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Subject: T45 7 & 8 cancelled
EssexBoy    6/19/2008 12:40:20 PM
The govt have finally confirmed what was widely suspected; the seventh and eighth T45s will not be ordered. So we'll be ending up with two carriers, six detroyers and thirteen frigates. Marvellous. EU Navy anyone? Essex
 
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ArtyEngineer       6/19/2008 3:04:03 PM
A truely sad day for the RN.  All we can hope for is an about face if the Conservatives win the next general election.
 
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Herald12345       6/19/2008 3:21:00 PM
How much does a Daring really cost? Maybe you'd like to go in on a few Arleighs?

$1.2 B US for a Daring.
$1.0 B US for an Arleigh.

6 Darings x  $1.2 B USW = $7.2 B US
7 Arleighs x 1.0 B US = $7.0 B US

What is wrong with that picture?

Herald

 
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EssexBoy       6/19/2008 3:53:23 PM

A truely sad day for the RN.  All we can hope for is an about face if the Conservatives win the next general election.


Not a chance I'm afraid.
 
In order to increase public spending the Tories would either have to:
 
1 - Raise taxes.
2 - Raise borrowing.
3 - Reduce spending elsewhere.
4 - Find some enormous efficiency savings.
 
The Tories are in the position that Labour was in 1996/7; the government is deeply unpopular and all the opposition has to do is sit tight, appear nice and promise not to do anything nasty to the electorate. Broadly speaking this, together with the parlous state of the public finances, effectively rules out options 1,2 and 3. Every government would like to do 4, but none have managed it on the scale required.
 
 
Essex
 
 
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interestedamateur       6/20/2008 3:35:38 AM
Essexboy is completely correct. In no way, shape or form have the Tories even mentioned the merest hint of increasing the defence budget. I suspect they won't.
 
The T45's are great ships but hopelessly overpriced at £1 billion a pop. As I mentioned on the carrier thread, the Dutch De Zeven Provincien Destroyer's are only half the price (if that much). They might not be such good AA warships but they are perfectly adequate for what we need.
 
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prometheus       6/20/2008 6:45:06 AM
I thought it was $ 1 billion, not £1 billion. I thought it was somewhere in the region of 600-800 million pounds.
 
Granted each single t-45 has more equivalent firepower than the entire t-42 fleet, and granted the two F-35 equipped carriers will give us so much more flexibility than the current navy. I'd prefer more ships - who would'nt. The navy took 30 surface escorts down to the falklands, let's not forget however, that some of those ships were hideously out of date and some, like the HMS Plymouth were basically useless due to their antiquity.
 
I'm just happy that the carriers will be built, we will finally have a balanced navy for the first time in decades. Even if the T-45 production line gets capped at six, the minister also stated that replacements for the T22/23 frigates will be accelerated, if the defence budget gets less squeased, i.e. a rundown in the Iraq commitment, there is the possibility that the FCS program might be expanded to cater for a couple more AA influenced hulls.
 
Good old fashioned british muddling.
 
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Herald12345       6/20/2008 6:54:17 AM
$560-600 M pounds sterling according to Beedle at Navy Matters. He's usually very good.

Herald

 
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Donkey       6/20/2008 7:28:45 AM
Wouldn't bet on the Tories bailing out the Navy, anyone remember Front Line First & Options For Change?
 
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Armchair Private    Grrr etc   6/20/2008 8:13:21 AM
No. You're both utterly and totally wrong. Defence spending at 2.2%ish is the lowest its possibly ever been as a proportion of the economy. The idea that a few billion can't be found for two more destroyers is pathetic. God knows who tells you what your opinions should be.

*ID cards are budgeted to cost £18bn .

*The NHS IT diasaster was budgeted at £12bn.

*The Olympics is budgeted at £3.3bn, expect that to double easily.

*We spend £29bn a year paying the national debt, that's up from £22bn in 2001. Why?

*DBERR costs £6bn and adds nothing. Certainly no business person would prefer having DBERR to say a £3bn corporation tax cut and a £3bn rise in spending on manufacturing through adding that half to the yearly Defence procurement budget.

*International development costs us £4.6bn, that is a purely discretionary amount. What is the moral level of spending for a rich country like the UK to spend on the international poor? Why not £20bn or £0.5bn? In fact last year we gave £1bn to a region of India, a country that is richer than us on a PPP basis.

As for the 'parlous' state of the finances ask yourself how they manage to be 'parlous' despite Govt. spending being at £600bn the greatest nominal amount ever.

I think I may have made similar points as these more than once before.............

Neither party will make defence a priority as long as their are no votes in it. Neither party contains politicians who are particularly in it for the common good, neither contains politicians who are selfless. Politics is a career for them, and they treat is as such. They make decisions on spending priorities based on whether its good for their career, not on some noble position on the long term benefit of the UK. You two talk as if you think they're making mighty decisions, weighing up difficult decisions, calculating long term benefit. This isn't the case, you're both naive.

Decisions under this Govt and to a lesser extent the previous one are made according to how they will play in the press.  That's it, their is no more consideration.
 
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BRoger       6/20/2008 10:54:19 AM
Rumours are that the RN agreed to the cut of two T45's in return for reassurances about the capabilities and numbers for the FSC - i.e. the high-grade 'C1' version will provide a significant AAW supplement to the T45s..
 
That said, who knows what budgetary pressures the MOD will be facing come decision time on numbers and capability for those ships.
 
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Donkey       6/20/2008 1:12:41 PM
AP, you left off the approx £50Bn that the goverment has spent out on 900 odd Quangos.
 
 
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