I think it will be the the RAF and Army heavy equipment that takes the big hit in this round of cuts. I Found this on another forum. It makes good sense to me.
" ...Of course the Navy is going to have EMCAT - if they have to move heaven and earth to get it. It keeps them in the game. So whether it is F35 or F18, those carriers will have catapults. Don’t you get it?
And while I am on it, here is another thing some of you don’t get:
Jointery is over. Where is the jointery in the RAF pronouncements that RAF pilots only will fly F35? Where is Jointery in trying to kill off Harrier in order to kill off fixed-wing FAA? Where is the Jointery in announcing that F35 will operate from land bases most of the time?
And I don’t you see? The Navy has dealt itself a Get-out-of-Jail-Free-Card. It’s called F18. Buy F18 themselves i.e. from their own agreed budget and the tables are reversed - the RN gets its fixed-wing FAA back under its own control.
There is no way that the Navy is not going to try for that. And it’s got an awful lot going for it - F18 appears cheaper and promises to save a lot of money. Whether or not it is and will is irrelevant. It’s the cheap package presented in the NOW that counts with the decision makers. But the real clincher is Sovereign Control. Because no-Sovereign Control means huge amounts of - you’ve guessed it, money. Money to the outfit that’s got you by the short and whatsits.
It is the dream of every corporate to tie their customers into a close relationship which they control. For there lies untold wealth. I know, I’ve seen it happen a few times now. I’ve worked for the screwer, where obscene amounts of money were extracted from the locked-in customer who couldn’t do anything about it - if indeed they knew what was happening. And I’ve worked for the Screwee where the company was in the grip of a large corporate who charged enormous amounts of money for services - and do you know Management didn’t question it. They felt safe and protected and more importantly their jobs were safe and protected. And most of these, both screwer and screwed, were large American corporates.
So the RN’s get-out-of-jail card is completely financial and in these straitened times is therefore very powerful. All these arguments about the relative merits of one plane over another matter nothing. We only have a few weeks to go and then the unceasing wittering will stop.
And Amen to that brothers.
I agree with this post just about 100%. It is what I have been banging on about
Leave aside every argument about LM and the F35B, (although Israel are saying their F35's - which will be considerably less expensive than F35B- will be about $100 million each. Why should we believe that over other figures? Because Israel will actually get them more or less free under the US military aid programme, and they have no need to cook their figures for public consumption.
Inside Intel / Who wants the Stealth fighter? - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News ) it still comes back to the very long running history of the RN and the RAF and control of the FAA.
The RAF, having already spent something like four times the amount of money the QE Class Carriers will cost on Typhoon -optimised for Air to Air combat and yet to be deployed operationally or do any harm to anyone except the British Tax payer- planned to kill off the joint Harrier force and saw F35B, among other things, as final victory for the RAF flying all British fast jets, with the added bonus that the RN would greatly ease their constant deployment problems by actually transporting their aircraft to the war zone.
STOVL was an RAF concept and came about because the RAF believed its airfields in Germany would not last long in the face of a Soviet attack. The RN adopted STOVL only because it did not get CVA, in the 1960's, and did not have a large Carrier that could operate CATOBAR aircraft.. When CVF -the now building QE Class Aircraft Carriers- was being designed all systems of operation were looked at. The RN's, realistic, view was that STOVL and CATOBAR both had pros and cons, Some people at MoD actually favoured CATOBAR, but the RAF, for its own reasons, was adamant for STOVL. Since, for the RN actually getting the Aircraft Carriers into Service was the main thing, at that time they sided with the RAF, since doing anything else risked the RAF coming out against the Aircraft Carriers, as they had with CVA, with disastrous results for the RN.
The CVF concept has gone through various stages. Put very simply: Large- smaller- large. At one stage they were looking at a very large ship with 'gold plated' systems including very large amounts of automation, very fancy radars, high quality self defence systems and very advanced propulsion and prop systems, etc. It all started looking very expensive. A smaller ship in the 30,000-40,000 tons area was looked at and a lot of work was done on it, but, in the end it became obvious that any money saved was not worth it in terms of the operational limitations on a smaller Aircraft Carrier. The design grew again in size, but lost most of the 'gold plated' options. The RN, because they lacked any real commitment to STOVL, ensured the design could, easily, be fitted for CATOBAR.
The world turns and you have an economic crisis, a change of Government and a new Defence review-round of Defence cuts. Whatever LM claims, the British Treasury does not like the look of the costs of the F35B programme at all. The Royal Navy, having recently breathed a huge sigh of relief having seen its longed for QE Class Aircraft Carriers actually start building, is not about to let the RAF F35B programme sink them.
As everyone and his dog, who follows the doings of the Royal Navy, knows the Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers are the future of the RN, the RN has watched over them, worked hard and sacrificed for them for years now. To be a front rank, first class, Navy you have to be able to do Carrier Strike and serious CAS. The Royal Navy is not the USN, but it is the Royal Navy and British Admirals certainly do not see it sinking into some kind of European style coastal defence force, not on their Watch. So the RN has a plan, ready and waiting, buy Super Hornet F18: It will be on cost and on time, it is a battle proven design that the USN intends to operate for at least the next 25 years and it will be able to do anything the British Government wants it to do. It gives interoperability with the USN (and, in due course, CATOBAR might well allow RN Aircraft Carriers to have excellent AEW aircraft) and says the RN, actually a very high proportion of our FAA pilots just happen to be slated for training -on F18- with the USN, so we can save money with our own, independent of the RAF, training pipeline... So we can have our Fleet Air Arm back. ... That's the same FAA that, since WWII, has actually provided UK with extremely good value for money and has always actually been able to do the job it is designed for. The Royal Navy may not have the large
PR Department of the RAF, but they go on, quietly and efficiently, doing the vital job they are paid for in the UK National interest.
And as for the RAF, don't be totally surprised if they end up with Typhoon and, perhaps, some Tornados, to compensate for no F35B any time soon, or, maybe, Typhoon and F35 but in very small numbers and over a very long time."