Future Carrier (Including Costs)

[FODPlod]

Originally Posted by ORAC

Now, as I was saying about irony.

Having been present with the task task force during the Falklands War and interviewed all the major commanders both naval and army who were present I think it fair to say Sir Max Hastings is more than entitled to his views and able to defend them both personally and based on their views - unlike those bsing their opinions on books on a war which took place either before they were born or were at best in nappies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Hastings

I suggest you are much more careful about describing his critics.

Originally Posted by FODPlod

This is the same gung-ho Max Hastings who, at his typically blinkered, fiercely pro-Army anti-everything-else worst, labelled the Royal Navy as cowardly for not starting a shooting match with Somali pirates holding hostages at gunpoint on board a yacht bobbing about on the ocean. He even got that wrong because it was a Royal Fleet Auxiliary tanker on the scene, not a warship.

Having 'liberated' Port Stanley single-handed, he has conveniently forgotten which service delivered him to the Falklands and fought and died to protect him en route. Yet strangely, he sees little or no role for maritime capability, aircraft carriers, air superiority, CASD or much else the RN (or the RAF for that matter) has to offer. His eyes are firmly fixed on 'boots on the ground' to the exclusion of all else required to prepare the ground for them, deliver them, protect them, sustain them in theatre and provide them with vital intelligence.