Seems to me Mr Putin could of learnt a few lessons from what the US did during the Cold War , and is looking at possible trying to tap into civilian and military communications ? The various officials who talked to the NYT did not seem to think so, the locations chosen are notable for their inacces...

If you cut all the undersea cables then everything has to go via satellite, which takes a lot longer and you get congestion. The ordinary person is not going to care if their Google search takes a few seconds longer but you can be sure a drone operator is going to require better QoS and latency than...

The New York Times has an article explaining the background . The disruptive effects of such an action would not be limited to US agencies. The fact that cables can be and are damaged all the time by natural accidents introduces a strong deniability theme - something that could well be attractive to...

US military cybersecurity fail.

Looks like AVRP is not working that well.

Can we have less e-peen and more constructive discussion please? TIA

Speech by CEMM Admiral Bernard Rogel about how he sees long term French naval strategic issues and their relation to 2016 government defence spending. There is a lot of interesting stuff here, too much to try to provide a summary of, so I won't. If you don't speak French you can try to make sense o...

I would have thought the plan for refuelling would be to land them ;) that's why they've spent millions on making them easy to land on the deck, and if it's to extend their range then it's FSTA which we've spent billions on (this does rather undermine their stealth credibility though). The Harriers ...

Re the USVs: http://forces.tv/36861986

They should probably have their own dedicated thread.

Too much has been spent on so called green technologies yet we have very little to see for our money in the way of benefits. Well, apart from the fact that wind is now the cheapest form of energy in Britain . We need both nuclear and green technologies because coal is coming (and must come) to an e...

You're ignoring the fact that freedom of speech implies the freedom to disagree that all of the things you wrote are desirable. Elective government - is it really any better for the average person than feudalism? Probably most people wouldn't see much difference in terms of their actual rights and r...

... we should be looking at control of our borders and our policy of letting anyone who fancies it settle here as of right. We should be crystal clear about what we stand for and only let in people who share those common beliefs. We need contrarian individuals to avoid us falling into the easy ways...

Can't see them being able to provide any kind of protection. Reconnaissance yes, also amphibious ops.

shark bait wrote:A "drone" boat capable of carrying out 12-hour surveillance missions is being developed for the Royal Navy's new aircraft carriers.

I don't think they're specifically for the carriers. There were more details on Forces TV a short while ago: http://forces.tv/97737897

Merkel's position is not surprising - do you realise how many ethnic Turks there are in Germany? Of course - yet again - "what arfah said", and Merkel is no doubt well aware of this so she can be as superficially generous as she likes and gain a lot of political support internally in the f...

And before that, a group of mini Kingdoms ruled by various ancient celtic kings. I think you're forgetting the part about it being the last bastion of the Western Roman Empire. It was Rome, civilisation, its inhabitants Roman citizens, for over a century after England fell to marauding illiterate b...

Everything that arfah said

Including the part about Doggerland, it could help to provide a boost to our flagging maritime sector to service it, and it would be iconic and therefore increase Britain's soft power.

ArmChairCivvy wrote:Now, which Convention are we referring to ? [Ottawa?]

CCM

ArmChairCivvy wrote:The Russians use scatterable submunitions that Western nations have renounced for doing too much collateral damage

Western nations other than the USA, that is.

ArmChairCivvy wrote:What would that correlate relationship entail?

It would entail that the rUK treats both in the same way, not that they would have some alliance between each other.

For (1) rather than "Greater Isle of Man", a better correlate would be New Zealand (similar population as well).

There's also no a priori reason that Scotland could not reinstate its own monarchy and become a correlate of one of the Scandinavian countries.

The operational descendant of Taranis is supposed to emerge in the 2030s, nobody has suggested 2020s.

Raytheon is working on using Excalibur smart munitions on surface vessels:

http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articl ... libur.html

No confirmation from USN.

Defiance wrote:Probably because you agree to sign the Official Secrets Act when you sign your employment contract, you'd have to be an absolute moron to discuss details of Taranis online.

You're missing the point, it was a response to Gabriele's previous post.

Why can't we just do what the French do and call it Reaper-M? Makes much more sense.

Let's face it CAMM-M is ten times better sounding than "Sea Ceptor"...

As I understand it when people have been talking about Taranis capabilities and what it brings to the table, they are talking about the Taranis concept rather than the current prototype airframe (which will presumably be one of a series of different prototypes).