Help focus the cuts on the right areas

[Flarkey]

Good and fair post Melchett01.

And I like your thoughts on putting DJRP on Typhoon. I'm surprised that it hasn't been done already. The updated DJRP is much improved on the old ones.

[dallas]

We send £250m/year to India in development aid. That's the same India that just announced at Farnborough that it might want to double the number of C17s it has on order from 10 to as many as 22.

We have 6, are at war, and are broke. Anyone spot a contradiction anywhere?

[Lyneham Lad]

We send £250m/year to India in development aid. That's the same India that just announced at Farnborough that it might want to double the number of C17s it has on order from 10 to as many as 22.

We have 6, are at war, and are broke. Anyone spot a contradiction anywhere?

As reported on Flight Global:-

Worth more than £700 million to BAE and Rolls-Royce, India's follow-on order for 57 Hawk 132s marks the UK's latest success with a product that has now been sold to 18 countries.

Give with one hand and get back with the other? Are these things linked? I couldn't possibly comment.

[andyy]

Same thing happened many years ago with the WG30 Helicopter.

[StopStart]

We don't send them bags of cash, merely offer economic concessions when it comes to buying stuff from the UK. Hence they buy lots of Hawks - we then benefit from the follow up trade.

[LFFC]

The "knife fight" gets worse!

Armed forces stunned by Trident bill

In a break with historical precedent, George Osborne, the Chancellor, has ruled that the entire cost of the new system must be found from within the day-to-day defence budget.
.
.
One senior defence official said: "It's a stitch-up. There was absolutely no hint of this during the election. The armed forces have been knifed in the back by the Treasury.

Major capabilities such as Britain's two new aircraft carriers may now be axed or delayed, the number of Joint Strike Fighter aircraft is set to be halved and a raft of RAF, Army and Naval bases will be closed in addition to other cuts, to fund the Trident replacement programme

Such are the financial pressures on the MoD that the four-submarine deterrent could be reduced to three or possibly two vessels to save money.

Under the new defence review, the entire Tornado fleet could be axed along with an armoured brigade, artillery regiments, the Nimrod MR2 anti-submarine fleet and RAF Kinloss.

The number of Joint Strike Fighters could be cut from from 150 to 75 and troops withdrawn from Germany.

One of Britain's two new aircraft carriers could also be cancelled.

I guess they really mean the Nimrod MRA4!

-----

Meanwhile, Gen Sir Richard Dannatt has made his views clear.

Having to pay for Trident is the Ministry of Defence's worst nightmare.

There is no way the current defence programme can be manipulated not only to fund operations in Afghanistan, and to recover from the £35 billion overspend inherited from the previous Government, but also a Trident replacement, the aircraft carrier programme and our acquisition and operation of a host of fast jets.

That seems obvious.

Of course the RAF must have the most capable aircraft available to protect our skies, meaning that we need enough of the latest batch of Typhoon aircraft to do this. But we cannot also afford to keep the ageing Tornadoes and the historic Harriers, of Falklands fame.

This dose of reality impacts on the aircraft carrier programme, too. At £4 billion, the two ships are not actually that expensive – but at £10 billion, the Joint Strike Fighters intended to fly off them most certainly are. This brings the whole project into doubt......

His solutions?

The answers lie with more and smaller ships to secure the sea lanes, and land-based planes whose range is enhanced by a renegotiated air-to-air refuelling programme.

And in case anyone thinks that this retired general is wearing khaki-coloured spectacles, the Army needs to reduce immediately its holdings of main battle tanks and heavy artillery, and its presence in Germany.

So apart from Typhoon, what land-based, AAR capable, [offensive] aircraft would those be if Tornado, Harrier and JSF are off the menu?

[Twon]

I'm sure I'll be accused of stirring up an anti civil service argument but looking at the quote "An assessment by the Royal United Services Institute last month expects a reduction of around 25,000 servicemen and 15,000 MoD support staff by 2014.", I find it a little surprising given that there are already more civil servants than military.

Why, in these times of cutbacks, will there be an even more disproportionate number of civil servants to uniformed manpower? Is it because they can strike if the cuts are too unpalatable. I guess we just bend over again!

[LFFC]

There aren't more civil servants than military in the MOD! See this post.

Poor reporting I'm afraid; don't believe everything you read.

[thebarrel]

A few attacks on 32 Sqn on this thread. I think there's some ignorance about what it does and how it is funded. I understood the Royals pay for their usage themselves. Also that the annual running costs are very small and contribute enormously to efficiency - I personally would prefer the important decision makers to be able to whizz round efficiently to several appointments rather than stuck in traffic and ineffective.

The fixed wing part of 32 Sqn was almost exclusively operating in theatre last time I asked, though that was not recently. I also heard that the rotary element (3 Agusta 109s?) had been chopped anyway.

Anyone shed any more light?

The fixed wing element of 32(The Royal) Sqn have been continuously deployed since 2001. There are 2 aircraft permanently in the Gulf, operating in both theatres.The service they provide obviously saves a valuable Herc or C17 from doing that job, as the tasking can be anywhere. The Sqn haven't flown Ministerial tasking or Civil Servants for a number of years now; the Royals when they fly pay the MOD just as if they were going to NetJets or something and that is only a surplus capability.

I'm sure it was admin-ers shouting for them to be cut...I do like the JPA controller's view of cost saving...why don't we just bin all the aircraft and pilots?

For actual cost saving, and please correct me if I'm wrong, surely the University Air Sqn is the place to start? UAS cadets get paid to attend, there are Grobs, QFIs and Serco personnel stewn across the UK, not to mention valuable property (has anyone seen the CUAS building?). A tri-service ops-focused OTC is what is required; the UAS system to me is a throwback to the flying club days.

Can we not part-civilianise C4i? I'm yet to actually get hold of a real person, just the infernal woman answerphone of the dreaded SPOC.

Finally, perhaps we should do what the Danish have and allow personnel to fly into theatre on non-DASS equipped aircraft. Controversial, but would allow us to charter direct to Afghan and scrap Tristar now, saving a monumentous amount of money.

The barrel for chancellor! Hurrah!

[Wyler]

Twon

Not all CS are pen pushers.

I am an instructor at a Training School. I left the RAF after 23 years service because I was tired of the continual upheaval and time away from home. The RAF now get the benefit of my experience for 40% of the cost of a senior Flt Lt. The RAF also gets continuity. I get to do a job I still enjoy and I get stability which = Quality of Life. Everybody wins. There are many more like me.

I am not taking a job from a regular, there are not enough to fill the posts and experience is at a premium.

If anything, you may see more people like me over the next few years because it is a cheap way of getting all of the above.

So, when talking about getting rid of CS, please remember the first line of my post.

ps: I would love my job to go to a Private Sector provider. Then I could get a more representative salary.

[Joe Black]

So apart from Typhoon, what land-based, AAR capable, [offensive] aircraft would those be if Tornado, Harrier and JSF are off the menu?

There's an aircraft in production at the time of speaking which has a very uncertain future...MRA4 - the "A" seems to always be overlooked and not taken seriously. An ISTAR platform with 15hours endurance, AAR capable, huge bomb bay(capable of carrying a multitude of weapons) - is it just me or are we missing a trick......or does it have to be fast and pointy to drop bombs??

[Pontius Navigator]

Originally Posted by Melchett01

how far have we come in the past 60 years? Given that 60 years ago we used to be able to put 1000 bombers in the air at any one time and fly to Berlin and back in a night, repeatedly, I really would ask just how far we actually have come now that we are struggling to maintain a capability that sees us struggling to get a handful of jets to theatre.

That 1,000 bombers was only a slight overkill but given a CEP of 400 yards most would have been needed to hit just one bridge.

Today any single fast-jet can destroy that bridge with better than 75% probability. To guarantee a kill a 4-ship would be sufficient.

Night after night was also an exageration. True some raids were back to back but the sorties were both weather and moon dependent. Now they can be day after day and night night after night and largely independent of weather although weather can still be significant.

That is how far we have come.

[Mr C Hinecap]

As we were discussing over lunch - how far have we come in the past 60 years? Given that 60 years ago we used to be able to put 1000 bombers in the air at any one time and fly to Berlin and back in a night, repeatedly, I really would ask just how far we actually have come now that we are struggling to maintain a capability that sees us struggling to get a handful of jets to theatre.

Apples and oranges there dear chap. You can't really compare

- fairly agricultural platforms flown from a home base with a whole country geared towards a war effort, to

- technologically advanced platforms flown from the other end of a very tenuous logistics chain while the rest of the nation goes about business as usual.