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Subject: Australia was offered a barter deal for a new build Invincible
Volkodav    5/4/2010 8:05:33 AM
Following the Falklands the UK could no longer justify the sale of Invincible to Australia but an offer was made involving the construction of an additional Invincible for the RAN in exchange for Australia building two Tobruks for the RN to replace Tristram and Galahad. The thinking was that it would be cheaper for Carringtons to build another two hulls based on Tobruk than to rebuild / replace the two war losses in the UK as the RN was forced to do. It seems to be a quite sensible proposition as it would have allowed ship yards to extend existing programs taking advantage of economies of scale in experienced and up to speed ship yards. There would have had significant flow on effects such as: 1. Australia gets a carrier and it can be tailored to our needs more than Invinsible could 2. The Seakings and their dunking sonars could still be deployed 3. The Wessex could still be deployed 4. Lynx could be bought instead of Seahawk saving the cost difference in the helos and the cost of modifying the first 3 FFG's to operate Seahawks. 5. FFG 5 and 6 could be cancelled and a smaller design (such as the B+V FS1500)could have been ordered in greater numbers for local construction instead of them and the ANZACs. 6. Work for an Australian ship yard with benifits for the local economy and industrial capacity. 7. We would have been better set up to replace the DDG's in the 90's with a proper AWD and then the FFG's (instead of modernising them) with more in the 2000s.
 
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Volkodav       5/15/2010 10:55:50 AM
This is not a hypothetical, it was a proposal made to Australia by the UK government that was killed of by the election of the Hawke government and their opposition to the acquisition of a carrier.
 
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