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Friday 10 February 2012

Latest Defence Fiasco: I See No Ships

Monday, 26th October 2009

There's a decent discussion to be had on defence priorities and on the future of both the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. Furthermore, you can argue about the number of aircraft carriers this country might need. There's a case for saying that the resources devoted to the new Queen Elizabeth Class carriers could have been more usefully employed elsewhere. But if there's a case for scrapping the carriers there's also a case for building two of them or, though this is not on the cards, three "super-carriers". What makes no sense, however, is building just one aircraft carrier.

And yet that's where we seem to be. Actually, it's worse than that. Current plans - to apportion this cockamamie proposal with a level of thought and sense it hardly deserves - are to build both carriers but use one of them, the Prince of Wales, as a helicopter-carrying amphibious commando ship. This, then, creates the worst of all possible worlds: maximum cost and minimal force projection. It is madness.

The reason given is that the Joint Strike Fighter is going to be too expensive to equip two carriers. But because we've sunk so much money into the carriers already they need to be built. Of course we've also sunk billions into the JSF too. Current policy - again it it can be called that - is to build an aircraft carrier and then refuse to stock it with planes.

Building one carrier only makes almost no sense at all. Apart from anything else, the demands of training and, in due course, refitting means that it won't be available all the time. Better hope we don't have to go to war on Wednesdays.

Furthermore, since you need, I think, to organise defence planning on a series of worst-case scenarios - with, therefore, layers of redundancy and a degree of stockpiling - the consequences of something disastrous happening to the Queen Elizabeth are so great and so severe that, paradoxically, they create an incentive to never actually use the damn ship because the risks of losing it may be outweighed by the benefits of actually deploying it. In that sense, then, having one super-carrier is actually worse than having none. It chews up resources while actually limiting flexibility. (That's why three carriers might, if we are going down the super-carrier route, make more sense than two: it provides cover for something going wrong.)

The headline numbers on these things are, sure, eye-popping. But these ships and the planes to fly from them are designed to last for 30 years or so. Put in that context the money is less of a problem.

As I say, there's a case for rethinking pretty much every aspect of future defence needs (and spending) but this half-cocked absurdity seems, amazingly, the very worst of all possible approaches. Perhaps we should not be surprised, then, that it's the path we're merrily determined to follow.

Filed under: MoD (15 more articles) , RAF (7 more articles) , Royal Navy (8 more articles) , Whitehall (126 more articles)

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Cuffleyburgers

October 26th, 2009 3:02pm Report this comment

Alex

Unfortunately procurement is nowadays in such a mess, and Naval procurement seems to be suffereing particularly been driven as it apparently is by:
1) the need to prevent anybody criticising Brown for cancelling a programme
2) the need to spend squillions on glaswegian deadbeats and diversity outreach officers and therefore to make squeeze the defence budget until the pips squeak, and then keep squeezing

I posted on the wall a few weeks ago some material I found detailing the appallingly counter-productive management of a new destroyer programme which if correct means that these new ships will be effectively useless once they are brought into service. At the time nobody seemed to be concerned by it.

If I can find it again I will post it here.

I am boiling mad. Where are the questions in the House?

Murtroyd

October 26th, 2009 5:11pm Report this comment

For an entertaining perspective on defence procurement try Dennis Wheatly's The Ka of Gifford Hillary which contains a complex discussion of Britain's naval requirements.

Cuffleyburgers

October 26th, 2009 6:05pm Report this comment

Alex

I tried to copy the text of my post abput the type 45 destroyers but for some reason it wouldn't go...

Anyway I posted it in the wall on October 7th, and the original material is from defencemanagement.com

Noa Zrk

October 26th, 2009 6:05pm Report this comment

Alex:
An excellent post. The procurement of one carrier is Candide in reverse, the worst of all possible options.
Nor must the immmediate resource requirements resulting from fighting of a newlab colonial war in the middle of the Himalayas detract from the need to establish a credible defence strategy.
It's not just the procurement of individual weapons systems that must be addressed, urgent though that is.
A balanced, independent and distinguished Defence Strategic Review is long overdue and should be launched now, to inform the hard strategic decisions which the next government must make in safeguarding the UK.
As we are now seeing any such 'decisions' made by the present disgustingly incompetent zombie government are simply self serving and counter to the UK's interest and the efficiency and morale of the Armed Forces.

Flying Fish

October 26th, 2009 6:11pm Report this comment

I could not agree more with Alex on the usefulness of such ships but all the hacks have completely missed the point on this story!
Even if we buy less aicraft both ships will be able to operate them with no modifications at all. And of course just what scenario even with our little carriers of the present do we ever send 2? That's right...Never!
I'll freely admit that we are in a pickle but perhaps not quite as sunk as you may want to believe.

Bob H

October 26th, 2009 6:25pm Report this comment

These military monstrosities should all be scrapped.
How else could we afford to keep all those pregnant schoolgirls fed and housed and also do all the sexchange operations, and keep all the unemployed TV watchers in beer and take aways. Military trivia just has to be sacrificed to keep this nation on track as the prime socialist example for all the world to see and admire.

mac

October 26th, 2009 6:52pm Report this comment

HMS Hermes was a "helicopter carrying commando ship" which performed pretty effectively as a conventional carrier during the Falklands War.

Provided HMS Prince of Wales is at least equipped to operate JSF, or some lesser fixed wing plane which we might be able to afford in the future, then doubtless the Navy will cope: it has long experience of doing so in the face of crass ministerial decisions, not least where carriers and the Fleet Air Arm are concerned.

Dixon

October 26th, 2009 7:32pm Report this comment

No carriers = no navy. Its as simple as that. Without their own air-cover, British ships could never operate beyond the range of RAF bases, apart from in the company of US or French carriers. Or maybe Indian or Chinese ones.

Scrap the carriers and you might as well scrap all ocean going vessels in the navy. Anyone familiar with my bellicose attitudes as reflected in coments at this site will be surprised for me to say this but, yes, do that. Britain is so utterly sunk in debt that any realistic prospect of sustaining the level of armed forces that we have are already scuppered.

So scrap most of the navy, reducing it to coastal duties and a submarine force, mainly in support of the nuclear capabilty.

Whilst we are at it, hack the army down to a territorial defense force. Lets face it, in the next twenty years the principal conflicts in which it will have to participate are likely to be at home.

We might as well do something similar.

All of these measures would save money equivalent to a fraction of one years NHS budget and a tiny portion of the cost of the banks bail-out.

Lets face it, the sheer smallness of the British forces is such that we have little to lose but the expense. The US Marine Corps alone is larger than the British army, air force and navy combined. The US Army has mi=ore than half a million solfiers. Yet Turkeys army is larger still. In turn dwarfed by India. Which of course is small compared to that of China. And all of these, friends today, perhaps enemies tomorrow, are now equipped with weapons at least as modern as those used by the British, in some cases ( such as the Indian air force ) superior.

What we really need to do is revisit, revise and extend the "rules of engagement" for nuclear weapons. The only thing that makes sense for a "David" in a world of "Goliaths".

Noa Zrk

October 26th, 2009 8:08pm Report this comment

Cuffeyburgers:

What goes around comes around; the Tornado ADVs flew for years with their Blue Circle radars. Best keep those Type 45s in harbour until we can borrow the telescopes from the Ruritanian Navy.

Dixon

October 27th, 2009 5:58pm Report this comment

"mac
October 26th, 2009 6:52pm

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HMS Hermes was a "helicopter carrying commando ship" which performed pretty effectively as a conventional carrier during the Falklands War.

Hermes could only operate VTOL harriers. The much loved harrier is shortly to be retired. No catapult = no aircraft carrier. and the chances of building the 2nd vessel as a helicopter carrier with a catapult...well thats never going to happen is it.

The problem is that the end of the harrier means the navy is comitted to the F35. But it would be nih on impossible to operate it from their existing vessels. If it will need a catapult, it would then be absolutely impossible, as the through-deck cruisers ( aka "carriers" ) have none.

In which case, its either one hull and a pretense to air-cover or no royal navy air cover at all.

criss whicker

November 27th, 2009 1:06am Report this comment

as the americans have lots of aircraft carriers.and some due to be mothballed for their own cuts. would it not be possable for the british goverment to buy 2-3 or 4 carriers of the americans and upgrade them.
just an idea .

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