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Subject: UK's vassal status re-affirmed?
mithradates    4/8/2007 12:56:16 PM
In this latest prisoner incident, the actual power of the U.K has clearly been demonstrated. Though the entire affair was instigated by the U.K army, it is now obvious to all that the U.K is entirely dependent upon the U.S for it's security. Without U.S military backup, the U.K cannot even attempt to deal on a basis of equality with Iran let alone superiority. Iran was able to extract written confessions and apologies from the 15 tresspassers of their guilt and then was gracious enough to pardon these criminals. While the U.K put these soldiers on TV and had them whine about mistreatment, and how much they wanted to preserve their own lives. Is there now any doubt that the U.K is but a vassal of the U.S?
 
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SGTObvious       6/11/2007 4:28:50 PM
NATO nations in Afghanistan
 
its rather academic, but there other countries taking bullets in afghanistan outside of NATO.
 

Australia is of course an honorary member.  It would be a full member, but is excluded only because of its rather inconvenient location relative to the North Atlantic.  Greece and Turkey made it on a technicality- we could call the Med a sort of attached lake.   Won't work with the Pacific.
 
As for the UK and carriers:  it would be a splendid idea.  A true full sized carrier offers a remarkable range of capabilities NOTHING else can match.  Note their service after the Indian Ocean Tsunami.  Having a mobile airfield you can move across 2/3 of the planet is invaluable- especially when that airfield comes with mobile hospital, mobile communications center, intelligence collection and analysis center, water distillation facility, etc, etc.  Of course, money is the real issue.  They are pricey.  And just one is not enough- you need at least two, so they can rotate.  The reality is, the problem is not that the carriers are too expensive, it is that the Royal Navy budget is too small!
 
Europe should pool its resources and buy six of them. 
 
SGTObvious
 
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flamingknives       6/11/2007 4:47:42 PM
Re British Carriers.

It would only be a splendid idea if you could somehow suspend reality and run about in a wonderous fantasy world. the RN has neither the budget nor the manpower to operate them. The airwings do not exist nor do the pilots to fly them and the consumables and logistics to operate them. The RN surface fleet does not have the expertise of operating a nuclear vessel or the means to refuel them. The UK has no shipyards capable of maintaining them.

Even if the RN had the budget, they would be better designing and building their own supercarriers and aircraft than buying US cast-offs.

Apart from anything else, the RN has a different operating philosophy to the USN.
 
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Ispose    UK Carriers   6/12/2007 11:58:19 AM
Maybe the UK / Belguim / Norway / Germany / Netherlands should pool their resources and Lease an older US Diesel Carrier for training use and buy one of the new CVN which are highly automated thus reducing crew sizes. This would give these nations a power projection capability that they currently don't have. I'm sure the French would opt out of such a venture but for the UK and other European Maritime Nations this would be a useful asset. put a UCAV and F-36 Air Wing on it with some V-22 Ospreys and this would be a useful ship.
If the older carrier is mainly used for training then being close to port and not spending most of its time at sea wouldn't really be a liability.
Except for a battleship nothing is better to prtect your interests abroad than a carrier. Most 3rd world or 2nd tier nations would think twice about messing with you if they know a carrier with state of the art Aircraft number more than their entire airforce is waiting of the coast. The sheer size of it also makes it useful for humanitarian missions.
For warfighting I agree 1 carrier isn't enough but for limited actions and peacekeeping the RN having a full size Nuclear Carrier is an immense strategic asset. Having a Full size Diesel carrier to back it up in time of emergency is also useful. I understand the manpower limitations of the RN but is there any reason the Diesel Carrier can't be used for Reserve Component training as well?
 
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flamingknives       6/12/2007 2:23:47 PM
Oo, excellent, a brand new CVN, chock full of ITAR restricted goodies and with the software etc. so withheld we wouldn't be allowed to steer the bleeding thing, much less fight it. With an obsolescent hulk as a backup and for training. Except that the training would be a bit pointless as the CVN would be so different.

F-35 - Only the UK has all the goodies promised and would probably not be allowed to use them on an international ship. UCAVs - only if we make them ourselves. Osprey, why? apart from more ITAR shenanigens, what would it offer to a CVN?

1 Carrier isn't enough for peacekeeping or limited action either, as you'd look a damn fool if your one and only floating
airfield is stuck in refit when you need it. Any 2nd or 3rd rate powers would feel free to act with impunity with your only carrier stuck in dry-dock or under tow in the atlantic because it has broken down, again. Or blocked from operating because the US has threatened to withdraw port facilities.

A Carrier is better even than a dreadnought at power projection, as it can stand off so much farther from the coast while still striking deep inland.

Much better to make our own. 2 65,000 tonne ships are better than 1 100,000tonne+ ship
 
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SGTObvious       6/12/2007 3:21:14 PM
"1 Carrier isn't enough for peacekeeping or limited action either, as you'd look a damn fool if your one and only floating
airfield is stuck in refit when you need it. Any 2nd or 3rd rate powers would feel free to act with impunity with your only carrier stuck in dry-dock or under tow in the atlantic because it has broken down, again. Or blocked from operating because the US has threatened to withdraw port facilities."
 
Excuses, excuses... 
 
If the US economy can maintain 14 of them, UK + Germany + Netherlands + Denmark + ??? can do at least 3 without a sweat.  Get the Poles to help.   They're ready, willing, enthusiastic, work cheap, and you've already got about a million of them in London.  Nothing will shake up world politics like a Polish aircraft carrier.
 
And how many crises have the US backed down from because a carrier broke down?  If you're not French or Russian, it doesn't happen that often.
 
And port facilities?  Good god, man, if you can afford a super carrier you can BUILD port facilities- and they don't have to be close by, either.  When the Ark Royal went to the Falklands, how many port calls did she make enroute?  A CVN's range is even longer.
 
And if the freakin Iranians can keep F-14's flying, the UK and friends can maintain anything that flies, if they put a little effort and ingenuity into it, even if the US were to somehow embargo everything.  We're talking about the UK and Germany.  That's two of the top seven economies.  Add in a few more and you have a superpower economy.  Act like it.  You're not Lichtenstein.
 
One true carrier and its group would have settled the Falklands war.  A squadron of E2's and a squadron of F-14's and the UK would probably not have lost ships to Argentine air attacks.  Better- the knowledge that one CVN group could trash the whole Argentine navy and air force, and leave the nation's economic infrastructure in ruins, would likely have kept the Falklands war from ever happening.  Carriers, plus the thought that might actually get used, change things.
 
If (when?) nutjob Chavez decides he's going to try the same move, pump up patriotic spirits by seizing islands from Europeans (Dutch, in this case) the Dutch are really going to wish they had a Nimitz.
 
SGTObvious.
 
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Ispose    Re: Sgt Obvious   6/12/2007 4:03:46 PM
Well said.
 
 
 
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Ispose    Re: Sgt Obvious   6/12/2007 4:09:55 PM
Oh...one more thing. It's the frikkin ROYAL NAVY...not her majestys coastal defence yacht club. If you are going to continue / or try to continue to be a World Class Navy that can defend your interests abroad...do it right. Sgt Obvious is absolutely correct that cutting costs and downsizing cababilities led to the RN's less than inspiring account of itself in the Falklands. The sailors did well with what they had but their government was borderline criminal in sending them to war undergunned.
 
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flamingknives       6/12/2007 4:43:58 PM
SGTObvious:

This is an interesting modification. The original proposal was a single, obsolescent, retired US carrier with a carrier air wing made up of surplus, obsolescent aircraft. My objections are not against aircraft carriers, large, nuclear or otherwise, but of buying up the USN's leftovers that they have decommisioned due to their being at the end of their lives. As ships (or anything) get older, more and more maintenance is devoted to keeping them going. They become finicky and prone to failure. So buying a decommisioned US carrier is a false economy and asking for an embarrasing breakdown of one of the many systems on board, such as the steam cats, the propulsion, lifts, various other machinary that would be enough to forestall aircraft operations. The US wouldn't back down in the face of this, because they have 13 more carriers that can turn up shortly.

The Iranian slant on the F14s is entirely false. The Iranian F14s fly, barely, only occasionly, in a desert, land environment. Operating them from a carrier to a Western tempo of operations and training is another matter entirely.
If we are going to get a bunch of western European states to form some kind of superpower, we will be making our own carriers, not buying scraps from our cousins across the pond.

The RN needs carriers. It does not need a US cast-off. The carriers should operate modern, independent fighter aircraft with minimum maintenance requirements operating the latest ordnance. Not odds and ends scraped together from AMARC with a weapons and sensor capability that started development in the 70's and stopped several years ago.

Proper carriers and fighters, rather than through-deck cruisers, would have been much better in the Falklands. But that was 25 years ago. The contemporary analogy for that period would be the Vincenzo de Mayo.
 
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Panther       6/12/2007 5:19:17 PM
"The RN needs carriers. It does not need a US cast-off. The carriers should operate modern, independent fighter aircraft with minimum maintenance requirements operating the latest ordnance. Not odds and ends scraped together from AMARC with a weapons and sensor capability that started development in the 70's and stopped several years ago."
 
Very true. But as long the admiralty, HM Treasury and perhaps quite a few incompetent British politicans keep getting in the way of the RN modernization, then US cast-off's might be your only bet outside of depending on an EU country (France) for the UK's carrier needs.
 
Has anyone over there asked their government, why after the example of the Falklands war, it's been 25 years with no clear cut answer yet and with the incredibly slow progress too supplying the British carrier needs? The RN deserves better than this, too constantly be put on the back burner, not knowing when HM goverment is going to finally get serious about it's own naval defense!
 
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Ispose    Re: Carriers   6/13/2007 11:39:49 AM
The RN needs carriers. It does not need a US cast-off. The carriers should operate modern, independent fighter aircraft with minimum maintenance requirements operating the latest ordnance. Not odds and ends scraped together from AMARC with a weapons and sensor capability that started development in the 70's and stopped several years ago.
 
Thats why I suggested that the RN get on board with the new CVN 21(?) project. This is the US Navy's replacement for the Nimitz class with much more automation and modular capabilities. This makes for a full size carrier with out half the crew of a Nimitz Class. Getting into the production cycle of this would mean and extra Carrier or 2 beyond what the US Navy is ordering with a cost reduction per unit that could be shared. I'm only speculating but minus the Air Wing they shouldn't be that much more than what the RN is currently looking at but with more capability. Being Nucler Powered means it's faster and doesn't need as much supply support from tankers...just Aviation Fuel. The crew requirements shouldn't be much more than what the RN is looking at now for their proposed Fuel Oiler powered carriers.
As far as using one of our older Carriers...this would mainly be a training ship...keep it close with a minimal crew...sail out for exercise and flight Ops training...it should be servicable. In case of War or a problem with your main Carrier(s) then ramp up and put it into Full Service. If the Indian Navy can keep their piece of crap Russina carrier running then the RN can certainly keep an older US Carrier operating. We've got several decommisioned Carriers just sitting around so there are plenty of spare parts available.
The new CVN 21's are designed with F-18, F-35, UCAV airrcraft in mind so the RN should be able to use these ships without any major mods.
I just hate seeing one of the Worlds foremost Navies with such a rich tradition being relegated to just another European Frigate Navy...Shame.
 
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