baldysblog.co.uk

Last Thursday the deal was signed to build two large aircraft carriers and it will come as little surprise to note that the majority of the shipbuilding jobs go to Scotland where the Labour Party’s fortunes are at a low ebb. Let me make it clear, I personally have no problem with ships being built in Scotland as without military orders, there would be no shipbuilding there at all.

The problem lies more with what they are building, there is absolutely no case and never has been for these 2 aircraft carriers, they are a total military nonsense that have nothing what-so-ever to do with the Defence of the Realm. They manage to be not only militarily useless but also are totally unaffordable in financial terms and will inevitably impact on all other defence procurements in a negative way.

Military Nonsense

In logical terms these two white elephants will never be able to be deployed by the UK in independent action, they will remain tied up in harbour and the Admirals too frightened to put them to sea just like the Argentinians after the sinking of the Belgrano. In fact there is probably a better simile, German Surface Raiders during the Second World War, all were bottled up or sunk. In fact in building these two ships, the Admiralty may just have well ordered two Iron clad Dreadnoughts, it’s not just Generals who start out fighting the next war as the last, Admirals too it would appear.

As warships as opposed to swanning around the globe on “goodwill visits”, they will never be deployed operationally without the Americans and as part of an American Carrier/Battle Group. The combination of capital and running costs are such that there will be insufficient other surface vessels to give support so, we will never be able to put both at sea ever. If we did in a conflict situation, think along the lines of the demise of The Prince of Wales and Repulse during WWII.

The sums involved tell the tale because after we have paid £4 billion for the ships plus 80 Joint Strike Fighters at around £100-150 million a copy, we will have no other surface vessels to escort them and barely be able to afford the tug boats to take them to sea. I must admit that I find the reasoning of our Defence Staff highly suspect because even the dumbest of our Admirals must be able to do sums on the back of a fag packet and if so, know that these are just not affordable.

The Real Needs

Since the end of the Cold War, the majority of our “European Partners”, whether in NATO or the EU, have collapsed into being next to useless so, like it or not, in military terms, the only people we can rely on are the “Anglo-Sphere” and in particular, the US. Taken in this context, US military planners may prefer the UK to offer “force potentials” that they do not have rather than more of what they do have already.

The UK needs to think first in terms of totally “dominating a maritime exclusion zone of 2-400 miles from UK shores with a permanent “picket line” of ships. In this context, there is a case for smaller, less sophisticated and more numerous ships to operate fleets of Predator type, armed pilot less aircraft and Helicopter Carriers are a must, if we can be bothered to buy the Helicopters and their software, of course.

In military terms, things change in the terms of being almost “cyclical”, things move on, fashion changes and then comes around again but one thing is constant throughout history, you need boots on the ground to take and hold space, in some things, nothing changes. But also there is another theme that needs to be taken on-board right now – defence in depth which is a completely different concept from this “building Dreadnoughts”.

Learn From History

Sometime back I came across a book that claimed that it was the Royal Navy who had “Won the Battle of Britain” and whilst in one sense it made me smile, it also made great sense too because what that battle was about was that only by destroying the Royal Air Force and establishing air superiority by the Luftwaffe, could the Germans invade Britain, neutralise the Royal Navy and prevent it interfering with German landings and subsequent ground operations.

But there is even more to be learned from this long ago distant battle of 68 years past, who exactly won and why ?

It really comes down to the specific scope and range of days chosen and the numeric “Lost”, “Killed” numbers of downed aircraft by both sides which shows overall an RAF “Victory” but frankly “only just” numerically because all of that is bollocks because it excludes the most important factor… aircrew.

Thanks to Lord Beaverbrook and technically, a far simpler world, production of aircraft was excellent but aircrew were another matter. If the Germans lost an aircraft, there was an 80-90% chance that they had also lost the aircrew because they were fighting over southern England ad the Channel. For the British, providing they could replace the aircraft, there was a 55-60% chance that they could recover the aircrew and have them flying the very next day.

Defence In Depth

There are “Predator” type aircraft flying missions over Iraq and Afghanistan that are being “flown & fought” from a USAF base in Arizona many thousands of miles away. I was impressed with one US Commander, apparently a former F16 pilot who commented that the one thing that impressed him most about Predator type aircraft was their”sheer persistence” in terms of operational time over the target because the ‘asset’ will stay flying whilst the ‘crew’ can be changed for coffee breaks.

A Typhoon (Euro-Fighter), apparently costs £60 million a copy but considering the fact that it probably costs 5 years to train a pilot for it, which is the greater cost ? The US has a simple answer to that, the pilot and regardless of the cost of the aircraft and to prove it, have specialist teams deployed to recover ‘downed’ aircrew.

A Predator unmanned aircraft costs around £5 million per copy bought from the US, mass produce them here and the cost might fall quite a lot however let’s put that into perspective: For the price of 10 Typhoons – £600 million, we could have 120 Predator unmanned aircraft but, it is far more than that. Our ‘pilots’ are sitting anywhere in the UK, can go to the toilet, have lunch be replaced mid-shift and still be controlling an armed and intelligent aircraft the other side of the world.

For the price of these two carriers without any aircraft, we could have 800 unmanned operational aircraft, include 80 Joint Strike Fighters at £100 million each and we could have 2,400 with very reliable 24/7/365 coverage.

A Crap Government

However, the aircraft carrier fiasco illustrates this Governments approach to defence spending. They will spend on massive capital projects such as this because it means civilian jobs, often in Labour held constituencies. The failures we see today rest in not properly valuing the “software element” of the Military, our serving personnel and the welfare of their families. Browne is useless but to be fair, is he more or less useless as the Hapless Hoon was ? The real scoundrel of course is Gordon Brown who starved the military of funding for a decade as Chancellor. The money would be far better on better, boots, bullets, body armour, vehicles and service accommodation.