Tourist,
actually I was not seriously suggesting a change to diesel.
When I worked (oh joy) I was more or less brainwashed
into the attitude, "only judge the result".
On that basis your statement "The gas turbine is not the problem on the T45"
falls far short. Regardless of the solution these ships should always have
adequate power available. My opinion is that the character who signed the contract
as well as the contractor who failed to say "this might not work" should be sactioned.
Having performed major acceptance tests in my (aerospace) career I would have needed a
lot of vaseline to deal with that one.
I do think that we should get away from the attitude of
"supporting british indistry". That approach just means it will be worst, not best.
Still, I don't want to give more time to this, and remember "Blue streak was the best ever"
John