Who said it's charity

 

Anyone mentioned the helicopters yet?
Cameron said before they came into power that Labour were abismal or words to that effect because the troops in Afgan didnt have enough helicopters, they need 20, so what do they do? 12.... bravo.

Tanks will be going into war stock, along with artillery, so it will still be there, just not costing as much to run whilst in moth *****, your downside is that you may well lose your armoured divisions, any tank crew will be hard to replace, looks like training will be limited and they will be tank hopping (and anyone who has served in the army will know that you only sign for one vehicle and all the equipment that goes with it, that could be interesting if they have to share )

Tony

 

So the Challenger 2s will be kept in warehouses etc rather than being sold on?

 

Basically yes, they wont sell them to anyone you know they will keep them in war stock, like alot of things, clothes, rifles, ration packs, trucks, landrovers etc, they all sit there, thats why you can pick up a very low mileage vehicle thats 30 years old from the MOD for like 2k with naff all miles on, storage is the way ahead (though it was the tories last time that sold off most of HM forces gear at bargain prices )

Tony

 

Pull the troops out of raghead land - bound to save a small fortune.
I mean - what's that cost to date FFS

 

Have a drive past Ashchurch, nr Powerstation.

 

an improved supply chain is the way forward, as is a better strategic understanding of requirements holistically across the entire MOD rather than on a service by service basis (as it's done today).

 

But you all said it wouldn't be like this under the Tories

 

The MOD as you know it today will cease, fairly soon it will contract for all its support on a raft of pan-service availability contracts that will be administered by industry, only then will the MOD become affordable. The current way of letting the services manage their own "stove pipe" requirements cannot be sustained.

Sit back and wait for industry to step in and sort the mess out, then things will finally improve

 

What scares me is without a carrier we can't defend the fleet. If HMS Bulwark is deploying its contingent there is no air cover available. I wouldn't want to depend on choppers.

Wasn't that long ago that the carriers were the core of a certain strike force that went to war over a certain small island just of the coast of a South American country.

 

What scares me is the Nimrod MRa4 was there to defend our nuclear deterrent from hostile subs and ships (all it's other jobs SAR, ISTAR, etc were a bonus).... Now it seems we're an island nation that doesn't need to defend it's self anymore. This 'defence review' is full of shortsighted pointless acts aimed at one thing only... winning the war in Afghan, nothing less. It was even admitted to us today by the Chief of the Air Staff here at Kinloss, a place thats still in shock to be honest. There's a unit full of personnel walking around in a daze today (and it's not cos it's 50p a pint in the mess either... tosh). This and a few other decissions will come back and bite a politician or 2 hard on the *** in the future. Personally i doubt i'll be round to gloat about it, after over 22 years i think the time has come to say ram it i've had enough now and take redundancy.

 

If I were at Kinloss I'd hardly be surprised, it's been an almost certainty that it would go (as MR4A) - it's another platform that's unaffordable but the project is at a point where it can be scrapped and incur minimal damage.

Funny thing is we have a carrier with no aircraft, whereas the French have surplus aircraft for a carri..... naah, can't be can it?

 

So d'you reckon the Argies will let us develop the oil extraction hardware, then step in again and take over once we have no carriers or carriers but no planes on them?

J.

 

Eerrr... we now have an operational airfield there now.

 

That's great for fighting the last war...

 

It's even better for deterring any future sillyness - the Argies as so inadequately funded and supplied they couldn't throw a bag of chips at us these days

 

Do you actually believe this, or are you just saying it for effect?

 

What should I read though? The opinion of a anti-EU website which as usual will have added 2 + 2 and come up with 'it's all a plot to steal my country by them evil eurocrats'?

Come on if I tried that trick you'd be all over it, it really isn't hard to find a conspiracy on the internet is it?

 

never mind all that gumpf of a similar important note is that they have reviewed the redundancy package, under the 2006 regs i would have got 26 months pay as a final package, now after the 'REVISED' terms i get 3, feckin great, time to start paying of my bills

 

I can tell you from personal experience that the Tornado is a very capable aircraft as indeed is the Harrier, both in their own way. They each have their own specialisations in which they excel. When it came to air to air combat, the Harrier is unbeatable when in Viffing mode. It does also make a very good interdiction aircraft.

When it comes to scrapping aircraft, the politicians are chasing their own priority which is saving cash of course. Defence is a secondary requirement to them when there appears to be no immediate threat in that respect so they will as ever be prepared to gamble that the aircraft required against such a threat won't be needed in the forseeable future, or at least when they are in power so that the blame should it happen eventually won't be laid at their feet!

Thus they feel that they can chop the Harrier which was such a decisive factor in the Falklands War and of course possess a carrier without aircraft for the moment! It is almost laughable but so serious in fact! What a great idea to combimne military forces with the French of course!

We shall know soon enough what they really intend to do anyway, then it will hit the fan I think.

 

The Harrier would likely have cost £80m - £100m a yearly support packages to keep operational, that's between £500m to £800m between now and JSF becoming operational in 2018. The Harrier became a ground attack platform and had no gun, so in theatre was about as much use as a chocolate fire guard.

 

Don't we have the Apache for that sort of ground support role?

Fixed wing is there to drop bombs.

 

A helicopter is far slower in responding to ad-hoc ground support requests.

 

I find it hard to believe that is the decisive reason Harrier is scrapped in preference to Tornado.

The US version of the Harrier has a sodding gun and I can't believe it would cost a fortune to install them or use the Aden cannon which was on the old Harrier.

Sounds like bollox to me.

 

The decision is based on the likely £4 Billion pound support service for primary and major maintenance to 2018 and the £0.5 - £1Billion pound cost of future upgrades, so cutting circa £5 Billion for something that can be replaced overnight by Tornado fast jets seems a reasonable and decisive move to me.

 

VIFFing was just a propaganda exercise. There isn't any documented evidence of it actually being used.
Our Harrier GR7 and GR9s cannot carry radar guided AMRAAM so cannot do any meaningful air to air. They can't even carry ASRAAM so have to rely on legacy sidewinders which are way behind the technology of russian made missiles. They would be easy pickings.
Also, our Harriers cannot take off or land from a carrier with a heavy payload and when operating in higher temperature climates the situation gets far worse.

VSTOL is great for airshows and that's about it.

We should have kept our Sea Harriers though.