The 'dying' Royal Navy; what the US can learn.
 

Reuters has a view..

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uk-military-navy-commentary-idUSKCN10L1AD

Almost enough to make a man in Grenada spill his rum punch!

Deeply depressing. I used to go past Devonport in the train and look at the warships and joke to Mrs TTN - "that's probably the whole of the fleet in there".
Now it seems I wouldn't be too far off :(

That's what happens when Governments prioritise tax cuts and handouts (education, social security, pensions) over defence

No-one goes into bat for defence and the Ministers are all second raters with no stroke

Let's hope the new carriers don't share the same reliability probs as the Type 45s..

"No votes in defence" - allegedly.

Is there any reason to think they would?

Apart from being grey, do they have anything in common?

BAe Systems in one guise or another

I undersatand from an Authority close to a Cmdr (E) up at the Clyde ,that the Modules once built at Portsmouth,then transported up to Scotland,sometimes dont marry up to their counterparts.Even watertight doors are not able to actuate in their slots,and then small items like a Plinth onto which a Phalanx mounting is bolted,has its bolt holes not lining up with its flange plate,so someone could not even drill out from a template accurately.I suppose when the Aircraft wont arrive until 2020,someone can redo the job properly!!!!Can hope I suppose,but the sooner eveything is removed fom the Wicked Witch of the North's domain and returned South,then maybe we can have a Navy that will work!!!??

A close family member, a project manager on that job would agree. However, the quality issues didn't lie with the Portsmouth teams

Yes, but that applies to pretty much every piece of equipment in our entire military.....

Yep, its all "Health - Education - Health - Education" = mention defence and you are committing political suicide.

Billions have been chucked away on a university system where thousands of academically mediocre students are pushed through and given joke degrees. Meanwhile if we suddenly decided we were going to seriously invest in defence, would there be a sufficiently large skilled workforce to make the kit?

(btw PPRuNe spell checker, its defence on this side of the pond, not defense :*)

The bit that rankles is when politicians witter on that we may have less ships but they have greater capability and weaponry.

Great, but it doesn't hold water when you need one ship covering the South Atlantic and one in the Gulf region, and you have replaced the two lesser capable ships with one, that cannot be in two places at once.

Given that when last I looked, all the Portsmouth modules (with the exception of one Island) were hangar deck and below, I suspect your contact may be mistaken. The sponson modules where the CIWS live were erected at Rosyth, mainly from steel fabricated in Appledore and shipped up.

Issues with marrying up large blocks will always arise. The difference in doing them between different shipyards is that it gets contractual rather than just the heads of the steel fab and shipbuilding departments in one shipyard having a shouting match and then just fixing the problem. Mountains and molehills one suspects - possibly compounded by RN personnel with limited experiences of working in build yards (as opposed to refit).

Maybe there reducing section sizes as the budget shrinks ;)

Quite true. The reason being that it kept Bliar's unemployment figures looking better than they really were.... A few kids doing 'meeja studies' or somesuch tosh at university, rather than being on the dole.

The initial production run of Eurofighter fuselage sections didn't line up either.

In a roundabout way, Mr Putin and his foreign ventures just might help these things change. I wander how an electorate that is forced to send £15 billion abroad as aid, is told there isn't enough money to defend them whilst they sleep.

Perhaps our technological edge is being eroded:

Are Russia's military advances a problem for Nato? - BBC News

What a quick diversion from the RN to Russian army :-)


Engineer, please, look at the author of that artice - "a diplomatic correspondent" talking about electronic warfare :-) Plus an abracadabra about "Russian military operations in Ukraine". The guy is totally inconsistent: if the Russians are so smart, why did not they overtake Kiev in two days? The answer is obvious: there are no regular Russian troop in Ukraine :-) Advisors, some volunteers - yes, but on the other side there are many NATO advisors and volunteers from West and nobody cries about that.


Coming back to RN, this is probably a reflection of the "threat model" currently used by the politicians. Clearly it is not needed as far as Russia is concerned, but (from a trespasser point of view) regarding issues like Falklands, it should be kept in a good shape....