is to say that more won’t follow? “Hello this is the other side sorry about that small tactical nuke. Won’t happen again! Promise!” “Hello this is the other side again. Yes I know we promised that we wouldn’t use another nuke. Just sort of happened. Not our fault your soldiers are so damned good and so numerous…….” Get the picture? If Iran tests one bomb CASD will be off the political agenda for two generations or more.
APATS,
Why would the P8 be based on anything other than a homegrown Boeing?
If Europe were to build an MPA it would be based on a homegrown Airbus. Similar to the Voyager project. The trouble is that the Americans are there first and reworking much the same systems into a different platform will take excessive time and money – similar to Sentry, I guess.
It just seems perfectly logical to me.
P8 is based on the 737 and not the C130/C17 because it doesn’t have a requirement for a massive rear ramp and will spend most of it’s time at medium altitude. Hence why A400 has never been a contender for dedicated MPA, because the expense of removing the rear ramp would make it pointless
If you want a short to medium range MPA that can do ASW but probably focus on maritime security, take your pick from many
If you want a long range MPA with a focus on ASW/ASuW your options are few, P8 is the obvious one but buggers up any hope of airframe commonality and therefore ties you into a 737 based E3/RC-135 replacement and lots of cash going to the USA.
If you want a long range MPA with a focus on ASW/ASuW AND keeping commonality and industrial benefits then you have to go Airbus and modify one of their mid size jet airframes, no getting around it.
Must admit though, am rather intrigued by the A400 MPA option, its not as daft as many might think it is
@TD: I think the question you need to ask about MPA, and indeed Rivet Joint and E3 is more a practical one. We’re never going to buy more than 20 of the first even in an ideal world, and the numbers for the latter are even lower. The only beneficiaries of a Euro project will be companies who will probably fuck it up the way they did the A400 and Nimrod (although it should be noted that by insisting on a Euro engine, the politicians hold more than half the blame). Buy it off the shelf.
If we want to actually gain useful skills, I suggest we build Taranis as a national project. Avoid anything Euro, but accept anyone as a subcontractor and or risk sharing partner. Moaning about the Yanks getting the money is about as relevant as doing the same re the French and Germans
I have an idea!!!! Why don’t we build our own MPA? No? Ok……
Simon,
Sorry I was not clear. I did not mean that the US should use an A400M was merely thinking out loud about its capabilities vs a 737 based airfrcraft.
WF
The rear ramp has not been removed from the CN 235/295 MPA family have they?
APATS,
Oh, sorry.
Why would the A400M be a good choice for MPA? It seems to be a cargo plane to me, not a very efficient design for high-endurance ops. Granted, it looks good on paper, but it could be better. Surely an A319CJ would be a better platform?
@APATS: no, it has not. Can the CN235 drop torpedo’s or sonobuoys from internal storage? It will need a internal underside bay to hold a significant number… another fuselage penetration. Hence, for the big stuff, it’s a lot easier to convert an airliner rather than a cargo aircraft
I can’t see having a rear ramp on the back of an MPA as a bad thing. There are many MPA versions of the C130 and the ramp is useful for many things.
That being said if we ever do get a good MPA we need to go of the shelf with no f**king around so either P8 or CN235.
@ repulse
If scrapping CASD and trident ment 7 extra astute II with a nuclear tipped version of Perseus then I’m in but I have not seen this proposed by the lib Dems or anyone else. Scrapping CASD is seen as simply a way to cut the budget. No extra funds for anything else. Having the develop our own warhead and cruise missile would likely take away any potential saving anyway. I favoured an Astute batch 2 with 4 CMC tubes for either trident or TLAM with one sub carrying four trident D5 fully loaded with 8 MIRVs on each missile. More than enough detterent in the 21st centuary.
@ wf I am inclined to agree. If we are to embark on a national defence project on our own it should be Taranis as the industrial benefits are rather large. Mantis derived UAS would also be a winner in my mind. s for an MPA A320 or A400m it just seems like a waste of time.
airbus builds 40 or so A320 each month so an extra order of 8-12 won’t make much difference.
Let’s just hope Taranis first flight happened soon and we scrap any notion of collaboration with France.
“If scrapping CASD and trident ment 7 extra astute II with a nuclear tipped version of Perseus then I’m in but I have not seen this proposed by the lib Dems or anyone else.”
Agreed.
SSN’s need to be kept, and we need enough nuclear cigar-tubes hitting the water in barrow in order to keep the ability to design and manufacture them alive.
TD yes the 737 would tie us to the airframe replacement for rc-135 and e3. Is that a bad thing? We’re already deeply integrated with those capabilities and the USAF to an extent that I can’t see it changing now. While I would like to see an airbus solution showing we can stand on are own two feet and based on the a319 I can’t honestly see the money coming forth to pay for it.
I would not go down the a400m route for an mpa replacement. The 737/a320 is cheaper to operate 2 engines as opposed to 4 and has a huge global supply network with repair facilities world wide. Perhaps more importantly the quietness and comfort of the cabin will be in excess of anything possible from a turboprop alternative for the systems required to be carried.
Martin
“airbus builds 40 or so A320 each month so an extra order of 8-12 won’t make much difference.”
Yeah it will the production lines are running at close to full production but the bigger problem is the parts suppliers to the fal are at max rate to support it. The only spare capacity may be at there new mobile fal plant in Alabama.
Once again we are discussing procurement programmes of a few billion in total cost that would be beneficial to our whole defence structure for decades. And the amounts aren’t even one year’s DfID budget.
Around Sainsbury’s I went off the idea of buying P8 in favour of more Merlin ASW, drones, C295, and some auxiliaries . Sorry.
I’m just writing a doc based on the things NaB and TD have said… I seem to forget certain rationale after while so thought I’d write it down for a change (note to self: must do this re CASD too).
However, I’ve split it into the normal DIE (Detect, Identify, Engage), yes, plus others I know. And in writing the “D” bit I simply can’t believe we don’t have MPA any more. We may as well simply give our seas and EEZ away!
Also, I really, really don’t think we’ll do anything than buy P8, if we rekindle our MPA capability at all. Even if it’s purchased by NATO and based in Lux along with the E3s I think they’d go P8.
@Repulse
“[CASD] can…be negated by never launching a nuclear strike on the UK.”
Am I missing the point of CASD? ;)
@x
A few thousand of something like these [1], tupperware box containing a satellite phone transmitting the audio from the on-board hydrophone to teams with headphones [2] based in some newly installed portacabins at Bletchley Park.
Cheap and helps towards resolving unemployment too. I think of it as the “Mechanical Turk” approach towards ASW.
Then we can look at upgrading the kit to something more capable in the “Flight II” batch (terminology chosen to appeal to an export market) at a later date.
[1] Autonomous ocean crossing robot fleet.
[2] Recruitment-incentive driven headphones.
@The Other Chris: quite right! And I spilled my coffee laughing :-)
@Martin + Jedibeeftrix
‘If scrapping CASD and trident ment 7 extra astute II with a nuclear tipped version of Perseus then I’m in but I have not seen this proposed by the lib Dems or anyone else’
Sounds good to me! If it met the criteria of maintaining a steady drumbeat of work at Barrow so we don’t loose the skill set, could be achieved with either the same of even a smaller budget then the CASD replacement and crucially provided a viable defence/threat in the same way that the current Vanguard/Trident set-up does then id be game.
I’m curious though as to whether people would see a second batch of Astute’s with Perseus as a direct CASD replacement that’s just done in a cheaper way, or if they would primarily operate as additional SSN’s and only pull the nuclear tipped missile out of the bag when necessary?
As a lot of people often mention when we get onto this subject what about the inherent confusion and danger of deploying submarines that either could or couldn’t have nuclear weapons on-board? Would the murky details lead to a lot of otherwise friendly ports refusing them entry, and if we simply declared that a particular submarine was carrying them would that not defeat the objective of having our nuclear deterrent on an otherwise stealthy platform?
Questions, Questions!
@ The Other Chris – re CASD – I don’t think you are, no…
GNB
P.S
Can anyone remind me how many SSN’s you need for every one deployed? It’s the not the same 1:3.5 ratio as it is for surface ships is it.
@ Challenger and others…said it before, but I will say it again…no Government that moved away from CASD would be doing so to use the savings for conventional capability…they would be doing so because it would achieve further defence cuts with CND/PC bonus points…on this front we need to be very, very careful what we wish for…loose lips cost ships!
On the question of CASD SSBN with reduced Nukes and some conventional payload, I am all for it if do-able and likely to secure four plus Vanguard successors (I’d like six)…but my plan would be to patrol them as now…no reason once the missiles start flying that some of them can’t be unusually big, and arriving from an unexpected direction…ideally I’d like to see something heavy enough to drill deep under a runway and then lift the whole thing up and drop it on any adjacent aircraft, vehicles or ground facilities when it goes off.
Up to the FCO to make sure that nobody gets the wrong end of the stick about what we are using…
GNB
RE: A400M vs P-8 in the MPA role…
I think people are way too optimistic about the A400M’s practicality in that role. Particularly if you want to go with a small buy to get the job done. Simply put you are not going to get the dispatch reliability with an A400m that you will with a 737 based platform. The A400m is a new platform that has had engine reliability problems in testing and is not going to be held to anywhere near the dispatch standards a civilian 737 will (they expect something around 99% dispatch reliability on multiple turns a day).
More on point it is a platform that is twice the size of the 737 in terms of weight. You are going to burn more fuel using it over the same distance. Even worse the base platform is twice as expensive as the 737 one is.
@APATS
I think it is important to remember that the P-8 competed with a custom built turboprop MPA aircraft built in the US for that contract and won. For a good while the P-8 was considered the underdog in that contract. Boeing sold the USN on the idea and the savings of having that global supply chain and ended up winning. The contract was hardly stilted in their direction.
Jeremy
A400m dispatch reliable and all x has a word begining with R that sums that whole paragraph up.
@Mark
Not saying it won’t be reliable. I am just saying that it is unlikely to have the same reliability as a 737 or A320 based aircraft. Those are simply held to much higher standards than any military aircraft because the margins for profit in their operations is so thin.
A400m was designed for the same airframe dispatch reliability as the a320. The bigger issue on military aircraft is the reliabilty of mission systems and das depending on mission required to be completed and to which comparison to civil aircraft dispatch rates is pointless
@ Chally
My splendid little Brassey’s book on submarines suggests that it is best if they are operated in fours. 1 in refit, 1 working up, 1 deployed, 1 returned/minor refit (repairs if you will). So that is three afloat and one in big bits on dry land. Seeing as submarines are uber complex I think it seems sensible. Of course you can stretch out refits and curtail deployments. When Polaris was in the planning stages it was envisaged there would be 5 R-boats to provide CASD. That “we” can get away with four V-boats either proves that is all we need or indicates that technology has improved somewhat. Seeing as all the submarines I have ever been inside, (U-boat, O-boat, and T-boat) all look the same inside (a bugger’s muddle of pipe crammed into a big pipe, crammed into what is essential a “pipe”), the sea hasn’t changed its physical properties, and other nations (Hello Oz!) have trouble with their submarines I would suggest humbly that they are as problematic today as when Mr Holland ventured forth in his creations. :)
@X
Thanks for the info! I can only guess that the desire for 5 R boats was to try and be extra careful and add even more flexibility into the set-up (our sole nuclear deterrent in the middle of the Cold War did deserve quite a large helping of caution…until the bean counters made them do with 4 boats that is).
If the realities of the past still apply wholeheartedly to operations today and we can only get 1 boat out of 4 to sea under normal conditions does that mean our 7 projected Astute’s are only going to have 1 at sea with the other 6 being in port or laid up? I guess as you say we could stretch deployments, maintenance and so on a bit, would that perhaps get us 2 available for deployment?
Id say that 1 East of Suez and 1 to work with the RFTG is the minimum we can get away with, and that doesn’t include the protection of CASD and the need to send 1 off to S.Atlantic or some other place in a crises. We really need 10 of the things!
I can see my musing has started some debate.
WF, surely if we can launch torpedoes from a submarine and launch a space shuttle we can utilise the massive cargo hold to come up with a system to launch sonobuoys and torps from an internal arrangement with the vast majority of any penetration being inside.
JMH
We are buying the airframe anyway, the more that are bought the cheaper they become. The Cn 235/295 MPA mission kit already exists. I was simply curious about the capability an aircraft that could carry so much and for a long time (it is flexible enough to be a tanker can be AAR) could bring to the role.
No offence but US procurement competition is “toxic” and seems to have far more to do with Politics than capability.
@ Chally
The RN will work with what it has. I should hope with 7 there is more than 1 available! We need to think more in terms of fractions of the squadron being available, even if that means 1.75 boats or 2.1 boats or whatever. That is more a measure of time than physical condition. And of course this is peace time too. Submarines are complicated machines, operating in a demanding environment, and all that results in a high work load for the crew. I wouldn’t want to do it for a living that’s for sure.
The RAF have shown no interest in V22. Perhaps the army….
We didn’t spend long commiserating with the French, did we?
@X
I get what you mean, and working on a 4:1 ratio would surely mean (using my very limited maths skills) that something like 1.75 of a boat will be available, so I can see how that could transfer to 2 boats being operational and deployed some of the time. That of course does only work within the rigid confines of the 4:1 assumption and as you rightly pointed out in fails to take into account maintenance issues on 1 side and emergencies resulting in unexpected surges of activity on the other.
Lets hope that 7 boats serve as well, the RN does seem to be pretty good at squeezing what it can from limited resources.
It would have to be a pretty penny that could get me to spend 3 months of my life at a time breathing nothing but recycled air, seeing nothing but artificial light and not having enough space to swing a dead cat around. I think id be fit to kill something on 1 of those tin cigars after about 5 minutes! I have a lot of respect for anyone who can live like that.
@x – I’m pretty sure somebody on the site suggested 3.5 Hulls = 1 available; thus 7 Astute = 2 available, but we would need 11 to guarantee 3 at sea…
Might be mistaken though.
@ Chally
Yes. Something like that. I don’t know. I think it will float around the 2 mark. So 1 in big bits and the other 6 being available in a similar rotation to surface ships. I can’t see 3 being deployed out of 7. NaB will be along sometime I suppose and give us the benefit of his professional wisdom. As I said I work off the figure in Brassey’s and my other readings. We will better off than the Australians with 6 boats. But saying that A-boats are a bit more complicated than the Collins.
@ GNB
There abouts. Seven is just such a lob sided number.
@APATS: to carry a useful load of torpedo’s and AShM’s, you will need to carry and launch them from somewhere near the aircraft centre of gravity. There’s no provision or space for much on the wings, so that means under the belly. Unfortunately, that’s precisely where the rough field capable, heavy load carrying A400 has both it’s undercarriage and a lot of it’s load paths, and it sits close to the ground for the same reasons. Nope, not practical!
http://www.wilcopub.com/wilcopub_images/images_A400M/23_g.jpg
http://www.feelthere.com/images/airbus-a400m__37_g.jpg
@ ALL re 7 Astutes
To be clear I can’t see more than 2 being deployed normally during peace time. If 3 are needed then yes, but I think normal tempo will be 2. And when I say deployed I don’t mean working up but on ops.
7? Who builds 7 of anything? Dwarves yes. Submarines no. :)
An A400 MPA…
Did any of you fine gentlemen read this
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2012/09/the-airbus-a400m-atlas-part-3-a-multi-purpose-platform/
x,
I guess it just depends on availability statistics and maintenance cycles.
We used to deploy 7 SHAR on Vince ;-)
@ Simon
Yes. But you have to a crew that has to be worked up. Qualified submariners don’t grow on trees. * Deployments just don’t happen, there is a programme that has to be planned. I bet NaB or APATS will be here sometime over the weekend to give us some professional insight into it all. :)
* They are grown under boxes like forced rhubarb. True. ;)
EDIT: Re 7 SHARs yes but aeroplanes aren’t as complex or as vital as SSNs. :)
@APATS
No offense taken. I think almost all defense procurement processes are toxic. We could all point back and forth at one another for the most laughable procurement programs that have been run until the day was done after all. There are very few major procurement programs that are not political in Western nations. What capabilities for the P-8 were lost to politics?
I just don’t think the P-8 is a bad program. LCS? Sure, I agree with you. The P-8 is perfectly fine. The UK is free to develop whatever it wants as an MPA, I don’t really care. The UK could certainly develop an A-400m based MPA. It is certainly big enough and can carry enough to do the job.
I personally wouldn’t. It won’t be cheaper or appreciably more capable than something already out there to buy. From my personal point of view the P-8 or an A320 based MPA are about as good as one could ask for going forward. You can basically operate the thing out of any commercial airport on earth and it is likely to have many of the parts and support systems to get the thing back up and flying because the airframes are so widespread. The only reason not to develop an A320 based MPA is that I don’t see the market size for it to spread the R&D cost. If you can find 100 buyers then have at. I love new airplanes of all types really.
But I don’t see those things as being realistic.
They know that “Qualified submariners don’t grow on trees” in Australia.
– I wonder how their recruitment campaign in the RN went?
– surely that was for people coming out of contract (rather than transfers)
“The only reason not to develop an A320 based MPA is that I don’t see the market size for it to spread the R&D cost. If you can find 100 buyers then have at.”
It’s all about modular mission systems nowadays. The aircraft exists already; and various MPA mission packages already sit on the defence supermarket shelf, purposely designed to be indifferent to the aircraft platform on which they may be fitted.
If you look at the C-235, a popular small MPA platform, there are various equipment packages used by the operators for a similar role – with customers buying as little as a pair of aircraft in a particular configuration.
There should be no reason why a British MPA should take on a resemblance to Nimrod, as long as the MoD picks a sensible off-the-shelf mission suite, and sticks to its decision throughout integration with the platform aircraft.
7 astutes basically allows one as sea continuously and one attached to the JEF which won’t be at sea continuously. The one at sea I am guessing will be needed in North Atlantic for CASD protection. We really do need a minimum of 10 which was the defence assumption pre 2010. Worse still we are expected to drop to 5 boats when the T boats are retired an Astute 6 and 7 are not yet commissioned. Very grim indeed.
.
@APATS
I think a400m could be turned into a great MPA if we ad the money but its a simila Gucci solution to MRA4 that we don’t have the cash or probably the need for. P8 is there are ready to buy and offers a similar set of capabilities to MRA4.
I do like the thought of being able to use a400 as an auxiliary tanker but then we are going to get 20 transport version anyway which we could do this with. I like the P8 ELINT capability which I think is something we are really lacking and if we were in a LIbya style op again we probably would need the MPA a400 doing ELINT rather than auxiliary AAR.
737 is very easy to operate even with a small fleet of 5 aircraft and 737 is likley to form the replacement for E3 and Rivetjoint in the future.
That being said I think I am increasingly leaning towards the SC 130 option possibly converting our existing c130 J aircraft. This would allow us o keep some c130j in SF role to replace the K models. Big question those is cost. I would go for any of these options depending on which is the cheapest.
@Martin: Having 7 SSNs (or fewer based on production timelines / delays) is very worrying indeed. Having one tied up on CASD protection is a further example of the how the “White Elephant” Trident system is restricting real and practical influence.
The fact that the French have six smaller SSNs shows they are even more limited to local Atlantic and Med operations.
OK – so if we are talking about MPA here’s some thoughts.
We REALLY REALLY need to look at it in a joined-up way.
We need to think about our on board mission systems in the context of the over land R1 Sentinel requirement, the Rivet Joint ELINT and the RAF AWACS systems. While sensor requiements may be different the mission consoles and computer processing power probably need to be common. Could we develop towards one core system for all these roles? And a range of different sensor pods available to be fitted depending on the mision / role? It would be a development path rather than a single project. But it would be well worth working towards.
Similarly for the airframe we need to set an overall fleet development path towards commonality. This probably needs to consider not only the ISTAR platfroms mentioned above but also the RAF AAR and Transport capabilities too – which suggests Airbus A330 rather than Boeing 737. But certianly we need to try and get the same basic airframe for MPA as we do for eventual E3 and R1 replacements.
What is unique to the ASW MPA? Probably the weapons release requirment. Sonor buoys can the posted out of a derringer door – but torpedos and depth charges can’t. It will be our only large airliner type plane with a bomb bay. Thats where the unique development costs will lie. And thats where the 737/P8 has a big advantage becuase that work has already been done. If we go A330 then someone has to stump up for designing a working bomb bay. And given the shortage of cash in France at the moment the chances are it would be us. Now there are advantages becuase we could design-in capability for our choice of weapons: Stingray, Storm Shadow, even Metoer or Paveway if we really wanted to. And that would bring a lot to the party. But it wouldn’t be cheap and we’re skint not just now but for the foreseeable future too.
So I don’t really want to nominate a preferred platform at this moment A330 and 737 both haver things going for them. Neither is the clear cut winner. What I want to do is beg for a joined up approach to managing long term procuement of a set of related capabilities. The Complex Weapons Team provides a clear model to follow. We need to apply that approach to the ISTAR family of capabilites in a similar gown-up, joined-up fashion. And if we do that then we CAN afford (amongs other things) a really good ASW / MPA capability.
@ repulse
Yeah it’s true that CASD takes up a lot of other resources. Have to factor in 3-4 SSNs and 3-4 Frigates plus land based MPA (if we had any). However I suppose these forces also compose the bulk of the UK based naval protection for home waters which we might expect to have anyway.
The issue with a seven boat fleet in my opinion is an enemy such as Argentina can always assume that we have one SSN in North Alantic. As soon as one pops up in the news I.e. with JEF or else where on exercise they can be almost certain there is not one lurking in their back yard. This lack of numbers removes one of the key benefits of SSNs in that the enemy can never be sure you don’t have one lurking around the area you want to go. a fleet of 10 goes some way to redress this. However where you get the £ 3 billion to buy the extra boats not to mention the extra money to run them is beyond me. There ain’t much outside of DFID left to cut. I could also see many areas in the forces more deserving of the money such as MPA, ISTAR, weapons integration on typhoon etc etc.
The MOD has studied cheaper detterent solutions before but seems to come back every time to SSBNs. I also believe if it was not for having to have domestic capability to build SSBNs we would already have lost production capability to build SSNs. I think the only reason the government continues to hae this capability is t give the yard soemthing to do when it’s not building the SSBNs.
Guys,
The enduring permanent SSN task is E of Suez. The SSBN CO uses space and stealth as his defence. Remember that any potential threat to the UK SSBN also threatens other and responses are mostly multi national.
Worth noting that the French operate Red and Blue crews on their SSNs
@Martin
‘We really do need a minimum of 10 which was the defence assumption pre 2010. Worse still we are expected to drop to 5 boats when the T boats are retired an Astute 6 and 7 are not yet commissioned’
I think we NEED 8 boats to (under normal circumstances) have 2 at sea, although 9 or 10 would of course be nice to give the fleet a bit of flexibility and margin for error. If all goes to plan then Astute 6 should be just commissioning as the final Trafalgar leaves service, and the way Turbulent had her decommissioning postponed by 6+ months shows their is a bit of room to extend dates when necessary. Although that still leaves us with a pitiful 6 boats for quite possibly a couple of years, I have no idea how the French manage to do anything else with theirs if 1 out of 6 is tied into CASD like ours.
@APATS
I was not aware we had an enduring SSN presence east of suez. Do you know why we don’t operate with red and blue crews on our SSN s. it would seem to make sense given such a small fleet.
@ challenger
Tink the five number was based on operational boats assuming that Astute 6 will be on trials. would be nice if we could extend the life of the T boats as the USN is doing with LA class. I agree 8 would be great especially when we are already paying atleast part of the cost for 8th boat to retain facilities between the gap of Astute 7 and Successor 1. Given the time it will take too build he four trident boats I am not sure if it would be possible to get an astute 9 and 10 as Astute her self will be nearing need for replacement.
Maybe UKIP can be convinced to add three more astutes to its manifesto.
@Martin
Fair point about Astute 6, as we have both stated it would be good to have the last couple of Trafalgar’s linger around long enough to keep the fleet up-to strength. As you rightly pointed out Astute 9 and 10 would be costly and could only be constructed at a time when the CASD replacement needs to be well under way and the Astute’s themselves are beginning to get a bit long in the tooth, thus making the idea difficult even if the money existed. I still think boat 8 makes a lot of sense though, it’s what’s operationally needed to keep 1 East of Suez and another in the North Atlantic. Although we have essentially paid for it I think those are sunk costs and so we would effectively have to pay for it twice over, but I think it would be worth it for an additional boat and to speed up the programme again. Not sure where we could get the billion or so from, but it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the wider budget.
@Martin: I think the whole without SSBNs we would not have SSNs is nonsense in my opinion. The fact that the RN has an asset that can independently operate any where in the world without detection and with a reasonable bite is a very valuable capability in it’s own right.
TLAMs with nuclear warheads were recently in the US arsenal, the French have nuclear cruise missiles also and the UK used to have tactical nuclear weapons (weren’t there some bombs on Invincible during the FI war?). We should be able to follow our previous procedures for these weapons.
@ APATS
With the Russians targeting money at their submarines there is a definite need for a RN SSN in the North Atlantic.
I know how CASD patrol is conducted. And that there is no active defence of it because an active defence would undermine its true defence of stealth. One of the reasons why the Russians put to sea is to look for (hunt sounds a bit aggressive :) ) NATO submarines including our V-boats. We need to return the favour. Similarly that is why we should always make sure there is T23 2087 up north too. Still not sure about P8; still thinking T26 14 & 15 and some more ASW helicopters would be a better buy. That is of course subject to change.
Lastly I am trying to keep you young APATS in work here! ;) :)
@ Challenger – “I’m curious though as to whether people would see a second batch of Astute’s with Perseus as a direct CASD replacement that’s just done in a cheaper way, or if they would primarily operate as additional SSN’s and only pull the nuclear tipped missile out of the bag when necessary?”
As mentioned by someone else; i am fairly certain that a very substantial component of the cost of operating a nuclear deterrent is involved in the design, manufacture, storage, transport, and testing of nuclear weapons, and not merely down to the size of four 15k tonne subs with very big fireworks in the boot.
This, combined with the fact that cruise will always be a less effective and more uncertain basis for a deterrent, tells me that RUSI are correct in suggesting that if an alternative to CASD does not offer really significant cost savings then it simply isn’t worth adopting.
I value the SSN’s immensely for the military advantages they confer (and hence the political), and would happily sacrifice CASD with Trident E6 to maintain them, which is a rapidly approaching problem given that our nuke-boat industry is below the level of real sustainability in a society that does not accept subsidised endeavors.
It is for this reason that I would like to see an end to CASD, with the creation of a post-Astute family of iterative SS(B)N’s sporting a (n empty) four tube CMC module, with a permanent lease on twelve Trident E6 missiles kept in the US stockpile, and some compliant warheads in a bunker deep under Aldermaston.
The intention being to support a fleet of twelve boats in classes of four, with a twenty seven year service life and rolling off the slips every 27 months, and thus a new design every nine years.
http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/thoughts-on-the-successor-deterrent-cmc-is-in/
This is the only way I can see us staying in the nuke-boat business for the long-haul.
p.s. what should we read into the continuing absence of the Lib-Dem’s much ‘lauded’ Trident alternatives report?
The white paper to parliament stated the cost of design and build of just the 4 ssbn subs would be 12b pounds and according to the 10 year equipment plan were spending 38b pounds on subs over that period so those 1 or 2 available subs better be pretty dam gd as we’re 1/4 of the procurement budget on them.
CASD with SLBM is the cheapest most practical way to maintain an unstoppable deterrent. Anything else isn’t worth the cost, time or effort!
As it stands SLBM are unstoppable and have a global reach. Cruise missiles can be shot down and don’t have a global reach. To use Cruise missiles as an effective deterrent would require a huge increase in missiles and a huge increase in launch platforms, that is far more expensive then a like for like replacement of the Vanguard Class.
Next there is no off the shelf Cruise Missile system available with the performance we would need so one would have to be adapted or developed. That would cost a significant amount of money and we have no guarantee that it would even meet the minimum performance parameters (maybe never). Trident D5 is in service, paid for and known to meet the minimum performance parameters of global reach and unstoppable making it an ideal deterrent system.
Which leads me to the point which is always missed or glossed over by those saying Trident should be retired in favour of an as of yet undeveloped alternative. Trident isn’t being replaced until 2040 at least and its projected replacement will be an evolutionary development of that missile. What is being replaced is the Vanguard Submarines, the Americans are pretty much paying for the development of the missile compartment which we will drop our already purchased and in service missiles! Further from that the Americans are pretty much paying the lions share of further development of the Trident D5 and its successor. To go for an alternative means WE WOULD have to stump up the cost ourselves for a system that is LESS effective.
As for the Lib Dem idea of placing the warheads in a warehouse as an insurance that is beyond contemptible. In effect that would be full nuclear disarmament as you would loose the deterrence aspect of having nuclear weapons. What happens jedibeeftrix when we do have to put missiles in those empty tubes? In this very small country there is no way that could be hidden from the press so the very action of bombing up these part time ballistic missile attack subs would entail a massive escalation! In comparison to the current steady non-threatening year round CASD. Or those subs would have to continuously pretend to be on a deterrent patrol and have their ability to travel or dock in foreign harbours curtailed. Many countries won’t let our nuclear subs in if they think there may be strategic weapons on them. Finally our entire nuclear stockpile would be at risk of first strike again making it next to useless as a deterrent. Sorry it just isn’t a workable idea.
@ Jedi
I agree that a new class of SSBGN based on astute is the way to go. The entire concept of nuclear weapons is becoming some what ridiculous. The USA has something like 6000 warheads but has major political issues deploying hellfire missiles from drones that may or may not kill a few innocent civilians. The UK moving too a diminished detterent but still with the ability to deactivate it at short notice may be enough to get other powers to begin doing the same thing.
I would be in favour of the four silos fro Trident rather than a Perseus cruise missile as it would save us the cost of developing a super sonic cruise missile, give us a detterent with fast global reach and probably save a huge headache in treaty’s etc. If the Extra SSBGN s used the common missile conpartment then they could carry TLAM most of the time giving us a much need boost in delivery of such weapons.
I would also consider having one boat at sea with the four tridents for atleast part of the year to keep any new potential aggressor always guessing. The simple fact that we had such weapons gives us all the political points of CASD and might give us a bit if moral high ground with the other P5 members to consider similar arrangements.
If all new boats after Astute 7 were so armed then eventually we would have a fleet of 12 SSBGN giving very flexible options for a future detterent should the political situation call for it.
Sorry fedaykin but not really trident and casd is there solely to allow a 15min response to a nuclear attack from Russia. There is no other rational that can be made for it that holds water. It up to them with the money to decide if we should continue spending on that from with a defence budget of 2% GDP or less.
Fine then we drop the nuclear deterrent I have no problem with that. But if we want a nuclear deterrent then nothing less then a CASD with SLBM is worth the time, effort or money as it wouldn’t be an effective deterrent.
If we want a DETERRENT then it has to be unstoppable! Next it has to be cost effective! Finally it has to be resistant to first strike. As it stands Trident is the cheapest, unstoppable, first strike resistant option. Every single serious defense study instigated on the matter has come to the same conclusion. Anything else we might as well just drop nuclear weapons all together for the value that these alternatives have.
On another note I really hate the glib excuse that comes up in these discussions about no-longer needing something that can obliterate Moscow in under fifteen minutes. Other people operate nuclear weapons around the world. To maintain deterrent against these threats you need a system with a quick global reach. As it stands Trident D5 meets that criteria.
There is no point in having nuclear weapons if you can’t obliterate anybody we don’t like globally at short notice. Anything less is pointless, if as a country we decide that we don’t need that capability then fine drop it all together but wishy-washy half solutions are not a solution at all.
Fedaykin. It’s not glib its fact not a single other country around the world outside of France and USA has the capacity or capability to attack this country with nuclear weapons. With the development of abmd capability there is no country outside Russia can attack this country. As trident is a second strike capability let us not pretend its to deter North Korea or Iran or some other such rogue state with no capacity or capability to threaten this country.
I disagree Mark, ABMD doesn’t work and I think it is a glib excuse in relation to Russia that is trotted out every time there is a debate about nuclear deterrence. It actually wasn’t about obliterating Moscow even during the height of the Cold War. It has always been about maintaining a general deterrent against anybody, it just so happened at the time there was more focus on Russia then anywhere else.
I think it does deter these rogue states, that is my opinion. Those rogue states know that if they put our nose out of joint then we can respond with massive overkill. So far it appears to be working. As I said if we drop the deterrent I have no real problem but if we are keeping them then CASD with SLBM is the only cost effective solution that offers an unstoppable deterrence which is resistant to first strike. Anything less outside of total disarmament isn’t worth the investment or time. That is my opinion, I respect yours is different.
@ Fedaykin – “What happens jedibeeftrix when we do have to put missiles in those empty tubes? In this very small country there is no way that could be hidden from the press so the very action of bombing up these part time ballistic missile attack subs would entail a massive escalation”
Sure, no doubt. CASD is truly effective at what it does, it remains a worthwhile objective for Britain to pursue, and I would be quite happy if we can continue to do exactly that.
Now, you tell me how we are going to achieve that with the Defence budget as it is?
SDR98 said we should have about ten SSN’s.
Pre SDSR the plan was to build about eight Astutes.
By the time the SDSR arrived we had only order six Astutes.
We were lucky to get the 7th, and only then because the coalition train wreck forced a pause on the successor deterrent!
If we build four shiny new SBN’s in the late twenties and early thirties, exactly how many Astute replacements do you think will end up being ordered?
More importantly; do you think we will even consider ordering an Astute replacement given the enormous subsidy we’ll have to maintain to preserve design and manufacturing currency as a result of a 9 boat (total) fleet on a three year drum-beat, a new design every 12 years, and an artificially short 22 year service life in order to accommodate the above factors!
As I said before, any alternative to CASD is either radically cheaper or its a non-starter. I presented (an) alternative that might be radically cheaper, and yet preserve a viable nuke-boat industry.
Any better ideas?
Mark
The threat from Iran or North Korea is unlikely to be direct, but both regimes are happy to sell heavy (& advanced by their standards) weapons to even dodgier regimes & terrorist groups. An Iranian or North Korean missile fired from a North African “Arab Spring” nation, is a growing risk & could reach Britain from there.
Problem is your solution doesn’t work as a deterrent. Having space to bomb up a submarine or even keeping one bombed up isn’t an unstoppable, first strike resistant system.
CASD is the cheapest solution when it comes to effective deterrent.
Now I agree that there is a separate issue about viability of UK Submarine production, we have seen the effects of gaps in production when it comes to cost over runs and problems with the Astute program.
Personally I think we should look at Diesel Sub production again but aside from that once the three Vanguard replacements are finished there will have to be a next generation attack sub program in place. I think you have a good point in suggesting a rolling sub class of four program.
£38b over ten years is under 10% of the planned annual defence budget for that period, or less than 0.26% GDP.
The NHS is around 7.5% GDP, Welfare 3.4% GDP and state Pensions (including Public Sector Workers) 8.4% GDP.
To put it into a context for monetary discussions.
@ Fedaykin – “Problem is your solution doesn’t work as a deterrent. Having space to bomb up a submarine or even keeping one bombed up isn’t an unstoppable, first strike resistant system.”
No, it isn’t. I would not pretend otherwise.
@The Other Chris – well said – we can afford it – we choose to squeeze the Defence Budget to a bare minimum – the only reason any Politician would abandon CASD would be to adopt a non-nuclear posture, not to invest further in conventional defence.
The choice is not Vanguard successor or more Astutes; it is Vanguard Successor or more LGBT Awareness Officers…
GNB
I had a great discussion with you chaps here about the need for CASD a few months ago. I was converted. Just thought I’d pop in the explanation I use to my friends and family to see if there’s any mileage in analysing it for alternatives…
Your next door neighbour buys a cannon, puts it in his front garden and aims it squarely at the front of your house.
There are plenty of ways round this, but armour isn’t one of them: Sabotage? Diplomacy? Extortion payments?… or simply buy a cannon and aim it at his house >>> Multually Assured Destruction (MAD).
If the guy buys another cannon, it really doesn’t matter, both houses are rubble anyway!
With the exception of MAD and the requirement for your own cannon the only sensible alternative route to take is sabotage, either of the cannon or cannon ball or to pay someone else to “blat” your neighbour should he decide to fire.
If we now turn back to the real world there is mileage in nuclear tipped TLAM/SS from Astute, but you’d need to saturate the enemy air defences to ensure a devastating effect that would make them think twice about striking first. IMHO I think this means too many SSN for us to be able to afford and changing the role of T45 to carry “specials”, something I think would totally undermine the use of T45 for many of its current tasks.
Perhaps we should build and operate a single SSBN, as should France, as should the USA, as should Russia and China, etc. We should then work them on rotation as an international coalition against each other. i.e. should one nation use theirs, the other four nations launch against the aggressor. Get this witten in stone and placed at the top of Everest for all mankind to see. MAD?
“No, it isn’t. I would not pretend otherwise.”
And therein is the crux of the problem as GNB says it is not a choice between Vanguard Successor or more Astutes it is really about having having a nuclear deterrent or not.
The put them in storage option put forward recently is basically nuclear disarmament-lite!
I am extremely worried about Barrow and maintaining skills there, personally I think the oft rumoured Astute No.8 needs to be ordered to help bridge to the Vanguard successor. Also more Diesel sub contractor work would be a good idea like the recent contract from Navantia to supply pressure domes for their S80 class:
http://www.deagel.com/news/BAE-Systems-to-Provide-Pressure-Hull-Domes-for-Spanish-S80-Submarines_n000001911.aspx
I would even argue that a new Diesel/AIP design using off the shelf technology (German Diesels for example) and systems lifted from the Astute program should be designed and then built to be loaned then sold at cost to any friendly navy that wants it. That way the welding and design skills are maintained and hopefully we interest some foreign navies in our products again. One possible customer strangely could be the USN for resell via FMS to Taiwan. If we sell it to the Americans we avoid the wrath of China (to a degree) and it solves the US problem servicing the promise to provide new subs to Taiwan. BMT have produced some interesting designs that could be moved forward with in that respect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryZLb9Ey-1o
if we build SSKs it will be at the expense of nuke-boats, and since our nuke boat currency exists at the very margins of viability already that is basically saying goodbye to nuke-boat building……………… unless we are willing to explicitly subsidise the survival of that industry.
likewise with astute 8, who’s paying?
i am willing to sacrifice CASD for nuke boat building.
That link to BAE/Navantia can turn out to be big business, as I see the most likely winner for final assembly of a good number of subs in Oz to be based on Navantia’s stretched 80 or the new 90 design
– same prime as for other recent classes of ships of RAN
– BAE for hull domes and something else (this must be the F35 wing and helmet corollary)
– already tried and installed American CMS for tight integration with their Pacific fleet
I’ve been away from the discussion since early this morning, lots of catching up to do!
If the money was ever found id of course like to see Astute 8 built and a dedicated Trident successor built, I do however think their is something to be said for the idea of a continuously evolving class of 12 boats in 4 unit subclasses as Jedibeeftrix advocates. With the ever increasing difficulty and costs of building brand new classes of SSN’s and SSBN’s I think a steady drumbeat of building fully multi-role submarines may be the answer, providing that they remain capable platforms and are significantly cheaper than the current plan.
As others have said, whilst maintaining a nuclear deterrent certainly has a lot of compelling justification behind it, the world is ever changing. Perhaps a dedicated fleet of SSBN’s on CASD isn’t the most effective and economical way of bring a credible capability to the table, and it’s far from certain but maybe a swing-role class that can send a sub at a time off with a smaller number of upgraded Trident (with other units of the class deploying in the SSN/SSGN role) may provide the economy of uniformity and scale whilst giving an effective service and thus be the way forwards.
The answer is, of course, an SLBM that can be fired from an SSN….or an SSN with an appropriate launcher ‘module’.
As luck would have it there is such a module and work has been done on such a missile. Google keywords – Virgina Payload Module, SLGSM (Submarine Launch Global Strike Missile) and SLIRBM (Submarine Launch IRBM).
32″ diameter two-stage missile capable of being dual or triple-packed into a single VPM ‘Trident’ tube. Single nuclear or conventional guided RV pointy end. Good for ‘up to 2000nm’ range depending on RV mass. Aerojet have successfully tested a 32″ stage and, Beedall comments, UK MoD have cast a few glances.
Batch2 Astute sporting a VPM insert, if we can get the funds we’ve put in to CMC re-assigned to VPM, and you have a number of SSN’s that can do deterrent CASD, SSGN or even a UK conventional-Prompt Global Strike role depending on what we make of SLIRBM and what further investment we put into TLAM.
http://defense-update.com/20120205_us-navy-revisiting-feasibility-of-a-sub-launched-global-strike-weapon.html
SLIRBM, it must be noted, is said to be unfunded in this or next years USN budget, but, has the potential to be a game changer in terms of UK deterrence.
Are we assuming then that we couldn’t build something like a Collins in Glasgow?
Wow! 2000nm? Really? That is a long way isn’t it?
At least no one is suggesting we cut a couple of SSNs to field a number of SSKs for lower risk tasks. If only people adopted the same approach to frigates!
I wonder what this French White Paper, if enacted, means for the UK. We are after all supposed to be co-operating closely with them on defence issues. For example, if they really only procure 8 FREMMs, what will that mean for escort numbers when we deploy a joint task group? How many A400M will they buy – less will make ours more expensive, won’t it?
Regarding the decision to restrict the Rafale buy to 225 in total. Am I alone in thinking it odd that this number just happens to match exactly the number of Rafales intended for their air force? I would be very anxious were I a French naval aviator. Then again, I’d be anxious if I were a French anything :-D
@fedaykin
I agree with your points about SLBM being the cheapest guaranteed way to deliver a detterent. Jedi s suggestin of a hybrid boat gets most if the benefits with ability to use current trident D5 or future E6 whilst at the same time helping to preserve the SSN industry. It makes it harder to cancel Future SSN production as well.
Im not sure about not having one at sea at all or atleast most nd the time armed with missiles.
e should remember that while trident previously came out of its own budget it’s now part of the mod budget which means politicians are unlikely to simply strip the money away and use it for something else. I think Jedi s system would be cheaper or atleast the same price as successor but would give us more utility in having an extra five boats.
you make a good point about our SSN s not being able to visit friendly ports if people think that they may have tridents on board. However would we really want them in other people’s ports anyway? It’s a hell of a security risk and how much need is there really for port visits by nuclear powered submarines.
X
“Wow! 2000nm? Really? That is a long way isn’t it?”
Yes it is. Good enough for us, give or take a few hundred, when we were running the R’s with Polaris.
@ fedaykin
I don’t take your point about ABMS being useless. e already have such systems deployed.true they are not great but they are improving SLBMs have improved little in 30 years and Trident E6 sounds pretty much a like for like replacement. We are in a world today where battle field lasers are beginning to be deployed on ships and vehicles. Trident will have to remain effective until almost the 22nd centuary ( that’s literally Star Trek time) having a hybrid boat able to launch cruise as well s ballistic missiles gives more options for detterent s in the future if ABM systems do become more effective.
Jonesy beat me to it. And that was against Soviet Russia, who had missile defences and a navy. Two thousand miles sounds fine against the likes of NK and Iran.
Of course, my 84 ship fantasy fleet consists of SSBNs, SSNs and SSGNs. No SSKs though; might need to look at that. ;-)
“Im not sure about not having one at sea at all or atleast most nd the time armed with missiles.”
To be fair, i am ambivalent about whether or not these postulated SS(B)N’s would run around with a warload in the CMC module, and i can see that if there was a regular run to and from america then it would be harder to say we were escalating a situation as Fedaykin suggested, but:
So much of the cost is wrapped up in the opertaion of CASD, rather than its possession, and my secondary aim (after preserving nuke boat industry), was a cost saving sufficient to meet the RUSI dictum.
re: VPM – i’d rather go with CMC as it offers all the same fringe side-benefits (such as multi-packed TLAM, and special forces), but comes with an actual missile that is actually designed to take multiple nuclear warheads.
@ArmChairCivy:
German national defense spending has very low priority and no real place in the public discussion. It’s simply never the talking point of the week in talk shows et cetera. Minister of defence has been an end-of-career office ever since the 80’s.
Cuts are possible, but it’s not the minister of defence or his helpers who decide about the budget. It’s the minister of finances (treasury). Even chancellor and parliament influence this only to a small degree.
I personally expect less than a hundred Typhoons in service (we would only ever deploy a handful at once anyway – even if we participate in some intervention). I also expect very limited shipbuilding activity, right down to the level of shipyard sustainment (which frankly the last fleet train ship order was all about). I also expect no major army procurement projects, since Leo2A6M still looks OK, Puma is brand new, GTK/Boxer is brand new, PzH 2000 is new et cetera. Numbers are too small to justify major development projects anyway.
The Afghanistan-reinforced insight was that we lack infantry numbers and there was some intent to add infantry (Jäger) battalions, but I don’t know what came of it.
The Bundeswehr has basically two jobs right now
(1) small contributions to multinational deployments (with only a handful big ticket systems at any one time) so politicians have some fun with the military as a great power gaming toy
(2) retaining technical competence for sophisitcated equipment (Typhoon, MBTs, IFVs, SPGs, warships, subs) and especially officer training. The only competence given up in the past decade was naval air (navy Tornado wing disbanded and the Luftwaffe is not serious about this legacy).
So any budget that allows the bureaucracy to deliver on these two points (with chancellor and cabinet preference for #1) is perfectly possible and in my opinion not surprising at all. We may end up at 100,000 and still meet both requirements, but we may also find ourselves at 200k personnel in 2020 just as easily.
Jedi
“re: VPM – i’d rather go with CMC as it offers all the same fringe side-benefits (such as multi-packed TLAM, and special forces), but comes with an actual missile that is actually designed to take multiple nuclear warheads.”
Problem with CMC is that its a 2×2 block. My understanding of the public source material on the VPM is that they went 4×1 configuration because 2×2 imposed a significant hydrodynamic penalty on the hullform. 4×1 is meant to be an easier fit option.
As to the Trident. 4 missiles….maybe 32 warheads all told…huge reach…an option not to be discounted certainly. I’m not convinced about the ABM surviveability of that few warhead busses though. To me the idea of 12 independent, manoeuvring, RV’s fired on dissimilar trajectories is going to give the ABM site a greater targeting challenge. Add in the conventional option as a TLAM alternate, for conventional fixed target clobbering, then it looks like quite a solution to me. Most notably if the cousins are going to finish off the development of it for us!
@ Jonsey – “Problem with CMC is that its a 2×2 block. My understanding of the public source material on the VPM is that they went 4×1 configuration because 2×2 imposed a significant hydrodynamic penalty on the hullform. 4×1 is meant to be an easier fit option.”
I would have presumed this too, and suggested as much a few months back on a naval thread here on TD, but El-Sid shot that down leading to me writing this:
“Thanks to El-Sid at Think Defence for pointing out that basic mathematics demonstrates that long thin things (like missile tubes) can be positioned side by side across a cylinder (like a submarine) without increasing the cylinder’s diameter to any significant degree. Therefore, regardless of configuration (1×4 or 2×2) a single CMC module should fit just fine on a 400ft 10,000 tonne SS(B)N.”
I believe El-Sid has some street-cred on naval matters, so I took him at his word. :)
Even if 4*1 is required I can’t imagine its that difficult to build our own CMC in that configuration. It’s really the size of the missile tubes that need to be configured to fit the missile rather than the configuration of the tubes themselves. would be nicer in many ways to have an off the shelf smaller ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear warheads but I doubt the USN is going to develop anything to threaten trident E6. Even if they develop the global strike missile they won’t put a nuclear warhead on it and I doubt they would allow us to bodge one on either.
@ Jedi think the partial patrols with Trident load gives us much of the detterent effect with less cost. Maybe 2 of the twelve boats would be used for this providing detterent patrols for 6-9 months out of the year. That would leave 10 boats to carry out SSN duties with up to 3 at sea any time. The larger common fleet means we can illuminate the need for spare boats to cover just incase scenarios. I can’t imagine a first strike against the UK which would not result is massive retaliation from other NATO countries. In order for us to get into such a situation one would imagine months if not years of growing tension. Nuking London is a bad idea for anyone who has money. For the Russians or Chinese its like blowing up there own bank. if anyone else Iran etc shot a missile at us you could bet the cousins would glass them long before Bono and the DFID let us retaliate.
Come to think of it any british PM would be mad to fire back at anyone even if they had hit us with a missile. He would most likley end up in court one day in the UK. Much easier legally to let the US fire the missile.
“Come to think of it any british PM would be mad to fire back at anyone even if they had hit us with a missile. He would most likley end up in court one day in the UK.”
I realise you are being flippant, but if we ever reach the situation where that is even the remotest of possibilities then we have reached the point where a nuclear deterrent cannot do what it says on the tin. It would be entirely pointless; a political weapon of zero political impact.
More generally, yes, i imagine my postulated common fleet could behave like this quite successfully, provided we are able to live without CASD.
@ All – back to my question about the continued absence of the lib-dem trident alternatives review; your thoughts please……
Looks like I have missed the Jedi/ El Sid correspondence a while back, but regardless, this
” Problem with CMC is that its a 2×2 block. My understanding of the public source material on the VPM is that they went 4×1 configuration because 2×2 imposed a significant hydrodynamic penalty on the hullform” may translate to the stretching of Astute’s hull design being not feasible, and a whole new design being called for?
– how many bn does that make, on its own?
@ Jonesy
I look forward to your arguing for the return of the SMLE, horses, the long bow, and 58 pattern webbing. :)
Jedi,
Fair one…I’d not dispute the statement. The material suggests that 2×2 was rejected explicitly because the 34ft diameter of the Virginia’s was insufficient to site the 2×2 module without a turtleback style hull mod. Looking at the ‘famous’ image with the team members stood inside the CMC tubes its not difficult to visualise that as being the case.
Of course a 4×1 arrangement wouldnt be immune to causing issues of its own with buoyancy, trimming etc over the standard length boat. Neither way could you consider the task ‘easy’ or especially cheap.
Martin
“Even if they develop the global strike missile they won’t put a nuclear warhead on it and I doubt they would allow us to bodge one on either.”
According to open source material the SL IRBM study, that resulted in the engine test, looked at both conventional and nuclear warhead options. Whether we would want to get involved in developing advanced warheads is debatable of course but there is a pretty well established track record with A3 and Trident for doing just that.
ACC,
How many billions??. Several I expect. It is a ‘batch2’ design after all. I would still expect it to be quite a bit cheaper in whole aspect design, build and in operational terms than a whole new class of bomber though!.
X,
Hard to find a scenario where SMLE etc would be suitable for purpose….SLIRBM though could well be. The interesting issues would be in patrol characteristics…do you operate like a bomber or do you ‘hide in plain sight’ and run the CASD boat like any other Fleet boat!?.
The other chris it isn’t out of the whole defence budget though it is the cash in the equipment and support budget of which sub expenditure will be 1/4. Make no mistake if the 1% growth doesn’t come or program’s run over further cut will be coming to pay for this system. I think there was a story that are ssn subs available at present was something like 4 the being layer up or on trials.
John lets be clear dispite Cameron’s bumbling the yanks have made it clear North Korea hasn’t been able to put a nuclear weapon on any missile let alone one to fly anywhere close and Syria is the beginning if the end game on Iran. It’s odd we’re worried by there tech yet South Korea hasn’t felt the need for casd.
Trident was there solely to stop industrial war in Europe it didn’t stop this country being attack or our territories invaded. Conventional forces also have arguably a bigger deterrent value. I’m sick to death of listening to the same tired lines about how where defended and serious about defence ect ect just because of trident. If the government want to give the defence budget a 10% rise to pay for the system fine but with a 2 % budget conventional capability getting canned right left and centre time to rethink our requirement s and no one will change my mind on that I’m afraid. If abmd doesn’t work the US, Korea, Japan Poland and Israel are gonna must be pretty stupid then. On the nukes in a cupboard argument well do they tell us if there’s actual nuclear missiles on our subs at present?
The dictatorial regimes talk but don’t use not because there scared of our bomb but know if the they attack the might of us conventional forces will see them over thrown a la saddam or the colonel.
WiseApe the French have confirmed the purchase of 50 a400m as per contract and the naval rafale have already been pocured thought there have been several navy crashes. The airforce will get about 160-180 rafale the rest are navy.
@Jedibeeftrix – A number of possibilities on the Lib/Dem Review:
1 It has been carried out rigorously and systematically, and shows that CASD is the best and cheapest option, so the main priority at the present time is to keep it out of the hands of the Tory back-bench until such time as it can be (edited)(falsified) in a half-way convincing fashion…
2 Those involved are unable to agree the version of the “no need for Trident” conclusion they want it to reach, and thus have made little progress with the falsification process to get there…
3 No work has been done, because it’s only purpose was to hold the “Coalition” together until the next election, and enough was done on that front by just talking about it…no point in wasting energy best used in working against the real enemy…peoples various front-bench rivals.
Cynical and thus Gloomy.
PS I say again, the option is Vanguard Successor or a further reduction to the defence budget equivalent to it’s cost…there is no third way resulting in more conventional capability…
As Mark points out ” it is the cash in the equipment and support budget of which sub expenditure will be 1/4″
– the equipment budget needed to be ring-fenced as a quarter of it had been taken away by stealth
So that leaves the other 50% of the defence budget, subject to further cuts but let’s call it one % of the GDP, as the whole budget has been around 2 %.
But hang on – all international comparisons for the last five years or so show the UK defence spending at 2.7% of the GDP?
– ahhh, the operational spending covered direct from Treasury.
– guess what, soon to be a round zero
So what do we get, to do proper comparison to past budgets:
3/4 % + 1% + 0% = 1.75 vs. what we have been seeing before this government started to play the definitions game (compare that to Gordon’s disappearing items through PFI?)… more like 2.7%
@ Jonesy
CASD is all about not being found. It isn’t a first strike weapon. Waving the nuclear deterrent in possible opponents faces changes the whole dynamic of our security posture as a nuclear state. These things are just another few 1000kg of HE.
@x : 58 pattern is way too ally. Back to 37 PDQ, plus involved discussions as to whether your SMLE is one of the Canadian vintage or otherwise :-)
@ Jonesey & ACC – “Fair one…I’d not dispute the statement. The material suggests that 2×2 was rejected explicitly because the 34ft diameter of the Virginia’s was insufficient to site the 2×2 module without a turtleback style hull mod.”
Well, i’m not sure how much difference i makes but Astute starts if with 3ft more beam, i believe necessary to accomofate PWR2.
But, I wasn’t saying that our successor submarines should be an evolution of astute itself, i’d anticipate it being a fundamentally new program that replaced the successor deterrent and rolled in the Astute replacement.
It would cost more billions, but we are about to spend many more billions anyway.
If we have taken the opportunity to go for PWR3, with its extra expense, it does suggest a commitment to the long term for nuke boats, as otherwise they have have played it safe/cheap and gone with PWR2+.
@ ACC – “But hang on – all international comparisons for the last five years or so show the UK defence spending at 2.7% of the GDP?”
But the equipment budget is more or less ring-fenced, and due to increase year on year, and that ring-fence holds the funds to trident successor.
Back to the quoted point, for all the shenanigans over treasury supplements being considered as core defence spending vis-a-vis the 2.0% NATO commitment; we did undertake to the yanks at the time of the SDSR that we would continue to meet that commitment, so if i am very optimistic enough of the treasury supplements will shift sideways to the core defence budget that we will continue to meet 2.0%, regardless of our hoped for lack of wars.
@ GNB – “Those involved are unable to agree the version of the “no need for Trident” conclusion they want it to reach, and thus have made little progress with the falsification process to get there…”
This may be the case, because they were forced to agree via the coalition agreement (and public opinion) that we need nukes of some kind, but when it comes to the nitty gritty of exactly what they don’t want (cos they really don’t), the review panel may opt to die in the ditch for CND ideological purity.
I’d laugh because it would be typical of LD foreign & defence policy, but it might sadly be true.
X
The present method for CASD is not being found. The deterrent force hinging, therefore, on the optimistic hope our bomber doesnt get stumbled across or bump into someone else and get broken at some inopportune moment. In my view if we shifted to an SSN based CASD hull the better camouflage might be the rest of the submarine flotilla. One bomber means one target for the opposition to neutralise….if any of the three or four batch2 SSN’s deployed, in the pertinent area, could be carrying the ‘instant sunshine’ then the opposition has a targeting problem. Also hunting a fast, maneuverable, hunter carries its own risks!.
Like GNB my view is we’ll end up with Trident and 4 new generation bombers that borrow heavily from the Astute design. I simply think its inaccurate to say that the only points in the argument are cold-war CASD or a limited ‘cheap’ punitive second-strike. Other options exist and actually offer an interesting capability set to maximise conventional deterrence at the same time as keeping the crucial nuclear ballistic card in the deck.
@Jonesy – I completely agree other plausible options exist, and if we had a Government for whom “Defence of the Realm” was the first priority they would be worth exploring. As it is we have one “government” after another for whom the only thing that really matters is “beating the other lot and winning the next election”…in fact in their peculiar world, that is the only thing there is…nothing is real, everything is intended to “make a statement” or “define a position”.
In that context being pro CASD says “I am strong on defence” and being anti CASD says “I am a progressive internationalist”….neither the system nor any participant in it can cope with any statement more nuanced than that.
Worse than that, because the reality of war and peace is so alien to these people, it is actually less real to them than a bad interview on Newsnight…so they never think about the real issues and possibilities, just about how to position themselves to the best advantage.
Why do you imagine I am so Gloomy?
“(…) if we had a Government for whom “Defence of the Realm” was the first priority they would (…)”
Think about what you wrote there.
The “Realm” is not under attack. That’s a so far perfectly successful national defence policy.
Future attacks of the kind a military is supposed to deal with are not to be expected. In fact, they would not be a reasonable scenario even if the UK military was reduced to a gendarmerie.
Now think about what you actually expect or hope for.
I suppose you were not thinking about the “Defence of the Realm”. I suppose you thought of offensive capabilities, about the ability to blockade, bully, invade and occupy foreign countries.
(Don’t stumble over the Argentina bogeyman, please. Forget them and their 1970’s military.)
Next, think about whether more expenditures would make a real difference. Wouldn’t the UK still be the lap dog of the US, not meaning to blockade, bully, invade or occupy a country on its own instead of together with the US?
What difference would UK spending make, the US would do it anyway (or not), and they would not need the (small or bigger) UK support except politically (UNSC veto right to maintain a diplomatic cover story).
Millions if not more than a hundred million people world-wide have an irrational preference for military power. Military power in excess of what’s required to deter aggression against oneself or one’s alliance. People just like the idea of having modern arsenals, many ships, many tanks, bigger tanks, meaner tanks, more troops, bigger budgets.
One doesn’t need to be a psychologist to develop the suspicion that this is a primitive instinct from the time hen the bigger, meaner ape horde got to harvest the better fruit trees.
Nowadays we don’t need the meaner or bigger horde. We need to get our sophisticated economies onto sustainable development paths. This includes huge private and public domestic capital investments to build the groundwork for future economic output and thus wealth.
Ape instincts are not going to help us much.
@SO – Always pleased to be told what I was actually thinking – when did you develop the psychic powers?
GNB
@ wf
Ooh gawd! Sounds like a night at the Legion with my dad and his mates. :)
GNB, don’t play strawman crap with me. I wrote “supposed”.
Don’t embarrass yourself by pretending to be unable to read and understand that word.
SO
“If you want peace, prepare for war” as the Romans said.
The 1929 stock market crash created the conditions for the second world war in 1939. The oil price shock of 1973/74 created all those small wars in the late 70s/early 80s.
The global credit crunch of 2007 has already led to the “Arab Spring”, more turmoil is likely before 2020.
Even Argentina could become a threat if they did a deal with the Chinese, i.e latest weapons for raw materials swap.
I have Polish relatives. I know their stories of suffering under the Nazis, then the Russians. Thats what happens to a Nation if its defences are inadequate.
@Jonesy
X The present method for CASD is not being found. The deterrent force hinging, therefore, on the optimistic hope our bomber doesnt get stumbled across or bump into someone else and get broken at some inopportune moment. In my view if we shifted to an SSN based CASD hull the better camouflage might be the rest of the submarine flotilla. One bomber means one target for the opposition to neutralise….if any of the three or four batch2 SSN’s deployed, in the pertinent area, could be carrying the ‘instant sunshine’ then the opposition has a targeting problem. Also hunting a fast, maneuverable, hunter carries its own risks!”
Since CASD came into force in excess of 300 patrols have been carried out with no break in the routine. Even the Anglo French incident merely saw a signal from the UK SSBN along the lines of, “involved in minor collision continuing patrol”. So as for being found in an op area encompassing 10 of thousands of square miles of water.
Hunting a slow sub, that is quieter than you anyway and even quieter due to its speed which has a superior sensor array and can still stick a 75kt spearfish up your arse carries all sorts of risk.
@ SO – You supposed wrong on so many different levels and at such great length that it would require a lengthy monograph for me to correct your erroneous assumptions as to my supposed beliefs…and as it would bore me to write it as least as much as it would bore the rest of the Alphabet Soup Mob to have to read it, I have no plans to undertake the exercise….I refer instead to my previous comments on various threads which do have a certain consistency, and do not greatly resemble your suppositions as to what I think, or what I meant…
Goodbye from Gloomy!
” We need to get our sophisticated economies onto sustainable development paths.”
Sorry. But that’s all Greek to me.
@Hartley:
The UK is an island or two which are part of the most powerful alliance ever (NATO), and of the second-most alliance ever (EU) at the same time. Said islands are far away from any unfriendly country, and there’s probably not one really politically hostile country in the world.
The UK would have no chance whatsoever to defend itself if the continent or large parts thereof turned hostile.
The alliance policy, not the MoD budget, is the preparation for and avoidance of war.
The UK would meet its alliance obligations easily with a much smaller military establishment, and much more effectively with much less emphasis on the RN.
Small wars and the militarily irrelevant Arab countries are no issue for the UK’s national security. Small wars are political gaming only.
The developments in the Arab world are first and foremost domestic developments that rather undermined than strengthened the national military forces.
The UK’s real problem is its small goods-producing sector and the poor capital investment which led to the small production base. 1% GDP additionally into capital investments for a decade or two would do wonders. 1% GDP less military spending would likely not leave an entry in future chronicles of the 21st century.
GDP – composition by sector:
agriculture: 0.7%
industry: 21.1%
services: 78.2% (2012 est.)
21.1% industry is the result of the Blair-era crash of industries. USD 513 billion goods production is not enough for economic sustainability.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/mar/27/britain-current-account-deficit-worst-since-1989
Since the name of game is money, and I think we’ve all come to the same conclusion that if the CASD is cut that money would definitely not find its way back into to the defence budget. However If the CASD is kept but some money could be trimmed here and there on the project throughout its life then we could use those funds for other purposes. To that affect I have a question those who are in the know explain if this is a feasible idea.
I understand why we have 4 SSBN’s, it’s so we always have the ability to have one deployed regardless of circumstances. Am I also right in thinking the RN operates 2 crews (blue/gold?) for each of the SSBN’s? I assume that this is so that there is always a crew to enable there to always be a boat deployed?
However we don’t do this for our SSN’s and that got me thinking. What happens if we just have 5 SSBN crews to rotate through the 4 SSBN’s, instead of 8 crews for 4 boats. I don’t know how long a SSBN deployment is in the RN but I believe that it’s about 3 months for the USN. Assuming that it’s the same here for the RN then I would suggest this as a possible rota for the five crews.
Crew 1: Deployed on 3 month patrol
Crew 2: 2 months work-down period, 1 month R&R
Crew 3: 3 months R&R
Crew 4: 1 month R&R, 2 months training
Crew 5: 1 month training/2 months work-up period
This would allow in 30 month period a submariner to be deployed for 20% of the time, working up/down and training for 50% of the time and 30% of the time for R&R.
Now the crew of a vanguard SSBN is 135, removing 405 personnel from the active roster. However I’m sure I’ve read it on here that it takes a total of 3 personnel to have one available in a crew at any one time, therefore by cutting 3 SSBN crews the total number of personnel is reduced 1,215. Now assuming that a crew of 135 cost about £3m per year (stab in the dark figure here, gives an average wage of about £22,250 per submariner), this means each year the RN “saves” £27m.
Well assuming we take the long view of this over say 10 years, this would give the RN £270m use on projects/capabilities they thought were useful but currently unfunded, also lets just add in the cost of the final Type 26 as well taking the total to £570m. I would use £570m on the following areas:
1) Bring PoW fully in to the fleet [£65m]
2) Remove Albion from extended readiness [£20m]
3) 10 years of funding to provide additional crew for PoW and the reserve LPD to allow them to be 2/3 manned at all times (using the crew saved from the Typ26 ship 13, sum transfers from the submarine service instead of redundancy and new recruits). This allows for the second RFTG to be used for training and held at say 45 days ready to deploy. [£380m]
4) Buy 4 more sonar 2087 to bring all Type 26’s to the same standard [£80m]
5) Buy 18 BVs10 equipped for AD (6 with radars, 12 with CAMM launchers, on the rear platform) allowing the active Commando Group to deploy 2 Radar and 4 CAMM variants to secure airspace above beachhead. 1 Driver/operator, 3 dismounts equipped with Starstreak HVM. [£25m]
The question is could we get away with only 5 SSBN crews? Is the loss of the final Type 26 worth having a uniform fleet all equipped with 2087? I think the answer is yes, what do you guys think?
TMM
@SO
The UK would have no chance whatsoever to defend itself if the continent or large parts thereof turned hostile”
I very nearly choked on a glass of Saint Clair 2010 Pinot Noir! Of course being able to turn Brussels, paris, berlin, madrid, Rome, etc etc into glass would have no bearing apart from the fact that we have quite happily kept the rest of Europe across the channel whether they like it or not for 900 odd years!
Just one the 2% of GDP thing, once you take away Foreign Military Aid etc and get down to the bare bones of actual military capability, defence spending is below 2%, and is more along the lines of 1.4%.
@APATS – not strictly speaking true, as the Dutch did make an appearance in 1689…but they were invited to join the party by some of the locals. For an apparently peace-loving fellow @SO can sound distinctly…insistent? Wonder how his approach plays with Greeks, Greek-Cypriots and Italians just at present…
GNB
APATS:
Being able to kill others is not the same as being able to defend oneself. That would require the ability to stay alive.
A few dozen cruise missiles would suffice to crash most of the national electric power grid’s capacity and repairs could take years. It doesn’t even take nukes to ruin a developed country these days.
Channel or not; the UK is bound to the fate of the continentals. Today the UK is allied, and thus the alliance’s military power is relevant for national defence, not the national military power. Above-average military budgeting is not about defence, but about the ability to play games.
@ChrisB:
I think you got the statistics wrong or something. The UK’s spending on foreign military aid is not that much.
SO
Being able to kill others is not the same as being able to defend oneself. That would require the ability to stay alive”
I am sure the word for deterrence must be there somewhere, if the ability to wipe out 70% of the opposition population does not deter the nothing does.
. Above-average military budgeting is not about defence, but about the ability to play games.
As for playing games, getting g 3 2 or 3 European leaders sacked in the last 18 months or so simply demonstrates that Germany is playing a different game and has gone all in.
I can’t help pointing out that an Alliance does not have military power, it’s members do…and if all of them assume somebody else will do it then it is a delusion not an alliance; furthermore, if the imbalance between those who do and those who don’t becomes excessive it rather swiftly becomes a former alliance; I do sometimes wonder if some NATO members actually listen to anything the Cousins say…
GNB
@ S O,
“I think you got the statistics wrong or something. The UK’s spending on foreign military aid is not that much”
— Considering how much of a fuss you make about other peoples reading comprehension, it’s ironic that you misread the sentence “…once you take away Foreign Military Aid etc” [emphasis added].
It’s a combination of things from military and economic aid to the Commonwealth war graves commission. The bottom line being that spending on actual defence capability (the bits that go bang and the bits that support the bits that go bang) is around 1.4% of GDP.
And just because someone might knock out our electric (keeping in mind we can do the same to them, and that’s just for starters) does not mean the end of the world. We’ve managed without electric before and I’m fairly sure we could do so again.
@ SO,
I don’t know which country you are from, but your snivelling and carping attitude indicates that it may be in Europe.
My country retains the capacity to rain seven shades of shit on your country at sea, in the air, and on the land, and at the rate that you are going, it would be justified in doing so. And not just in conventional terms. And the resulting seven shades of shit would probably improve your miserable little country.
Your country, if in Europe, retains the capacity to do precisely fuck all to mine. And if some other part of the world, even less. I’d just like to point that out.
Do not forget that my country has bled itself white in a effort to keep Europe free, over the last 100 years. If you, or more pertinently your politicians are ungrateful, we can send you the bill.
RT, analysis indicate a high probability he is German, probably West German, considering that East and West Germany have a generation that is brought up seperate from each other and have a different mindset and logic train.
SO
“Millions if not more than a hundred million people world-wide have an irrational preference for military power.”
Well, considering that the last time we were invaded, the first order given after surrender was “kill everyone suspicious between the ages 18-50”, pardon me for not looking forward to round 2. The “kill everyone in the hospitals” was just something that happened, so I won’t beat you on the head with that, despite the added 600+, murders? executions?
So don’t mind me when this ape brain would prefer a 200 strong air force backed up by MBTs and MLRS standing against a repeat of incidents like that. And before you whine about sustainable economies, over here, it’s been there, done that, still doing that. And despite that, 4-6% GDP still goes into the military.
Just in case.
So you mind your own security situation and try not to tell the whole world what to think about their security situation. We tried that running the place from India during the Pax Britannia, you can guess how well that turned out when they shifted the admin centers to the Crown Colonies in Malaya. I doubt running the place from Germany is going to be much of an improvement.
Ook, ook!!!
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/02/life-idUSRTXZ7LK
Talk about a cheap way of showing the flag! :)
Bloody adorable though.
@ SO the UK trade deficit is purely caused by our physical deficit. End of story. e .could opt to do as mainland Europe has and cut much faster but then we would likely end up in depression with much if the rest of Europe.
I think your getting a little high on the German supply my friend. Germany much vaunted manufacturing economy is only a success in recent years on two factors, a captive and uncompetitive Euro Zone market forced to compete on German terms and the rise if emerging market economies seeking luxury goods. Neither of these situations is likely to continue and when they end we will see a return to recession in Germany as with the last decade.
also remember that the manufacturing model will always be lower value duded than the service export model. Germany will have to eventually deal with this.
as for your views on military spending one must consider the historical context. Germany came from a point where high military spending led to war. e come from a point where poor spending eroded our position and ment we almost lost a war in 1940. I agree there is no conceivable conventioanl threat but I believe that is in large part because NATO spends nearly 75% of total world spending on defence. if that situation changes then I believe we will be in a substantially different threat environment.
Sven, using your model of Europe can you explain how The Republic has not succumbed to English might yet? And ignore the boorish abuse of some: We would not Pilkington your capitals! An EMP over the Rhineland/lowlands would spannah most of Europe (including our good selves).
CASD: Trident 8000nm great-circle. Try replicating that when you have a 2000nm system and your deterrant is said to seek to deter Norks, Russkies, Iranians (and Israelis).
Even outwith Successor Barrow needs to build subs. You’re spending pre-allocated money even without redesigning your nuclear delivery system.
Astute: The Hoon shifted production onto a thirty-month drum-beat. That’s ten boats over a Core-II lifecycle*. If anyone believes pre-SDSR 2010 would have delivered 7 & 8** then I have two Type 45s to sell you (same numbers). Still I am impressed that we seem to have Lord West posting on The Boss’s site!
Gloomy-Boy and Fedaykin have my votes. Now what happened to the feel-good thread that the header promised…?
* If Core-III goes to a forty-year cycle then we may see more SSNs if our SSBNs can last until ~2070. (40 * 12) / 30 = 16…?
** Boat seven is probably the result of long-grassing Successor, not a commitment to the Royal Navy.
@ GNB – “I can’t help pointing out that an Alliance does not have military power, it’s members do…and if all of them assume somebody else will do it then it is a delusion not an alliance; furthermore, if the imbalance between those who do and those who don’t becomes excessive it rather swiftly becomes a former alliance; I do sometimes wonder if some NATO members actually listen to anything the Cousins say…”
Precisely.
@ Fluffy – “If Core-III goes to a forty-year cycle then we may see more SSNs if our SSBNs can last until ~2070. (40 * 12) / 30 = 16…?”
Could you expand on (all of) that, please?
It sounds important to understand, and I don’t (yet).
“Ape instincts are not going to help us much.” – Served us well since the reptiles were forced to take a back seat.
Apes btw are peaceable creatures, only stirred to anger when:
You look them in the eye;
you try to shag their females;
you try to curtail their frigate numbers.
OK I made one of those up.
SO
I think you have missed the bigger picture.
Defence budgets in Europe (& the US) are being cut. Meanwhile, defence budgets are rising in Asia. Wealth is leaving Europe & heading for Asia. 1100 tons of paper Gold was dumped on the market in a single day to rig a lower Gold price. The result was large numbers of middle class Indians & Chinese rushing to buy physical gold. So real Gold is leaving Europe & heading East.
We were told that the EU had made it impossible for heavy weapons to be fired in anger in Europe ever again. Then Yugoslavia broke up, with all sides using whatever heavy weapons they could lay their hands on.
The “Arab Spring” could lead to a mass invasion of Europe from the Middle East. Spain,Portugal, Greece, Bulgaria are vulnerable. 400 years ago the Ottomans got to Vienna, before the Poles stopped them. This is one potential scenario. Before you accuse me of being Islamophobic, I would point out there are other scenarios where the Arab nations get invaded by Russia or China. Rampant nationalism is running through both.
Say Afghanistan collapses into anarchy when the West leaves. Russia could move in to “restore order”, then decide it cannot be done while Pakistan “harbours terrorists”. So they invade Pakistan too(having used SF to neuter their nukes). That gives Russia access to the Indian Ocean. Any troublesome locals can meet their “Katyn”.
An alternative, would have China pay Russia for transport, so that China can invade Iran & Syria. Again to “restore order”. In reality a Chinese colony further West. Any stubborn locals can be starved to death. Its what Mao did.
All of this is unlikely, but not impossible.
The global financial crisis does make the World unstable. This is not the time to cut the defence budget, either in Britain or continental Europe.
I don’t think anybody believes SDSR2010 would give us more boats. “Should” have given more like. Keeping Barrow in work is more about what we choose to spend than what we can afford. The yard is there and the personnel are there if we want to use them. It is a question of leadership not circumstance. And our leaders seem to be clueless. It isn’t a question for some of thinking outside the box. More about making them aware they are in a box in the first place. Westminster hasn’t a clue what is needed in almost every sector of government. Defence will suffer because it isn’t perceived as an immediate need. God help the rest.
I’m interested in ChrisB’s figures regarding the defence budget.
I’m broadly okay with the SIPRI definition as useful nation-to-nation comparitor – which I think NATO goes by – although I have never been comfortable with operational spending being counted as core defence spending; cue dodgy headlines of the gov’t du jour saying were spending 2.7% of GDP on defence, so the NATO threshold is just dandy, without saying what happens when Afghanistan ends.
It will be a sad day when we dip below 2.0%, because we all know it will mark the start of an endless downward trend:
“We’re all europeans now!”
At which point the next Chatham House poll will not show a majority in favour of an interventionist FP in support of our Great Power responsibilities that derive from our UNSC role.
John Hartley said “We were told that the EU…….”
I am not wishing to be pedantic but do you truly mean the EU not NATO? If you do mean the EU then gosh what silly Billies they are.
Further what you say about potential conflicts. Never underestimate a man with a rifle surely is the lesson we should be bringing back home from Afghanistan. A lesson I think our military leaders always seem to forget. And probably at a deeper level why European governments don’t really like their citizens holding firearms. More “The government and its people.” than the more palatable morally correct “The people and their government”. if you will.
X
Yes it was the EU. Whenever anyone questioned their latest power grab, they countered that they were stopping war in Europe ever breaking out again.
My scenarios may be a flight of fancy, but the reality is that we have a weak Europe, a rising Asia, turmoil in the Middle East & global financial trouble. How this plays out is anyones guess, but I will be amazed if it does not lead to war/wars. Most likely a WW1 scenario, where a war no one wants, breaks out by miscalculation.
Master Beeftrix:
It’s Wiki but it’s all I have…:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S1B_reactor
So iif the Navy buy hulls for the full reator-life then, over a forty-year lifecycle (480-months) and on “The Hoon” drum-beat (30-months), I make it possible to build 4SSBN and 12 SSN.
Sadly I’d be getting my telegram from King William V before I would see it happen but, hey-ho…..
@John Hartley & X – got my vote – and if you want a good example of the law of unintended consequences I think this exchange started because I dropped a thought to @Jonesy about the uselessness of the UK political class and a belligerent pacifist out there launched a thermonuclear device at me, apparently prompted by my use of the term Defence of the Realm. I would say he set my supposed views up as a Straw Man but he forbade me to do so…but he did assure me those were his last Rhetorical Demands in TDLand…
@ Fluffy – don’t we work to different constraints, re reactors?
I though our choices were:
PWR2 = 25 years
PWR2+ = 25 years + safer
PWR3 = 30 years
@Fluffy: “Trident 8000nm great-circle”, if there is a nuclear showdown it will be after a perlonged period of tension. We will know our enemies, and if they are smart they woukd have floided the Atlantic with Subs looking for our boomer.
Having more platforms capable of launching a strike albeit closer to the target has many positives. The main one being that we are not sinking the national wealth into one trick ponies which will never be used.
@ John Hartley
Once I posted I went on a voyager of exploration to find that the EU had claimed such. Silly Billies.
I don’t think you are wrong to think or consider scenarios such as you outline. The trouble is today too many are too complacent and think we are some way better than those who went before. That we are more civilised or more intelligent or simply better. We aren’t. We need to test ideas and put them out for consideration. Even if an idea is some way flawed testing the idea can tell us something about the real world. Whatever the real world is. For a while now I have wondered whether with the size of European armed forces now being so small that it might actually lead to them being used mainly because the size of retaliation is now so reduced you could weather it (especially as you would be expecting the retaliation) you may get away with bold action in the first instance. Probably won’t happen. But considering against the real world reveals a lot. Tests are important. Very easy to parade facts and say this won’t happen or that won’t happen. In 1600 if you had told an Englishman there would be no monarch within 50 years he would have thought you mad.
Somewhere between the outlandish and the status quo lies the future.
I don’t share the cynicism about a weak Europe. There is no existential threat at the moment. Why are we so surprised that spending has dropped on defence? SO does have a particle of a point when he says that some European nations see their defence needs being met by maintaining core first tier capabilities at low levels and contributing stabilisation forces to international forces.
History has shown that every country in Europe has been willing to pony up plenty of divisions of the threat is there.
We need to stop thinking in terms of defence cuts somehow being in perpetuity. They might be if peace reigns but I for one won’t be sad if my children never know war and the cost of that is I never get to boast on the Internet about how many tanks my country has.
There is simply no existential land threat to Europe. Asian tanks can’t reach Poland.
@ Repulse
@Fluffy: “Trident 8000nm great-circle”, if there is a nuclear showdown it will be after a perlonged period of tension. We will know our enemies, and if they are smart they woukd have floided the Atlantic with Subs looking for our boomer”
During this prolonged period of tension we of course are doing jack shit? Not arming our other 2 or 3 bombers? Maybe dispersing them or given the range of Trident simply diving it in loch Long or Loch Goil :)
@Phil,
Ref Europe.
Yes even with defence cuts we could (if we cooperated) easily field a force sufficient to see of any realistic threat between us.
@Jedi,
Constraints? What like the need for 12 AAW? 10 SSN? Control over our sovereignty?
All-and-everything is up-in-the-air. Would a 30-year, Core-III cycle (all ours are currently 25-year Core-II) give you, me or the politicians an excuse to maintain “The Hoon”? Even 30-years will equate to only ~12 SS[B]N.
We have an up-coming “capability-gap” in SSNs because of Labours’ refusal to fund Astute 7 & 8. At least with the Bechtel reactor we can rethink our untersee-boots outwith a panic, no…?
:goes-away-and-looks-for-Hammonds-spreadsheet:
@Chris:
One usually lists the biggest item first or only in such lines, so I assumed FMA would be relevant. So where did you get the 1.4% from? Just yesterday I saw a 2.5% statistic, and 1.1% points is an awfully huge difference.
@GNB:
Sure, the alliance members need to carry the burden (together). My point is that it doesn’t really help to boost one’s own contribution above the average contribution required, as it doesn’t really make a difference in terms of defence. Thus I mentioned “above-average”.
Military power and nuke wanking or not – the UK’s security and defence hinges on the alliance with at the very least France, and in the long term on its relations with continental Europe. Its own military is a secondary factor to its security.
@Martin:
The service export model basically doesn’t exist. The UK’s economy is 70% services, but its exports are only about 40% services. Services exports would be very difficult to increase substantially – unlike goods exports.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/uktrade/uk-trade/august-2012/sb-uk-trade–august-2012.html#tab-Value-of-UK-Trade-in-Goods
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/uktrade/uk-trade/august-2012/sb-uk-trade–august-2012.html#tab-Trade-in-Services
By the way; the financial sector doesn’t create wealth; it merely redistributes it. That’s hardly a fine model for a country of 50+ million people.
@John Hartley:
Gold is about as irrelevant as art collectibles, for it is largely just a collectible. The industrial uses (electric contacts etc.) are marginal. There’s furthermore no difference between gold and gold. “Paper gold” is BS invented by goldbugs. Whether you have gold at home or at a bank does not matter – in either case it’s your legal property right that counts. Goldbugs mix up the legal concepts of property and possession.
The Arabs would need to unite AND develop their economies AND create modern military forces before they could even think about how to get across the Med, so that’s no issue till 2030 or so.
The claim about peace in Europe extended typically to the EU, not beyond. The idea was and is that the countries cooperating in the EU would not wage war against each other.
The Yugoslavian civil war id not falsify this. It rather demonstrated the possibility that involuntary unification could lead to a violent separation.
isn’t there a tradeoff however, between the desire for a decent service life with which to amortize the design and build cost, versus the need to maintain a build schedule that can sustain the supporting industry, without ending up with an enormous fleet of boats that we can man, maintain, or use?
40 years sounds lovely, but on a twenty-four month build schedule we’d end up with twenty subs in service, which would be lovely if we had the manpower and a mighty pile of shekels lieing around spare!
This is why i’m keen on twelve boats, in batches of four, hitting the water every 27 months, and with a 27 year service life, allowing a new design every nine years. It seems a nice mix of; capable, affordable, & efficient.
@ SO
Why would it be difficult to increase service exports? Half the world is desperatly trying to build manufacturing industry increasing competition and squeezing margins. Not so long ago Germany decided in needed to increase its service base. don’t forget the vast majority of what is consumed are services. how do you deal in the long term with the squeeze on manufacturing margins? German wage cuts over the past decade have restored competitive advantage but are hardly long term solutions. This leads eventually to competing with the likes of China on a direct wage basis. Not a good long term strategy.
It’s a falisy to say that the fiancial system does not create wealth. It creates plenty of wealth for those who provide it and the UK just happens to have the major fiancial centre on the planet located inside it which is one of the reason why our physical manufacturing base is smaller than the G7 average. I should also mention that while the rest if the UK economy may be struggling along with much of the rest of the world London is once again booming.
SO, if everything is about launching cruise missiles at electricity substations, why is your blog all about armour (well, armour and armoured infantry)?
RE: CASD. I’m mostly with Jedi:
http://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-a-submarine-for-all-seasons-30657.html
It’s worth remembering that we were happy with the capabilities of Polaris/R boats; however, the cost of maintaing a different system to the Yanks, who had moved on to Posieden, meant we accepted whatever the yanks went with. Which means if we go with a seperate system long term cost and maintence should be the main concerns rather than range, number of RV’s,etc.
@Jedi,
Since “The Hoon” we have had a thirty-month drum-beat. I’d prefer eighteen; you twenty-four. But we have “The Hoon”.
@Sven
Britain’s invisibles (according to the back-pages of “t’Economist”) are very good. I’d be more worried about “la Belle France” and my residencey [The Netherlands] if I was a German tax-payer.
It makes no sense to park our V-boat in the Atlantic.
Only the Indian Ocean allows us to target all of the current primary belligerent hot spots with a single boat given 8knm range: Middle East, Asia, Korea, Africa… Argentina, etc.
Have a quick play with ranges (I also urge you to investigate how small 2,000nm is as a comparison):
http://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm
@Alex; it’s not. Only 198 of 1157 blog pots are tagged with “army”.
Besides, both aggressor’s and defender’s economy may be ruined, but land warfare would still be possible and could be decisive. It would also be most important in limited conflicts.
http://youtu.be/diuQiXt5qE4?t=7m2s
@ The Other Chris,
Trident has (reportedly) more like a 10-11,000km range. It should be able to hit most countries comfortably from the North Atlantic, with the exception of Australia and some of its surrounding nations.
@ S O
You can’t cheaply insult peoples reading comprehension on the one hand and then back out when you clearly f**k it up yourself. Anyway, GDP and defence. So UK nominal GDP is estimated at £2,400 billion. UK annual spending on defence capability is estimated at £33 billion. That’s technically 1.375% of GDP, though I generously rounded it up to 1.4%.
The video was supposed to start at 7:03
@Phil – Some truth in what you say, but the lessons of history seem to me to be that:
1 The people most likely to decide war is in their interest are populist democracies with a high self-righteousness quotient and some seasoning of grievance – Iran and Pakistan clearly, but many others on or potentially on that spectrum – Russia, some of their ex-Republics, Egypt, maybe Turkey…there are no doubt others that people who know more about them can identify…and my model is obviously Germany and Italy in the 1930’s.
2 Next come authoritarian regimes looking to maintain popularity – the Argentine in 1982 and North Korea now – but many potentially fall in to that category – obviously China, but also some of the ex-Russian Republics – and numbers of the bigger Latin American or Far Eastern Countries might well be in this category, or indeed in the first.
3 Then authoritarian regimes that don’t care what their people think…
4…and finally genuine liberal democracies – the Anglo-Sphere and much of Europe – who rarely start full-scale agressive wars in their own interests and without international diplomatic cover (GW1 and 2, Afghanistan and Libya were all UN supported endeavours, like it or not)
However liberal democracies do provoke wars by appearing weak – most notoriously all of us in the 1930’s, but also the UK alone over the FI back in 1982 – but then when someone else starts it, we finish it in horrifying style…Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki.
My concern is now and always has been a concern that by appearing to shy away from the cost in blood and treasure of strong defence…we are risking an avoidable overreaction once we have absolutely no choice and finally get organised to do that which is necessary.
See the post 9/11 period for details.
@SO – You assume Europe is a reliable ally – with the Euro in slow-motion melt-down and Southern Europe moving towards open revolt against the Diktats of the Bundesbank, I don’t..
@Jedibeefitrix – I like you submarine plan – where do I sign up?
GNB
@Chris
The UK’s GDP is near 2.4 billion USD, not GBP. In GBP it’s a bit more than 1.7 Bn
33.4 Bn Military Defence
+2.6 Bn R&D defence and
+0.1 Bn civil defence
36.1 Bn is about 2.1%, but I get that the UK miraculously inflates its “defence” budget with 8.6 Bn foreign economic aid (foreign military aid being less than 0.1 Bn).
http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/year_spending_2014UKbn_12bc1n_30848s#ukgs302
I’m not sure if there’s more spending hidden in other budget titles, though. The Americans hide a lot in their Energy budget (much naval nuclear power and nukes stuff), for example.
______
Besides, provide proof for me having “cheaply insult”ed anyone here, or be herewith called out as a liar.
@GNB:
“You assume Europe is a reliable ally”
Reliable allies or not is not the key question. The key is whether they’re hostile or not. The UK is safe as long as continental Europe is not hostile. Furthermore, the Baltic countries or Poland can justifiably be concerned about reliability, but the UK is now in geographic backwater.
@Martin:
“Why would it be difficult to increase service exports?”
Total goods export EU27 in 2011: 1556.5 Bn € (Eurostat)
Total services export EU27 in 2011: 603.9 Bn € (Eurostat)
Goods trade is much bigger than services trade, and the UK has already gone extremely towards services (or more correctly, it has neglected its manufacturing sector).
“the UK’s security and defence hinges on the alliance with at the very least France”
Comedy gold.
I am worried. What if Sven’s thinking is typical for Germans? That alone would be enough reason to get out of the EU……..
@ The other chirs
The problem with IO CASD patrol is how to get th boast there. I doubt if a Suez transit is either possible or a good idea. One pissed of Muslim with an RPG could cause a massive problem. I seriously doubt we have sufficent capacity in the V boat fleet to have to have them transit via the Horn of Africa either. specially as the boast get older and need more maintaining. tlantic also gives options to enter the pacific under the ice sheet ( not sure when we did this last but its possible) just incase we do need to target the Aussies or Kiwis :-)
Sorry about spelling in previous comment using iPad and the spell check wont work :-)
“but the UK is now in geographic backwater.”
I think Great Britain is physically in the same place when it was the HQ for this little venture…
http://www.atlasofbritempire.com/uploads/Empire_1921.png
founded when ships were powered by sails, there was no aircraft, or modern communications systems.
Talking of modern communications the UK has one of the strongest e-commerce sectors in the world. The Internet cancels out physical space. If only our government would spend £30 billion on our Internet infrastructure instead of paying for a trunk route on the Great German railway.
Backwater really?
Sven if there is less trade in services then it makes it easier to increase. There are only so many cars people can drive or shoes they can ware ( maybe not my wife )
However for a long time service have out grown manufacturing because the more advanced an economy gets the more services it requires. Take the typical pint of beer down the pub. Only around 10% of the price I pay goes to making it. The rest goes on services. People in the third world will also begin to want more services which will invariably lead to an increase in demand. You should also note that most economic figures tend to underestimate services and their exports. It’s much easier to count cars or machines being exported than intellectual property rights or fiancial transactions.Inter net services of which the UK is the largest per capita provider of in the world are particularly susceptible to this. This is one of the key reasons why the UK and the US appear to be permanently in deficit yet have not gone bankrupt.
I’m not saying that the UK does not need to manufacture a bit more clearly it does but Germany is far too much the other way and it won’t work out well for them in the long run.
Many models for “greener” economies are service based. T
@SO – We have considerable and comparatively recent experience of seeing-off a hostile and heavily armed Pan-European state…are you suggesting we might need to do so again? If so, it’s excellent reason to rebuild our conventional capacity on all fronts…
@X – Our chum Sven chats with us in English on a UK based web-site – I assume that makes him an open-minded internationalist by his local standards…or possibly UK based…perhaps an emollient Diplomat?
@ SO – “Reliable allies or not is not the key question. The key is whether they’re hostile or not. The UK is safe as long as continental Europe is not hostile.”
Not that I want this to seem like sniping, it isn’t, but i thought you said:
“the UK’s security and defence hinges on the alliance with at the very least France, and in the long term on its relations with continental Europe.”
The two seem to contradict?
@ GNB
I know I am guilty of over egging the “sea blindness” “sea power” “we are an island don’t, you know?” cake at times. Ok all the time. But geographical backwater? We starved his country in two world wars.
Europe doesn’t feed us. It doesn’t secure us. It doesn’t satisfy our energy needs. It doesn’t do much for our global trade. It has wrecked our institutions. And it seems keen on destroying our domestic trades and services too. And for what? For whose benefit?
When we say Europe do we mean the EU? Or Europe in general? What about those nice Russian chaps? Or the lovely Norwegians who aren’t in the EU? And the Swiss chaps?
Safe behind the French deterrent, not…….
http://en.europeonline-magazine.eu/french-missile-test-fails-as-m51-self-destroys-over-sea_279243.html
@x: Yes, the UK is now in geographical backwater because the frontiers of NATO and of EU have moved. London is far from both Murmansk and St. Petersburg, while Tallinn and Warsaw are not.
@JBT:
I see no contradiction. An alliance has also the utility of keeping its members from fighting each other.
http://tinyurl.com/ceqxfsx
@Martin:
The GDP share of services grows indeed and that`s normal, but the share of manufacturing can (and often does) fall below the point of sustainability.
Some Western countries have a trade balance deficit AND a capital disinvestment per capita. Both hints at a lack of sustainability and could be corrected by either lowering material wealth expectations (consumption ) and/or by increased manufacturing output. The scale of the issue (several % GDP) hardly allows for exportable services to fill the gap (remember – they did not). To increase manufacturing output tends to require more investment in the capital stock, as higher utilization of capacity is likely not going to pull it off alone (the problem is older than the reduced utilization rates of the last five years).
In short; macroeconomic data appears to indicate that a healthy developed economy would be close to about 25% GDP output from manufacturing, construction, fishery, forestry and farming and 75% from services (with variations). Anything below 20% (UK, US) or above 30% (Germany) looks off balance and troublesome (trade balance, capitals tock development per capita etc.). Being too high is less worrisome than being too low, though.
@ S O
I have £2.4 trillion here. Could be an error indeed. Let’s say it was £1.7 trillion, that still means that £33bn is short of the 2%.
And here;
May 04, 2013 10:17 PM, S O said; “GNB, don’t play strawman crap with me. I wrote “supposed”. Don’t embarrass yourself by pretending to be unable to read and understand that word.”
Well, that quote was no insult.
———-
I don’t think it makes sense to subtract military R&D from the military spending. One can debate about whether military pensions or civil defence are military/defence spending, but R&D certainly is. Thus it’s 36 or 36.1, not GBP 33bn. And 36.1bn is 2.1%.
@ x – I think I’m down and bleeding in consequence of a blue on blue…
@ x – I think I’m down and bleeding in consequence of a blue on blue…mayday, mayday…
@ S O
As far as I’m aware, we don’t count it as defence capability. It’s our budget, we choose how to present it. That you don’t like it is of zero consequence.
And yes, that was an insult. How you expect to say to someone “Don’t embarass yourself by pretending blah, blah” and not have that come off as an insult is beyond me. Must be a German thing.
The essential premise anyway being that you were moaning about what you thought was someone trying to cover their arse by saying they’d misinterpreted your statement, only for you to then go on and try to cover your arse by saying you’d misinterpreted my statement. That’s broadly referred to as ‘hypocrisy’ or ‘trying to have ones cake, and eat it’.
@ SO
“In short; macroeconomic data appears to indicate that a healthy developed economy would be close to about 25% GDP output from manufacturing,”
I have a degree in Economics and have never come across this statement before. Can you back it up with anything?
Infact Germany has a roughly 25% share of manufacturing. Are you confusing Germany for a healthy developed economy?
The world average share is 16% of GDP which would suggest that 16% was a healthy share for any country and one might expect a developed economy that consumes more services than a developing economy to have a lower share of its economy devoted to manufacturing.
Here is a nice graph for you.
http://forum.uschamber.com/blog/2012/03/manufacturing%E2%80%99s-declining-share-gdp
As it shows manufacturing as a share of GDP has declined very substantially which would suggest that it will be easier to increase service exports than manufacturing ones in future.
The UK could never match Germany’s manufacturing share unless we stop all of our media (a big UK export) Close the city of London and stop extracting oil from the North Sea. Conversely all of these activities are far higher value added than any German manufacturing industry and I am sure the Iron Frau would cut of her left nut to have anyone of these industries relocate to Germany. Quite simply too many of our people are involved in better industries than manufacturing to get us any where near 25%.
Again I am not saying that the UK should not have a bit more manufacturing. However you are listening to the media and some politicians who are still under the rise of China myth, we all need to manufacture more blah blah blah from around 5 years ago. In the financial markets (where I work ) the debate has moved on considerably since then.
SO
Some of those investors with paper gold have gone to their banks to collect the real thing, only to be told they can only be paid in paper money, not physical gold. Some might call this a default, while others might say they should have read the small print. Paper gold has very little real gold backing it up (perhaps as low as 1%).
If I had to pay to get on the last flight out of a collapsing Europe, I do not think Euro notes would get me a ticket, but gold sovereigns would.
Is there a threat?
Even in Europe. a comedian gets a quarter of the vote in Italy, the New Dawn party in Greece is on the rise, while in England UKIP wins 140+ council seats & 23% of the vote. In short, the old parties are losing ground. The new parties will have new policies. Global financial chaos means changes in government all around the world. Countries that were friendly or neutral, could become hostile very fast. It is foolish to think you will get a decades warning of trouble. You may get only six months, so you will have to fight with what you have got.
Mind you, I do agree that UK industry (& infrastructure) needs building up a bit.
@ GNB
I am not ranting at you. More expressing my incredulity at Sven’s postion to somebody who can normally decipher my ravings. There is no point in talking with the Teuton himself. As we say here, “Don’t try to teach a pig to sing, It wastes your time and annoys the pig!”
@APATs: of course you could hopefully get one or two boomers out. But how about 9 or so nuclear armed SSNs and possibly 2 CVF groups… would that not be enough deterrent…
Agree there is a cost to develop, store amd service but we used to have tactical nuclear bombs so there is a model we can follow.
@ SO re Murmansk
Really?
http://www.naval-history.net/ww2mR110Arctic.GIF
I think you will find Murmansk is as far away from us today as it was in WW2 when Allied navies and merchant used convoy to help keep the USSR supplied. And just as far as when post-WW2 British submariners went north to watch over the Red Banner Fleet.
The light blue bits on this map are called the sea. Look it up. Amazing thing. Used to transport huge loads long distances. Contains fishes you can eat. And resources that can be mined.
http://www.jimmymack.org/images/world_map.gif
On the tenuous link of the Indian Ocean, Blue Bits, former French (defence white paper) colonies, and SDSR 2015 – what do you all think will happen with Diego Garcia?
Nothing. It is too darn useful.
Renewed lease?
Oops
http://www.asdnews.com/news-48924/French_M51_ballistic_missile_self-destructs_in_failed_test.htm
@ TOC
Though when you look at this map all of a sudden P8 looks a bit short legged compared to the Kawasaki P-1….
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/images/diego-garcia-enroute-map.jpg
@X
There is no real significant range difference between the P-8 and the P-1.
@ Jeremy M H
True. I read it wrong. All aeroplanes look the same.
@The Other Chris
‘On the tenuous link of the Indian Ocean, Blue Bits, former French (defence white paper) colonies, and SDSR 2015 – what do you all think will happen with Diego Garcia?’
Maybe I’m being a real thickington but I don’t see how any of that relates to Diego Garcia?
Agree that it’s far too useful to abandon, but at the same time the UK has neither the funds of the justification for keeping the base open and occupied on it’s own.
So yeah I’m assuming we will go for a lease renewal in 2016 and if the American’s are too busy moving to the Western Pacific and don’t wish to stay then maybe we can get either India, or Australia or both could get in on the deal, although id be surprised if they did move out altogether.
After a day or two to mull it over I’m rather convinced that Jedi’s 12 boats in 4 unit subclasses multi-role SSBN’s are the way to go! Steady drumbeat of work and deliveries, slow evolution of technology as opposed to reinventing the wheel every time and 12 boats (the minimum I see as effective) in the water to play with. Assuming it offered good enough levels of capability and the costs were kept stable (and hopefully smaller than the price tag on separate SSN’s/SSBN’s) then great!
I don’t think the whole nukes on a boat going into a friendly port is as big a problem as some people like to make out. If it was carrying them it should act as the Vanguards do and maintain a stealthy 3 month patrol without stopovers, and if it isn’t carrying them then they can surely declare that to a friendly port where they wish to call and their won’t be an issue. Perhaps it’s not as clean and tidy as the current set-up, but it’s clearly not an impossible way of operating.
Funnily enough… as for “Maybe I’m being a real thickington but I don’t see how any of that relates to Diego Garcia? Agree that it’s far too useful to abandon, but at the same time the UK has neither the funds of the justification for keeping the base open”
the French maintain an extremely small contingent on Mayotte (relates more to Africa than the Indian Ocean), nothing at all on the other islands and there seem to be more Americans than French in Djibouti.
So like us, their main interest has been A-stan and is the Gulf. Now, these (their) colonial sloops are different from frigates by being smaller but having at least the same, if not more range. How about surveillance frigates? Lafayette has just over half the range of their smaller cousins… what are they actually for?
– I understand what Singapore uses theirs for, they made them faster and lost a further third of the range in the process, but then again the area of operations is fairly well defined and more confined
@martin; economist here too.
Germany’s goods production share of the economy (manufacturing + much less construction + tiny agriculture, fishery, forestry) is 31.5% according to official German statistics (see destatis). I already mentioned Germany as being above 30%.
I asserted that the best region is around 25% goods production or manufacturing because developed countries with less tend to have the symptoms of not enough industry (trade balance deficit, insufficient capital investment for maintaining capital stock per capita etc.) while the few developed countries with more (specifically Germany) have the opposite symptoms (excessive trade balance surplus mostly).
Trade balances are largely about goods trade, with services playing a much lesser role. Exportable services constitute only a small share of services demand, so it’s not at all visible to me how one could pay with additional such services to balance the trade with a huge goods trade balance surplus country. This doesn’t seem to have been observed, ever. You cannot export additional movies, music and financial advice worth € 160 billion to Germany, for example.
Seriously, to consider the financial sector in London a great sector is quite ludicrous. It’s no better than Las Vegas’ gambling industry; almost all about redistribution, very little about generation of value for the society.
@x: You insist on not getting it, apparently.
The UK has still the same distance to other locations, but many nearby locations turned from red to blue. It is now geographical backwater, too far away from any power that could turn hostile in the medium term. It’s not the UK that’s going to be attacked if anyone in NATO, but some distant NATO ally. Countries such as Estonia, Poland, Turkey are direct neighbours with at most moderately friendly powers.
@Challenger
The only link is Diego Garcia is in the Indian Ocean (a Blue Bit), used to be a French colony (who have just issued a defence white paper…) and the USA’s lease renewal is around SDSR 2015. I did say tenuous. ;)
SO, service industry gains value by “skimming” some of the money that passes by from overseas, not domestic. You are right in saying it is only redistribution only if you look at it in a local context, in an international context, it adds value to the country by taking it from other countries who use their services. Service fees can be a pain.
Or are you trying to tell me that my country’s economical model is in error and the budget surpluses are illusionary? (80% services, 20% manufacturing) If only manufacturing makes money, where IS all that irritaing cash coming from? Agriculture?
@ x
No I get it its you don’t understand it. Our strategic position is determined by the sea not by land. If WW3 had come about “we” would have spent as much time bashing Ivan at sea as we would have on land. In fact we would probably have been better served by not having our army on the Continent in heavy armour and investing even more in ships. But we had to send an army to make up for the Frogs crying off early and the home side only being able to make up numbers with long haired spotty faced conscripts. The only potential aggressor on the Continent now is Russia. And the Kola Peninsula is just as far from Pompey, Guzz, and Faslane as it was 23 years ago. Actually flight time to Moscow by D2 is a good deal less. The UK is a sea power. That we do land and air just as well is due to us being a tad awesome. We can’t help it. Anyway haven’t you got a widow’s savings to rob or a Mediterranean government to tumble?
x, are you talking to yourself? :)
Surely by Svens argument the US was in the same position for WW1 and 2 so not being attacked but able to build and project power is now bad?
@ The Other Chris
I forgot that DG was a French territory long ago. If id have remembered that then the other stuff would of probably made more collective sense!
@ Observer
When I talk to Sven yes. :)
( It has been one of those days here. )
Observer, thanks for putting that tedious services/ manufacturing debate to bed (?)
… heading there myself, too
@ APATS
No the US is both safer and less safe. If NATO’s borders are now further to east in Europe it means Russian forces are now further from Washington, but it also means more of Russia’s forces are closer to California as well.
@x
NOOO!!! RUSSIAN BEACH BOYS!! Think Nostradamus said it was one of the signs that the world is coming to an end.
ACC, no worries, the problem with the original position was that it is “locally” true, but the effects we are looking for are actually obtained only when you look regionally or globally, which Sven did not do.
@x – Sorry old boy – a bit slow on the uptake – scanning the B’Berry whilst taking Boy, his main man (both nine) and Mrs Gloomy to see Iron Man 3…but having caught up on things, I now see your point…has the Rhineland been occupied yet?
Might add that the film was excellent, and I now want the CVFs equipped both for and with tooled-up geezers in heavily armed tin suits (in FAA Navy Blue)…
GNB
“Or are you trying to tell me that my country’s economical model is in error and the budget surpluses are illusionary? (80% services, 20% manufacturing)”
Which country would that be?
Budget surpluses are of little interest regarding sustainability, especially so in the short term. The trade balance and the development of the national capital stock are the interesting macroeconomic variables concerning sustainability. A government can run budget surpluses while the economy is about to crash.
For example, Spain had a fine fiscal development up until the moment it began to collapse. http://tinyurl.com/c5bq69q
Meanwhile, their trade balance told us that Spain’s economy was not healthy http://tinyurl.com/c8ttfmc (the youth unemployment rate did so as well, albeit it was much less terrible than in earlier decades).
s said,”No the US is both safer and less safe. If NATO’s borders are now further to east in Europe it means Russian forces are now further from Washington, but it also means more of Russia’s forces are closer to California as well.”
Don’t see how anyone who does not share a border with Russia can be worried about Russia, short of going Nuke–very unlikely. Russians have always been very calculating about the “correlation of forces”. Their Navy looks kind of sad.
China worries me, China in 20 years worries me more.
Proliferation of Nukes combined with non-state actors worries me most of all.
SO
” A government can run budget surpluses while the economy is about to crash”
Which is of course why distressed economies currently all have governments that have a nice budget balance. Right. On Mars.
Prove your hypothesis.
Re: Spain
GDP by sector: agriculture (2.3%), energy (2.3%), industry (11.7%), construction (10.0%), ->services (66.6%)<-
The trade deficit was made up for by the services sector, one which you totally ignored, which is why it looked to you like they were losing money when they were not. This is what allowed them to spend while maintaining a positive budget. In fact, the Bank of Santander is internationally famous and by you ignoring chunks of the economy just because they do not suit your pet economic theory makes me very very suspicious of your economic policies.
"Budget surpluses are of little interest regarding sustainability"
And you call yourself an economist? A leaking budget is totally not sustainable, how you can say that a balanced or positive budget is of little interest regarding sustainability? A balanced budget IS the epitome of sustainability! You don't have it, you are living on borrowed time!
A long term budget surplus and a big savings buffer translates into increased confidence in your economy and a bigger warchest against runs on your currency and a better defence against economic downturns and you say it is "of little interest"??
Seriously…./facepalm.
"Which country would that be?"
Singapore.
@ SO
“Seriously, to consider the financial sector in London a great sector is quite ludicrous. It’s no better than Las Vegas’ gambling industry; almost all about redistribution, very little about generation of value for the society.”
The city of London is about properly functioning secondary markets. It certainly has issues which are largely be redressed probably too slowly but you should not through the babay out with the bath water.
You’re an economist and you don’t believe in properly functioning secondary markets? What type of economist are you? Marxists? Marxists are the only branch of economics that I am aware of that don’t believe in secondary markets.
If the city of London does not generate any real wealth then why does the UK make so much money out of it? How come so many people are employed? Should we close these institutions in favour of making ball bearings for China? Also you have not answered my broader question on how an advanced economy can add sufficient value to manufacturing to maintain and grow its workers wealth in the long run. Do you believe that the German real wage cuts of the past decade will have to continue indefinitely? Do you think people will stand for that in the long run?
If world manufacturing share is 16% a fact you don’t dispute then how can you claim 25% share of manufacturing is sensible. There is obviously insufficient demand for good’s to devote 25% of GDP to creating them. The only way to change this would be to subsides manufactured goods and drop them on third world markets. How would you increase global manufacturing to 25% of GDP? What would be the environmental impact of nearly doubling manufactured output. Where would you find the energy and resources for such an endeavour? What would be the point? I already have 2 cars and 4 TV’s not sure if I really want anymore.
@ ACC and Observer
Have to set up the TD Singapore branch club at Sembawang then.
Again Sven different countries very successfully operate different models. The UK is not in deficit because it does not manufacture its in deficit because if has a government budget deficit. Once this is eradicated then trade deficit will disappear.
TBH, the UK model is the exact inverse of the problems with the US, there they do have a manufacturing deficit which indirectly is contributing to a government deficit by hindering recovery. Which is not helped by the credit crunch, low government confidence, low market confidence from commodification and credit rating agency mess ups.
Meanwhile, back in France…
Their new, longer-ranged M51 ballistic missile -due to enter service in 2018- could give them the excuse to rationalise their nuclear arsenal. Throw out the freefall bombs and their associated costs, and rely only on their SSBN fleet.
Though TD mentioned the latest test failure, they did have a successful launch just a few years ago, and I believe much of the new missile’s gubbins are developed from the current generation missiles.
Isn’t it about time we stopped this obsession with designing and building uniquely British SSNs?
It’s claimed that we have to keep this capability in-house; but we don’t have any problem entering into international aircraft programmes – Tornado, Typhoon, Atlas, etc.
There is no external market for nuclear-powered submarines. Other naval projects, T26 for example, at least have the potential for overseas sales; but only a handful of nations operate SSNs, and most build their own. Only India operates a foreign nuclear sub, and it isn’t one of ours – and they want to develop their own production capability anyway.
And an all-British submarine production ability is hardly a benefit in times of war – if war broke out tomorrow, we can’t exactly turn out another half a dozen Astutes by the end of the month.
They are too expensive, we can’t sell them, and we just don’t require enough to justify the subsidies.
@ Brian Black – Not sure if there is anyone we could cooperate on with SSN’s. The US wont give us most of their tech and sharing with the French opens up a can of worms with what US tech we do share. We could cooperate with India on hulls but our new breed of reactors use such highly enriched Uranium that they are classified as a nuclear weapon in their own right which we could not share with the Indian’s under NPT.
@ Jedi – I suppose the biggest question on your SSN plan is how much has already been spent on successor. While it’s not passed main gate yet this decision is largely being seen as a rubber stamp and the project is under way essentially already. The work done thus far on the CMC and PWR3 would be completely transferable to the new programme but I am not sure about other work. I think I am correct in saying we have already spent around £ 2 billion on it since 2008.
That being said if successor is simply a stretched Astute with 3 CMC’s we might be able to just cut two of the CMC compartments out of the design then job done :-)
lol martin, recycling at its best huh? :)
Brian, problem with multi-national projects is that they can end up in rather nasty arguments with each country pushing for “their” “ultimate” design, and that may end up costing more than just doing it on your own, for example the Horizon class frigates or the MBT-70 programs.
Not to say it is impossible, just that before you start, you probably have to set very tight goals for the project.
Personally, I have my suspicions that the French were so willing to sell us their top end tech because DCN had a funding shortfall when the UK pulled out from Horizon, but that is just my suspicions. Timing fits though. April 1999 UK pull out, March 2000 contract signed for Project Raven (Formidable-class frigates).
International affairs. Countries screwing one another.
A pity I wasn’t headed for Singapore… but to bed
Anyway, RE ” Only India operates a foreign nuclear sub”, yes, and it is on a 10-year lease.
It has been stated that NPT would stop the US from selling nuclear subs to Oz (for convenience of argument let’s ignore the latter’s non-nuclear policy)
– how does a lease get around this (if the statement is true in the first place)?
Want to add… manufacturing-centered PRC has trade deficits, too.
Ressource suppliers are running surpluses, as well as Germany as the exemption from the rule.
And then, software is in the service sector, health to a good part. Both the industries with the largest growth. 3D printing will turn most manufacturing into a service.
So, the manufacturing centric boom will not happen, and Germany will get problems, too.
Hi Observer, I am sure the French (gvmnt) ship yard had a cash flow shortfall, but what is so hi-tech about a frigate sale (Lafayettes for Singapore)?
– CEC on them came from the US, anyway
“Ressource suppliers are running surpluses”
A pity that most of the gold in Rome travelled East, along the silk road, to pay for silk and spices.
Even more so a pity that they did not move away from gold standard… would have made it balanced trade, commodity for commodity, and the debasing of the currency would not (?) have led to the collapse of the empire.
Paper gold is moving to the East again. Still the US empire will not collapse (may be shrink) as a reserve currency IS a commodity… you can produce it at will.
http://www.fgmr.com/images/Images%20Articles/Deposit%20currency%20at%20Fed%20Banks%2015%20Feb%202010.GIF
… lots of highly paid economists in Central Banks, but only Brazil and China have actually aired concerns
http://www.fgmr.com/images/Images%20Articles/M1%2015%20Feb%202010.GIF
about melting the dollar, as they would suffer, not so much the US
ACC, not sure of the CECs, our equipment has a bit of a Frankenstein nature.
Have to remember the sale was almost a decade back and things that were released were things like the SLAT decoys and NGDS, quite literally a lot of the same stuff that actually went into their later FREMMs. In fact, compare the equipment list from the French FREMM and the sold LaFayettes and you’ll actually find more in common between them than the Horizon.
In a way, it might be mutual benefit. They got development funding, we got used as test beds + tech. Oh well. As long as both parties are happy.
@ ACC – Not sure about the lease issue and NPT. However it may be to do with fuel enrichment. As far as I know its only new US and British subs that wont require refuelling for 25+ years and this is achieved by using very highly enriched uranium which is classified as weapons grade under NPT.
Also Russia does not seem overly bothered by NPT (cough cough Iran.)
To get around NPT the brazilians are using a very low enriched Uranium reactor which will require refuelling every few years. The French are rumoured to only be assisting in design of the hull but again they are not a country which seems to put much stock in the NPT (cough cough Iraq) and I would not be surprised if they offer assistance of some form on the reactor.
I think the bigger issue for the Aussies is there own domestic aversion to anything nuclear (except selling uranium to every man and his dog). I did wonder if it was possible to sell them Astute and keep the reactor under an RN officer on board with a lease arrangement with the UK . I am sure legally speaking it would be easy enough to get around NPT if Australia really wanted Astute or Virginia.
Re Industry & the City
The cynic in me thinks the City gets star billing, because the City firms give the politicians all those nice tickets to the Opera/Wimbledon finals/FA Cup games & then those highly paid, one day a year consultancies, when they retire from politics. Probably why not a single failed banker has spent a single night in jail, despite taxpayers being stuck with a 70 year debt to pay off banker recklessness.
I would like to boost UK industry by copying Switzerland. The Swiss find a niche industry that is too small for the Chinese to bother with, then become world champions at it. Cable cars & rollercoaster rides for example.
The UK invented televisions, but now makes no TVs. No point making standard TVs to compete with mass produced Chinese ones, but what about odd sizes the Chinese do not bother with? For example, I really want a 34″ flatscreen. The world is awash with 32″, 37″ & 40″, but no 34″.
We are demanding that banks have more reserves , to be more robust. I would add, that if they want the UK taxpayer guarantee, they should lend at least 10% of their loan capital to UK industry.
@ ACC – “A pity that most of the gold in Rome travelled East, along the silk road, to pay for silk and spices.”
And British gold into China to buy tea and spices, a problem we solved with the Opium wars. That taught the chinese an object lesson in being rude enough not to permit mutual trade with someone powerful enough to object to having their economy drained of currency.
@ Martin – ” I did wonder if it was possible to sell them Astute and keep the reactor under an RN officer on board with a lease arrangement with the UK ”
I did wonder whether the new french boats wouldn’t be a better fit for australia – they use low grade uranium too I believe – as they are cheaper and might dodge the NPT issues.
jedi you mean British silver?
@ John Hartley – The city gets a bad name however it’s more the maverick operations of big banks and their traders that cause the problem. These people represent a small proportion of the industry. Most of the functions the city provide’s such as the ability to buy and sell energy or metals not to mention liquidity in secondary markets for bonds and stocks is vital not just for the UK but for the world at large. Given the UK’s lead in this it make sense for the government to support it. However things have gone far too far.
The banks that got government support are owned by the government and could easily be made to devote par of lending to Uk industry although I suspect that they already have more than 10% of lending tied up in this.
I would rather see the government directly intervene and set up its own business bank targeted at SME’s. The government has plans to do this but has dragged its feet for some time.
However going back to my point against Sven its too easy to call the city a giant casino and write it off. Its far from this and loosing the services it provides would cause severe damage to the UK and the world at large. Its interesting to note that most of the institutions that caused the 2008 crash from US Sub prime lenders to RBS and the German Landesbanks were not head quartered in the City of London or any were near it.
Most people working in the financial industry hate the banks and none of us got a bailout when things got tough in 2008.
@ Jedi – The French barracuda’s may be a better fit for the Aussies requirement’s. They are probably not looking for something that can saturate a target with TLAM. I’m sure the French would sell them to them in a heart beat. Neither the UK or the US is awash in SSN construction space over the next decade as we have our own boats to build and I would seriously doubt BAE Australia would have the capability to build something as complex as one of our SSN’s.
@ John Hartley
British industry already does that in a way. For example look at Scalextric, sorry I mean Formula One and how much of the engineering is UK based. We also do well in large markets as well with niche products look at JCB who have a record year. And we even have our ownBang & Olufsen with Linn Products. They don’t do 34″ tellies, sorry, but their factory is monument to hi-techi-ness in its own right. Let’s not forget ARM either.
What HMG needs to do is invest and promote products and services of the now and intermediate future. Instead of spending money, £30bn, on a communication system of the 19th century it needs to invest money in the Internet. BT are in the midst of £2.5bn fibre-optic project. What could they do with £10bn? It would certainly end the criticism levelled by some that are cherry picking which areas to switch from copper. Of course that would be against EU rules. Remember rather like the Pacific railways in the US or the Tzar’s railways HS2 is a politic project more than commercial. Britain has one of the strongest e-commerce in the world. And on top of fibre what about extra for the mobile market? We could spend £10bn of that £30bn moving 500,000 onto green sources of energy like PV and earth heat pumps. It would take some load off our creaking generation. Or 10 green coal powered power stations or extra LNG tanks. Then we have exciting stuff like investing in REL Ltd who operate on a shoe string yet could put us back near the top of the industrial league. The EU, sorry France, I mean the EU like to throw REL Ltd scraps every now and then. If their work pays off you can bet their technology will become European, sorry I mean the EU, I mean French, I definitely mean EU. :) And don’t forget the UK is one of the world’s leading builders of satellites.
And lets not forget that we still have BAE and we still build nuclear submarines. Heck CVF isn’t to be sniffed at either, even though they will be just good ships not great ships. What has hampered them isn’t British technical competence but British political incompetence.
It would also help if HMG got a hold of the science and IT curricula threw money at them too. Making it attractive to youngsters. Product first not the business side first.
And lastly we need somebody to speak for British industry out in the wide world. Most EU trade delegations speak with German and French accents.
@ X I think we simply need the media to change its broken record. Most people in the UK have probably never heard of most of the companies and industries you mention and the media still seems to be hung up on the closure of Leyland or something to prove their point that we don’t make anything any more.
We could defiantly use a bit more investment in infrastructure but I can’t think of a country in the world that does not. I think the two areas we fall down on and need to improve are technical education for 16 – 18 year olds and major change in post graduate programmes. People can talk all day about people studying engineering at university we have bucket loads of them at under grad level but as soon as you want to do graduate level work (which is what we really need) suddenly the education system stops and you are left having to try and write applications for funding from obscure government bodies. Meanwhile foreign students who’s national governments or rich parents are paying take up all the places. Neither of these issues would be particularly difficult or expensive to fix.
@ GNB re Rhineland
No I am still probing German defences to the west of the Ems between Groningen and Emmen. My trusty Universal Carrier has carried me flatly through the Dutch countryside. Can’t say up hill and down dale as they appear to have none. Can’t find the bloody Hun anywhere.
Stopped a local Jonny yesterday to get some local intel’. Spent 20 minutes SHOUTING VERY LOUDLY and gesticulating at my map when the blighter informs me he speaks English. Damn suspicious if you ask me, he spoke English a bit to well. Asked if had seen the Hun as I could not see anybody at the border. He mentioned something called Schengen, open borders, and then it became obvious. Schengen sounds like Schlieffen, practically the same word. Damn Hun has outflanked us again…………
Now I bet you have some questions about the foreign Jonny and “Op Sec”. Even though it was damned suspicious he spoke English a little too well we didn’t have the resources to take him prisoner. There is just the two of us and my dog is good for lots of things but handling prisoners is probably beyond him. Further even though he had a beard he wasn’t dressed as a nun so probably wasn’t 5th Column. Couldn’t execute him as a spy as we have only have one round and it doesn’t fit our gun, which doesn’t function. And lastly the chap was off to wedding so seemed cruel to take up more of his time. I did ring up the Americans and tell them about the wedding. They have a special drone section for monitoring weddings, you have heard them mentioned in the news from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Anyway not to worry as I took his name and address. If there are any shenanigans to my rear I will be straight round to Mr Mickey Mouse’s house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Emerald City, to administer a swift fixed penalty notice.
@x – Bloody good show, Boss…just watered the horses and currently tacking up…the Cavalry Division will be marching to the sound of the guns as soon as we’ve finished our pints…both of us
GNB,
you don’t march a Cavalry Division to the sound of the guns, you expect them to have pre-thought you and already be beyond the sound of the guns, ready to ride in from the rear and let rip with the sabres (as per Jeb Stuart, lots of battles but crucially not Gettysburg). Marching towards the sound of the guns is very infantry, and slightly stupid.
Have just had a delightful ride with the little darlings, the eldest of whom is in disgrace for failing her cycling proficiency exam (she’s quite good at cycling, just not very good at sharing the road with anyone). She and I went through lots of roundabouts, junctions, etc, both of us with slightly gritted teeth as she does not like it when I embarrass her in public, and I don’t like it when she nearly kills herself. The little one meanwhile got bored and went cross-country on a shortcut back to the house. Despite falling off into some brambles, he still beat us back home. Good for him. A proper young cavalryman.
Martin
I’m going to disagree with you there to a pont from my own experiences all be it well over a decade and half ago we started our university engineering course with about 40 people only 10 graduated (and only about 4 of that lot went to engineering) the rest couldn’t hack the longer hours or the maths mainly and our lectures were constantly complaining of having to add more math to the course dire to the poorer and poorer standards coming out of schools I hate to thing what its like today! But if you were an engineering student graduating today with let’s say 36k + debt would you apply for the engineering job at 22k a year or go to the city firms offering 40k a year who particularly head hunt such graduates?
Continental Europe will easily pay engineers 1.5 to twice what they’ll get here the drain on talent in this country from engineering is getting worse and fancy schemes wont help, either waive the fees for eng graduates who stay in engineering in this country for ‘x’ years or dont in back handed ways make sure the detail drafting work ect gets shipped to india/poland/romania but can be done by appropriately supervise apprentices in this country enabling companies to take more on thru that route.
The city hasn’t learnt anything there still trying to make money from borrowed money. If it were me plenty more would have got fired with no pay offs.
@ RT
Wait until she learns to drive you can get her one of these…….
http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1433/725797009_ecc0ea114d_z.jpg
@ GNB
Good show. Glad to have you and Copenhagen along. Though if you can get him to “box” it might be better than riding. Europe is a long way for a one eye Shetland with a wooden leg. And don’t forget to bring his rosette from the last parish gymkhana. What did the citation say again? “Totally unbelievable performance. Special is all in senses of the word!” Though why “unbelievable” and “special” were underlined thrice I don’t know…..
@ Mark
A few years back I returned to education. The average British can neither read, write, use a computer, or do much beyond arithmetic and simple algebra. Apparently calculus is a A-level fodder now, I did it what they term year 8. How the universities manage to turn out all those 2.1s I don’t know. In my day only 5% went on to higher education. How suddenly nearly 50% can reach the dizzying heights of uni’ I don’t know. All I will say is there appears to be a very steep climb between 2.1 and 1st so I think the academics are playing gatekeeper into their profession. Why the rise in 1st’s overall? I think some kids who in times past wouldn’t have gone onto uni’ are now going because it is the norm and some are doing well. Saying that it is no excuse for turning HE into a degree factory.
@ Martin
I haven’t forget you. Will reply later. :)
Re British industry; RBS just said, they desperately try to lend 20b of cash. According to current estimates, British companies are swimming in 750b if cash.
Huge amounts of money but no balls to invest.
This money spread to startups would more than suffice to jumpstart the economy. Better than waiting for devaluation, one could argue.
@Observer – Strictly speaking, Indian Silver owned by John Company.
@RT – Why do you think you are commanding the Division – apart from your social superiority as a Regular Cavalry Officer? All I have to call on is some family experience in the Yeomanry (SAW, Great War, WW2; Great Uncle and Father respectively.
@x – Not sure you are really taking this TDEF Business seriously old chap…were you commissioned pre-Cardwell?
Just back from local, both Boy and main man fed and cheerful, Mrs Gloomy likewise therefore less Gloomy
@ GNB re Cardwell
This is a RNAS Armoured Car Section op me oppo……… :)
@ mark I totally agree we should waive fees for engineering students as well as other key disciplines. I suppose we also have to look at industry and ask why British companies won’t pay the salaries or take on trainess.
I do think the post grad system lets us down however and not just in engineering but in science and other fields. It just seemed so complicated to get onto an Msc course when I was at uni compared to the Bsc.
Not sure if I believe that maths standards are falling all the time. They seem to have been saying that since the built hadrians wall yet the country still seems to stay afloat but being some what of a youngin myself I will bow to X’s superior historical experience and go off and try an figure how how to use a slid rule to build the pyramids of Giza :-)
@x Splendid – I’m actually in favour of putting some of those containerised missile kits on all our warships, and returning to the regular deployment of Naval Brigades…
A pint at the TD Virtual Bar for the first chap out there who can name a well-known War Poet who was in one…a chaser for anyone who can in addition correctly identify which Battalion a “Former Naval Person” commanded on the Western Front after he left the front bench…
GNB, if you are talking about WSC, for heaven’s sake, it was a rgmnt!
Will have to raise the bar a bit, for RT: who was the last cavalry commander -bde/div/more , that made it to a Head of State in Europe?
@X – Our sources differ – by my reckoning it was the 6th Battalion of one…and are we thinking of the King of Naples?
GNB, sorry about taking charge of the Division. It’s in my nature. See something looking like it needs organisation, take charge of it.
Rupert Brooke.
Can’t immediately think of the answer to ACC’s question. Franco was an infanteer, so seems ruled out. De Gaulle was an infanteer originally, but commanded a tank regiment and subsequently an armoured division, but that’s hardly cavalry. Or Jaruzelski in Poland? de Valera?
Just a thought, there must have been a few years in the 50s when virtually every European country with an Atlantic seaboard had an ex-military man in charge (certainly Ireland, the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, unsure about the Cloggies or the Belgiques).
@ Martin
The term you want is STEM; Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
Somebody here got very upset when I suggested funding a medical student for free was better than funding 10 sociology students. Can’t remember who that was for the life of me. Doesn’t matter I am sure they had a good reason.
Personally I think the old grammar secondary modern system had a lot going for it. As did polytechnics. What I can never understand is that the education system rarely prepares students for the next level in the system. Or if it does it seems to happen because of initiatives by schools themselves. For example, correct if I wrong about this, university history departments would be saved an awful lot of time if second year A-level students had to reference their work. Spend year one A-level learning to write essays without the added complications of referencing. And then year two add it in. Then the first year of uni’ can be spent more productively. Similarly with the gap between GCSE and A-level. One of our local secondary schools starts it pupils on GCSE in year 8. This means year 10 is spent preparing for college and work, and the kids appear to be benefiting from it. That GCSE is a joke is another matter; I have an A* Maths GCSE so I know what I am talking about. ;) Nearly as proud of it as my O-level in Maths I am. Though the latter certainly had more maths than the former which was mostly arithmetic.
The other things that needs overhauling is ICT which is unbelievably p*ss poor. Be able to use MS Office’s simpler functions isn’t IT literacy, it is MS Office literacy. The new term they use in education is IT fluency. The latter is an overarching term that combines information technology fluency, information literacy, and lastly media literacy. My time back at uni’ showed me that British kids seem to be lacking in all three areas. Kids can text, but rarely back up their work and struggle with hardware problems. They struggle to discern valid on line resources. And they are poor at using common IT applications such as search engines. The term digital native makes me laugh. Compare IT to a car. And then ask are we all “mechanical natives”? By the same metric we must be. But most of us are poor drivers. Mechanically unsympathetic. And many struggle beyond the simplest maintenance of tasks.
For ICT GCSE need to start resembling the old O-level Computer Science qual. I remember when I was at school watching a documentary about Japanese school kids. It showed them on a Saturday going to the market to pick up electronic components for their own (home) projects. I remember seeing a stall laid out with tubs full of ICs, ribbon cable, and other gubbins. And there was stall after stall after stall like that in that market. I can see it in mind today. And we thought we were flash if we managed to write a bubble-sort in BASIC. But to the teenage me what my Japanese peers were doing was amazing. Yes I knew kids who built stuff and some who were true geeks but they were the exception and far from the rule. But we were a lot more technically adroit (for our time) than kids today. A few weeks back I perusing a hobbyist site about Rapsberry Pi on RISC OS assembler. In the comments section a father asked if hexadecimal and binary were too complicated for his 12 and 14 year olds to master. Now full marks to dad there for taking an interest in his kid’s education. But an F to the education system. Why? Kids, especially a 14 year old. should know all about number bases. When I was 14 I could do arithmetic in hexadecimal and binary as fast as in deanery. I wasn’t exceptional in that I knew lots who could. Yes they were geeks and dweebs. But we covered bases in maths anyway. You can bet there are still kids in Japan (and Taiwan and South Korea) building electronics at home at the weekend. While our kids get a GCSE in IT for not doing much more than opening up a Word document.
@ACC & @X – sorry chaps, got you confused for a vital moment then. Seem to have agreed on Rupert Brook – who is buried where?
Need to review sources on WSC, but I think it was the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusilers.
@RT – I am sticking with Joachim Murat, General of Cavalry, Marshal of France and King of Naples…but am now wondering about Slender Billy? I await a ruling from @ACC
Hi RT,
that would have been Mannerheim,
3 d and a bde under of cavalry under his command in
Poland… Fast forward to 1939-40 and thoroughly beat those who at the most were sergeants at the time, promoted to generals.
– Head of State in 1944, well, once before already but retired at the time of General Election
I get shouted down for this, but there is a GCSE in Engineering, but hardly any schools teach it. Most say the kids would be better off concentrating on maths at school, then starting engineering at university. This misses the point that you need to get teenagers interested in engineering in the first place. Hence the GCSE in engineering. OK , its generalised, but they have to start somewhere.
@ John Hartly
True. But ICT is just lacking. I shall go to look at the GCSE Engineering syllabus…..
As for “concentrating on maths at school, then starting engineering at university. ” I have similar thoughts on language teaching. Until we are proficient at understanding the structure of our own tongue how can we learn another? Grammar isn’t evil nor for that matter is Received Pronunciation.
ACC,
interesting about Mannerheim (having now Wiki’d him) – quite a character. I had heard of his name, but would not have thought of him.
GNB,
nothing wrong at all with the Yeomanry. I was Adjutant of 2 Yeomanry Regiments. Oddly, for two months, they overlapped. Strange quirk of history. The CO and I managed the drawdown of the DLOY to a Squadron of the new RMLY, and at the same time raised the Scottish Yeomanry, which existed for about 8 years. The CO had to get written permission from CGS to be CO of two units at once – some arcane rule about powers of command.
And if any historian ever wonders why SCOTS YEO had 2 crossed lances on their capbadge while having no lancer heritage at all, it is because I wanted lances, nothing more. Perks of the job. A reward to myself for having to deal with the Army Dress Committee, and some seriously stuffy retired officers from the antecedent Yeomanry Regiments. I “failed” to submit my design of cap badge to them, and it was a done deal by the time I “remembered” to inform them.
http://www.jamespringle.co.uk/html/old_scots_regiments.html see towards the bottom, with the antecedent Yeomanry regiments as well.
@ACC & @RT – Mannerheim…outstanding; I skied in Finland once…quite small hills, a vast quantity of trackless forest and so much snow for so long that they actually save it from year to year packed hard under sawdust and then rebuild the base of the piste with it…completely bonkers as far as I could see, but they were perfectly charming so what the hell…
I owe you both a virtual drink at the virtual bar I am hoping the Boss will build in to the site at it’s next iteration; if you get in before me, put it on my virtual slate.
GNB
…virtual drink? The sun’s over the yardarm or some similar nautical excuse. I’m sinking into a single malt with two ice cubes, and (disgracefully, as I thought I’d given up) having a fag. Having had to cycle in front of a car to stop the lunatic driver from running over my equally lunatic daughter, I’m not worried about death at the moment. She is looking at the Highway Code on her laptop prior to a test (and hopefully not mentioning to her mother that Daddy knows lots of swear words, and can string them together quite fluently).
@RT – If @ACC has whetted your curiosity, I would recommend “White Death – Russia’s War with Finland 1939-40” by Robert Edwards – a good read and not too long…
GNB
PS – I am startled and impressed to hear that Mrs Red Trousers did not already know about your command of invective…Red Trouser Hall must indeed be the very wellspring of marital felicity and connubial bliss.
GNB,
Mrs RT pretends not to know. I am only allowed to swear when blood is drawn.
We seem to have acquired a duck today. It is in the pond, paddling quite happily. I think it would look good when roasted, but the little darlings have been feeding it and are now attached to it, so I am forbidden. I have shoooe’d it off twice, but it came back. If it proves useful as a burglar alarm (the scaled down version of the Roman geese), then it will be tolerated.
Talking about France and tjongs European, this might be of interest:
http://europeangeostrategy.ideasoneurope.eu/2013/05/06/new-report-on-european-military-capabilities/
*things…
@ST
Thanks for posting that. From the other side of the pond that is a really interesting read. It makes some excellent suggestions but it also hits upon what seems to be the main problem with European integration. The theories are all great but there seems to be a breakdown in execution when it comes to most things.
My only real criticism of the piece is that I strongly suspect they had their answer “more integration” before they even got around to defining the problem(s). I am not saying they are wrong but their selection of buzz words and the way parts are written reminds me of someone writing to an answer to some degree.
Hell, step one would be agreeing on goals and mission and I don’t get the impression Europe is all that close to doing even that yet.
ST, thanks.
In the half hundred text pages, really the only “new” thought was combining EU Coast Guards and modelling that force along the lines of the USCG – for global reach.
The appendices are more interesting
– in EU aggregated heavy land equipment, the only category not cut seems to be protected mobility
– in warships only LPDs seem to be a growth industry (also true globally) , whereas everything else is shrinking
@AmchairCivvy said, “- in warships only LPDs seem to be a growth industry (also true globally) , whereas everything else is shrinking”
and OPVs, which might tie in with your point about a EU Coast Guard.
ACC,
How come LPDs are growing even though most nations are going down the LHD route: Australia, Spain, France, etc?
Silly me, silly them, I read the doc.
They use LPD as a generic “amphib” ship.