Aircraft Carriers

So the contracts for the two new aircraft carriers will be signed today - these ships, which will be the biggest that the RN has ever had (and that includes all the dreadnoughts, superdreadnoughts - Hood, Vanguard etc) and at 65k tonnes not far off the super-carrier category of the US Navy. (For those who want to have more details of the UK ships look here: http://navy-matters.beedall.com/cvf1-01.htm )

I must admit that the cynic in me won't actually believe in them until I actually see them floating down the Solent ...

I am in two minds about these ships to be honest. Unless we rely upon the US for airpower we need to take our own since modern warfare is expeditionary in nature, especially since we are looking at counter-insurgency, asymmetric warfare, and we cannot always rely upon a friendly power providing us with basing facilities and anyway our current carriers are pretty ancient and do not have the capacity required - so we probably need these carriers

But at what cost? The Army is too stretched at the moment; we urgently need to replace the snatch Land Rover; and we desperately need to provide the troops in Afghanistan with more heavy-lift helicopters. The Chinook HC3 fiasco shows up the MoDs procurement practises at their very worst. Moreover, the Navy is fast losing escorts. The original order for 12 Type 45 destroyers announced with much fanfare by the Government was first quietly cut to 8 and has now been further cut back to just 6. Furthermore, the Type 42 destroyers, the 45s are intended to replace, are being withdrawn and not replaced; the same is true of the Navy’s frigates. All of this will leave precious few ships and likely too few to provide a proper escort for the carriers. What it will mean is that once again we will be obliged to rely on anti-air warfare assets provided by other nations.


Brown has never had any interest in the Armed Forces. The mere fact that we don't have a full-time Secretary of Defence just serves to confirm that, apart of course from spin and stunts like the pre-phoney-election one he tried to pull in Basra last autumn.

We need more funding - and better balanced funding (stories of the MoD spending £750m on taxis, hotels etc doesn't help a jot - see the Arrsers reaction here: http://www.arrse.co.uk/cpgn2/Forums/viewtopic/t=100141.html) between the armed forces which reflects the modern style of warfare.

I would recommend anyone that has an interest in modern warfare to read Gen Rupert Smith's "Utility of Force - The Art of War in the Modern World" (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Utility-Force-Art-Modern-World/dp/0713998369)