Libya fighting shows just how idiotic the Defence Review was

Help me out here

I can't be arsed rifling through the barely-concealed vitriol so just give me the general gist - you are criticising getting shot of planes and carriers, used in "this type of mission" when there is also "the hugely more common one of battling guerillas and insurgents". My take on this would be that this sort of thing comes up so few and far between we would be best leaving it to the mary queens to sort out. Massive oversimplification, of course, although I don't expect those four pages of waffle to be much more than wordy criticism with little thought give to facts and figures.

Yeh, yeh, I should read the whole thing, yeh, yeh...

Re: At the risk of universal obloquy...

Probably due to the extensive coverage in the media, one would assume.

If they just sat back idly and watched the events unfold, I'm sure people would have a thing or two (more) to say about our government.

One thing I didn't quite understand in this analysis was the remark about using so few Tornadoes in Libya. Surely this is a good thing as, as pointed out by the author, their payloads, running costs etc. are expensive.

Not that I know anything about military stuff though.

But who would have got those old Tornados?

If the Libyan government had offered to take them off our hands we might have been looking down the wrong end of a technological disparity.

Bzzzt wrong

"In other words the RAF is contending that it requires more than 11 Tornados to keep one in the field."

The whole point of only sending so few out is to retain the majority back at home for Defence of the Realm... which after all is the entire point of having an air force at all...

when are we attacking Syria and India and ....

so we attack any country that tries to stop rebels that are a threat to it.

when will we be seing action in syria where the government snipers have been killing people ?

what about india which has hundreds of thousand of army in the tiny region kashmir and killed thousands of innocent people ??

so come on cameron , sarkozy, obama, lets serve justice and attack these countries as well

Quick summary

As long as we only choose to fight poorly equipped countries, we don't need all this equipment.

Corollary: If we scrap a lot of this equipment, we will only be able to fight third world countries.

Corollary^2: If we scrap this equipment, we will become a viable target for other nations who have hardware that's inferior to what we have at the moment.

Our military hardware isn't just for offence - it's also for defence and (more importantly) deterrence.

Don't get it

I can clearly see the point that the Eurofighters aren't filling a need right now, but since they have to be bought so far ahead - development cycles are like ten years now, ownership for three to four decades - how can you possibly look that far ahead?

The fact is that jets do exist which are competitive with Eurofighters, and those jets are up for sale.

To say you can see so far ahead and know a country owning those jets will never get in a spat with you is kinda presumptuous, isn't it?

I know you feel that it's "fighting the last war", but if you realize that dictator swatting IS the last few wars, and that you're 100% focused on fighting it to the point of ignoring any other possibilities, it becomes a little funny.

Still love reading you though.

2 reasons

"could I ask why the UK felt the need to launch an unprovoked aggressive war against a nation that is doing us no harm, and probably has never done us any harm?"

2 reasons -

1. It makes the money spent on defence/aircraft appear justified. Imagine what people might say if tax was spent on planes that were never used (shock!).

2. By doing the above, there is a false assumption that all other countries will fear you. After all if you've not been involved in some sort of war situation for a few years then you're seen as a "soft" target.

Of course I'm being sarcastic with the above but sadly there are enough people in positions of authority who genuinley believe things along those lines.

Perhaps you need a History Lesson?

After reading this august journal for many years, I believe that the register has finally lost the plot with your inputs Lewis.

Go away and read some history. For instance, Tanks, why not get rid of them, useless things. Of course we tried that in the 30's and ended up fighting a certain dictator with 50mm guns on his tanks using Matilda I's with machine guns.....

The same issue can be made against every bit of "fact" that you have placed in this so called article. Go and find out some real information, and perhaps your conclusions wouldn't be a pile of cr*p.

Air support does NOT win battles. It helps to have control, but by no means is it the be all and end all as you depict it. Battles are won by all arms combinations, not light troops alone.

Idiot. Not a f clue.

Happiness is Vectored Thrust

Not being able to field a carrier in a fairly limited action like this should be a very stark warning of what's liable to come. I'll give it a couple of years at most, by which time the Harriers will have been scrapped (they won't be sold, too much US kit on them) and by which time someone will have found decent reserves of oil around the Falklands. You can guess the rest.

As for buying Rafale, if we hadn't been so pig headed way back when both Rafale and Eurofighter were still paper planes, we'd have had Rafale in service already, which would have saved us and the French a lot of money.

Err, no...

'The Harrier could even carry Storm Shadow, assuming you actually wanted to do that for some reason.'

Err, no it couldn't - http://services.parliament.uk/hansard/Lords/ByDate/20101111/writtenanswers/part004.html

'The Harrier fleet actually had more aircraft modernised to drop the latest smart weaponry'

Apparently not Brimstone (main anti-armour air-to-ground missile) though (see above).

Plus with less than half the combat radius of a Tornado GR4, a Harrier taking off from the coast of Libya (never mind a safe distance out to sea) wouldn't get half way across the country without refueling putting targets in the south out of range entirely.