Britannia ruled the waves

Noa Zrk

"Had we ordered much of the new carriers to be built overseas, we could have had them at a fraction of the £5 billion cost. But the asinine logic of the Defence Industrial Strategy means that we instead had to have them built in the UK".

Concrete evidence please, of the correctness of this statement that:
1.- building them abroad would be cheaper, by how much? £4b or 3, 2, 0.5?
2.- that the SDR's logic was asinine.

I have a suggestion, let us outsource what remains of UK Conservative nationalistic journalism to a country which believes in it and allows it to be practiced, such as the USA or possibly India, where true values in defence of our liberty can obtained at a fraction of the cost and without asinine views being expressed.

Matthew Knowles

The first round of overseas procurement is usually cheap. Then once the domestic capability has died out through no orders the prices mysteriously increase. Ask Japan or Taiwan about that. List prices for helicopters from the US do not chime with the prices paid by their overseas customers for example.

The proposal to buy from overseas has implications for our armed forces, the UK's place in the world and jobs in our domestic industry who supply the troops as their priority customer - just as any overseas supplier would prioritise their own forces over our own. If we depend wholly on either domestic or overseas suppliers the UK will not get the best deal but a good mix means that the troops get the appropriate equipment at the appropriate time.

normanc

Bearing in mind that public money is simply taxes taken from private companies we have to ask ourselves do our defense industries pay for themselves? They don't have to wholly cover their costs, simply the income they generate minus the cost of offshoring our own defense production.

I'd be surprised if, when taking into account the foreign exchange our defense industries generate, as well as their UK taxes, UK jobs, etc., they're not paying their way.

Or as close to it as not make it worth the strategic error of depending on foreign powers for the means of defending our Isles - one of the two legitimate functions that governments have (the other being protection of private property, including the private property that is our physical body).

Daedalus

We are an island manufacturing country (well in my dreams we are). We should be able to build ships and planes and tanks and guns and missiles and all of the other things we need for our defense; and it would appear we can't. The reasons we can't are lost in the mists of time but an experience when visiting Barrow in Furness in the early 70s when I was an engineer cadet in the merchant navy has stayed with me and I have to say has been used as an example of why we lost most of our industry. We were taken into a dimly lit shed with sand for a floor to see the very latest (I think 4") navy gun the sort you see on the front of a frigate in a fiberglass cupola. There it was in the light from the unwashed windows covered in the dust from the floor and the general crap of heavy manufacturing, lost, unloved, forlorn and supposed to be heading for a ship somewhere. It was at that point as a 17 year old, with no experience of manufacturing, warfare, women or life, that I knew we were f*c*k*d as a manufacturing nation. The 3 day week built on the feeling and the union closed shop rules at that time confirmed it. But we are coming back, there is no doubt about that, but defense is still back in the 70's; why? The MOD. Get rid of the MOD bring in a new department such as the Ministry of War, new ways of working especially in procurement. Yes technology moves on, design the ship/aircraft/tank with stuff that works now, is reliable and cheapm, that is standard. Start designing the next lot with tech you KNOW will exist when it goes to be built. OK its not cutting edge; but who else who we may fight in the near future will have cutting edge, the US the Chinese the Russians, I don't think we will be fighting any of these other than in MANUFACTURING. We can do the cutting edge stuff for those that want it and can afford it we don't need it for what our armed forces will be tasked with in the next 25 years as far as I can see.

Daedalus.

TrevorsDen

What 'plan' - all I have heard so far are rumours and suggestions.

I note going back to when these massive ships were first proposed, the size was quoted as being necessary to work with American carriers. No mention of France then.

The cost of the US nuclear carriers are not far short of what we are paying for smaller conventional ones. Whilst I do not see much saving to buying a US build one off the shelf (helicopter carriers maybe) there is the logic of buying second hand US carriers.
But its not just the carriers - its the high cost airplanes to go on them. We could put catapult on them and buy used F18's.

As it stands we are building the ships but cannot afford the planes. But apart from prestige we have no need for these vast 66500ton ships. We do need a navy - just not the one thats being built.

TrevorsDen

Daedalus - 'We should be able to build ships and planes and tanks and guns and missiles and all of the other things we need for our defense;'

Yes but we cannot build them in the numbers big enough to be viable. At least we cannot build (alone) suitably technologically advanced weapons in the numbers necessary to make them viable.

France has built the Rafale alone but it is inferior to the 3 nation Typhoon. its aircraft carrier has been beset with problems, its tank is well, lightweight. There is no way we can afford to build 'Raptor' and 'Lightning II' type aircraft alone.
A new tank would be horribly expensive and only a very small number needed. We struggle to build new refuelling planes and new transport planes and APCs. Our new Destroyer is massively over budget and effectively unaffordable. Technology is killing us. We can build all manner of things but they would be inferior to 'state of the art'.

We must ask - do we need the absolute ultra best? Striving for this has led us to be without basic helicopters and simple ground attack aircraft and mine resistant vehicles when we needed them - it has left us slow to respond to change.

Constantly saying we must have the best is leaving us with massive overspend and massive holes in our capability. We need to redefine our capability, redefine our mission and saddle up accordingly.

This is what the review is SUPPOSED to do. We will wait and see - I suspect our most lethal weapon will be the salami slicer.

strapworld

Interesting French press release, my translation.

Sorry Trevors Den this will knock you off your stride!!

Translation:-Separately, another French official confirmed that France's Defence Minister Herve Morin and Britain's Liam Fox would hold a news conference in Paris on Friday, but declined to comment on Tuesday's press reports.

Any formal announcement is likely to have to wait until the Franco-British summit in November, when President Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister David Cameron will be able to study the options, officials said.

The coalition could well end this year, sadly!! I cannot see the Conservatives nor the Labour Party accepting this!

strapworld

The Sydney Morning Herald!!!!!!

France, UK in talks on warship timeshare August 31, 2010 - 10:54PM
Historic rivals and modern day allies France and Britain are in talks on pooling their naval strength, officials said on Tuesday, after reports they might share a fleet of aircraft carriers.

Neither Paris nor London would confirm a report in the British press that the Royal Navy and the Marine Nationale might share carriers, but French officials said the defence ministers would hold a news conference on Friday.

"We're in a phase where we must absolutely synchronise our budget cuts so that, in the end, there's no loss in our military capacities," a senior French diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

What say ye now Trevors Den. Still a nasty rumour?

anne allan

So, to boil it down to essentials - this is the equivalent of my buying a super dooper new cooker and being unable to afford cooking utensils and food?

Beer Moth

I think the comments above show a distinct anti-Gallic tone which should be consigned to the historical dustbin, and we should accept that we need to work alongside our French cocksucking cousins.

LloydJ

Economics, economics, dear boy!
Out of 5billion cost a high proportion is labour and local sourcing of which cost all is returned into the British economy. It is better to employ those workers than to make them live on benefit payments.
Buy cheaper from abroad and loose the whole cost.
Simple economics as taught at high school!

TGF UKIP

Noa Zrk makes an interesting point in his final para.

Were, for instance, The Weekly Standard to launch a UK edition, I suspect the circulation of The Speccie would be decimated.

If only The Standar would.

Daedalus

TrevorsDen
That is the point I was making. We don't as a country need to have the lastest equipment for our armed forces. We need stuff that works is reliable and cheap. I cannot see that in the next 25 years we will be fighting a war with anyone where we need to have cutting edge technology. If Argentina invaded the Falklands again we couldn't raise a taskforce but we could put several submarines in strategic places to blockade the River Plate amongst others given the POLITCAL WILL. Having spent many months going up and down the Plate as a youngster whilst at sea it would not be difficult. As a country we are at the cutting edge of some manufacturing technology, we don't need it for our armed forces; just reliable kit that works, does what it says on the tin and does not cost a lot.

Dixon

British "defence" like that of the rest of Europe has become a joke. What are British soldiers but social-workers with guns and sacrificial lambs? Look at the laughing stock the British Army became in Basra. When the US and Iraqi forces (for crineoutloud) had to effectively invade the British "controlled" zone of anarchy and kept the whole plan secret because they knew British Camel-Corps officers would inform their Arab pals they are so fond of kow-towing to.

Any weapon can only be as effective as the bearers willingness to use it. Lets face it. Our ruling "elites" no longer have the cajones to use mlitary forces to do what they would still, if allowed, be able to do. So why must we suffer the burden of keeping them? "Use it or lose it". If its not the one, it should be the other. As its not going to be the former, then it should be the latter. We should scrap the Army, Navy and Air Force and replace them with a small teritorial defence force.

Nuclear weapons are an entirely different matter.

Baron

if we were to embrace the French and share the naval hardware what language is the joint force going to communicate in? English or French, or both?

Bruce Finch

As a recently retired Naval Officer, Defence Strategy consultant and staunch Tory the evidenec is specious and the logic of Mr Carswell's argument is not clear - by what factor would they have been cheaper? On what evidence against any credible benchmark? US carriers are usually more expensive to build. The design is largely French (Thales) . Combat system integration is a highly complex systems engineering problem, it isn't like rolling a cruise ship off a production line. Moreover a major factor in the rise in cost was Quentin Davies's enforced delay which added a billion to costs. There are a lot of good reasons why we might not want to share a capital defence asset with any foreign power but the Defence Industrial Strategy is not one of them

Will Rees

They will have to revisit the temporaary measure of income tax surely?

yank

Beer Moth, you're a goddamn anarchist.

Stop it.

Stop it this instant, I say!

oldtimer

This idea,if carried through, will end in tears. Furthermore, it is yet another case of putting cart before the horse.

The first requirement in any defence review is to state the country`s international political objectives in the world as it is today and how it might evolve to our disadvantage in the future. Until this is explicit, all the talk, the leaks and the speculation is meaningless. No doubt it serves the interest of the political class to muddle the waters in this matter - as it does in every other - but it does not inspre either respect or confidence in their abilities to produce a sensible, let alone right, answer.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

Share planes with France? Imagine if heaven forbid there was a war. Shades of World War II, would we be expected to surrender our airpower to the enemy, or self-destruct as in 1940, when it was found vital to destroy the French Navy?

John David Barnett

Defence. Not defense.

lola

Went to Cragside once. Armstrongs house north of Newcastle. Very nice place and not at all 'grand'. Shown the room where he accommodated the Japanese emissaries buying warships for the Japanese Navy. Pictures of Armstromngs works along the North bank fo the Tyne. All gone now. But what went wrong? Why can't we arming the world? One word - overhead. Decades of delusional leftyism has foisted a 60% ish overhead cost on everyhting we make or service we provide and its nannied once self reliant and hardworking peoples into a false sense of expectation. A sense that you can have all the toys even if you don't work for it.
The failure of the DIS is just a symptom of this progressive failure.

We can make and do stuff. We just need to unload a shed load of unproductive overhead and get on with it.

Martin C

"Had we ordered much of the new carriers to be built overseas, we could have had them at a fraction of the £5 billion cost."
This is not so. While the cost to the MoD budget is 5bn, the cost to the state is in fact far less. This is because around 70% of the cost of these carriers is the workforce to build and fit them out; and these workers pay taxes both direct (income, NICs etc) and indirectly (VAT etc). And of course the state does not have to pay these workers benefits while the carriers are built in Korea or wherever.
So the cost to the MoD might be 5bn, but the cost to the State is less than half of that figure - which is competitive with the cost of building them in Korea.
This is basic economics Mr. Carswell, you should know this.

denis cooper

This proposal is clearly unworkable, because while it's highly unlikely that we'll find ourselves at war with France during the lifetime of these warships it's very likely that there'll be a divergence of foreign policy interests which would lead to one country vetoing a deployment proposed by the other. We and the French might as well save ourselves the outlay and not have them at all, if either party can prevent their use by the other when they are needed.

Some things are workable - several countries contribute warships to a multi-national naval taskforce for a particular agreed purpose, one country sells a warship to another country, one country leases a warship to another country, two or more countries agree to save costs by designing and building their warships together, and even two or more countries sharing some small specialised non-military vessel and providing personnel for a joint crew - but two countries sharing a major warship, an aircraft carrier, is not workable unless they also share a government and a foreign minister.

I'm surprised that such a foolish idea is even being mooted.

The Bellman

And 'aeroplane', not 'airplane'. FFS, Carswell...

EyeSee

It's not that we shouldn't build them here, but that we need someone in UK public procurement who can read and write a contract. Naturally we need to move away from the thought-free policy making of Labour, instead buying what we need now and in the future (that is 'we' as in Britain, not the EU). With careful procurement we can get the best kit and the best value (note, not necessarily cheap). All of the above needs a big change; we have to stop putting ideology first.

Simon Stephenson

LloydJ : 11.04pm and Martin C : 11.35am

You both appear to be arguing that simple, basic economics suggests that home construction of the aircraft carriers is good sense, because otherwise all the construction workers would be out of work and having to be paid benefits. What grounds do you have for making this assumption?

If, indeed, there is a large section of the British industry that is insufficiently competitive to continue in business without receiving uneconomic state favouritism, ougtn't we be trying to do something about the lack of competitiveness rather than papering over the crack and hoping it goes away?

Autonomous Mind

Too many people here are completely missing the point. This is Tory policy coming to fruition.

This is a plan that has been 14 years in the making and it has stuff-all to do with DIS or procurement.

"The UK/France Letter of Intent (LOI) on co-operation and areas of mutual interest in maritime defence was signed by Ministers in 1996. This covers a very wide range of activity, including operations, and 20 formal Working Groups have been established under the direction of the British and French Chiefs of Naval Staff. The working groups cover such activities as: Future Aircraft Carrier Development, etc..."

http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/royal-navy-vessel-share-with-french-navy-was-a-tory-plan/

Hey

"We don't need the best, we need cheap and available"

To fight against insurgents/barbarians in Southwest Asia, sure. To fight even moderately competent foes requires the absolute best equipment available. It keeps the Russians out, the French down, and dissuades the Argies et al.

In every hot conflict during the cold war, the best equipment proved itself, especially in airframes. Arab countries fielded vast numbers of Soviet planes and were beat handily by the Israelis and the Americans.

The UK should pull out of all European defence procurement co-operation and buy all Anglo equipment. Supercarriers from the experts instead of hack jobs from people who can't keep a propeller on, vast quantities of F-35s, tanks, real submarines...

A few "accidental" misplacements of USB sticks could lead to some very, very good deals from the Indians on materiel as well.

Dixon

...aside from which (my earlier comment) cannot we just admit that British manufacturing products are...well the word I want to use wouldn't be allowed here, lets just say "fecal extruscence". Screws without slots in the head, can-openers that can-not open a can, "computers" with keys that drop off, "fighters" that are a decade behind schedule and two decades out of date (Typhoon) and that favourite laughing stock of the Taleban, Land Rover "Snatch" (rather aptly named given the old-time colloquilism which those who named it seem to have been unaware of). Nimrod...an airplane which flies with kerosene slopping about in its fuselage! Before I stopped watching TV I saw that Channel five doc about HMS Ocean. A helicopter carrier with only ONE flightworthy helicopter and incapable of operating out of reach of shore-supplied bottled water. Thats British weapons manufacturing: Junk! Absolutely utter and complete, ineffably abysmal RUBBISH!

If we must have these toys, then we should buy American. Their kit actually works. Come to think of it, thats why, for the most part we DO buy American. Ie, C130, C17, Apache, F35 (if we ver get it),etc.

Of course, there are always exceptions, like the Merlin, which looks set to be the next US presidential helicopter. But these are exceptions, and international products at that.