The answer to your original question is No. That is an opinion that i do not share. The vast majority are not spending 2.0% nor will they for many years yet, outside of Greece and Poland no major country in Europe is spending 2.5% Accepted - my point was more that if the UK did respond to events by...

no. no more so than was true in the 19th century. more purple if you will - at the direction of a maritime strategy, yes. The maritime strategy was historically designed to firstly contain Spain then France in the 18th/19th centuries followed by Germany in the first half of the 20th century. The re...

A maritime strategy is not a naval strategy. It is largely based on the law of economic warfare. Whereby you guarantee trade for yourself and deny trade to your enemy. In the 19th century that trade was almost exclusively at sea so denial of the sea to the enemy was considered paramount. That holds ...

The ultimate guarantor of nato is the nuclear umbrella and that will remain. The response to nibbles or testing along its border more interesting and why Baltic states in particular are extremely nervous. It’s the political leadership and command elements most missing without the US you saw that in...

The question that people are really asking is do you want the political construct that goes with such a joint program.

It really has little to do with the airframe requirement that’s just a smokescreen.

…my answer to that is I’m not sure they are crucial it can be done without them. They can’t be excluded from the discussion, RN literally revolves around them now. It’s an easy win for an incoming administration. Put PWLS into extended readiness and instantly the headcount and budget pressures disa...

What may last post means is less tasks, less programs to free cash to invest in specialists areas. So based on current planning what are you proposing to cut? As I have mentioned before my choice is national requirements around air defence, maritime security and counter terrorism/eod. Beyond that o...

As I have mentioned before my choice is national requirements around air defence, maritime security and counter terrorism/eod. Beyond that our contributions to coalitions would be around submarines, strategic transport, aar, airborne ISR and special forces (under which I included the RM and paras)....

What may last post means is less tasks, less programs to free cash to invest in specialists areas. So based on current planning what are you proposing to cut? As I have mentioned before my choice is national requirements around air defence, maritime security and counter terrorism/eod. Beyond that o...

Much tighter priorities, fully resourced areas of competency more focus on defence. Many many others do it on much less than we do. Of course this is important but it won’t solve all of the problems in isolation. Blaming foreign exchange rates isn’t the only answer either. The SSNs, SSBNs and Tempe...

Have you noticed that when a fastjet squadron deploys as a squadron they go with 8 jets be they tornado, typhoon, or f35 even though there peace time compliment is 12. For intense operations they may add 1 or 2 additional jets for fwd deployed maintenance spares. The problem with comparing what the...

Have you noticed that when a fastjet squadron deploys as a squadron they go with 8 jets be they tornado, typhoon, or f35 even though there peace time compliment is 12. For intense operations they may add 1 or 2 additional jets for fwd deployed maintenance spares. The problem with comparing what the ...

No it really isn’t. I do not get why people think more money is the answer all you get is the same issue’s amplified. What’s the solution without spending more money? Much tighter priorities, fully resourced areas of competency more focus on defence. Many many others do it on much less than we do.

[quote=Poiuytrewq post_id=165613 Moving to 2.5% will produce almost £60bn per annum for defence. Moving up to 3% would produce closer to £75bn. Thats a huge increase and clearly shows what has been removed. This is the foundational reason for all of the problems that U.K. defence is suffering now. [...

French fremm frigate engaged 3 ballistic missiles in the red sea

If you want to go down the route of we don’t have a national requirement to deploy a brigade outside of nato you don’t need to deploy brigade support sized aviation outside of nato and that includes fastjets. Disagree, if you want to strike OTH, at speed and at a scale of @500 elite troops then the...

There is not enough helicopters to go round multiple groups nor is there capacity to operate two carriers simultaneously. The problem gets worse if the carrier is separate as there is a csar requirement that draws on the same limited helicopter pool. Would argue that yes you could operate two, but ...

I would say the LHA mode would be a natural default configuration for a CVF. This for me is something in the region of a sqd of 8-12 F35s, 6 AEW/ASW Merlins, 8 Commando Merlins, 3 Chinooks and 4 Wildcats, plus two companies of RMs. The problem you have with this default position is other than the c...

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/20 ... n-red-sea/

Wildcat and martlet your time has come.

[quote=Repulse post_id=165566 I would say the LHA mode would be a natural default configuration for a CVF. This for me is something in the region of a sqd of 8-12 F35s, 6 AEW/ASW Merlins, 8 Commando Merlins, 3 Chinooks and 4 Wildcats, plus two companies of RMs. [/quote] The problem you have with thi...

They should bought the Russian mistrals off the French and replaced the LPDs. In fact if they want to go that way license build 2 mistrals now. But to resource 3 commando properly requires considerable investment Royal Navy leadership aren’t interested in doing that and I doubt any of the other com...

They should bought the Russian mistrals off the French and replaced the LPDs. In fact if they want to go that way license build 2 mistrals now. But to resource 3 commando properly requires considerable investment Royal Navy leadership aren’t interested in doing that and I doubt any of the other comm...

... 3 could be ready at any time .. Having 3 out of 4 at any time will be really challenging. Maybe at some point could happen but on consistent rate highly unlikely. It also has been said somewhere that the RM could go with 4 x LSU's of 500 instead of 8 x 250 Total number of personal could easily ...