Trident or Aircraft Carriers or JSF

[a1ex2001]

It's frankly a stupid and unworkable idea. We would need complete European political sovereignty before a joint armed forces would be practical.

Totally agree a fully integrated European army is not possible with the current level of European integration. I don't think many of our neighbours would agree to us sending the combined European fleet to the Falkland islands for example!

I can see the potential for much closer integration, but all the projects we have been involved in so far have been nightmares. The Merlin Helicopter is great but years late and massively over budget and the common escort for the Navy that became the type 46 was a total failure apart from delivering a semi functional missile system.

 

[Hank_Marvin]

should have gone down the route of catapult and wire for the carriers, then the choice of plane would have been much greater, any flavour of f-35, etc etc.

 

[Vidar]

erm.... no, I would stake my house on that would never happen...

Stelly

Stelly no offence intended but that is rather short sighted of you as being technoligically superior compared to your closest rival is predominantly what puts you in the top spot and England specifically has achieved more technological advancements on the battlefield than any other nation in the modern world, the most notable being the longbow, sailing ship and Tank. To suggest that we as a nation are not capable of any further revolutionary concepts for the battlefield is as I've stated already, short sighted.

 

[matt_fsr]

To suggest that we as a nation are not capable of any further revolutionary concepts for the battlefield is as I've stated already, short sighted.

For example, there is an absoulte truck-load of money to be made for anyone who can build an automated system that can knock out a modern MBT.

(granted, it'd make a lot of people very unhappy, but it might get built 1 day)

 

[Tefal]

Stelly no offence intended but that is rather short sighted of you as being technoligically superior compared to your closest rival is predominantly what puts you in the top spot and England specifically has achieved more technological advancements on the battlefield than any other nation in the modern world, the most notable being the longbow, sailing ship and Tank. To suggest that we as a nation are not capable of any further revolutionary concepts for the battlefield is as I've stated already, short sighted.

We arn't technologically superior though.

The superpowers are as they have masses more resources, we can never catch them up now.

England specifically has achieved more technological advancements on the battlefield than any other nation in the modern world, the most notable being the longbow, sailing ship and Tank.

None of them is exactly in the modern world though is it?

When your last great achievement was nearly 90 years ago it's not exactly current.

 

[Vidar]

Totally agree a fully integrated European army is not possible with the current level of European integration. I don't think many of our neighbours would agree to us sending the combined European fleet to the Falkland islands for example!

I can see the potential for much closer integration, but all the projects we have been involved in so far have been nightmares. The Merlin Helicopter is great but years late and massively over budget and the common escort for the Navy that became the type 46 was a total failure apart from delivering a semi functional missile system.

A fully integrated Europe is a bad idea period, never mind having a combined army. Some might suggest that if done properly the benefits would out way any negative aspects but for me it feels like a european super state would be something similar to George Orwells 1984, The UK should always retain its sovereignty lest we be exploited

 

[PMKeates]

Sure, and have a dozen or so different political agendas pulling in a dozen different dirrections. A world class carrier group that never leaves port......

Nice idea, but given competing political agendas the defence force would be just that - it would almost certainly never leave europe.

We need to unify the political agenda too!

Sorry most of Europe are spineless fools

Hmm, no!

 

[Allnamestaken]

Im asian..... British asian.

I would never want our country to be part of Europe in a joint millitary of any kind.


Keep our sovreignty intact!

Love this country! Altho politicians are ruining it with cuts in the wrong places and shoddy spending on things that really cannot be afforded cuts.


Our public sector did get majorly overbloated and now were suffering for it with things we really need.

What i hate is that theyl make these cuts and as i said earlier in the thread pay for the pope to visit this country and stupid things like that.

Ugh okay.

 

[a1ex2001]

should have gone down the route of catapult and wire for the carriers, then the choice of plane would have been much greater, any flavour of f-35, etc etc.

The carriers are designed to be reconfigured to cats in the future if required for any new aircraft design. The decks are along way off going onto the first carrier so the decision to change the layout could still be taken before launch. The carrier designs are actually very good and we should be trying to sell them to anyone who is in the market for a carrier.

 

[Vidar]

We arn't technologically superior though.

The superpowers are as they have masses more resources, we can never catch them up now.




None of them is exactly in the modern world though is it?

When your last great achievement was nearly 90 years ago it's not exactly current.

That's a fair point but why not look at the reasoning behind that, simple fact is we currently lack the infastructure to develop such radical concepts, but that could be rectified with investment if deemed nessecary by the powers that be but sadly it isnt.

One advancement I do know of in the current world is that an english based university is the closest in the world to developing a working fusion reactor, if sucessfull the applications would be staggering

 

[Stelly]

Stelly no offence intended but that is rather short sighted of you as being technoligically superior compared to your closest rival is predominantly what puts you in the top spot and England specifically has achieved more technological advancements on the battlefield than any other nation in the modern world, the most notable being the longbow, sailing ship and Tank. To suggest that we as a nation are not capable of any further revolutionary concepts for the battlefield is as I've stated already, short sighted.

We arn't technologically superior though.

The superpowers are as they have masses more resources, we can never catch them up now.

None of them is exactly in the modern world though is it?

When your last great achievement was nearly 90 years ago it's not exactly current.

Don't get me wrong I do think we have the technological knowledge to be a world player, most of the aircraft carrier advancements are British inventions...

The harrier was a first, even the yanks use our technology with that one...

I just don't think that we have the resources to be a super power again...

Stelly

 

[233]

I really don't understand why we couldn't gave wrnt to the Americans and got them to build us a pair of Nimitz class carriers prolly gave worked cheaper too

Could have got a cracking deal on some jets too

 

[gettothechopper]

f35 costs are insane, as awesome as it looks its just silly money now, pull out and buy off the shelf F-18's and fit the catapults to the new carriers

you could get 3 f-18's for the cost of 1 f-35 and keep $10m in change
and thats in 2010 money, by the time f35 is ready the costs will have gone way up

f-18 would be a massive improvement over the harriers we have now and are more than a challenge to anyone who could threaten us

fit astute class with nuclear tomahawks and scrap trident and older sub classes (even building more astutes would be cheaper than starting a whole new design for tridents)

just the notion that we still have nuclear weapons and can deliver them is the only job they need to so why waste money on it

foxtrot - latest US carrier is costing $9billion each, new QE class estimated cost is $3.9billion each, plus we need the ship building money spent in the uk

 

[233]

As for trident bin it and adapt what we have already ie tomahawk system or maybe a couple of stealth bombers from the yanks surely going to bemcheapermeasiermand amdamn site quicker into service

 

[scorza]

We need to unify the political agenda too!

Which we're well on the way to doing, we even have a European foreign minister now (who is British incidentally). I don't see a combined EU military as being as far-fetched as it was, especially as all our EU partners are looking to cut public spending as well - military integration is an obvious way of doing that.

 

[Over Clocker]

I really don't understand why we couldn't gave wrnt to the Americans and got them to build us a pair of Nimitz class carriers prolly gave worked cheaper too

Could have got a cracking deal on some jets too

Because we generally build a lot of our military hardware ourselves. It keeps the skills in this country, it keeps people like BAE Systems the world's 2nd largest defence company, and it keeps massive military export orders alive.

 

[Over Clocker]

TO those saying bin Trident and use cruise missiles, or aircraft launched weapons, do some research please!

Trident missiles can travel at 13,000 mph (approx Mach 20), yes Mach twenty. This makes them pretty much impossible to shoot down. They also have a range of around 7,500 miles. Yo do the math....

Very easy to shoot a plane down. Very easy to target a surface ship. Very easy to target a land based launch system.

 

[semi-pro waster]

Care to back that up?

I'm not getting drawn into the debate of the validity of the study but I believe the report in this thread is what scorza is referring to, the NHS was rated as most efficient from 7 selected countries.

As for the original topic, I don't feel I know enough to be able to offer a useful opinion on it.

 

[Vidar]

Not to mention if you buy off the shelf hardware, people are already aware of its capabilities...

 

[Jonnycoupe]

This

Replace vanguard / trident with slightly stretched astute subs with less capacity, 6 missiles with mult warheads would be fine.

Trident Successor is looking at a totaly new propulsion and steam generating plant which is driving the costs up massively and TBH they need to do that if they want to drop from 4 SSBNs to 3 and retain CAS-D. Whether that works out cheaper in the long run that continuing with PWR2... who knows.