[1] sovereign capabilities (they should be listed, one day, otherwise the money pit is bottomless). Also leads to buying a couple of specimen, so that the next gen development effort has a spring board. Not necessarily enough units to provide a credible capability (which has capacity in it as one factor).donald_of_tokyo wrote:# Also note that treasury cut no money. They payed as much as RN asked for as planned (even added 1B GBP). It is simply the development cost which ate all the hull 7-12.
So, the question must be, why RN developed its own AAW system? [1]
Also, in T45 hull 7-8 discussion, I remember it was banned in favor of CVF and T26. It is also RN's decision. Having 8 T45 and 11 T26 would be much cheaper at last. But, it was a decision made around 2010, right after the "Lehman shock". So, in some sence, understandable...[2]
I always think, RN was toooooo optimistic about economy[3] right before the Lehman shock, which made them go for 2 of 70000t large large CVFs [4], huge dream of 12 T45s and 16 T26s or so. After the shock, CVF confronted NO CUT[5].
[2] Buying votes, with a good dose of keynesian thinking blended in
[3] Not their job
[4] Would not have got them otherwise, ever. The stupidity of Power Projection as a Force for Good had been revealed, but Power Projection had become (quite rightly so) the embedded thinking on defence
[5] TSR2 effect: sunk cost too high to cancel. The current Head of NAO was writing the contract, on behalf of the then Gvmnt, to make sure it was going to stay that way... all the way
