More proposed cuts in the Surface Fleet

[safewalrus]

Getting close to the old joke about if you want to join the navy son, buy your own boat ain't it!

 

[Passed-over_Loggie]

I recall that it was always an old Labour Party aim to reduce our Forces to less than a World power. The Fabian Society, Kier Hardy and Michael Foot spring to mind. Well, while masquerading as Thatcherites, I think these buggers have probably done it.

We will have the capacity to insert and support the Army in expeditionary warfare almost anywhere in the World. Meanwhile, Britain's presence will be absent from our sea lanes. The one Task Group Navy.

Does anybody have a transcript of Adml Parry's presentation to RUSI?

 

[slim]

Quote from Portsmouth North Labour MP, Sarah McArthy-Fry, " Personaly I am NOT hung up on numbers, because a modern warship can do the equivalent of six warships from 20 years ago".

What she fails to comprehend is that same warship cannot be in six places at the same time!!

Keep Striving

Can someone please inform this knowledgeable MP that I left the navy over 21 years ago and the type 42s the navy had then did not leave with me!

 

[SILVER_FOX]

Obviously just another labour sheep following the party line. With comments like tat I wouldn't fancy her chances of getting re-elected in the Portsmouth area.

SF

 

[Deleted 493]

Quote from Portsmouth North Labour MP, Sarah McArthy-Fry, " Personaly I am NOT hung up on numbers, because a modern warship can do the equivalent of six warships from 20 years ago".

What she fails to comprehend is that same warship cannot be in six places at the same time!!

Keep Striving

What a nice lass. I'd like a question put to her. How many days, hours, minutes or even seconds has she done in uniform? Clearly, she is not hung up on numbers, therefore we can expect even more manpower gapping, procurement ****-ups, stores shortfalls and delays in commissionings. Now by anyone's guess, if the Royal Navy was a private business (and let's face it, we are not that far away from that) we would be calling in the recievers. The management, fraudulent bastards that they are, seem to be stripping assets in the same manner that the carniverous business-buyers out there in the wide world do so ... except we are not talking about some fast-food restaurant chain here or a tyre making factory in the Black Country. We are talking about the 'greatest armed forces in the world' ((c) Hoon and Blair, almost holding hands in chorus when they used to chant it) It would be nice, once in a while, if certain MPs, secretaries of state, under secretaries, Whitehall movers and shakers and other such venal fuckwits with whom we seamlessly seem to have placed our sponsorship with (and many, if not all, don't understand a bean of service life or ethos) would come on down to the coalface, by-pass the big blue brick full of yes-men, and speak to the people that matter. I'd like to personally speak with the MP for Portsmouth North, person to person and ask her exactly how much she knows about the pressures we face and if we'd be happy with a navy that consists of six Type 45s, eight Type 23s, and a few amphib-capable landing ships. If she is convinced that Britian's world interests can be upheld and the ongoing contribution to NATO maintained, if she is wholly confident that should on of her 'six-ship' Type 45s suffer a serious damage control incident whilst under attack, if she is absolutely certain that everything we do, from Antarctic Patrol to Norway ops, from counter narcotics to disaster relief can be done by just 'God, and a handful of marines', then I'd like to see her detailed working out, and I'd like to see the names of the people who adviser her on such matters.

Typical Westminster-Village gobshite.

Levers

 

[mikh]

Quote from Portsmouth North Labour MP, Sarah McArthy-Fry, " Personaly I am NOT hung up on numbers, because a modern warship can do the equivalent of six warships from 20 years ago".

What she fails to comprehend is that same warship cannot be in six places at the same time!!

Keep Striving

What a nice lass. I'd like a question put to her. How many days, hours, minutes or even seconds has she done in uniform? Clearly, she is not hung up on numbers, therefore we can expect even more manpower gapping, procurement ****-ups, stores shortfalls and delays in commissionings. Now by anyone's guess, if the Royal Navy was a private business (and let's face it, we are not that far away from that) we would be calling in the recievers. The management, fraudulent bastards that they are, seem to be stripping assets in the same manner that the carniverous business-buyers out there in the wide world do so ... except we are not talking about some fast-food restaurant chain here or a tyre making factory in the Black Country. We are talking about the 'greatest armed forces in the world' ((c) Hoon and Blair, almost holding hands in chorus when they used to chant it) It would be nice, once in a while, if certain MPs, secretaries of state, under secretaries, Whitehall movers and shakers and other such venal fuckwits with whom we seamlessly seem to have placed our sponsorship with (and many, if not all, don't understand a bean of service life or ethos) would come on down to the coalface, by-pass the big blue brick full of yes-men, and speak to the people that matter. I'd like to personally speak with the MP for Portsmouth North, person to person and ask her exactly how much she knows about the pressures we face and if we'd be happy with a navy that consists of six Type 45s, eight Type 23s, and a few amphib-capable landing ships. If she is convinced that Britian's world interests can be upheld and the ongoing contribution to NATO maintained, if she is wholly confident that should on of her 'six-ship' Type 45s suffer a serious damage control incident whilst under attack, if she is absolutely certain that everything we do, from Antarctic Patrol to Norway ops, from counter narcotics to disaster relief can be done by just 'God, and a handful of marines', then I'd like to see her detailed working out, and I'd like to see the names of the people who adviser her on such matters.

Typical Westminster-Village gobshite.

Levers

Well Said!! could'nt agree more.

 

[Not_a_boffin]

Obviously just another labour sheep following the party line. With comments like tat I wouldn't fancy her chances of getting re-elected in the Portsmouth area.

SF

It get worse mate, that knob Lewis Page is apparently trying to influence Tory policy - straight from the same songsheet

http://www.ercouncil.org/Cost-Effective Defence.pdf

 

[Stranded_Muppet]

Lets face it, Politicians only care about themselves, fat pay rises and staying in Parliament to avoid getting a job which will force them to do an honest days work. And to achieve that they'll play on the things that matter most to most people. How many famillies across the UK have use of schools or hospitals, in one way or another, and how many have some interaction with one or more Armed Service? Easy answer and we get shafted. With the current trend of terrorism, piracy or anything else shouldn't we be showing more of a presence on the oceans of the world rather than pandering to America's every wish?

We should get a politician for each depolyment to let them understand how their crap decisions and penny pinching **** us over.

 

[dixie_gooner]

Is it they join and no sea time, or just go ahead for the trade and be done with it. Britain rules the waves....yeah! :x

Not a chance of that, there are no jobs shoreside these days. Its sea time all the way, a bit of "harmony time" for courses and some leave and back on board

 

[Hawkeye]

Is it they join and no sea time, or just go ahead for the trade and be done with it. Britain rules the waves....yeah! :x

Not a chance of that, there are no jobs shoreside these days. Its sea time all the way, a bit of "harmony time" for courses and some leave and back on board

No your right there all the shore jobs are now with Flagship Training and some catering company. I feel sorry for all the newbies

 

[angrydoc]

That's quite a depressing paper. Granted I only read the first few pages, but hopefully what I read isn't in the thoughts of those up high.

If the senior guys in Main Building would listen to Gen Sir Mike and focus on the lads and not on management speak and trying to treat us like a private enterprise, I wonder if things would change for the better.

Defence spending is ridiculously low - the proportion of our GDP which goes on defence is well below most "equivalent" countries (don't have the reference for this but could prob find it - was on Radio 4 last week). As has been said, the military is not a vote-winner. I don't know what the answer is - noone listens, nor do they want to listen.

More and more shore jobs have been contracted out (badly), naval bases and other military establishments are coming down with MoD civil servants, the public don't seem to give two monkeys about us, we can't shop in Harrods or have a beer in Walkabout in case we offend someone - something is going to have to happen.

God knows what, though.

 

[chieftiff]

I have read the whole thing and it's actually not that depressing, flick to page 32 if you want to be cheered up. There are some good ideas and some remarkably coherant arguments even if I don't agree with them all. Interesting that six Harriers turns out to be more effective than 8 Apaches or a whole Artillary Regt! I think some senior Naval officers may have small strokes at the suggestion that the head of the army should be the senior member of the armed forces and the heads of the other two services should be dropped a rank!!!

It's probably very depressing reading if you work for the DLO/DPA(or whatever they are called this afternoon) or BAe. Then again maybe a wake up call!

 

[angrydoc]

As a skimmer, I balked a bit at the "decommission all 22s and 42s, cut back the number of 23s, and slow down procurement of 45s and Astutes". That would leave us with, erm, nothing - especially when you consider the remaining Fleet would probably be at "reduced readiness"!

 

[chieftiff]

As a skimmer, I balked a bit at the "decommission all 22s and 42s, cut back the number of 23s, and slow down procurement of 45s and Astutes". That would leave us with, erm, nothing - especially when you consider the remaining Fleet would probably be at "reduced readiness"!

That's what I meant by I don't agree with them all 8O

 

[higthepig]

Reducing the Fleet as they appear to be doing, getting manpower down to 20,000, makes me wonder if the two Carriers are viable, these are just assumptions, but Eagle and Ark carried a crew of 2,500 each with Squadrons embarked, 5,000 out of 20,000, bearing in mind the manpower to operate these two ships, which is far more than 5,000, does`nt leave a lot left for the rest of the surface fleet, considering the Sundodgers will still be with us.

 

[Passed-over_Loggie]

H_T_P is exactly right. We need a lower human footprint in our maritime assets. More £s hardware to £s overhead. Get Mckinsey's in; they're the experts.

 

[sonofamatelot]

I just feel sad at the short sightedness (is that a word?) of our so called leaders. Always ready to grab the reflected glory of a victory or an act of bravery but never a thought for the people who suffer as a result of their actions.

 

[stumpy]

I've just skim read Lewis Page's bit, and there are some good bits in it, ie scrap Nimrod, Tranche 3 of Eurofighter, order more battlefield helicopters etc. He wants to scrap the last of 22s and all but 8 of the 23s, an djust have 6 Type 45s (though honestly that is all we will get).

Paqge seems for submarines, proper aircraft carriers, amphibious ships etc but against the use of highly expensive escorts for the run of the mill work they do, and instead seems to say that we should order more amphibious ships and use them. I also think that we should possibly reduce the number of current escorts, but build a new class of simple escorts (possibly an even further stretched River Class. Put a hanger on the back, and a big void space up front. Some could then have space for a Tommahawk silo, others fitted with a 4.5" with a v.large magazine to make it useful, and others fitted with just a 30mm. Fit each with a phalanx. These ships could be relatively cheap but do all the work needed, and we could get a useful number for the cost of a type 45.

Just a thought.

 

[stumpy]

Another of his ideas is to convert the role of the cavarly (using challenger and recce tanks) to armoured infantry using warrior. This seems to make sense, but I would be wary of giving up tanks altogether as they still seem useful in Iraq today. One option would be to change most of the cav regiemtns as he says, but put most of the tanks into storage and a few with a TA unit (I think that there is already one). This way you get the capability when you need it, but at a low annual cost. Also, stores would be cheap as there would be plenty to canabalise (not sure how to spell that, not a word I use often!).

 

[noemis]

Pinochet wasn't such a bad lad afterall!!

Perhaps a coup is going a bit far though!

What we need are politicians in the areas that sustain our military capability, Pompey, Guzz, Winchester, Colchester and various crablands, who are dedicated too and understand us. We vote for them, the 2 party system should have died years ago, so vote for someone that we can trust. Some of you guys seem to have your heads screwed on, RR party anyone?