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[Lizzie_Zoom]

I have been banging on about this for years and mentioned this on the forum a few weeks back. The cost then was "only" £3.9 billion which worked out at about £68 per person in the Uk.

What really gets my goat is that these buffoons are free and easy with our money and none of them ever gets sacked. We either need the defence item or we don't. The government of the day are being advised by the same civil servant or military buffoons.

It has been estimated that inadequate, incorrect ordering of day to day military stuff costs the taxpayer £4billion too. That is just incmpetence on a biblical scale. However it doesn't matter as we can just correct the situation by taxing the drones ( i.e. the workers) a bit more. Job done.

 bit of deja vu with the Ark Royal. That is scrapped and they have started on a replacement which will arrive in 2018? We either need an aircraft carrier or we don't. That scrapping order was made by the present incumbent government I believe. They are all as bad as each other.

Historically the MOD have tried hard not to spend money when really required on new kit, then ended up paying through the nose and wasting billions of pounds to catch up later.  Sudden changes in military demands does not help, especially when their political masters commit our forces to unpredicted arenas and types of war. 

In modern times that has been The Falklands War, The Gulf War, the Iraqi invasion, and now Afganistan.  All have placed specific demands on the inefficient MOD, with panic ensuing, money being wasted, and our brave military going without vital gear! 

The hard fact is, as I mentioned before, the MOD put off the politically sensative issue of replacing the then already aging Nimrod with the American AWACs in the 1980s.  The Ark Royal and her sister ships were a cheap skate option when built during the 1980s, with the politicians of the time calling them, and forcing the Royal Navy to do so also, a "Through Deck Cruiser", as Britain had previously ruled out having fleet carriers again!  These Through Deck Cruisers should have been replaced by full, large, carriers years ago, but this was avoided, and once more the British tax payer has paid dearly for this delay, with the current government needing to scrap what are now old ships which would be highly expensive to maintain or refit, with the result still not being fit for 21st century purpose.  Technology moves on quickly, and no more so than with warships!

The question you raise Varche about whether or not we need carriers is a very valid one!  Do we need carriers, no more than we once required Dreadnoughts, Super Dreadnoughts, then the last British Battleship HMS Vanguard. 

War has moved on.  During WW1 the power of the new weapon, the plane, emerged, but mainly for its ship spotting and target ranging ability.  So before WW2 battleships were still considered essential, but aircraft were a looming presence as a significant war weapon.  It was quickly learnt in the early days of WW2 that indeed aircraft could so often prove deadly to ships, and especially the large bulks of slow moving battleships, with the result that the future was clearly the aircraft carrier and the planes flown from them.  The end had come for the battleship and battle cruisers.

By the end of the 20th century any large warship, by then the carrier especially, had become an easy target for very advanced nuclear submarines, long range aircraft, and crucially ship-ship, air to ship, submarine to ship, and land to ship missiles.  Even Frigates had become easy pickings for air launch Exocet missiles. Their range has become ever greater, and the computer / satellite technology has made their accuracy deadly.

With this in mind we can ask the question, not of "do we need carriers", but are they now obsolete?  Is the future of naval conflict one of huge hidden nuclear driven, ballistic missile firing submarines, land based long range aircraft, or simply long range land based anti-ship missiles?

No doubt these questions are now taxing the minds of the military chiefs, the MOD mandarins, and the political leaders.  The bottom line is then that the current carriers being built could be a complete waste of tax payers money yet again.  Like HMS Vanguard they will be very obsolete before they are commissioned!;)

Or to precis and using my earlier words: " we either need something or we don't" Note I didn't use want.

Fair enough Varche

The answer is we do not need these carriers, and we do not want them but the contracts are all in place to build them!

[Lizzie_Zoom]

No doubt these questions are now taxing the minds of the military chiefs, the MOD mandarins, and the political leaders. 

May I respectfully suggest that in the highlighted groups you have identified the problem, not the solution?

 

I know that, as we are dealing with fellow humans who cannot precisely predict, and never have, the future nature of conflict and where that could be within the time scale of weapon building and development!