Who needs an aircraft carrier?

[maviczap]

Originally Posted by Swin

I remember it when it was new And going for a walk around the brand new Illustrious, and the Ark Royal shortly after that!

Ah well, that makes you quite old? I remember the ferries leavin Felixstowe for the Falklands.

I was old enough to get called up, we were worried we would!

I've got a book with the fleet that went down there.

How can an island such as ours have no mechant fleet, all down to accountants and shareholders

[sv4me]

Originally Posted by maviczap

No the current decision was made by accountants, the mess was made by Gordon & co, but the carriers were ordered as Ark Royal & Invincible are old and would need replacing. That was the thinking at the time the order was placed.

Sub Prime mortgages are the real cause of a lot of our finacial probs?

I hate the old cliche of if America sneezes, the world catches a cold. While admittedly our economy would take a battering in the fallout regardless, it is up to us to better protect ourselves from what is going on in the rest of the world. Hard to do that when we are so heavily dependant on others these days and dont produce anything.

My biggest grievance is with the banks over here. After quantitative easing they refuse many legitimate SME's loans, instead paying themselves huge bonuses to retain the 'talented' investors that helped get us in this mess in the 1st place. They irresponsibly lent huge mortgages to people who should be protected from themselves and when they realised people couldnt pay, the BofE had to lower the interest rate to peanuts, giving people no real incentive to save.

Can you tell I dont like banks

Accountants usually get the blame for trying (not necessarily succeeding ) to clean up someone elses mess

[Wideboy]

its all becoming quite clear that those in charge really are idiots!their just suggesting more and more ridiculous things as the weeks go by

"what's the biggest threat to the UK a the mo..... Al-Qaeda..... hmm what shall we do than?.... i know, lets get rid of all our defences, but that's not all we can do!! we can then announce it to them!....... not only could we let them attack us but with kin-jong-nutcase jr and mahmoud ahmadinejad about and clearly bonkers we might aswell let them have ago also"

if your average joe blogs of the public can see why this is a ****ing nobhead way of thinking, then why the feck cant they..... their meant to be well edumacated

[maviczap]

Originally Posted by sv4me

. Hard to do that when we are so heavily dependant on others these days and dont produce anything.

Yep arrives daily past my office window from China

Originally Posted by sv4me

My biggest grievance is with the banks over here.Can you tell I dont like banks

Who does

Originally Posted by sv4me

Accountants usually get the blame for trying (not necessarily succeeding ) to clean up someone elses mess

Wasn't having a go at accountants in general, just the ones at the Treasury

[Biker Biggles]

Originally Posted by Swin

Sorry, but you're a bit wrong here.
We currently have 3 Carriers - Invincible (the one I was on), Illustrious and Ark Royal.
The new carriers ARE fitted out to operate fixed wing aircraft, they will have the F35 II, but agreed, they will be about 5 years operating helos as the planes won't be ready (or "navalised", whatever that means)
Both of the new carriers will probably stay in service longer than the Invincible class carriers - which is just on 30 years now, I doubt very much that the 2016 carrier would be scrapped after 4 years.
Apparently, it was commented that it would cost more to scrap the carriers in build than to continue with them, which sounds a bit of going for the cheapest option - we will have around 5 years where the navy's largest aircraft will be helicopters....
Harriers were going to be phased out in 2015 anyway, they're old - and as a point of fact the Navy hasn't operated their own Harriers for a long time now, technically the Navy currently doesn't have Harriers of their own.

Despite all this, as an ex-sailor, I am watching on with horror at what is happening to the armed forces of this country - and I also worry about the Falklands again, now that theres around £3bn worth of oil under those islands...

I think you are out of date on this.Invincible has been paid off to reserve for some years and was due for scrapping this year.Illustrious is a helicopter carrier,leaving only Ark Royal currently able to carry fixed wing aircraft.
On Radio 4 this morning it was said the first new carrier (2016)will not be fitted with catapults and landing wires because the aircraft wont be available.The Harriers will have gone and the new joint strike fighter wont be ready.When the second carrier arrives in 2020 it will be fitted with catapults and the other ship will be redundant.They will then mothball it or sell it.
I think they will have to do some sort of U turn and either keep some Harriers or buy in some American fighters.The current policy just doesnt stack up intellectually,logically or any other way.

What amazes me is the stupid decisions made after months of looking at all the facts, when Joe Bloggs could do it better with just the information gleaned from tabloid headlines and Radio 4. Shame on them! I say post this thread to David Cameron to show him the error of the coalition ways!

Of course this is a financial exercise. A significant amount of CAPEX has already been spent on the new carriers. The OPEX spent on an annual basis to keep the Ark Royal operational won't be insignificant. If you scrap the Ark Royal, the cumulative saving achieved by doing this, over the 10 years or whatever it is involved, will make the remaining CAPEX involved in the new aircraft carrier projects cost neutral. Then at the end of it we have two aircraft carriers, but didn't spend any more money on them. I'm not saying this is exactly the calculation that has been made, but it will be something along the same lines. The trade off is that we do without the carriers in the meantime.

[maviczap]

Originally Posted by Wideboy

its all becoming quite clear that those in charge really are idiots!their just suggesting more and more ridiculous things as the weeks go by

"what's the biggest threat to the UK a the mo..... Al-Qaeda..... hmm what shall we do than?.... i know, lets get rid of all our defences, but that's not all we can do!! we can then announce it to them!....... not only could we let them attack us but with kin-jong-nutcase jr and mahmoud ahmadinejad about and clearly bonkers we might aswell let them have ago also"

if your average joe blogs of the public can see why this is a ****ing nobhead way of thinking, then why the feck cant they..... their meant to be well edumacated

No, the biggest threat is Cyber attacks, so all we need is IT specialists now. Its called Virtual War

Mr Putin is watching with interest, as he will soon control our gas supply too, plus he's been sending his flying club over whilst ours is busy on desert ops

Originally Posted by maviczap

plus he's been sending his flying club over whilst ours is busy on desert ops

Believe it or not, there was a little UK airspace probe this morning 'oop North...

At present, the Current Carrier fleet is a bit of a white Elephant. The Fleet Air Arm's priority was Fleet Defence however, in the Mid-00s, The FAA Sea Harriers (a fighter) were scrapped/sold/given to Museums, whilst the Squadrons re-equipped with Harrier GR7A/9As which are a ground attack aircraft with No means of fleet defence.
That said, the whole decision to Scrap the Harrier completely is beyond me. Its only recently gone through a massive upgrade to mk9A spec, it's a remarkably potent piece of kit. We operated GRs for a number of years in Afghanistan where Tornado and Typhoon couldn't due the state of the country's Runways from years of conflict. To think that it can be just cast aside in favour Typhoon, which still has not even dipped its toes into a hostile theatre, baffles me.

[Biker Biggles]

Thats a very good point.I wonder why they dont use the Harrier as a fighter.Perhaps they think surface to air missiles are good enough these days.They would have a nasty surprise I think.