But sadly from Friday's
Telegraph:
Libya forces David Cameron to rethink defence cuts
Restoring the Royal Navy’s Harrier jump jets is also ruled out as prohibitively expensive.
Need it be so?
Also:
Nick Clegg: defence adjustments will be needed
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg says that it is inevitable that changes will be made to the Strategic Defence Review, while Lord West argues that any additional money should be used to reinstate the Harrier Jump Jet.
On a more controversial note from the
Gaurdian:
Royal Navy airpower offers a far cheaper option overseas than the RAF
Some of the comments are a bit - err - special. Like the rabid one about the Harrier being rusty (carbon fire doesn't rust surely?) and the ones about anti ship missiles - apart from the fact that ships can shoot missiles down, the whole point of carrier aircraft is to carry firepower over the horizon.... They seem to miss that.
A
similar thread on Rum Ration notes that:
Hell of a lot of ground running going on at Wittering!!!
Incidentally this
force of ships etc has not deployed early because of Libya. Honest!
Wrathmonk
WEBF - I fully appreciate there is more to carrier ops than the aircrew and it may well be that AV8B guests in future exercises. But I'm also sure that the differences between aircraft ops on LUST and QEII are so huge that starting from 'scratch' and getting rid of 'bad habits' from years of Harrier ops would not be a bad thing. We'll just have to agree to disagree! Being a realist I know there is no cash available to reinstate the Harrier (without taking a capability gap or cuts elsewhere within MOD) - as for keeping decks warm I suspect the RN will have to find the cash within their 'slice of the pie' at the expense of something else.
I disagree - or do I? Surely cats and traps are only a means to get aircraft into the air and back on deck, but the whole business of moving aircraft about a moving deck, managing limited deck space and the airspace around the carriers, making sure that the ship is in the right place, at the right speed, on the correct bearing and with a lvel deck, communicating with aircraft, operating and maintaining sensors and landing aids, FOD awareness....... These are the same surely?
Anyway, far more experienced people than I have expressed concern:
Bismark
As I am sure has been said elsewhere, the aircraft and pilots just represent the front end of the carrier strike capability. The idiocy of the SDSR decision, which the PM is about to compound in the FR/UK Defence deal (FT Today), is that we risk losing the capability to operate jets off carriers. All of the expertise on the current CVSs will have gone (we are getting rid of the CVSs), the aircrew will have gone (either PVRd, redundant or moved to other aircraft types, the command experience will have gone (as will the met, ATC, FC, deck handlers, planners etc, etc).
Not_a_boffin
While they may be adept at doing the mission plan, launch, mission, recovery thing, they are unlikely to have a great understanding of how to spot a deck, arrange aircraft for servicing vice maintenance, weapons prep and bombing up and how all the various departments both in the squadrons and on the ship work to deliver the sortie rate. People thinking just about aircrew and (to some degree) chockheads are missing the point - it's the corporate experience of how to put it all together that is about to be lost. Nor can that be maintained at HMS Siskin - that just gives the basics of handling, not the fine art of pulling it all together.
As SDSR says "we need a plan to regenerate the necessary skills"- all I can say is it had better be a f8cking good one, cunning eneough to do more than brush your teeth with!