God, we might even get the carriers!!

[chockhead819]

according to the latest from the Navy News we are going to get the JSF after getting an agreement from the yanks.

Navy News

 

[Chalky]

Don't say anything out loud!

 

[SILVER_FOX]

At the risk of sounding just a little bit pessimistic "Holding breath ... feeling feint ...... turning blue ...... slipping into unconsciousness ...... and then - nothing"!!

Just like the carriers which will probably be the next thing to be axed.

SF

 

[higthepig]

With the manpower cuts, who is going to man them?

 

[dunkers]

With the manpower cuts, who is going to man them?

Oh Hig I have every confidence that the Ministry of Defence has predicted the manpower levels we are going to need 10 years from now :? :roll:

According to recent figures, the RN has a net loss from its strength of about 1,000 per year, at this rate we'll soon have more ships than men :?

 

[Harry_Skinters]

The MOD is in cloud cuckoo land. There are more hard gaps and soft gaps at present than ever. This is before the Full Time Reserve Service FTRS posts are stopped. The RAF contingent of SAC's loaned to supplement gaps at the two airstations also finish in April. With the new AET courses just beginning to suck all the personnel away from the real business of maintaining aircraft, there is no wonder the powers that be have had to radically change their thinking and hack the new course in half.
The new carriers..............they are just defence cuts waiting to proclaim the government has saved money. Or perhaps the FAA with the RAF can go on deployment!

 

[Sniffle-Snaffle]

About feckin time!!!!!

 

[dondon]

Believe it when it happens ,

 

[Grubber]

O.K, so we get the ships.

They have an air wing of about 50 aircraft.

How many Aircraft will we have in the FAA by then?

How many people will we have left?

Will we have enough ships to form a Carrier Battle Group?

Big questions with no answers. Latest buzz around campfire is that we're only buying 2 Type 45's due to lack of funds, which I can believe seeing how they even turned the heating off in our accomodation yto save money when it was *&^%$ freezing outside

 

[jesse650]

the secretary for defence has had a new report, according to the times yesterday that the army need another 10,000 bodies to keep on at the same level of deployments as it has now........and apparently that would mean reforming some of the regiments that were amalgamated during the last round of "rationalisations".......

well, what do you know!!!!!!!!!!

do you think the navy'll get anything out of that? or will the government rob peter to pay paul by cutting the other services??????

 

[slim]

Basically we have enough service personnel. The problem is that they are spread too thinly around. Stupid government decisions are costing lives. Its peace time supposedly. Why cant we realise that the UK is no longer the worlds policeman and decided to take care of our own country/ borders. We would then have sufficient manpower.

 

[fido]

Basically we have enough service personnel. The problem is that they are spread too thinly around. Stupid government decisions are costing lives. Its peace time supposedly. Why cant we realise that the UK is no longer the worlds policeman and decided to take care of our own country/ borders. We would then have sufficient manpower.

I go along with that!

 

[Pierre_Argh]

Why cant we realise that the UK is no longer the worlds policeman

...well actually Britain is still a permanent member of the UN Security Council, so actually we are... the question is, perhaps, can we still afford to be?

 

[fido]

Why cant we realise that the UK is no longer the worlds policeman

...well actually Britain is still a permanent member of the UN Security Council, so actually we are... the question is, perhaps, can we still afford to be?

Pierre, at the risk of offending you (God forbid), whether or not we are a permanent member of the UN Security Council is, dare I say, now a moot point. We've moved on since 1945 and no longer have the political or financial clout to influence world affairs despite what Tony the Freeloader would have us believe. From my perspective, we can no longer afford to pretend that we are a major player on the world stage and would be better placed in providing an advisory role to to those that are rather than putting our hard pressed and under funded sailors, soldiers and airmen into the front line to be killed in support of the interest of some other nation. Let us not forget that our taxes are providing asylum and financial benefit for many who profess to be our enemies to the detriment of our people in the field who are attempting to stabilise their regimes. We need to get some balance here.

 

[Junglie_killick]

Why cant we realise that the UK is no longer the worlds policeman

...well actually Britain is still a permanent member of the UN Security Council, so actually we are... the question is, perhaps, can we still afford to be?

Pierre, at the risk of offending you (God forbid), whether or not we are a permanent member of the UN Security Council is, dare I say, now a moot point. We've moved on since 1945 and no longer have the political or financial clout to influence world affairs despite what Tony the Freeloader would have us believe. From my perspective, we can no longer afford to pretend that we are a major player on the world stage and would be better placed in providing an advisory role to to those that are rather than putting our hard pressed and under funded sailors, soldiers and airmen into the front line to be killed in support of the interest of some other nation. Let us not forget that our taxes are providing asylum and financial benefit for many who profess to be our enemies to the detriment of our people in the field who are attempting to stabilise their regimes. We need to get some balance here.

I'm with Fido on this one we need to start covering our countries own back and not those of countries who no longer wish to have anything to do with us. The goverment is giving it's citizen's and, us it's protectors of Democracy, two fat fingers, and they ain't Kit-Kat Chunky's

 

[Chalky]

Our country still has a great deal of economic and military muscle to it through such mediums as the UN, NATO, EU, and the Commonwealth. The difference we need to grasp is that we now no longer have an inalienable right to interfere in world affairs simply because we can.

The Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, however controversial some may call it, is an example of regional democracies taking charge of their own back gardens. It is, in short, what we've been trying to encourage for years in Africa. It is this time of regional self-determination that we should encourage so that we don't have to act like we're pretending to be a colonial power, and we can use our experience and clout to make this the case.

Iraq will be seen, hopefully, as the lasting folly of the West in thinking that it can bend the 'primitive backwaters' of the globe to our will by the use of our economic and military force. The lessons we will learn from it will hopefully allow us to proceed down a route where we say 'As long as you keep your borders tidy and don't let you Douglas fir encroach on my sunlight, I won't attack you with an axe.'
The approach to regional collective responsibility is becoming a rapid reality as South America and Africa start to form the basis of continental economic cooperation in the style of the EU which, regardless of the details of curvy bananas and the like, has lead to fifty years of peace between the EU members.

I am, however, wistful in my dreaming of this overly simple future, but I don't think it's a bad start, mainly because it keeps our lads and lasses out of sticky quagmires that may cost them their lives for no good reason.

 

[Pierre_Argh]

Fido / Junglie Lad

Our government has make some real cock-ups IMHO. I don't agree that the invasion of Iraq was justified, and the war against terrorism sounds to me too much like the old 70's adage "******* for Virginity".

Regarding the Security Council, I actually agree with you, we don't seem able to afford the role we play. perhaps we should find a way of gracefully bowing out... In the meantime, I suggest, like-it-or-not we should accept the commitment we have lest we make a mockery of the UN (but that's a whole new issue)... you don't have to have much imagination to guess what GWB's reaction might be if they were told by the UN (to borrow a phrase) "to cease and desist" on some of their activities?

(Gud'afternoon to the internet eavesdroppers at Langley)

 

[stumpy]

The lessons we will learn from it will hopefully allow us to proceed down a route where we say 'As long as you keep your borders tidy and don't let you Douglas fir encroach on my sunlight, I won't attack you with an axe.'
.

Okay, so I take it that you are in favour of doing nothing to stop ethnic cleansing in Sierra Lone or the Balkans then? That as long as they keep the borders tidy then it doesn't matter??? Do you really think we will never see genocide or ethnic cleansing again? Mmmm... Darfur?

 

[slim]

The lessons we will learn from it will hopefully allow us to proceed down a route where we say 'As long as you keep your borders tidy and don't let you Douglas fir encroach on my sunlight, I won't attack you with an axe.'
.

Okay, so I take it that you are in favour of doing nothing to stop ethnic cleansing in Sierra Lone or the Balkans then? That as long as they keep the borders tidy then it doesn't matter??? Do you really think we will never see genocide or ethnic cleansing again? Mmmm... Darfur?

We tried to stop ethnic cleansing in Iraq and look whats happening now.
Time for us to realise that we are not the world power we were, lets stop trying to police the world and look after our own people for a change.

 

[dunkers]

The lessons we will learn from it will hopefully allow us to proceed down a route where we say 'As long as you keep your borders tidy and don't let you Douglas fir encroach on my sunlight, I won't attack you with an axe.'
.

Okay, so I take it that you are in favour of doing nothing to stop ethnic cleansing in Sierra Lone or the Balkans then? That as long as they keep the borders tidy then it doesn't matter??? Do you really think we will never see genocide or ethnic cleansing again? Mmmm... Darfur?

Name ONE member of the British armed forces who joins up to fight for some other poor bastard's country?

Issues such as ethnic cleansing should be dealt with by other countries in the same region - eg as Ethiopia is dealing with Somalia now.