I see a nuclear cruiser called the USS Gene Taylor in the future. Great target for a used Tu-22M in the absence of an air force, or any of the other things that we won't be able to afford.

Putting a southern Democrat from a surface-shipbuilding state in charge of the HASC is like asking Gary Glitter to help run your Girl Scout troop.

Boffo,

"1 - that UK will require ever decreasing numbers of DD/FF, because 2 - shipbuilding costs will rise inexorably."

No figures for the future fleet are available, but I'm guessing it'll be twenty escorts, six or eight T45's plus T23 replacements. I don't see why costs should rise- DIS states that we maintain a "core" capability, but also that the UK should shop abroad for the low value steel bashing where appropriate- the complex high tech stuff being done back here. However, if "Shipco" comes to pass- and this enterprise can rival its foreign competitors, we may find that steel bashing becomes more competitive here in the UK as Shipco wins export orders needed to drive down unit costs?

"the next DD/FF design will be 2025 (just in time to forget everything learned for FSC)."

That would surprise me. Planning for T23 replacement needs to start NOW. With the CVF's out of the way we'd need new escort construction to begin strait away.

Steel bashing is misleading. Large amounts of steel bashing can be subbied out for ships (eg MARS tankers) that are largely "empty".

I can tell you from personal experience that a conventionally sized DD/FF should take no more than 1.5-2m production manhours to build in total. Add some realistic labour rates to that and you get a feel for the proportion of cost that any "Shipco" might be able to influence. BTW - with steel at £600/te and say 2000 te of steel per DD/FF thats only £1.2M for material costs. Steel labour for an efficient yard should be around 150 manhours per te, so thats 300000 manhours by a reasonable rate (say £20 hr, plus overhead) say £12M labour total for the steel construction........

The real problem is described most elegantly here......
http://www.coltoncompany.com/newsand...ment2004q3.htm

and the cost impact here (for LPD17)
http://www.coltoncompany.com/newsand...htm#EIGHTH_LPD

I can see the rationale for a Shipco (SOBS - Son Of British Shipbuilders), but not of letting t'Bungling Baron and his aircraft company (that would rather do anything but design and build an aircraft) run it. Give Vospers all the yards!

CVF - fantastic insurance to ensure you have airpower in your pocket around the world, but there might be another basing option near Lebanon

http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.c....x=121&g.y=217

Spot it?

Ah yes. What Strike and AD assets are based there?

Not_a_boffin, did you see the link provided by DiD in my last post?

The Lion in Winter: Government, Industry, and US Naval Shipbuilding Challenges

ORAC - VMT a very succint description of the problem. The interesting thing about LCS is that the Navy effectively sh1tcanned the requirements process in detail, cut NAVSEA out of most of the deliberations and put the design and build in the hands of second tier shipyards. Result - a programme that has gone from concept design ITT in 2002 to first of class in the water in early 2007 and is still broadly within target unit cost of $250M. Of course it helped that some of the payload (combat system items) were kept from the programme, but is indicative of what could be achieved.

Steamer - the Baron is only part of the problem. Without sufficient opportunity to design NEW vessels, develop the build programmes and commission them, VT would still be subject to the same problems. That's the bit MoD needs to grasp. Rather than lump all the "important" bits into Shipco and give out new design orders every 15 years, we need to decrease the periodicity and pay the penalty in NRE.

Thanks for those links Boffo, mildly reassuring to know that we are not the only country with shipbuilding problems :{

That coast guard "cutter" is surely an Arleigh Burke derivative?

As an aside, and as a very rough rule of thumb, I've always reckoned on £1000 per displacement ton for the cost of a basic warship hull, less all the weapons and sensors?

Ah, that is the cunning bit. You can move them and they get there faster than ships. You can even self-ferry some SH, hence the large twin rotors dropping pax onto the Lusty.

Of course, if it had been somewhere a bit further away from one of our few last outposts of empire we would have been stuffed and a CVF would be handy. Unless it was in the middle of a desert of course.

Blunto,

Thats all well and good but a stationary strip of tarmac doesn't tend to move around the place at 26 knots. This makes finding the thing rather easy :E

It is nice to have a few outposts left though...good for shore leave?

..and it won't sink either. We could be here all day. Let's have both.

Oh come on Blunto, put 'em up :8

Oh alright, I agree...

Its unlikely that the UK armed forces will get involved in armed conflict in the Eastern Med. If we did then Cyprus is ideally placed and we would not need a CV in theatre. As has been pointed out, we no longer have lots of little islands dotted about the place and land based locals are far less friendly than they were. So lets have both. I'm still getting positive feedback on CVF, lets hope its stays that way.

.......but we do have some:
The United Kingdom is responsible for 3 Crown Dependencies and 14 Overseas Dependent Territories.
The Crown Dependencies are the Isle of Man and the islands of Guernsey and Jersey know collectively as the Channel Islands. The Overseas Dependent Territories are Anguilla; Bermuda; the British Antarctic Territory; the British Virgin Islands; the Cayman Islands; Gibraltar; Monserrat; Pitcairn Island, St Helena and dependencies (Asuncion and Tristan Da Cahuna) South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Navaleye your argument is flawed. You could not operate from Cyprus because the staff would need to close the airfield for their lunch break/going off watch/golf/flight safety standdown/BBQ on the beach (delete as appropriate.

What about Diego Garcia? and the Falkland Islands. Interesting to see how many of those listed have had actual or attempted invasion over the last 100 years.

Nope - she's only 4000te and just reflects the current fad of putting signature reduction sloping on everything (shame about the highly reflective masts....).

As far as costs go, I'd put another 0 and possibly a factor of three on your rule of thumb. Course, if shipco ever gets going, that'll be a couple of 0's!

Some of these industries have a "use it or lose it" problem. See this article from Janes.

Giving evidence before the House of Commons Defence Committee (HCDC), officials from BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce said that the industry needed a firm commitment from government on a future submarine build programme in order to assure continuity of work and long-term viability.

Not surprisingly, the thickos in Government cannot understand that.:ugh:

On a different note...

On the 845 NAS Photo Gallery there are some pictures of Sea Kings on and around the quayside in Beirut. Does anyone know what they did?

Am I right in thinking the evacuation could have still gone ahead if there had been no access to Beirut port? The six Junglies and three Chinooks could have pick up entitled persons, and smaller ports (or even beaches) could have been used by Bulwark's landing craft?

Well the Germans came to see us uninvited for five years during WWII !

Although as we (the Channel Islands) are so close I assume you wouldn't need a carrier to defend us!