Originally Posted by
Onceapilot
The whole giant war canoe saga is raping the rest of the RN, the RAF and the UK Defence budget.
OAP
Except that once again, the facts do not support your opinions.
Taking the last years for which the NAO major project breakdowns are available (sadly 2015), you'll find that the top
in-year spend is Typhoon at £976M from a total of £5.1Bn that year (19%). A whopping £200M below that comes QEC @ £742M at 15% of the in year total. Then comes the A400M at £706M (14%) which even exceeds the amount spent on the Astutes at a meagre £682M (13%).
Interesting that even at the end of the production run, Typhoon is still by some distance the most expensive project in the EP. Note that 2015 is also well past peak spend of the QEC programme, so that spend ranking ain't going to change much.
Of all the projects in the EP that are past MG, those supporting Air total around £37Bn (£32Bn if you exclude that allocated to F35) compared with £25.7Bn that could be attributed to the Naval service. Alternatively, the in-year EP split is still £2.5Bn vs £2.1Bn in favour of Air and that's making some generous assumptions as to the "benefit" of complex weapons spend and F35.
Your opinion on the carriers isn't going to change, but its prejudice appears to be driven entirely by the size of the ships, rather than any consideration of fact. Do at least try to support your assertions with fact rather than blaming your own personal hobby horse.