UK-France Defence Treaties

Never trust the French. :D

Then again a subtle shift in our 'friends' might be a good thing in my books. The Yanks are overbearing and troublesome allies at times and the two junior members of the Security Council do need the ability to waggle a stick at certain people, no matter how small and smelling of cheese that stick might be. :D

A cautious thumbs up from me, I think.
 
makes sense, a country we've had military relations with for longer than my grandparents have been alive, and have cooperated with successfully in many conflicts over the last century. we really need to get over the dark ages/18 hundreds, it was an awfully long time ago that britains were landing in france (and vice versa) as invaders.
 
VoG said:
i couldn't see the French getting involved militarily if there was another flare up in the Falklands years from now.
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Quite, or dare I say another Iraq style situation.

I don’t know the details, but it will only work if it gives us the capability to work unilaterally.

The other treaty will allow the setting up of a "combined joint expeditionary force", thought to involve a brigade of about 5,000 soldiers from each side, which will operate under one military commander to be chosen at the time.
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Well that sounds like a source of continual bickering.
 
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Funny isn't it really. The French have a reputation for capitulating - WW2 and nearly WW1 if the yanks hadn't joined in. Yet they are the most militant in the Europe for taking on their own government.

So I reckon if anything ever kicks off we'll just tell the frogs troops that the enemy is working for French politicians and they'll get stuck instantly.
 
K1LLSW1TCH said:
The French did actually fight in WW2, don't get where all the hate is coming from?!
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Think you will find their contribution was rather limited!!

The only good thing about France was that it gave us Jocks plenty opportunities to kill English!

Language will be a huge problem, as they hate speaking English and us French, so in the thick of battle deaths will come of it.
 
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snowball1 said:
Think you will find their contribution was rather limited!!
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their contribution was rather large actually, the held the germans off while our army evacuated from dunkirk, without that we wouldn't have had a military presence in africa and the invasion of britain, had it gone ahead, would have probably been a great deal more successful. 100,000 French soldiers died in a month.
 
Its a damn horrible idea in my opinion. I cant beleive it.

In the event of another falklands for example, are france going to send their carrier in? I dont think so.

Its all well and good until something actually happens which strongly affects one of us, but not the other.

In my view, we have two far better options.

1 # Build and keep both carriers. They dont both need to be fully kitted out straight away, things can come in time. Maybe even keep an invincible class carrier in service until we can afford to kit out the new ones properly.

2 # Keep one carrier, sell the other. Keep an invincible class carrier as well so that we can always have one at sea.

I dont like it at all.
 
mmj_uk said:
Why do we need this? who exactly is going to attack a nuclear armed power such as us?

Russia and China might decide to nuke us off the map but a defense pact with France is hardly going to save us is it?

This seems like just another baby step towards globalization, Germany and a few others will steadily join the pact and before you know it the EU has full military control.
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The simple fact is, while the defence contractors are private companies, they are all but public sector workers being paid, because without us buying military equipment, they'd go bankrupt and the government would be paying a lot of people on benifits and also persuading companies not to sell arms to other buyers is largely done through buying stuff ourselves.

Lots of wars, and military spending in general is persued for an economic result, whats worse is the contracts awarded to various defence contractors are awarded to them by people who have a habit of later joining the boards of those companies. Public servant fights for company X to get contract over company y, said public servant retires from politics and joins company x's board for 2 mil a year and does no work, cheap way for company X to get a 10billion defence contract.

Thats how life is, if we shut down the military, fired all the troops, stopped partaking in defensive positions around the world and stopped all offensive involvement, well, you'd be looking at several hundred thousand unemployed people.

Right now we can't afford to cut spending massively because of the situation we've gotten ourselves into, Afghanistan, peace keepers elsewhere in the world, the ability to threaten military action with spare personal/equipment/bases in strategic places worldwide keeps a lot of places in the world safer.

Likewise we can't afford not to cut spending as much as possible, and we can't afford not to get the best value for money we can.

We can go into an agreement with France, save billions a year for 10 years, 20, 50 and the year after, drop a Nuke on them, such is life. For now we aren't looking to go take on Iran, NK or China nor can we afford to, save money now, have more to spend later.


What happens for instance if, 10 years from now Iran really gears up for a war, because we saved no money we don't have any chance of getting new equipment to help in a war against Iran. If we save billions upon billions in the 10 years up to the agression starts properly, we'll be in a hugely better financial position.

In reality, real wars aren't won by the numbers you have in your military or the equipment, wars are won based on the financial and manufacturing ability to produce DURING war, and personal comes from the general population war's always gone that way, tiny conflicts against nations that can't defend themselves in any way at all aren't the same thing.
 
EdGey said:
Its a damn horrible idea in my opinion. I cant beleive it.

In the event of another falklands for example, are france going to send their carrier in? I dont think so.

Its all well and good until something actually happens which strongly affects one of us, but not the other.

In my view, we have two far better options.

1 # Build and keep both carriers. They dont both need to be fully kitted out straight away, things can come in time. Maybe even keep an invincible class carrier in service until we can afford to kit out the new ones properly.

2 # Keep one carrier, sell the other. Keep an invincible class carrier as well so that we can always have one at sea.

I dont like it at all.
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Two things, firstly having two cariers sitting around doing very little costs a LOT of money every year, we can't afford it, its really that simple. Go ask Labour why our defence is being comprimised so every chav on benefits can get boob jobs or sex changes for free, the money got spent, its not there anymore, thats life.

Secondly, do you think we'd get hugely great value for a ship everyone in the world knows we can't afford to keep, are desparate to sell and can only sell to a VERY limited number of countries, which is compounded by the fact that most other countries can't afford a brand spanking new carrier + upkeep + personal+ planes. Basically theres no one to sell to because everyone else is in the same financial mess.

Labours philosophy, pay for everything, never choose, be prepared for everything. IN real life you can't do that, we can't spend billions on something we can't afford just in case we get into another war, which, again, we can't afford. By that sense we should stop paying for the NHS altogether and get 5 more carriers, what if Germany decide to take over the world again :o

War is about your ability to produce during a war, we could spend 500billion on planes that because of a new plane in 10 years time are completely obsolete so when we get into a war in 10 years, we need 500billion more of the fancy new planes.

You need the bare minimum to really make the other guys think if they want to start a war, once it starts, its about production/economy/if you can afford it.

WW2 was won because the USA became the biggest manufacturer of war equipment the world has ever seen, a whole country dedicated to it, and we could only afford it because we wrote a truly phenomenal IOU.

It also costs hundreds of millions to simply maintain equipment over the years, so a plane bought today and used in a war in 10 years costs a heck of a lot more than a plane bought in 10 years used in a war straight away.

We can't afford it, and really don't need it right now, its a complete waste to keep a shedload of unused tanks/planes/boats around just in case.
 
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drunkenmaster said:
Secondly, do you think we'd get hugely great value for a ship everyone in the world knows we can't afford to keep, are desparate to sell and can only sell to a VERY limited number of countries, which is compounded by the fact that most other countries can't afford a brand spanking new carrier + upkeep + personal+ planes. Basically theres no one to sell to because everyone else is in the same financial mess.
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So what are we actually doing with the other one?

Simply giving it to france?

I do get what you're saying with the rest of your post. But its about the ability to project power around the world where needed. Yes, war is about production etc during it, but you cant start building an aircraft carrier when a war has started and expect it to be in use by the end of it.

I dont think a single aircraft carrier is enough for the UK.
 
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