Aircraft Carriers - SO Twentieth Century...

[Clinton Huxley]

Article on BBC website re the utility of the aircraft carrier in the 21st C, particularly for middle-ranking powers like the UK. Are they old hat, budget-guzzlers that starve your defence budget of more useful kit or an essential badge of great-power pretensions?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18237029

Never needed 'em in my day, of course.

£7 Billion? That's a lot of cavalry mounts.....

[klr]

With a proper aircraft carrier*, the UK could have intervened more effectively (and more efficiently**) in Libya last year than it actually did.

*It was possible to fly helicopter gunships from HMS Ocean, but only against targets relatively close to shore.

**None of this business of flying all the way from the UK.

[Clinton Huxley]

Indeed - but then in Libya we lacked all manner of other capabilities and indeed ran out of ammunition. At least partly, this is because the UK is attempting to retain some kind of capability in all areas, resulting in not being able to do anything very well.

[John_fi_Skye]

Did the Falklands conflict not make clear - 30 years ago - just how vulnerable surface craft are to weapons like the Exocet, and doubtless plenty of more modern kit? It's time Westminster got the message about the end of empire, and let's not stop at carriers, but do away with lots of budget-guzzling, completely unnecessary stuff. And then let's not just use that money we've saved elsewhere in defence: let's also vire it into other areas, like health and job creation.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Did the Falklands conflict not make clear - 30 years ago - just how vulnerable surface craft are to weapons like the Exocet, and doubtless plenty of more modern kit? It's time Westminster got the message about the end of empire, and let's not stop at carriers, but do away with lots of budget-guzzling, completely unnecessary stuff. And then let's not just use that money we've saved elsewhere in defence: let's also vire it into other areas, like health and job creation.

The Fauxlands War pointed out the need for better counter-measures, and they were developed. It's an action-reaction game.

[John_fi_Skye]

Did the Falklands conflict not make clear - 30 years ago - just how vulnerable surface craft are to weapons like the Exocet, and doubtless plenty of more modern kit? It's time Westminster got the message about the end of empire, and let's not stop at carriers, but do away with lots of budget-guzzling, completely unnecessary stuff. And then let's not just use that money we've saved elsewhere in defence: let's also vire it into other areas, like health and job creation.

The Fauxlands War pointed out the need for better counter-measures, and they were developed. It's an action-reaction game.

Yeah. Sure. So we put squillions into one big egg-basket which we think keeps us as a hegemonist superpower, and the next weapon that's a wee bit ahead of our countermeasures sends it to the bottom with all hands. Wherever that leaves us, it's without a paddle.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[John_fi_Skye]

Looks like a Clanger blowing its nose without a hanky.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It can put two hundred pounds of depleted uranium-enriched ammunition in the air PER MINUTE. You don't have to hit something, the bogey flies into solid air.

[John_fi_Skye]

Yep. No doubt. And the UK Ministry of Defence knew about Super Etendards and Exocets, and yet the Sheffield went down. So did the unsinkable Titanic.

Accepting that we'd need to do something about the ship-builders put out of a job, let's scrap these daft carriers, and buy some other things that will actually be of some use to us. As I said, health and stimulating job creation would be a start.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

John, alien spacecraft crash all the time, so it looks like we'll have that problem for a long time to come.

[John_fi_Skye]

Maybe if we call in the Clangers.....

[Clinton Huxley]

It'll take one of em being sunk for us to move on

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It'll take one of em being sunk for us to move on

...to what?

[John_fi_Skye]

It'll take one of em being sunk for us to move on

...to what?

Regretful public breast-beating that we bought it, and a penurious but weapon-free future.