Some good news at last...
The maintenance costs savings of AOG'd aircaft will help counter the non-existent savings of leaving the EU.
What's not to like?
;)
US sanctions on Turkey for Russia purchases could ground Brit F-35s
Uncle Sam has raised the possibility of sanctions against Turkey for buying Russian anti-aircraft missile systems – putting the UK's supply of overhauled F-35 fighter jet engines at risk. US government official Aaron Wess Mitchell threatened action if the Middle Eastern/ European nation completed its purchase of Russian S-400 …
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Monday 23rd April 2018 23:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Largesse
Largesse is a battle with consequences all of it's own. My largesse has to beat their largesse, without you giving it to them on a plate.
Military superiority comes from either of a few areas
1] Uniqueness [functional &/or operational superiority] - Outright Superiority, bigger, better.
2] Superiority in numbers - Out number with more forces
3] Allies & distribution - More friends in more places.
Selling it or giving it away only works sometimes. Where [#3] fails you need [#1 or #2], and you have already betrayed yourself [#1] in attempting [#3.]. So that leaves you with [#2] outnumber with redundant forces. The weapons already developed could if required eliminate [#2] so states are left with little wars, spats and quarrels. What make one go all in, when one cannot afford to lose, but cannot win?
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Tuesday 24th April 2018 18:17 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: @Voland
Wow. So you have a day job as well as writing on this forum
One has to entertain himself sometimes while stuff compiles or integration tests are being run.
Or distract himself while his brain is trying to figure out "why the f*** this piece of Gak which someone pretends to be network hardware refuses to initialize". There is stuff which human brain handles best in a background thread and you do not always have the time to "sleep on it". Sometimes, a good flame war is almost as good as "sleeping on it" in terms of figuring out things.
Different people do things differently you know.
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Wednesday 25th April 2018 14:00 GMT Dave 15
Re: Could I interest the UK in...
Seem to recollect that HMS Victory is the best armed ship in the Royal Navy (having guns at least which the others don't, and not needing missiles which are apparently too expensive to be put on the others), thus your idea isn't totally stupid.
Perhaps if we can find an old mozzie or two then the wood wont show up so well to the radar and they were pretty quick
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Friday 27th April 2018 12:49 GMT SkippyBing
Re: Could I interest the UK in...
'Seem to recollect that HMS Victory is the best armed ship in the Royal Navy (having guns at least which the others don't,'
Victory has fibreglass replicas to avoid the weight damaging the hull which is sagging after a few decades in dry dock. You'll also find the others do have guns, that can cause a significant amount more damage than a 19th Century cannon. The thing on the front of a T26 or T45 is a Mk8 4.5" gun with a variety of ammunition types.
You'll also find that although the wood of a Mosquito won't show up on radar* all the bits of metal inside it, like the engines, will show up perfectly well.
*Depending on the frequency of the radar
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Tuesday 24th April 2018 10:46 GMT EnviableOne
Re: Could I interest the UK in...
sorry we still have the fairey swordfishes that took out the bismark ...
Oh and a collection of seaFury's and SeaPhantoms to play with ...
and a bunch of wildcats, merlins and some Seakings lying around ....
Oh and theirs them hawks we got sitting around for target practice...
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Tuesday 24th April 2018 16:12 GMT Dave 15
One day...
The idiot that decided to build 2 huge aircraft carriers instead of multiple small ones which would have been more flexible and harder to sink (larger numbers, more targets in order to have them all gone) should be hung
The idiot that signed up to have the largest aircraft carriers the Royal Navy has ever had to have less capability to fly fast jets than HMS Hermes (which before the skijump could fly fast jets) should be hung
The idiot that made them non-nuclear should be hung
The idiot that signed up to have a foreign and frankly incapable jet (it runs out of fuel, cant vector in flight, cant fly near a thunderstorm and is 3 times the price of the Russian and not as proven or capable as the Harrier) should be hung
The idiot that signed to have the jets serviced by Italy and Turkey rather than the UK who has paid a fortune to own the heaps of rubbish should be hung.
In fact a lot of hanging should go on. I bet they all get knighthoods instead
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Tuesday 24th April 2018 23:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
If you hang everyone who gets things wrong you wont have anyone left who's learnt how to get it right next time.
The fact is, the high level decisions for our military are made in the overall interests of NATO. That will yield an answer to many of your criticisms.
If we really need to service jets ourselves, we would.
If we really need small carriers we could build them more quickly than big ones.
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Wednesday 25th April 2018 14:08 GMT Dave 15
mmmm
Yes but no but...
We could only service the jets if we knew how and had the parts.
We could only build the small carriers if we had the Harriers to fly off them, a steel industry, a coal industry, a power industry and some time (all the Harriers are in bits in America, the F35 is useless, the EU required us to stop the steel industry, the coal industry was destroyed because some miners wanted a payrise, the power industry is all foreign owned and reliant on gas from Russia so hardly robust. And our forces are so small and badly equiped that any invading force arriving at the channel tunnel would have the entire country in about 2 hours.
As for the rest I guess we need to suck up to the USA and pay for its over expensive and massive military (for heavens sake, even with a global empire to support we didnt need a navy that comprised over half the worlds war ships).
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Friday 27th April 2018 13:06 GMT SkippyBing
Re: One day...
'2 huge aircraft carriers instead of multiple small ones which would have been more flexible and harder to sink '
Multiple small carriers would be less effective, you'd need more manpower per aircraft sortie because you don't get the benefits of scale. This means you either can't do everything you require or you sail them around in a convoy at which point it's no harder to sink two than it is one.
'less capability to fly fast jets than HMS Hermes '
Hermes was very marginal at operating fast jets, I have a graph that tells you how much height you'll lose off the end of the deck in a Buccaneer before you're going fast enough to climb away. It would not be allowed today.
'The idiot that signed up to have a foreign and frankly incapable jet'
It's ~15-20% British, which isn't far off Tornado. If you can find a jet that doesn't run out of fuel you're really on to something, vectoring in flight is over-rated and certainly wasn't used in the Falklands, it can now fly near Thunderstorms since the fuel tank inerting system was signed off as fit for purpose, there's no directly comparable Russian aircraft they'd let us buy so no idea where you're getting the comparative cost from, obviously an aircraft that hasn't been in combat yet won't be as proven as one that has, but then by that logic we'd still be flying Sopwith Camels, and it carries twice as much, twice as far, twice as fast as the Harrier.
'The idiot that made them non-nuclear should be hung'
So you'd want the UK to develop a suitable reactor, submarine ones not being that good an idea as the French have found out. Not to mention the additional training burden for the extra nuclear qualified personnel, extra infrastructure to bring a nuclear powered ship into Portsmouth, etc. etc. Not to mention the additional up front costs which could have made the project untenable.
'The idiot that signed to have the jets serviced by Italy and Turkey rather than the UK'
The UK could service the jets, and indeed will service the avionics, but decided that spending $1 Billion on an engine overhaul centre when they'd be three others in Europe wasn't the best use of money.
But you know, keep it up, I'm sure you'll get something right.
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Wednesday 25th April 2018 14:10 GMT Dave 15
Maybe, but not for long, the carriers are oil burners and will run out pretty quickly (nuclear would have been a sensible option especially with the size and the fact we already know how to do nuclear from our submarines), that is assuming they dont share engines from our latest set of ships and over heat at the first sign of tepid water
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
