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Old 12-07-2019, 13:48   #23
Chris
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Re: Leadership who is the next PM?

One thing that has made me take more of an interest in Jeremy Hunt lately has been his acknowledgement that the Royal Navy is too small. For a maritime nation with a major interest in global trade it’s insane that our Navy has become as small as it has. It’s all very well that one Type 45 destroyer has the same air defence capability as six of the T42s sent to the Falklands conflict; one T45 still can’t be in six places at once. The navy in the 1980s may primarily have been an anti-submarine force but it still had the numbers to divert to the Falklands or other hotspots (such as, for example, the Armilla Patrol that safeguarded shipping in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war).

The Gulf is hotting up again and if Iran decides to provoke a confrontation it is more than able to overcome a single Duke-class frigate. So far all it has done is to test our resolve and found us at least marginally better prepared than when we allowed an entire survey team to get kidnapped and paraded on TV in Tehran wearing cheap nylon suits.

The Navy needs a fast, adequately armed, medium sized ship design that it can build in numbers and deploy globally, sooner rather than later. The best-in-class vessels can take on carrier group duties and let the rest protect our interests patrolling the world’s sea lanes.

Last edited by Chris; 12-07-2019 at 18:33.
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