Axe to swing again for the RN

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glenhowells
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Axe to swing again for the RN

Post by glenhowells »

HMS Albion and Bulwark along with 1000 marines are being suggested be cut from the order of battle. Mod said this has to be done to save the carriers. A rear admiral was slapped down and redirected by the Mod for speaking the truth of the state of the Royal navy. To add insult to injury the French offered the Royal Marines the use of their own ships if the RN LPD's are with drawn from service. If this Happens the RFA will be the only service capable of putting boots on the ground from the sea. So the Royal Navy has become a patrol boat force with the lose of a number of capabilities over the last 10 years this rot started with HMS Invincible is there an end in sight i wonder.

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Re: Axe to swing again for the RN

Post by MikeJames »

Basically the issues are three fold.

1. The UK funds the military to 2% of GDP, which sounds fine until you recall a couple of factors. The UK Govt has big power pretensions, including ballistic missiles and the nuke-powered subs to operate them, multiple aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines and a track record of massive cost overuns, all of which have drained cash away. :gu:

2. The UKs decisions to build almost everything at home seems admirable, but it has resulted in basically a small handful of companies with monopolies who charge like wounded bulls, then have massive cost overruns while delivering mediocre quality.

The case in point is the Nimrod ASW aircraft, they were supposed to be upgraded, but BAE so frakked that program up that it was cancelled. Started in 1996 the project was subject to delays, cost over-runs, and contract re-negotiations; the upgraded Nimrods had been originally intended to enter service in 2003 but was cancelled in 2010 (14 YEARS later) as a result of the Strategic Defence and Security Review at which point it was £789 million over-budget and nine years late. :x

This is one of dozens of such examples, but none of the companies involved ever seem to suffer penalties for their actions, instead being chosen to undertake new programs and wasting even more of the taxpayers money.

3. The peculiar British Government's desire to be seen as 'punching above it's weight', to behave like a superpower when they are anything but. So much money has been spent on the accoutrements of superpower trappings, the carriers, the SSBNs and their missiles and the SSNs for the RN and the Typhoon and A400 for the RAF that the rest of the armed forces are starved of funding. :?

A case in point, The UK, the nation that invented the tank, is looking to upgrade/replace their Challenger main battle tank. The decision was made to award the contract to Rheinmetal in Germany because the British haven't ordered new tanks in over30 years, thereby starving local manufacturers of work and one by one they all went out of business. Now no one in the UK can design and build main battle tanks, so the UK has to get someone else, in this case the Germans, to do so. :no:

The RN is particularly susceptible to salami slicing, replacing a capability with new ships but, because of cost inflation and the almost inevitable cost overuns, ordering fewer ships than they are replacing.

Six all too mediocre Daring class destroyers were ordered to replace 14 Type 42 destroyers. Even if the Type 42 was world beating (it's not) you can't be 14 places at once with six ships. If assigned to escort the new carriers the RN would be hard pressed to have more than one assigned to each carrier, with one in three in refit and a second in three working up, in minor maintenance or preparing to enter refit, thus QE2 and PoW would have at best one Daring each with them. :(

Similarly the 16 Type 32 frigates were to be replaced by the Type 26 frigate, but the UK couldn't order something that didn't cost a fortune so that order was capped at 8 (though it may be reduced to 6) due to massive cost inflation (The project is budgetted at one billion pounds per ship in 2017 money). The first ships are currently about to start construction. :gu:

Navy then ordered a smaller and cheaper ship, the Type 31, that is supposed to only cost 250 million pounds per ship but absolutely no one believes that, not industry, not Navy, not even the politicians. Latest specs suggest the Type 31 will be built to such a dumbed down capability that BAE Systems have proposed an upgunned OPV to the RN. :tdown:

Basically the politicians are unsure what they want, but they don't want to spend the money necessary on defence to meet the commitments the UK already has, let alone any new ones the politicians sign the UK up for. The UK and France both spend 2-2.1% of GDP on Defence. The Chinese officially the same but no one believes their own figures, while Russia spends 4.5% and the US spends 3.5%. To put that into perspective, Australia spends 1.9% of GDP on Defence.

To make that more understandable, converted to US dollars in 2016.

US $611 Billion
China $215.7 Billion (as stated earlier likely an under reporting of the true figure)
Russia $69.2 Billion
France $55.7 Billion
UK $48.3 Billion
Japan $46.1 Billion
Australia $24.3 Billion

As can be seen, until the UK politicians either decide to fund the UK armed forces to meet their ambitions, or restrict the number and total of missions demanded of the services to meet the funding, the RN, RAF and the British Army will continue their decline into irrelevance.

Mike
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Re: Axe to swing again for the RN

Post by MichaelB »

Days gone by, part of the Mediterranean Minesweeper force on patrol operating out of Malta in 1955.
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Re: Axe to swing again for the RN

Post by MikeJames »

By comparison, the current Royal Navy mine hunter force comprises just 13 ships, six Hunt class and seven Sandown class.

The expectation is that one of each will be decomissioned as a cost saving measure in the next few months. :(

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Re: Axe to swing again for the RN

Post by glenhowells »

Yes Mike a far cry from the 118 Ton's that saw service with the RN and other navies. How the empire has shrunk and fallen.

Cheers Glen
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