Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

its a shame to lose ark royal but since the sea harrier got scraped in the 90s the carrier lost its punch or even self defence against anything as the current gr9 hasn't got long range anti air missiles just a couple of winders so against an airforce it would be up ++++ creek anyway. With regards to the falklands would 4 eurofighters make that much of a difference and the 2 rapier batteries dont think so. It does beggar believe on what we could send to retake the islands buy some harriers from the us marines? Now the current model of the harrier the raf is good for cas missions but that role can be done by either the tornado or euro or worst case the hawk. ↲Now the new carriers should be catapult launch instead of vtol and just buy some rafaels from the french to use with them by the time the ships are ready they'll do fine and only have to wait 4 years to have the over priced jsf working on them.

---------- Post added at 23:00 ---------- Previous post was at 22:59 ----------

oh sorry about the lak of breaks in the text above but this stupid phone just doesn't like doing that

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

I disagree re: the Falklands. The UK may be facing a period without the kind of maritime equipment that re-took them in 1982, but on the other hand the Falkland's own defences are far more robust than they were and Argentina's own military is a very pale shadow of what it was.

We may not have the force to re-take them but Argentina doesn't have the force to capture them in the first place.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

okay the argies haven't got that much in the way of air but those things can change quite easy remember win has 80 odd harriers for sale from now really and yes they aren't a match for the euro's but together with long range anti air missiles from the mirages and a4's they can cause issues

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

If you're suggesting that Argentina is likely to suddenly and rapidly go out to procure a few squadrons of second-hand aircraft, find the money to pay for them and the political will to send them to Las Malvinas, then I'd like to know where you're getting your intel (and you should let MI6 know as well).

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

I believe the Falklands should not be used as a benchmark of our overall defence capability.

However, the lesson we should have learned there was that look down radar is mandatory.

Factor that in to the theatre in Afghanistan & the role of the 'drones' doesn't seem to be included in the 'review' - why not?

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

You all forget the UK's biggest conventional deterant, Submarine launched TLAM. We can hit any land mass in the world, we never had that capability before.

The political pressure having 1 or more Nuclear boats sat of a foreign coast is massive. Look what Conquerer did in the Falkland and that was without any land strike capability.
Stick a T boat of the Argie coast with 30 TLAM and watch them back right off. Same with other potential problem states.

I hate seeing our war fighting capability being measure only in our surface fleet which is redundant in the modern theatre. The Ark should have gone years ago i am glad they have finally seen sense and thank god they are not scrapping the Astute project.

And yes i was a sun dodger and probably highly biased :D

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

It's a way to pull out prime forces (and destroy local economies based on their local deployment) from a country that wants independence from Westminster. RAF Lossiemouth is now on tenterhooks.

:dunce:

When Nimrod was removed from RAF St Mawgan in Cornwall, the local economy suffered greatly.

Most of my role in the RAF latter years were in support of Nimrod down there.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Ahem. Don't believe everything you read in the papers. The majority of Scots are quite happy to remain part of the UK.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...ecord-low.html

It does however show that in an independent Scotland we wouldn't be able to sustain any meaningful armed forces. Trident would be binned leaving a couple of large naval bases empty and generally Alex Salmond would have to find even more money in his magic biscuit tin.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Alex Salmond seems to be of the opinion Scotland is fine financially and it's the rest of the UK dragging the finances down.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-11547485

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

It's a nice cozy world he lives in, detached from the realities of everyday life. In some respects he's like the current opposition in Westminster saying everything sucks and would be so much better with them in charge but don't actually flesh out their claims with solid information about what they would do.

Having this in charge, albeit as a minority government, seems to have worked out fairly well so far up here but I wouldn't want them completely in charge and I definately wouldn't want an independant Scotland.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Why is the Nimrod being classed as an airbourne early warning platform? It isn't. When we wanted a replacement for the Avro Shackleton, a testbed Nimrod AEW was developed, it was ditched in favour of the E3 Awacs platform(also known as Sentry).

The Nimrod comes in two variants, the MR2 which is based at the Scottish base's and is a Maritime Patrol / Search and Rescue platform. The second model is the R1, that is based at RAF Waddington and performs task such as electronic jamming, intelligence gathering, etc. It's not an AEW platform.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Nimrod is also a very good sub hunter/killer... and if surface ships disappear in favour of subs, then the enemy's subs will be able to do their tasks almost unmolested.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

That would bementioned in the post above yours....;)

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

But it does look like the Astute project is scrapping itself as it seems that the Astute class does also have the ability to hit any landmass in the world as well

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan...lands-11605365

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

I saw that, but "Patrol" doesn't hit home the fact that it's a "Hunter Killer" as well.

Another role was/is escorting Royal flights accross the Atlantic... and watching Richard Branson prang his powerboats. ;)