Since when has Yeovil, the home of AgustaWestland been in Dorset? I'm sure my address is Yeovil, Somerset!!

Well, at least my job is more secure now. Took the government enough time to make their decision.

Yeovil is in Somerset, not Dorset. Otherwise the article is spot-on. Even though a number of my friends were relying on the Future Lynx being approved it is obvious even to them that its a waste of money (and even then just a posponement of the next Westlands crisis).

Insert my normal comment about Lewis' pro american standings....

Insert my comment about how I agree with him about the carriers....

Insert new comment with suggesiton he run for office if he know so much :)

... the need for carriers and what useful chaps they. In times past it hs to be said, simply rocking up off the coast with a carrier group was enough to avoid hostilities.. of course that probably wouldn't be the case now.

I'm also inclined to agree with points about buying off the shelf kit but freely admit if my job were on the line as a result I'd probably feel different.

AgustaWestland are owned by Italians.... Selex and currently they are building helicopters for the Americans in the UK because Lockheed cant master the technology needed!

General Dynamics UK won the FRES project because most of the electronics inside is part of its other big UK MoD contract Bowman (and the bowman project that is 7 years late and according to some commentators it has bankrupted GD UK 5 times over as the MoD wrote a good contract for once! Unlike the once given to EDS for £6bn for DII which is now closer to £10bn!) But Fres was going to be built in the UK...

I could cope with the MoD Buying American for FRES if they paid me that half million.

Seriously though, if we bought all our defence stuff from the yanks, then what happens when we fall out with them? Also, their stuff is only cheaper because of the scale of their purchasing, it is not necessarily superior and in many cases inferior. You could probably buy your defence equipment cheaper from China, but would you trust it?

But really do we want to be dependant on the yanks, or would you like a self sufficient nation that can defend itself from the superpowers if required?

Unless i'm mistaken the unit cost for the basic Blackhawk army version was $6m but that was in the early to mid eighties so presumably would be somewhat more expensive nowadays. That would throw a spanner (FOD!) in the costings in the article. I'm sure it would still work out a lot cheaper to buy a proven platform than the steaming pile of cr*p that Westlands will no doubt serve up (very late).

Even Paris could work that out!

Fighting two wars on a peace time budget... talk about wearing out people and equipment.

Also, who fights a war economically... you have a choice fight to win or fight economically (=lose)

With the amount of Sunburn missiles floating around at present and with the perspective of Bramos and Co joining in the supersonic cruise missile party any carrier is pretty much a target for shooting practice. Even the American carriers are sitting ducks. Big nuclear powered fat ducks which can be culled at will by nearly all potential "opponents".

This article puts the things nicely in perspective and it was written before Bramos was tested. As a matter of fact, the things have only gotten worse since that time: http://www.rense.com/general59/theSunburniransawesome.htm

What the article misses however is that the navies have been there before. It is essentially a repeat of the pre-WW1 situation when the first submarines could shoot nearly any battleship at will, but there was no means to discover them and no means to fight them. By 1916 all battleships dragged nets around them which were more than sufficient to guard against the fairly weak torpedos in use at the time.

So what the fleet needs is not new aircraft carriers. It needs lots of small, expendable, cheap boats capable to drag a blimp barrage behind them. Simple and Stupid. Even better, nothing to prevent putting some old write-off Phalanx guns on the Barrage blimps. While they are totally useless on a ship, they will be perfectly sufficient when hoisted to 100-200m above the sea level. Cheap, cheerful and most importantly - effective until we find another way to deal with the changed situation.

Once we have figured out a way to deal with the fact that nearly all countries out there can swat a carrier group with impunity we can go and build some new ones which are fit for that age. Before that any money on carriers is good money thrown after bad.

That price for the Seahawk looks a bit low, unless it's the US Navy's equivalent of the Blackhawk that is just a transport aircraft without the usual radar and other sensors that the Anti-Surface Warfare version has. That's were the cost is, and even if we bought Seahawks instead of F Lynx we'd undoubtedly double the price of the US version by specifying different sensors, avionics etc. Also the CTS800 engine is a 50/50 venture between Honeywell and Rolls-Royce so it's a bit dishonest to call it an American product as I'm sure one of those companies is based in the UK.

Agree with the bit about the Carriers and FRES though.

I can understand if you're a Navy guy why it would seem like the end of the world. But you've overlooked most of the more subtle implications (as ever) of this budget bodge.

>Well, at least my job is more secure now

It's funny really, The Register is quite a popular news site in defence circles and yet always with the caveat of "except that idiot defence reporter"...

For shame, was the "research" on the unit cost of the blackhawk done from wikipedia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UH-60_Black_Hawk

Large pieces of the carrier contract will be built in Portsmouth.... before being delivered to Scotland to be nailed together....

Now, given that the 2 Portsmouth seats are at best marginals, I guess our share of the work wil go ahead even if they have to sit on a dockside in Scotland somewhere for 3 years.

There again, I'm old enough to remember the local tories 1979 election slogan of 'Labour will shut Portsmouth dockyard'..... 2 years later the tories tried to do it too

So I guess the moral of this story is "If you work in the defence industry, both parties will screw you"

This is a disgrace, and troops will die as a result. Cold hard simple fact, however they dress it up. The UK could no longer mount a serious blue water operation alone and as a result of this will be entirely reliant on host nation support to mount serious littoral force projection operations in the near to medium term. A carrier is not simply an airfield (albeit one that does not require foreign political permission to operate) It a capital ship capable of commanding operations entirely independently, of being the launchpad for force projection from the littoral into the land (and with the advent of Tomahawk and a reasonable air wing, that means a damn long way)

The ground attack and close support a carrier group can easily and quickly deploy is essential to the foot-sloggers, as is the capability to insert and more importantly extract by air. In the ever increasing uncertainty of geo-politics it is independence and freedom to manoeuvre, it is the ability to increase diplomatic pressure without the need to invade sovereign territory - simply by the positioning of a fleet. Iit is the ability to pre-position whilst diplomats debate UN resolutions, and on a less blood-thirsty note it is the capability to provide a massive assistance to civilian administration in times of disaster.

"It is upon the Navy that under the good providence of God the wealth, prosperity and peace of these Islands and of the Empire do mainly depend".... Damn right then, and now (maybe ditch the god bit)

[ex-RN Officer, and Civil Emergency Planning Officer]

General Dynamics UK Ltd (aka GDUK, with sites in Hastings, East Sussex and Ashchurch in Wales) is "prime contractor" for the UK side of FRES, so not quite sure how this fits Lewis's rant - are you getting American (the "GD" bit) kit, or British (the "UK" in the name)?

The American helicopters suffer from the same hot-and-high issues as the UK helicopters, but the American government is a bit quicker to spend the money to actually pay for the "improvements" needed to bring the kit up to the specs that were recommended in the first place (ForEx, Apaches are American-built, and they cannot launch full-load in Afghanistan or Iraq either - just like out Lynx. But at least Lynx can carry either the troops *or* the weapons - Apache is only supposed to carry weapons... oops).

The basic airframe for a Blackhawk might, with "bulk-buy" discounts, favorable deals from the US Congress and various other "cost-cutting" be around Lewis' £6m but that won't take account of the time and effort required to support them, or to train the UK personnel to do so - or is Lewis really suggesting that we should let the Yanks do it all for you - again?

About the only heli capable of performing anything near a useful service in these two theaters are the Chinooks - mebbe you should scrap all those expensive Jynx/Future Jynx, Merlin, Sea King/Commando, Puma, Griffon, Squirrel etc that Lewis seems to think are so useless and just buy some more off-the-shelf Eggbeaters and let Boeing do all your support, maintenance and training?

Didn't the US Navy nearly lose a destroyer or frigate because some cad drove a bumboat alongside loaded with explosives? Since Lewis's beloved RN cannot even tell when they are five miles (allegedly, as seen from Witehall/Westminster) off course, or protect their men (and one woman) from all those nasty Iranian gunboats, what hope is there that they will be able to protect two great big f*ck-off floating airfields from some evil genius armed with an AK47, a couple of bags of TNT and a sampan?

Lewis, wake up. If you were to ask The Man On The Front Line what they wanted from the suppliers, you would get a very different answer from the one you get from the Top Brass, and both these answers would be worlds apart from what the Politicians and Beancounters would want the Forces to have if it were down to them.

In an ideal world, the British armed forces would have all the kit they needed to do their jobs as "requested" by their political lords and masters, regardless of expense - if "Our Boys (and Girls)" are prepared to put their lives on the line to defend Truth, Justice and the British Way then the odorous slime in Westminster who send them into battle with substandard kit - and frequently insufficient amounts thereof to boot - would forget such self-serving tricks as placing orders for kit from their own constituencies just to garner a few votes. But face it, that ain't gonna happen.

Instead you get the fightin' few sent into battle with kit designed years ago to the cheapest possible limits and then made by the lowest bidder. Yes, you could save a few pieces of silver by buying American hardware and letting the manufacturer support it, but there was something on the idiot box a couple of days ago about some American commander getting his panties in a bunch when the civilian support crews refused to "service" (as in, refuel) his AFVs between 1300hrs and 1400hrs, and charged double to do so after 1700hrs...

Maybe you should stop spending so much time reminiscing over the RN's "Glory days" and start thinking about how the AMERICAN forces view their kit - or do you *really* believe it is only the Britsh forces who buy webbing, boots and body armor from "outside sources"?

Fat cats...lobbyists...corruption...incompetence - sounds like business as usual.

"UK companies generally GIVE SECRETS AWAY, not leak them (which implies something shady and underhand) - usually in response to an offer of "information sharing", and most often to our good 'friends' across the Atlantic" ... By Anonymous Coward Posted Friday 12th December 2008 10:34 GMT

And nowadays, that is a very profitable route for inventors too, AC, who can easily host their tempting wares online to a global audience at practically zero cost. And you invariably find that they are trailed in publications not dissimilar to El Reg.

This article massively overlooks the vulnerability of surface ships to attack by submarines. Diesel-electrics are two-a-penny and dont require highly trained operators to deliver a lethal torpedo package (witness South Korea's lethality). Proliferation of these vessels is immense - projections show that there will be 100 of these "unfriendly nation submarines" in the Pacific alone by 2014 , let alone else where in the world. The Type 45 may protect the carrier against air attack, but without decent anti-submarine protection they're dead ducks. The Type22/ 23 ASW frigates will be end-of-life by the time the carrier enters the water with their hulls stretched well beyond their intended life usage, yet their replacement (the future surface combant) in-service date is flying out to the right faster than a supersonic jet. Quite simply, we can't afford to buy the carriers as on current defence expenditure plans, they'll be at the bottom of the sea the first time there's any sign of trouble as there's no credible plan to ensure they aren't sunk by submarine attack.

if the UK actually gets into a serious fight with a competent enemy, rather than the stoneage opponents we still have problems beating.

If the Iranians had acted differently recently, the MOD would be looking for a new ship to christen HMS Cornwall.

Succinctly put, old lad:- definitely with you there 100%.

However, as the cretins-in-charge will almost certainly have not ordered enough ammo, might one suggest that the "against the wall" scenario be replaced with the old traditional "rope & a lamppost" operation?

Why can't we build a subsurface aircraft carrier? Or one that surfaces to launch then dives again? Silent, invisible, probably nuclear powered- it'd not be hugely expensive to run (though you're looking at a Nimitz sized bill for the thing- though it'd be cheaper than a separate sub and aircraft carrier) but it would have a devastating effect on the morale of other countries navies. And as a country with a huge store of knowledge about underwater workings (thanks to our oil exploration guys), nuclear power and general tech-stuff we have the capability to build one natively.

An AUV/glider patrol could detect subs and approaching boats, mapping them out in great enough detail that you'd be able to tell what type of vessel was approaching, as well as performing mine-detection operations- and with a slight modification to existing commercial umbilicals you could have several tens of kilometers of range with a tethered high-powered Battle-ROV, making it easy enough to perform complex sabotage operations on enemy vessels, tow divers and equipment, repair damage to its host vessel from the outside, and so on.

Anyway, good article! It's horrendous to hear Bush say the war's not over etc etc etc only for his lapdogs over here to say "Bugger this, we're not going to pay for our troops to stay alive out there. But we're not going to pull out either due to our "Special Relationship".