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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
America must be laughing all the way to the bank, because we'll be chucking billions at them for new aircraft.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ahtman wrote:
If you aren't spending at least 50% of your GDP on the military then it is obvious that you are commies.

You Americans have had a lot to say on dakka when it comes to the US military and bad decisions, but compared to the UK military's incompetence, you guys are total amateurs.

We scrapped maritime patrol aircraft a few years ago, which cost us hundreds of millions, now we're having to buy replacements from you guys at the cost of billions!

Don't buy the planes we're wasting trillions on building right now, they are complete POS.

To be fair, the Nimrods were getting very old. The original airframe was an early 1950s design, the De Havilland Comet.

This only emphasises the lack of forward planning that led to not having a replacement of some kind ready to go into action, whether built in the UK, or purchased from the US.

Britain an island nation, and all that.

 DarkLink wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
You know what this sounds like we need? To stop romping about all over the world and have an armed forces which is capable of defending the nation where the nation actually is. A Home Guard if you will.

Because the best way of defending your nation is to wait for the tanks, nukes, and suicide bombers to come to you.

Yes, because that is extremely unlikely to occur (an actual invasion by another power), and because conventional armies do pretty much feth all to lrevent suicide bombers and terrorists... you know, because of they did work the western world would be the safest place on earth and the middle east would be a veritable garden of eden...

 djones520 wrote:

And do you realize how useless a single brigade is?

That entirely depends on the task. In conventional warfighting a brigade can't do much but then an army with 2 divisions can't do much in conventional warfighting either; guess how many operational divisions the British army has?

 djones520 wrote:
well, we'll be the ones doing the heavy lifting, as per usual.

Well if you insist upon launching pointless, and ultimately massively counter productive, invasions then its only fair.

 DarkLink wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
You know what this sounds like we need? To stop romping about all over the world and have an armed forces which is capable of defending the nation where the nation actually is. A Home Guard if you will.

Because the best way of defending your nation is to wait for the tanks, nukes, and suicide bombers to come to you.

Our massive military spending did Sweet FA in stopping 9/11 or any other terrorist attack, whether from Islamic or Christian fundamentalists, here in the US.

 Psienesis wrote:

 DarkLink wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
You know what this sounds like we need? To stop romping about all over the world and have an armed forces which is capable of defending the nation where the nation actually is. A Home Guard if you will.

Because the best way of defending your nation is to wait for the tanks, nukes, and suicide bombers to come to you.

Our massive military spending did Sweet FA in stopping 9/11 or any other terrorist attack, whether from Islamic or Christian fundamentalists, here in the US.

You people do not even need terrorists to carry mass shootings

Correction... we don't need foreign terrorists for mass shootings. We are perfectly capable of producing them right here at home, thankyouverymuch!

As a slight aside, The reason Nimrod was scrapped (after a rather expensive rebuilding program) was that at the final hour it was found that the original aircraft were all hand built, and this meant that airframes and wings were all ever so slightly different. This meant that mating up new wings and airframes couldnt be done easily or quickly, resulting in HUGE extra costs to mate all th [arts together.

It was decided to scrap it off as a bad job and buy the Orion instead from the USA. While Nimrod was a better aircraft\sub hunter, its airframe design issues killed it in the end.

Also, saying buying from the USA is cheaper, its not. This happened when the RAF had developed and built the TSR 2 bomber, it was the most advanced aircraft in the world at the time, and wasnt bettered design wise until Tornado was created and the F-15 strike eagle, some 25 years later.

The labour govt of the time decreed that planes would never need to dogfight again (missiles being the new hotness) and that as the TSR 2 was deemed to be expensive, they planed to buy the F-111 from the US air force. Therefore every TSR 2 Job, die, process equipment etc was destroyed, every airframe bar the test plane and a almost finished one were scrapped, at massive cost.

The F-111 was then delayed by several years, massively over budget and inferior to the TSR 2.

Since the 50's Labour has been bad at militrary spending, botching things on the hope to save money, but in the end costing us more.

The aircraft carriers are a case in pint, we needed new ones, that wasnt in question, but why scrap\sell the harrier jets that could have been retrofiteed (as the Americans did with our airframes we sold for pennies) in favour of the F-35.

Which was then further broken by demanding a VTOL lift off, then wanting a catapult, then wanting a vtol again, meaning the carriers were delayed even more and watsed millions in doing nothin.

Wy they didnt do what the french did and make baval versions of the Rafale, we could have made the Typhoon marine catapult ready ata fraction of the cost. But the navy wanted its special snowflake fighters, the f35.

The tories and labour have both been bad on military budgets, but the tories are a bit hamstrung with the carriers as labour put in massive clauses in the contracts if they are scrapped it costs more in fines than the carriers are worth!

Its all a bit crap, though i would rather at least have them, even if late.

I caught some shows on quest the other week about the last Ark Royal. Two things that stand out:

1. It was heart breaking seeing her being decommissioned so early, leaving us with no aircraft carrier. At the decommissioning meal they had the Swordfish pilot who crippled the Bismarck join them. A riled WWII veteran Jock is the last thing you want to be near, he wasn't impressed

2. The other episode I saw was Ark Royal on exercise off the US coast, with the fleet in tow... WTF!!! Where is our Navy? That wasn't a Navy that was a bunch of toy ships! It's absolutely disgusting what's happened to our Navy

... and as a son of an ex Bootneck who the hell decide to give Matelot's gun's!!!

 Psienesis wrote:
Don't buy the planes we're wasting trillions on building right now, they are complete POS.

Incorrect.



Anyway, I take a certain amount of pride in knowing that the first operational squadron to call the Queen Elizabeth home will be USMC naval aviators.

 Wolfstan wrote:
I caught some shows on quest the other week about the last Ark Royal. Two things that stand out:

1. It was heart breaking seeing her being decommissioned so early, leaving us with no aircraft carrier. At the decommissioning meal they had the Swordfish pilot who crippled the Bismarck join them. A riled WWII veteran Jock is the last thing you want to be near, he wasn't impressed

2. The other episode I saw was Ark Royal on exercise off the US coast, with the fleet in tow... WTF!!! Where is our Navy? That wasn't a Navy that was a bunch of toy ships! It's absolutely disgusting what's happened to our Navy

... and as a son of an ex Bootneck who the hell decide to give Matelot's gun's!!!

Why do you need an aircraft carrier? Have a lot of drones. if you want to do rescues or such build a cheap jeep carrier for helicopter operations.

Seaward wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Don't buy the planes we're wasting trillions on building right now, they are complete POS.

Incorrect.



Anyway, I take a certain amount of pride in knowing that the first operational squadron to call the Queen Elizabeth home will be USMC naval aviators.

Great, now we have to take in lodgers.

Oh the indignity of it!

 notprop wrote:

Seaward wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Don't buy the planes we're wasting trillions on building right now, they are complete POS.

Incorrect.



Anyway, I take a certain amount of pride in knowing that the first operational squadron to call the Queen Elizabeth home will be USMC naval aviators.

Great, now we have to take in lodgers.

Oh the indignity of it!

Thats how the Jamestown colony was started. Soon all your haggis and fish and chips are belong to us!

 notprop wrote:

Seaward wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Don't buy the planes we're wasting trillions on building right now, they are complete POS.

Incorrect.



Anyway, I take a certain amount of pride in knowing that the first operational squadron to call the Queen Elizabeth home will be USMC naval aviators.

Great, now we have to take in lodgers.

Oh the indignity of it!

There will be a lot of trouble with the spare bedroom tax, won't there.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To be fair, the Nimrods were getting very old. The original airframe was an early 1950s design, the De Havilland Comet.

This only emphasises the lack of forward planning that led to not having a replacement of some kind ready to go into action, whether built in the UK, or purchased from the US.

Britain an island nation, and all that.

KK is right.



The Nimrod upgrade plan to update the 1950s design ended up costing us a ridiculous amount and BAE needed to be shown it couldn't get away with wasting any more money.



BAE were just too expensive, that's why we ended up buying from the US.

Hasn't worked out well with the F-35 though.

They should have just carried on with the much cheaper option of conventional carriers with catapults and F18s

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11642595/Break-up-the-RAF-and-stop-buying-British.html

Defence procurement in the UK has always had the aim of keeping a few thousand people in well paid jobs/expenses, despite the cost to the taxpayer.

The same stuff could be bought cheaper abroad or off the peg from the USA, but vested interests fight tooth and nail to stop this from happening.

That url links to an excellent article on the subject of the British taxpayer being ripped off when it comes to defence spending.

How much of a contract would come back?
If a £10 billion contract is given to a UK-based company, I assume that more than half of that gets spent in the local economy, or taxed?

....or spent in bars and restaurants near to the MOD building?

Hence the high tax on beer

Don't the British have the guys with fuzzy hats that don't move?

They seem like they've got it together.
Have them man your ships.

The corps of Guards are pretty good but they can't VTOL and fly at supersonic speeds.

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 DarkLink wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
You know what this sounds like we need? To stop romping about all over the world and have an armed forces which is capable of defending the nation where the nation actually is. A Home Guard if you will.

Because the best way of defending your nation is to wait for the tanks, nukes, and suicide bombers to come to you.

Yes, because that is extremely unlikely to occur (an actual invasion by another power), and because conventional armies do pretty much feth all to lrevent suicide bombers and terrorists... you know, because of they did work the western world would be the safest place on earth and the middle east would be a veritable garden of eden...

At this exact instant, yes, no one will probably invade you. But the UK spent most of the 20th century under the threat of potential invasion from various powers, and there are plenty of modern powers that have the potential to develop into another USSR if things go badly, so I wouldn't be so naive about it. The middle east has always been stricken with strife, and considering the recent events with ISIL it's also incredibly naive to think that you can just let them do their thing and everyone will just get along.

I'm not saying that you need to go invade someone or something, I'm just saying that the idea of ditching a modern military in favor of a glorified police force that does not operate overseas is... well, not the best idea, I'll just leave it at that.

 DarkLink wrote:
At this exact instant, yes, no one will probably invade you. But the UK spent most of the 20th century under the threat of potential invasion from various powers, and there are plenty of modern powers that have the potential to develop into another USSR if things go badly, so I wouldn't be so naive about it. The middle east has always been stricken with strife, and considering the recent events with ISIL it's also incredibly naive to think that you can just let them do their thing and everyone will just get along.

I'm not saying that you need to go invade someone or something, I'm just saying that the idea of ditching a modern military in favor of a glorified police force that does not operate overseas is... well, not the best idea, I'll just leave it at that.

The UK spent a few years in the 30's and 40's under threat from invasion.

A modern military, even one such as the one posessed by the USA, is entirely unsuited to fighting a full scale invasion and holding action. As witnessed by the massive instability in every contry that has been invaded in recent times. Even in the days of total war, taking and holding another nation was not exactly easy. Even then, the requirement to take and hold territory, especially foreign nation states, has pretty much evaporated unless that nation has oil.

ISIL and other terrorist groups have pretty much zero capacity for invading the UK or US and a standing army, navy and air force does pretty much nothing to prevent terrorist attacks. Invading and destabilising other nations allows these types of groups to take hold and grow... as demonstrated by the last 50-60 years of adventures in the middle east. I am under no illusions that leaving the middle east to it will result in "good things happening" in terms of the people living there and the extremists who have effectively invaded and pacified the locals through terror. But then again they wouldn't exist if America et al hadn't decided that their troops needed to go out and see the world in some vague kicking out at a terrorist act on American soil...

Traditionally, the UK has resisted invasion by making continental allies against whichever nation is the most powerful and dangerous in Europe, in order to maintain a balance of power.

In the modern world, the UK can best defend itself by various means, not in order of importance:

Use diplomacy and 'soft power' to maintain strong relationships with allies and to try and defuse conflict before it starts.
The Royal Navy and Air Force are the two essential defences for an island nation. The RN also has the capability to "show the flag".
The Army although secondary in home defence has a role of overseas force projection in co-operation with the other armed services, and training and supporting allies.

It is unlikely the Army would ever need to or be able to send powerful conventional forces like armoured divisions overseas. There are few potential enemies against whom this kind of force would be useful, and the ones that might crop up would be too powerful for the UK to attack by itself.

It also helps that, unless the UK has gone really off the deep end an attacked a country like Russia with no provication, the US would be there in a second, and nobody beats us in military spending!

Whilst I'm not what you'd call a fan of the current state of our Armed Forces, it isn't half as bad as the doom and gloom being made out in this thread.

I'm reading stuff on th F-35 right now: oh god this aircraft seems so bashed (is it actually a word ?) !
How can such a costly and important project be so bad (if it is really) ?
And why UK did not developped his own aircraft ? I mean, France did it, so it is largely possible .

 godardc wrote:
I'm reading stuff on th F-35 right now: oh god this aircraft seems so bashed (is it actually a word ?) !

Not sure. I mean, bashed is a word (a verb), but can it be used as an adjective? Urban Dictionary says yes

How can such a costly and important project be so bad (if it is really) ?

Because Congressmen have pockets to pad (and FREEDOM!).

More realistically, because they tried to do too much with one air frame. Complications arouse, the project went horribly over budget, half the people complain about it, the other half ask "well what else are we gonna do." Good case of how not to develop a new weapons system

Good to see that the UK will be worthless should Russia ever attack any of its allies. At least us Muricans have an effective conventional military. Bloated defense budgets, ftw! I pray to god that what I read on this thread is only half-true...

EDIT: After some brief research, I found that the Royal Navy is tiny (in comparison to the US, which is a continental power), though the RAF, at least, still maintains a sizable amount of aircraft (though it's still miniscule compared to US airpower), while the Army and Marine Corps is just sad (in comparison to both the French and the Muricans). Seriously, I would have thought that the UK would've at least had half the numbers of the French. While numbers aren't everything, a military that small will be hard-pressed to defend the UK should anything like open war with a similarly wealthy nation occur.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
It also helps that, unless the UK has gone really off the deep end an attacked a country like Russia with no provication, the US would be there in a second, and nobody beats us in military spending!

So, we can expect you 2-3 years after everything kicks off?

Or will it be like the last time somewhere under our protection got attacked (and was actually invaded by Argentina) where you don't bother at all?

Hey now. We knew you had that one covered Bro. You con't use a M1 Abrams to break down a sand castle. That's just overkill