The end to the UK's new carriers?

Stolly said:
It is somewhat useful to be able to deter attacks against our interests from the vast majority of countries that don't have that capability.
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How would their armies and planes cross over all of Europe to attack the UK without getting destroyed? We have trident as a much more effective deterrent.

fadetoblack said:
Yes but if you looked at his reply he said what goods a carrier if the lands been obliterated. If you have a carrier carrying say 10 planes loaded with nukes would you still think about attacking?? :rolleyes:
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Err we already have trident as a deterrent...
 
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Energize said:
How would their armies and planes cross over all of Europe to attack the UK without getting destroyed? We have trident as a much more effective deterrent.



Err we already have trident as a deterrent...
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Well, i guess that since we are an island they may choose to come via the sea. At least we have a strong navy to stop that from happening...oh wait...we didn't build the carriers and they've brought a couple and sunk all our surface fleet when they caught it our of range of our land based aviation.

Whoops.
 
Stolly said:
Well, i guess that since we are an island they may choose to come via the sea. At least we have a strong navy to stop that from happening...oh wait...we didn't build the carriers and they've brought a couple and sunk all our surface fleet when they caught it our of range of our land based aviation.

Whoops.
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Or we just nuke the armada. Any force that wanted to attack the uk would be obliterated before they got anywhere near us, regardless of aircraft carriers. The whole point in trident is a deterrent against attack, when you have that, you really don't need anything else as any country or force that attacks would get nuked.
 
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Energize said:
Or we just nuke the armada. Any force that wanted to attack the uk would be obliterated before they got anywhere near us, regardless of aircraft carriers. The whole point in trident is a deterrent against attack, when you have that, you really don't need anything else as any country or force that attacks would get nuked.
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Nuclear weapons are primarily a deterent though - what if the other side has them? You can't just go round using them unless it's the absolute last resort. The political and military consequences are huge (not to mention the environmental ramifications of nuclear weapons).

Hypothtical scenario - Argentina invades the Falkland islands again. Britain needs the ability to project power to the other side of the globle. We can't just nuke Argentina until they give them back. We would have to fight a conventional war, and the carrier is an essential part of that.

You could argue for a similar scenario involving North Korea (although the scary thing is I think they would be prepared to fire nuclear weapons at their enemies).
 
lokkers said:
We can't just nuke Argentina until they give them back. We would have to fight a conventional war, and the carrier is an essential part of that.
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Of course we could nuke Argentina, it's just a question of political will ultimately.

I would be surprised if we could put together another task force now, the Navy just don't have sufficent ships. I understand it was a struggle last time, with several ships either coming out of mothballs or sales to foreign countries being delayed.
 
This is nothing about "defence" its about Britain being able to say oooh look how much we can contribute when america flexes its muscles and runs off to defend an oil field.

Its us keeping face trying to live up to our glourious naval days.

I say we scrap the army down to a minimum for sending out to god forsaken countries as part of a coalition/peace keeping force.

Dont need maned tanks any more - Dont any of you guys watch Future weapons on Discovery :)
 
The Mad Rapper said:
Of course we could nuke Argentina, it's just a question of political will ultimately.

I would be surprised if we could put together another task force now, the Navy just don't have sufficent ships. I understand it was a struggle last time, with several ships either coming out of mothballs or sales to foreign countries being delayed.
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The UK would never 'just nuke' a country like Argentina, the international community would never stand for it and it would put us on a par with international bully boys like Iran and Isreal. I for one hope this country never has the political will to use Nuclear Weapons in a first strike scenario against a poorly armed nation.

The major issue with another Falklands war isn't the lack of naval vessels we could just about cope in that respect and the Argentine Navy has been even more scaled back than ours. What we really lack is mercahnt vessels sailing under British colours that we can comandieer to carry soldiers and machinery half way round the world as we are not allowed to just pinch the ones sailing under forign colours.

I think the carriers will definately go ahead as the contract are very heavily front loaded, we have for example already paid for all the steel that will be used in construction, this was done deliberately to make changing our minds not very cost effective as the majority of the money has already been spent. The only thing I would change is I'd ditch the F35 variant that we are planning on buying and go with something cheaper and better.

Trident has to be replaced, as long as there are other countries on the world with Nuclear Weapons we should maintain and independant deterrent. They don't seem hugely relevant at the moment given the end of the cold war and the current threat profile from terrorists etc but if we ever get rid of them we will never get them back and nobody can predict the future accurately enough to say we won't need them.
 
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Efour2 said:
This is nothing about "defence"
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It has every thing to do with defence, our military has been run into the ground so far that currently we would find it almost impossible to defend our territories such as the Falklands and other commonwealth countries and almost definitely couldn't defend our own shores from any serious attempt to invade, apart from one or two modernish pieces of equipment like the typhoon our armed forces are probably at this time in a worse state than we were in 1939.
 
The Mad Rapper said:
Of course we could nuke Argentina, it's just a question of political will ultimately.

I would be surprised if we could put together another task force now, the Navy just don't have sufficent ships. I understand it was a struggle last time, with several ships either coming out of mothballs or sales to foreign countries being delayed.
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It's just a question of killing millions of innocent people with nuclear weapons because their govm'nt wants to own a lump of rock in the South Atlantic.

Defence of the Flaklands is a completely different thing than what it was in 1982. There are RAF Tornados complete with in flight refuelling aircraft, a company of infantry & support, and a Royal Navy Firgate or Destroyer & HMS Endurance.
 
sidthesexist said:
Did you mean the F35? because currently the F22 is illegal for the US to export and even if it wasn't there would be no way we could afford to buy it.
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Also On 6 April 2009, as part of the 2010 Pentagon budget announcement, Secretary of Defense Gates called for production of the F-22 to be phased out by fiscal year 2011, leaving the USAF only 187 fighters.
 
a1ex2001 said:
The UK would never 'just nuke' a country like Argentina, the international community would never stand for it and it would put us on a par with international bully boys like Iran and Isreal. I for one hope this country never has the political will to use Nuclear Weapons in a first strike scenario against a poorly armed nation.
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During the last Falklands war a nuclear strike was being prepared on Cordoba, apparently.
 
wordy said:
It's just a question of killing millions of innocent people with nuclear weapons because their govm'nt wants to own a lump of rock in the South Atlantic.

Defence of the Flaklands is a completely different thing than what it was in 1982. There are RAF Tornados complete with in flight refuelling aircraft, a company of infantry & support, and a Royal Navy Firgate or Destroyer & HMS Endurance.
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Are you saying the Tornadoes should take off in the UK, fly across to the complete opposite end of the Atlantic, engage in a fight for Ariel Supremacy and then fly home? I think fatigue might play a key role in our losses. And when we go to tactical bombing strikes I think our tired pilots may miss the target and hit a few schools. Not to mention, the time delays for when our boys call in air support and have to wait several hours for the plane to get there.
 
No what he is saying is there are units based on the falklands including Raf, navy, Army
my pal is based there for 4 months (lucky him)

all Incoming aircraft around the falklands are accompanied on their final approaches by Tornado F3 jets.


The government spends at least £70m a year to run the islands' defences, roughly equivalent to Argentina's entire annual military budget.
 
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Von Luck said:
I'd be happy to see the carriers, type 45s and our nuclear deterrent scrapped.

The UK needs to reposition itself in the world and stop pretending we're still a colonial power and/or world prefect. Agree joint sovereignty with Argentina over the Falklands and stop mucking around in the middle east. Start shifting towards declared neutrality.

The 'loads of countries' that allegedly want to wipe us off the map aren't going to travel halfway around the world to invade Croydon.
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Which would cause tens of thousands of job losses and businesses to crumble, from first to third tier suppliers and smaller subcontractors who almost survive on orders from this industry.

People outside of the industry have no idea how important and how much of a negative impact stopping these programmes would have on the country.
 
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