UK Strategic Defence Review 2020 - get your bids in now ladies & gents
Join Date: Nov 2007
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Age: 53
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By the late 1980s Typhoon was going to replace the last four Phantom squadrons (Wattisham and Wildenrath) and the Coltishall Jags. By the time it was available the Phantoms had long gone so it became a Tornado F.3 replacement by default.
How old is that list of high and low capable fighters? I think the F-111 is somewhat out of place, bearing in mind it hasn't been in service for years and since they cancelled the F-111B it never had an air to air role.
How old is that list of high and low capable fighters? I think the F-111 is somewhat out of place, bearing in mind it hasn't been in service for years and since they cancelled the F-111B it never had an air to air role.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
It’s old but was just used to show comparable size.
I don’t think people realise how large an aircraft such as a SU-27 is, I remember the first time I walked underneath one without having to bend down….
I don’t think people realise how large an aircraft such as a SU-27 is, I remember the first time I walked underneath one without having to bend down….
Thread Starter
Today's Times
Sir,
Rishi Sunak describes the increase in defence spending as putting Britain on a “war footing”. In reality it is more like a slow reversal of the extensive defence cuts that have occurred since 2010. Moreover, the statement that this will result in an increase in funding of £75 billion over the next six years is disingenuous. This year Britain will spend about £64 billion on defence, 2.3 per cent of GDP, so simple maths indicates that an increase to 2.5 per cent will not get anywhere near the overall increase in expenditure that the government claims.
Rear Admiral (ret’d) Philip Mathias
Southsea, Hants
Sir,
Rishi Sunak describes the increase in defence spending as putting Britain on a “war footing”. In reality it is more like a slow reversal of the extensive defence cuts that have occurred since 2010. Moreover, the statement that this will result in an increase in funding of £75 billion over the next six years is disingenuous. This year Britain will spend about £64 billion on defence, 2.3 per cent of GDP, so simple maths indicates that an increase to 2.5 per cent will not get anywhere near the overall increase in expenditure that the government claims.
Rear Admiral (ret’d) Philip Mathias
Southsea, Hants
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I understand it comes from a early 2000's source touting F-22 for Australia v the proposed JSF (despite the 1998 congressional export ban) which probably accounts for the F-111. This was when the production run of the mighty balloon killer
was to be 750 and the FB-22 was still a possibility. Also it predated the RAAF's interim replacement of F-111C with the Super Bug hence F/A-18A as a comparator.
I thought extreme agility plus low frontal RCS were supposed to be the SU-57's selling points and coupled with the R-37 it is designed for the role MB suggests, firing from extreme range behind its own SAM defences and sensor screen. Development of countermeasures particularly to disrupt mid-course updates and the seeker to limit the NEZ and means to take out the missile not the platform become the development goal. But AFAIK the monster only carries 4 AAMs.
Aren't AIM-260 JATM / LREW / Meteor and their Chinese equivalents intended to be used in a similar role on a variety of platforms? For Meteor this includes Typhoon, Rafale, Grippen and by 2027(hmm) F-35. But as ORAC says ROE (particularly Western ones) are likely to rule out any advantages of firing at extreme range, except in all out peer-to-peer conflict.
was to be 750 and the FB-22 was still a possibility. Also it predated the RAAF's interim replacement of F-111C with the Super Bug hence F/A-18A as a comparator.I thought extreme agility plus low frontal RCS were supposed to be the SU-57's selling points and coupled with the R-37 it is designed for the role MB suggests, firing from extreme range behind its own SAM defences and sensor screen. Development of countermeasures particularly to disrupt mid-course updates and the seeker to limit the NEZ and means to take out the missile not the platform become the development goal. But AFAIK the monster only carries 4 AAMs.
Aren't AIM-260 JATM / LREW / Meteor and their Chinese equivalents intended to be used in a similar role on a variety of platforms? For Meteor this includes Typhoon, Rafale, Grippen and by 2027(hmm) F-35. But as ORAC says ROE (particularly Western ones) are likely to rule out any advantages of firing at extreme range, except in all out peer-to-peer conflict.
Thread Starter
Todays Times Business pages
Empty defence spending promises are a shot in the dark - The government’s announcement was misleading and opaque and does nobody any favours
Paul Johnson director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies
Last week the prime minister committed to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of national income by 2030. I got intensely irritated. . What annoyed me was not the commitment, either. It was all about the misleading and opaque way in which the additional spending was presented. When it wanted to make it look big, the government claimed it would boost spending by £75 billion; when it wanted to appear fiscally responsible, it claimed it would be cheap as chips, costing only £4.4 billion in 2028-29 and easily paid for by undoing some of the recent jump in civil service numbers.
It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes, or even the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, to see that there might be something not quite consistent about these claims. Quite obviously, you can’t increase spending by £75 billion at a cost of £4.4 billion. What on earth is going on?
In brief. You get to £75 billion by assuming defence spending is frozen in cash terms every year between now and 2030. Then you look at the difference each year between that flat cash number and what you’d spend on a path to 2.5 per cent of GDP. Then you add up all of the differences. Hey presto, you get £75 billion of additional spending. This is an old trick, of which Gordon Brown was the great master. That is no excuse. The numbers that result are essentially meaningless. What made the use of this trick particularly remarkable was the accompanying and clearly inconsistent claim that the policy would cost hardly anything. If you want a small number, you don’t assume that defence spending would otherwise stay flat in cash terms. Rather, you compare your policy with a baseline in which defence spending remains at its present level of 2.3 per cent of national income. If you assume that most of the spending would have happened anyway, then getting it up to 2.5 per cent by 2030 does, indeed, look rather cheap.
Reversing the direction of travel may be necessary, but it is going to be painful. Jeremy Hunt has said that he wants total spending on public services to rise by 1 per cent per year over the next five years. Given commitments on health, childcare, overseas aid and defence, this would imply sharp spending cuts for many public services. More money for defence means even sharper cuts. A first pass at the numbers suggests that this new commitment could mean the cuts reach 4 per cent a year for a range of public services. That is, frankly, implausible.
I’m not going to let the opposition off the hook. It has committed to raising defence spending to the same 2.5 per cent of national income when conditions allow. That is a literally meaningless commitment. “Conditions” will depend on whether, for example, it reverses the £20 billion national insurance cut we have just enjoyed. If Labour does that, then conditions will allow immediately. More importantly, conditions depend on what its other priorities are. Would defence spending really trump demands from the NHS, schools, welfare and everything else? Labour has been exactly as opaque as the government over how it would prioritise within the desperately hard budget constraints it will face if it assumes office.
A commitment to spend 2.5 per cent of national income on defence is a serious, significant and costly statement of intent. It should be treated as such by all of us, by our enemies and by our allies. Playing these sorts of games with the announcement makes one wonder quite how seriously our government takes it.
Empty defence spending promises are a shot in the dark - The government’s announcement was misleading and opaque and does nobody any favours
Paul Johnson director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies
Last week the prime minister committed to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of national income by 2030. I got intensely irritated. . What annoyed me was not the commitment, either. It was all about the misleading and opaque way in which the additional spending was presented. When it wanted to make it look big, the government claimed it would boost spending by £75 billion; when it wanted to appear fiscally responsible, it claimed it would be cheap as chips, costing only £4.4 billion in 2028-29 and easily paid for by undoing some of the recent jump in civil service numbers.
It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes, or even the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, to see that there might be something not quite consistent about these claims. Quite obviously, you can’t increase spending by £75 billion at a cost of £4.4 billion. What on earth is going on?
In brief. You get to £75 billion by assuming defence spending is frozen in cash terms every year between now and 2030. Then you look at the difference each year between that flat cash number and what you’d spend on a path to 2.5 per cent of GDP. Then you add up all of the differences. Hey presto, you get £75 billion of additional spending. This is an old trick, of which Gordon Brown was the great master. That is no excuse. The numbers that result are essentially meaningless. What made the use of this trick particularly remarkable was the accompanying and clearly inconsistent claim that the policy would cost hardly anything. If you want a small number, you don’t assume that defence spending would otherwise stay flat in cash terms. Rather, you compare your policy with a baseline in which defence spending remains at its present level of 2.3 per cent of national income. If you assume that most of the spending would have happened anyway, then getting it up to 2.5 per cent by 2030 does, indeed, look rather cheap.
Reversing the direction of travel may be necessary, but it is going to be painful. Jeremy Hunt has said that he wants total spending on public services to rise by 1 per cent per year over the next five years. Given commitments on health, childcare, overseas aid and defence, this would imply sharp spending cuts for many public services. More money for defence means even sharper cuts. A first pass at the numbers suggests that this new commitment could mean the cuts reach 4 per cent a year for a range of public services. That is, frankly, implausible.
I’m not going to let the opposition off the hook. It has committed to raising defence spending to the same 2.5 per cent of national income when conditions allow. That is a literally meaningless commitment. “Conditions” will depend on whether, for example, it reverses the £20 billion national insurance cut we have just enjoyed. If Labour does that, then conditions will allow immediately. More importantly, conditions depend on what its other priorities are. Would defence spending really trump demands from the NHS, schools, welfare and everything else? Labour has been exactly as opaque as the government over how it would prioritise within the desperately hard budget constraints it will face if it assumes office.
A commitment to spend 2.5 per cent of national income on defence is a serious, significant and costly statement of intent. It should be treated as such by all of us, by our enemies and by our allies. Playing these sorts of games with the announcement makes one wonder quite how seriously our government takes it.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Apropos of nothing, Germany has 82 medium-lift helicopters while the UK is tying itself in knots over trying to acquire "up to 44", and falling well well short of that number it seems.
Seems that the number of helicopters being sought through the UK's NMH programme has fallen even further than the quantity reported by @Helofresh - now sits at 23-32 sources indicate.
https://www.flightglobal.com/helicop...158096.article
Seems that the number of helicopters being sought through the UK's NMH programme has fallen even further than the quantity reported by @Helofresh - now sits at 23-32 sources indicate.
https://www.flightglobal.com/helicop...158096.article
Apropos of nothing, Germany has 82 medium-lift helicopters while the UK is tying itself in knots over trying to acquire "up to 44", and falling well well short of that number it seems.
Seems that the number of helicopters being sought through the UK's NMH programme has fallen even further than the quantity reported by @Helofresh - now sits at 23-32 sources indicate.
https://www.flightglobal.com/helicop...158096.article
Seems that the number of helicopters being sought through the UK's NMH programme has fallen even further than the quantity reported by @Helofresh - now sits at 23-32 sources indicate.
https://www.flightglobal.com/helicop...158096.article
Sunak's commitment to 2.5% GDP by 2030 is politics pure and simple as the chances of him being in power in 2030 are negligible. As my grandmother used to say "fine words butter no parsnips". Tories since Cameron ( he who sold off the Harrier fleet to the US Marines for a song and shredded the Nimrods) have only paid lip service to preserving a credible military structure. Boasting about our 2% GDP achievement rings false when you consider that in "2015 the UK changed what was counted in its defence spending. War pensions (around £820 million), assessed contributions to UN peacekeeping missions (around £400 million), and pensions for retired civilian Ministry of Defence personnel (thought to be around £200 million) were included for the first time. That’s over £1 billion in spending which was previously not counted in the budget." Fullfact.org
If 23 is all we need, just make the requirement for 23.
In oral evidence to the HoC Northern Ireland Committee's hearing of oral evidence on Defence Spending in the province on Wednesday (starting at 10.26.45), Nick Laird, managing director of European space and defence at Spirit AeroSystems (ex MOD senior civil servant - left 2017), stated '“The number of aircraft for the UK military defence is circa 30, and we’ve just gone through an extended invitation to tender and we’re now in an invitation to negotiate (ITN) period,” Spirit are one on the Airbus helicopters partners.
Apparently there is a key focus on exportability for the NMH winner.
Apparently there is a key focus on exportability for the NMH winner.
