Do we really need new aircraft carriers and Euro fighter planes?

[mateykatie]

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7010508.ece

The Prime Minister will use the launch of a Green Paper on the future of the Armed Forces to promise a new generation of warships and fast jets over the coming decade. He will also guarantee an extra £1.5 billion for the war in Afghanistan, and promise to safeguard defence spending from any cuts next year.

Mr Brown aims to display Labour commitment to the military while also forcing the Conservatives to say whether they would match such spending.

His pledges will include:

• going ahead with two 65,000-tonne aircraft carriers at a cost of £5 billion;

• maintaining troop numbers in the Army at more than 100,000; and

• committing a future government to the Joint Strike Fighter, costing £10 billion, and completing the £20 billion Typhoon programme.

We obviously need a good military with good kit, but not these white elephant mega projects. The threats to us in the future will be terrorists and small insurgent groups - not big countries.

We should scrap Trident and use a less expensive nuclear deterrent too.

The airraft carriers are vital in that they will allow us to project power from the sea without having to rely on neighbouring countries letting us use their airfields.

Maintaining troop numbers is hardly a white elephant, the Army is pretty overstretched as it is.

I don't know as much about the new fighter planes but I know we do need to replace the ageing Tornado jets.

All of these are necessary and vital to the future of the Armed Forces and to our future defence and foreign policy.

Do you have information that the Joint Chiefs of Staff don't about what the threats will be to the UK for the next 30-50 years? That's the time scale that is being planned for. I suggest you read the paper by Michael Codner at the RUSI website www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/FDR2.pdf which lays out clearly the choices facing the UK and where it goes with it's military.

The problem is that procurement takes time - you can't plan for just one type of threat, you have to be able to cover all the bases. If an aircraft carrier or a submarine is suddenly needed, you can't just snap your fingers, or go to Tesco to get it; you have to plan years in advance and sort out the contracts. You then have to oversee the build, ensure that the sea trials go correctly and only when the RN is satisfied that the vessel is fit for purpose will she be accepted into the Fleet.

Aircraft carriers are not mega white elephant projects - they provide a platform from which to perform all sorts of operations including disaster relief. How do you propose we deal with Somalia without a platform like an aircraft carrier from which aerial patrols can be carried out; the SBS, SAS, Marines and Army can be transported there and landed; operations can be planned etc? As the Carriers are already in build, and providing much needed employment at Appledore in Devon for example, they might as well carry on. It would cost more to get out of the contracts.

Air superiority is necessary in conflict and that can be provided from aircraft carriers, without the need to ask if we can park our jets in another country. We do not have to find a friendly nation to provide us with bases in the area in which we are fighting; an aircraft carrier is a big beastie and can hold more than the crew. It can be supplied by RFAs and the RN has Replenishment At Sea down to a fine art.

I don't think there is a less expensive deterrent than Trident; the boats have been built and will go on for quite a while yet.

The £1.5 billion is probably creative accounting as it always is with this govt and defence, and GB can promise what he likes because he won't be in power.

The reality is that redundancies are going to happen in the Armed Forces. The extra £900 million announced this year for Afghanistan comes from the existing defence budget and not from the treasury reserve, and is coming at the cost of closing an RAF base; taking two ships out of service very early and redundancies in the Army and RAF. As the RN is the smallest of the three services at approx 35,000 personnel (Boots the Chemist employ more people than the RN, go figure) it looks as if we may avoid redundancies.

This government has significantly underinvested in Defence for the past 13 years and promising to throw money at the problem to buy the votes of HM Forces won't work. It's too little, too late. The Forces are overstretched, underfunded, and are not happy. I find it appalling that the guys who are in Afghanistan get I think a Council Tax discount and a small bonus per month; whilst a Mod employee on a short term contract gets a bonus of £84,500. That is equivalent to the pay of a Naval Captain (therefore very senior) with 5 years in the rank.

'We need a good military' you say. We have one of the best and most highly trained militaries on the planet. Other nations spend small fortunes sending their officer cadres to our training establishments and staff colleges. Unfortunately, although the military is what keeps this government punching above it's weight, they are not adequately resourced to do the job. Lessons from history are also being ignored; we are an island nation; we import much of our food and energy. How is the Army going to protect the oil tankers coming through the Straits of Hormuz when the Iranians have mined it? We need a Navy for that; they also protect oil rigs and provide for safe passage on the sea. You can't just look at Afghanistan and say that is the be all and end all; you have to look at the bigger picture and what may occur unexpectedly and what assets we will need to deal with that.

It is no good planning for the next conflict, you need to be looking at the one after that. After all, prior planning prevents piss poor performance as they say in the RN.

Every time since the end of WW2 that a British plane has shot down an enemy aircraft it's been launched from an aircraft carrier.

We last had "proper" aircraft carriers back in the 70s and the Government scrapped them saying that we wouldn't need them anymore, that the threat we would face in the future wouldn't require them.

Then the Falklands happened.

We ended up going down there with two tiny ships barely worthy of the name "aircraft carrier" (officially the Navy had to call them Through Deck Anti-Submarine Cruisers to escape the ban on carriers) that could only launch a certain type of very limited plane.

It was a close call.

Had we had proper carriers things would almost certainly have been different. The aircraft we could have used would have been vastly superior and we would have had airborne radar coverage. It's almost certain that we wouldn't have lost as many ships as we did and that we would have ended the fighting much quicker, if indeed the invasion had happened at all.

So basically you can't see what is coming and big defence projects have to be planed a long way in advance.

We can't just throw everything away and focus completely on what we're doing now (though that said a lot more of that needs does need to happen) and we need to be prepared for a variety of events.

We are going to see a lot of fighting between the armed forces now though.

The RAF want to kill the carriers and fund the conversion of the Eurofighter Typhoon into something that can actually do ground attack missions.

The Navy want their carriers and have given up on a lot of ships and aircraft to get them, right now the only carrier capable planes they have are less capable in the air-to-air role than what they had in the Falklands.

The Army are keen to point out that they're the ones carrying the brunt of the fighting and that their tanks are getting old.

Ermmm, the Royal Marines (who are part of the RN) are doing a helluva lot of the fighting in Afghanistan as well, plus the RN has 450 personnel out there permanantly. The RAF are also there with fighters which provide the airstrikes. It is a joint operation, not just the Army.

Gen. David Richards seems to be proposing all the eggs in one basket solution, whereas Mark Stanhope (First Sea Lord) is looking outwards.
They are all grown ups and know that the pie has to be sliced in certain ways; they seem more to be having a philosophical discussion about where we go for the next 30-50 years in our capabilities.

Personally, I'd have the carriers and some more submarines. Russia is quietly re-arming, including enlarging their submarine fleet, and the best way to deal with one of those is with another boat.

The RAF want to kill the carriers because they can't/won't land on them. That's why we have the Fleet Air Arm who can!

"They are all grown ups and know that the pie has to be sliced in certain ways"

They can actually be terribly childish...

The RAF is more than keen to get rid of the carriers and the JSF. It believes that they should be the only people with airplanes. Google "one nation one airforce" to see some of the things that they're up to.

The RAF's been there before of course. They had a major part to play in the scrapping of the Navy's last proper carriers back in the 70s. Rather famously they produced a map that showed how they could project airpower all over the globe with no need for carriers. The map had helpfully shifted the otherwise awkwardly distant Australia so as to give the appearance of global cover. As the Falklands showed that wasn't quite the case.

The head of the navy spat his dummy out over this a year or two and publicly threatened to quit. More recently the current head was telling the press that Afghanistan was not the "only game in town".

And that was in response to the head of the army talking to the press about how in the future we need more troops and less technology.

The Navy's bet the house on those new carriers. They've got less air power than they had 30 years ago, transferred what they do have to be pretty much under RAF control and have ships sailing around with no armament. This will get quite catty...

Yes we need them, now more than ever.

Just because the 'cold war' is said to be over does not mean that Russia will stay silent, especially with the likes of Putin.

You then have China, still a communist state and very well armed, would you want to go to war with china with our limited resources?

It's not a peaceful world we live in and we should be expanding our forces and giving them a decent armada and up to date tech to help them in their efforts to defend our country. It's too late once the first shots are fired.

I personally sleep better knowing they are out there.

"The threat to us in the future will be terrorists and small insurgent groups".

Agree - they will be a threat to us. But can you actually say they will be the ONLY threat.

Not only are there the potential nations that could pose a very real military threat (Iran, Russia, China etc), look far enough ahead and see the impact of climate change, population growth, water shortages and food shortages. Here we are on a very fertile, land with (currently) a lot of water. How should we protect ourselves from mass migration unless we have some of these "white elephants" as you call them.

Note it also says "completing the £20 billion Typhoon project". After the decades and billions already spent on it, it would be surely crazy to scrap it now. And also, let's not forget the thousands and thousands of people who are employed in the defence manufacturing industry. You've got to weigh up the cost of not investing in these projects. The people lose their jobs, massive manufacturing companies close, the government not only has to fund their dole and other benefits but they lose stacks on lost taxes. In addition, Britain then loses military manufacturing expertise ... who will be innovating for the future if we have no manufacturing? How will we be prepared if we can't supply our own military? Rely on other nations? Very risky strategy.

PS - just re-read the bit about mass migration. I am not a Daily Mail reading political-correctness-gone-mad-immigrants-go-home type I promise. But if we agree climate change is a reality, then what goes hand in hand with that is food/water shortages. I saw a map of the world once in the National Geographic and the amount of the world that has viable truly fertile land is very small. Most of continental Europe is marginal. Britain and Ireland are fertile. So you can see the potential nightmare that could ensue.

"Just because the 'cold war' is said to be over does not mean that Russia will stay silent, especially with the likes of Putin.

You then have China, still a communist state and very well armed, would you want to go to war with china with our limited resources?"

The real worries aren't Russia or China but of something happening that we just don't see coming.

Back in the 60s and 70s we could see the threats of both of those places but no one really imagined that Argentina would suddenly do what it did and they came shockingly close to succeeding.

So it's not just worrying about the problems that you can see but making sure that you're flexible enough to deal with those that you can't.

"Note it also says "completing the £20 billion Typhoon project". After the decades and billions already spent on it, it would be surely crazy to scrap it now."

A large chunk of the money that the RAF wants for the Typhoon isn't to "finish" it but to make it into something that's a bit more useful.

The Typhoon was designed to face the situation 20 years ago and so is an air-to-air fighter in the Top Gun style.

It's really not very good at blowing stuff up on the ground.

A few do have limited bombing capability but the RAF really wants to extend that to make it a long range bomber.

"In addition, Britain then loses military manufacturing expertise ... who will be innovating for the future if we have no manufacturing? How will we be prepared if we can't supply our own military? Rely on other nations? Very risky strategy."

We already do depend on other nations.

The Typhoon is a European project.

The JSF is mostly American.

Trident is American.

The new carriers are half French, though their ones will be more capable than ours.

Even the new European military airbus, which is horrendously over budget, is stuffed with American technology.

There is a balance to be struck between keeping defence capability alive and getting off the shelf equipment at a fraction of the price. Right now it's the wrong way.

Do our troops really care that the new future Lynx will be British built or is it more important to them that they cost 2.5 times as much as an "off the shelf" helicopter that are twice the size and twice as powerful and, more importantly given Afghanistan, that they could have right now rather than in a few years time.

We could have given those helicopter workers half a million pounds each and still saved about a quarter of a billion by ordering the more capable readily available alternatives.

And the army would have those better machines right now.

Who's happy with that?

Not the troops.

Probably not the workers who could have been half a million pounds richer.

Shareholders and managers win out.

It shouldn't swing completely towards just buying everything ready made but it does need to head back that way a touch for both economic and military reasons.

Agree completely that more off-the-shelf products need to be available and quickly churned out but I'm not sure that shareholders and managers do win out. Extra cost doesn't necessarily translate into extra profit. One of the problems is the original proposal by the manufacturer responds to an original request by the MOD but the development/production lead time is so long that there are many opportunities for modifications to be requested/required. These mods add on cost not just for the MOD but also to the manufacturer. What you end up with is a bespoke product when actually, a simpler version may as well have been just as good. The defence procurement policy at the MOD is critically at fault here. They ask for the earth when actually, a fraction of that would do the job, get equipment on the ground fast and under/within budget.

Also agree that many projects are collaborative across multiple nations but at least we do have research and production capability here in Britain so we are not "dependent".

I don't think all of 1SLs speech was in response to Gen Richards remarks, and he is right - Afghanistan is not the only game in town. If you go to the MoD website, you can read it in full and see what was prepared and what was in response to Richards, as it is very clearly indicated. Stanhope points out that the Falklands came out of left field, and that we need to have the capability to deal with things like that again if necessary.

The RAF are potentially up for the bulk of the forthcoming redundancies at the moment. They are overmanned and will have to take the cuts at mid ranking officer level. They may not have the pilots to fly the planes.

I think Russia is a worry. All it needs are submarines at the strategic choke points and havoc is wreaked on shipping. They also control much of the energy supplies; remember the stand off last winter?.

There is oil near the Falklands; that will be a flash point and the Navy will need ships to defend it, plus more submarines.

I think we need a realistic strategic defence review, and to look at what we want to project world wide and how we can achieve that.